88° North

Chapter Four

Nadia’s first thought was that she was dead. But there was too much noise. She creaked open an eyelid. Fluorescent skyscrapers sailed past, to the ear-crushing roar of rotors spinning above her. The chopper swooped down towards the bay. She spied a double-decker Star Ferry as it chugged its way to Kowloon across the thin stretch of black water.

She was on her side, barely able to move in the cramped area on the floor next to Jake and Hanbury. Why wasn’t she out cold like they were? The radiation sickness. It was affecting her biochemistry, attacking her organs. But it also meant that whatever neuro-paralytic they’d pricked her with wasn’t effective. The thing that was killing her might just save her life, at least for a while.

Her hands were by her sides. Men she couldn’t see without giving herself away sat on benches above her, the white tick of a Nike trainer close to her face. Was Salamander there? Unlikely, the chopper wasn’t that big. It was dark inside, the men no doubt gazing out the windows, assuming their three captives to be unconscious. She slid her right hand slowly into her pocket. As the helicopter weaved its path to wherever it was headed, she breathed a silent thank you – her phone was still there. Nudging the tiny bar that pushed it into vibration mode, she activated the call sequence to dial the last number. The Chef. She waited thirty seconds for him to pick up and listen. He’d hear the rotors, and would realise she couldn’t speak. Her middle finger was over the speaker hole, just in case he said anything. But that wasn’t their code, wasn’t what he’d taught her years ago. Always wait to hear who is calling.

With the nail of her forefinger she tapped a short sequence, dat-dat-dat, dar, dar, dar, dat-dat-dat. SOS. Idiot’s Morse. She waited. And waited some more. Her phone buzzed against her fingers. He’d clicked off and rung her again. Three rings, and then it stopped. Their own code. It meant the only thing she needed to know.

I’m coming.

But her ride didn’t cross the bay to Kowloon. The chopper swung back towards Hong Kong then around to the darker, less touristy side of the island, with fewer glitzy skyscrapers, towards Port Stanley. The chopper banked hard to the right and reared up as it slowed, ready to land. She glimpsed trees, a lone mansion, and a single figure standing outside. Large, bear-like, unmoving. The man who had been seconds away from nuking London. The man who had ended her sister and father. Without thinking about it, she clenched her fists.

One of the men noticed. ‘Fuck, she’s awake! The boss’ll kill us!’

‘Not if he doesn’t know,’ said another.

Nadia saw the Nike trainer rise, and then she saw nothing.

When she awoke she was on a chair, facing Jake and Hanbury, both still out cold. She wasn’t handcuffed to hers like they were. Her head ached, and her right cheek felt swollen. A man in a white coat knelt in front of her, a syringe in his hands.

‘She’s awake.’

He moved to Hanbury and injected him. Slowly he roused. Jake was in a corner. He didn’t look too bad. There was a streak of congealed blood on his forehead, and the left side of his face was coming up in a yellow-blue bruise. Hanbury was a different story. A crude bandage was wrapped around his head, already soaked with blood, one eye closed-up, its lids puffy and black.

That was when she noticed how bright it was in the white room. And the video cameras, one on either side, mounted on tripods, with two young men – boy-next-door Chinese dudes – manning them. Pro-looking camera gear. What were they going to do, make a snuff movie? Demand ransom from someone? There was also a tall sheet of glass behind her and to her left. She wondered what it was for.

She heard him before she saw him. That tar-like voice, the heavy Russian accent mixed with something else. No one knew Salamander’s precise origin. An orphan of the Steppes, half-Russian, half-Mongolian. Or Korean, perhaps. But he was wanted in most continents.

She knew his story. A talented spy for Russia, one of their best. He and the woman who was to become his wife, also a spy, had been sent to North Korea in the late ‘70s. Together they’d neutralised a prototype nuclear experimental facility, and set Kim Il Sung’s nuclear weapons ambitions – at that stage little more than a dirty bomb with fissile material from its Yongbyon reactor – back a decade. They’d done the world a huge and never-acknowledged favour. But instead of being rewarded for their heroism, a year later they were betrayed by their Soviet and Chinese paymasters, aided by the British, right here in Hong Kong. Salamander had been left to rot in prison on a remote Chinese island, after seeing his wife gunned down at the airport. A toxic life story. Yet nothing justified what he’d done, what he’d tried to do, and what she and Jake still believed him capable of.

