Authors: Matthew Dunn
I reached the trunk and saw that it was secured by numerous steel bolts. I’d no idea what Trapper’s game was, but I had to open the trunk and get Isabella out of there. Keeping my gun pointed toward the tower, I slid back each bolt and swung the lid open.
What?
I thought.
Inside was a young Indian man. He was bound in chains. Around his throat was razor wire that had cut into his skin. Blood had drooled out of his mouth; more of it covered his naked upper torso, having oozed out of a bullet wound in his chest. I placed my fingers against his neck, then his wrist. No heartbeat. He was dead.
The man at the end of the line said, “His name was Sahir. I told him you murdered his father and I could help him get revenge.”
I tried to make sense of it. “Who was his father?”
“The man I described to you. Don’t worry—you didn’t kill him. I did. And tonight I killed his son.”
I gripped my gun harder. “What is this about?”
Calmly, the man replied, “It’s about a young man deliberately getting himself arrested in Afghanistan so that he could convincingly tell the CIA that you’re being targeted for assassination. It’s about flushing you out and doing so in a way that gets you on your own. And ultimately, Mr. Cochrane, it’s about punishing you.”
“For what?”
“One day you’ll find out. Today’s not that day.”
I glanced at Sahir. He looked so young. “Did he know I was going to be here tonight?”
“Yes. He brought me the lamp, box, and sweet Isabella. He thought he was going to kill you. He was wrong.”
“What are you? A terrorist?”
“Oh dear, no. I’m much more
special
than that.” When he spoke again, his voice was deeper, and he sounded older. “Sahir and I are very different people—different nationalities, ages, backgrounds, and aspirations. But I let Sahir use my code name when he was in captivity so that you knew who you were dealing with. And I pretended to be Sahir when I called you. Misdirection. That’s one thing Sahir and I did have in common. He was good at it. But I was better. I killed him after his work for me was complete.”
“Why haven’t you killed me?”
“I could easily do so right now if I wanted to. Instead, I prefer to punish you. And I’ll keep doing so until I decide that you’ve suffered enough and need to be killed. But for now, you don’t need to fear me. You’ve been punished enough tonight.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m the real Trapper.” He sounded like he was running. “Good-bye, Mr. Cochrane. We’ll meet again.”
The line went dead.
I shoved my cell into my pocket and ran across the field to the water tower, clambered up one of the ladders, and raised my gun. Isabella was sitting on the walkway, her knees bunched under her chin, ropes lashed around her wrists and ankles. A sock had been thrust into her mouth. I walked around the base of the water tank, poised to pull the trigger if I found Trapper. But he wasn’t here.
I released Isabella from the ropes and gag. “Are you okay?”
“No . . . no, I’m not okay.” She started crying.
“Are you injured?”
She shook her head.
“Where is he?”
“Gone, gone . . .” She lowered her head and started shivering.
“I’m getting help.” I called Patrick, told him what had happened, and ignored his yelling that it was the middle of the night.
He told me that he’d send a team of paramedics to help Isabella, an FBI agent who could ensure matters were kept quiet, and CIA officers who’d sanitize the place. He added that he wished I’d never been born.
I pulled Isabella to her feet, helped her get off the tower, and walked her across the field toward Sahir’s coffin. I had her sit down where she wasn’t close enough to see what had been done to Sahir.
I looked at Sahir, feeling sorry for him. He’d been duped by someone even smarter than him. It had cost him his life. But Trapper would have known that killing him was in no way punishing me. I didn’t know Sahir. Nor did I know Isabella, and in any case, she was alive and unharmed.
None of this made any sense.
T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING
I drove back to the safe house to collect the rest of my belongings. Patrick and his team had left the farm thirty minutes ago. His CIA specialists had spent hours sanitizing the field of all traces of what had happened there. Paramedics had removed Sahir’s body for cremation. The FBI officer had taken Isabella to a hospital, where she would be treated and monitored before being made to sign nondisclosure documents and flown back home to Argentina.
The sun was out and I was glad, because it meant I didn’t have to worry about being killed. Plus, tonight I was going to take Chrissie out for dinner. When I’d asked Patrick about her, he’d told me that she was still at the safe house, adding, “Why wouldn’t she be? She can’t cover your ass from any other place.” As I’d been about to leave the farm, he’d shaken my hand, given me the very slightest of wry smiles, and said, “Tomorrow, I want you on a plane out of here.”
