Authors: Matthew Dunn
B
ob’s eyes opened. Had he been asleep? Knocked unconscious? Or was this how it worked when you reached the other side?
He just lay on the ground for a while, breathing, trying to work out what was happening while wondering if all this was real or a dream. The room looked like the same one he’d been in since he’d been captured. But three things were different. The red words were no longer on the wall. All of his shackles had been removed. And Ramzi was nowhere to be seen.
Was this a trick?
Probably.
Soon, he’d be back in chains, on his knees, jihadists laughing as they sawed through his gullet.
Still, it was nice to think otherwise. Even if it was a foolish thought.
And it was nice of the president to try to reassure him, and tell him he’d give him medals, and would announce to the world that Oakland was the finest son of America. It was like a parent trying to comfort his child at the end of the phone, the parent not knowing where the child is, the child being trapped in a coffin, deep underground somewhere no one could find him.
That cool breeze? Where was it coming from? It felt so good on his painful skin. A draft, he guessed. A change of wind direction, perhaps. He’d never felt the breeze in here before.
Bob forced himself to his feet, yelping in pain from the rope injuries on his legs. He staggered forward, calling out in a hushed voice, “Ramzi? Ramzi! What’s going on?”
Maybe Ramzi couldn’t answer because he was being torn apart in the room next door.
He reached the wall where Ramzi had been tethered, next to the red letters that had faced Oakland for every second of his incarceration.
Dead Room.
He touched the area where the letters had been. It was damp. They’d been washed off very recently. Oakland wondered if the trick they were playing on him was to make him think he’d lost his mind. They needn’t have bothered. If he had any sanity left, it was so wafer thin that the cool breeze he felt was liable to make it snap. “Ramzi—are you dead?” he asked as he limped to the door. Ramzi didn’t answer. Bob placed his hand on the door handle, deciding that they’d slaughtered Ramzi and left Bob trapped in here with no food and water so that he could surely go insane and die.
He turned the handle.
The door opened.
The breeze was refreshing though Oakland ignored it because his heart was beating fast with fear and hope. He wished he didn’t have the hope. It was so cruel. So tantalizing. So utterly fucking futile.
“Ramzi—did they murder you? Bury you in the desert? Eat you? Piss on you? Tell me, please. I need to know. It’ll help me prepare myself for what they’ll do to me. Please, Ramzi.”
He looked in the adjacent room. No hangman’s rope; the bench was gone.
“They ate you, Ramzi.” Bob staggered onward along a corridor. “My poor Ramzi. Disappeared forever.”
He passed other rooms, all of them empty, and reached the end of the corridor. He opened the door and walked into what looked like a warehouse. There were piles of metal girders, rusty machinery, conveyor belts covered in dust and mildew, and a tractor and trailer that was on bricks and had no wheels. The vehicle looked like it had been stripped of every spare part that might be useful. No, this wasn’t a warehouse. A long time ago, it had been a factory.
At its far end was an open door, and beyond it, brilliant white light.
“Heaven or Hell,” Oakland muttered between gritted teeth. “I don’t care. Either’s better than this place.” He limped onward. “You out there, Ramzi? What’s it like? Harps and grapes, or goats with forks?”
Maybe Ramzi was now an angel, waiting for him in the white light, his huge wings outstretched, a smile on his face as he hovered above the ground. He hoped so. It would be sad if instead he confronted his translator in a barrel of boiling tar, burning alive for eternity.
The breeze was stronger. His eyes were squinting because the light was so damn fierce. God’s light? The devil’s light? Either or, it hurt. Mustn’t look directly at God, he reminded himself. It’s rude to do so. Be polite. Say sorry for the naughty things you’ve done. Move along.
He reached the door and stopped, his heart still beating fast, his mouth open.
What he saw looked like the outskirts of a town or large village. A road was here. So, too, houses, telegraph poles carrying cables, and banks of grass that ran alongside the road’s edge. The place looked poor but not impoverished—more like the blue-collar working towns that Bob had grown up in. It appeared deserted. The sky was blue, the temperature pleasant. The breeze continued to wash over him as he staggered down the center of the road.