Salamander needed to be put down.

He walked into view and stood behind the glass. Despite being seventy if a day, and as large as an ox, he glided like a dancer, and she recalled how he could move very fast when required. He was unarmed, dressed in a black cotton tai chi outfit done up at the front with wooden toggles. Along with his thinning grey hair, it made him look like some wise old kung fu master, until you saw his eyes. Black as tar-pits, like his voice. The well of hatred bubbling inside him was plain to see, a grimace of disgust carved into his features. She imagined what he’d been thinking these past forty years, the single mantra that kept him alive and gave him purpose.

They will pay.

He didn’t look at her directly, while she in her turn glared at him. He was waiting for something, or someone. She’d skewered him with her knife back in London, under his armpit. A wound like that must still hurt. And he’d been in Chernobyl too, in the high-rad zone. She hoped he wasn’t long for this world. More than anything, she wanted the Chef to arrive. A door opened.

It wasn’t the Chef.

Blue Fan, dressed in a wine-red pantsuit that looked both elegant and flexible, so she could really move in it – as in kick and do her martial arts stuff – without ripping anything. Salamander, her grandfather, didn’t seem to approve. She said something to him in Cantonese.

‘English,’ he said, pointing a finger at Nadia. ‘She needs to understand.’

‘No one knows we are here,’ Blue Fan said. ‘The police are all over his apartment, though.’ She indicated Hanbury, who was coming round.

‘The video footage?’

‘It shows them entering. No one else.’

Wait a minute …

‘The sniper bullet?’

‘Standard Russian military issue.’

Russian. Like herself.

We’re being set up!

The doctor was about to rouse Jake, but Salamander waggled a forefinger, and the short Chinese doctor bowed, gathered up his wares, and hurried away.

Salamander waved at another man who’d been standing in the shadows, who she hadn’t seen until now, he’d been so still. The tall thin man with a hollowed-out face and piercing, heron-like eyes, stalked forward. His feet rustled the plastic sheeting on the floor. She hadn’t noticed it before now. So, blood was going to be spilt.

Heron stood next to Jake. He drew a butcher’s knife, grabbed Jake’s unconscious head by the hair, and teased Jake’s carotid with the serrated edge.

Although Nadia was still groggy, she needed to at least try to do something. But Blue Fan had her eye on her. Nadia had already seen her in action. It occurred to her that everything had been set up since they’d landed, like a script in a play. Classic Salamander. You set a trap for him, and found yourself caught in his.

‘Wake him fully,’ Salamander growled, flicking a hand at Hanbury.

Another man appeared, young but hippo-fat, with a triple chin. He must have been standing behind her. So, there were at least six: Salamander, Blue Fan, two cameramen and two henchmen. Maybe more outside. She couldn’t take them all on without a weapon, and even then …

Hippo raked off the bandage around Hanbury’s head, then doused him with a bucket-full of iced water. Hanbury coughed, stuttered some expletives and thrashed around, then stilled once he saw who was in the room.

‘Hit him in the face,’ Salamander said.

At first Nadia thought he was instructing the man who’d just drenched Hanbury, but Hippo stepped backwards. With a shock, Nadia realised Salamander was talking to her.

Salamander made a sighing sound, and the man with the knife at Jake’s throat nodded, his knife arm tensing.

‘Wait!’ Nadia was on her feet. Salamander did not look at her, only Hanbury. Blue Fan watched her curiously, as if to see whether she had it in her. Nadia recalled her deal with Jake, made merely hours ago: that they wouldn’t be blackmailed into doing things for Salamander in order to save each other.

Yet here she was.

She approached Hanbury. She weighed everything up. The Chef was on his way, but she had no idea when he would arrive. Probably all three of them – her, Jake and Hanbury – were going to be executed. So why play along? Because there was still a chance. Salamander and Blue Fan didn’t know about the Chef. Maybe he couldn’t take them all down. If he could surprise them, then maybe … The Chef had once told her that maybe’s were as reliable as lottery tickets. But sometimes they were all you had.

‘The face,’ Salamander said. ‘Like you mean it.’

