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fredbassettTitle : I Spy
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Alex Rider
Rating : 15
Characters : Ian Rider/Yassen Gregorovich
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Summary : When a job takes an unexpected turn, Ian has to go on a road trip with a very irritating prisoner.
The man looked like every other tourist in the city as he strolled through the olive grove on Petrin hill on his way back down to the old town after enjoying an afternoon in Prague’s impressive Strahov monastery.
There was nothing at all remarkable about him. Good looking rather than handsome, with short dark hair, wearing a casual grey linen jacket and faded jeans. He walked with easy grace, occasionally smiling at the many walkers and joggers in the park. He was in his early 30s but could easily have passed for five years younger.
The shadows of evening were drawing in and the afternoon crowds had long since drifted away to the city’s many bars and restaurants. The path meandered through the orchard, wending its way through the valley, occasional benches providing somewhere for lovers to sit or for the elderly to rest. The valley was a popular green space for dog-walkers as well, some animals on the lead, others running free.
A young woman called to three children playing amongst the trees and was answered by someone else’s dog running up, expecting a biscuit. The woman sighed, rolled her eyes and tried again, with the same lack of success. The dog sat, wagging its stumpy tail. The children pointedly ignored her.
The man smiled as he passed them, a look of amused sympathy on his face.
A woman pushing a baby buggy uphill laughed, and called something out in Czech. The other woman smiled and laughed as well. As she walked, a child’s woolly hat dropped from the back of the buggy. The woman carried on without noticing.
The man bent down to pick up the hat and called to the woman, holding it in his outstretched hand as he caught up with her on the path.
As a handover, it was as unremarkable as both the active participants.
All that was remarkable about it was the stupidity of the handlers who had agreed to two agents meeting in such an open place. The handover could just as easily have been accomplished in the crowds thronging the Charles Bridge or gathering to watch the mechanical clock.
For Yassen Gregorovitch, the killing shot would be no test of his skills. He had no interest in the exchange of secrets. His job was simply to send a message to an intelligence agency who had made the mistake of crossing his employers once too often. Scorpia never forgave and never forgot. The message was a simple one delivered with a 7.62mm round from a Dragunov SVU sniper rifle.
The woman’s head exploded like an over-ripe watermelon, showering the baby buggy and its occupant with a mix of blood, bone and brain matter. A clean kill. He took quiet pride in his accuracy and her face joined the ever-expanding gallery in his head. He remembered them all, He owed them that, at the very least.
He had no instructions regarding the male agent.
Yassen was glad of that. He did not regard himself as a sentimental man, but he would still prefer not to be the one to end the life of his friend and mentor’s younger brother.
A flash of movement across the valley caught his eye and he shifted position with his powerful sniperscope. He might not have instructions regarding Ian Rider but someone had.
What he should have done was disassemble his rifle and leave, quickly and quietly, as planned.
For once, Yassen failed to obey the dictates of common sense and training.
Screams already echoed around the valley as people stood in shock, frozen by the sight of the nearly headless woman on the ground surrounded by a spreading pool of blood. Ian Rider, reflexes honed to perfection from years in a dirty business, darted forward and grabbed the item he’d concealed in the baby’s hat. That rapid movement saved his life as a bullet punched through his shoulder rather than drilling a hole in his heart.
Despite that, Rider paused to look in the pram, checking to see if there was a baby in there.
Idiot.
The other sniper was already reloading and sighting again.
Yassen breathed out a small sigh of irritation and took his own shot. The bullet hit the sniper in the throat ripping through flesh and severing an artery to spray blood in a wide arc. The man had paid the price for failing to choose a better firing position. A rookie mistake he wouldn’t live to repeat.
Without waiting to see what was happening in the valley, Yassen came smoothly to his knees and disassembled the rifle, stowing it in his backpack before gathering up the two spent cases and melting away into the trees to make his way off Petrin hill to where he had left his vehicle.
Three hours later, Yassen Gregorovich left Václav Havel Airport bound for Vienna and his next job.
****
Ian Rider was a spy, more suited to subtle infiltration than pitched battles in grimy back streets.
He particularly disliked pitched battles when he’d had to spend the evening drinking to preserve his cover. He knew his reactions were slower than they should be, even though he’d tried to keep his alcohol consumption as low as possible without arousing suspicion.
Counting down the 12 rounds in his Makarov semi-automatic, Ian took out two of his opponents before diving for cover behind a large, malodorous dustbin, startling half a dozen rats that promptly scattered into the darkness.
He heard one of the bad guys call out in rapid German, “Make sure Cossack dies and get rid of the body. We’ll deal with the Brit.”
This Brit understands German, Ian thought, as he broke cover, wondering if the cut-price muppets he was up against knew anything about the dangers of giving their positions away. He took out one with a head shot and put a bullet through the thigh of the second one. He needed someone alive to question.
A bullet buried itself in the metal of the bin six inches from his shoulder. The muzzle flash gave away his opponent’s position and Ian was able to return fire with greater accuracy. This bullet tore through the man’s guts. He fell to the piss-soaked back alley, clutching his stomach.
