He’d served in an elite Special Operations group hunting bad guys in Afghanistan, and had looked set to have a long and distinguished career until a roadside bomb took out the Humvee he was riding in, leaving him with lumps of the device and the vehicle embedded in his legs and spine.
After a difficult rehabilitation, he’d transitioned into the Military Intelligence Corps for a brief time before the CIA headhunted him. That wasn’t the kind of offer you refused, and so for the past five years he had been working out of Langley.
Desk work might have been more suited to his physical abilities these days, but Franklin was still lean and fit despite the injuries that had ended his military career. His dark blond hair was always cut short, his suits were always well pressed, and he carried himself with the confidence typical of his military heritage. His grey-blue eyes sparkled with quick intelligence as he nodded in greeting.
The second man was older, probably in his mid-fifties. His greying hair was receding a little at the sides, and there were lines around his mouth and eyes. He was still in good shape though judging by his trim waist and broad shoulders, with no sign of the middle-aged spread that such men often struggled against. His face had the ruggedly handsome look of a movie star, and the slender reading glasses he was wearing suited him perfectly.
There was something oddly familiar about him too, but Drake couldn’t place it. Still, one look was enough to confirm that he was one of the ‘big pay cheques’ that Franklin had alluded to. His suit looked as if it cost more than Drake’s monthly wage, and he had the imposing
bearing
of a man used to giving orders and having them obeyed. This guy moved in circles that Drake would never be a part of.
Both men rose to greet him as he entered, Franklin moving a little slower than his companion but trying to hide it. Several spinal operations had failed to undo the damage done by that roadside bomb. Sitting in one position for more than fifteen minutes resulted in painful muscle spasms, so he was often found pacing the room during long meetings.
‘Ryan. Good of you to join us.’ He gestured to the man beside him. ‘I’d like to introduce you to Marcus Cain, director of Special Activities Division.’
Drake’s heartbeat shifted up a gear in that moment. Now he knew why this guy seemed familiar.
Marcus Cain was one of the big players within the CIA’s complex power structure. As head of Special Activities Division, he was responsible for sanctioning black operations all across the globe. Basically, just about anything the US Government needed done, but could never admit to.
Cain smiled as he rounded the table to shake hands. ‘Sorry to haul you in here at such short notice, Ryan. From what I hear, you were taking some long-overdue R and R?’
His grip was strong, his smile easy and confident. He was like a movie star pressing flesh with eager fans.
Franklin gave him a hard look, as if to forestall any objections he might have been mad enough to voice. For some reason, Drake felt foolish about his earlier complaints on the phone. Had Cain been listening in?
‘It’s no trouble, sir,’ he lied.
Cain’s amused smile suggested he wasn’t fooled for a moment. Still, he said nothing further on the matter.
‘Well, I appreciate your getting here so fast.’ He gestured to a vacant chair. ‘Please, take a seat. Coffee?’
‘No, thank you.’
As Drake sat down, Cain returned to his own seat and poured himself a cup. ‘Dan here tells me you’re very good at what you do,’ he remarked conversationally, taking a sip of his coffee. ‘In fact, I’m led to believe you’re one of the best case officers on the payroll. Would that be a fair assessment?’
Drake was leader of a Special Investigation Team, a small but prolific sub-unit of Special Activities Division formed to investigate, track down and, if possible, bring home missing CIA operatives.
The CIA employed thousands of operatives – they were never, ever referred to as agents – all across the globe, doing everything from intelligence gathering to espionage, kidnappings, political interventions, assassinations and undercover work.
Inevitably, some of these operatives would ‘go dark’ and stop reporting in, either because their true identity had been uncovered, they had been killed or injured in the course of their mission, or on rarer occasions, because they had turned against their former employers.
Whatever the reason for their disappearance, it was vital to know what exactly had happened to them. If they had been captured or uncovered, had they talked? If they were being held hostage, was it possible to recover them? If they had turned rogue, what were the chances of apprehending them before they did any serious damage?
Answering those questions was the task of a Special Investigation Team. Colloquially known as Shepherds, their job was to piece together whatever clues were available on missing operatives, find them and, if possible, bring them back into the fold.
