Authors: Rob Sinclair
What choice did I have? I was certain to be killed if I refused. If Lena didn’t shoot me then Chris almost certainly would. I moved towards the car. Lena got back in, scooting over to the middle of the back seat to let me in. She kept the gun, a Berretta, pointed toward me until I was in and had shut the door.
The guy with the assault rifle dived in next to Lena and the driver put his foot down. The car lurched forward. The back end fishtailed left and right as the tyres struggled to keep traction on the slippery surface.
As the car began to move away, I looked back. Mackie’s man was writhing on the floor. I couldn’t tell where he’d been hit, but it didn’t look good for him.
Chris stepped back out into the open. He took aim and fired off the rest of his clip. But the muzzle flare and the distant sound were the only evidence of his having done so. None of the bullets came close to the vehicle. It wasn’t a surprise. Handguns are made for short distances and we were already too far away. Anything over fifty yards and even a trained marksmen would struggle, particularly given the limited time that he’d taken to aim. Luck would have been his only hope. But for now, at least, that seemed to be with me.
Or so I hoped.
As I settled back down in the seat, though, I didn’t let the feeling of relief at the momentary respite take hold. It was highly unlikely that I could have got away from that café without Lena’s help – I was unarmed and had no transport, no money. But I didn’t want to feel anything positive about the situation.
For one thing, I wasn’t stupid enough to not realise the mess I was in. Mackie hadn’t trusted me. That was for sure. He almost certainly would have passed that message on to others. And now look at me: running away from the scene of his demise with the Russians, the very people I’d tried to convince Mackie I’d escaped from. Whatever lingering doubts may have been in the minds of my people would be gone now.
I was well and truly on my own.
Lena held on to her gun, though she placed it casually in her lap. She stared straight ahead, out of the front window, not paying any particular attention to me now that she had what she wanted. The man to her left did the same. He was holding the assault rifle vertically, the butt on the ground next to his feet, the barrel pointed at the roof of the car. I couldn’t see the face of the driver, but could tell it was a man from glancing at the back of him. The front passenger seat was empty.
We drove like that, no-one saying a word, for five minutes as the car meandered through the cold, quiet streets of Omsk.
The silence gave me some time to let what had just happened sink in. A few minutes ago I’d been sitting opposite the person to whom, despite everything, I felt closest in the world. And he’d been gunned down in front of me. I’d seen Charles McCabe for the last time. I tried my best to hold back the tears that were welling in my eyes.
I knew the Russians had to be responsible for his murder. They’d wanted Mackie dead. They’d wanted
me
to kill him. And, rightly or wrongly, given that I’d run straight back into their hands, I was almost certain that Mackie’s death would now be pinned on me.
I felt more alone than I could imagine. Every time I tried to do something to get my life back on track, another problem seemed to come along to set me back even further. And now, with Mackie gone, I felt so lost.
With the adrenaline of the chase gone, I was struggling to keep my emotions bottled up inside. I tried not to think about Mackie. Tried not to think about the gap that was now left in my life. I tensed my whole body, focusing on that, not the tears that threatened.
I managed to keep it locked up, like I so often did. But that only made me feel like I was betraying Mackie further. Was I so scared of feeling emotion that I wouldn’t even let myself grieve for him?
I looked out of the window. I didn’t know where we were going but I could tell from the now sparse buildings that we were heading out of town.
‘Why did you kill him?’ I asked, finally breaking the silence.
‘You know why,’ Lena said without hesitation, her eyes staring straight ahead.
‘The cherry on top,’ I said, referring back to one of the conversations we’d shared during my captivity.
Lena laughed. ‘Something like that.’
‘Who did it?’
‘Not important.’
‘It is to me.’
Lena turned to me, scowling. ‘Why? Do you want your revenge now?’
Yes. I did. In fact, I knew at that moment that I
had
to avenge Mackie’s death. If nothing more than to prove that I wasn’t to blame.
‘You still don’t believe that your people turned against you, do you?’ Lena said. ‘Even after we saved your life just now.’
‘I’m not sure what I believe right now. But I do know that I haven’t been saved.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Well, am I free to go?’ I said, looking down at the gun in Lena’s lap.
