Her father stared at her coldly and she saw a look in his eyes that she’d not seen before. It was the look of a dangerous man. A man to be feared. A killer. Silent Blade.
Anna smiled and got to her feet. ‘Come here. Take a look at this.’
Anna once again saw the man she knew – her father. It was as though there were two different people inside him and it took a split second for one to overcome the other.
But which man was real? Which persona was in control of the other?
Anna took the photo from her jeans pocket and held it out. Vlad came over and put an arm around her shoulder as he stared down at the picture. He beamed.
‘Do you remember?’ Anna asked.
‘Yes.’ He took the photo from her hand and brought it closer to his face.
‘It was my eleventh birthday. I don’t remember it ever snowing on my birthday before.’
‘No. Me neither.’
‘We had fun that day.’
‘Yes. We did.’
‘I’ve always loved that picture.’
‘I didn’t know you had it.’
‘It’s the only picture I have of us together’
‘I don’t have any,’ Vlad said, his smile vanishing.
‘That picture has kept me going for so long.’ Anna looked up and stared into her father’s eyes, feeling her own eyes welling up. He gazed back, and she could see the love and devotion that he was feeling. ‘But that man,’ Anna said. ‘He’s not you. Not really. Not anymore.’
Before Vlad could say another word, Anna whipped her hand behind her. She unsheathed the small hunting blade that was strapped to her lower back. She thrust the knife forward and plunged it into her father’s side. Four inches of metal sliced through skin and flesh, and penetrated his right kidney, severing the renal artery at the same time.
The simple blow was a fatal one. Anna knew that for sure. She’d placed the blade there with precision and knowing. Vlad would bleed out within a minute, two at most. But she wasn’t finished.
She withdrew the knife. Her father stepped back. His eyes were wide open in shock, his skin white. Anna cried out as she thrust the knife forward again, into her father’s stomach. He let out a painful gasp. Anna pulled the knife away, and he sunk to his knees.
Vlad held one hand over the gushing wound on his belly. A large patch of red spread across his shirt. With his other hand he reached up to Anna.
Tears rolling down her cheek, she grabbed his hand. Held it. Felt the strength in his grip weakening by the second.
As he faded away, the pool of thick red blood beneath his body growing outwards exponentially, Vlad’s gaze never once left his daughter’s.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said.
Anna felt her bottom lip quivering, and fought to keep her composure. She had to stay strong. But soon there was nothing she could do to stop herself sobbing uncontrollably.
‘I’m so proud,’ her father spluttered, blood pouring from his mouth. He managed what Anna took to be a smile. ‘You really are my daughter.’
They were his final words. Anna let go of his hand. It flopped down. His head slumped forward.
After that Anna’s father – Vlad Abayev, the legendary Silent Blade assassin – was no more.
CHAPTER 25
Present day
‘And you’re telling me that this Anna Abayev is the person who left the note?’ Green asked.
‘Yes, I think so,’ Ryker said.
The two men were sitting at a polished stone dining table on one of two patios at the back of Casa de las Rosas. Walker was inside with his lawyer, Graham Munroe, who’d arrived a half hour earlier. Munroe was claiming Walker was too traumatised to be interviewed by Ryker. There was only so long Ryker would go along with the silly legal shenanigans. Green might have been happy to sit around and play by the book but that had never been Ryker.
‘After killing her father, Anna went on to become one of the most infamous assassins of a generation. The Red Cobra.’
Green scoffed at Ryker’s words. Ryker flicked him a glare. There was nothing humorous or flippant about what he’d said.
‘It all sounds a bit, you know...’
‘What?’
‘Hocus-pocus. Assassins. Silly names.’
‘It’s real. As real as it gets.’
‘If this kind of thing – paid assassins – even exists then why the daft name? I mean, wouldn’t the whole point be that she was so good no one ever knew which murders she was even responsible for.’
‘To a large extent, you’re right. She was brilliant at what she did. Her crime scenes were among the most meticulous I’ve ever seen. For most of the killings she’s been linked to there was zero trace evidence. But the intelligence services are so called for a very good reason: they gather intelligence, through whatever means they can.’
‘Like through coercion and extraordinary rendition to black sites? Yes, I’m familiar with some of the concepts. I watch the news.’
Familiar with the concepts? Clearly Ryker was a bit more intimate with the lengths the intelligence services would go to in order to gain information than Green, but he held his tongue.
‘Like that, yes,’ Ryker said. ‘But a reputation like the Red Cobra’s can’t be built solely through squeaky-clean assassinations and dubious accidents. She’s a freelancer. People, the kind of people who would need her services, need to know of her work. She has to have some identity.’
‘So where did the name come from?’
‘I don't know when it started. The red cobra is a type of spitting cobra, and she’s been known to use pepper spray to incapacitate her victims. Plus she supposedly wears bright-red lipstick. But I say that’s bullshit – embellishment. A large part of the power of her identity as the Red Cobra is that she’s a beautiful woman – hardly common in her line of work. I guess linking the name to a feature of her looks is a natural end result.’
‘So the calling card – the note she left for Walker – is that her usual MO?’
‘Not usual, no. But not unusual either. Think of it like this; when one ruthless gang or mafia family are waging war against another, they want their enemy to know they’ve been hit. Using a shadowy figure like the Red Cobra to attack your enemies adds power to the acts she carries out. It creates fear.’
‘How do you know all this anyway?’ Green asked, still sounding sceptical.
Ryker didn’t answer the question, just stared at Green until the older man finally seemed to get it.
‘Fine. So say I do buy the story. What has this Red Cobra, a deadly assassin according to you, got to do with Kim Walker’s murder? And Patrick Walker?’
‘It was thought that Kim Walker was Anna Abayev,’ Ryker said. ‘Kim’s fingerprints matched those of a profile that MI6 hold on the Red Cobra.’
‘That’s who you really work for? MI6?’ Green said, and his eyes lit up as though it was a moment of great excitement for him.
‘No,’ Ryker said. ‘I don’t.’
Green frowned. ‘What exactly are you saying then?’
‘I don’t know who Kim was, who she really was, I mean. Or how her fingerprints wound up on that file. But she certainly wasn’t the Red Cobra.’
‘How can you be so sure?’