The deadliest kind of assassin is one who is already dying…

As the radiation poisoning that Nadia Laksheva was exposed to in Chernobyl takes hold of her body, she knows she has mere weeks to live. But Salamander, the terrorist who murdered her father and sister has a deadly new plan to ‘make the sky bleed’. Nadia is determined to stop him again, even if it is the last thing she ever does …

The only clue she has are the coordinates 88˚ North, a ridge in the Arctic right above one of the largest oil fields in the world, three thousand metres below the ice. If Salamander takes hold of the oil field, he could change the climate of the whole planet for generations to come.

But can Nadia stop him before her own time runs out?

The gripping third and final novel in J.F. Kirwan’s brilliant spy thriller series. Perfect for fans of Charles Cumming, Mark Dawson and Adam Brookes.

Also by J.F. Kirwan

Nadia Laksheva Spy Thriller Series

66 Metres

37 Hours

88º North

J. F. Kirwan

ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES

J.F. KIRWAN

In his day job, J.F. KIRWAN travels worldwide, working on aviation safety. He lives in Paris, where he first joined a fiction class – and became hooked! So when a back injury stopped him scuba diving for two years, he wrote a thriller about a young Russian woman, Nadia, where a lot of the action occurred in dangerously deep waters. It was the only way he could carry on diving! But as the story and characters grew, he realised it was not one book, but three… J.F. Kirwan would love to hear from readers. You can follow him on Twitter at: @kirwanjf.

Thanks to my pre-readers, Andy, Beatrice and Laura, my ever-trusty writer colleagues Chris, Dimitri, Marie, Mary-Ellen and Gwyneth, and my editor Charlotte and the team at HQ Digital, HarperCollins.

And thanks to all my friends and family, who kept the faith when it mattered most.

In memory of John and Dino, two real-life heroes.

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Also by

Title Page

Author Bio

Acknowledgements

Dedication

Prologue

PART ONE

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

PART TWO

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

PART THREE

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Epilogue

Extract

Endpages

Copyright

Prologue

When killers enter a dark, smoke-filled room hunting their quarry, they don’t usually look up to the ceiling. Which was exactly where Blue Fan was, her hands and feet wedged against the edges of a recess, as if crucified on an X-shaped cross. Like a sacrifice. Which is what she’d have been if they’d detected her. One of them did glance her way, but not long enough to distinguish her head-to-toe camouflaged suit from the matt black ceiling. Muscles taut, not breathing, she counted the rifle-sight lasers criss-crossing the empty chamber. Three. Disappointing.

She was worth more.

As the door sealed behind them, shutting off all light, the night-goggled men stole forward. All she saw now were the lasers. They told her where the men were, which way they were facing. She listened to their measured breathing, smelt the fresh Hoppe’s No. 9 gun oil smeared on their weapons. They were directly below her. The one on the right stalked away from the other two.

A mistake.

Two stilettos hung immobile from breakable lanyards around her wrists. She took a silent breath, relaxed her elbows and kicked off with her feet, snatching the handle of each blade as she dropped.

One of the two men below her must have heard the whisper of flesh against stone, because he turned, too late. Her first blade syringed into the closest soldier’s neck, transecting his spine at C5, taking him out of the game, while her second blade – for the soldier who’d turned – ice-picked through the gap just above his breastbone. Mortal wound, not yet dead. She used his crumpling body to pivot, and landed in a crouch. Withdrawing the first blade, she sheltered behind her human shield as the third soldier whirled around and squeezed the trigger on his automatic rifle, and didn’t stop. The deluge of bullets finished his comrade.

‘Lights!’ she shouted.

The room flooded with bright light, blinding the third soldier. He ripped off his goggles but didn’t release the trigger, pummelling her body-shield while she waited for his magazine to empty. He let go of the rifle to grab his handgun, but she’d already sprung upwards. His eyes locked upon her empty throwing hand as the blade speared his throat. Two rounds blasted into the concrete floor as he choked, drowning in his own blood, his free hand uselessly trying to stem the flow from his neck. He fell backwards onto the concrete, already dead, his arms and legs splayed, a mirror image of her on the ceiling six seconds earlier.

Blue Fan surveyed the scene. All dead. All clear. She retrieved her stilettos, and wiped off the blood on one of the soldier’s uniforms. The door opened. Two heavily-tattooed, unarmed men strolled into the room, as if this was business as usual. One of them kicked the third soldier, just to be sure, or maybe for the hell of it.

‘Weapons to Kai Tak,’ she said. She studied the three corpses for a moment, and their military insignia. British. SAS. Okay, that made up for it a little. Aside from the wounds, they were in good condition – or at least most of their organs would be, not to mention their bone marrow. “Bodies packed in ice, straight to Dr Lam.’

Another man entered. Not merely old, ancient, his white beard knotted together by a pale blue opal ring, the same colour as his eyes. Like Death come for a visit. The Judge, independent from any triad, yet holding them all to account. She had other names for him.

‘You know what day it is?’ the Judge croaked.

How could she forget? It was her birthday. Which meant this had been nothing but a warm-up. These men had been professional soldiers. But today she would face something else. A triad assassin. Someone like her. Not as good, though. Never as good.

‘You must prepare,’ he said.

As if he cared. He’d love to see her dead on the floor, sell her kidneys, her eyeballs, probably give them away for free. He was Old School, and she was a woman, one who’d risen higher than any other in a triad. She met his eyes. They exuded warmth, friendship, trust. She knew better. He’d spent a lifetime perfecting how to lie with his eyes, and too many had gone to their graves trusting them.

‘I am always prepared,’ she replied.

‘We shall see.’

***

The rain fell thick and fast, like dull blades. Blue Fan stared down at the tangle of silver carp wriggling in a white plastic box, protected from the downpour by a tarpaulin. Their sharp eyes accusing, their mouths gaped, barely able to breathe. Soon to be bought, cooked, digested, excreted, chemically treated, and flushed back into the sea. She selected the healthiest, most vigorous one. The fishmonger, a stooped and crinkly old woman with dyed red hair in a bun, snatched the fish out of the bucket with bony fingers, quick as a heron, then went back into slow motion. Blue Fan regularly saw this woman teaching tai chi fan at six every morning in Victoria Park. Funny, in the West, people flaunted their talents. Here, they concealed them.

The open-air food market in Wan Chai bustled as always, Blue Fan’s nostrils assaulted on all fronts by pungent spices and glutinous stews. She didn’t need to buy food. She was the acting head of the Green Dragon triad, its enforcer. She could breeze into any one of a hundred homes and they would let their children go hungry in order to feed her. Yet every day she walked the streets on which she’d grown up, reminding herself who she was, how far she’d come, and how easy it would be to fall back there. She glanced up through the torrent to the overpass, clogged with taxis on their way to the snail’s-pace undersea tunnel to Kowloon. Turning back, she scanned the apartment windows, each with its dim aluminium box housing an aircon unit, searching for a thin sniper’s barrel. Nothing. The attempt would be close-quarters. Triad custom. A knife, or a butcher’s cleaver, perhaps even a spear. Or a death-touch, though that skill was almost lost now.

The sea of faces around her were all normal; people hurried on account of the rain and the imminent threat of a cyclone – it was August, the season for them – whereupon everything would be quickly battened down and all the streets would empty. A few confused tourists sheltered their phones more than their heads in order to translate shopping requests. Triad assassins would never masquerade as foreigners. There was a code, after all. They lived and died by it, herself included. She searched for men with tattoos. Nothing. The warning had said noon.

It was 12:03.

She heard it before she saw it: the stuttered hum of a bladed weapon tomahawking through the air. She dropped down low into a snake posture, right leg outstretched on the soggy ground, left leg bent double, as the axe sailed past her and squelched into the forehead of a balding man with an umbrella, his shirt spattered by rain, a sheen of sweat on his face from the intense humidity. Until a moment ago he’d been next in line to buy fish. He keeled over, rigid, silent, already dead, eyes unseeing, the umbrella falling with him like a frozen parachute. Blue Fan triangulated the position of the attacker behind her, and was about to let one of her razor fan-knives slip from her fingers, when a ragged child ran across her path.

Her eyes met the assassin’s: an athletic male, jet black hair in a ponytail, a tiger tattoo on his inner forearm, its front claws outstretched, its jaw set in an eternal, angry roar. Others around her suddenly caught up with events. A woman screamed. The fishmonger vanished into the dark recesses of her shop, while another shopkeeper stumbled backwards and tripped over his wares, upsetting water-filled cartons, spilling gawping koi and angry crabs onto the cobbled pavement. People ran. The attacker removed two more short axes from his belt, one in each hand, and crossed them in front of him as he faced her. A male tourist tried to video them, until Blue Fan skewered his smartphone with one of her blades. He stared at it a moment, then dashed off.

Thunder cracked, loud and close. Warm rain lashed down, drenching everything. Wind whipped water into her eyes. The cyclone was early. On cue, the siren wailed, and everyone vanished.

Now it was just the two of them.

She hadn’t moved from her snake-stance, a fresh blade in each hand, four more in reserve. He uncrossed his arms, yelled a warrior’s cry and scythed through the rain, arms whirling like propellers, slashing the air, leaving no space. He was good. She pulled her legs together to stand upright. No mean feat, but she trained every day, she had since she’d been a child. She watched, perceiving the pattern, looking for an opening. There was none. Make that very good. She raised her arms ready to throw, and timed it so that one blade would follow a fraction of a second after the first. It might be possible to block the first, but almost impossible to dodge the second. She launched her two blades. They clanged as he deflected them, sending them skittering across the ground.

Make that exceptional.

He was methodical, focused, a thresher bearing down on her. She couldn’t see a way through, and so, not for the first time, she knew she would have to kill him using psychology, as her grandfather, Salamander, had taught her.

She turned and ran.

He chased her into a blind alley. She let her gait falter, just a fraction, giving the impression of fear. She glanced left and right, as if in panic, felt him close on her, heard the fast helicopter rhythm of his axes. She needed to make him break his stride, accelerate for the kill, create an opening. It wasn’t happening. Somewhere deep inside her, panic tried to rise, but years of brutal training pulped it.

The most difficult martial art she’d mastered was Mind Boxing, a linear mode of attack, whereas his movements were circular. But it was only partly about movements. She was out of space, and out of time. Never put your back against the wall, Salamander had told her, because you might as well be stood up in a coffin, and this assassin almost had her there. Almost. She raised her right leg behind her, planting her foot against the wall, her standing leg vertical and straight. She faced her attacker, her hands in fists close to her chest, blades pointing upwards. His eyes narrowed. He’d not seen this move. How could he? Only Salamander knew it. A lost North Korean technique. She added the final, necessary touch.

She closed her eyes.

A shift in his rhythm created that split-second opening she needed. He accelerated forward. She sank backwards, both legs arcing like bows, opened her eyes and locked onto the axes, computing the timing. He lunged forwards, his left axe aiming the killer blow to her head, the right whirling behind for the follow-up. She kicked off from the wall. Her turn to yell now, a dragon’s roar. Her right blade spiked through his descending wrist, while her body twisted, giving her that extra reach. Her left blade punctured his throat and severed his spine, cutting his brain off from his limbs. Blood spattered her face. The assassin’s second axe, momentum still guiding its course, slammed into her shoulder. But it was devoid of power and precision, and struck her with a glancing blow, the axe toppling from his fist. A flesh-wound. A gash she’d stitch later. A scar for the rest of her life.

