London, England
Peter Winter sat on the soft leather chair behind his desk in the JIA’s London office. Until three days ago, the office had belonged to Charles McCabe, his former boss, who’d been shot and killed outside a cafe in the Russian city of Omsk. Mackie, as he was more affectionately known, had been a charismatic leader. Someone whom Winter, despite his vastly different personality traits, had long aspired to be like.
Following Mackie’s untimely demise, Winter had immediately taken over day-to-day management of his boss’s portfolio of agents. It was the step up that Winter had craved for the last five years working for Mackie. It should have been a moment of happiness, of satisfaction. In some ways, despite the circumstances, it was – or at least it would be in time. In a few days, maybe a few weeks, he would open the bottle of champagne his girlfriend had bought him for his thirtieth birthday two years ago that he had been saving for the day when he was finally promoted to commander within the JIA.
But not yet.
Not while there was still so much turmoil, not just in the JIA but in his own mind.
And not while Mackie’s killer was still on the run.
In many ways, the unexpected promotion hadn’t been easy on Winter, despite it being a position he’d long craved. He noticed the looks from other people within the organisation. He knew they saw him as the young whippersnapper, promoted above his level of experience and aptitude, commanding agents who in some cases were many years older than him and had many more years’ experience. Not that he felt he wasn’t up to it. He knew he was. But knowing the doubts that others were surely feeling only added to the weight of expectation on his slender shoulders.
‘So what news do you have for me?’ Winter asked, looking over his desk at Paul Evans.
Winter and Evans were similar. Both tall and wiry, both of a similar age and service span with the JIA. Both were tech-savvy thinkers, puzzle solvers, brains rather than brawn. And yet they were leading very different lives. Evans was a field agent, much the same as Carl Logan, albeit with very different characteristics. Winter, on the other hand, was essentially a paper-pusher. He commanded a group of agents but rarely had to get his hands dirty. Yet he was now considerably more senior in the hierarchy than Evans would ever be – a specialised field agent really had nowhere to climb to.
‘We have nothing on Logan,’ Evans said. ‘If that’s what you mean.’
‘He’s just disappeared?’
‘It would seem so. It doesn’t help that there’s no way of tracking him now. No IDs, no bank accounts, no phone.’
Winter wasn’t sure whether Evans’s comment was a dig at him. It was Winter, in his new role, just hours after Mackie’s death, who had proposed to the JIA committee that they clear Logan’s bank accounts, wipe away any record of his time with the JIA, his identification, essentially his entire life. To the outside world, it was now like Carl Logan had never existed.
In many ways, to the outside world, he never really had.
The committee had approved the request almost without question. Somehow, after being held captive by the Russians for three months, Logan had escaped and had wound up at the scene of Mackie’s murder. Even worse, he had fled the scene with the Russians. Exactly what was happening wasn’t clear. But Logan was now on the JIA hit list. A rogue agent.
The idea of deleting Logan’s identity and taking his belongings, his money and everything he had was to make it impossible for Logan to continue operating as much as it was to protect the JIA’s position. But Winter was now starting to wonder whether the decision had been too hasty. Whether he’d actually acted with his heart – angered by Mackie’s death – rather than his head. In deleting all evidence of Logan’s existence, had Winter in fact handed Logan exactly what he needed to disappear for good?
For years, Logan had operated like a ghost, in the shadows. Now he was a ghost even to the JIA.
There was a knock on the office door and Winter’s secretary opened it and stuck her head around.
‘Jay Lindegaard is here to see you,’ she said.
‘Shit,’ Winter muttered.
He really didn’t want to speak to Lindegaard, the most senior of the JIA’s committee members and a long-time CIA agent and pain in the arse. Winter was surprised the man hadn’t just blasted his way into the room. That was certainly his usual style.
‘Okay, send him in,’ Winter said.
Moments later, Jay Lindegaard, wearing a light-grey suit that bulged in all the right places, strode into the office and right up to the desk, eyeballing Winter all the way.
Winter got to his feet, coming a few inches short of Lindegaard’s height and a few inches narrower than his muscular physique.
‘Jay, this is Paul Evans. I’m not sure whether you two have met?’
Evans stuck his hand out toward Lindegaard.
‘Yes, I know who he is,’ Lindegaard snapped, ignoring the offer of a handshake. ‘Have you found Logan yet?’
‘We were just talking about that actually.’
‘And?’
‘And we’re at a bit of a loss,’ Winter said, sitting down.
‘A bit of a loss?’ Lindegaard barked in his thick American accent. He remained standing. ‘Do you have anything at all? We have a madman out there killing all and sundry. He’s now running around with one of the most wanted criminals in the world. Do you know he could bring down this entire organisation if we don’t stop him?’
‘We’re trying,’ Winter said, doing his best to remain composed. He looked over at Evans and tried to gauge his response to Lindegaard’s reference to Angela Grainger. Evans hadn’t been brought into the loop yet about that. But there was nothing. Not even a twitch. ‘As it is,’ Winter continued, ‘we haven’t got any agents left on the ground in Russia.’
‘And yet you two are still sitting here,’ Lindegaard said. ‘How do you expect to get anything done if you’re three thousand miles away from the action?’
‘That’s my point,’ Winter said. ‘I don’t think we can. We need to get feet into Russia and tap up our sources from there.’
‘So why is Evans still here then?’ Lindegaard blasted. ‘Why isn’t he in Moscow already?’
‘Actually, that was why I called Evans in,’ Winter said, hearing his voice becoming weaker in the face of Lindegaard’s bombarding manner.
As much as he wanted to fight back, Winter knew that entering into a shouting match with Lindegaard wouldn’t help matters. With Mackie gone, Lindegaard was now technically Winter’s immediate boss, along with the other three committee members. He had to at least try to keep Lindegaard at bay. Which sounded infinitely easier than it was.
