Shadow Read online

  Verbeke didn’t want to look her in the eye. He wanted to relish the moment, the ferocity and the power of it. Each time they had sex, each time they reached this point, he played with the idea of constricting his grip until he heard the cartilage in her throat crack. He liked the control that gave him over her. It was as strong a thrill as the act itself, potent and heady. Verbeke brought her right to the edge, but his sole concern was his own pleasure, and with a grunting shout he reached his climax. He immediately disengaged and shoved Axelle away, letting her fall gasping on to the bed while he rose to clean himself off.

  He stalked across the room to where his clothes lay in a pile on a chair, and picked through them. The air was cold on his bare skin. These quarters were a converted office space, and not fit for purpose, but he had lived in worse places. He pulled on his underwear and a pair of trousers. His gaze drifted to the window in the far wall. Outside, a heavy rain was pelting the glass, turning the view of the black rock landscape beyond into a blurry, ill-defined mess.

  “Did you enjoy that?” said Axelle from across the room. Her voice was coarse and husky from the exertion, and she rolled over, reaching for a towel. “I think you missed me in prison…”

  Her tone ignited an instant anger in Verbeke.

  “Be quiet, slut,” he spat. Any suggestion that there might be something approaching affection between them infuriated him. His hand formed into a fist and he wondered if it would be necessary for him to make her understand that wasn’t so. “Your chatte isn’t that impressive.”

  “Connard!” she shot back, with enough force to show some spirit, but not enough to truly rile him. Axelle knew Verbeke’s moods well, and that too aggravated him. It meant she thought she could manipulate him, like women always did.

  Shrugging on a shirt, he poured himself coffee from a flask on the table and considered her over the rim of the mug as she started to dress. There were few females he had allowed into the ranks of the Lion’s Roar. He’d learned early in his life to distrust them and be wary of their faults, but the French woman was one of the rare exceptions. She was useful for those tasks when a man might raise suspicions, and he reluctantly allowed that her innately callous, calculating manner was a good balance to his more aggressive impulses. The sex was a bonus.

  In that way, she was a good example of what the Lion’s Roar needed in their females—loyalty and obedience, and the unquestioning resolve to do whatever was needed for the cause.

  Most of the time, Axelle stayed on the right side of that measure. But he decided it wouldn’t do for her to become comfortable there, to think that he might be soft on her. Not that he ever would. Verbeke had seen strong, potent men enfeebled by the toxic influence of sly women, and he had vowed never to fall victim to such a thing.

  They are necessary, he reminded himself, even pleasurable. But in the end, just tools. Without a man’s hand upon them, they can do little for us.

  Verbeke remembered where he had first heard those words. He had been standing in a corridor, in that cramped old apartment on Avenue Clemenceau. No more than a child, the sounds of shouting and violence had drawn him to the door of the room where his mother slept with his stepfather. When the man came out, still holding the strap of his leather belt in one hand, little Noah had seen a glimpse of her, bruised and cowering in the corner, before the door shut again. He knew that belt; the sting of it was familiar to him from the days when he whined about something, or showed what the big man called “weaknesses.”

  His stepfather crouched down, so that they were looking each other in the eye, and he told Noah what women were worth as his mother wept quietly in the next room.

  Only men know how to be strong, he had said, putting a paternal hand on the boy’s shoulder. Men like us. We are the lions, not the sheep.

  It was the first time in his life Noah Verbeke had not felt like a child, like someone lost and subject to the whims of an uncaring world. It was the first time an adult had trusted him with something—this truth. It was the boy’s epiphany. He could become strong, be a man, if he was willing to follow the path.

  The path his stepfather showed him was easy to grasp. It was made of hate. Not just his animosity for the pathetic, venal ways of womenfolk, but for anyone who was not a man like us—and there were so many of them. The apartment was in Kuregem, one of the poorest districts in Brussels, and with that poverty came resentment. Every day, more and more foreigners flowed into the country grasping for handouts, and an idiotic bleeding heart government gave them everything they wanted, edging out the whites who deserved to be there.

