Deadlock

TWO

Two weeks later Kabul, Afghanistan

"THE DIRECTOR CALLED AGAIN," Ralph Moore said when Ted Ferguson came into the hotel room. "He wanted to know why he couldn't reach your cell phone. I told him there must be satellite inter¬ference."

"Good man," Ferguson said. "Not that he'll believe it." "You should have taken the call."

"And what was I to tell him? That we still can't find Emily Hud¬son and Joel Levy? I told him that yesterday and the day before. How the hell could he expect the CIA to find them when the military and U.N. are coming up zero? Even if we knew where they were, these damn blizzards would keep us from moving on them." He scowled. "I'll be lucky to have a job when this is over."

Moore shrugged. "The Company is having tremendous pressure put on it by Congress and the media. You know that, Ferguson."

"I know that we're drawing a blank. Why aren't our informants able to give us information? It's as if Hudson and Levy dropped off the face of the earth. If they're not dead, why haven't we had a demand for ransom? All the forensic evidence around the trucks indicated that it was a probable bandit hit."

"They probably are dead."

"Then show me the bodies, dammit. Let me turn the Marines loose on whoever did it."

"And get you off the hook."

He nodded curtly. "I'm as mad as anyone else at the murder and abduction of American citizens, but I won't be made the bad guy. I have to get them out of Afghanistan or show the world they're dead."

"I've called MI6 in London, but they still don't have any leads," Moore said. "None of their Middle East informants have come up with any info. We may be out of luck."

"No way." He dropped down in his chair and reached for his phone. "I can't give up yet. Is John Garrett still living in London?"

Moore straightened in his chair. "Garrett?"

"Is he?"

"As far as I know."

"Then get me reservations there in the next few hours."

"Garrett won't help. He stopped doing jobs for us three years ago. And you can't rely on money. He's got money to burn these days."

"Tell me something I don't know. Smuggling evidently pays exor¬bitantly well," Ferguson said grimly. "But he'll do this job. I'll find a way to make sure he does. I need him. He spent years in Afghanistan when he was a kid and has kept his contacts. And he knows those mountains like the back of his hand."

"I'll bet you don't get him. He was royally pissed at us after Colombia."

And who could blame him, Ferguson thought. The whole sce¬nario had gone wrong, and the CIA had been forced to leave Garrett to fight his own way out of a very sticky situation. Well, maybe not forced, but he'd regarded Garrett as expendable at the time. "I'll make him an offer he can't refuse."

"What?"

"How the hell do I know? I'll decide that on the way to London."

He was dialing as he spoke. He'd had the number on hand for the last week, when it had become obvious what a disaster this case was shap¬ing up to be. And involving Garrett might cause the situation to spiral out of control even more. There was no question that he was efficient and deadly in the field, but he could be volatile. In his late teens, Gar¬rett had been a mercenary; later, he had become involved in smuggling and high-tech embezzlement. He had allowed them to use him occa¬sionally when he'd been low on funds, but he'd always been a loose cannon. He had a sudden memory of Garrett as he'd last seen him in that jungle in Colombia: stripped to the waist, sweating, muscles gleaming with explosive tension, his dark eyes glittering with rage when he'd realized they were leaving him. Hell, he might not even take the call.

Garrett picked up after four rings. "You must be sweating blood, Ferguson."

"Things are… difficult. I'd like to come and discuss it with you."

"Such politeness. You used to demand or use blackmail."

"But you always managed to get your own back. May I come?"

Garrett was silent a moment. "You're not my favorite person. Why do you think I'd let you?"

"Because you didn't ignore my call. Because you may be a son of a bitch, but you're not petty." He paused. "And because I thought you might be getting bored. You lived on the edge too long."

Another silence. "Come ahead. But you're probably going to be wasting your time. I'm not inclined to do you any favors."

"I'm not asking for anything but information."

"Bullshit. I've been down that road before." He hung up.

Ferguson let out his breath as he punched the off button. He hadn't realized how tense he'd been until Garrett had agreed to see him. "It's a go," he told Moore. "Get me Garrett's file. I want to read it on the plane. I've got to find a hook."

"FERGUSON IS COMING," GARRETT said as he turned to Jack Dardon, who had just come up on deck. "I think I'll go back to London."

"Good. You've been lousy company." Dardon sat down in a deck chair. "Is he going to beg and plead?"

"Not if he can use coercion." Garrett got up and went to the rail and looked out at the coast of Greenland. "He thinks I'm bored."