“Hello! Anyone here?”
Maybe this was a Syrian village whose occupants had been gassed to death. A ghost town remained. Yes, that’s what happened. It had been decided by higher powers that Bob Oakland had been condemned to an everlasting existence within a chemical attack. That sucked.
There was movement farther down the road. Something black. Bob couldn’t decide if it was an imp, demon, or creepy ghost girl. It had legs and arms, for sure. Don’t trust it, Bob told himself. It might play at being nice, but it wants your liver and kidneys.
The black creature grew nearer. Walking. Not a ghost girl, instead an old witch. She had a headscarf on, her back was bent, and a stick was in one hand. Of course, her frailty was all bogus. Don’t eat anything she offers you. It’ll be laced with poison. Pretend you don’t know what she really is. Maybe she’ll leave you alone.
The old woman got very close and stopped, her expression quizzical. She shrieked while holding her mouth to her hand and staring at the walking corpse that Bob resembled. “Peter! Peter!” she cried out while looking at a house across the street.
A middle-aged man in overalls ran out of the house and came to Bob’s side. He placed a hand on Bob’s shoulder, concern and confusion all over his face. “What happened?” he asked in a language that wasn’t English or Arabic.
But Bob understood and spoke the language very well. The man’s question hade made Bob’s thinking sharpen and his sanity return. And it made him realize that he’d been victim to the biggest trick of all. “Where am I?” he croaked.
The woman asked, “What happened to you? Were you in an accident? Robbed?” She glanced at Peter, then back at Oakland. “My son will get you help. We have a car. We’ll take you to a hospital.”
“Where am I?” Bob repeated.
It was Peter who answered. “Our town is ten miles south of St. Petersburg. You’re in Russia.”
T
he president, Tusk, Kinnear, Bolte, and Will Cochrane were still in the Oval Office.
Will remained sitting on the chair in the center of the room, his eyes closed and his fingertips pressed against each other. His mind was no longer occupied with thinking; instead, it was poised to pounce on breaking developments. And he was oblivious to the others in the room. Right now, anything they said, did, or conjectured on was irrelevant. All that mattered was what could happen outside the room. Only when news of that event reached the confines of the Oval Office would Will open his eyes and engage his brain.
The president’s phone rang.
His chief of staff picked it up, listened, and hung up.
Will opened his eyes and looked at Tusk.
Tusk broke out into an uncharacteristic beam. “We’ve got him! Our consulate in St. Petersburg. He was taken there by a couple of Russians. Oakland’s on U.S. diplomatic soil now, and we’re flying him home. He’s in bad shape, but he’s being patched up and will be fine.”
Patrick winked at Will. “And he’ll have some big stories to tell when he gets home.”
The president momentarily closed his eyes and slowly exhaled. He nodded, and looked at Will. “Sir, I’m in your debt. Whatever your price, you name it.”
Will got to his feet, approached the most powerful man in the world, withdrew a slip of paper, and placed it in front of the president. “My price.”
The president frowned. “What’s this?”
“Parking ticket. Seventy-five pounds. It’s a lot of money. The bastards got me in south London’s Oswin Street. I’m not sure if you have any influence over the Southwark Council?”
Exasperated, Patrick grabbed the ticket. “Tell you what—let’s let the CIA go head to head with your local council and see who comes out on top.” He laughed and held out his hand. “Well done!”
Will shook his hand, a slight smile on his face.
Kinnear stood before the MI6 officer. “Unconventional thinking seems to have paid off.” For once, his hostility was absent when he added, “And thank goodness for that. But it was an almighty problem for you to solve.”
It had been one of Will Cochrane’s most challenging cases.
Arzam Saud was not a terrorist though he had been made to look like one by Russia. Saud was a Russian asset, recruited by a Russian intelligence officer who was previously a KGB operative until he worked for its successor, the SVR. That officer had assumed the false name of Viktor Gorsky. Gorsky had been operating undercover as a businessman with that name ever since he had killed the real Gorsky in Afghanistan.