Nadia glanced left and right. The cameras were carefully angled. One would show her face, the other Hanbury, helpless, already beaten, tied to a chair. A good shot of her hitting him, and anyone watching would assume she’d done the rest. She still didn’t know what this staged show was for. Salamander’s next move, whatever that was.

Hanbury was a bloody mess, his face swollen, one eye a slit between two puffed up eyelids, blood all over his face. He glanced around, squinting painfully as he did so, saw Jake, then turned back to her.

‘Do it,’ he said, coughing. He squeezed his eyes closed.

Nadia heard her own breathing turn thready. She coiled her right hand into a fist, drew it back, and with an anguished grunt that to her was all about remorse, but to an onlooker would be dumbed down to pure rage, hit him hard, almost knocking him off the chair.

‘Again.’

She complied. Hanbury made no sound, didn’t register the intense pain she knew he must be feeling. The only sound was the thud of her knuckles against soft, pulpy flesh, and the blood splattering the plastic sheeting.

‘Again.’

A tear hung at the outer corner of Hanbury’s puffed-up eye.

‘No,’ she said. ‘You have enough.’

Heron flourished Nadia’s pistol. He sprang the mag and flicked eight of the 9mm parabellums into his palm with his thumb, then clicked the mag back into place by ramming it onto his thigh. One bullet left. He slid the pistol noisily across the plastic sheeting to her feet. A Beretta. Her, and her father’s, weapon of choice. She stared at it, refusing to comprehend why it was there, even as she began to sweat.

Images flashed through her mind. The day her father had been snatched away from her, when she was fourteen, and she hadn’t dared pick up his Beretta to protect him. The first time she’d used it for real, and shot Janssen. The first time she’d killed, back in the Scillies, and then how many more times she’d pulled the trigger in Chernobyl. She was a killer, no question.

But an executioner?

She couldn’t do this. She wouldn’t do this. Nadia looked to Blue Fan, mentally begging her to intervene. Blue fan didn’t have that cold look in her eyes anymore, but she clearly wasn’t going to interfere.

‘Shoot Mr Hanbury,’ Salamander said. ‘In the head.’

Nadia shook her head. ‘No fucking way!’

Salamander sighed again, and said something in Chinese.

‘Nadia,’ Hanbury said. ‘Listen to me.’

She stared at him. She wanted to pick up the gun and shoot Salamander, but Hippo and Heron had their gun sights trained on her face. And the sheet of glass … was it bulletproof?

‘My family died tonight,’ Hanbury said, his voice croaky. ‘Not my real family. But they were all I had. I—’

‘No. Don’t you dare ask me!’

His eyes were waterlogged, their inner light drowned. ‘Nadia, I’d rather go quickly.’

She faced Salamander. ‘What’s to stop you killing me and Jake straight afterwards?’

His eyes met hers for the first time. Deep, sunken, two smouldering lumps of charcoal.

‘I give you my word, in front of my granddaughter, that Jake will live.’

‘We are Green Dragon triad. We operate by a code,’ Blue Fan added. ‘We live and die by it.’

That’s what Nadia had been told before, by one of Salamander’s men, right before he died.

‘Take it, Nadia,’ Hanbury said. ‘Best offer you’ll get today.’

‘Now,’ Salamander growled.

Hanbury’s lips quivered. ‘Just remember, Nadia. It’s not always about the big picture. The small pictures. They’re what really count.’

She stared at the Beretta. A small part of her hoped the Chef would burst in, any second. Her life’s history told her otherwise. But if Jake would live … She knelt down and picked up the gun, her head level with Hanbury’s. ‘I’m sorry.’

She stood, breeched the weapon, snapping the bullet into the chamber. She pressed the end of the muzzle against his forehead, tenderly, as if it was a caress, and firmed her right arm. He closed his eyes. She took in a ragged breath, then let it out slowly, as if through a straw, like her father had taught her … and spun around and fired straight at Salamander, aiming for his right eye.

The shot rang out in the room, like a sledgehammer striking a bell. A ricochet. Bullet-proof after all, a tiny smear on the glass in front of Salamander’s face.

Hippo seized her in a bear hug and pulled her to one side, while Heron prised the weapon from her fingers, and re-loaded the magazine. Heron then moved into position next to Hanbury’s trembling frame.

‘Lift your head a little, Mr Hanbury,’ Salamander said. ‘And your butler James’s brother, and Ma-Lee’s mother will live to see dawn.’

