Deception Game (49 page)

‘Then we destroy the bastard.’

McKnight winced as the hood was yanked off her head, bright electric light flooding her eyes. Squinting, and trying to ignore the headache that still pulsed through her head like the steady beating of a drum, she glanced around, trying to take in as much detail of her surroundings as possible. There was no way of knowing when the hood might be thrown back on.

The source of illumination seemed to be a floodlight of some kind; the sort of temporary device that workmen would set up in underground tunnels while they went about their tasks. Its beam was directed straight at her, obviously intended to disorient her and make it difficult to tell what was going on.

In that respect at least, it was working. Her limited field of vision was enough to tell her she was in an enclosed room. It’s dimensions were hard to judge, but it appeared to be both long and wide, and probably industrial in origin given the corrugated-steel walls on either side and the rough floorboards beneath her feet. A warehouse or factory perhaps.

But whatever the room’s original purpose, the place seemed to be disused as far as she could tell. There was no machinery in view, no storage crates, no furniture save for a single wooden stool facing her. The air smelled of dust and sawdust and old engine oil.

Movement was impossible. Her wrists and ankles had been securely fastened to the chair she was now seated on, and she didn’t doubt there were armed guards watching her in any case. In short, she wasn’t going anywhere unless her captor allowed it.

Having removed her hood, the man in question now stepped into her line of sight, moving with the slow, deliberate ease of one who knows time is on his side. Pausing for a moment to wipe a layer of dust from the stool, Faulkner settled himself on it and regarded McKnight in silent, careful deliberation.

Needless to say, she did the same.

This was the first time she’d seen David Faulkner up close and she had to admit, his appearance was very much in line with what she knew of his personality.

Impeccably dressed in a neatly ironed white shirt and khaki-coloured trousers, he looked like he’d stepped out of lunch at an expensive country club. Everything from his watch to his shoes were designer brands.

She assumed him to be in his fifties, though his face had a strangely ageless quality about it, his forehead smooth and unlined, probably courtesy of a few shots of botox. Even his neatly coiffed blonde hair looked fake, either plugs or a toupee.

Only his eyes gave him away as something more than a rich middle-aged businessman preoccupied with his own vanity. Those eyes were fixed on her now, cold and cunning and assessing.

‘Hello, Samantha,’ he began, the words pouring out as smooth as velvet. ‘I know this must seem like rather a moot point now, but it’s occurred to me that we’ve never been properly introduced. My name’s David. It’s a pleasure to meet you.’

McKnight said nothing. She had no desire to converse with this man.

‘You’re probably wondering why I brought you here, why I went to all the trouble of liberating you from your Libyan army friends,’ he went on. ‘I was hoping we might sit down together and have a little chat...before things move forward. I always make a point of giving people a chance to be open and honest with me, perhaps save us all a bit of...’ He glanced away for a moment and let out a faint sigh. ‘Unpleasantness. After all, we’re both reasonable people. There’s no reason we can’t converse in a reasonable way.’

She closed her eyes, the headache and pain of her numerous injuries seeming to return with greater intensity now. ‘Look, asshole, I’m tired and I’m hurting and I’m really not in the mood to listen to all this crap. Let’s save us all some time and get down to it. I know you’re going to threaten me with all kinds of torture, maybe break out the hacksaws and blowtorches or whatever else you’ve got in mind. But the fact is you’re wasting your time. You want to know where Ryan is? I can’t tell you, because I don’t have a goddamn clue. He could be on a flight home, or dead by now for all I know. He left me to die out in the desert, because I asked him to. I was unconscious when the Libyans found me, and God knows how long I’d been lying there. So do what you have to do, but drop the Bond villain routine. It’s enough to make me throw up, if I actually had anything in my stomach.’

Far from being angered by her outburst, Faulkner merely smiled in amusement. ‘Actually Samantha, I don’t need to trouble myself with hacksaws or blowtorches in this case. The fact is, I believe you. I don’t think you know where Ryan is, or even if he’s still alive, so I’m not going to waste my time torturing you.’

At this, McKnight frowned in confusion. Of all the reactions she’d expected from him, this hadn’t been one of them.

