Logan walked out of the house and headed to the gates. He’d thrown on one of the guard’s overcoats, but as he left the house, he was still hit by the bitter cold, which seemed worse than ever. Maybe it was just because he’d become too used to the warmth of the house.
He traipsed across the cleared courtyard. The snowy remnants under his feet were slippery and hard and he had to plant his feet heavily to stop himself sliding. As he reached the outer gates, a guard jumped out of the hut on the opposite side and started shouting at Logan in Kazakh.
‘Open the gates,’ Logan said back in Russian as he came to a stop.
The guard didn’t move, just carried on shouting. Logan heard footsteps behind him and turned to see Grainger following him. Fleming stood further behind her, by the open doorway. He shouted loudly and the guard on the other side of the gates went quiet and skulked back into his hut. A few seconds later, Bulat scurried out of the house, past Fleming, and over to a control box on the outer wall. He pressed a button and the metal gates began to whir and slide open.
‘Carl, are you sure this is the best idea?’ Grainger said when she reached him.
‘I want to know why they’re here,’ he said.
‘Please. Just think about this.’
She reached out and put a hand on his shoulder.
‘I’ve thought about it,’ he said, shrugging her off.
His decision to confront the vehicle’s occupants might have seemed rash to Grainger but it wasn’t one he was undertaking lightly. He’d already identified the occupants of the car: the Kazakh NSC. It was the only plausible conclusion.
For starters, the number plate of the four-by-four was Kazakh, so it didn’t belong to another FSB surveillance team that had followed him and Grainger over the border. Sure, the FSB or CIA could have hired a Kazakh car, but Logan didn’t believe either of those agencies could have tracked them to Fleming’s so quickly.
And even if they somehow had, the fact the vehicle was just sitting there like it was spoke volumes. It was possible the NSC could have been there at the behest of someone else, but if that was the case, they either would have stayed in the shadows or already launched an attack.
So while he didn’t fully understand why the NSC were there, or even how they’d found him, so far he didn’t see them as a threat. And he saw no point in sitting around to wait and see what would happen. They were either friend or foe and he may as well figure out which one it was sooner rather than later.
If anything, it was intriguing to Logan that the NSC were on his tail in the first place. He and Grainger could have tried to escape and go on the run once more, but Logan saw no benefit in trying to evade them before he even knew what their intentions were.
He turned and marched through the open gates, then headed up the track toward the parked four-by-four. He didn’t look behind him, but guessed from the silence that neither Grainger nor Fleming and his men had followed him out of the compound. That was fine. He didn’t need them tagging along to complicate matters. He wanted to appear as unthreatening as he could.
Logan was just ten yards from the car when two of its doors swung open in unison, the front passenger door and the rear door on the driver’s side. Two men emerged, dressed identically in long black coats that came past their knees, smart trousers underneath and shiny black boots. It was an unusual combination. The boots, which were more like what you would expect on a soldier, looked out of place against their formal clothing, but Logan guessed in the snowy winter they were a necessity.
The man who emerged from the rear hung casually from his open door. The other came around the car and moved toward Logan. He and Logan were only a few yards apart when the man took a hand out of his pocket to reveal a gun. He didn’t point it but Logan stopped moving, as did the man.
The man said something to Logan. He spoke calmly, no hint of anger or tension, but Logan didn’t understand what he had said. It did at least confirm to Logan what he’d thought – that the car’s occupants were from the Kazakh NSC. Even with the man brandishing his gun, Logan still felt calm and in control.
‘I don’t speak Kazakh,’ Logan said in Russian.
The man glared at Logan, his face giving nothing away. Then, without saying another word, he lifted his gun and pointed the barrel at Logan. He had two hands around the butt, his arms outstretched.
For a few moments, everything went silent. But then, all of a sudden, the man shouted something at Logan. He was still speaking Kazakh but his whole demeanour had now changed. Logan held his hands up in the air. He could only guess that was what the man had asked him to do. But it didn’t seem to calm him down at all. He continued to shout, inching forward.
Logan remained calm. The man wasn’t going to shoot him. Not if Logan didn’t give him a reason to. Logan was convinced of that. If the man had wanted to kill him, he would have already. Logan glanced over and saw that the second man was also now brandishing a weapon, though he was still cowering behind the open car door.
The first man continued to move closer, until the barrel of his gun was only a few inches from Logan’s face.
‘What do you want from me?’ Logan said, trying his best to stay calm.
From the position the man was now in, Logan could quite easily attack and disarm him before a shot was fired. Logan was of half a mind to do just that, but then he heard shouting from behind and he instinctively spun around. It was Grainger. She was running toward him.
‘Angela, what the hell are you doing?’ he blasted.
It was the last thing he needed. She came to an abrupt halt, her vision fixed somewhere behind Logan’s right shoulder. He immediately guessed why. The man had become spooked. He was making a move.
Logan ducked down and began to spin around, but the man was one step ahead. The butt of the gun caught Logan on the jaw, splitting the skin on the inside of his mouth and sending him reeling. He fought hard to recover before another blow came, readying himself for the attack. But Logan was too slow. Maybe it was the hangover.
The thick sole of the man’s boot thrust down onto Logan’s neck, pinning him to the floor. From nowhere, another man appeared and quickly cuffed Logan’s wrists behind his back.
Logan heard Grainger scream behind him as the two men hauled him to his feet. Logan fumed and raged, trying his best to shrug the men off him, but he soon went still when he felt the barrel of the gun pushed against the side of his head. And when he looked up, he saw a third man walking to Grainger, gun trained on her, and all of his fight suddenly waned.
The man strode up to Grainger, then reached down with one hand and pulled a set of handcuffs from his pocket. He tossed them over to her and they landed at her feet. She looked up at Logan, as though asking him what she should do. Her face was hard and defiant. Logan knew there was plenty of fight in her. It wouldn’t be the first time the two of them had fought against the odds. But despite the perilous situation, Logan still firmly believed this wasn’t a fight they needed. Not until the NSC had declared their hand.
In the end, he simply nodded to Grainger and she hung her head.
The two men pulled on Logan’s arms, ushering him backward, toward the car. Logan didn’t resist, but he also wasn’t going to make it easy for them. He let his body flop down so the men had to take his weight, his boots scraping the ground as they carried him along.
One of the men pushed Logan’s head down while the other shoved him in through the open rear door. Logan looked over and saw Grainger, the cuffs around her wrists, the third man marching her toward him.
Then Logan caught a glimpse of something behind her. By the gates to the compound. Two figures. Fleming and Butler. Standing, unmoving, their arms folded. They were close to a hundred yards away but Logan was sure he could see a toothy smile plastered on Butler’s face.
Grainger reached the car door and was bundled in, next to Logan. The three men got back into the car and, without another word, the engine started. The tyres spun and the car lurched forward onto the track and slowly started to move along the grooves in the snow, away from Fleming and the grinning Butler.