‘That’s entirely up to you.’
‘Then what do you want from me?’
‘I want you to believe me. And we want you to work for us. You’re a real asset, Carl.’
‘It’s never going to happen.’
‘I don’t think Mackie’s bodyguards would be so sure of that. Nor those two who’ve been babysitting you. They’re probably already telling their superiors how you’ve turned. How you lured Mackie to his death.’
She smiled at her last words and I had to fight back the urge to wipe the smirk off her pretty face. I clenched my fists as hard as I could, trying to channel away the anger.
She was right, of course. Mackie himself had doubted me, never mind Chris and Mary and the two other men I’d run away from after drawing Mackie to his death. Because that’s how it would be portrayed, I had no doubt about that. I would be a wanted man.
‘Despite your antics over the last few days, you’ve done exactly what we wanted you to,’ Lena said, picking up on my thoughts and loving every second of it.
‘However you try to play it,’ I said, ‘Mackie’s death has nothing to do with me.’
I spoke through clenched teeth, angry with myself as much as anyone else. Because even though I desperately wanted her to be wrong, I knew that she wasn’t.
‘Do you really believe that?’ she said. ‘Then why did you run from the café?’
I didn’t answer but it was self-preservation. Simple as that.
‘You took us right to him,’ Lena said.
‘How?’ I asked, immediately thinking through the possibilities.
Was one of Chris or Mary involved? Perhaps that was what they’d been talking about at the safe house the night before, when each had claimed the other couldn’t be trusted.
‘Ah, Carl, all in good time. Just be sure that if it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t have been able to get to him.’
‘Yes, you could. You could have got to Mackie if you wanted. It wouldn’t have been that hard. You didn’t need to drag me into this.’
‘I don’t think so. Your agency is secretive for a very good reason. Mackie is like a ghost except to those on the inside. You were our way to him.’
‘But you still needn’t have set me up like that. Why are you trying to make it seem to everyone else like I betrayed him?’
‘That’s not my intention at all. I just want you to see the truth. Mackie set you up. He’s the reason you were with us in the first place. In the end, he got what he deserved.’
‘He told me that Project Ruby is real. That my mission was real.’
‘And did you believe him? Did he show you any kind of evidence to back up his claim?’
He hadn’t. Nothing at all. But I’d wanted to believe him, no doubt about that.
‘Didn’t think so,’ Lena said.
‘He said the mission was a success,’ I said. ‘That they’ve
got the information. If that’s true, it’ll all come out in the end. It won’t matter what you do to me.’
‘You’re right. The mission was a success,’ Lena said. ‘We got you, Mackie’s dead and they got the information they wanted. But the information was nothing to do with Project Ruby.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Lena was grinning, enjoying toying with me as usual.
‘I told you before that they gave you up for information, remember? But it wasn’t Project Ruby that your side wanted. It was something else. To us, though, having you wasn’t enough. So we brokered a new deal. You know, the buck didn’t always stop with Mackie. He didn’t have to know about everything. So we went higher up the chain.’
Lena smiled knowingly. She was playing me as she always did. Leading me on. Only giving away what was required to further her own needs. I had met some snakes in my time, but she came out trumps as the most slippery and sneaky.
I got the gist of what she was talking about, though. Someone
had
betrayed me. And it looked like someone had betrayed Mackie too. Someone had made a deal with the Russians, sold out not only me but Mackie. And it had cost Mackie his life. I had no idea what the deal was. But I had a good feeling for who might.
Chris or Mary.
I didn’t trust either of them. They’d both told me the other was dirty. Perhaps they both were. Though Mary had been convinced that Chris was working with the CIA. Maybe they were the missing link in all this. Or maybe Mary was the dirty one. A snake in the grass, Chris had said. Just like Lena.
‘What was the deal?’
‘All in good time, Carl,’ Lena said. ‘I’m going to need you to put this over your head for the rest of the journey.’
She took a small sack from the man next to her and placed it onto my lap.
‘Why?’
‘Because you can’t know yet where we’re taking you.’
‘Even though you want me on your side?’