‘We were just about to go over the arrangements,’ Evans chimed in.
Lindegaard turned his steely gaze to Evans and stared down at the young agent. After a few seconds, he huffed and spun around, then headed back to the door. He stopped when he reached it and turned again to speak.
‘This is not a strong start you’re making, Winter. I might not have seen eye to eye with Mackie at all times, but he was good at his job. You’ve got some big boots to fill. So start filling. I want Evans in Moscow now. And I want daily updates from you. We need to keep moving before Logan causes any more damage.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Winter said.
‘And if you get even a sniff of where Logan is, you come to me immediately. He’s a threat to you, me, everyone in this organisation. The longer he stays on the run, the bigger that threat becomes. Got it?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I’ve got to head out of the country but call me anytime to update me.’
As soon as Lindegaard slammed the door behind him, Evans began to get up from his chair.
‘Where are you going?’ Winter said.
‘He just said–’
‘Sit down! We’re not done yet.’
Evans gave a sour look but did as he was told. Winter was surprised at himself for his authoritative tone. Perhaps Mackie had rubbed off on him more than he’d realised. Or maybe he was just riled by Lindegaard’s unnerving presence.
‘Before you go, there’s something we need to discuss,’ Winter said.
Evans stared at Winter sullenly.
‘We lost a good agent out in Moscow,’ Winter said.
He was referring to Jane Westwood, who’d been operating under the alias Mary White. The reports coming back from Russia were that Logan had taken Westwood hostage in Omsk after she’d been sent to bring him back in following his apparent escape from the FSB. She’d wound up dead in a back alley in Moscow. Logan was the obvious culprit, but the picture of exactly what was happening in Russia was becoming less clear by the hour.
‘I know,’ Evans said. ‘I worked with her on her first assignment. She was a real asset.’
‘She was. But I’m more than a little suspicious about how she was killed. Just what went wrong out there?’
‘Logan’s gone rogue. It’s simple, isn’t it? The Russians have turned him. He’s working for them now.’
‘Then why did his killing spree involve taking out numerous agents from the FSB too? It doesn’t look like he’s the best of friends with anyone anymore.’
Evans didn’t respond.
‘I spoke to Logan,’ Winter said. ‘Not long after Mackie was killed. And I spoke to Westwood too. There was something bugging her. She was telling me about the CIA agent she’d been teamed up with out there. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I knew the CIA had been brought into this mess to help find Logan when he’d first been captured in Russia – against the wishes of Mackie, I would add – but it’s the CIA’s involvement that doesn’t sit easy anymore.’
‘In what way?’
‘Angela Grainger,’ Winter said. ‘You remember her?’
‘Of course,’ Evans said, his face deadpan.
Winter knew Evans and Grainger had never met face to face, but Evans had been involved, along with Logan, in the mission to rescue Frank Modena – the US Attorney General – after he’d been kidnapped in Paris. A kidnapping plot that Angela Grainger had orchestrated. So Evans knew of her. Everyone knew of her. What Evans didn’t know, though, was that since Grainger had escaped from Logan, from everyone, she had fled to Russia to be sheltered by the FSB.
‘And you know that’s who Logan’s with now?’ Winter said.
‘I do,’ Evans said. ‘Because Lindegaard mentioned it and now you have too.’
‘We didn’t know the Russians had been harbouring Grainger. She’d been on the run for over a year. Her presence in Russia only became apparent when we were negotiating for Logan’s release. The Russians, clearly, were using her as a massive bargaining chip.’
‘I can imagine,’ Evans said. ‘And I’m guessing that’s why the CIA took an interest in Logan’s imprisonment.’
‘Exactly. But that’s when things started getting muddy. The CIA took over. After that, I’m not sure what deals were done with whom.’
Winter knew the CIA had been working with Mackie. The JIA was jointly funded by both the American and British government, and working side by side with the CIA and MI6 wasn’t unheard of. When Logan had first been apprehended in Russia, Mackie had been desperate to arrange a deal to get his man out alive. After weeks of making no headway, the CIA had come into the fold to help negotiations. But the deal had never been struck. Logan had escaped – or at least claimed to have escaped – from the clutches of the FSB, only to later draw Mackie out into the open, allowing the Russians to murder him. On the face of it, it appeared Logan had been turned and was now working for the Russians.
But Winter was increasingly getting the feeling that wasn’t the whole story.
‘Something was happening in Moscow,’ he said. ‘Something that got a number of people killed. I’m pretty sure the CIA didn’t come into this to help Logan. They wanted Grainger – I’m certain of that. But what were they offering in return?’
‘Maybe it was Logan.’
Winter raised an eyebrow. ‘Mackie would never have allowed that. He wouldn’t have given up on Logan to score points with the CIA.’
Winter wanted to believe his own words, but then he’d been asking the same question himself. If Logan had been the other part of the deal – a swap, his life for Grainger’s – then just who had sold him out? Winter certainly wasn’t aware of Mackie having done so.
‘I’ll get on the next flight to Moscow,’ Evans said. ‘Whatever’s happening, I’ve got more chance of uncovering it if I’m on the ground.’
‘Of course. You do that. It’s a start at least,’ said Winter. ‘But I don’t think you’ll find the answers there.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because Logan isn’t in Moscow. If I were to bet, I’d say he’s not even in Russia anymore. Wherever he is, you need to follow him.’
‘Do you know where he’d go?’
‘No. But you have to find him. And quickly. Get to him before the CIA or the FSB do. Because Logan is one of the only people who knows what’s really happening here. And unless we find him first, we may never find out the reason Mackie was killed.’