Since then, Gorsky ran a high-ranking front for funneling SVR money and paying its assets. In order to hide his role, the KGB and its successor SVR set up the banks Trans Forex and Moscow Vision for the sole purpose of being the legitimate funding vehicles of another Russian intelligence front—the company KapSet. Gorsky was the pivotal public face of these institutions and was essential to use Russian money to entrap potential foreign assets. Saud was one such asset. His age and nationality were deemed ideal for someone who might become a fundamentalist. His intellect was also important. The SVR needed a thinking spy, not a mindless crazy.
Gorsky got to him in two ways. First, he lured him into partnering on property deals. Second, he got him taking Russian sweetener bribes. Then Gorsky told Saud who he really was. By then, Saud was in too deep to have a way out. Gorsky had his hooks in him and forced him to work for the Russians.
Saud was used to penetrate ISIS and was a key source of intelligence to Russia. But he got caught by pro-Yazidis, who handed him over to the Americans, believing him to be a bona fide ISIS soldier. Russia constructed a plot to pose as ISIS wannabes, capture a CIA officer, use him as leverage, and get their prized asset Saud released.
The translator Ramzi was the one who had tipped the Russians off about the CIA officer’s meeting with Shiite elders. He, too, was on Gorsky’s payroll.
The six alleged ISIS Chechen Muslims were in fact cadre Russian SVR operatives acting the part. They wanted the West to be terrified for the fate of the CIA officer. Pretending to be ISIS wannabes would do that.
But Will had gotten to the truth and given the president words that would not only call the Russians’ bluff but also tell them that America and Russia shared the same enemy and purpose. When the president had spoken to the leader of the six-man unit, he’d used subtle language to tell the man that he knew Saud worked for Russia and was vital to the war against ISIS. But he also hinted that trading Saud for Oakland could backfire against the interests of both Russia and America. The better solution would be for Russia to walk away from Oakland and for Saud to escape U.S. custody at some point in the near future. Russia would reactivate Saud, and he’d be sent back to ISIS, where he’d be hailed as a returning hero by the jihadists and continue to spy on them on behalf of Russia.
Russia’s tactics had been brutal. With Ramzi’s permission, they’d even had to torture the translator in order to fool Oakland and others that he was a victim. Now, Ramzi remained on the payroll of SVR and its legitimate face in the person of Gorsky. The translator had played the part well.
The president shook his head. “Russia tried to put one over on us. Thanks to you, they failed though it still feels like I’ve done a deal with the devil.”
Will was about to leave but hesitated, pondering the president’s observation. “Russia wants ISIS obliterated as much as we do. That’s why it did everything it could to get Saud released. It wasn’t a deal with the devil, sir. Rather, it was a deal with a state whose interests have momentarily overlapped with our own. What makes you uncomfortable is Russia’s methods. Perhaps”—he smiled—“it would be in order to remind Russia that we don’t need to play such games.” He wrote on a scrap of paper. To the president, he said, “On the day before we allow Arzam Saud to escape back to his Russian masters, give him this and tell him to give it to Viktor Gorsky.”
Will turned and walked out of the room. He knew what would happen next. Still, one had to try to make the world and the people within in it aspire to the greater good.
The president read Will’s words.
Dead Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev said
,
There is a tragic clash between truth and the world
;
pure undistorted truth burns up the world. Berdyaev would be turning in his grave if he could see how wrong his observation now is. We
,
and you
,
are burning up the world with distorted truth. This
,
and the fact you are looking at the man holding this paper
,
is a reminder to you that it needn’t be thus.
The president folded the paper into neat squares. “Russia’s not the only one that has those kinds of methods.” He smiled and tore the paper into pieces.
W
ith thanks to David Highfill and Luigi Bonomi and their brilliant teams at William Morrow and LBA, respectively; Judith; and my eleven- and twelve-year-old children who ask me profound questions about the “grown-up” world that I strive to cryptically answer in my books.
Keep reading for an excerpt from
the next installment in
Matthew Dunn’s thrilling
Spycatcher series
Coming in hardcover October 2015