Then it was all gone, replaced by darkness. I’d been dreaming, and woke to a pounding headache and a bitter taste in my mouth. My eyes adjusted to the dim light and I realized I was in an empty apartment high above the city. The windows were covered in some kind of blackout material, but it had curled at the edges to create tiny gaps that enabled me to see the twinkling lights of Moscow spread out far below. These gaps were the sole source of light, and only cast enough to discern wall from floor and space from solid shape.
My arms were stretched above my head, and when I looked up I saw my wrists were secured in fabric cuffs that were attached to a chain, which hung from a hook. My feet were bound together by similar fabric cuffs and attached by chain to a hook in the floor. I’d been stripped to my underwear.
I was suddenly assaulted by loud noise, death metal music, and blinding light dazzled me. I squeezed my eyes shut and desperately tried to pull my arms down to cover my ears, but they were chained tight and the light was so bright it blazed through my lids. Then the light and noise were gone, replaced by darkness.
“Are you with us?” a voice asked.
It was a voice I’d heard before, belonging to a man with a Russian accent, the killer I’d chased from New York.
A light went on behind me and illuminated the space ahead. I saw my shadow cast on the concrete floor, pathetic and helpless. I looked away from it and noticed the walls had also been stripped back to concrete, but they were covered with graffiti, scrawled in what looked like dried blood. It was a nightmarish scene, and I was at the heart of it.
I heard footsteps to my rear and the man I’d pursued from New York stepped into my field of vision. He wasn’t wearing a mask or a disguise, which was bad news because it signaled he had no intention of letting me live.
“Where’s Dinara?” I asked. My voice was dry and rasping. I cleared my throat. “What have you done with her?”
He stepped forward and I got a good look at his face. He had short brown hair, a flat nose, almond eyes and a square jaw. Handsome, but those who knew what to look for would notice an ugly cruelty in his eyes. He wore black combat trousers, a matching T-shirt and boots, and looked every inch the highly trained soldier I’d suspected he was when I first encountered him in New York.
“They call me Veles,” the man said. “It has been interesting to finally encounter someone who can almost keep up with me.”
“Let her go,” I said. “You have me. There’s no need to hurt her.”
“But there is,” Veles replied.
He yelled something in Russian, and I heard movement behind me. I strained to turn my head as footsteps approached. Two sets, I thought, dragging something across the concrete.
It was two men in the same uniform as Veles, and they were pulling Dinara. She too had been stripped to her underwear and was bound at her ankles and wrists. Her feet had been grazed by the concrete and were bloody, and she had a gag over her mouth. Her eyes met mine, and they shimmered with fear.
“Jack Morgan. Marine. Detective. Fighter. Survivor,” Veles said. “Not the kind of man who cares about his own suffering. But the suffering of another...”
He walked over to Dinara and caressed her shoulder.
“Leave her alone!” I yelled.
“What do you know, Mr. Morgan?” he said. “Tell me everything. And then tell me what your team knows, and we can decide who has to die.” Veles produced a butterfly knife from his pocket, flipped it open and pressed the point against Dinara’s exposed sternum. “And we can decide how they have to die. Quickly and kindly. Or slowly. In unimaginable pain.”
Chapter 58
I struggled against my restraints but they held firm. Dinara was defiant, but there was terror in her eyes.
“Don’t do this,” I said. “Just let her go.”
Dinara’s tough veneer was starting to crack and I could see tears forming. Blazing with anger and frustration, I struggled again, but there was nothing I could do.
Suddenly, a gunshot erupted from somewhere behind me, followed by the thunderous sound of footsteps and the crash of a door being slammed against a wall. I heard heavy boots tramp into the room, and urgent cries filled the air. I couldn’t believe it when Veles dropped the butterfly knife, and he and the two men holding Dinara raised their hands, and backed toward the windows.
The room filled with gun-toting police officers, who trained their weapons on our abductors. A female officer untied Dinara’s gag, and she began yelling at Veles, who ignored her and instead barked angry commands at the police. But they paid no attention to his instructions, and handcuffed him and his accomplices. The female officer used the discarded butterfly knife to cut Dinara’s bonds, and she ran over to me, just as Anna Bolshova, the Moscow detective who’d tried to interrogate me, entered the room.
She seemed to be in command of the raid, and was barking instructions at the dozen or so officers in the large apartment. Two of them hoisted me off the hook and cut the bonds around my legs so I could stand freely.
Dinara leaned against me, trying to control her emotions.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have known it was a trap.”
“Me too,” I said.
Veles exchanged angry words with Anna as he and his two men were frogmarched out of the room.
Anna seemed unsettled when she came over. “Asshole!” she remarked. “Are you OK?”
Dinara nodded.
“How did you know where we were?” I asked.
Anna looked over my shoulder, and I glanced round to see Feodor Arapov, the huge bear of a man from the Residence, pass Veles and the other two prisoners as they were led from the room.
“Hello, American,” he boomed. “Did we spoil your fun?”
“How...?”
“Leonid asked some of us to keep an eye on you,” Feo said. “The couple you spotted at the bridge. They were our guys. We saw you get taken and followed you here.”
“And they called me and said you’d been abducted by a drugs gang,” Anna added.
Feo looked sheepish, and my expression must have given something away, because Anna suddenly realized she’d been played.
“You mean that man really was SVR?” she asked nervously.
None of us said anything.
“He told me we were disrupting an intelligence operation,” Anna said. She looked at us searchingly. “Oh, come on! You said they were part of a gang.”
“They are,” Feo replied. “It’s just a very powerful gang.” He took my arm. “Come,” he said. “Time for us to go, before she rethinks who the villains are.”
“What about a statement?” Anna asked.
“Those men abducted us,” I replied. “If you hadn’t arrived, they were going to torture and kill us.”
“They can help you fill in the blanks tomorrow,” Feo said. “If you manage to hold those men for longer than a couple of hours. For now, these two need medical attention.”
“SVR? This is going to cause real trouble,” Anna said.
“You saved our lives,” I replied. “I owe you one.”
Dinara added her own response in Russian, but neither of us seemed able to lift Anna’s spirits. She had a rough night ahead.
As we followed Feo from the room, he took off his coat and wrapped it around Dinara’s shoulders.
“They found your clothes in another room,” he said.
“Thank you,” she replied.
“I owe you,” I told him.