"You are. So am I. We should go to Amsterdam and find you a nice talented whore to spark a little interest."

"You can get whores anywhere."

"But I like the Dutch."

"Then you go to Amsterdam."

"Maybe I will. I'm not like you. I like things easy." Dardon was silent a moment. "Don't get involved, Garrett. It could be one big headache."

He shrugged. "I'm just going to listen to Ferguson."

"Is that why you've been on the phone for the past two days with Karif Barouk?"

"Karif's an old friend. I spent four years with him and his family with his tribe in the mountains when I was a boy."

"So you told me. And the two of you did everything from am¬bushing Russian troops to raising hell in Kabul. It would be natural to call on him if you needed information, wouldn't it?"

"I'm curious." He turned and walked back to his deck chair and picked up the newspaper that had photos of Emily Hudson and Joel Levy blazoned on the front page. "And I don't like puzzles that have missing pieces. It annoys me."

"And that's all?"

"No." He gazed down at the photo of Emily Hudson. "Sometimes I get pissed off. God knows, I know that nothing about life is fair. Look at me. I've been a selfish son of a bitch since I was a kid and crawled out of the gutter. Yet here I am now, safe and on Easy Street because I fought and clawed and learned every dirty trick in the book." He tapped the picture of Emily Hudson. "She seems to have done everything right.

Worked her way through school and still went on youth trips to help third-world countries. She spent most of her adult life risking her neck trying to preserve some kind of cultural heritage for people who would just as soon kill her as look at her." His lips twisted. "As a reward, she's probably going to die, if she's not dead already."

"As you said, life's not fair." Dardon tilted his head. "But why is this particular inequity bothering you so much?"

Garrett had been asking himself that same question. He didn't know either Hudson or Levy, and those sob stories the media had been broadcasting for the last two weeks shouldn't have roused the anger he was feeling. It was just another atrocity in a world filled with them. He'd thought he was hard enough to be totally immune.

He shrugged. "Maybe I've had too much time to think about it. The life of leisure isn't what it's cracked up to be. I'm used to being busy."

"Is that all?"

"No." He tossed the paper back on the chair. "I like her face."

"YOUR FACE IS GETTING THIN," Staunton said. "You're not eat¬ing. I don't like that."

"What does it matter?" Emily said dully. "You don't care whether I live or die."

"Oh, but I do. My employer would be upset if you died before you told me where you hid the hammer."

Emily didn't answer. It did no good to deny it. He wouldn't lis¬ten. "Then he's going to be upset. I can't tell you what I don't know. What kind of a monster would pay you to do this? Who is he?"

"I have certain business ethics. It wouldn't be honorable of me to give you his name."

"His name is Satan."

Staunton chuckled. "I won't tell him you're so disrespectful. He might take offense." Then his smile faded. "Yes, I don't like your condi¬tion at all." He covered her with her blanket. "You have to keep warm. It's still snowing outside. And you're not sleeping. No more tears, no more screams, no begging me to spare that poor lad. But of course there's not much of him left to spare, is there?"

"No," Emily whispered. "And may God send you straight to hell."

"Not nice, Emily. Now I want you to eat today. If you don't, I'll find a new and more excruciating way to hurt Levy."

"You couldn't hurt him any more than you have."

"You know better than that. You've watched me do it. It's only been two weeks. A few burns, a few body parts… Did you enjoy yes¬terday, Emily?"

"Enjoy?" She repeated the word in disbelief. "You burned out his eyes, you bastard." "You remember?" "Of course, I remember." "Nothing else?"

She stared at him in bewilderment. "What?" "I've noticed you try to block out certain choice episodes. Like the one yesterday."

"You son of a bitch."

"Now that showed some spirit. Eat your food. I want you fresh and strong when I take you to Levy's hut." He stood up. "Twenty minutes, Emily."

She closed her eyes. She desperately wanted to cry. But he was right; the tears would no longer come. She had wept too much, drowned in horror and helplessness and guilt.

But it wasn't over. Staunton always kept his word. He would find a way to punish her by tormenting that poor shell of the man who had once been Joel Levy.

She sat up and began to eat.

"NICE PLACE," FERGUSON SAID as he looked around the large living room whose west wall was entirely composed of tall windows over¬looking the sea. "But not as palatial as I thought you'd choose, consider¬ing your present affluence."

"You mean ill-gotten gains, don't you?" Garrett smiled. "You're being tactful. How amusing. Would you like a drink?"