Nadia tried to scream ‘NO!’ but Hippo’s fat palm smothered her mouth. She kicked, but to no avail; the guy’s legs were like dead tree stumps.

‘Tilt the barrel down a fraction,’ Salamander said, and continued giving instructions, choreographing the scene until the pistol and Hanbury were exactly where they had been while Nadia had held the gun to his head.

‘Hold it just there,’ Salamander said. ‘Now.’

Nadia flinched with the gunshot, and watched in disbelief as Hanbury’s head flopped backwards, as if he’d simply fallen asleep, a neat hole in his forehead, scorch marks around the wound’s circumference. Blood oozed out and pooled there, until a single drop ran down his temple, like a tear.

Nadia stopped struggling.

Hanbury’s face was serene. She wished she’d had more time to get to know him. But then, if there was anything after, there would be plenty of time very shortly. The Chef would arrive too late.

She looked at Jake, still unconscious. He’d see the video, sooner or later, seamlessly spliced. Her placing the gun against Hanbury’s head, the weapon firing, him falling backwards. Everyone would see it. At first he wouldn’t believe it, but then he’d wonder, just enough to crack the bond between them.

Salamander had won. Maybe not the big game, whatever that was. But this small one. Her small life – her picture, mainly full of death and pain – was over. Like Hanbury’s.

Salamander walked to the two cameras and ejected the memory sticks, pocketing them. He uttered something in Cantonese to his granddaughter and left. Heron and Hippo hauled Jake up and dragged him away, while the cameramen packed up their gear. She heard a car engine start out front.

She guessed Blue Fan was the executioner here.

‘I’m ready,’ Nadia said.

Chapter Five

Nadia was led outside by Blue Fan, where four armed men awaited her, which seemed a trifle excessive. The road was quiet, except for the night breeze rustling the trees. Salamander and Jake were gone. The hazy lights of a beach – Repulse Bay, she reckoned, the only true beach on the island – beckoned far below.

Blue Fan walked up to her, close. ‘If you make it to the beach, you live.’

‘Bullshit,’ Nadia said. ‘It will look better for the headlines if I’m shot in the back fleeing the crime scene.’

‘You make it to the beach, you live. Our code, remember?’

‘Salamander doesn’t live by a code. He twists the rules any way that suits him.’

Blue Fan seemed to consider this for a moment. ‘I am not my grandfather. You will have a five second head start.’

Nadia scanned the bushes and trees descending at a thirty-degree angle to the beach, five hundred metres below. Dense vegetation. Almost no light. There would be roads crossing her path every now and again. It was a chance, a slim one. And there was one good reason to try.

Jake.

She turned back to the four men. Three of them looked eager for the hunt, removing their jackets, revealing heavily-tattooed torsos and arms. The fourth one stood back. At his feet was a long holdall. A sniper rifle. Just in case. There was an open, flat stretch of land between the tree line and Repulse Bay. He’d have a clear shot.

She spoke to Blue Fan. ‘If we meet again, just bear in mind that for me, there are no rules.’

‘Everyone follows rules. Most are not aware of the rules they follow. Now, run, Nadia Laksheva. Run for your life. One.’

Nadia sprinted across the tarmac into thick bush, ducking just in time beneath a low hanging branch. In her head, she counted. Two. She tripped over a root, and tried to roll in the soft earth and leaves, but ended up sliding on her front. Three. She got up and start running again. Four. Taking large, loping strides, each one threatening to twist her ankle on treacherous undergrowth, she thought about alternative tactics: lying low, climbing a tree, breaking off to the left or right. No. The quickest route to life was a straight line. Five. She heard the thrashing of the three men entering the bushes behind her, their footfalls thumping the ground. They probably knew this terrain, and would spread out in case she was stupid enough to hide.

The headlamps of a car rounding a bend lit up the foliage below, and a clearer passage emerged to the left. She bolted for it. Darkness flooded in again, but the route was etched on her retinas, and she ran as fast as she could. Suddenly she spilled onto asphalt, an empty road, her knees buckling as she hit solid terrain. No cars, just the men closing on her. A high-pitched pfft sound to her right announced a bullet from a silenced weapon. She dashed for the other side of the road and dived into the bushes.