Ian sprinted from his position towards the other men, finishing the one he’d gut-shot with a bullet to the heart.
The man he’d shot in the thigh was sprawled on the ground, sobbing and clutching his wound. Ian kicked away the fallen pistol and dropped to one knee.
“Where’s your safe house?”
“Fuck you,” the man gasped in his native language.
Ian pulled the injured man’s hands away from the ragged wound in his thigh. “Tell me and save yourself some pain.” His German was fluent, with a local accent he’d spent a while perfecting.
“I said fuck you!”
“You did.” Ian grabbed the man’s wrists and pinned them down under one knee then and jabbed his fingers into the open wound.
The man howled in pain, raw and guttural.
“I’ll ask you once more…” For emphasis Ian stuffed his fingers deep into the man’s bloody flesh. For a moment he thought he’d pushed his victim too far into shock, then he caught the gasped address. “Repeat!” he ordered.
The man whimpered in pain, repeating the address.
Ian committed it to memory then shot the man in the head. He wiped his bloody hand on the man’s sweater and straightened up, checking to see if anyone had come to investigate the gunshots.
This clearly wasn’t an area where civic values featured highly. Even the rats had buggered off.
And that was exactly what he should do. But the reference to killing Cossack had piqued his interest. He knew the name. His dead brother’s protégé, Yassen Gregorovich, Scorpia’s top assassin. Probably the best contract killer in the business. If Ian could bring him in, his bosses in MI6 would be impressed.
The address he’d been given was 20 minutes away on foot, but Ian had a car not far away. If he succeeded in his objective, he would need it. Ian made his decision and walked quickly through the backstreets of Dresden, doing his best not to draw attention to himself. The dilapidated car was where he’d left it and, somewhat to his surprise, it still had all its wheels. That was always a good start.
The safe house was in a run-down area close to an industrial estate on the edge of the city, all drab brick and boarded up windows complete with mindless, spray-painted daubs.
The street was dark and deserted. The unmarked door succumbed to a hard kick that jumped the lock open, splintering the door frame. Peeling wallpaper and the smell of damp greeted him. Ian quickly checked the ground floor then made his way up the narrow staircase, Makarov held in a two-handed grip, expecting trouble.
In a mildewed attic room he found the only sign of life in the house; what looked like a bundle of rags huddled in a corner, trussed up with rope and cable ties.
Ian poked the huddled figure with the toe of one grimy shoe. “Cossack?”
A pair of clear blue eyes stared up at him.
Ian switched to Russian. “Are you hurt?”
The man replied in German, with a local accent that made Ian’s look amateurish: “Do you care?”
“No, but it’s polite to ask.”
The creak of a floorboard behind at the top of the stairs gave Ian the split second he needed to pivot around, shooting from the hip as he took in the sight of a man carrying a short-barrelled combat shotgun, sawn off so it could be carried under a jacket. Unluckily for his would-be attacker, Ian had extremely good hearing. If the man had been fractionally quicker on his journey across the city, Gregorovich would be dead, rather than a drug pusher barely out of short trousers. That shower of shit must have been out of their mind to think they could tangle with the likes of Scorpia for long, but then they had taken one of their top assets prisoner, so maybe they weren’t quite as amateurish as they seemed.
Ian hauled Gregorovich to his feet. The man had enough dark stubble on his face for it to pass as a short beard, his short hair was plastered to his head with dried sweat and not-so-dried blood. The dark shadows under his eyes and numerous cuts and bruises on his face and neck told their own story. His captors hadn’t been gentle. The bloody ruin of three fingertips and two toes was more than adequate proof of that. The Russian’s clothes were stained and torn, with corresponding injuries showing through in numerous places. He’d also been beaten on the soles of his feet.
“What went wrong?” Ian asked. “Not like the great Cossack to end up trussed up like a Christmas turkey.”
Gregorovich sighed. “It’s a long story.”
Ian’s smile was brittle, with just a hint of malice. “It’s a long drive to England. And I hate listening to the radio.”
“Approximately nine hours from here to Calais.”
“Only if you take the direct route.”
“Will there be toilet stops and ice cream?”
“Only if you’re a good boy.”
“Oh, I’m very good,” Yassen said, his lips quirking into the merest hint of a smile. “But I think you already know that, Ian Rider.”
“You should be, my brother trained you.” Ian rifled through the dead man’s pockets and came up with a blunt knife and a Grach that didn’t look like it had seen a cleaning rag in a decade. He left them both with their former owner, but he took the packet of cable ties and used another three to supplement the ones already adorning the contract killer’s slim wrists. Ian didn’t believe in taking any chances. For good measure, he secured the man’s ankles as well, then knocked him out with one swift punch that Gregorovich barely saw coming.
Ian knew better than to expect cooperation from the man.
****
“I spy with my little eye, something beginning with T.”
“Trees. It was trees five minutes ago, half an hour ago and for the two hours before that.”
“Well, we are in a forest,” Yassen pointed out. “If you’d taken the autobahn, there might have been more choice of subject.”