I knew Patrick wouldn’t discipline Chrissie for helping me. She was too valuable to the Agency, and in any case I suspected Patrick was glad that I’d confronted Trapper and established that I was no longer under immediate threat. Patrick and my MI6 controller had told me that a big operation was looming and they needed me for the job. They couldn’t afford to keep me in hiding much longer.
I stopped my car outside the safe house. It was the time of day when the ordinarily quiet residential street should have been showing some signs of life—people going to work or doing school runs. But it was dead. I decided that the occupants of the street
must
all be retirees who did nothing more productive all day than watch TV. I wondered if that’s what I’d be doing in thirty plus years’ time. I doubted it.
I was delighted to see that Chrissie’s car was outside. If she wasn’t already awake, I’d start cooking some breakfast to entice her downstairs—play housewife, as she called it; prove to her that I was a modern man who’s good around the house.
I unlocked the front door and entered the house. The kitchen radio was playing samba music, so Chrissie must be up, I thought. I imagined her shamelessly wiggling her hips in time to the beat and then stopping and feeling a bit embarrassed when I caught her. “Honey, I’m home,” I called out.
She didn’t answer.
Music’s too loud,
I thought.
I removed my jacket and decided that I needed to take a long soak in the bath. I felt grimy and didn’t want Chrissie to have to hang around a man who’d spent the whole night in clothes sodden with rain and sweat.
She wasn’t in the kitchen; she was probably taking a shower. Damn. Now I had a mental image of her naked.
I made myself a black coffee and tried not to burn my mouth as I drank it fast to get a much-needed hit of caffeine. I felt exhausted; no doubt I needed at least a couple of hours’ sleep in the safe house before we went out tonight, or I stood no chance of being good company over dinner. And I’d need to be at my very best, because apparently tomorrow I was on a one-way ticket out of town.
My back was hurting; I walked toward the living room so I could finish the rest of my coffee resting on the sofa.
Then my world turned over. “No,” I yelled.
My hand involuntarily released the coffee mug.
Wearing a bathrobe, Chrissie was sitting on the sofa.
Dead.
I ran to her, threw myself onto my knees, grabbed her limp hands, and repeated, “No, no, no! Chrissie: no!”
There were two bullet holes in her forehead.
Tears were running down my face, though I was barely aware of them. I was giddy from shock and felt like I was going to vomit. I sat next to her, cradled her head, and rested it against me while rocking her. Between sobs, I asked, “Who did this to you? Who . . . who could do this to you, my Chrissie? My . . . Chrissie.”
I was overcome with grief, and I just held her, not knowing what to do. I cursed myself for leaving her here alone, for thinking this house was safe, and now finding her . . . like this.
She was cold but not in full rigor mortis, meaning she’d been murdered sometime during the night.
Sometime while I’d been out looking for Trapper.
I had to force my grief to one side and get my mind to focus. I pulled out my handgun and searched the house. But no one was here. I sat back down next to Chrissie and recalled what Zakaria told me.
The fact that Trapper wants you dead isn’t your biggest problem. What should concern you the most is that he’s told your colleagues and you that he wants that outcome.
And I remembered what Trapper told me last night.
It’s about flushing you out and doing so in a way that gets you on your own. And ultimately, Mr. Cochrane, it’s about punishing you.
Punishment.
Zakaria had suspected I was being taunted by Trapper so that I’d go after him. But I now realized he also suspected that Trapper wanted me to go after him because in doing so I’d leave behind people I care about. One of those people was the real target. I went after Sahir. Trapper killed him to keep his mouth permanently shut about their collaboration. And then Trapper went after Chrissie.
To punish me.
I felt like a fool.
And I had no idea how Trapper had gotten my cell phone number and the location of the safe house, and established that Chrissie and I were getting close. Nor did I know who Trapper was and why he was doing this to me.
That had to change.
I had to make Trapper pay for what he’d done.
But for now, I could no longer ignore my grief. I kept hold of Chrissie’s hand. She was dead because of me.
Dead.
