Battlefield 4: Countdown to War by Peter Grimsdale Read Free Book Online Page A

the job would allow.
    He’d had a buddy in training at the Farm whose wife had left him without warning. Eight years of marriage and she’d gone one Sunday morning while he was out jogging, ‘ Enough ’ squirted in Olay hand cream across the kitchen table. It was only the writing medium that was unusual; officers’ relationships failed all the time. They should have another memorial wall at Langley to commemorate all the marriages the Agency chewed up.
    He watched her as she continued to get ready for the day in sullen silence. She wasn’t even going to dignify his promise with a response. She was right; he wouldn’t have either.
    It had started so well. They were both fugitives from their own countries. She had no interest in America, which was all right by him. Shanghai with its collisions of cultures, the ongoing duel between past and future, amused her as it did him. Being with her made him feel even more at home and even less like going back to where he had come from. She’d told him from the get-go she didn’t do housekeeping or nurturing. ‘You can get that from a local girlwho wants to go and live with you in America,’ to which he’d shot back, ‘Who wants to live in America?’ He’d surprised himself about that; the place had got under his skin, detached him from home like no other posting had done.
    Her bluntness surprised and pleased him. The first time, a mere thirty minutes after they’d met, at a sports bar in Pudong, she’d said, ‘We could go to my place and fuck, unless you’d hate yourself in the morning.’ Soon he was hooked. It made a refreshing antidote to the wearying coyness of the local girls; even the ones for hire behaved like Mormons. That and her wavy blonde hair, like a beacon in the sea of straight black; he could see her coming a mile away. When the sun shone there were little glints of copper in it like it had been forged from some rare alloy used only in the most hi-tech weaponry. And the sex, of course, not just how it felt physically but the way it opened up a space in which he could be someone other than Kovic the liar and sometime killer. Someone better than he dared imagine he could be.
    He made a move towards her. He couldn’t help it.
    ‘I’m late for work.’ She took a step back, scooped up her bag and hoisted it over her shoulder. It looked heavier than usual. But she was wearing the earrings. Come on, Kovic. Give it a try .
    ‘Look, I’m not much use to anyone right now; I got a shitload of stuff to deal with. Why don’t we talk later? We could ride out to Zhujing, to the place you like by the lake.’ It was frequented by young courting couples getting away from their relatives, none of whom had their own bedrooms, let alone apartments. It was just that, the very romantic corniness, that she liked.
    He stepped aside so she could get through the narrow doorway.
    ‘I suppose a blow job’s out of the question?’
    The crack nosedived, crashed and burned somewhere in the space between them. The door closed behind her and was gone. Fuckwit, he told himself. Last night he hadn’t counted on finding her there. He assumed she’d waited at the restaurant the first night, then gone back to her apartment, then when there was no word, stayed away. Maybe she’d even been worried; let herself in, waited up, then finally, with her fine slim hand still marking her place in her book, hadgone to sleep. When he got in he’d been on the move for thirty-six hours. Boy, had he been glad to see her – a beacon of humanity after the carnage on the border. But now, looking round the apartment, he noticed the few things she kept there – her hair drier, a coffee pot, her birth control pills – were gone.
    His backup phone buzzed with a text from Cutler. Get in here, now .

8
    USS Valkyrie , South China Sea
    Garrison was on the bridge in his grey leather swivelling chair. Wow, just like Captain Kirk in Star Trek, Tommy had exclaimed, aged eight, on his first visit to a