Free Black List by Will Jordan Page A

‘Apparently Yates tried to make a run for it, but local police cornered him on a rooftop not far from the scene.’
    Far from celebrating, however, Cain looked just as tense and unhappy as before. ‘Anyone else with him?’
    ‘No, sir. Just Yates, according to the report.’
    The older man said nothing for a moment, the muscles in his jaw tightening. ‘Where is he now?’
    ‘En route to a local police station.’
    ‘I want him in 
our
 hands within the hour, no matter what shit the Brits try to give us. Get one of our field teams to that station right away, and make sure they have interrogation experience.’
    Santiago hesitated, for a moment tempted to ask what this was all about, but immediately discounting the idea. Such things were far above his pay grade.
    ‘Do we have a problem, son?’ Cain asked, fixing him with that withering stare of his.
    ‘No, sir. No problem.’
*
    In a darkened shop doorway about fifty yards down the street, Anya watched as Alex was led out to the waiting police car by the two arresting officers, his head down and his shoulders slumped in defeat.
    People had drifted out of nearby residential buildings to find the source of the commotion and watch the drama unfold, including a group of drunken young men on their way home after a night out. A couple of them paused to shout jeering remarks at the prisoner as he was helped into the back seat of the car, before turning their attention back to their takeaway meals.
    Anya clenched her fists, mastering her temper only with some difficulty. This man, weak and frightened though he might be, was her only link to the information she so desperately needed. Without him, everything she’d done so far would be for nothing.
    He was sure to crack quickly under interrogation, and while she hadn’t told him anything that could compromise her, she also knew that his eventual confession would eliminate any chance of finding what she needed.
    She hadn’t come this far to fail now.
    Her only saving grace was that the Agency hadn’t yet become involved. The British police who had rushed to arrest Alex were certainly acting on their orders, no doubt under the guise of a joint operation against cyber terrorism, but it would take the Agency time to assemble a field team and a suitable place to interrogate him.
    If she was going to do something, it would have to be soon.

Chapter 8
    I should have made that jump. That’s all I could think about in the hours following my arrest. I should have gone for it, taken my chance and for once in my shitty, pointless life shown a bit of courage.
    Who knows what might have happened? Maybe I could have saved myself a lot of pain and trouble, or maybe the end result would have been the same. I suppose I’ll never know.
    They say you regret most of all the things you could have done, but didn’t.
    S
tory of my life.
*
    This was the end of the line.
    This was where it was going to happen.
    Alex was sitting bolt upright with his hands cuffed tight behind his back, his wrists throbbing in time to his pulse as the metal dug into his flesh. The wooden chair beneath him was hard and uncomfortable, while the cloth sack over his head submerged him in total darkness, robbing him of all sense of orientation and clinging to his face with every inhalation. Though he wasn’t bound to the chair, he dared not stand up, dared not move a muscle in fact.
    It had been just under three hours since his feeble attempt to escape via the roof of that apartment block. He knew this because, with little else to do, he had been patiently counting out the seconds and minutes since his capture, measuring the passage of time for no other reason than to keep him from contemplating the fate that awaited him. He’d always been good with numbers, and even better at remembering.
    The ride to the police station had lasted sixteen minutes, after which he’d been escorted to a cell and left there for another fifty-two minutes. Fifty-two minutes of sitting