She rolled the way she’d been taught, knowing that at this speed, if she hit a tree trunk, she’d be stunned long enough for them to catch her. But she came up on her feet and continued, arms in front of her in a crude triangle, hands in front of her head. A thick branch whacked her ribs, making her spin around, but she kept her balance. She kept her arms up. Protect the head, always. That’s what the Chef had taught her. She heard the whine of a motorcycle, maybe a local on his way home on the road she’d just crossed. But Salamander’s men were already charging through the bushes behind her. She had maybe another four hundred metres to go. She wasn’t going to make it. Not even close.

She kept running.

A second pfft told her they were trying to down her in the woods before she reached the next road, so that became her goal. Just make it to the road. A branch exploded to her left, so she began zigging and zagging. Maybe if she was lucky, she’d hit the road just as the motorbike was coming along it, and maybe … Too many maybe’s.

Just fucking run!

She spotted the white lines of the road through a gap in the trees, and pushed off for one final sprint, but the next bullet found her left shoulder and sent her sprawling forward. Her hands instinctively went down to brace against the fall, and a branch struck her in the face. It felt like she’d been punched on the nose, and she tumbled out of the woods, her head smacking onto the warm tarmac.

Through ringing ears, she heard the motorbike’s engine, the driver braking, crunching through the gears. She crawled towards the white line, her final goal. She touched it. If she was killed here, bleeding, wounded, at least somebody might ask why a kill shot had been necessary. A seed of doubt before the investigation was closed. She imagined the headline. Russian assassin-bitch gets what she deserves.

Shoes skidded to a halt in the dirt. The men didn’t venture onto the road. Of course, three men chasing an unarmed, wounded woman would look suspicious. They’d either have to leave her, or kill the motorcyclist if he stopped. She heard the crackle of static followed by a low, urgent voice. One of the men was asking Blue Fan what to do.

The motorbike was slowing. She regretted it. An innocent passer-by was going to be killed.

The men stepped out into the road, fanning around her. She looked up into the glare of the headlamp, unable to see the rider, the motorbike’s engine humming calmly.

Three quick silenced shots. Tap-tap-tap. Three pairs of legs around her buckled as the men slumped to the ground. Neck shots, all of them, cutting the spine. A shot like that gave the soon-to-be-dead person a few seconds to get over the shock and make peace with their maker. Only one person she knew preferred this tricky target.

The Chef stuck the bike in first and drove closer, then leant over and scooped her up off the ground as if she weighed nothing. He swung her around behind him on the bike, and they sped off. She held on as best she could. Then she remembered the sniper. He’d not been able to get a fix on her or the Chef while they were under tree cover, but as soon as they took the corner, they’d have to slow down, and he’d take the shot. They approached the bend, and the Chef again braked down through the gears. She tried to shout Sniper! but she had no voice.

He braked further, and she guessed this was it. But the Chef didn’t take the turn. He ploughed straight into the forest. Despite being whipped by leaves and small branches, and nearly being knocked off several times, Nadia wished she could see Blue Fan’s face right now.

But she was losing blood, and the wound burned like hell. Each bump was like a screwdriver jabbing at her shoulder. She was growing cold, going into shock, unconsciousness not too far away. She buried her head into the Chef’s back, and listened to the rhythmic whine of the engine as he shifted through the gears. She slipped, caught herself, and he pulled up a ramp. The bike skidded to a halt, and she felt something like a belt tighten around her lower back, securing her to him.

They sped off again, into a tunnel, where the engine’s whine became a throaty drone reverberating off the tall arched walls, headlamps flashing past her, the Chef weaving in and out of traffic. She tried to stay awake. Even with the belt she could still fall off, or upset the bike and get them both killed. Suddenly they were out of the tunnel, and she saw banks of floodlights up above, which meant they were near Happy Valley stadium, not far from Wan Chai, Blue Fan’s territory. What was the Chef thinking?

Suddenly men and women in white coats were all around her. She was on a gurney. What had happened? She must have blacked out. Where was the Chef? Had she fallen off, caused an accident? She couldn’t remember, could barely feel anything. People in pale blue masks, smocks and hats were animated above her, the ceiling lights moving fast. They were running, shouting. A bespectacled face appeared, asked something urgently, she had no idea what. What would he need to know? Of course. Blood type. She told him, in English. He barked something to somebody she couldn’t see.