But at least she still had a life.

She extracted the blades from his neck and wrist as he sagged onto the ground. Collecting herself into a formal standing posture, a soldier standing to attention, she bowed to her dead assailant.

She heard a slow clap. The Judge. He was dressed in a hooded orange robe, like the Buddhist monk he professed to be. Those denim-blue eyes still sparkled, though he was at least eighty. He approached, and stood at the other side of the corpse, gazing downwards.

‘He was one of the best,’ he said.

Not the best, then.

‘Your role will be unchallenged for another year,’ he said. ‘At least amongst the five.’

The five triads who still held to the old ways.

He passed her a rag from one of his robe pockets. For the blood. She took it. Her grandfather would have beaten her for being cut, locked her in a dark cell with no food, water or shit-hole for three days. After all, the axe’s edge could have been poisoned.

A group of police skidded to a halt at the open end of the alley, each wearing head-to-toe transparent waterproofs over their uniforms. She tensed, but the Judge remained serene. The four officers came over, picked up the body and the axes, and took everything away. As if she and the Judge were invisible. Thunder cracked again. She shivered. She wasn’t cold; it was still thirty degrees, but she was bleeding.

‘I must go,’ she said, asking permission, because with the Judge, that’s how it was.

‘Your grandfather failed.’

Of course he’d failed. Otherwise she’d know. Everyone would know. London would be ash. The question was …

‘He escaped.’

Now she really wanted to go.

‘They are looking for him. And you.’

Finally he nodded, and she left.

‘Till next time,’ he said, in a mocking tone, his words washed onto the street by the rain.

She’d been wary before, knowing an assassin was after her. But now her grandfather – Salamander – would return. Shamed. Disgraced. Which made him more lethal than ever. And he would have plans for her, as always. Plans she would hate to the core. Like London. She’d pretended until now, gone along with his ideas, worn a mask. But now he would see through her. Then he would kill her.

She trudged up waterlogged steps to the overpass, devoid of cars due to the cyclone. Rain pelted the steaming asphalt, the skyscrapers of Tsim Sha Tsui barely visible across the bay. She took in a long, deep breath. This was her city, her home. She would never leave. Her father had long ago secured a plot for her grave on the hill overlooking Victoria Park and the bay. She lifted her bare face to the rain. Stark white bolts forked down, catching the lightning rods of the most beautiful skyline in the world, the intense thunder sending a tremor through her body. A thought occurred. She could not kill Salamander because, despite everything, he was still head of her triad so even if she succeeded, her life would be forfeit.

The answer was simple, as it often was. Find someone else, someone outside the triad system, to do it for her.

PART ONE

Chapter One

Skyscrapers punctured the cloud layer, their glass facades gleaming gold in the morning sun. They floated above a sea of white, the cloud base locking the local and expat population into the sweatbox that was Hong Kong. The plane approached the airport on Chek Lap Kok island, and Nadia felt respect for what humanity could achieve. Yet as the A380 dipped, the white turned to smudgy grey, and she recalled that while most were prepared to do an honest day’s work, there were those few who would tear it all down.

Salamander.

Her quarry, the world’s most wanted terrorist. He was on the run after she’d thwarted his attempt to nuke London, but not before he’d taken out eight world leaders. She stared down as Kowloon unfolded itself, Hong Kong Island opposite, several green-and-white Star Ferries traversing the short expanse of water in between, carrying people to and fro. He was here. And although his organisation was in ruins, he would know she and Jake were coming for him.

Jake touched her arm. ‘Did you get some sleep?’

Two hours, out of an eleven-hour flight in first class. Before she’d thrown up in the loo. Before she’d seen the spot of blood that told her she was doomed, radiation from her stunt back in Chernobyl exacting its deadly toll. Four weeks left before she’d slip this skin.

‘Yes,’ she lied. When did she start lying to Jake? Now, apparently. If he knew the truth, he’d abort the mission, or worry too much about her and get them both killed.

He gave her a searching look. They knew each other too well. Distraction then. Besides, she needed to tell him about her phone call.

‘I called for reinforcements.’

He sat back. ‘Greaves? Mallory?’

Not a bad idea. Maybe later. ‘No. The Chef.’

The plane bumped onto the tarmac. A few people clapped. Engines shifted into reverse, thrusting her against her seat belt, then eased off.

‘Seriously? You can just snap your fingers and he comes running?’

‘I wish,’ she said, smiling. ‘But the Colonel, he can.’

Jake nodded. ‘Why is he called the Chef?’

Good question. ‘Nobody knows.’

‘You never asked?’

She shook her head. ‘You haven’t met him. Not exactly one for small talk.’

Jake let it go, and she gazed out the porthole. The runway shimmered in the heat. August in Hong Kong wasn’t recommended. This was the month most expats fled to cooler climes, the humidity intolerable. She turned back to Jake’s difficult-to-lie-to blue eyes. Like the ocean. The stewardess handed him his jacket. Nadia studied his profile, and suddenly wanted to call it all off. Screw Salamander, screw everything. Three weeks of functional life left. Maybe less. They could head to Thailand. She could fuck his brains out until the sickness really kicked in, then swallow a bullet. Maybe do a deep dive, and keep going.

She caught herself. No. She’d promised too many people. Salamander had taken everyone from her. Her sister, her father, Jones, Bransk. Only Jake was left. And he wanted revenge as well, for Lorne.

‘You up for this?’ he asked, turning back to her.

She stood up and folded her arms, waiting for him to rise and let her off the plane. He flashed one of his winning smiles as he got up, and she felt a pang. She was going to miss those …

They were met in the chilly air-conditioned Customs area by a small entourage of uniformed police, led by a man who introduced himself as Inspector Chen, head of counter-terrorism in the Hong Kong Territories. Short, lean, dark-haired, he greeted them with a smile that could almost have been a sneer. He spoke too fast. His English was good, but it took Nadia a few seconds to untangle the heavily-accented word-stream and work out what he’d just said. The three policemen behind him, alert but bored, said nothing. Jake seemed to understand Chen better. Even though Nadia frequently dreamed in English, it wasn’t her mother tongue.

She caught ‘we have transport waiting,’ and was about to follow, when Jake’s tone grew an edge.

‘We’re taking the MTR.’

The metro? Why? But she wasn’t about to second guess Jake. Maybe he was making a statement, that he and Nadia needed to work alone.

Chen’s sneery smile flat-lined. ‘You are guests of the Chinese—’

‘We jointly represent MI6 and FSB,’ Jake said, as if there was nothing more to say.

Chen remained unruffled. His sneer re-emerged, no longer masquerading. His men no longer looked bored. Two of them took a pace, fanning out behind their leader. They wore sidearms. Chen didn’t. Jake and Nadia were unarmed, of course, though she hoped not for long. Maybe that was why Jake wanted to separate from this official escort.

Chen puffed out his chest. ‘Then we will accompany you.’

Jake didn’t miss a beat. He’d thought it through. She’d have to have a word with him later about her low tolerance for surprises.

‘No,’ he said. ‘If you come with us, no one will talk to us, and we’ll have a big target painted on the backs of our heads.’

She watched Jake. There was something else. He didn’t trust the local police. Hardly surprising. Salamander, his son Cheng Yi before him, and now his granddaughter Blue Fan all operated out of Hong Kong, yet were never arrested, never brought in for questioning. The HK database had been completely empty on these three, except for Cheng Yi’s funeral. Not even birth certificates. Which made her wonder … Now the Territories were run by China. Power had shifted since British colonial rule had expired. Still they’d remained hidden all this time. Did Salamander have friends in the Hong Kong government? Or China?

Chen had his hands by his sides, the pinkie of each stretched out, and his three men drew their pistols. Slick. No barking of orders that would draw attention to the group. She and Jake were on the wrong side of passport control. They were in international space. Chen could put them back on the plane, send them home. It looked as if Jake had overplayed his hand.

A man in a crumpled beige suit hustled over to them, his brow sweating despite the aircon, dampening the wavy fringe of unkempt rusty-grey hair, his belly protruding far over his belt. When he spoke, it was in the Queen’s English.

‘Inspector Chen, no need for that, these are my guests.’ He held out his palm as he approached, and bowed with such an amiable face that Chen had no choice but to shake his hand.

‘Mr Hanbury,’ Chen said, for the first time his voice slowing to a normal pace.

‘So sorry I’m late. Traffic, you know, and I had to take the dogs to the vet again, well you of all people know how it is, with Biyu and Da Chun, how they fuss over their Boxer.’ He turned briefly to the three men. ‘Guiren, Jun, so good to see you again. And you, young sir, I don’t believe we’ve met?’ He offered his hand to the third policeman who still held his pistol, his eyes darting between his colleagues to know how he should react.

Chen spoke again. ‘Mr Hanbury, we have a situation here—’

‘Oh come, come, I think not. I have a letter here from the Embassy, and an email from the HK CEO’s office, granting these two good people diplomatic immunity. It just came through an hour ago, so how could you possibly have known.’ He showed his iPhone to Chen. Nadia caught sight of it. A sea of Chinese characters.

Hanbury was good. And prepared. Nadia noticed two male baggage handlers who were taking their time, stealing occasional glances in Hanbury’s direction. She doubted they were armed, but they belonged to Hanbury.

Chen took and read the letter, quickly scrolling down the iPhone, stabbing it with his forefinger, knowing he’d been outplayed. He turned to Jake, his face breaking into an award-winning fake smile.

‘Welcome to Hong Kong. Enjoy your stay.’ He glanced briefly towards Nadia. His smile evaporated, and he and his men marched off. The baggage handlers melted into a group of tourists.

‘So sorry about all that. Alex Hanbury, at your service., but just call me Hanbury, everyone does for some reason.’ He offered his hand to Nadia. She shook it. Clammy and limp. Somehow it suited him.

Hanbury led them towards the express train, then at the last moment they veered off towards the taxi area. As soon as they passed through the automatic glass panels to board one of the red and white taxis, whose door and boot automatically swung open, the heat and humidity smacked into her. Hanbury said some words in Chinese, then spoke again as the driver seemed not to understand.

Catching her inquisitive eye, Hanbury explained. ‘I always try Cantonese first, in case the driver is local, then if that fails, I switch to Mandarin, which is what the influx of Chinese mainlanders speak.’

She climbed in next to Jake, Hanbury in front. As soon as the doors closed, she was washed in cool air. The taxi pulled out of the underground car park into eye-blistering sunlight that made her wince, until they descended into a long tunnel full of red tail-lights.

She leaned her head towards Jake. ‘You like changing your mind.’

‘The sooner we disappear the better.’

She nodded towards the front of the cab, to Hanbury. ‘We could do with some local knowledge.’

Jake asked, and Hanbury filled the role of a cosy radio station, covering weather, politics, where to eat, where not to go – he spent rather a long time on that. All in all, he was an entertaining and jovial tour guide. Eventually they came out of the tunnel, and she got to see the bottom halves of the skyscrapers she’d admired a couple of hours earlier, most of the cloud cover burned off by the sun. Each tower was an architectural marvel, but also a middle finger to nature, and in the case of the tallest, to all its shorter contemporaries. On the Hong Kong skyline, size mattered.