The CIA could call upon six permanent Shepherd teams. Or rather, six permanent case officers, of whom Drake was one. Each was the core around which the rest of the team was built.
Again he felt his heart beat a little faster. Cain was putting him on the spot, seeing how he would react. ‘I’d say you’re better placed to make that assessment than I am, sir.’
Cain smiled. ‘Typical Brit, always underplaying things. Well, you should consider yourself lucky that your reputation precedes you.’
Opening a folder on the conference table in front of him, he leafed through the pages with the mild interest of a man studying a novel he has already read. It took Drake a moment or two to realise it was his own personnel dossier.
‘Let’s see … You joined the Parachute Regiment in ninety-seven before moving on to the SAS two years later. You did two tours in Afghanistan, the second with Fourteenth Special Operations Group as part of Operation Hydra,’ he noted with a flicker of interest.
Drake felt himself tense up. There were only a handful of people in the world who even knew about Operation Hydra, and it seemed Cain was one of them. With director-level security clearance, it was only natural that he would have been briefed on it, but still his casual revelation caught Drake off guard. Just hearing the name spoken out loud was enough to elicit a chill of recognition.
‘You received two citations for bravery and a promotion to sergeant before you left,’ Cain went on. ‘You’ve been with the Agency four years now, and you have the highest success rate of any case officer in the past ten years. I’d call that a pretty decent record, Ryan.’
Drake said nothing. There was more to his military record than Cain had mentioned, but the man had tactfully left it unsaid. It seemed he was out to mount a charm offensive instead.
‘Which is just as well, because we need someone with your talents.’ Cain set his dossier aside and slid a single photograph across the table to Drake. ‘Take a look.’
Turning the photo around, he leaned in closer to study it. Drake’s eyes opened wide when he saw the face staring back at him.
It was a woman. She was Caucasian, with a pale complexion and blue eyes. Her hair was light blonde, cut short and styled in a simple side parting that left a strand falling across her face. She wore no make-up.
She didn’t need it.
She was beautiful; strikingly beautiful in fact. Her mouth was full and rounded, her cheekbones high, her nose narrow and finely chiselled. Her straight, clean jaw-line tapered down to a firm, well-defined chin. The shape, symmetry and arrangement of her features combined in elegant harmony to create a face that was almost captivating in its perfection.
Her age was difficult to tell, but there was something about her face that had lost the softer curves of youth and assumed the more definite lines of maturity.
But what he noticed most of all were her eyes. Icy blue and vividly intense, they held his gaze and wouldn’t let go. Even in a photograph they seemed to stare right through him. Never in his life had he seen eyes like those.
‘This is the most recent picture we have,’ Cain explained. ‘It was taken about six years ago.’
‘Who is she?’ Drake asked, still staring at the picture.
‘Her true identity is highly classified, even for someone
with
your clearance. What I
can
tell you is that she’s a former paramilitary operative, working under the code name
Maras
. She worked black ops from the mid-eighties onward, then four years ago she went rogue and disappeared. In short, she’s a relic of the bad old days. But unfortunately, we need her.’
Drake frowned. That wasn’t exactly a detailed biography. ‘Why?’
‘Times change,’ Cain said with a dismissive shrug. ‘Even relics can have their uses. We need you to find her and bring her in for debriefing. Now, the good news is that we know where she is. But that’s also the bad news.’
With that, he reached into his folder and slid another picture Drake’s way.
It was an overhead, probably taken from a surveillance satellite. The image quality wasn’t great, but it was sufficient to depict some kind of fortified facility surrounded by snow-covered wasteland. The building was a simple, uncompromising square enclosed by a high perimeter wall, with defensive towers at each corner and a large open space in the centre.
It looked like a castle or fortress, and a formidable one at that.
‘Say hello to Khatyrgan Prison.’
‘I’ve never heard of it,’ Drake admitted.
Cain cocked an eyebrow. ‘Then you should consider yourself lucky. Most people who end up there don’t come back to tell any stories. It was built to house some of Russia’s most dangerous criminals – murderers, crime lords, terrorists, enemies of the state … You name it, there’s probably some guy there doing time for it.’