I tried to clear my head, telling myself that I should call Patrick. But he’d come over here straightaway and sanitize the place. I knew it had to be done, but now I wanted a few moments with Chrissie before my life was completely erased from hers. I reached into my pocket, withdrew a tiny box, and flicked it open. I removed the pendant I’d bought for her yesterday, placed it in her hand, and brought her fingers over it.
I wanted her to hold on to it for as long as possible.
More tears ran down my face as I kissed her on the cheek and whispered, “Good-bye, my love.”
With thanks to my wife for being such an enthusiastic proofreader of my book; to my two brilliant mentors, David Highfill and Luigi Bonomi, and their second-to-none teams at William Morrow/HarperCollins publishers and LBA literary agency respectively; and to the lovely estate in the Scottish Highlands for enabling me to have the solitude to complete this novella amid inspirational surroundings.
Keep reading for an excerpt from
the next installment
in Matthew Dunn’s
thrilling Spycatcher series
Coming in hardcover October 2014
From William Morrow
An Excerpt from
Dark Spies
Prague, 2005
I
T WAS NO
easy task to identify a spy and make that person betray their country. But that was what the Russian man was here to do.
Wearing a black tuxedo, he entered the InterContinental hotel’s Congress Hall and fixed a grin on his face so that he looked like every other insincere diplomat who was attending the American embassy’s cocktail party. There were hundreds of them, men and women, beautiful, plain, and ugly, from at least forty different countries. The less experienced of them were huddled awkwardly in small protective groups, pouring champagne down their throats to ease the pain of being here.
The Russian wasn’t interested in them.
Instead he was here because he wanted to watch the people whom he termed “the predators”: the seasoned, clever, heads-crammed-f-of- juicy-secrets diplomats who glided through events like these, moving from one person to another, offering brief, charming, inane comments, touching arms as if the act conveyed profound meaning, before floating effortlessly to the next person. Diplomats called it “working the room,” but the Russian understood that wasn’t what they were doing. They were controlling the room and everything within it, watching for a moment when they could snatch a vital piece of information from someone weaker than themselves, or choosing the right moment to speak a few carefully chosen words and manipulate vulnerable minds.
The Russian knew the predators, and some of them thought they knew him—Radimir Kirsanov, a forty-something, low-level diplomat who was on a short-term posting to the Russian embassy in the Czech Republic. The women in the room liked Radimir because he had cute dimples, sky-blue eyes, blond-and-silver hair that was styled in the cut of a 1960s movie star, and the physique of a tennis player—the kind of shape that was not particularly good or bad in the naked flesh, but that wore a suit with rapierlike panache. Plus, they thought his dim mind made their superior intellects shine. The men, on the other hand, briefly glanced at him with disdain, as if he were a brainless male model.
Radimir grabbed a glass of champagne from one of the dozens of black-and-white-uniformed waiters who were navigating their way across the vast room, dodging diplomats, and skirting around tables covered in immaculate starched white cloths kept firmly in place by heavy candelabra and artificial-flower arrangements. The Russian held the glass in front of his chest, with no intention of drinking from it, moved past a bored-looking string quartet, and walked into the party. All around him was the sound of laughter, manifold languages, and women brushing against men who were not their partners.
Radimir made sure he didn’t glide with the confidence and precision of a predator. He wasn’t supposed to have the skills to do that. Instead, he meandered his way across the room, smiling to show off his dimples. He stood in the corner, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, sometimes smoothing a hand against his suit, as if he were fidgeting because he was ill at ease and had sweaty palms.
For a while, people noticed him. Beautiful people get that kind of attention. But as with gorgeous art, there’s a limited period of time one can stare at a good-looking person before it becomes boring. After thirty minutes, he was sure he was invisible.
He moved to another part of the room, not too far, just a few yards to the next table, where he could pick at some canapés and fiddle with part of the flower display. He kept his gaze low, as if to avoid the embarrassment of having to talk to someone cleverer than him. Thankfully, the demigods around him knew that Radimir was aware of his limitations, so they left him alone. It was the only good thing they did for him.