“And go through every traffic enforcement camera from here to the coast? What do you think I am?”
“The brother of my mentor and friend.”
“I hate to break this to you, but my bother was a deep cover agent for MI6.”
The resentment that Yassen had detected in Ian Rider still simmered just beneath the man’s calm demeanour.
“I know. He should have been more cautious with his tech.” If Rider thought to rattle him with that sort of jibe, he was going to be disappointed. Yassen had had several years to come to terms with Hunter’s betrayal. Now it bothered him surprisingly little.
“Were you the one to plant the bomb on his plane? Revenge, maybe?”
“No. that is one order I would have refused, even though it would have cost me my life.” Yassen saw no reason not to tell the truth. His feelings for Hunter were unlikely to have gone unremarked by his mentor’s employers.
“So who did?”
“Someone else close to him.” Yassen leaned back in the front seat, ignoring the rope fastened around his waist and the insistent pressure from his full bladder, and closed his eyes. “I spy with my little eye, something beginning with R …”
“Road.”
“You’re getting bored with this game, I can tell.”
Yassen was half-hoping Ian would stop the car and drag him out of it for a beating. At least that might give him a chance to escape. It would also relieve the boredom. The MI6 agent was good, but Yassen was confident that he was no match for a Scorpia trained assassin. There was just the small matter of an almost indecent number of cable ties. One or two he could break with a strategically angled fall. Ten were a slightly different proposition.
He feigned sleep for an hour. Rider would need to stop eventually. As far as he could tell there was nothing more than a bottle of water in the vehicle, unless Rider had a picnic hamper stowed away in the boot, which he doubted, So far the man hadn’t drunk a drop, nor had he offered any to Yassen.
After an hour, Yassen tried a different tactic. “Are we there yet?”
“No. Go back to pretending to sleep. You were less irritating that way.”
“You promised me an ice cream if I was good.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Yassen’s lips twitched in the dark interior of the vehicle. He wondered how often Ian’s nephew – Hunter’s son – had used that line and failed to get away with it.
“Did so.”
Much to Yassen’s amusement, Ian’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. If he kept this up, he might get a chance to escape after all.
Five minutes later, “I need a piss.”
“Not my problem.”
“It will be if you’re planning to keep the same car all the way to London.”
“Be my guest, Car stinks anyway.”
That wasn’t the response he’d been hoping for, but Yassen knew how to roll with the punches.
A few moments later, when big fat drops of rainwater hit the windscreen in a typical European summer rainstorm, Rider flicked on the wipers. They promptly smeared the water all over the screen, creating an unappetising mess out of the dead fly snuff movie that had been building up. If storm kept up, he would have to find somewhere to lay over. The wipers were wholly ineffectual at their job.
“I spy with my little eye something beginning with R.”
“You’ve just had that one,”
“I’m not aware of a rule that says I can’t re-use the same letter. We had T 25 times.”
“And it was tree every single time.”
“It might not be road this time. You’re a spy, think outside the box for once.”
“Did my brother teach you to be this annoying?”
“No. He taught me how to kill. And how to make love with a man and enjoy it,” Yassen added and had the satisfaction of feeling the slight wobble in the ancient car as Rider’s hands tightened on the wheel yet again.
“My brother loved his wife.” The words were as flat as some of the roadkill they’d passed.
“He did,” Yassen agreed. “He also enjoyed sex with other men, as you know perfectly well.”
“Do I?”
“You caught him masturbating over gay porn when he was 13 and you were 10.”
Rider had no answer to that, but Yassen thought he’d moved a step closer to being dragged from the car and beaten. The Rider brothers’ relationship had been complex, to put it mildly, but under the usual mass of sibling rivalry and jealousy, there had been genuine love. Rider wouldn’t be happy about his brother having shared secrets like that.
“Hunter liked fucking men. John Rider was faithful to his wife. Does that make you feel better about his preferences?”
“My brother is dead, Cossack. It’s immaterial to me how often you had sex with him.”
“The way you’re trying to strangle that innocent steering wheel gives the lie to your words. For a spy, you have a surprising number of tells.”
To Yassen’s surprise, Ian came out with a surprised laugh. “I’ve been told I have few, if any, tells, but then you were trained by my brother, he always could spot them all. You’re wasting your time, by the way. I went on several long car journeys with John when we were children. I know all his old tricks for pissing people off. If you carry on, I won’t beat the crap out of you, but I might gag you with one of my socks, and trust me, you won’t find that a pleasant experience. I’ve not had the chance to change them in three days.”
That was the longest speech he’d had from Ian since they’d started this interminable journey. Yassen counted that as a win.
“One more round of I Spy?” he suggested. “I promise I’ll let you win this time. I spy with my little eye something beginning with …”
“Sock…”
Yassen cranked his grin into an irritating smirk and decided to ignore the pressing need for a piss by going to sleep for an hour.
****
The rain had slackened off to a fine drizzle. Fortunate, as Ian didn’t think the wipers could have taken much more. The rubber looked as ragged as he felt.
