Chris Ryan - Who Dares Wins

Sam would know those eyes anywhere, because they belonged to his brother.

It was like a dream – a dream in which he urgently had to do something, but couldn’t force his body into action. This was a mistake. It had to be. Sam looked over his shoulder at the guys congregated in the room around him. Their faces glowed in the dim light of the OHP, but their expressions registered no surprise as they gazed at the screen. Sam’s eyes darted from one face to another. None of them, he realised, would recognise Jacob even if they saw him. They were either too young or never knew him.

All of them, he realised, except one person.

Sam faced forward again and glanced to his right where Mac was sitting. His friend looked up at the screen. There was no twinge of recognition in his face.

And then the room was plunged into darkness as the OHP was switched off. ‘All right, guys,’ Whitely announced brightly as he turned the main lights on again. ‘RV back here 09.00 on Thursday. Rest up before then. Tell your missus to keep her hands off you – everything goes right you’ll be back for tea and blow jobs Sunday lunchtime.’ He straightened his papers on the lectern and headed for the door.

There was a hubbub in the room as the assembled squadron rose to their feet and started chatting. Sam didn’t move. There was a sickness in his stomach, a kind of breathlessness. If he opened his mouth to speak, he wasn’t quite sure what would come out. Everything was confused in his head. Perhaps he’d made a mistake. Perhaps it wasn’t Jacob, just someone who looked like him. That would make more sense. The bearded figure in the picture looked rough and worn. Jacob had always taken care of what he looked like.

He tried to persuade himself in the few moments that he sat there that he had indeed made an error; but deep down he knew he hadn’t. It was Jacob.

Sam closed his eyes, took a deep breath and turned to look at Mac. But his friend wasn’t there. He was already walking out of the room, deep in conversation with one of the younger guys. Almost before Sam knew it, he was alone.

The sudden burst of anger came from nowhere and was beyond his control. With a swipe of his hand he hurled the chair on which Mac had been sitting on to its side, then stood and kicked it a good couple of metres. It was stupid, pointless, and didn’t make him feel any better. He left the chair on its side, though, and, cursing under his breath, stormed towards the door. There was a suspicion at the back of his mind that someone was playing games with him. He didn’t like it. He wanted it to stop. Now.

The drab, flat corridors of the Kremlin were unpopulated at this hour. Sam stormed through them, a thousand questions bursting from his brain. When he came to Mark Porteus’s office he barely stopped to draw breath before knocking on the door: not a polite rap, but a solid thump with a clenched fist.

No answer.

‘Boss!’ he shouted, banging again on the door. But still nothing. ‘ Boss! ’

‘Everything all right, Sam?’

He turned. It was Jack Whitely. The Ops Sergeant’s green eyes were narrowed. Sam clenched his jaw and gave him an unfriendly stare. Whitely was an old hand. Several tours with the Regiment. He was organising this mission – surely he knew what was going on. Damn it: if Porteus couldn’t tell Sam what the hell was happening, Whitely was the next best thing.

‘What’s…?’ he started to say.

And then he stopped.

Amid the confusion in his head, one single thought began to crystallise.

What if Whitely hadn’t recognised his brother? Or Porteus. Or even Mac. What then? If he alerted them to it, Sam would be instantly pulled from the op.

Whitely blinked, then raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes, Sam?’

He drew a deep breath.

‘Nothing,’ he said. And then, because Whitely was still looking strangely at him, ‘09.00 on Thursday.’

Whitely nodded. Sam walked away. He could feel the Ops Sergeant’s eyes burning into his back. It took everything he had to keep his pace steady and his mind calm.

Kelly Larkin awoke, bleary eyed. The room was dark and in her drowsiness she thought it must still be the middle of the night. It was a lovely feeling, splintered only when she saw the orange glow from her bedside alarm clock. Seven-thirty.

‘ Shit! ’ she hissed, suddenly awake. She clambered naked out of bed and hurried to the underwear drawer of her dressing table, pulling on some knickers and awkwardly hitching her bra behind her back, before she finally remembered the revelations of the previous evening. Jamie’s confession; the way he had stormed out of the flat; how she had stayed up waiting for him until sleep finally overcame her. And now, she realised as she turned round to look at her bed, there he was. Asleep. She breathed a sigh of relief.

Quietly Kelly walked round to his side of the bed and perched on the edge. His head was covered with the duvet, his breathing regular and heavy. Kelly gently uncovered his head to look at his slumbering face.

What she saw made her catch a breath.

His upper lip was smeared with blood, dark brown and flaking at the edges. The smear itself extended up on to his right cheek before streaking gradually away. The blood, though, was not the most distressing thing. His skin was purple, bruised and mottled; his right eye was blackened and closed up. Jamie looked like he’d been in the boxing ring.

Kelly shook him by the shoulder – not forcefully, but tenderly and with concern.

‘Jamie,’ she whispered. ‘Jamie, wake up.’

He didn’t stir, so she shook him again. This time he started. His eyes opened and he looked around without moving his body, as though he didn’t know where he was. When his eyes fell on Kelly, he shut them again for a moment before pushing himself up on his elbows.

Kelly touched his face lightly with her fingertips. ‘What happened?’ she breathed. ‘What time did you get back?’ The pungent smell of last night’s alcohol wafted under her nose.

‘Late,’ Jamie replied non-committally.

‘I know it was late, Jamie,’ Kelly retorted a bit more sharply than she had intended. ‘What happened to your face?’

‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘Nothing I can’t cope with.’ He smiled at her – a peculiarly gruesome expression given the state of his face – then stretched out his hand towards her breasts.

She shrugged him away and stood up. ‘I’m late for work,’ she said. With her back turned to Jamie she walked to her wardrobe and pulled out a charcoal grey two-piece suit and cream blouse; still with her back turned to him she put it on. Tears were coming. She didn’t know if she’d be able to stop them and she didn’t want him to see.

Her eyes were hot now as she finished getting dressed. She felt a riot of emotions all trying to burst out. Confusion; anger; sympathy. Almost on an impulse she turned round, the first tears dripping from her eyes. He was still sitting there, eyeing her up with that self-satisfied look on his face. ‘For God’s sake, Jamie,’ she railed. ‘I just don’t know what to think.’

His expression changed to one of wariness.

‘All I want to do,’ she wept dramatically, ‘is get close to you.’ She knew she was sounding dramatic, but she couldn’t help it. Rushing to his bedside she sat down again and grabbed his hands.

‘Those things you told me last night,’ she continued. ‘It meant so much that you opened up to me.’

Jamie looked down at the duvet.

‘You don’t have to be embarrassed,’ Kelly insisted. ‘I know you’ve been drinking. I can smell it on you. But please just tell me, what happened last night?’

There was a pause. Jamie took a deep breath and when he gazed back up at her, his forehead was creased. He looked for all the world to Kelly like a confused little boy.