  Belgium is for Belgians, his stepfather would say, for lions not sheep, repeating the refrain until it became embedded in Noah’s mind. When his mother finally fled the abuse she was suffering at both their hands, he barely noticed.

  His stepfather was so proud when young Noah told him the stories of the windows he broke in immigrant homes, of the epithets spray-painted on walls, the shops set alight. He told him it was permissible to steal from these mongrel foreigners, torment them and make their lives a misery, because they were the enemy.

  On some level, Verbeke knew he was being raised in a churning cauldron of hate, but the fury of it gave him life. It freed him, knowing for certain that every hurdle in his life, every refusal he suffered, was the fault of the weak and the different. They had no right to be here, to take what was supposed to be his, and he had every right to detest them for it. He had an enemy for all his ills, and a limitless rage to direct at them.

  There was, of course, a second lesson his stepfather taught him. That came later, when he was much older, a man in his own right with his own cadre of thugs and a growing territory of hatred. It was a revelation, learning that even the strongest could be corrupted. If anything, that lesson was more valuable than the first.

  One night, Verbeke left a man dead in a filthy alley behind a backstreet bar, after he had dared to suggest that Noah’s stepfather liked to put his cock in black whores. Through the red haze of his rage, as he kicked the man’s skull in, he refused to believe it. His stepfather had shown him the path. He had made a boy into a man capable of becoming a lion.

  But then he found the old fool screwing an immigrant prostitute and he realized that the weakness could take anyone. The anger which came upon him in that moment was far worse than that he had inflicted on the man in the bar. It was the totality of every other rage he had ever experienced and more.

  Lost in the memory, Verbeke’s hand gripped the coffee mug, knuckles whitening around it.

  He remembered killing the woman, crushing her neck until it broke, but memory blurred around the facts of what he did to his stepfather. All that mattered was that the old man died of his stab wounds on the way to the hospital.

  His men and the others who hated, they lauded him for what he had done, and while some of the police were on their side, enough were not. Verbeke had to vanish, and a friend helped him enrol in the Belgian armed forces, covering up the parts of his criminal record that otherwise would have halted him.

  As a soldier, he learned much more, channeling his impulses and aptitude for violence to the work of the state that he loathed so deeply. He sought out and nurtured contacts with the like-minded few he found within the military. For a time he rose high, and he might have gone further—if it hadn’t been for cowards like that rat Jakobs.

  He grinned, thinking of the other man, wondering how long it had taken him to bleed out in that train carriage with two bullets in his gut. It was a pity he had not been able to relish that murder a little more, after the trouble that self-righteous bastard had given him.

  Jakobs had been the one who forced Verbeke out of the army, after it came to light that he had been abusing prisoners of war and non-combatants. But that had been a boon, in its own way. Returning to civilian life put him back in the place he had come from, and reawakened the old hate. The city he had grown up in, the country he called home, was infested with more foreigners than ever before. Verbeke saw
that and his rage rose high. His thuggish charisma found him a ready audience of other angry men who felt the same way he did.

  He picked up where he had left off, but this time his cadre, his Lion’s Roar, would be something more than a gang of directionless hooligans, striking out at random. They would become soldiers, as he had, fighters in a war between cultures to preserve their way of life. He knew the cause was right, he felt it in his blood and bone. How could he be wrong, when so many in the nation felt the same way? And not just in mainland Europe, but in Britain, Scandinavia, Russia and even America? He had more allies, and more enemies too—but that made him bare his teeth in a hunter’s snarl.

  The more of these mongrels there are, the easier it is to destroy them.

  Axelle saw him staring in her direction and she ran an inviting hand over her bare breasts, mistaking his savage smile for renewed carnal interest.

  “You want to go around again?”

  He sneered at the offer, snatching up some of her clothes and throwing them at her.