"No." Ferguson felt a ripple of annoyance as he watched Garrett pour himself a whiskey. This wasn't the sweating, fierce man of the last time they'd met. The bastard was so damn confident and at home in this house that had probably cost as much as Ferguson's entire pen¬sion would bring him. Was he jealous? Why not? Garrett had it all. He was dressed simply in jeans and a white cable-knit sweater, but he wore them with casual elegance. He was in his late thirties, tall and muscu¬lar, and he moved with the litheness that Ferguson remembered. His brown-black hair was clipped close, and his dark eyes dominated a face that effortlessly held one's attention. And, dammit, not only was he smart, he was more lethal than any man Ferguson had ever met. He'd even intimidated Ferguson on occasion. "The Company could have stopped you from settling here, you know. All we would have had to do was drop a few words in the right ears. Criminals aren't welcome here in England. After all, you're a smuggler and a mercenary."

"Am I?" He shook his head. "I'm retired, Ferguson. And if you want to try to blacklist me with Her Majesty's government, go ahead. I don't care."

He was telling the truth. "I'm not threatening you."

Garrett smiled. "Not unless it would do you some good. You're not handling this well, Ferguson. I'm getting impatient. Get down to it."

Ferguson pulled a file out of his briefcase. "Emily Hudson, Joel Levy. Kidnapped two weeks ago by bandits in the Hindu Kush. We need to get them back."

"And?"

"I need help."

"Yes, you do. You'll be lucky if they're still alive."

"Damn you, we've done everything we could to-" He stopped. "You know the area, and you have contacts. I wondered if we could talk you into using those contacts to get us information about the bandits."

"That's better. To the point and almost polite." Garrett took a sip of his whiskey. "They weren't taken by bandits."

Ferguson stiffened. "What?"

"There was some bandit involvement, but they were taken by for¬eigners."

"The killings were done by AK-47s of Russian make used by the bandits in the area. The footprints by the trucks were made by boots that came from a village in those mountains."

"Red herrings."

"Then who?"

Garrett shook his head. "Not bandits. Not Taliban. Not Al Qaeda. No one from the Middle East. Maybe someone English, Irish, Euro¬pean… I don't know."

"Then who does, dammit?"

Garrett shrugged. "I've told you all I could find out. I can con¬tinue to try, but it will take time. You don't have time."

"But you could find out more if you were on the ground there?"

"Maybe." He gazed thoughtfully down into his drink. "Yes, prob¬ably."

Ferguson wanted to strangle the bastard. "You could find them?" "Yes, I think so."

"Then go in and get them," Ferguson said through his teeth. Garrett leaned back in his chair. "Are you ordering me?" "You're damn right."

"It appears the gloves are off." Garrett's eyes narrowed on Fergu¬son's face. "And you wouldn't do it unless you thought you could get away with it. You can't blackmail me, and you can't bribe me. I've put myself beyond your reach. What's left?"

"Jack Dardon," Ferguson said. "He's worked for you for the last six years, and you've been friends since the old days. You don't have many friends, do you?"

"Enough. Where's this leading?"

"We can't touch you, but Dardon has left a few strings that we can unravel. He evidently wanted to be independent and set up his own smuggling operation after you retired. We have information that would cause him a good bit of trouble with the Greek and Russian govern¬ments."

"Evidence?"

Ferguson nodded. "Affidavits, photos. Sufficient to put him be¬hind bars for a good many years. Would you like to see the file?"

Garrett slowly shook his head. "I don't think you'd bluff under these circumstances."

"No bluff. Go to Afghanistan and get Hudson and Levy out."

"And you'll turn over Dardon's file and any hard evidence?"

Ferguson nodded. "Dardon isn't important to us."

"Except as a tool. We're all tools to you. I wondered what you'd come up with to tip the balance."

Garrett's tone was without expression, and Ferguson had a sinking feeling that he'd failed. Garrett was going to tell him to go to hell. Maybe Dardon wasn't as good a friend as he'd hoped. There was no anger, no intensity, none of the ferocity that he'd remembered in Garrett.

"Don't doubt I'll do it, Garrett."

"You probably would." Garrett finished his drink and stood up. "So I'll tell you what you're going to do, Ferguson. You call off all those Marines and U.N. forces who might fill me full of bullets. You make sure everyone knows I'm one of the good guys… in this par¬ticular instance. Your men stay out of the area. I don't want you any¬where near me unless I yell for help. And when I do call, you'd better come. It had better not be another Colombia."

