The team leader was called Ulana. She slammed a mug of tea in front of Will and said in English, “You brought others along with you?”
As Will looked at her, he wondered how she coped being a woman alone out here in charge of three men. She had a whippet-thin, sinewy physique and was as strong as any of the men she commanded, which no doubt helped. That, and the fact that she wore a permanent reminder to anyone that she was extremely dangerous — a vivid scar across her throat that had come from a man who’d tried to decapitate her before she broke free and used his knife to gut him. “Thanks for the drink. No, just me.”
“You sure?”
Will glanced at the man pointing a gun at him. “Nothing else would make any sense.”
Ulana nodded. “That’s true. But you’re a tricky bastard and it wouldn’t be the first time that you’d deliberately done something that didn’t make sense.”
“Not on this occasion. Our agreement remains fully intact.”
An agreement that was two years old and was initiated shortly after Will had been told about the GRU team in Greenland by one of his GRU double agents. He’d considered telling CSIS, the Canadian intelligence service, about the unit’s activities in the northern archipelago, but had decided their activities were harmless, and in any case they could prove useful to him. So instead, at a time when Alistair thought Will was on vacation, he’d observed the team and approached its leader when she was alone. They’d agreed on terms, though Will and Ulana both knew it was a precarious deal.
The man with the knife stopped twirling it and pointed the blade at Will. “You know this isn’t the way to go about getting our help.”
Ulana agreed. “Your being here may compromise us. The rules are in place for a reason, and they’re your rules.”
They were. Will looked again at the man holding the gun and saw that his finger was now over the trigger. “I can assure you that no one knows I’m here.”
The smoker stubbed his cigarette out. “Good. Then we get rid of you and go back to business.”
“I’m hoping you might consider another option.” Will took a gulp of his tea. It was sickly sweet and made with cheap tea bags, but God, the hot liquid felt good as he swallowed it down. “I need transit to Canada.”
Ulana laughed.
Her men did not.
One of them said, “Not a bad idea. Bury his body there, away from us.”
Ulana moved to the table and leaned in close to Will. “Or just drop you out of the Islander midway across the strait.”
Will held eye contact with her.
She smiled before moving back to her mug of tea. “You been a naughty boy?”
Will didn’t answer.
“Of course you have, or you wouldn’t be here.” Ulana clicked her fingers at the smoker. Without taking his eyes off Will, he hand-rolled a cigarette, lit it, and gave it to his boss. She inhaled deep on the tobacco, blew out a stream of smoke, and asked, “You know why you’re not dead already?”
Will shook his head.
“Sir Tim Berners-Lee.”
Will frowned.
“Inventor of the World Wide Web.”
“I know who he is, but what’s he got to do with—”
Ulana gestured for him to shut up. “You remember the days before the Internet? Grubbing around in archives, or libraries, or speaking to assets just to try to find out some crappy piece of information?” She patted the laptop. “Now we’ve got Google.”
Will nodded toward the laptop. “You won’t find any trace of me on there.”
“Really?” Ulana typed on the laptop and placed it in front of Will. “Who’s that then?”
Will made no attempt to hide his shock. On the screen was a photo of his face. “What the—”
“Seems an SSCI guy called Senator Colby Jellicoe doesn’t like you very much, and to all intents and purposes he’s told the world as much. Actually, it’s worse than that. He’s put the feds and all their European pals onto you and thinks it’s best that you’re shot dead. Gave the media a photo of you. This one’s from the front page of the New York Times, but you’ll find the same one all over the Net and in a pile of other U.S. and non-U.S. papers.” She snapped the laptop shut. “Seems you were a naughty boy. And seems your real name is Will Cochrane.”
Will couldn’t believe what he was hearing and what he’d seen on the computer. “Did the senator say what I’d done?”
“No. Just you disobeyed Agency orders during a mission in Norway, and that the only reason U.S.-Norwegian relations hadn’t turned to rat shit was because the senator had promised the Norwegian government that you would be brought to justice.”
Will nodded slowly. Of course, no mention had been made of Ferryman or Antaeus. But that didn’t change the fact that he was now royally screwed. “I didn’t think they’d go… this far.” His mind was racing. Did this change everything? Should he turn around and vanish for good?
Ulana seemed to be reading his mind. “Still want to go to Canada?”
“I…” Will settled on one thought — Ferryman — and made a decision. “Yes. More than ever.” He looked at each person in the room, knowing that this could go either way, and that all it would take for him to be killed was for Ulana to snap her fingers as if she were requesting another cigarette. “Please. I’m on my own. In every sense.”
“You were set up in Norway?”
“No. But it appears that I came very close to severely pissing some people off.”
“People we might dislike?”
Will lifted his hand to rub his weary face.
The man with the gun cocked the hammer.
“Maybe.” Will lowered his hand. “I don’t know. How would I know?” He tried to smile. “You’d have to meet them first to see if your personalities jelled.”
Not his wisest comment. The man with the pistol was now standing next to him, looking at Ulana while holding the barrel against Will’s temple.
Will spoke quickly. “This is nothing to do with GRU. I promise you that.”
“You promise me it’s got nothing to do with Russia, full stop?”
Smart, Ulana.
Will responded, “Nothing to do with anything other than me wanting to get my hands around the throats of some bastard Agency people.”
Ulana tapped ash from her cigarette. “Difficult situation, this, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because people like us lie for a living.”
“Correct. And did you just lie?”
“No.”
Ulana laughed. “You could have said yes.”
“And that could’ve been a lie.”
“So, round and round the mulberry bush we go.” She stared at him, her expression now cold. “But I don’t think I have time for any of that.”
She turned her attention to the colleague next to Will.
And clicked her fingers.
FOURTEEN
Antaeus raised his old rifle to eye level, focused on the moonlit area of woodland, and pulled the trigger. The shot echoed over the surrounding countryside, causing night wildlife to shriek as it made for cover. He ignited his oil lamp and limped toward the place where his bullet had struck flesh.