Sentinel (34 page)

Nausea accompanied his agony. He swallowed hard, desperate not to vomit, choke, and lose his grip on his axes. The wind grew stronger, blowing more ice at him. Despite his exertions, his body was now shivering; the sweat from the earlier climb now made his garments cling cold against his body. He tried to count each swing of his ax, imagining that if he made it to a count of three hundred he would be off this terrible place and alive. But he kept losing count, not able to focus on anything other than getting his arms and legs to move at the right time.

It took him another hour to reach the overhang. His body was now leaning back at an angle of forty-five degrees. He looked down. Eighteen hundred feet below him was the ledge, out of sight, and a further nine hundred feet beyond that was the base of the ravine. He stayed still and looked up. Directly above his head the mountain face curved sharply. He looked at the overhang, wondering if he would fall to his death in the next few minutes. He moved.

After two swings of his axes, he was on the overhang, his back now directly facing the huge drop below. He kept his body bunched close, using smaller reaches of his axes and crampons and digging them in at an angle within the surface. As he moved, inch by inch, three thoughts were in his mind: Is the ice strong enough? Am I strong enough? Have the subs reached Russian waters yet?

He managed to get across thirty feet of the two-hundred-foot overhang before pausing. He let his heavy body hang there, deadweight between the small toe blades of the crampons and the thin spikes of his axes. Carefully withdrawing the point of one of the axes, he swung it hard into the ice, pulled on it to test its grip, and moved onward. Thirty minutes later, he had moved another thirty feet along the overhang. One hour after that, he had reached the center of the slope. More than anything, he worried about his hands. The ax straps were around them but were not enough to stop his body from falling if his agonized fingers involuntarily released their grip. He tried to wrap his digits tighter around the shafts of his ice picks, tried to flex them to get blood moving through them when his crampons were in place, but nothing stopped the pain. He thought that he was now dying.

He decided that he had always known that he was going to die a violent death but that it was better to do so through inability to conquer a terrifying ancient mountain rather than by being outmatched by another man. That thought spurred him on. He looked down again. The whole world seemed to be beneath him. It looked so beautiful, so perfect. It looked like a place that had once tolerated his existence, but not anymore.

He slammed a foot against the ice, drove an ax into it, jabbed his other foot into the overhang, gasped for air, and moved his outstretched arm to swing the other ax into position. It all seemed futile now. But he still kept doing this for another sixty feet.

His frozen hands started to slow down and fail. Death, he decided, was now close by. He looked at the overhang inches above his face, stretched his head and neck back to look at the sky, and saw the sun, blue air, thin streaks of cloud, and the endless mountains beyond.

He jabbed the point of an ax farther along the surface, spat blood, watched it fall far below him, felt the skin on his face become taut, swung his other ax, and looked at the end of the overhang. It was now only a few feet away.

He heard a noise. It was barely audible at first, but it seemed to be coming from the sky. He winced as he looked in its direction. He saw a small dot. It grew larger. The noise became louder. His hands and feet were vibrating. The mountain shook. The dot got bigger and bigger. It seemed to be moving very fast. His limbs were now badly shaking. He breathed fast, urgently looking between the thing from the sky and the tools he had fixed in the mountain. The thing grew larger, a thunderous scream accompanying it. Will braced himself, ready to drop to his death.

He narrowed his eyes.

The thing came closer.

Then it banked up, only a few hundred yards away from him, moving back toward the sky. A MiG fighter jet.