That stopped him in his tracks. ‘Russia?’
Cain nodded. ‘Siberia, to be exact. The Sakha Republic.
It’s
at least a hundred miles from anything resembling civilisation.’
Drake was starting to get an uneasy feeling. Cain was suggesting they try to stage some kind of jailbreak in a sovereign country with the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear weapons.
He looked up. ‘You’re serious about this, aren’t you?’
Cain’s gaze didn’t waver for a second. ‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Can’t we cut a deal with the Russians?’
By this, he meant bribery. A few million dollars went a long way in Russia these days, and it wasn’t as if the CIA was short of cash.
Cain shook his head. ‘Not an option. She’s too valuable to them. And if we open negotiations, we’ll lose our window. Besides, we’re working to a tight schedule. Our only viable option in this case is direct intervention. It has to be done quickly, quietly and, most important of all, anonymously. The Russians get one sniff that the Agency was behind this, and we’re all in the shit.’
It also meant that if the Shepherd team involved was caught or captured, they could expect no outside support.
Now Drake was starting to understand why they wanted him on board. He was British, with no immediate connection to the CIA. He was an ideal choice for a job like this.
Drake leaned back in his chair, taking several moments to digest everything he’d heard. He felt as if he’d just landed in some cheap spy novel.
‘So let me get this right,’ he said at last. ‘You want me to take a team deep into Russian sovereign territory, infiltrate a high-security prison, find and recover a prisoner whose name I don’t even know, then somehow escape with her and make it back to US soil without anyone finding out who was behind it?’
‘That’s about the size of it,’ Cain confirmed. ‘And time’s ticking, Ryan. We have three days. If we don’t have her back on US soil by then, it’s over.’
Three days to plan and execute what might well be the most difficult and dangerous operation of his entire career.
‘That’s … quite an ambitious timetable.’
To his surprise, Cain laughed. ‘I’m not the Pope, son. You can speak freely here. In fact, that’s exactly why we brought you in. I want an honest, no-bullshit assessment from you. Can it be done?’
Drake said nothing. The problem with honest answers was that once given, they were impossible to retract. He’d been on his share of operations that were slapped together at the last minute, and they rarely left him with pleasant memories. And this was one job where there could be no margin for error.
He glanced down at the photograph of the prison again, hesitating a moment before delivering his answer. ‘It’s possible.’
Cain’s eyes lit up. ‘So you’ll do it?’
‘I didn’t say that, sir,’ Drake amended. ‘I said it’s possible in theory. But theories have a tendency to fall apart when you’re halfway around the world on a covert mission into hostile territory. And if this goes wrong, none of us will make it back alive.’
‘Risk is part of the job,’ Cain reminded him. ‘If you can’t handle that, it wouldn’t be hard to find someone who can.’
The change that had come over the older man was startling. Without altering his posture or moving a muscle, his entire bearing had changed. He wasn’t the smiling, affable movie star who had welcomed Drake into the room a few minutes earlier. Now he was cold,
ruthless
, businesslike. He was a king on this particular chessboard, and he had no time for pawns like Drake unless they proved their worth.
‘With all due respect, I think it would, sir,’ Drake replied, his tone calm and even. If Cain wanted to play hardball with him, then so be it. ‘None of the other Shepherd team leaders will take this job on. They don’t have the training or the background for it. You picked me because I helped run snatch-and-grab operations in Afghanistan. You could go outsource and use a special forces unit – say Delta or Task Force 88 – but then you’d have the problem of deniability if they were caught, and operational security if they weren’t. Whatever history this “
Maras
” has with the Agency, I’m guessing you want to keep it in-house, quiet and deniable. So that leaves you with me.
‘You asked for a no-bullshit assessment of the situation,’ Drake went on. ‘Well, mine is that this entire operation is a house of cards just waiting to fall over. And anyone unlucky enough to get caught up in it is either going to get killed or captured, which in this case is just as bad.’ He sighed and glanced away for a moment. ‘I’m not afraid to put my life at risk, but what I can’t and won’t do is drag a Shepherd team in without good reason.’