At ground level, everyone walked fast, termites swarming around their metal-and-concrete mounds. There were a number of religions in China, but in Hong Kong the undisputed one was work. The taxi driver veered right and climbed a zig-zagging road, revving through the lower gears. Abruptly he stopped by a railing, and they piled out into the morning heat. The sign at the entrance said ‘Zoological Park’ and Hanbury wandered inside, his handkerchief already drawn to mop his brow.

‘So few places to meet and not be overheard,’ he said. ‘We don’t kid ourselves at the embassy. Besides, once there, they’d track you easily.’ He turned to Nadia, eyes suddenly bulging with excitement, like an overgrown kid. ‘Have you ever seen a snow leopard? Can you imagine, a snow leopard in this heat?’

Without waiting for a reply, he strode up a winding pathway towards metal cages containing shrieking birds, some monkeys, and … the snow leopard didn’t look too happy.

Suddenly she felt nauseous. Not the common garden variety. This was the clawed-animal-in-your-colon kind. She walked as calmly as she could towards a bench.

‘You okay?’ Jake asked.

She didn’t meet his eyes. ‘It’s the heat.’ Second lie. She made a promise to stop at ten.

‘It’s the humidity,’ Hanbury interjected. ‘Over ninety per cent in August. Poor little bugger.’

She glanced up sharply, but Hanbury was staring at the snow leopard. ‘Sometimes I think about coming here in the small, wee hours and putting it out of its misery. You see, animals can’t kill themselves. This one never even moves. Animals don’t realise when the game is lost, don’t know when to call it a day.’ He turned to her, and the playful, avuncular veneer was gone. He looked into her, through her, as if she was already gone.

He knew. Possibly through his embassy connections, maybe via the Colonel back in Moscow. But he knew.

Jake was squatting on the pebbles, staring at the leopard. It got up and came over to sniff his fingers through the wire mesh. Jake stroked its nose. Hanbury raised an eyebrow.

‘Are you talking about Salamander?’ Jake asked, standing up.

‘Who else?’ Hanbury replied, smoothly.

The nausea ebbed. Nadia needed to get her head into the game. ‘So, can we talk here?’

Hanbury plonked himself down next to her, with a middle-aged sigh, and the wooden beams under her bottom lifted a few centimetres. He pulled out a smartphone, touched it a few times then surveyed the blue and white sky. ‘Definitely.’

‘Do you know the location of Blue Fan?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

She and Jake exchanged a glance. They hadn’t expected that particular answer.

‘Then why isn’t she in custody? Someone knock her off her number-two-most-wanted pedestal?’

Hanbury leant his head back to survey the sky through the tree cover. ‘Not quite.’ Some locals meandered towards the snow leopard enclosure, a giggling toddler in pigtails riding her father’s shoulders while his beaming wife shouldered the cluttered pushchair up the slope.

Hanbury hauled himself upright, his paunch leading the way, and headed down towards the central gardens. Nadia and Jake followed. They walked past two elderly women doing their morning exercises. Nadia realised the park was full of people doing warm-ups and tai chi. One tall, reed-thin woman of indeterminate age was practising sword-fighting, her ponytail waving behind her as she executed a flawless series of complex movements, while a younger woman kneeling on the dusty ground, watched with sharp, unwavering eyes.

‘The serious martial artists are over in Victoria Park, the exhibitionists are in the Hong Park over in Central, but there is some real local talent here and it’s more relaxed,’ Hanbury said, wiping sweat from his brow with a second handkerchief. They all sat on a stone bench, and Nadia studied three separate groups of teachers and students learning the tai chi long form. Yang style – she recognised it. She’d seen the Chef practice once.

Hanbury sighed. ‘We sent people in at 4 a.m. SAS.’

Jake spoke first. ‘And?’

Hanbury flourished his hands like a conjurer. ‘And nothing. They disappeared. Dead of course. There’s quite a prosperous organ market here. Being fit young men, they were probably sliced, diced and iced, then shipped in polystyrene to Mumbai.’

Nadia winced. Hanbury was so matter of fact about it. There was more to him than met the eye. He wasn’t standard embassy material. Jake had shown her Hanbury’s file on the plane. Contractor for Her Majesty’s government in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Was he a killer? Hard to tell. Probably one step removed. Not the one to pull the trigger, but the one who set up the target. Which made her wonder …

Hanbury continued. ‘Blue Fan’s location – at least that particular one – is an underground maze of tunnels and chambers. Many homeless live there at night, not to mention it’s a sanctuary for the remnants of a Falun Gong circle. The police won’t enter, they say it will cause a social storm, be used as political capital by those who oppose re-integration, trigger another Umbrella Protest.’

It wouldn’t stop her and Jake going in. Besides, her organs were too irradiated to make any money on the market. Her mind stalled. She’d promised not to think about it. Find Salamander, kill him, then give Jake a good time. That was Plan A. Plan B was take down Salamander and get killed in the process. Plan B, statistically speaking, was Plan A. Plan C was simply get killed in an exotic location.

Nadia switched her attention to the central group of Chinese locals near a dry fountain. Most were sitting in a circle, watching a young man who moved more fluidly than any other she’d ever seen, except the Chef, her taciturn trainer back in Russia who should be coming to their aid soon. This man, though, was something else; it was as if he had no bones or joints, like he was a human snake. The two other groups at opposite ends of the park quickly finished what they were doing, and scuttled over to join the growing audience. Hanbury was mid-sentence, but was mainly addressing Jake, and the tail-end of the nausea still tugged at her guts, so Nadia got up and walked over to watch. She’d been trained in martial arts, and knew a bit of tai chi, but this guy had obviously popped out of the womb doing it.

He finished a complicated routine, where he crouched down and leapt up and spun and kicked, all in a heartbeat, landing soundlessly. Everyone around burst into applause, Nadia included. Some of the people clearly knew him; a local tai chi hero.

The crowd was beginning to disband, when a young woman cut through and walked straight up to the man. She had short, rough-cut black hair, and wore a tight-fitting black one-piece suit with an open Chinese collar. Her features weren’t quite Chinese, they were thicker set. She was slim, not an ounce of fat. The only non-black item on her person was a rectangular grey pouch strapped to her outer right thigh. Sticking out the top were six thin silver handles, with a metallic blue sheen. Blades.

Shit.

The woman adopted a martial stance, right leg forward, right arm bent, her open palm head height. A challenge to the man who had just wowed everybody. The crowd that had begun dispersing converged again, creating a solid wall of people, Nadia on the inner ring. Which meant Jake and Hanbury could see nothing.

The man noticed the challenger for the first time, with a barely detectable flinch. He knew who she was. He cautiously mirrored her stance, and the back of his right wrist made light contact with hers. The crowd stopped breathing. It was like an adult version of the game ‘blink’. Thirty seconds passed. Nadia could see his eyes, but also those of Blue Fan – Nadia presumed it was her, in the flesh. Maybe she could try and arrest Blue Fan here and now. But with what? She had no weapons. Besides, this couldn’t be coincidence.

A few people pulled their smartphones out to take videos, but others in the audience dissuaded them, politely or otherwise.

Without warning, his arm rammed forward like a piston, propelling an iron fist, like he really meant to flatten her, but Blue Fan’s head had moved. She whirled around almost too fast to see, her left arm chopping towards his neck. He blocked it with his own left, while Blue Fan’s back leg scythed around low, aiming to sweep him off his feet. But he was good, and spun in mid-air, landing a few feet away from her. She stood up straight, relaxed, like she was waiting for a bus.

He wasted no time, and attacked in a flurry of hands, feet, knees and elbows, a head-butt or two thrown in for good measure. She evaded them all. She didn’t block them, she simply wasn’t in whatever space he tried to strike. The man began to perspire. Blue Fan remained serene.

The local hero backed off, trying to regain his composure. Blue Fan crouched down low on her right haunch, her left arm pointing forward, palm stiff, as if it was a spear. She sprung towards him, the spear unwavering. He tried to block, to kick, to evade, but Blue Fan countered, her arm always ending in the same location, aimed towards his neck. In the end she tripped him and drove him down to the ground, her fingers pressing into his throat. He yielded. For a moment Nadia thought Blue Fan was going to kill him. But she stood up in a formal statue, as if standing to attention, and bowed to him. No applause this time, though Nadia thought she’d just witnessed the most dazzling display of martial artistry she’d ever seen. Instead the crowd drew back, except a few who helped the man to his feet. Everyone was awe-struck.

No, they were afraid.

Blue Fan ignored them all and walked right up to Nadia, while those standing behind Nadia vanished, and Nadia’s Plan C spiked in probability. Blue Fan’s black eyes bored into Nadia’s.

‘Go home,’ she said, her accent thick, guttural. Like her grandfather’s. ‘Or else you will die here.’

Nadia didn’t know why she decided to say it, especially since she’d not even told Jake yet. Maybe some things were easier to tell an enemy than a friend.

‘I am dying. Might as well be here. Nice and warm.’

Blue Fan’s eyes narrowed a fraction. Nadia didn’t miss the moment. ‘I’m going to kill your grandfather.’

Blue Fan’s eyes relaxed. Were they smiling? ‘Juk neih houwahn.’ She spun around and walked away, the crowd parting before her. Nadia dashed back to Jake and Hanbury, but a quick backwards glance told her that Blue Fan was long gone.

Jake looked up, smiling. ‘Must have been good.’

‘It was Blue Fan,’ she replied.

His smile stalled, then vanished. Hanbury whipped out his phone and began talking urgently, then yelling in Chinese, losing his composure for the first time. Cantonese seemed like a good language to shout in. Sharp, choppy syllables. Maybe she could pick some up if she had the time.

Nadia told Jake – who knew some basic Cantonese from his last trip here – what Blue Fan had said.

‘It means good luck,’ he said.

She gazed back to the crowd, where a group of people consoled their defeated champion. A squad of police entered the park, exactly from where Blue Fan had exited. They had to have passed her. They stopped and surveyed the scene, and one of them spied Nadia across the park. He was smiling. It was Chen. The smile looked genuine this time.

It figured. She turned back to Jake. ‘We need guns.’ She stared at the place where Blue Fan had demolished her opponent. ‘Lots of guns.’

Chapter Two

The pizza delivery man arrived, and placed the box on the coffee table in their suite overlooking the harbour. He didn’t wait for payment.

‘Four cheese is my favourite,’ Nadia said, recalling how Katya used to poke her forefinger down her throat in disgust at the very thought.

Jake lifted the cover of the box. ‘How about Quattro Pistoleros?’

‘This slice is mine,’ she said, plucking the matt black Beretta Cougar from the box. She sprung the cartridge, checked it, then re-inserted it. ‘Zero cholesterol.’

Jake delved into the box, and picked at his metal food a moment. ‘A classic Marguerita for me,’ he said, retrieving an M9.

She knew he didn’t really care about guns like she did. Knives or spear guns were a different story. And on that point, she fished out a knife. ‘Dessert,’ she explained. And then she wondered. There had been another knife in the box, and she hadn’t seen Jake take it. She folded her arms.

Jake shrugged. ‘An MI6 move. Old habits die hard.’