His shoulder was aching like he’d taken a hindfoot kick from a very bolshy mule. Despite extensive physio, it still wasn’t back to 100% fitness after the incident in Prague. He was going to have to stop soon for a pee, a drink and a rest, but as they were in the depths of the Black Forest, he didn’t think that getting off the beaten track was going to be a problem. The whole fucking area – or at least where they’d been for the last couple of hours – was nothing more than trees, with laybys and small forest roads. Everywhere.
“Shoulder giving you problems?” Gregorovich had woken up 20 minutes ago, but he’d continued to pretend to be asleep. Probably a sock avoidance technique.
“No.”
“Liar. It was a through and through. Looked like it missed the bone, but it was hard to tell from where I was.”
Ian checked the rear-view mirror. No vehicles, no lights, no nothing. He pulled off into the next rough parking area he came to.
“If you took the shot, why am I still alive?”
“I took the first and third shots. The second one was the one that got you. Whoever paid to have you taken out got their shooter from the bargain basement. Failed to take account of your movement and hadn’t chosen a very good firing position.”
“Describe the scene.”
“Magic word?”
“Sock.”
Gregorovich proceeded to describe the scene on Petrin Hill with the clinical accuracy of a world-class killer. By the time he’d finished, Ian was in no doubt that the Russian had been there in person and that he had taken out the inept sniper who’d been responsible for putting him out of the field for two months. Spending two months with Alex had been a pleasant bonus, but he wasn’t sure the boy had bought into the story of him slipping on some split coffee on the stairs at the bank and sustaining a broken clavicle.
“Why?”
“It wasn’t for your winning personality and generous hospitality,” Gregorovich said, coming closer to displaying mild irritation than Ian had seen from him so far.
“You want a piss and you want a drink.”
“Go to the top of the class, Mr Rider. You have precisely five minutes before you incur additional cleaning charges on the splendid vehicle.”
“No worries. I’ll just leave it lying around so some of the local kids can torch it for fun.”
Ian strolled a few metres away from the car and indulged in a long overdue and very satisfying pee before taking a long drink out of the water bottle. After precisely four minutes, he opened the passenger door and untied the rope holding Gregorovich in place.
“One wrong move and you’ll lose a kneecap.”
He watched closely as Gregorovich manoeuvred himself upright. No mean feat after sitting unmoving for hours after a couple of days of being badly beaten. The Russian had described the attempts to get information out of him to Scorpia’s detriment as strictly amateurish, but the lack of three fingernails and two toenails on top of the rest of his injuries couldn’t have been pleasant.
The assassin leant on the side of the car and struggled with his bound hands and mutilated fingers to tug down the zip on his trousers and free his cock. Ian didn’t offer to help, even when the man wasn’t entirely successful in directing the piss away from his bare feet and bloodied toes. Gregorovich managed to tuck himself away but clearly drew the line at bothering with the zip again.
Ian handed over the water bottle and let his captive slake his thirst.
“Why save my life, Cossack?”
“Never call a target by name,” the man chided. “Your brother taught me that.”
“My brother could be a cold-blooded bastard when he wanted to be.”
Gregorovich nodded. “He was one of the most talented killers I’ve ever worked with. He was also the only friend I’ve had in my adult life. I loved him. He saved my life. I saved yours. Simple, really.”
Oh you clever bastard, Ian thought, you clever fucking bastard, and for a moment he wasn’t sure if he meant his brother or the protégé who had clearly worshipped him, despite the betrayal.
By playing a series of stupid, irritating games designed to remind Ian for hours on end of the brother he’d loved and lost, followed by the obvious truth about the Prague incident and culminating in an equally obviously true declaration of love, Yassen Gregorovich – Cossack – had just ensured there was no way in hell that Ian could, or would, hand him over to MI6.
Ian pulled a knife out of his pocket and in two quick movements, sliced the cable ties on Gregorovich’s ankles and wrists then stepped back.
“My brother taught you well.” He walked back to the driver’s side of the ancient Skoda, already thinking that he’d have to stop at some point for fuel and food. Slamming the door with unnecessary force did something to relieve his irritation at being thoroughly played.
Cossack slumped into the passenger seat. “Going my way, mister?”
“I’ll drop you in Aachen. You’re on your own from there. But if you start on fucking I Spy again you’ll get worse than a sock in your mouth.”
Three hours later, Ian pulled the Skoda into the carpark outside Aachen station and chucked the car keys into Cossack’s lap. “I’ve changed my mind. If I have to spend another seven hours in this fucking rustbucket, I’d probably just save you the bother and shoot myself. I’ll take the train.”
Cossack favoured him with a slight smile then before Ian could react, the assassin leaned over and pressed an open-mouthed kiss to his lips with just a tantalising flicker of tongue.
“You’re more like your brother than you think.”
“And you’re less of a cold-hearted bastard than you think.”
Ian slipped out of the car, leaving the door open and walked unhurriedly through the main entrance of the station.
He changed trains four times on his way back to London until he was certain he’d not picked up a tail.
He left 95% of the past 48 hours out of his mission report.