"I had no choice but to leave you there. You made it out okay," he said. "You're going to do it?"

Garrett didn't answer him. "Get out, Ferguson."

Ferguson repeated. "You're going to do it?"

Garrett went over to the desk and scrawled a phone number on a Post-it note. "I'm leaving tonight for Afghanistan. When I arrive there, I want to be told by my banker in Switzerland that they've received that file and any other evidence you have on Dardon."

"Not until the job's finished."

"It won't even begin unless you give over the file." He handed him the Post-it. "And I'll have Dardon at the bank to make sure that you've complied. Be certain you turn over everything."

"And what if I don't?"

Garrett stared him in the eye. "I'll come after you. You know how good I am. You sent me on enough missions."

Ferguson quickly looked away. "You may be getting the best of the deal." He rose to his feet. "I don't even know if you can find them."

"I'll find them. I have a few leads."

Ferguson's eyes widened. "You lied to me. What leads?"

"None I'd turn over to you or the military to botch. One blunder, and you'd get them killed. Hell, 77/ be lucky if I can get them out in one piece. I have to move fast. I made my reservations for Kabul when I docked this morning."

"You son of a bitch. You let me go through this, and you were go¬ing anyway?"

Garrett shrugged. "I wanted to know what you were going to use to force me to go." He headed for the door. "I thought I might as well get something out of this mess besides the possibility of being chopped up and spread over that mountain range."

"WE HAVE TO TALK, EMILY."

She opened her eyes to see Staunton kneeling beside her. "It doesn't do me any good to talk to you. You don't listen."

"Then I'll do the talking, questioning actually, and you have only to answer."

"I don't know where it is."

"That wasn't the question." He reached out and gently stroked her cheek. "I've grown very fond of you in these weeks. I don't believe I've ever felt so… intimate with anyone. What a brave, lovely woman you are."

She shuddered at his touch but didn't move. For the past few days he'd been touching her, stroking her, almost lovingly. She'd ignored it. She wouldn't be the one to suffer if she fought him.

Staunton sighed. "Yes, it will upset me enormously if I have to hurt you." Liar.

"But it will," he said softly. "I've been avoiding it by concentrating on Levy, but you just won't help me." "I can't help you."

"I'm coming close to believing you, but my employer won't be sat¬isfied unless I tell him what I've done to you to verify that." His fore¬finger traced the curve of her upper lip. "So we have a choice to make."

"What choice?"

"I'm sure you've noticed that Levy is not responding to… stim¬uli. He's dying, Emily." "Yes."

"And that means that there will be no possibility that you'll tell me what I need to know to stop his suffering. I'll have no excuse." His fingers moved to stroke her throat. "So I decided to leave the choice to you. I can continue to rouse him to pain for another few days. I might be able to do it. I'm very good."

"Or?"

"Or I can spare him and switch my efforts to you. You know what that will mean. You or Levy. Decide."

Yes, she knew what that would mean. It was her turn. She had known it would be coming.

She moistened her lips. "Me."

He sighed. "I thought that you'd want to spare him. I want you to know that I'm going to regret what I have to do to you." She shook her head.

"You don't believe me? I'll prove it. I'll give you twenty-four hours before I start." He bent his head and kissed her lingeringly. "Do you know with women it starts with rape? Sexual violation seems to be the ultimate humiliation. But it also has to be brutal enough to bring pain. It would hurt me to be brutal to you in that particular act, so I'm going to turn you over to Shafir Ali the leader of my bandit friends. He's been very cooperative and needs a reward. He has no problem with brutality. I understand he beat his wife to death for not being sufficiently enthusiastic in the sack. He'll probably want to share you with his friends later, but tomorrow night he's going to de¬vote himself to you. I'll deliver you to his tent at exactly this time to¬morrow night." He kissed her again and rose to his feet. "You might spend the next twenty-four hours thinking about what Shafir will be doing to you. I'll go and tell Levy that he won't suffer anymore."

Emily watched him leave the hut. She had thought she was too numb, too calloused by Joel's agony, to be afraid, but she was wrong. Panic was rising within her.

God, let her get away from here. Or let her have the courage not to give Staunton the satisfaction of making her break under the pain.

A shot rang out from Joel's hut next door.

No!

She arched upward as if the bullet had struck her. 77/ tell Levy he won't have to suffer anymore. She should have guessed. Dear God, she should have known.