‘I don’t need you to help me find him.’ Reaching into his pocket, Faulkner held up a cell phone. ‘If I’m right, he’ll find me.’

With their course of action decided, they had only to wait for the right time to put their plan into action. At Cunningham’s recommendation, the group would remain in the cave until the following evening, giving them time to rest and recover a little strength before attempting the border crossing to Tunisia under cover of darkness. This mountain hideout was, according to him, about as remote and safe a place as it was possible to find anywhere on earth.

Thus, there was little to do for now except wait. Frost and Mason had chosen to occupy themselves with checking their limited supply of weapons and ammunition, trading insults and sarcastic remarks to keep their spirits up while they worked. It was a habit they fell into more easily as time passed, dealing with tension and danger through mockery and dark humour as if by mutual consent. Perhaps it helped take their minds off the loss of one of their own, or perhaps it was enough simply to have someone around who understood.

Whatever the reason, it worked for them.

‘Ow! Goddamn this thing,’ Frost mumbled as the hacksaw blade slipped from her grasp for the third time, grazing her knuckles.

She was working to remove both the wooden stock and the lengthy barrel from the antique shotgun she’d stolen from the farmhouse the previous night, turning the gun into a bank robber’s dream. It was a shame to ruin such a fine weapon, but its sheer size and weight made it impractical for transport or concealment.

Normally it was a simple enough procedure to modify a shotgun in this way, requiring just a few minutes in a decent workshop. Unfortunately the only tool at her disposal was an old hacksaw borrowed from Cunningham’s limited cache of equipment. The blade had seen better days, and the handle had partially snapped off, leaving only an awkward metal stub to grasp. Severing the hardened steel barrel was an arduous task, and made no better by Mason’s unsympathetic attitude.

‘Hey, I’d have thought you had plenty practice doing that sort of thing,’ he remarked with a wicked grin, watching as she resumed the rhythmic up-and-down sawing motion.

It took little imagination to guess what he was alluding to. ‘Fucking pervert,’ she hissed. ‘Maybe I’ll test this thing on you when I’m done.’

Mason winked at her. ‘Good luck. You’d do more damage if you threw it at me.’

‘Keep talking,’ she mumbled. ‘I’ll remember this next time you need me to get your laptop working again.’

As the woman carried on with her difficult task, she became aware that Mason wasn’t her only observer. Glancing up, she noticed both of the young Tuareg hunters watching her from the other side of the cave. One – she thought it might have been the older one, Amaha – was seated at an improvised comms station that looked to have been built from scratch out of frequency scanners and old military radios. He didn’t seem to be transmitting anything, but rather passively listening in on other people’s broadcasts.

Keeping one half of his radio headset pressed to his ear, he elbowed his younger sibling in the ribs and leaned closer, whispering something in his ear that brought amused chuckles to both men.

‘Something funny, ladies?’ she demanded, staring right at them.

Amaha spoke back to her in Arabic, struggling not to laugh.

‘I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. Why don’t you come a little closer and say it?’ she suggested loudly, tensing up a little in anticipation of a good scrap. They might not speak the same language, but she had a feeling she could teach him a little respect all the same.

‘He says you work like you talk – fast and loud,’ Cunningham explained to her. Leaning against the rocky wall nearby, he’d been smoking a cigarette in meditative silence until now. ‘He wonders if you do everything the same way.’

Both young men were laughing now. Frost glanced at them, chewing her lip as she considered whether or not the hacksaw would work more effectively on human flesh than the antique gun.

Sensing her dangerous change in demeanour, Cunningham added, ‘High spirits, lass. Wouldn’t let it get to you.’

Frost spared him only a brief glance, not trusting herself to look at him for too long lest the memory of what he’d done override common sense. She had promised Drake not to cause trouble here, and she would abide by that, despite her better judgement.

‘If I were you, I wouldn’t let
me
get to
them
.’

With nothing more to say on the matter, she turned her attention back to the gun and started sawing once more. She was almost through the barrel when she heard the soft thump of boots on the sand nearby, and looked up to see the younger of the two Tuaregs, the one with the scar, approaching. She vaguely remembered his name as Iskaw.