  “I’ll tell you when.”

  The faint shade of coyness faded from her expression.

  “You’re angry with me.” She swore under her breath. “You’re always angry about something.”

  “I should be happy?” He growled out the words and took a threatening step toward her. “You climbed into bed with the Combine and you want me to be pleased about it.”

  “Fuck you!” she retorted. “I made a choice. The Lion’s Roar needed you on the outside, not rotting in a cell!” Axelle jerked her thumb in the direction of the other rooms. “The men follow you, Noah. They need their leader! How long do you think the group could operate without you?” The woman snorted. “That poseur Van de Greif can’t control the men, they laugh at him. And Duz or Brewn? They’re vicious but they’re not as smart as—”

  “They also don’t pay any attention to you,” he interrupted.

  “True. That’s why they’re only fit to be followers, not leaders. They don’t see the way it really is.”

  “And you do?” He advanced on her.

  She nodded warily. Still half-dressed, Axelle held the bundle of her clothes to her chest as if it would project her.

  “The Combine have been observing us for a long time, you know that. Our interests align with theirs.”

  He made a show of glancing around.

  “They’re certainly generous with their resources. Giving us these toys. But I have to wonder what the price is?”

  “It is simple,” said Axelle, with an arch sniff. “They’re fearful. Oh, they want to thin the herd like we do, but they are afraid to get their hands dirty. No different from Van de Greif—just with more money.”

  “And better weapons.” He looked back at the window, picking out the metallic domes against the dark hillside. “I do like that.”

  “I knew you would,” she went on. “They need people like us. People with vision, purpose, and will.”

  After his arrival, Axelle had shown Verbeke the elements of the opportunity the Combine had laid out for them, and it made his pulse race. It was one thing to spill mongrel blood and throw firebombs, but this scheme was an order of magnitude beyond those acts of violence. It made such deeds seem petty.

  Executed correctly, it would change the map of Europe and bring thousands to their banner.

  There was a sharp rap on the door and he went to it, wrenching it open.

  “What the fuck do you want?”

  Verbeke glared at Duz, who stood with another of the men and the foreign woman, Park, at his side.

  Duz nodded at the woman. “She needs to talk to you.”

  He was the same height as Verbeke, but he always seemed to be slumping, hunched forward as if he expected to be rushed at any second. He fingered the poorly groomed anchor beard that did little to distract from his ruddy complexion and close-set eyes.

  “So—”

  “I repeat,” said Verbeke, turning his attention on Park, “what the fuck do you want?”

  He wandered away from the door, while Park nervously followed him inside. Duz hesitated on the threshold, leering when he saw Axelle still half-undressed.

  “I won’t do any more for you,” said Park, with the forced firmness of someone who was afraid and trying hard not to show it. “I want to know my family are safe and well before I will proceed.”

  “Do you?” Verbeke’s hand shot out and he grabbed her wrist, twisting it hard so she cried out. “I don’t see why.”

  Axelle pulled on her blouse and came toward him.

  “She needs her hands to work.”

  “Didn’t I already say to you, Shut up, slut?”

  He glared at the French woman. Still, he let go of Park and wiped his hand down his trousers. The Korean’s eyes were brimming with unshed tears and he felt his gut twist with disgust at the sight of her. She was everything that he loathed—a gutless refugee who had fled her own nation, a traitor to her people, and the worst kind of female, the kind who thought they were cleverer than everyone else.

  Would she be able to out-think me choking the life from her? The idea amused him.

  At length, he relented, making a dismissive gesture.

  “Fine. Show her.”

  Axelle picked up a tablet computer from the desk and swiped across the screen, finding a still image.

  “Here. This was taken this morning.”

  She handed the tablet to Park, who stared at it, shaking her head.

  The image was of two more of her kind, a man and a boy, standing in front of a black and white house. They looked terrified, which satisfied Verbeke, and the man was holding up a newspaper. Park pawed at the screen, enlarging the picture to get a better look at the paper’s masthead. The copy of The Straits Times bore today’s date.

