They’d rushed in, one at a time. The biggest of them had dragged her off the bed and pinned her shoulders against the wall. The other man had reached down to her waist and grabbed her wrists with one hand while his other hand fumbled in his pocket. There was a click and one of her hands was free. She’d waited for him to uncuff her other hand and scratched at his face. She’d felt his skin wedging in a strip under her nails. She’d tried to get hold of his hair but it was too short. He’d shouted at her, calling her a bitch, and punched her in the face.
She’d gone down under the force of that punch. One man had sat on her chest and the other on her legs, sending a shard of pain shooting up her left leg, the one that had been broken back in Moscow. She’d heard the shackles clanking against the concrete as they too were taken off.
The men had then retreated from the cell, and she’d run at the door as it closed. Slamming her fists against the steel. She’d heard a door open and slam shut. Then they’d come back, her cell door opened again, and another man was thrown inside.
He was dressed normally. He looked American, or at least how she imagined Americans looked when they weren’t in uniform. His hair was shorter than the guards’ and he had a fresh scar that ran along the top of his head. He’d looked from the knife to her but made no move towards it, not even when she bent down to pick it up.
His gaze had met hers. There was no fear in his eyes. She’d held the knife in a hammer grip like she’d been taught by her husband. Still he hadn’t moved. They’d stayed that way for what seemed like an eternity. She’d sensed he was conscious of the knife but he never looked at it. Not once.
Then, finally, he’d spoken. ‘I’m not going to fight you. So if you’re going to do it, then let’s get it done.’
She’d looked from the man to the unblinking eye of the camera mounted in the corner, put down the knife, and put out her hand. He’d taken it, and she’d helped him on to his feet.
Back in the control room, Brand had tired of the love-in. ‘OK, go live.’
The operator punched a key. The screen went blank. The operator hit it again.
‘What is it? What’s the problem?’ Brand asked, agitated.
‘We’re not getting any signal from that camera.’
‘Try again.’
‘I just did.’
Brand kicked out at the wall in frustration. Half an hour ago the cell had been occupied by a solitary woman, cuffed and shackled. Now it was her, Lock and a knife. What the hell had gone wrong?
Fifty-three
Lock handed the knife back to Mareta — a calculated show of trust he hoped he wouldn’t have cause to regret. If he was going to get out of here he’d need her cooperation.
An alarm that had been shrieking in the background for the past five minutes fell silent. Lock prowled the cell, examining its construction from every angle. Mareta watched him.
‘The only way out is through the door,’ she said.
‘You speak English? Sorry, stupid question.’
‘They don’t know I understand them,’ she said, nodding to the disembowelled camera which lay on the bed.
‘Who are you? Why are you here?’
‘My name is Mareta Yuzik.’
That piece of information alone went most of the way to answering both questions. Lock wouldn’t have recognized her face, because very few people had seen it. And most of those who had were dead. But he sure as hell knew the name. In fact, it sent an involuntary shudder all the way from the base of his spine to the back of his neck.
Mareta was the most infamous of Chechnya’s black widows, women whose husbands had been killed by the Russians and who operated as suicide bombers in the Chechens’ bloody guerrilla war to win independence from the motherland. Mareta’s husband had been a notorious Chechen warlord. But that wasn’t what had made her exceptional. What made her stand out was the fact that she’d disavowed martyrdom to assume command of her former husband’s group of fighters.
Mareta’s band had spent the last few years on a murderous rampage. Lowlights included the wholesale slaughter of some of Moscow’s prime movers and shakers during a performance by the Bolshoi. Demonstrating a horrifyingly accurate understanding of the theatricality required to get yourself noticed as a terrorist in the modern world, Mareta had kicked off proceedings by personally beheading the lead ballerina live on stage. Of course, where the newly rich Russians were, so were their bodyguards. A firefight had taken place during which the respective close protection teams took out more of each other’s clients in the crossfire than the Chechens managed. The finale had been a huge explosion.
In that particular puff of smoke, Mareta and her comrades had disappeared, leading to speculation that the whole thing was a putup job by the Kremlin, who’d seen one of their main political rivals taken out during the outrage. The apparatchiks had seen it as a happy coincidence.
Mareta’s follow-up was no less demanding of world headlines. Her fighters entered a kindergarten just over the border from Chechnya and held two dozen infants hostage before slaughtering them in cold blood, taping events for posterity. Once again, Mareta slipped into the night before the building was overrun and most of her fighters were killed by Russian special forces.
It was this second escape which had earned her the nickname of the Ghost in the Russian media. There had been numerous sightings of her since then, including in northern Iraq, Pakistan and Helmand Province. Her popping up here beat them all.
Lock decided to follow Mareta’s lead and play dumb. ‘Do you know why you’re here?’
‘To die,’ she said, matter of factly.
‘Are the other people they brought here also from your country?’
‘Some. Some from other places.’ She picked at a hang nail with the tip of the Gerber. ‘Now, let me ask you the same question you asked me. Why are you here?’
‘It’s a long story.’
Mareta glanced around the cell. ‘Maybe we have a long time.’
Lock trusted his new cellmate about as much as Brand, so he gave her an edited version of events, telling her he was an investigative journalist looking into the activities of a drug company.
‘You have investigative journalists, right?’
‘Investigative?’ She rolled the word around in her mouth like it was the funniest thing she’d heard. ‘Yes, we have these people. The government kills them.’
She was clearly a glass-half-empty kind of a gal.
‘So when I was looking around this place,’ Lock continued, ‘they found me, beat me up. I guess they threw me in here hoping you’d finish me off.’
Mareta listened calmly. She paced to the door and back again, making shapes in the air with the blade of the knife. ‘So why do you think I’m here?’
‘You mean, what would a drug company want with you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I think you’re a guinea pig.’
‘Guinea pig?’
‘Yes. They’re going to use you to see if something they’re developing is safe to use on humans.’
‘What?’
‘That, I don’t know.’
In fact, he had a couple of ideas. Mareta’s presence here had to have been sanctioned at the highest level. Maybe a private deal between governments. Maybe Meditech was developing something which the Russians thought could open her up for interrogation. Both the CIA and KGB had chased down so-called ‘truth’ drugs during the Cold War, everything from sodium pentathol to a more orthodox tongue loosener like whisky, or a picture of the target in a compromising position. In a world where quality intelligence could save thousands of lives, something surefire would be worth more than its weight in gold.
‘So, which paper do you work for?’ Mareta asked.