It would have been impossible for the pilot to have seen him, and no doubt he was just practicing maneuvers over the range, but as the jet pointed at the sky the mountain shook more vigorously. Will tore his eyes away from the sight and looked desperately at the overhang. But it was too late. One of his axes and both of his crampons shook free from the surface. He fell down and swung like a pendulum, hanging from the one remaining ax spike in the ice. Gasping for air, he stared at the spike, knowing it would pull out at any moment. He tried to thrust his boots at the surface as he swung close to it, but he did not get near enough. His body stopped swinging. Pulling up a few inches with his arm, he swung his other ax toward the ice but missed, his grip on it loosening as his arm moved quickly through the air, the ax very nearly falling away from his hand, saved only by the strap around his wrist. He pulled up with his arm again; the effort was monumental, the pain immense, but he kept pulling, knowing that he had to get much closer to the ice this time, even though his arm felt as though it were going to explode. He kept moving until his arm was at a right angle, readied his other ax, focused his eyes on the spot he wanted to strike, swung his ax, and jammed his spike deep into the surface. Wasting no time, he moved his legs back, then swung them together toward the overhang. His crampons dug into the ice. He moved forward, reaching the edge of the overhang. Blindly, he swung one ax over its edge and felt it dig into something. He did the same with the other.

He heard the jet again. Its noise was growing louder.

Removing one crampon and bringing his knee under his chest, he slammed his boot into the ice.

The roar of the jet was getting nearer. The mountain began to shake.

He moved the other crampon and stabbed it into the surface.

His whole body was vibrating.

He pulled with his arms while thrusting forward with his legs, easing his body around the lip of the overhang.

Large chunks of ice near him cracked and fell away.

With all of his strength, he pulled, finally getting his chest onto an area of flatland on the other side of the overhang. He kept pulling as one of his feet fell away, then the other, until his whole body was off the overhang and lying on the ground above it. He had made the impossible climb.

But maybe it was all in vain.

Crawling forward, he looked around. More of the mountain was above him, but he could see that he would not have to climb any farther. He was on a plateau two hundred feet long. To the left of the mountain was a chasm, beyond it another plateau that had a track leading to it and a lodge in its center. He had found Sentinel’s prison.

Getting to his feet, he walked across the plateau and looked at the chasm between him and his destination. It was about fifteen feet wide and hundreds of feet deep. He turned away and, holding his axes at head height, sprinted toward the gap. Reaching the edge, he leapt, lifting his axes until his arms were fully outstretched, and swung them forward as he neared the far side of the drop, digging them deep into the ground by the chasm’s edge. His upper body was on the plateau around the lodge; his legs were dangling in the chasm. The pain was intense. But the area around him was covered not in ice but in snow. His spikes moved but failed to maintain any grip; his body weight was pulling down into the chasm. Urgently, he slammed his boots against the surface below him, but his crampons only met more snow. His upper body slid back, the axes carving long grooves in the ground. He was sliding to his death, and there was nothing he could do about it.

His head moved to the edge, then into the chasm. His arms moved off the plateau and were now above him. He braced himself, waiting for the axes to come over the edge, release themselves from everything, and drop him to a place that would snap his neck and every other bone in his body and crush his internal organs.

Then he stopped moving.

He looked up.

A hand was gripping his wrist with tremendous strength. It began pulling him up. Then another hand grabbed Will’s arm. He was lifted out until he was lying facedown on the plateau. He raised his head.

Sentinel was standing before him.

The MI6 officer was wearing jeans, a windbreaker jacket, and hiking boots. Deep lines of fatigue etched his face. He put a hand underneath Will’s armpit and helped him to his feet. “Razin’s dead?”

Will’s heart was racing; he breathed deeply. Nodding, he pulled off his balaclava and looked around. “It doesn’t make any difference. Razin’s planted one of the bombs. Right now three U.S. submarines are sailing close to Russian waters. As soon as they enter, the bomb will go off.”

“And war will commence.” Sentinel rubbed his face. “We need to go.”

“How did you get out of your shackles?”

“I was never in them. Razin drugged me.” He shook his head. “That’s how he got me to talk. He must have expected to be back here long before I regained consciousness.”

“Your agents are dead.”

Sentinel slowly lowered his hand. “All of them?”

“Yes.”

Sentinel said nothing for a while before muttering, “Then all is lost.”

He turned and began walking toward the lodge.

Will stood still, watching him. He recalled Sentinel telling him how he had recruited Razin, how they had sat alone in the Lufthansa business-class lounge in Frankfurt and talked for an hour.

