The Russian and his colleague did.
He heard footsteps.
Now the footsteps were faster, the noise of them growing louder.
The sniper was coming for them.
The Russian raised three fingers to his colleague, then two, then one.
They broke cover from behind the mounds, their pistols raised toward the encroaching sniper.
But he wasn’t there.
The Russian stopped and held his handgun before him, twitching it left and right to search for the sniper. Where had he gone? Movement from near the cabins to his left. He changed stance, pointing his gun in that direction, and for half a second saw his colleague being dragged backward while still upright, his feet desperately trying to keep up with the rest of his body because a big hand was on his throat, and another had two fingers in his colleague’s nostrils. The rest of the sniper was obscured. His colleague was being used as a shield. The Russian had no clear shot before they disappeared into the largest cabin.
That’s where the sniper had run to, and where he’d emerged from to attack their flank when they broke cover.
The Russian operative dashed to the buildings, entered the cabin, and saw his colleague on the ground, his neck at an odd angle and clearly broken.
He felt an almighty punch to his chest.
Another punch struck him on the jaw.
A hand slapped him in the throat.
A knee smashed into his ribs. His hand was grabbed, twisted so that his arm muscles were in a lock and were weak, and he was forced to the floor and held there in a viselike grip. He knew what was coming next.
Will Cochrane’s boot slammed with brutal force into his throat and held him there as his legs thrashed and his life was crushed out of his body.
Before he died, the Russian’s last thought was that he’d totally underestimated his assailant.
THREE
Standing in the same spot where Will Cochrane had momentarily crouched beside her, Ellie Hallowes watched the tall officer emerge from the cabin holding one of the Russian’s pistols.
He stopped and stared at the five men who’d died outside of the buildings. Ellie thought he looked haunted by what he’d done. That surprised her, because she’d met enough paramilitary men to know that they were totally focused while doing a job and acted like overexcited kids when the job was done. This man was clearly different.
He tucked the pistol under his belt, knelt beside Herald, rummaged through the dead spy’s pockets, and removed his wallet and ID documentation, which he secreted in his jacket. She frowned as she watched him take off her asset’s overcoat. It was the same one that Herald always wore when he met Ellie during the winter months — knee-length, expensive, Royal Navy blue, hand-tailored in Savile Row by an émigré called Štěpán. Will held it by the shoulder pads, moved to her side, and put the coat on her.
He lowered his head.
“What happened in there?” she asked.
Will looked up, but didn’t answer. His greenish blue eyes were bloodshot but nevertheless shining and alert. He was, she decided, a handsome man.
She lit a cigarette and stuck it in the corner of her mouth. “I’ll recommend that you get a commendation.” Her cell phone rang. The number was withheld, though she knew it was the Agency calling because only it had this number. As she raised it to her ear, she thought she saw the tiniest smile on Will’s face.
A man spoke to her with a deep, strident voice. He didn’t introduce himself, although Ellie knew exactly who he was: Charles Sheridan, a senior CIA officer who’d proven throughout his career in espionage that he was in equal measure very capable, ruthless, and, in Ellie’s opinion, a complete dick. He told her that it annoyed the fuck out of him that the duty officer had needed to call him in on his day off because it sounded like a Category 1 protocol was about to be breached by one of their own. He asked what had happened. She told him while looking at Will. Sheridan went silent for five seconds before muttering in a more deliberate tone that Cochrane had been in breach of the protocol and had disobeyed orders to withdraw, that she was to tell him that his Agency exfiltration route out of Norway was now going to be shut down and that the most important men on both sides of the pond were in complete agreement that Cochrane was to surrender himself to either the British or American embassy in Oslo. Sheridan said he’d send a team to the area to try to clean up the mess, though he couldn’t guarantee they’d reach the location before Norwegian cops arrived on the scene, so either way Ellie was to get out of there and return to Langley.
She closed her cell and looked at Will. “Charles Sheridan says you disobeyed orders. Why did you do it?”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time not to let them put a bullet in your brain. I’m prone to being impetuous.”
He was English. She wasn’t expecting that. “I thought you were SOG. Who do you work for?”
Will shrugged. “As of right now, sounds like no one.” His expression became serious. “What do they want you to do with me?”
She told him what Sheridan had said.
“The embassies?” He laughed. “Nice and discreet. Tie me up, put me in a box, fly me back to the good old U.S. of A., rendered as a traitor who’ll face the gallows.”
“You did nothing wrong.”
“You just worry about yourself now.”
“You’ll go to Oslo?”
“Nah, never liked the city. Beer’s too expensive.”
Ellie blew out smoke and tapped ash onto the ground. “Then I’ll have to bring you in myself.”
Will didn’t respond.
“Disarm you. Put a gun to your head. Walk you out of here.” Ellie’s expression was focused as she kept her eyes on him. “Trouble is, that’s not an easy option.”
Will held her gaze. “I’m not in the business of hurting female colleagues.”
With sarcasm in her voice, Ellie said, “How very chivalrous of you.” She dropped her cigarette onto the ground and extinguished it with her foot. “No. The option’s not easy because…” She left her sentence incomplete as she nodded toward the bodies of the men Will had killed to save her life.
Will momentarily followed her gaze. “I just did my job.”
“Yeah. Your job. Not an Agency job. At least, not after it told you to back down.”
“Perhaps I should have backed down.”
A large part of Ellie wanted to disagree and tell him that nobody had ever put their neck on the line to save her in the way that Will had done today. But she was still attempting to get the measure of Will, and responded, “Perhaps you should have.” She folded her arms and repeated, “Who do you work for?”
“I’m a joint MI6-CIA officer.”
“Joint?” Ellie frowned. “Paramilitary? Freelance?”
“No. Full-time intelligence officer.”
Ellie’s mind raced. Though the Agency and MI6 frequently ran joint missions and shared freelance assets, she’d never heard of an individual being used as a full-time employee of both organizations. The man before her had to be highly unusual. “I think you’re in a classified task force.”
Will was silent.
“Not one run by Sheridan. But maybe one that he’d dearly like to shut down because he wasn’t given the glory of running the force.”
Will said nothing.
“And today you gifted him that opportunity by disobeying orders. But it goes beyond that, doesn’t it? Because those orders have to relate to some serious shit. What’s this about?”
Will nodded toward the cabin where Ellie had met Herald. “I could ask you the same thing. What happened in there?”