Zara's Game Read online
Contents
About this book
Also by Jo Black
Before you Start Reading…
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Next In Series…
ZARA'S GAME
THE BLACK SWAN TRILOGY PART I
Published By Black Label Fiction
First Published in the UK by Black Label Fiction, 2018
Copyright © Jo Black 2018
The right of Jo Black to be identified as the Author of the work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to persons, either living or dead, business establishments or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the above publisher of the book.
Digital Ebook - U.K English 2018 Edition
Created with Vellum
About this book
ZARA’S GAME
ZARA SCOTT: THE BLACK SWAN TRILOGY
PART I
M.I.6 Analyst Zara Scott has been abducted in Pakistan after uncovering a hidden conspiracy whilst investigating a suspected Al-Qaeda financing deal. Held in the clandestine U.S rendition program; her situation seems hopeless until she summons a memory from her past. The mere mention of Alex "The Dragon" Green is enough to stop her ruthless interrogator from continuing her questioning under duress.
"The Dragon"; the leader of a Kremlin sponsored Private Military Company whose reputation strikes fear into the hearts of his enemies, and is regarded as "The Angel of Death" by many, learns of his estranged wife's situation whilst carrying out an operation in Azerbaijan to stop the Chechens being supplied with arms by an old adversary: David Smythe. Against his Russian sponsor's wishes, Alex is quick to take action to recover Zara, unleashing his wrath against all who oppose him.
As Alex and The Company dig deeper into the circumstances surrounding Zara's abduction, they find themselves drawn into a much bigger international conspiracy that threatens the millennia-old Mercenary Guild's very survival, and starts a chain of events that will destabilise the fragile balance of forces keeping the world from descending into a chaotic and unstoppable conflict.
Zara's Game is a tense epic length espionage & political thriller set within a fictional clandestine world, anchored around the controversial W.M.D claims against Saddam Hussein prior to the second war in Iraq.
Also by Jo Black
NOVELLAS
Sarajevo (The Blades SAS Novellas I)
Colombia (The Blades SAS Novellas II)
Sierra Leone (The Blades SAS Novellas III)
London (The Blades SAS Novellas IV)
Paris (The Blades SAS Novellas V)
Las Vegas (The Blades SAS Novellas VI)
The Blades SAS Novellas Collection
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NOVELS
Oscar Bravo Lima (The Blades SAS I)
Task Force Dagger (The Blades SAS II)
Zara’s Game (Zara Scott I)
* * *
COMING SOON
Feb 2018
Mockba (Spetsnaz Alfa Nero Novellas I)
March 2018
The Tiger Sanction (Tiger Lane i)
April 2018
Whisky Mike Delta (The Blades SAS III)
May 2018
Agent Of Chaos (Zara Scott II)
Before you Start Reading…
Thank you for downloading this eBook by Jo Black.
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stay up to date with the author by social media or on his official website at:
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www.joblack.com
People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises.
* * *
The Three Sources and Three Constituent Parts of Marxism
(March 1913)
VLADIMIR ILYICH LENIN
1
He kissed his daughter on her forehead and left the house. The paternal soft smile he had given her was nothing more than a veneer over the ugly cracks of a man who had no trace of compassion or emotion. His clean-shaven head and disjointed nose merely hinted at the contents — a soul stripped bare of anything beyond an unswerving loyalty to duty, a duty that had made his reputation as a breaker of the most tenacious of wills belonging to those who tried to defy his interrogations. They called him “The Rat.” A term most westernised cultures associated with an informant, but in Arabic took a more literal form — a relentless gnawing to reach the bones of truth. He was (retired General) Amin Hamouda, now a senior officer of the Tunisian Intelligence Service, a secular regime that put down Islamic extremism with a relentless and brutal iron fist of extra-judicial process.
He placed a pair of pristine aviators on his crooked nose and walked down the front path surrounde
d by well-tended rose borders to a waiting black Mercedes E-Class. His driver, a skinny young man clad in a smart but ill fitting off the peg black suit and unbuttoned white shirt, nodded in deference as he opened the back door. Amin slid his portly frame into the back seat, the door closed and they drove away.
Amin’s place of work was a former French legionnaire fortress on the edge of the Sahara desert. Surrounded by a barren sand-sea of nothingness, brutal heat and desolation, it was a man-made purgatory now used predominately as a C.I.A black-site for their global rendition program. The Tunisian allies provided a useful (but unequal in the American’s favour) partnership in obtaining information from unwilling informants without the need for due process, human rights, or over-sight. It was a task Amin performed with great diligence.
As he exited the car he mopped the beads of sweat from his brow and walked briskly from the secure courtyard into the shade. The wooden posts the legionnaires had used as punishment still remained as a monument to the most brutal of tortures — simply attempting to survive on the tip of the desert sun’s anvil.
Whilst moderately cooler (thanks to the feet-thick sandstone walls) the basement interrogation rooms still remained stifling ovens that lacked even basic air circulation. The rudimentary sanitary system added a permanent noxiously unpleasant odour to the discomfort of occupation. A pungent aroma Amin had long since become accustomed to.
He walked in and pulled out an old wooden chair from beside the table then sat down.
She didn’t move.
Her eyes remained fixed in a middle-distant stare at some imaginary point on the far side of the room. Completely motionless. She betrayed nothing. He sat and stared at her. A measured stare. Sharp chiselled features, high cheekbones with half-cast skin pulled taut over, perfectly manicured eyebrows, dusty mocha hair in a ponytail. A svelte frame of toned sinewy muscles. Her vest singlet t-shirt drenched in sweat tight over her breasts, nipples erect pushing at the soft cotton. Amin’s breathing broke from his usual highly controlled subdued pace, a coarse of arousal flooded into his loins as he imagined ravishing her young slender body with force. Visceral moments of imagined sexual violence, as he smashed her head against the wall during his climax, breaking her perfect features into a bloodied mess before strangling her. Moment by moment he mentally de-humanised her, turning her from an attractive young woman into a mere conduit for his violent fetish to de-personalise her into nothing more than a rag-doll for his sadistic pleasure.