Holding his champagne glass with two hands so that he looked like an amateur at this type of event, he walked to another table, then another, then several more. Forty minutes later he returned to his starting point in the corner of the room. Poor Radimir, he imagined the pros would think if any of them had seen his awkward and pointless amble around the room, though he doubted any of them had noticed. The predators were moving up a gear, pouncing on late and desirable new arrivals, placing firm arms around them and guiding them to people they didn’t know but just had to meet, cracking jokes, whispering in ears, kissing cheeks, flattering, nodding with sage expressions, and all the time acting to hide their agenda: pure lust for information.
The Russian placed his full glass on a table, leaned back against the wall, folded his arms, and smiled his very best pretty and dumb smile. He’d practiced the expression many times in front of mirrors and he was convinced he’d perfected the look. It was an expression that he hoped said, I’m resigned to the fact that my looks are all I have.
It kept people away. Even the ones who were as dim-witted as he was, because no one wants to stand next to a man who’s as stupid as they are but four times more attractive.
Radimir momentarily closed his eyes.
When he opened them, he was the cleverest person in the room.
A man who was not called Radimir.
Instead, someone who was known to a limited number of people as Gregori Shonin, an SVR intelligence officer. And a predator with skills that were way beyond those of the other predators around him.
There was a third side to the Russian, one that did not carry the false names of Radimir or Gregori, one that was the truth, but right now that was buried so deep inside him that he gave it little thought. This evening, being Gregori undercover as Radimir was sufficient for what he hoped to achieve.
Gregori’s huge intellect was processing a vast amount of data, all gleaned from his forty-minute walk through the room. Hundreds of voices and sentences, many of them in English, some in other languages he understood fluently, only a few in tongues he didn’t understand or care about. He spent several minutes doing nothing more than deliberately forgetting most of what he’d heard. Ejecting the crap, was how he like to term the cognitive process. It was an arduous task, but necessary, because at the end of it he would picture himself standing in this huge room, not with hundreds of diplomats from all around the world, but instead with one or two officials who worked for countries he loathed and who’d said or done something interesting.
Something that suggested they had the potential to spy on his behalf.
He continued the process of ejecting. Introductions, pleasantries, small talk, lots of “How long have you been posted here?,” several people lying about how beautiful the American hostess looked tonight, a few jaded comments about last week’s G7 summit, bad humor, and a fairly amusing anecdote from an Italian diplomat about her experience at a Mongolian tribal feast. All crap.
Gregori stared ahead. The room was still buzzing at full capacity, but in his mind he imagined that only one American couple was in the place. Both were predators. They were standing still, frozen in Gregori’s radar as he walked around them, staring at their faces from different angles as he sought a glance into their eyes and their very souls.
The husband was an experienced CIA officer who’d previously been posted to the Agency’s stations in London, Abu Dhabi, and Pretoria. He’d been in Prague for two and a half years and was due to return to Langley in six months. He was thirty-seven years old, no doubt smart and capable, and had met his wife while both were studying at Harvard. She too could have gone on to have an excellent job in government, though early on they had decided that the overseas life of an Agency spouse would preclude her having a career. So, she’d agreed to be the good wife, accompany him on his overseas postings, and support him in every way, and in return he could give her a couple of kids. But so far they’d been unsuccessful in having children.
Gregori was interested in them for two reasons. One was a hushed and angry comment made by the husband to his wife.
“Are you sure that’s where you were this afternoon?”
The other reason was perfume.
The wife loved Dolce & Gabbana perfume, so much so that she would never step outside of her home without applying too much of it to her throat and wrists. At events like these, one didn’t have to stand too close to her to smell the unmistakable rich scent on her skin. But tonight was different, because she wore no such scent. Where had she been this afternoon? Gregori thought through the possibilities. A place she’d gone to clutching the ball gown she’d collected from the dry cleaners. A venue where she could get dressed in comfort, fix her hair, and put on makeup that she’d brought along in her handbag. Some location that didn’t allow her time to rush home before meeting her husband at the party. And she would have desperately wanted to go home when she realized she’d forgotten to pack her beloved perfume.
Where was that place? Like all top spies, Gregori used his instincts and imagination to fill in the gaps. Of course, that place was another man’s home. The woman had been unfaithful to her husband. She’d dressed for the party after she’d made love.
Gregori smiled.
Her infidelity could give him leverage over her husband.
Perhaps it would make her husband betray the United States.