Matthew Dunn - Spycatcher

Will tried to picture the young, wretched Lana in such circumstances and somehow relate her to the glamorous woman sitting before him. He could not do so. He felt revolted by what she was telling him. More than anything else, he wished he could move to her side and hold her.

“But I refused to die. I refused to be a victim. So I waited for what seemed an age, until I was sure the men were far away, and I picked myself up and walked.” Lana brushed fingers through her silky hair. “I don’t remember the journey-I was in a daze and no doubt was suffering all sorts of mental and physical distress. But I made it back to the city and fell onto its streets. Some men and women found me and took me straight to Megiddo. He told the people to leave and carried me into his shelter. I was half conscious, but I remember him lighting a wood fire to heat a bucket of water. I remember him stripping me of my clothes and standing me naked before that fire while he washed my body. I remember him giving me the only set of spare clothes he had while he used the bathwater to hand-wash my own soiled garments. I remember him looking at me with both strength and confusion in his eyes.” Her voice was very quiet now. “I loved him at that moment. I loved him because he seemed to me to be my savior.” She shook her head. “So when he later abandoned me, I felt as if nothing made sense anymore. I felt as if something in me had died. I felt as if all I had left was hatred toward the man who I had thought was better than all the others I had known.” She looked back at Will. “And ever since, I’ve felt that hating someone was safer than trying to love another man and have that love taken away again.” She smiled and looked a little embarrassed. “Maybe that’s not true anymore. Maybe it never made sense.”

Will shook his head. It made perfect sense to him, because he knew all about the fear of love and loss. He knew all about the ways to hide behind other emotions or put up barriers to stop love. He stopped shaking his head and wondered whether, like Lana, that was true for him anymore.

Will breathed deeply as he stood by the entrance to the Westin hotel. It was still light, although he knew that darkness would begin to fall in an hour or so. And judging by the color of the clouds above him, it looked likely that fresh snow would soon drop to add to the stuff that already lay thick over Zagreb. He walked up to a hotel attendant and handed the man his parking valet ticket. Within two minutes his car was delivered to him. The Audi A8 was the most powerful sedan available from the rental dealership he’d visited earlier in the day. Will gave the attendant some money and asked him to stay with the vehicle for a moment. He walked back into the hotel and spoke to the front-desk concierge. He told the woman he’d heard that the views of the city sunset were magnificent from the vantage point on Medvednica Mountain, and he wondered whether the road to it was passable today. The woman advised him that the solitary road to the mountain’s summit was clear but icy and that he would be better advised to wait a few days until conditions improved. Will thanked her and explained that he would at least try to make the drive now, given that he was leaving Croatia in the morning. He walked back out of the hotel and entered his vehicle. He hoped that what he’d just done had been sufficient to allow members of the Iranian surveillance team enough time to prepare a vehicle to follow him. If they were savvy enough to overhear or subsequently get the information from the concierge, he had also given them his destination and reason for going there. His cell phone beeped, and he saw he had a message from Roger.

Four men in two vehicles are onto you. The rest of them are staying with our lady. Good luck.

Will closed his phone and drove.

For fifteen kilometers he traveled west across the traffic-laden city. He drove within the speed limit and occasionally looked in his rearview mirror to search for anything out of the ordinary. But he was not yet worried about spotting the Iranian vehicles, which would have been difficult anyway, thanks to the density and movement of other cars around him. It was only when he turned northeast onto the hilly Route 2220 that traffic evaporated and just two sets of headlights remained behind, but at a moderate distance from, his vehicle.

It was dusk now, and snow began to hit the Audi’s windshield as Will drove steadily up the hilly route. He took the bends in the road slowly, hoping to appear to be a cautious driver looking for signs of ice. There were houses bordering the road for fourteen kilometers as he continued his gradual ascent. The houses then vanished, and Will’s observation of the two distant vehicles behind him significantly increased. Around him now were no residential or road lights, only forest. The road veered eastward just as the snowfall became heavier and more rapid. Will squinted to focus his eyes through the blizzard that was now striking his car. When he looked in his rearview mirror and saw one of the set of headlights become larger, he had to resist the urge to speed away and instead kept glancing ahead and behind.

The first set of lights moved rapidly toward Will’s car until they were directly behind him. He braced himself for an impact, but to his surprise the car passed him at speed and traveled rapidly up the hill before him. Will flashed his lights so as to appear annoyed with the careless maneuver of the other driver, then glanced back to see that the other vehicle had moved a little closer to him. As he looked ahead again, the first car disappeared up the road and into the rapid white dots of falling snow.

Will drove another three kilometers, and the whole time the vehicle behind remained at a distance of approximately two hundred yards. He knew that within ten minutes he would reach the vantage point he was supposedly aiming for, and he also knew that the isolated stretch of road he was now on was as good a place as any for the Iranians to hide an assault.

The forest on either side of the road had grown thick, and its trees acted as barriers to prevent vehicles from moving off their route. In warmer times, Will imagined, the place around him would contain idyllic walks for hikers and families, but right now it looked dark, lonely, and hostile.

He eased around yet another bend and saw that the road stretched straight ahead for several hundred yards. At that very instant a set of headlights turned up to full beam came driving toward him at high speed. He glanced in his mirror and saw that the rear vehicle was also now approaching him, but at a slower speed. He knew that the vehicles were being driven to trap Will’s car between them. He slowed his Audi to thirty miles per hour, downshifted, and placed his left hand on the right-hand side of the steering wheel. He moved the car into the center of the road, poised his right hand over the handbrake, eased off the accelerator while depressing the clutch fully, and then yanked the wheel hard to the left. A split second later, he pulled up the handbrake and felt his car spin around. As it did so, he moved the steering wheel in the opposite direction. He was now facing back down the hill and had come to a total halt. But the car that was now ahead of him had clearly increased its speed. Will knew he had no more than three seconds to get out of the Audi or be crushed.

He opened his door and dived out of the vehicle at the same time he heard the noise of impact behind him. He didn’t look back. Instead he ran straight into the forest ahead of him. He sprinted between trees while counting to ten in his head and then turned ninety degrees to continue sprinting to another count of ten. He spun around and crouched. Breathing rapidly but silently, he looked at everything near him. The forest was obviously wild, as trees grew naturally here-they were unevenly spaced, and some areas around him were dense while other areas were more open. Everywhere was covered in ankle-deep snow, although Will knew that the combination of blizzard and twilight would make it difficult for anyone to use the snow to track him. Nevertheless, there were four men after him, and he knew that if he stayed still for too long, he would be caught.