‘Boy, I’m really not in the mood for shits and giggles,’ she warned him. Casual – albeit irritating – banter was one thing, but harassment was quite another. Promise or no promise, she’d have no problem putting the hurt on this man if he overstepped his bounds.

To her surprise, however, he hunkered down on the ground in front of her, his expression oddly serious now. ‘I not laugh,’ he said in broken, heavily accented English. ‘I want...make sorry. You not...feel bad, we laugh.’

This at least prompted a raised eyebrow. ‘Thought you couldn’t speak English?’

Iskaw shrugged. ‘I learn little, listen better than speak.
Wali
teach.’

‘
Wali
?
’ she repeated. ‘Who’s that?’

The young man gestured to Cunningham, who was still sitting with his back to the wall. ‘
Wali
is name for him. Means...guardian, and friend.’

Frost couldn’t help but smile at the irony. Matt Cunningham was many things, but guardian and friend didn’t exactly spring to mind when she thought of him. ‘Let me ask you something. Do you know who
Wali
really is? Where he came from, why he’s in your country?’

She half expected Cunningham to intervene, to silence her and break up the conversation lest she expose him for who he was. To her surprise, however, he did no such thing. But she could feel his eyes on her even from the other side of the cave, listening and waiting to see what happened.

The Tuareg hunter nodded solemnly. ‘He tell. He make mistake, do bad things for bad people. He tell good men die because of this.’

Frost sniffed and looked down at the gun in her hands. ‘That’s right. Good men die because of this. My friend died because of this.’

She heard a faint sigh from him. ‘I not know
Wali
before. Good man, bad man...it is past. But I know now. I know he save me, give me shelter, teach me. My...family force me out. He is stranger, but he help me. For this, I owe him a debt.’

Perhaps his relationship to Cunningham wasn’t so incongruous after all, she thought with grudging recognition. There was a certain symmetry to their respective situations – one lonely outcast meeting another. ‘So what are you now? His servant?’

‘His friend,’ Iskaw corrected her. ‘Until my debt is paid.’

Remarkable that one so young should place so much value on honour and responsibility, Frost realized. It was of course misplaced, stupid, and as likely to get him killed as it was to repay whatever debt he imagined he owed, but she couldn’t help feeling a touch of respect for him all the same.

‘While we’re talking about repaying debts, I should probably point out that you still owe me one knife,’ she reminded him, switching to a topic she was more comfortable with. ‘Feel free to give it back any time.’

Iskaw’s hand went to the blade sheathed at his waist, though he made no move to draw it or return it to her. ‘Not debt. You owe us your life.’

‘And you owe us yours,’ she pointed out helpfully. ‘Go figure.’

‘Why is this?’

‘When you first showed up at our meeting spot alone, we could have killed you right there and then. It would’ve been the sensible thing to do, but we let you live. We’re nice like that. The point is, you owe your life to us. You wouldn’t be breathing if we hadn’t held back.’

He was smiling now, seemingly enjoying their verbal sparring session. ‘I knew you there. If you attack, you not live long.’

‘Don’t flatter yourself, pal. In the great scheme of things, you’re not exactly John Rambo.’ It was perhaps a universal truth that no matter where one was in the world, adolescent boys always suffered from that most debilitating condition – the chronically inflated ego. ‘Anyway, if you knew we were there, why did you lay your weapon down to pray?’

‘Allah protects,’ he said, speaking in a flat, matter-of-fact tone, as if it were a well-established rule known by all. ‘If He wills me to live, I live. If not, I die.’ He flashed a wry grin. ‘It seem safer to keep Him happy.’

‘Suit yourself,’ she said dismissively. Frost was about as religious as she was sensitive. ‘Personally, I’d rather stick with body armour and common sense. Oh, and for the record, I argued in favour of killing you. Just thought you should know.’

At this, Iskaw chuckled to himself, reached into his cloak and unbuckled a second knife that he’d kept hidden until now. Held in a simple leather sheath that was scuffed and faded with age, it looked to be some kind of traditional hunting knife, clearly having seen many years of use. To Frost’s surprise, he held the weapon out to her.

‘You take,’ he said.