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Alex Rider
Rating : 15
Characters : Ian Rider/Yassen Gregorovich
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Summary : When a job takes an unexpected turn, Ian has to go on a road trip with a very irritating prisoner.
The man looked like every other tourist in the city as he strolled through the olive grove on Petrin hill on his way back down to the old town after enjoying an afternoon in Prague’s impressive Strahov monastery.
There was nothing at all remarkable about him. Good looking rather than handsome, with short dark hair, wearing a casual grey linen jacket and faded jeans. He walked with easy grace, occasionally smiling at the many walkers and joggers in the park. He was in his early 30s but could easily have passed for five years younger.
The shadows of evening were drawing in and the afternoon crowds had long since drifted away to the city’s many bars and restaurants. The path meandered through the orchard, wending its way through the valley, occasional benches providing somewhere for lovers to sit or for the elderly to rest. The valley was a popular green space for dog-walkers as well, some animals on the lead, others running free.
A young woman called to three children playing amongst the trees and was answered by someone else’s dog running up, expecting a biscuit. The woman sighed, rolled her eyes and tried again, with the same lack of success. The dog sat, wagging its stumpy tail. The children pointedly ignored her.
The man smiled as he passed them, a look of amused sympathy on his face.
A woman pushing a baby buggy uphill laughed, and called something out in Czech. The other woman smiled and laughed as well. As she walked, a child’s woolly hat dropped from the back of the buggy. The woman carried on without noticing.
The man bent down to pick up the hat and called to the woman, holding it in his outstretched hand as he caught up with her on the path.
As a handover, it was as unremarkable as both the active participants.
All that was remarkable about it was the stupidity of the handlers who had agreed to two agents meeting in such an open place. The handover could just as easily have been accomplished in the crowds thronging the Charles Bridge or gathering to watch the mechanical clock.
For Yassen Gregorovitch, the killing shot would be no test of his skills. He had no interest in the exchange of secrets. His job was simply to send a message to an intelligence agency who had made the mistake of crossing his employers once too often. Scorpia never forgave and never forgot. The message was a simple one delivered with a 7.62mm round from a Dragunov SVU sniper rifle.
The woman’s head exploded like an over-ripe watermelon, showering the baby buggy and its occupant with a mix of blood, bone and brain matter. A clean kill. He took quiet pride in his accuracy and her face joined the ever-expanding gallery in his head. He remembered them all, He owed them that, at the very least.
He had no instructions regarding the male agent.
Yassen was glad of that. He did not regard himself as a sentimental man, but he would still prefer not to be the one to end the life of his friend and mentor’s younger brother.
A flash of movement across the valley caught his eye and he shifted position with his powerful sniperscope. He might not have instructions regarding Ian Rider but someone had.
What he should have done was disassemble his rifle and leave, quickly and quietly, as planned.
For once, Yassen failed to obey the dictates of common sense and training.
Screams already echoed around the valley as people stood in shock, frozen by the sight of the nearly headless woman on the ground surrounded by a spreading pool of blood. Ian Rider, reflexes honed to perfection from years in a dirty business, darted forward and grabbed the item he’d concealed in the baby’s hat. That rapid movement saved his life as a bullet punched through his shoulder rather than drilling a hole in his heart.
Despite that, Rider paused to look in the pram, checking to see if there was a baby in there.
Idiot.
The other sniper was already reloading and sighting again.
Yassen breathed out a small sigh of irritation and took his own shot. The bullet hit the sniper in the throat ripping through flesh and severing an artery to spray blood in a wide arc. The man had paid the price for failing to choose a better firing position. A rookie mistake he wouldn’t live to repeat.
Without waiting to see what was happening in the valley, Yassen came smoothly to his knees and disassembled the rifle, stowing it in his backpack before gathering up the two spent cases and melting away into the trees to make his way off Petrin hill to where he had left his vehicle.
Three hours later, Yassen Gregorovich left Václav Havel Airport bound for Vienna and his next job.
****
Ian Rider was a spy, more suited to subtle infiltration than pitched battles in grimy back streets.
He particularly disliked pitched battles when he’d had to spend the evening drinking to preserve his cover. He knew his reactions were slower than they should be, even though he’d tried to keep his alcohol consumption as low as possible without arousing suspicion.
Counting down the 12 rounds in his Makarov semi-automatic, Ian took out two of his opponents before diving for cover behind a large, malodorous dustbin, startling half a dozen rats that promptly scattered into the darkness.
He heard one of the bad guys call out in rapid German, “Make sure Cossack dies and get rid of the body. We’ll deal with the Brit.”
This Brit understands German, Ian thought, as he broke cover, wondering if the cut-price muppets he was up against knew anything about the dangers of giving their positions away. He took out one with a head shot and put a bullet through the thigh of the second one. He needed someone alive to question.
A bullet buried itself in the metal of the bin six inches from his shoulder. The muzzle flash gave away his opponent’s position and Ian was able to return fire with greater accuracy. This bullet tore through the man’s guts. He fell to the piss-soaked back alley, clutching his stomach.
Ian sprinted from his position towards the other men, finishing the one he’d gut-shot with a bullet to the heart.