She pocketed her knife. She had to admit she’d almost been hoping to find a pizza in there. She was having difficulty eating, what with the nausea gnawing at her guts, and pizza always smelt so good. To make it worse, Jake had been stealing glances at her when he thought she couldn’t see. He knew something was going on – going wrong – with her. He’d probably figured it out. MI6, as he’d said. She’d rehearsed various ways to tell him. They all sucked.

‘Let’s go for a walk,’ Jake said. ‘Check out the place where Hanbury sent his men yesterday.’

It seemed like a long shot, but why not. She grabbed her lightweight jacket, partly in case it rained, mainly to cover the Beretta handle sticking out of the back of her jeans.

‘Ready.’

Tonnochy Road lived up to its seedy night-time reputation. At one end were the hotels, including the one where Nadia and Jake were staying. But towards the middle it took a downturn. They passed a couple of busy bars, one where a band was playing, the singer doing an impressive rendition of Sinead O’Connor in her heyday. But those treading the sweating pavement slowly shifted from small groups of tourists and Western couples, to single men, some arm-in-arm with attractive, mini-skirted Asian girls in cliff-edge heels. Nadia and Jake walked briskly past the girly bars, where typically an older woman sat outside with two young, very attractive girls, as if in easy conversation. The straggling parade of single guys continued to crawl along, checking out the merchandise, sometimes moving on, other times stopping to chat with the girls. Occasionally this ended with the man walking into the bar with a girl, or even both girls, whereupon new girls would emerge.

A smooth operation. A straightforward business model. Nothing that didn’t have its counterpart in most major cities in the world, though not always so blatant. But something made her stop. Katya. Nadia’s sister had been forced into prostitution for five years. She’d never complained about it, but right now it was as if her dead hands rose up through the uneven paving slabs and seized Nadia’s ankles, anchoring her to the spot. This was a bad idea, she needed to focus on finding Salamander. But she owed her dead sister. Part of the deal that had gotten Nadia out of prison the first time, meant that Katya had been trapped into being – the word stung her – a whore, for five years. She’d see Katya soon, maybe. She wanted to be able to say, ‘hey, I did something for you’. It wouldn’t make it right, but it would be something.

Jake continued a couple of paces then stopped and gave her a quizzical look.

‘Let’s go inside,’ she said.

The older woman who’d been nursing a cigarette, chatting to one of the girls, jerked her head up.

Jake’s eyes narrowed. He walked up to Nadia, and spoke quietly. ‘We’re kind of on the clock here. Whatever the reason you want to go inside, it’s not going anywhere. It’ll still be here tomorrow.’

Exactly. She breezed towards the entrance. The older woman rose quicker than Nadia would have given her credit for, and intercepted her at the doorway. The two girls watched with big eyes.

‘I help you?’ she said. She glanced toward Jake, as if to enlist him. A single woman entering such an establishment was clearly out of the norm.

‘I’d like to go inside.’

‘Like girls?’ the older woman asked. No judgment, just a business question.

One that put Nadia on edge. ‘I’d like to go inside.’ She turned to Jake. ‘Come with me?’ she said.

The older one beamed, a sly smile. She gestured for both of them to enter. As soon as they were inside, everything changed. Super-strong aircon, dazzling purple-white lights that fluoresced the underwear of all the girls inside through their schoolgirl white blouses and short pleated skirts. Four of them danced – well, gyrated – on top of the bar, while half a dozen others milled about with the three punters inside. Ice buckets filled with bottles of champagne – cheap labels she’d never heard of – cluttered the place. The girls with the men were all smiles and giggles, focused on their clients. The others wore faces on a sliding scale between bored and wary.

A local girl, petite with smoky, bedroom eyes, and a tall, vivacious blonde with perfect skin joined Jake and Nadia at a round, stand-up table. ‘Hello handsome,’ the blonde said to Jake, with the hint of a Scandinavian accent, while the dark-haired one came close to Nadia, and stroked her upper arm.

Nadia shut her eyes a moment, clamped her lips together, and imagined Katya. How she must have felt, so many times. Her stomach tightened into a knot, nothing to do with her sickness. Why hadn’t she gotten Katya out of there sooner? Five. Fucking. Years. She opened her eyes.

‘Do you want to get out of here?’ she said, addressing both girls, barely keeping her voice under control. Jake stared at her, like he had no idea what she was doing. That made two of them.

The blonde threw her head back and laughed. ‘It’s customary to have a drink first.’ She waved a lazy finger towards the bar, and a young girl, barely a teen, grabbed a metal bucket, rammed a bottle into the crushed ice, and brought it over. She popped the cork like a pro, deftly filled four glasses, shoved the empty bottle upside-down back into the bucket, and disappeared behind the bar again.

‘I mean get out of this life,’ Nadia said. The other girl was still stroking Nadia’s arm. Her smile had gone, but she said nothing.

The blonde pouted. ‘Oh baby, you’re not going to be a bore, are you? If you’re not here to fuck, you should leave.’ She leaned into Jake, her crimson lips close to his, her breasts pushing against his chest. ‘Be honest, baby. Don’t you want both of us? I only go with Western tourists, never with the locals.’

Jake’s eyes remained locked onto Nadia.

None of this was on her agenda, which was simply ‘Kill Salamander’. But the more she thought about it, about how few days she had left, the more she wanted to rescue at least one person from a dismal life. Jake had said these places would be here tomorrow. There was the problem. No one acted. And soon, for her at least, there would be no tomorrow.

Nadia turned to the smoky-eyed girl. ‘What about you?’

The girl glanced around furtively, and spoke in a low voice. ‘No way out,’ she said, taking a glass. Nadia seized her wrist before the glass reached her mouth.

‘What’s your name? Your real one.’

More furtive glances. ‘Jin Fe,’ she said. She stared at the bubbles in her glass. ‘It’s a joke. My mother was bilingual, Cantonese and English. Jin means swallow, like the bird. Fe means coffee. Swallow coffee.’ She tried to smile, failed, and took a sip.

The blonde’s eyes hardened. She put down her glass, and pointed four fingers in the air. ‘Have it your way,’ she said, and left the table.

It was well-choreographed. Three of the dancers got down from the bar, joined the girls chatting up the punters, and led them to a back room, champagne bottles and ice buckets and all. Four men in cheap black suits and shoelace ties appeared out of the woodwork, two in front of Nadia and Jake, two behind. All of them were thick-set, heads shaved at the front, ponytails at the rear of their scalps. The one directly in front had a dragon tattoo rising from his collar, coiling up over his chin onto his left cheek, a scaly claw poised next to his left eye. It looked fresh. Must have been bloody painful.

‘Five hundred dollars,’ he said, in a measured, oily voice. ‘And you get to leave on your own feet.’ The way he said it, he was hoping they didn’t have the money.

‘Sure,’ Nadia said, and pointed at the Asian girl. ‘But she comes with us.’ The girl began to back away, but Nadia held onto her wrist.

‘Two thousand for the night,’ the guy said, routinely. ‘And she comes back in the morning.’

‘Ten thousand,’ Nadia counter-offered. ‘And she never comes back.’ The girl stared at Nadia, her eyes a cocktail of fear and surprise, with just a dash of something surrendered long ago.

Hope.

Tattoo-man folded his arms, and put his thumb to his lips, as if considering the offer, but Nadia reckoned he wanted to rumble more than he wanted the cash. Probably didn’t like being upstaged by a woman. Then again …

‘One hundred thousand,’ he said, with a lop-sided grin, ‘and you keep the girl. But I’ve been there. She’s not worth it. Maybe you’ll like the taste better.’

The older woman came in from outside. She watched and listened, her narrowed chin making her look like a bird of prey in the stark lighting. No, not a bird of prey. A carrion bird. A crow. She perched at the bar.

Jake spoke. ‘We don’t have—’

Nadia felt Katya watching her. If there was an after-life, then maybe they’d soon be reunited. Or not. It didn’t matter. Nadia needed to right a wrong. This one act was a gift and a penance. In the bigger scheme of things, it didn’t amount to a piss in the ocean. But right here, right now, for Katya, for Nadia, and maybe for this girl, it was everything.

‘She’s coming with us,’ Nadia stated, like it was a done deal, because whatever else happened, that was the way the future was going to play out.

The guy’s grin twisted. ‘American Express?’ A metal rod slid from the sleeve of his suit into his right hand.

Nadia reached around behind her, to snatch her pistol from her waistband, but the crow arrived first.

‘We accept your offer of ten thousand American dollars,’ she said.

Tattoo-man’s grin crawled off his face, then he reeled off a machine-gun volley of protest in Cantonese. The crow talked just as fast, but in a lighter tone. Silk versus bullets. His onslaught faltered in the face of her firm rebuttal. His eyes flicked between her and Nadia, and then to Nadia’s waist, and the fact that she’d been reaching for something, and he did the math the crow had already computed. The other three men said nothing, waiting for their cue from the real boss. And then the crow beckoned someone from the shadows. The blonde. The crow said something, and the blonde’s face flashed disgust, then quickly recovered. She escorted Tattoo-man to one of the cubicles at the back.

The crow gestured to the bar, and Nadia, the girl and Jake walked over. The same young girl who’d delivered the champagne deposited a credit card machine on the counter.

Nadia nodded towards Jake. He pulled out his wallet, and selected one of two gold cards. Not the company one. His own. The three men hung back, but kept their eyes on the trio.

‘I’ll pay you back,’ Nadia said quietly.

‘Birthday present,’ he replied. His phone buzzed, and he cupped his hand over the mouthpiece while he confirmed the transaction.

‘She needs to get her things,’ the crow said, indicating the back.

Nadia shook her head. ‘We’ll be back to pick them up later,’ she lied. She still held the girl’s wrist. But the girl wasn’t resisting any more. ‘But she needs her passport. Send one of your men to get it.’

The crow stared at Nadia for a moment, then nodded to one of the monkey-suits. She then made a phone call of her own, presumably to confirm the money had been transferred. It took five minutes for the passport to arrive.

It felt like an hour.

Nadia, the girl and Jake left. ‘Taxi?’ Nadia said.

Jake shook his head. ‘No, the tram, then up to the Peak, then a taxi back to the hotel.’

Nadia faced the girl. ‘Don’t run, okay?’

She shook her head. ‘Where would I go? If I go back there I will be punished, and any other bar will just send me back to this one.’ She glared at Nadia. ‘What are you going to do with me?’

‘Do you have family?’

She shook her head in a way that Nadia figured it was a lie – the truth being not anymore. Perhaps her family had sold her into prostitution. She thought of her name, Jin Fe, and its origin. Forget ‘perhaps’.

She handed Jin Fe her passport. ‘I’m trading one life for another,’ Nadia said, not expecting her to understand. She imagined Katya nodding and then walking away. Nadia felt as if a weight had dropped off her shoulders.

She spotted the tram bustling down the road towards them. ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

On the other side of Central, close to the zoological park where she’d encountered Blue Fan, they took the funicular. It trundled upwards at a fifty-degree angle to the Peak, making the skyscrapers to the side look like they were leaning, and Nadia had the weird sensation she was falling uphill. Then they arrived at the highest point on Hong Kong Island. It was cooler at the top, and Nadia felt she could breathe for the first time since leaving Moscow.

They got a window-side table at the Peak restaurant, looking down over the skyscrapers competing in light shows; one that slowly shimmered up and down its body from red to blue to purple to green and back to red, another a massive spire straight out of a science fiction film, blazing a beacon of white light into the night sky. She gave Jin Fe two hundred dollars to spend in the shops, and the girl sped away like a ten-year-old with pocket money to burn.