‘It’s somewhere safe. That’s all you need to know.’
‘And what if I refuse?’
‘Please don’t,’ Lena said, tapping her gun again.
Her point was made. She wasn’t going to get her wish, though. Not this time. Not any time. It didn’t matter to me whether she was telling the truth or not any more. No benefit would come from my being associated with her. I would never work for the Russians. For her.
Perhaps I should have let them take me to their supposedly safe place. Find their nest and then pass the information back home so the JIA could wipe out the lot of them. But whom would I tell? With Mackie gone, who else was there to listen to me?
I had only one other option. I lifted off my seat and threw my weight into Lena’s side, barging and pushing into her. She hadn’t expected the move; her body was relaxed. She provided little resistance to my weight, falling into the man next to her.
Lena let out a yelp and began to right herself, to correct her balance, pulling on her gun as she did so. But I didn’t give her any time. Still pushing my weight down onto her, I reached around the handle of her Berretta with my right hand. Lena’s fingers were wrapped around the grip, a finger on the trigger, but plenty of room for another. With my hand over hers, I forced my finger as far as I could toward the trigger.
The man to her side was trying to push Lena off him, unable to move freely with both her and my weight bearing down on him. I knew that would buy me a few seconds. I
pulled the gun up, feeling Lena’s resistance but easily able to overpower it. I pointed the barrel toward the driver. I wasn’t even sure whether he was aware yet of the brief commotion. I didn’t hesitate to find out.
I fired two shots.
Skin and bone and bloody flesh splattered on the windscreen of the car. The driver’s body went limp, his hands dropped from the wheel, the engine’s revs died down. At least his foot hadn’t stuck on the accelerator.
In all likelihood we would still crash to a stop, but we weren’t going fast, probably somewhere around forty miles an hour. At worst, we would collide head on with another, bigger vehicle. Potentially we would simply roll to a stop. I was aware of the risk. Now it was just down to fate.
Lena was squirming, using her right elbow as a weapon. Pulling on her hand to try to release my grip on her gun. Clawing at my arms with her free hand. But she had neither the strength nor the room, in the confined space, to manoeuvre.
I jerked the gun around, the barrel edging towards the man the other side of Lena. He’d almost readied himself with the rifle: his finger was on the trigger, the barrel in mid-arc. But the small cabin made its swing towards me difficult and ungainly. And slow.
In the end, the size of the gun cost him his life. I pulled on the trigger of Lena’s gun twice more. One bullet hit the man in the neck, the other just above his right eye. More blood sprayed out into the air, some of it hitting me in the face.
Lena murmured and groaned as she tried to wrestle back control. The car swayed to the left then right as it hit the kerb at the side of the road and bounced off it. The movement pulled me away from Lena. For just a second she must have thought it would be her chance. But it was never going to happen. I threw my left elbow into her side, eliciting a
shout of pain from her. I did it again. And then once more. With her fight waning, I took the opportunity to prise the gun from her. It didn’t take much effort.
I immediately pointed the barrel at Lena’s head. We were both panting, our chests heaving. Lena had a look of both shock and anger on her face.
‘What are you going to do now?’ she hissed.
I hesitated, waiting for the red mist in front of my eyes to clear. I had the upper hand now. No need to act rashly.
‘Are you just going to kill me?’ Lena said. She tried not to sound fazed by the situation, but her trembling body gave her away. For all her bravado, she was scared. ‘In cold blood?’
‘You’re going to tell me the truth,’ I said. ‘I want to know the truth.’
Lena managed a laugh. ‘Carl, everything I told you was the truth.’
I wanted to pull the trigger. I’m not sure why I didn’t. Maybe I would have done, but in the end, the option was taken away from me.
Even though I’d known it would come, it still took me by surprise when the car finally came to an abrupt halt. Whatever we’d hit, I wasn’t prepared for the impact. Maybe Lena’s words had knocked my concentration. The sincerity in her voice.
At the moment of collision, I was half-turned toward Lena, sitting forward in my seat. My body was thrust forward, the belt not catching in time before my head cracked off the back of the driver’s headrest. The gun that I was holding flew from my grip. I don’t know where it landed.