The man he’d shot in the thigh was sprawled on the ground, sobbing and clutching his wound. Ian kicked away the fallen pistol and dropped to one knee.
“Where’s your safe house?”
“Fuck you,” the man gasped in his native language.
Ian pulled the injured man’s hands away from the ragged wound in his thigh. “Tell me and save yourself some pain.” His German was fluent, with a local accent he’d spent a while perfecting.
“I said fuck you!”
“You did.” Ian grabbed the man’s wrists and pinned them down under one knee then and jabbed his fingers into the open wound.
The man howled in pain, raw and guttural.
“I’ll ask you once more…” For emphasis Ian stuffed his fingers deep into the man’s bloody flesh. For a moment he thought he’d pushed his victim too far into shock, then he caught the gasped address. “Repeat!” he ordered.
The man whimpered in pain, repeating the address.
Ian committed it to memory then shot the man in the head. He wiped his bloody hand on the man’s sweater and straightened up, checking to see if anyone had come to investigate the gunshots.
This clearly wasn’t an area where civic values featured highly. Even the rats had buggered off.
And that was exactly what he should do. But the reference to killing Cossack had piqued his interest. He knew the name. His dead brother’s protégé, Yassen Gregorovich, Scorpia’s top assassin. Probably the best contract killer in the business. If Ian could bring him in, his bosses in MI6 would be impressed.
The address he’d been given was 20 minutes away on foot, but Ian had a car not far away. If he succeeded in his objective, he would need it. Ian made his decision and walked quickly through the backstreets of Dresden, doing his best not to draw attention to himself. The dilapidated car was where he’d left it and, somewhat to his surprise, it still had all its wheels. That was always a good start.
The safe house was in a run-down area close to an industrial estate on the edge of the city, all drab brick and boarded up windows complete with mindless, spray-painted daubs.
The street was dark and deserted. The unmarked door succumbed to a hard kick that jumped the lock open, splintering the door frame. Peeling wallpaper and the smell of damp greeted him. Ian quickly checked the ground floor then made his way up the narrow staircase, Makarov held in a two-handed grip, expecting trouble.
In a mildewed attic room he found the only sign of life in the house; what looked like a bundle of rags huddled in a corner, trussed up with rope and cable ties.
Ian poked the huddled figure with the toe of one grimy shoe. “Cossack?”
A pair of clear blue eyes stared up at him.
Ian switched to Russian. “Are you hurt?”
The man replied in German, with a local accent that made Ian’s look amateurish: “Do you care?”
“No, but it’s polite to ask.”
The creak of a floorboard behind at the top of the stairs gave Ian the split second he needed to pivot around, shooting from the hip as he took in the sight of a man carrying a short-barrelled combat shotgun, sawn off so it could be carried under a jacket. Unluckily for his would-be attacker, Ian had extremely good hearing. If the man had been fractionally quicker on his journey across the city, Gregorovich would be dead, rather than a drug pusher barely out of short trousers. That shower of shit must have been out of their mind to think they could tangle with the likes of Scorpia for long, but then they had taken one of their top assets prisoner, so maybe they weren’t quite as amateurish as they seemed.
Ian hauled Gregorovich to his feet. The man had enough dark stubble on his face for it to pass as a short beard, his short hair was plastered to his head with dried sweat and not-so-dried blood. The dark shadows under his eyes and numerous cuts and bruises on his face and neck told their own story. His captors hadn’t been gentle. The bloody ruin of three fingertips and two toes was more than adequate proof of that. The Russian’s clothes were stained and torn, with corresponding injuries showing through in numerous places. He’d also been beaten on the soles of his feet.
“What went wrong?” Ian asked. “Not like the great Cossack to end up trussed up like a Christmas turkey.”
Gregorovich sighed. “It’s a long story.”
Ian’s smile was brittle, with just a hint of malice. “It’s a long drive to England. And I hate listening to the radio.”
“Approximately nine hours from here to Calais.”
“Only if you take the direct route.”
“Will there be toilet stops and ice cream?”
“Only if you’re a good boy.”
“Oh, I’m very good,” Yassen said, his lips quirking into the merest hint of a smile. “But I think you already know that, Ian Rider.”
“You should be, my brother trained you.” Ian rifled through the dead man’s pockets and came up with a blunt knife and a Grach that didn’t look like it had seen a cleaning rag in a decade. He left them both with their former owner, but he took the packet of cable ties and used another three to supplement the ones already adorning the contract killer’s slim wrists. Ian didn’t believe in taking any chances. For good measure, he secured the man’s ankles as well, then knocked him out with one swift punch that Gregorovich barely saw coming.
Ian knew better than to expect cooperation from the man.
****
“I spy with my little eye, something beginning with T.”
“Trees. It was trees five minutes ago, half an hour ago and for the two hours before that.”
“Well, we are in a forest,” Yassen pointed out. “If you’d taken the autobahn, there might have been more choice of subject.”
“And go through every traffic enforcement camera from here to the coast? What do you think I am?”
“The brother of my mentor and friend.”