‘She might not come back,’ Jake said.

Nadia shrugged. ‘The whole point was to get her out of her cage.’

‘Have you thought this through?’

She shook her head.

‘It’s about Katya, I get it. But we should be looking for Blue Fan and Salamander, Nadia. We don’t need complications right now—’

‘I’m dying, Jake.’

He said nothing. And the only reaction she could read was one of resigned relief.

‘You knew?’

‘MI6, remember?’

‘I wish you weren’t being a saint about it. Some yelling is in order.’

‘Don’t have it in me, Nadia.’ He reached for her hand. ‘But say the word, and we’ll leave here, go somewhere and—’

‘No. Salamander. It’s the last thing I’m going to do.’

He leaned back, removed his hand, took a sip from his beer in its polystyrene stay-cool sleeve, and stared out at the vista. ‘When’s the Chef arriving?’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I wish I was someone else. Someone who’d dive every day with you in the Maldives until …’

He turned back to her, leaned forwards, his eyes moist, his voice edgy. ‘Until you become too weak, start bleeding internally, and I get to nurse you for a couple of weeks watching you suffer and slip away minute by minute …’

He stopped, leaned backwards again, and took another swig. ‘We’re not tourists, Nadia.’ He patted the inside of his jacket, his M9. ‘This is who we are. Besides, we both know what the likelihood of failure is. Blue Fan killed three SAS yesterday, she impressed you this morning with her martial skills, and the local police aren’t lifting a finger to bring her in.’ He glanced down, as if considering whether or not to say something. Then he did, low, confessional, so she could barely hear him. ‘I wish I could take your place.’

She reached for his hand. He looked up. ‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘Who needs the Maldives?’ He tilted his beer at the window. ‘Best skyline in the world is right here.’

She wanted to stop the world, freeze it, here and now. But Jake was right. They were on a mission, on the clock. She’d had her moment of caprice, freeing Jin Fe. Now it was back to work, because the one thing Salamander wasn’t killing was time.

‘We need to agree on a ground rule, Jake. Salamander plays people. He makes them hostage to each other. They do what he wants, to save the other one, and then both end up dead anyway.’

‘Your point?’

‘We don’t play his game.’

Jake took a swig, the last of the beer, and slapped it down on the table. ‘Deal.’

She had to be sure. It was how Salamander had escaped in Chernobyl, and her sister and father had paid the price. ‘I mean it, Jake.’ She took a breath. ‘If killing him means you die, I will still pull the trigger.’

He didn’t blink. ‘Same goes for me, Nadia.’ He caught the waiter’s eye and made the universal air-signature to ask for the bill.

Jin Fe returned. Nadia took one look at her, decked out in the worst possible combination of garish American baseball and basketball attire, and began laughing.

‘What?’ Jin Fe said. ‘What?’

Jake looked her up and down. ‘We’ll never lose you now.’

Nadia touched her shoulder. ‘Ten thousand dollars. Money well spent.’

Nadia’s phone beeped, and she checked the screen. Her smile subsided. ‘The Chef. His plane just landed.’

Jin Fe beamed. ‘You have your own chef?’

Nadia smiled and squeezed the girl’s shoulder.

Jake’s phone buzzed. ‘It’s Hanbury. Something’s up.’

Chapter Three

They gave Jin Fe a key to their suite and some taxi money, and sent her back to the hotel, with her passport and a slip of paper with a telephone number on it. Nadia said they’d be gone for a few hours, and if they weren’t back by morning, to call the number using the hotel phone.

Jin Fe frowned, but there was a gleam in her eye, perhaps at the prospect of staying in a western hotel without a client, where she could call room service. Nadia wondered how much of a bill the girl could rack up in a matter of hours. It didn’t matter – Nadia still had forty thousand dollars left in her Swiss account, money she was never going to spend, and there was no one else to leave it to. There was nothing of personal value in the room the girl could steal; Nadia and Jake travelled light. Even so, he questioned her judgement.

‘You sure about this? We don’t know her from Adam – well, Eve, I suppose.’

‘I need to do this, Jake.’

‘She could be long gone when we get back.’

‘Good. The whole point is to set her free.’

‘Being free after being in a cage so long might be tough for her. I wondered if you’d want to watch over her a bit.’

‘She is tough. Besides,’ she patted her own gun inside her jacket, ‘I’m not exactly the nurturing mother poster-girl. And we have more pressing business.’

Jake held his hands up in mock-surrender. He reached for the bill while pulling out his wallet. I hope it works out for her.’

‘Thanks,’ she said.

He chucked a few twenties on the table. ‘For what?’

And in that moment, suddenly the Maldives sounded like the only place to be, with him, until the bitter end. She flushed the thought away, this time for good, and laid a ridiculously large tip on top of his bills.

‘For being here,’ she said.

For being you.

They took a cab to Hanbury’s apartment, halfway down the Peak. The slaloming road was hemmed in by trees, but she glimpsed Stanley Harbour on the other side of the island, as the road snaked its way down Victoria Peak’s spine, then crossed back towards Central. The drive was hypnotic, and she nearly drifted off. Whether that was due to jet lag or her illness, she didn’t care to speculate. When they arrived, the driver left them standing outside the barred electric gates, which didn’t open until the taxi had departed.

A woman in a traditional housemaid’s uniform arrived and escorted them along a gravel path. There was no other access unless you happened to be a squirrel, the trees and bushes were so dense. The location was remarkably quiet, save for the distant hum of traffic down below. It meant Hanbury would hear anyone approaching.

Like a squat crab, the apartment perched on four sturdy concrete pillars, the two front legs far longer due to the sharp slope of the terrain. The front, overlooking Hong Kong Bay, was mainly glass. Bullet-proof? Maybe not. Still it was higher than the skyscrapers. A sniper would have to fire a bullet from Kowloon, three miles away. One or two marksmen she’d worked with in Russia could pull it off.

She glanced at her watch. She’d be much happier once the Chef joined them.

A trim, forty-something, black-suited, white-gloved butler, backed by two hyper-looking Dobermans, barred the solid oak entrance. He held out a small lacquered tray.

‘You need to relinquish your firearms if you wish to enter.’

‘Mr Hanbury is expecting us,’ Jake said. The butler did a statue impression, exuding the notion that he was prepared to stand there all night. The dogs didn’t look so patient.

Nadia shrugged. She surrendered her Beretta Cougar. Jake pulled out his M9 and thumped its black polycarbonate body onto the tray. The butler made a short bow and moved aside, his free arm indicating the entrance hall. But as soon as Nadia crossed the threshold, there was a penetrating whine. The dogs growled, baring their teeth, one of them drooling. She froze. The tray appeared next to her. She dug out her knife, and dropped it next to the pistols. Jake fished out his.

The butler said something in Chinese, and the dogs sat down. As Nadia passed, she let them sniff her hand, and crouched down to stroke them behind the ears, her head within biting range. They let her pet them, but remained alert, watching her. She was impressed. Even the dogs were smart.

Hanbury, in tan trousers and a red striped shirt open at the collar, stood in the dimly-lit vast lounge. He gazed dreamily to the city below, one hand smudging the window glass, a whisky tumbler in the other. Classical music blared from four Bang and Olufsen speakers as tall as her. Shostakovich’s 5th. For her benefit, perhaps. Jake approached and began to speak, but Hanbury shushed him by raising the whisky glass, spilling a drop onto the plush carpet, while the crescendo built.

This piece had been her father’s favourite. He used to sit her on his lap and tell her Cossack stories while she listened. She envisioned soldiers marching, then running into battle on the front line, most to their doom, a few to glory, cannons belching smoke and thunder all around. The cadence arrived, an ashtray vibrating noisily on the glass coffee table. Hanbury pushed off from the window and activated a button on a remote he had in his pocket, and the music diminished to a whisper. His rusty-grey hair was brushed to one side, masking the beginnings of a bald patch, making him look like an ageing hippy-turned-diplomat. He had the look of someone who had been a bit of a rebel in his youth, probably a hit with the girls, back in the day. He had that been-there-done-it-all air about him. Not in a boasting way, more like he’d seen enough, thank you very much.

He turned to them. ‘What on earth were you doing on Tonnochy Road?’

So, he’d had them followed.

‘Personal,’ she replied. He probably knew what had happened, and might think she and Jake wanted a threesome with the girl. She didn’t care too much about what he thought. But then she realised she did. Somehow, he made her care. He was an unusual man. The type who led from behind. Someone who didn’t judge you, because he didn’t have to. He made you judge yourself.

‘There are two ways to change the world,’ he said. ‘People will tell you that you need to see the bigger picture.’ He stared down at his whisky, then at her. ‘In my not-so-humble opinion, they are wrong. I’ve watched such people – politicians and so-called leaders – come and go, getting others killed or thrown in prison, while practically every revolution or victory leaves society more or less as it was before, or worse off. You see, the world turns, and, well, history recycles us.’ He smiled, a benevolent – if a little preachy – uncle.

‘The small picture, that’s what you need to see. That’s how to change the world.’ He walked forwards and raised his glass. ‘My dear Nadia, you changed a small picture this evening, and though in the larger scheme of things it doesn’t matter one jot, I salute you.’

Nadia felt her cheeks flush. ‘Spasiba,’ she said quietly.

Hanbury swirled the whisky around in its chunky tumbler, rattling the melting ice cubes against the glass, and took a swig. His smile faded. ‘Salamander’s here,’ he said. ‘In Hong Kong.’

Nadia’s insides tensed, and all her sleepiness vanished. She wanted her Beretta back. Now. ‘Where?’

Hanbury plumped himself into a leather armchair, depositing the tumbler on the table. The butler appeared out of nowhere and placed a coaster underneath, wiping up a drop of the alcohol.

‘He was seen disembarking from a junk in Port Stanley early this morning. Difficult for a man that size to hide. One of ours tried to tail him, but …’ His eyes glazed over, and he picked up the tumbler.

Nadia understood. The tail had disappeared. Dead, if he was lucky, still alive and begging for it by now if not. A thought struck her. ‘The tail, did he know about us?’

Hanbury suddenly looked sheepish, like an overgrown schoolboy caught out. ‘We’re safe here. It’s a fortress. The glass is bulletproof, in case you were wondering. Besides, he’s been here on and off for decades. He’s never interfered with the embassy or its staff.’

Nadia’s gut begged to differ. She suddenly thought about Jin Fe back at the hotel. What if Salamander or Blue Fan turned up there? ‘Jake, we should leave.’

‘Just a minute,’ Jake said, glancing down and then frowning at his mobile phone. ‘Hanbury, can you make a call?’

‘To whom?’

‘It doesn’t matter. My phone shows no signal. It was fine when we arrived.’

Hanbury put the glass down, spilling a few more drops onto the table. He’d clearly had a few. He picked up the cordless phone, went to dial, and then stopped.

Nadia guessed why. No tone. She dug out her mobile. No signal.

‘Our guns, Hanbury,’ Jake said. ‘Now!’

Hanbury looked momentarily confused, but then he grabbed the armrests and heaved himself up.

‘James!’ he yelled.

Then he shouted two names Nadia couldn’t untangle, and the Dobermans beat the butler into the lounge, skidding on the parquet.

