“I will go to them. An exchange of hostages,” said Pavel. He was standing, hands on hips in a gesture of defiance.
“I cannot let you do that,” said Tom Lyth, matching the other man’s defiance.
“You cannot stop me, I….”
“Pavel, I can and I will and it’s never going to happen.”
The battleground was in Pavel’s bedroom and away from the rest of the team. Following the harrowing phone call, Lyth had decided to talk to Pavel and tell him the truth of the situation. It was the first time in their professional relationship that he had ever seen Pavel in such a rage!
He had told him of the abduction of Sabina and the assassination of the SCALPEL team member, Alvarez. He had told him of the hostage-takers and what they wanted, of the time limit they were up against and how the negotiations had been going so far. The argument had been going on for over an hour and was going nowhere except around in circles.
“I thought you were my friend?” said Pavel. He had taken to pacing up and down in front of the window and every time that he walked past the glass, an involuntary shudder went down Lyth’s spine at the thought of a sniper taking aim at an opportunistic target that presented itself.
“I am whatever you need me to be to get the job done. I’m a professional. I use people, I get what I need and I move on. I’ve done it dozens of times,” said Lyth reasonably.
Pavel snorted in derision. “You are such an expert on human weakness… you disgust me. And these people you used, did they live? Did they die?”
Lyth’s face darkened and he thought back to that fateful night in North Africa; the red dot on Solange’s forehead, the spray of blood. “They lived… and sometimes they died. It is the nature of our work.”
“And you are proud of this? You are the big man?”
Lyth shook his head slowly. “No. I am not, but that is something that I have to live and deal with, the guilt is mine to own.”
Pavel threw his hands up in the air in anger and contempt and returned to his pacing.
“Pavel, my priority is you. To just willingly give you up and put you in harm’s way puts everyone at risk. It also puts the future at risk. I will not allow that,” said Lyth.
“And Sabina? What of her! You feel you owe her nothing…. they have her and are threatening to kill her!” challenged Pavel.
Jax had been sitting in the corner on a chair, watching the two men argue, and finally she spoke up. “Pavel, no one could have foreseen them taking Sabina. At the moment she is safe, but if you just give yourself up, we lose the advantage.”
“She is my sister!” he shouted, before storming out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
Jax went to go after him, but Lyth shook his head. “Leave him; he’s had a lot to take in. Let’s give him some time.”
Jax sat back down in the chair and stretched her legs out, relaxing for a moment. “You do know that the other side will kill her? Those Jihadis don’t follow the rules, they are butchers.”
Lyth thought back to the screams of Sabina as she was being tortured. “I know. For the moment we have the advantage, we have the thing they want – the information inside Pavel’s head. We give that away and we lose the mission and put a thousand other Sabinas across the planet at risk.”
“There is another option,” said Jax. “If we can’t control the information, we can at least stop it from getting out… permanently.”
Lyth turned to her. He hated her when she was like this; cold and cruel and ruthless. He knew what she was about to propose; murder. He shook his head vehemently. “I will not let that happen. That is not what we are, to do that makes us no better than the people we are fighting against.”
Jax shrugged. “It may be our only choice.”
“No! We do not murder our agents because it is expedient – ever! We will find a way.”
“Okay, okay… it was just a suggestion. So, what are we going to do? I mean fuck, if I could go in his place to get the girl out, I would!” said Jax, staring out of the window at the expanse of the surrounding forests.
Tom Lyth’s head snapped around. “What did you say?”
Jax looked at him, a bored expression on her face. “I said I’d go in his place as a hostage swap, but they don’t want us, do they? They want what’s in his fucking head.”
The world slowed down in his mind, but there was the kernel of an idea taking shape. It was muddy, hazy and was incredibly risky to pull off, but they were beggars in the options department and this was the best one they had at the moment… maybe.
“Go and get Pavel in here, I need to talk to him. I think there may be another way, but to do that I’ll need a specialist. I’ll need Savini,” he said.