“I hate to break this to you, but my bother was a deep cover agent for MI6.”
The resentment that Yassen had detected in Ian Rider still simmered just beneath the man’s calm demeanour.
“I know. He should have been more cautious with his tech.” If Rider thought to rattle him with that sort of jibe, he was going to be disappointed. Yassen had had several years to come to terms with Hunter’s betrayal. Now it bothered him surprisingly little.
“Were you the one to plant the bomb on his plane? Revenge, maybe?”
“No. that is one order I would have refused, even though it would have cost me my life.” Yassen saw no reason not to tell the truth. His feelings for Hunter were unlikely to have gone unremarked by his mentor’s employers.
“So who did?”
“Someone else close to him.” Yassen leaned back in the front seat, ignoring the rope fastened around his waist and the insistent pressure from his full bladder, and closed his eyes. “I spy with my little eye, something beginning with R …”
“Road.”
“You’re getting bored with this game, I can tell.”
Yassen was half-hoping Ian would stop the car and drag him out of it for a beating. At least that might give him a chance to escape. It would also relieve the boredom. The MI6 agent was good, but Yassen was confident that he was no match for a Scorpia trained assassin. There was just the small matter of an almost indecent number of cable ties. One or two he could break with a strategically angled fall. Ten were a slightly different proposition.
He feigned sleep for an hour. Rider would need to stop eventually. As far as he could tell there was nothing more than a bottle of water in the vehicle, unless Rider had a picnic hamper stowed away in the boot, which he doubted, So far the man hadn’t drunk a drop, nor had he offered any to Yassen.
After an hour, Yassen tried a different tactic. “Are we there yet?”
“No. Go back to pretending to sleep. You were less irritating that way.”
“You promised me an ice cream if I was good.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Yassen’s lips twitched in the dark interior of the vehicle. He wondered how often Ian’s nephew – Hunter’s son – had used that line and failed to get away with it.
“Did so.”
Much to Yassen’s amusement, Ian’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. If he kept this up, he might get a chance to escape after all.
Five minutes later, “I need a piss.”
“Not my problem.”
“It will be if you’re planning to keep the same car all the way to London.”
“Be my guest, Car stinks anyway.”
That wasn’t the response he’d been hoping for, but Yassen knew how to roll with the punches.
A few moments later, when big fat drops of rainwater hit the windscreen in a typical European summer rainstorm, Rider flicked on the wipers. They promptly smeared the water all over the screen, creating an unappetising mess out of the dead fly snuff movie that had been building up. If storm kept up, he would have to find somewhere to lay over. The wipers were wholly ineffectual at their job.
“I spy with my little eye something beginning with R.”
“You’ve just had that one,”
“I’m not aware of a rule that says I can’t re-use the same letter. We had T 25 times.”
“And it was tree every single time.”
“It might not be road this time. You’re a spy, think outside the box for once.”
“Did my brother teach you to be this annoying?”
“No. He taught me how to kill. And how to make love with a man and enjoy it,” Yassen added and had the satisfaction of feeling the slight wobble in the ancient car as Rider’s hands tightened on the wheel yet again.
“My brother loved his wife.” The words were as flat as some of the roadkill they’d passed.
“He did,” Yassen agreed. “He also enjoyed sex with other men, as you know perfectly well.”
“Do I?”
“You caught him masturbating over gay porn when he was 13 and you were 10.”
Rider had no answer to that, but Yassen thought he’d moved a step closer to being dragged from the car and beaten. The Rider brothers’ relationship had been complex, to put it mildly, but under the usual mass of sibling rivalry and jealousy, there had been genuine love. Rider wouldn’t be happy about his brother having shared secrets like that.
“Hunter liked fucking men. John Rider was faithful to his wife. Does that make you feel better about his preferences?”
“My brother is dead, Cossack. It’s immaterial to me how often you had sex with him.”
“The way you’re trying to strangle that innocent steering wheel gives the lie to your words. For a spy, you have a surprising number of tells.”
To Yassen’s surprise, Ian came out with a surprised laugh. “I’ve been told I have few, if any, tells, but then you were trained by my brother, he always could spot them all. You’re wasting your time, by the way. I went on several long car journeys with John when we were children. I know all his old tricks for pissing people off. If you carry on, I won’t beat the crap out of you, but I might gag you with one of my socks, and trust me, you won’t find that a pleasant experience. I’ve not had the chance to change them in three days.”
That was the longest speech he’d had from Ian since they’d started this interminable journey. Yassen counted that as a win.
“One more round of I Spy?” he suggested. “I promise I’ll let you win this time. I spy with my little eye something beginning with …”
“Sock…”
Yassen cranked his grin into an irritating smirk and decided to ignore the pressing need for a piss by going to sleep for an hour.
****
The rain had slackened off to a fine drizzle. Fortunate, as Ian didn’t think the wipers could have taken much more. The rubber looked as ragged as he felt.
