Private Moscow (Private 15)

. Maxim Yenen had walked us into a trap.

Why? I asked myself.

It was my last coherent thought. One of the drunks ran up behind us and struck me on the back of the head, and the world went black.

CHAPTER 57

I COULD HEAR the crash of distant waves and felt the beat of the sun on my face. I was lying on warm sand and could almost taste the brine in the baking air. Part of me was puzzled by my circumstances, but there was nothing I could do about them. I couldn’t even move, which was troubling because I could feel the soft touch of a woman stroking my hair. I couldn’t see her face, just the edge of her wide-brimmed straw hat, which intermittently blocked the blinding sun that blazed in an unblemished sky.

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.