  “N-no,” she stuttered, after a moment. “This isn’t enough. I want to speak to them.”

  Verbeke snatched the tablet from her and shoved it into Axelle’s hands.

  “Who do you think you are, making demands?” He prodded Park hard in the chest. “Perhaps I’ll call up and have them shoot the boy in the head while you watch?”

  Park gave a pained moan as he spoke, and her hands flew to her mouth. She shook her head, the tears streaking down her face.

  “No. No. If you kill them I won’t help you. I won’t. They’re all I have.”

  Verbeke stayed silent for a long moment, letting her dwell on that horrible image in her mind’s eye, and then he snapped his fingers at Axelle.

  “Fine. Show her.”

  Axelle carried the tablet to a docking station on the desk and locked it in place. With a few keystrokes, she opened up an encrypted video window and connected to the staging post back in Singapore, from where the team had coordinated the initial abduction.

  Ticker’s face appeared on the screen.

  “I’m here,” he began, slightly out of sync with the movement of his mouth on the video. “Prepping to go. Problem?”

  “Show us the hostages,” Axelle told him.

  “Right now?”

  “Right now,” she repeated. “The wife is here. She wants to see them.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Ticker drawled, catching on quickly. “Gimme a second.”

  The visual turned blank for a few moments, and when it returned, it was coming through a grainy digital camera feed.

  The picture showed Simon Lam and his son seated at a folding camping table, in what resembled a nondescript industrial space, a basement or a warehouse. The two of them looked up, as if someone out of sight had entered the room.

  Park took unsteady steps toward the tablet, her hands bunching.

  “Talk,” said Ticker’s voice, from off-screen. “Your wife’s watching.”

  “Susan? Susan, are you there?” The husband leaned forward, then back, his motions stiff. “Susan?”

  “Mommy?” The boy blinked, as if he was holding back tears.

  Verbeke watched Park silently come to pieces in front of him. She shuddered and wiped a
t her eyes with the heel of her trembling hands, drawing in a tremulous breath.

  “I’m here,” she called out, “Did they hurt you?”

  “What?” said the husband, before he answered. “We’re okay. Okay.”

  “Please help us,” added the boy. “Come and get us.”

  “I will, as soon as I can,” insisted Park. “I promise.”

  She straightened, making an attempt to find her courage, but Verbeke easily saw through her false bravado.

  “That’s enough,” he snapped, and made a throat-cutting gesture.

  Axelle cut the video and Park gave that pitiful moan again.

  “This is the end of me being generous with you,” he growled. “Your friend Kyun told me you could give us what we need in a day, so get in there and do it.” He pointed in the direction of the lab. “If I have to look at you again before that, someone is going to get cut.”

  “You will kill us anyway!” Park screamed abruptly.

  “You’re going to stay alive until we see a success,” Axelle countered. “Who dies between now and then is up to you.”

  Duz saw his cue and grabbed Park by the arm, dragging her away before she could protest any more.

  When they were alone again, Verbeke snorted.

  “We need to watch her. She’s going to be trouble.”

  Axelle nodded at the tablet screen.

  “Not as long as we have that. What did you think?”

  He reached for his discarded jacket, giving her a mocking nod.

  “I think it was worth every cent of the Combine’s money.”

  SEVEN

  It was after nightfall before they were ready to deploy.

  Lucy had been the one to make the call, as the senior operative in their cell, deciding that a couple of hours delaying and preparing was worth the risk that their targets might have moved on in the interim. Every instinct in Marc wanted to get in there and search for the abductees, but he knew as well as she did that the right prep before a mission could make the difference between life and death when an agent was in the field.

  Malte secured another vehicle for them—a fancy euphemism for “hot-wiring”—and now they were close, threading through traffic on the four-lane highway in a black sedan with darkened windows.