‘Lock everything down, James. Give them their guns and break out ours.’ The maid trotted in, then disappeared into another room. James ran back out and returned with their weapons, the maid with two assault rifles.

Nadia spotted it – a faraway light hovering between the two nearest skyscrapers.

‘Get down!’ she shouted.

But at that same moment there was a loud rat-a-tat-tat, as a series of bullets peppered the exact same spot on the glass, and then one broke through. The maid was punched off her feet by a round that took the top of her skull off.

Nadia dropped to the floor on her back and shot out the two lights in the room, leaving just the gloom from the entrance hall. Hanbury crawled towards the maid, while Jake rolled and snatched up one of the assault rifles. But they couldn’t fire outwards, due to the glass. James made it to the other assault rifle while the dogs barked at the window, then ran to their master.

‘Hanbury, we have to get out of here,’ Jake said. ‘The sniper probably has a night-sight. The garage. It’s underground, right?’

Hanbury was on all fours, crouched over the maid. He seemed to only half-hear. Maybe the maid meant more to him than hired help. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We have two bullet-proof Range Rovers.’

‘Lead the way.’

Nadia heard the chopper, the one carrying the sniper. It was moving in, now it had played its advantage of surprise.

James spoke to Hanbury in Cantonese. Hanbury nodded, then crawled flat along the floor, beneath the shelter of the furniture. Like snakes evacuating a sinking ship, the four of them and the two dogs made it to the corridor, where the chopper had no line of sight. Nadia stood up.

James checked a panel of video screens, showing the garage empty except for the two cars, and entered a code into a keypad next to a door. The screen for the stairwell was blank. James’ brow creased, his forefinger hovering over the keypad, then he entered the final digit. ‘Stand back. I will go first,’ he said.

As soon as the door mechanism buzzed, James yanked it open. The sound of a shotgun at close range blasted into the hallway. James was thrown upwards and backwards, his chest-cage ripped open.

Nadia fired at the half-open steel door, her bullets ricocheting down the stairs to the garage. Jake slid across the floor and unloaded a complete magazine from the semi-auto, the noise deafening. Nadia poked her head around the corner. Two men on their backs, too many bullet holes to be alive. The ringing in her ears eased off, replaced by the sound of three people breathing heavily, and the panting dogs standing faithfully by their master.

Jake snatched up James’ semi-auto. ‘We have to go. Hanbury, send the dogs downstairs.

Hanbury was bereft, breathing heavier than the dogs. Nadia didn’t really know anything about him, perhaps he’d just seen the closest thing to his family gunned down in the space of a minute. And now Jake was asking him to send his dogs into a potential kill zone.

Hanbury held out his upturned palms and the two Dobermans approached. He stroked each of them. One of them licked his hand. He said something soft in Chinese, as if he was talking to his children.

Obediently they broke away from him and bounded down the stairs. Jake followed close behind. Nadia grabbed Hanbury by the arm, and they descended.

The garage appeared to be clear. Jake stalked to the nearest Range Rover, turning three-sixty, rifle at eye level, ready to fire. The dogs ran and sniffed around the basement garage, not sensing anyone. Jake checked under the cars, then Hanbury bleeped the closest one unlocked. They stole inside, Nadia and Jake in the front, Hanbury behind. The dogs leapt into the back with their master.

Jake started and gunned the engine. ‘How do we open the garage door?’

Hanbury held up a remote. ‘They’re probably waiting just outside.’

‘This thing’s bullet-proof, right?’

‘Yes. Like the glass upstairs,’ he replied, his voice weak.

Jake passed Nadia the semi-auto. ‘But this time we can return fire.’ Again, he made eye contact with her. ‘Ready?’

A drop of sweat trickled down the nape of her neck. Something nagged at her, something wasn’t quite right, but there was no time to delay.

‘Go,’ she said, opening the side window just enough to shove the barrel through the gap.

The metal doors rolled apart, floodlights revealing an empty ramp. Jake floored the pedal. The tyres shrieked and the car sped off and hit the ramp hard, banking up the curved driveway as if on rails. A searchlight shone down from the chopper, bushes and trees whipping as if in the grip of a hurricane, the sound of the rotors drowning out everything else, making it hard to think let alone speak. But it didn’t open fire. Why? An idea began to form. First the maid. Then James. Statistically speaking …

Jake crashed through the entrance gate, and they skidded onto the dark road. Nadia fired off a few rounds at the chopper to let them know this wasn’t going to be a turkey-shoot. It backed off. Why? It could easily pick them off, fire at the tyres or through the roof of the Range Rover. Later. Just as she thought they might get away, they hit a straight piece of road, and the headlamps lit up a large man standing in the middle of it.

Salamander.

‘Take him!’ she screamed. ‘Kill him now!’ But it was too easy, and she suddenly understood what was going on. ‘Wait!’ she shouted.

Jake was accelerating, and for one tantalising moment she thought she might achieve her goal ahead of schedule. But a Humvee burst out of the bushes and blocked the way. Jake slammed on the brakes but the distance was too short, and Nadia barely had time to bring her arms up in front of her face. She was catapulted forward, her head cannoning into the windscreen, as the Range Rover slammed into the tank-like vehicle, bounced upwards and then came to a stop, its engine dying.

Before she could recover, the car was swarmed by men. She felt something prick her neck, and was hauled through the open window of the car. Her limbs began to turn to jelly, though not before she’d kneed one of her captors where it hurt most. She struggled to get free, but felt herself slipping away, and the last thing she saw was Hanbury on his knees, and Jake unconscious and bleeding from cuts on his face. The dogs attacked, barked, bit, and ripped skin from two of the attackers, but there were too many, and she heard Hanbury screaming, begging ‘No!’ as the Dobermans had their throats slit.

The strategy was clear to her now. For whatever reason, Salamander wanted all three of them alive.

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.

The gurney stopped. Rough hands grabbed her all at the same time, lifted her in a practised way, and her bare back met cold metal. Where were her clothes? What had happened? Was the Chef still alive?

And then she remembered the video. By now they’d have spliced it together, released it on the net. A clear scene of her smacking Hanbury in the face, then executing him. Jake would see it. Everyone would see it. She’d be on the most-wanted list everywhere. The first sniper bullet back at Hanbury’s apartment had been Russian. There was going to be hell to pay. The Brits and the Russians – those most obsessed with finding Salamander – would be at each other’s throats. A smokescreen, allowing Salamander to get on with whatever he was planning. The bastard was several steps ahead, as usual. But then she wondered. Why had he really taken Jake? She didn’t buy this ‘live by a code’ bullshit, not from him. He had something else in mind.

The bespectacled doctor held up a syringe, transparent liquid squirting out of its silver needle. No … no sedatives … need to stay awake … She tried to sit up, but firm hands held her fast to the metal, and a pricking in her upper arm told her it was too late. Her arm became desperately cold, as if her blood was being replaced by ice, then it spread to the rest of her body. It reached her head and her thoughts grew sluggish. In her mind’s eye she dropped into a pit of cloying, glutinous quicksand, Hanbury nearby. He was struggling, clawing at the air, almost submerged. She reached for him, screamed for him to take her hand, but he didn’t hear her, and then he was gone.

Chapter Six

Nadia swam with Jake in the crystal blue waters of Anspida. The water was warm and the sun beat down on her head, glistening off the tops of the wavelets, the white sand beach fringed by swaying palm trees just metres away.

‘Nadia,’ he said, his eyes deep ocean blue. She took a few strokes toward him. But he was drifting away.

‘Nadia,’ he said again, more insistently. She swam harder, faster, but she was dragged backwards. Someone else surfaced right in front of her. Blue Fan, who raised her arm and slapped Nadia hard across the cheek. ‘Nadia!’

Nadia jerked awake. Not Blue Fan. Jin Fe.

‘Finally. Get up. Dress. We need to leave. Now.’

Nadia tried to move, but her left shoulder felt like a stake was driven through it, nailing her to the bed. She took in her surroundings. A small room with a bed and a lopsided cupboard. A drip in her left arm, leading to a half-empty transparent plastic bag on a metal stand beside her.

‘Get up, lazy bones.’ Jin Fe said it with sincerity, perhaps thinking it was a way of chiding her, whereas it made Nadia smile.

‘Lazy bones?’ Nadia felt light-headed. Morphine?

Jin Fe’s brows locked together. ‘Get. Up. They are coming for you.’

Nadia tried to remember, and then everything flashed back to her. She tried to sit up, but couldn’t do it on her own. She hated relying on anyone, but …

‘Help me, Jin Fe.’

Jin Fe got her off the bed and onto unsteady feet.

‘Clothes?’ Nadia couldn’t walk around Hong Kong in a hospital gown.

Jin Fe grabbed a rumpled plastic bag, and began pulling out trashy dresses that would make Nadia look like a cheap prostitute. She picked the least tarty one and again had to enlist the girl’s help.

‘Thank you,’ Nadia said. Jin Fe didn’t seem to notice.

‘That man’s scary. He threatened me.’

The Chef. Good, he was alive. If she had any chance of finding Jake, she’d need him.

Nadia pointed to her feet. Jin Fe dipped into the bag and pulled out two bright red stiletto-heeled shoes.

You have got to be kidding …

Jin Fe produced a cheap blonde wig, and some large sunglasses. ‘Come on! No time, we need to leave now. They are coming!’

Nadia supposed it was a good cover, and tried on the wig. Her scalp began to itch. She donned the sunglasses and staggered into the brightly lit corridor. She hadn’t worn heels in years, and was weak from whatever patch-up work they’d done on her shoulder. She knew she must look like a drunken whore. A clock on the wall told her it was 8:15. Jin Fe was right, she had to get out of the hospital before her description was linked to the video, which was probably all over YouTube and the TV channels by now. At the end of the corridor, they waited for a lift. Nadia would have preferred the fire escape, but not in her condition, and not in those heels. As the lift doors opened, she flinched at seeing the four Hong Kong policemen inside. One of them looked her up and down, lingering, holding the doors open for her. He gave her a toothy smile.

Jin Fe ushered Nadia into the empty lift, and rattled off something in Cantonese. The cop’s smile foundered, and he let go of the doors to go catch up his colleagues. The lift doors closed.

Nadia grabbed the waist-high bar for support as they descended. ‘What did you say to him?’

‘I told him you here for HIV treatment.’ Jin Fe said, matter of fact.

The lift doors opened into the garage. ‘This way,’ Jin Fe said.

Nadia suddenly wondered why she was trusting this girl she’d met less than twenty-four hours earlier. But a limousine pulled up, and as the driver’s window hummed down, she saw the Chef, and hobbled over to the car and got in the back seat. Jin Fe followed.

In the front passenger seat was a Japanese man, fifty-something, an unruly mound of salt and pepper hair. He seemed agitated, with fingers that drummed incessantly on the dashboard, and a deep frown that looked like he slept in it.

‘I guess we’re not going back to the hotel?’ Nadia asked.

The Chef didn’t answer. One of his rules. Never reward stupid questions. She tried a different tack.

‘Who’s your friend?’

‘Later,’ the Chef said, his accent less Russian than she remembered. He pulled out of the garage. They hit the exit ramp and she was blinded by the sun. Almost immediately they were in a fast-moving river of cars, and she saw white-and-red taxis everywhere. The traffic weaved around tower blocks via concrete overpasses that made her imagine snakes and dragons writhing around the city. Must be the morphine. She needed an espresso to clear her head. Maybe a double.