His shoulder was aching like he’d taken a hindfoot kick from a very bolshy mule. Despite extensive physio, it still wasn’t back to 100% fitness after the incident in Prague. He was going to have to stop soon for a pee, a drink and a rest, but as they were in the depths of the Black Forest, he didn’t think that getting off the beaten track was going to be a problem. The whole fucking area – or at least where they’d been for the last couple of hours – was nothing more than trees, with laybys and small forest roads. Everywhere.
“Shoulder giving you problems?” Gregorovich had woken up 20 minutes ago, but he’d continued to pretend to be asleep. Probably a sock avoidance technique.
“No.”
“Liar. It was a through and through. Looked like it missed the bone, but it was hard to tell from where I was.”
Ian checked the rear-view mirror. No vehicles, no lights, no nothing. He pulled off into the next rough parking area he came to.
“If you took the shot, why am I still alive?”
“I took the first and third shots. The second one was the one that got you. Whoever paid to have you taken out got their shooter from the bargain basement. Failed to take account of your movement and hadn’t chosen a very good firing position.”
“Describe the scene.”
“Magic word?”
“Sock.”
Gregorovich proceeded to describe the scene on Petrin Hill with the clinical accuracy of a world-class killer. By the time he’d finished, Ian was in no doubt that the Russian had been there in person and that he had taken out the inept sniper who’d been responsible for putting him out of the field for two months. Spending two months with Alex had been a pleasant bonus, but he wasn’t sure the boy had bought into the story of him slipping on some split coffee on the stairs at the bank and sustaining a broken clavicle.
“Why?”
“It wasn’t for your winning personality and generous hospitality,” Gregorovich said, coming closer to displaying mild irritation than Ian had seen from him so far.
“You want a piss and you want a drink.”
“Go to the top of the class, Mr Rider. You have precisely five minutes before you incur additional cleaning charges on the splendid vehicle.”
“No worries. I’ll just leave it lying around so some of the local kids can torch it for fun.”
Ian strolled a few metres away from the car and indulged in a long overdue and very satisfying pee before taking a long drink out of the water bottle. After precisely four minutes, he opened the passenger door and untied the rope holding Gregorovich in place.
“One wrong move and you’ll lose a kneecap.”
He watched closely as Gregorovich manoeuvred himself upright. No mean feat after sitting unmoving for hours after a couple of days of being badly beaten. The Russian had described the attempts to get information out of him to Scorpia’s detriment as strictly amateurish, but the lack of three fingernails and two toenails on top of the rest of his injuries couldn’t have been pleasant.
The assassin leant on the side of the car and struggled with his bound hands and mutilated fingers to tug down the zip on his trousers and free his cock. Ian didn’t offer to help, even when the man wasn’t entirely successful in directing the piss away from his bare feet and bloodied toes. Gregorovich managed to tuck himself away but clearly drew the line at bothering with the zip again.
Ian handed over the water bottle and let his captive slake his thirst.
“Why save my life, Cossack?”
“Never call a target by name,” the man chided. “Your brother taught me that.”
“My brother could be a cold-blooded bastard when he wanted to be.”
Gregorovich nodded. “He was one of the most talented killers I’ve ever worked with. He was also the only friend I’ve had in my adult life. I loved him. He saved my life. I saved yours. Simple, really.”
Oh you clever bastard, Ian thought, you clever fucking bastard, and for a moment he wasn’t sure if he meant his brother or the protégé who had clearly worshipped him, despite the betrayal.
By playing a series of stupid, irritating games designed to remind Ian for hours on end of the brother he’d loved and lost, followed by the obvious truth about the Prague incident and culminating in an equally obviously true declaration of love, Yassen Gregorovich – Cossack – had just ensured there was no way in hell that Ian could, or would, hand him over to MI6.
Ian pulled a knife out of his pocket and in two quick movements, sliced the cable ties on Gregorovich’s ankles and wrists then stepped back.
“My brother taught you well.” He walked back to the driver’s side of the ancient Skoda, already thinking that he’d have to stop at some point for fuel and food. Slamming the door with unnecessary force did something to relieve his irritation at being thoroughly played.
Cossack slumped into the passenger seat. “Going my way, mister?”
“I’ll drop you in Aachen. You’re on your own from there. But if you start on fucking I Spy again you’ll get worse than a sock in your mouth.”
Three hours later, Ian pulled the Skoda into the carpark outside Aachen station and chucked the car keys into Cossack’s lap. “I’ve changed my mind. If I have to spend another seven hours in this fucking rustbucket, I’d probably just save you the bother and shoot myself. I’ll take the train.”
Cossack favoured him with a slight smile then before Ian could react, the assassin leaned over and pressed an open-mouthed kiss to his lips with just a tantalising flicker of tongue.
“You’re more like your brother than you think.”
“And you’re less of a cold-hearted bastard than you think.”
Ian slipped out of the car, leaving the door open and walked unhurriedly through the main entrance of the station.
He changed trains four times on his way back to London until he was certain he’d not picked up a tail.
He left 95% of the past 48 hours out of his mission report.
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Date: 2021-05-02 01:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-02 02:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-08 09:53 pm (UTC)Road trip revelations, yum!
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Date: 2021-08-08 09:58 pm (UTC)