He reached into his pocket and withdrew his handgun, keeping his eyes on the man who was walking with strength and purpose toward the mountain property. Then he raised his gun and pointed it at Sentinel. “I can’t let you go in there.”

Sentinel froze, standing with his back to Will.

“You never had drugs in your system.” Will placed his finger over the trigger. “But I bet there’s a gun in that house.”

Sentinel raised his arms outward. “What are you talking about?”

Will gripped his gun harder. He felt nauseous. “This wasn’t your prison. Instead, you used the place to wait while Razin did your dirty work for you.”

Sentinel turned slowly, lowering his arms. Looking directly at Will, he said with anger, “I survived five days of drug-induced hell and rescued a man who was about to fall to his death. Lower your weapon, and help me get out of here.”

But Will kept his gun very still. “Why? I’m not going to help you get out of here. And I’ll kill you if you take another step toward the lodge.”

Sentinel was silent, just staring at him.

Will’s mind was racing and confused. But he was certain of one thing: Sentinel had tricked him all along. “Was everything a lie?”

Sentinel kept staring, his anger no longer evident. He gave a bitter smile. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet. “To me, everything has been the truth.” He looked away toward the mountains. “Can you imagine what it feels like to spend six years in a Russian prison, receiving endless bouts of torture, knowing that the West has given you up for dead?” He looked at Will. “How it feels to be finally released, only to find out that the British government has relinquished you of the one thing you treasure the most: the title of Spartan.” His anger returned. “When that happened to me, I hated Russia and I hated the West. I decided that when the time was right, I would bring them both to war so that they could tear each other apart.”

Will’s head spun. “Why America, not Britain?”

Sentinel’s eyes narrowed. “Because it was a CIA Soviet agent who betrayed me to the SVR and led them to me. When the Cold War ended, the Americans should never have let him go back to Russia. I wanted them to pay for their mistake. Plus I knew that Britain didn’t have the power to bring Russia to the brink of war but America did.” He looked around. “But now that it’s about to start, it’s only a matter of time before Britain gets sucked into this war along with most of Europe.” He smiled. “Everyone’s going to die.”

Incredulity struck Will. “A Russian CIA agent betrayed you?”

Sentinel locked his eyes on Will. “Razin found out who he was. I tracked him down and killed him.”

“You made me capture and interrogate an innocent MI6 officer!”

Sentinel nodded. “Borzaya’s story was all untrue. I told him that we were trying to flush
you
out as a traitor and to do that we had to make you confident that we suspected someone else. You had to believe that the Head of Moscow Station was the man who had supplied Razin with the identities of my agents. You did a good job, though Razin ensured he died. He climbed onto the roof of the church and poured gasoline into it.” He looked at the sky. “When I first met Razin, we spoke for an hour in the transit lounge, but the content of that discussion was different from the version I gave you. I quickly realized how ambitious the man was; told him a half-truth that I hated the West for abandoning me in a Russian prison; said I wanted revenge, that we needed to spark war; that if he killed my tier-one agents Russia would not be crippled, he would be seen as a hero and could take over the country. Razin agreed to my terms.”

Sweat poured down Will’s face and back. “How could you work with a monster like Razin?”

Sentinel smiled. “It had always been my intention to have Razin killed when his task was complete. The man was extremely capable but psychotic. Whatever the future held for Russia, I couldn’t let it be run by a man who’d want to rebuild it into a superpower.”

Will exclaimed, “Svelte was trying to warn us about you!”

He has betrayed us and wants to go to war.

“And your mad dog.”

Only Sentinel can stop him.

Sentinel nodded. “My original idea was to plant a nuclear device on a Russian submarine. For that I needed Svelte, but the submariner refused and quickly deduced what I was planning.” He spat. “That was careless of me. Svelte escaped and used the DLB before I had a chance to clear it myself.”

Will paled. “Is this really what you want? Total war?”

Sentinel glanced at the lodge before looking back at Will. “There’s nothing else I need now. Not even my life.”

He took a step toward Will.

Will moved a finger along the trigger. “Stay where you are.”