As they climbed a slope – Fortress Hill according to the road signs – she glimpsed a bay full of expensive-looking yachts, then the Chef swung left into another underground garage, beneath a bland rose-and-cream apartment block.

The four of them got out and crammed into a tiny aluminium lift with crude fans instead of proper aircon. She began sweating as soon as the door closed. Upstairs the Chef dug out a set of keys and opened an iron grill before unlocking the main door. It was homely inside: net curtains, a painting on the wall of an elegant Chinese man, a plastic-coated table with a jug of water and mugs, and a stash of toys next to an ironing board propped up by the kitchen entrance. Someone’s home for sure, rather than a safe house, but it was deserted. Nadia knew better than to ask. She headed to a threadbare sofa and parked herself carefully while Jin Fe sat at the table and poured four glasses of water. Nadia recalled the bar where they’d rescued Jin Fe, and the young girl who had poured them champagne. She wondered how early Jin Fe had started in the business.

The Chef remained standing. She’d rarely seen him sit in a chair. He said chairs killed more people than assassins and cars put together, only more slowly. She hadn’t seen him in five years, yet he hadn’t aged. She guessed he was close to fifty now – chief assassin wasn’t an old man’s job. He had the same chiselled, square Russian jaw she remembered, jet black hair with just a sprinkling of grey near his ears, and a solid-looking brow good for head-butting. The only jarring features were his green eyes, almost reptilian. At least that’s what you thought when he looked directly at you. His body was the same fluid dancer’s frame it had always been. As if to prove it, his legs coiled down effortlessly into a cross-legged position on the floor, his back straight, eyes alert.

One of her fellow trainees used to call him Cobra back at the training camp in Siberia, partly because his movements were so fluid, but mainly because he seemed poised to strike at any moment. The Chef had also perfected an assassin’s technique called snake eyes, which he showed each of his students only once, along with a short lecture:

‘Your enemy must see their imminent death in your eyes. Then they will falter, they will hesitate, and they will blink, clinging to life. This is the moment you strike. It is physiological, predator and prey, and is the way of things, hardwired into all of us. You must always be predator, never prey. You must perfect this look.’

Nadia hadn’t, had never wanted to. She shivered. Only one other person she’d ever met had mastered that look, and he was currently holding Jake captive.

The Japanese man dragged a chair from the table and parked himself there. His handsome face was deadpan. Or just dead. There was more light in the eyes of the man in the portrait on the wall. His thick accent required him to speak slowly, to navigate his tongue around consonant-heavy English sentences.

‘My name is Sakuro,’ he said, turning to look directly at her. ‘I am an oncologist.’ His face darkened, as if a thundercloud had passed behind his eyes. ‘I was an oncologist. I was summoned to Fukushima. I treated radiation victims.’ His gaze lingered on her, studying her in a way that was totally opposite to the cop in the lift, then he gazed towards the window, or to nowhere, or maybe back to Fukushima. His hooded eyes were haunted. He’d seen terrible things.

Or done them.

Nadia felt her anger rise. Why had the Chef brought an oncologist? She didn’t need this.

‘This wasn’t part of the deal,’ she said, speaking to the Chef.

‘My deal is not with you, Nadia.’

True. The Colonel, her handler back in Moscow – the Chef’s deal was with him. The Colonel must have offered him something to work with her. She had no idea what, and didn’t want to know.

‘If we are to work together,’ he said, ‘I need to be sure you won’t collapse on me or start puking at a crucial moment.’

‘That will never happen.’ Because she’d eat a bullet before she got that far.

Sakuro spoke. ‘I wish to speak to Miss Laksheva alone.’

The Chef ushered Jin Fe out of the room, though not before she cast a worried glance back at Nadia.

Sakuro pulled out a silver cigarette case and opened it, revealing a row of white filterless cigarettes. He extracted one, produced an old-style silver lighter, and lit it up. Some kind of ritual, perhaps to calm his nerves. He inhaled long and deep, then stood and approached the window. He seized the brass lever and let some air into the stuffy room. The gap was narrow, the window held in place by a steel rod so that it couldn’t be opened fully, so that children couldn’t fall and parents couldn’t jump. Despite the narrow gap, the room was immediately inundated with the relentless hubbub of cars, taxi horns and shouting below, mixed in with hammering and drilling from the skinny tower-block-in-progress opposite. The heat and humidity of the city seeped in and easily conquered the air conditioning. Sakuro didn’t seem to notice. He leant his head against the glass and gazed downwards. He spoke quietly, so that she had to strain to hear his words. But then, she had the feeling he wasn’t really talking to her.

‘I knew the Prime Minister of Japan, and several ministers. I treated a few of their wives. I saved them. We live for the ones we save, because so many succumb, if not the first time, then later. So, I was trusted. When the tsunami hit, crippling the nuclear power plant, the country was thrown into chaos. The Prime Minister and his aides needed someone there they could trust. The scientists were contradicting each other, and as for the plant owners … So, I went, with my medical team.’ He inhaled again, then dropped the cigarette out the window, and watched it fall. He tugged the window shut, and turned to face her.

‘I did not believe in hell until that mission. There are few who were not there who could even begin to understand. But you were in Chernobyl, Nadia. You saw Fukushima-Daichi’s future, what it will become in twenty years.’

Nadia’s breathing slowed. Sakuro probably hadn’t intended it, perhaps didn’t even know what had really happened there, but images from her brief sojourn in Chernobyl – her sister lying dead in a pool of blood, her father putting a bullet into his skull after Salamander had chained him to a mound of radioactive slag – slapped into her. Hell didn’t cover it. She didn’t want to go back there. But who was she trying to kid? She’d never left. Because Salamander was still alive and breathing.

Sakuro took a few steps over to an armchair and sat down like an old man.

‘We watched the emergency teams go in, working in total darkness, their dosimeters and Geiger counters going crazy. Did you know they had to hook up car batteries just so they could activate the controls and displays, to tell them what was going on inside?’ He didn’t look at her or wait for a reply.

‘We had to get the reactor under some kind of control, in the most atrocious conditions. Floodwater everywhere. Every little thing, even the most basic task, was made extremely difficult and hazardous. I had to report every hour, on the hour, back to Tokyo. I was not there for the victims. I was there to keep the workers standing so they could go in, deeper and deeper, until we could stabilise the core and prevent secondary explosions.’ His head tilted back. ‘I worked with a small team of engineers. My “core” team.’ He tried to smile, but was clearly out of practice. ‘Most are ill now. There is nothing I can do. But we got the reactor under control. They got it under control. The Prime Minister thanked me personally.’ The way he said it, it was a curse.

He coughed, and it caught in his throat and became deeper, more violent. His eyes watered. He took a silk handkerchief out of his pocket and raised it to his mouth until the episode ended. He glanced at it for a few seconds before folding it and putting it back in his pocket.

‘Towards the end, I became aware the workers had a nickname for me. Doctor Death.’ He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Before Fukushima I spent twenty-five years battling cancer for my patients. More often than not I lost. But I always fought for them, until the very end.’ He paused, his eyes studying the ceiling. ‘After Fukushima, I could no longer practise, could no longer look my patients in the eye. And so I switched to research. The government gave me a generous grant, to keep my mouth shut. There was no need. I had little desire to speak about it.’ He dug out his cigarette case again, looked around, then perhaps decided not to pollute someone else’s home. He laid his head back again.

Nadia got up, poured a cup of water, and walked over to him. He sat back up, for the first time his features shifting, perhaps surprised. He took the cup.

‘So, I am your last engineer,’ Nadia said. ‘You have drugs to keep me going, to keep me working even while my body is disintegrating on the inside.’

He pulled himself up so he was sitting on the edge of the chair, and his face suddenly became animated, no longer Dr Death.

‘Yes, Nadia. And no. I want to offer you something. Something I have not told your … colleague.’

She flared. ‘Don’t you dare say you can cure me. I know how bad my condition is, and I’ve accepted it. If you want one last guinea pig to ease your conscience, try yourself.’ She was guessing, but the scant energy in his face deserted him.

‘You forget, I am – was – an oncologist. I am accustomed to the storms of emotions of my patients—’

She stood up fast, standing over him. Her hands balled into fists. ‘I am not your fucking patient!’ She reckoned the Chef and Jin Fe could hear her. She didn’t care. ‘Just give me the drugs to help me get the job done.’

He rose from the chair, but slowly, calmly. He was tall, and towered over her. ‘I will. But first you will listen to what I have to say, because soon everything will be silent for you.’

Not what she’d been expecting. ‘Your bedside manner’s a little unconventional.’ She sat down. The pain in her shoulder started up, as if someone had inserted a corkscrew into the bullet wound, and kept twisting it.

‘Most cancers start inside the body,’ he said. ‘Something goes wrong, a few cells get the wrong message, and start producing malignant cells that the immune system cannot clean out. Your situation is different, as it was for my engineers. You have been attacked from the outside.’

‘The net result is the same,’ she said. ‘Corrupted cells reproduce, immune system can’t cope, too much damage.’

‘The situation is different for the immune system, and science has made tremendous advances in immunotherapy for particular types of cancer. But it all depends on genes. The engineers didn’t have the right gene make-up, and it was too late for them by the time I perfected the technique. But you, Nadia—’

She held up her hand to make him stop. The Colonel had told her before she’d left. A radical therapy that might work, because she had a particular gene. But he’d also said they’d have to start before symptom onset, and she was way past that point now. She thought of Jake. If he was still alive … But right now she was focused. She needed to free Jake and take Salamander down. For Katya, for her father, for Bransk, for Jones, and countless others she’d never known. But mainly because Salamander was still plotting something. He was smart, always one step ahead. She knew he would probably take her down with him. That was the best outcome she could realistically hope for. And she could only take him down if she had no future, otherwise there would be a sliver of hope holding her back, making her blink at the crucial moment. She folded her arms.

‘I’ve listened to you, as you asked. The answer is no. It’s final. Just do what the Chef asked you to do, give me something to keep me going, and nothing more.’

Sakuro nodded. He took out the cigarette case, lit another one, opened a briefcase full of medical equipment, and began pulling on rubber gloves.

The Chef entered a few minutes later. ‘Are we good? Can you keep her going?’

Sakuro answered, facing Nadia. ‘We start now. It will be painful. I do not think that will be a problem for you.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, though she wasn’t sure why.

Nadia awoke to find it was 4.30 p.m., according to the clock fashioned inside a toy landscape, Star Wars, maybe. She was in a bed just big enough for her, in a child’s room. The late afternoon sun streamed in through ineffectual flower-pattern curtains. Sakuro’s procedure had indeed been painful, but she felt alert, all traces of nausea banished. She’d been sweating profusely – the sheets were soaked – a side-effect of the milky green concoction he’d pumped into her veins, using a syringe fit for a horse. In fact, she had no idea what he’d actually injected her with – whether it was something to keep her going, or something to try and begin a cure. Maybe both. As long as it did the former.

Never one to laze in bed with her thoughts, she took a cold shower using the handheld water spray while squatting in the half-bath, flinching when the water doused the still-raw wound in her shoulder. She dried off and found new clothes. Normal ones, this time. Feeling marginally better, she joined the Chef and Jin Fe in the lounge. Sakuro had left. When she saw what they were watching on the news, her good mood evaporated.