It was if she felt his eyes invading her. A woman’s intuition sensing the danger from the close proximity of a sexual predator. She flicked her eyes to look at him. An intentional stare that betrayed nothing, save an edged notion of disdainful contempt, an acknowledged recognition of what she could see beneath his veneer. The subtle visual dance between skilful agents of subterfuge engaged in a non-consensual foreplay of sensory perception.
His throat was dry. He declined to solve it with a gulp of the water presented in a glass before him, preferring its Marlboro-laced hoarseness to improve the delivery of his message in tone, as well as substance.
‘You know why you are here.’
Statement of fact. Not a question.
She said nothing. Still betrayed nothing. Just stared.
Time passed.
How much is irrelevant.
Simply the stall before the inevitable where ten minutes would be no different to ten hours after the event. It was a conceit he would grant her only insofar as it suited his purpose. ‘You know why you are here.’ He repeated it as if she might not have heard the first time, or perhaps his treacle-thick accented English required a repeat intonation.
She still said nothing. She still did nothing.
Repeat it once. Repeat it a thousand times. It was the same statement, the same fishing expedition. Not to determine if she knew why she was there, but if she cared enough to protest why she was there, or offer up some alternative narrative that would determine the way in which he would crack her icy English reserve and get to the truth his sponsors had demanded.
He had one objective. Information. He didn’t care by what means he obtained it, only that he obtained it, and it was the truth. ‘I require three things from you. The location of your associate, Mister Bishop, the dossier, and the video recording you made. I’m at liberty to use whatever means at my disposal to obtain them. It would be advisable for you to co-operate.’ Finally her emotionless stare was broken. An involuntary memory reflex that forced her visual focus aside as her brain flickered through her memory to recall and connect the events to her current circumstances. Less than a second later she closed her eyes, chastising herself for the lack of control over her instincts that imparted her interrogator with his first indicative of guilt, closely supported by the second from her self-admonishment. Slowly her eyes opened and her gaze returned back to his, awareness that he’d read both signals and deciphered them instantly. Her carefully constructed mask of deceit already cracking. He nodded. His first returned signal that it was understood. She tried to swallow. A burnt parched throat desperate for moisture, and yet hesitant to ask because she knew already what was coming. Sensing his captive’s discomfort, Amin laid down another card in his deck of power plays. He slowly and deliberately picked up his glass of water and sipped it gently, each swallow slow and echoed in the silent void of the interrogation room. He placed the glass back down and wiped a finger down the condensation clinging to the side of it then returned his stare to her.
No response.
Not so easily riled.
She would take more. Much more.
Amin pleased himself with a brief glint of a smile to savour the potential for practising his skills on such an attractive canvas. Her defiance simply served to further the eroticism for Amin. He looked at his protégé, who was stood in the corner leaning lazily against the wall, and made a slow and deliberate nod. Amin got up and removed his jacket slowly before placing it neatly on the back of the chair. He walked over to a wooden bench placed up against the wall, it was set out with a jug full of water, an empty bowl, and some clean towels. He carefully unbuttoned his cuffs and removed his expensive gold cufflinks, rolled his sleeves neatly up above his elbows, removed his wedding ring, filled the bowl with water then plunged his hands gently in before slowly bathing the water across his face and head to wash away the sweat. As he performed his ritual cleansing, his assistant walked over and placed a black cotton hood over her head and pulled the cord tight round her neck. She didn’t struggle or resist — a passive acceptance of what was to come. The protégé walked over and took a large jerry can then returned and waited behind her.
Amin patted his face softly with the towel. ‘Begin,’ Amin said quietly, barely above a whisper.
The protégé summoned the two guards. They walked over and picked her up by each elbow and forced her on her knees before tilting her backwards over the chair. The protégé tipped the jerry can over until a long stream of water cascaded down over her face, slowly at first until the cloth soaked through then increasing in volume as she began to choke, cough, and then gasp for air. It continued until the entire five-gallon can of water was empty. Amin walked over. ‘Again,’ he said. The protégé took a second can and repeated the water boarding. She struggled, but they kept tight hold of her, she desperately sucked at the soaking cloth for gasps of air that only served to inhale more water vapour, increasing the sense of drowning and panic. They continued repeatedly for more than an hour until finally Amin sat down again. He nodded at his accomplices. They dragged her back up onto the chair. The protégé loosened the hood and pulled it off. Black eyeliner streamed in messy lines, running down reddened cheeks, she spat the water and sputum from her mouth as she desperately strained for breath, her lungs burning with prickled pain from the irritation, her eyes bloodshot and unable to focus as her brain lapsed into delirium.
‘Where is Bishop? Where is the dossier? Where is the tape?’ The Rat gnawed again slowly, word by word. She coughed and spat out what
was left of her dignity, her head dizzy, unable to support its own weight, desperate to escape into the comfort of unconsciousness. Sensing his victim’s departure into a comatose state, Amin got up and walked over, he grabbed her roughly, clenching meaty coarse-skinned hands around her slender neck. A sharp violent backhanded slap delivered with precision knocking her head from one side to the other. Re-awakening all her pain sensors. A second slap in the opposite direction followed by a third, her cheeks now burning red and numbed by the onslaught. Grabbed by the throat again. ‘Tell me what I want to know! You will tell me!’ The defiance remained. Smouldering from deep within and projected out through the mirrors of her eyes.
Zara's Game