The network channels showed stills from the video – her fist connecting with Hanbury’s chin, her standing with the gun pointing at his head, Hanbury lying on the floor in a pool of thickening blood. The last had been taken later; there was yellow-and-black crime scene tape within the frame. Some of the other channels, including a Russian one, showed the doctored video. It caught Nadia’s harsh expression as she punched Hanbury, and then shot him. Impressive editing. Ninety-nine out of a hundred viewers would judge her a cold-blooded murdering bitch. A high-ranking Chinese official stated that she was armed and dangerous, public enemy number one. On BBC World a British official talked about this atrocious act, how no stone would be left unturned …

She slumped in the chair where Sakuro had been hours before. She felt like a pawn who’d just been flicked off the chessboard by a grandmaster. But Jake was still in play, for some reason she couldn’t fathom. Which meant she had to crawl back onto the board. She caught the Chef’s eye.

‘What did the Colonel say?’

The Chef interlocked his fingers. One of eight ninja signs that had multiple meanings. This one signaled conflict. It also meant they were stuck in the trenches of battle, and would have to wait. Patience. Not her strong suit. It had a third meaning, one she preferred not to delve into.

Defeat.

‘The Colonel will protect you as long as he can. But the British are already leaning on his superiors for answers.’

‘They know I saved their asses, right? Doesn’t averting a nuclear strike on London count for something?’

He gestured at the TV with the remote. ‘Would you like to watch it again?’

He was right. Salamander had played this well. Checkmate after only three moves into the game. Fool’s mate.

What made it worse was that Jake was missing. The Brits would be desperate to hear from him, to get his side of events. But he’d been unconscious, so couldn’t verify anything even if he was still alive. Which he was, she told herself, because otherwise … No otherwise. He was alive. Period.

‘We need to find Jake,’ she said.

‘We need to find Salamander,’ the Chef countered.

‘Then back to the original plan. Find Blue Fan.’

And that was where her plan tripped and fell flat on its face. Jake had intended to use police intel and Hanbury’s network to find her. When all was said and done, Hong Kong wasn’t that big, just very populous. Blue Fan was probably still in Wan Chai, not far from where they were right now. But that didn’t help locate her.

‘I may be able to help,’ Jin Fe said.

They both turned to her. Nadia had been wondering how to get the girl out of Hong Kong to … anywhere. Somewhere she could make a fresh start. She’d hoped to elicit help from Hanbury …

‘What do you know about Blue Fan?’ she asked.

‘Our line of business is run by the triads. Blue Fan is with the Green Dragon triad. We are owned by the White Tiger triad. They are rivals. You need to talk to the Judge. Then you will find Blue Fan.’

‘Just like that?’ Nadia asked.

‘Well …’ she lowered her eyes to the tablecloth, then lifted them and stared at the Chef. ‘You must go through the Judge, and offer to kill her. A challenge. That will get her attention. I’ve heard she rarely refuses.’

Nadia wondered how she knew so much. ‘And how do we get his number? Do you happen to have it?’

Jin Fe took out her phone, wiggled her fingers on its surface, then handed it to Nadia. ‘He will answer this number.’

Nadia stared at her.

Jin Fe shrugged. ‘The Judge likes girls who like girls.’ She fixed Nadia with her eyes. ‘Not just pretend ones, the real deal.’

Nadia recalled the way Jin Fe had stroked her arm back at the bar-brothel. She cleared her throat, and addressed the Chef. ‘What do you think?’

The Chef took the phone from Jin Fe, stared at the numbers for a few seconds, then handed it back to her. ‘Before I challenge Blue Fan, I would like to find out if she is as good as you say she is.’

Nadia considered the Chef at least a rook on the chessboard. She’d asked for his help, but he had no real obligation to her. ‘You already saved my life. I won’t ask you to get yourself killed. It’s not your fight.’

She thought she glimpsed his cobra eyes for a moment, then they were gone.

‘Salamander is your fight,’ he said. ‘The Colonel told me to come, and he is persuasive, but I am also here for my own reasons.’ He drifted to the door, as if gliding on ice. ‘But if I am to fight her, I also need to practise. Victoria Park is close. I have a couple of hours of light left. Stay here.’ With that, he got up and left.

‘How does he move like that?’ Jin Fe asked, once the lift had descended.

Nadia recalled how they used to joke about him back in the camp, because you had to joke about people who scared you that much. ‘They removed all his bones when he was a baby, and replaced them with tendons.’

Jin Fe laughed and went back into the kitchen, and then the full weight of what Nadia had been trying not to think about slammed into her like a truck. Jake. Salamander had Jake. He might be torturing him, killing him … FUCK! This was not supposed to happen. She was meant to die, not him. They’d only just started out, and Salamander had bloody kidnapped him. And they had no idea where Salamander had gone, where he’d taken Jake, or even why. She needed to do something, anything, but what, exactly? An idea struck her. A long shot. She went back to the kid’s room and fished around in her holdall, and breathed a sigh of relief when she found her phone. She came back to the lounge.

The phone had a stealth function, bouncing the signal off a minimum of six satellites. She activated it, found the number she wanted, and hit ‘Call.’ She knew she’d have forty-five seconds before any one of a number of agencies could trace it.

Somebody picked up. Inspector Chen. He answered with a barrage of antsy Cantonese. Not too happy about getting a call. A busy man.

‘It’s Nadia.’

His tone changed, and the background chatter in his office ceased. She imagined him drawing a line across his throat to make everyone else shut up, while he put the call on speaker, signalling someone to start a trace.

Ten seconds.

‘You must give yourself up, Nadia. We have orders to shoot you on sight. What you did to Hanbury –’

‘I didn’t pull the trigger, and they had a knife to Jake’s throat. The video skipped a few things.’

‘Who are they?

‘Blue Fan and Salamander.’

‘Nonsense. Salamander is not here. We would know.’

Twenty seconds.

‘Salamander has Jake. You need to arrest Blue Fan. Three of her men were killed two roads down from the house where Hanbury was executed, on a direct line to Repulse Bay. There must be blood. DNA. Empty cartridges. They shot at me.’

‘There was a downpour last night. Surrender now, Nadia, give yourself up, then we can talk, you can present your side of the story—’

He was stalling. Thirty seconds. What else was there to say?

‘Jake was unconscious. He never saw any of it. Just tell the Brits that Salamander has him.’

Forty seconds. She hung up.

Had it been pointless? Chen wouldn’t believe her. But she’d done it for Jake. Chen had put a trace on the call, which meant it was recorded and therefore non-deniable. He would jump at the chance to talk to MI6 directly, though probably his superiors would steal that opportunity from him. It didn’t matter. MI6 had to be put on the right track. Maybe they could do something, maybe they could find Jake and rescue him, because he was one of their own, and right now she didn’t fancy her chances of saving him, even with the Chef.

Jin Fe appeared in the kitchen doorway. ‘Hungry?’

‘No,’ Nadia said. A reflex, because these days she never had any appetite. She’d lost weight in the past two weeks, even though she’d had none to lose in the first place. But she was hungry. As if to emphasise the point, her stomach rumbled.

‘Actually …’

Jin Fe beamed and disappeared back into the kitchen.

Nadia sat up and scrolled through the phone address list. It was very short. Five numbers. Her fingers hovered over one of them. What had he said to her at Jones’s funeral, back in London?

Anything, anytime, anywhere.

She barely knew him. Yet Greaves was the only other survivor from a team of six who’d chased Salamander into the sewers beneath London, and stopped him from detonating a nuclear warhead. What was the phrase? Brothers in arms? He was a foot-soldier for MI6. Not like Jake, certainly not like the Chef. And not like her. He would have seen the news. The Chef would absolutely not want her to bring in someone else. But Greaves had said what he’d said. And it was his private cell, so he wouldn’t do anything like try to put a trace on it.

The aroma of cashew-and-chicken wafted towards her, the sizzles and pops of a good home-made stir-fry. She tapped the number, and pressed ‘Call’. There was a sizable chance he wouldn’t pick up. Nadia was by now both a disavowed Russian agent and an enemy of the British Crown, her slaughter of Hanbury a matter of public record, going viral on YouTube. The weight of it pressed down on her. He wouldn’t pick up. She and the Chef and Jin Fe would all be dead soon, and Jake not long afterwards, despite Salamander’s oath. She’d been outplayed. The Colonel was right, Sakuro was right. She should have taken the offer, and stopped kidding herself, she was ill for Christ’s sake, bloody well dying. She recalled the Chef’s hand signal earlier, and its third meaning. Defeat. Salamander had …

Greaves picked up.

She couldn’t speak for a moment. She got up and paced. ‘It’s Nadia,’ she said, sounding hoarse even to herself. ‘Listen, the video, you must have seen it. I didn’t … that is, it wasn’t the way—’

‘Stop, Nadia. What do you need?’

She leant her back against the door, slid down into a sitting position, and began talking.

Afterwards she returned to the table and ate with gusto, and thanked Jin Fe for the best Chinese meal of her life. Then she retired to the bathroom, closed the door, and stared into the mirror. It was high time she practised snake eyes, because Salamander wouldn’t be an easy kill. And what Jake and the rest of the world needed right now was a predator.

Chapter Seven

The Chef needed to call in a favour. They were holed up in Fortress Hill for a reason. He walked down the curving road, then stopped at a pharmacy that was also a herbalist – not uncommon in Hong Kong – waited until the owner was free, and spoke to him in fluent Cantonese. The herbalist gave him a curious look as he listened to the order, then nodded and disappeared out the back for ten minutes, returning with a brown paper bag stuffed with roots. The Chef paid, left the shop, and hopped on a tram, paying with a Hong Kong two-dollar coin as the dilapidated, double-decker bus rattled its way through rush hour traffic. Victoria Park approached on the left, a haven of green hemmed in by skyscrapers and expressways.

He walked around the perimeter, taking in the different groups limbering up, cooling down or else in the heat of training, from martial artists to basketball players to footballers. For him, life was motion, and he’d never known a more active city, especially the older generation. He paused to watch a group of ageing women performing the slow, dance-like tai chi fan form, in perfect harmony, all with serene, smiling faces. Under a clutch of trees, a lithe man was teaching the sword form. He crouched low, thighs horizontal, the two fingers of his non-sword hand pointing like a pistol, parallel to the sword held above his head. The fingers represented a knife. The Chef wondered if the teacher really knew knife tai chi – it was almost a lost martial art, replaced by Navy SEAL knife-fighting techniques. The teacher was good. He went from low to high, perched on one foot as the sword angled down at forty-five degrees. His students were not so good, and he didn’t correct them. It was his one criticism of Chinese martial arts training – they didn’t do much actual teaching. They demonstrated, and waited to see if the student got it. It was closer to a talent vetting system. He didn’t criticise too much, however, because it worked. Most people gave up or accepted their limitations, while a few, the very talented ones, persevered and became legends.

He walked on until he found the person he was looking for. He had to pass by a couple of men who appeared to be chatting, laughing at something on a smartphone. They were watchers. The Chef made a triad hand signal and caught one of the men’s attention. The Chef flicked his eyes to the old man seated on a rusting iron bench beneath a weeping willow. The watcher nodded almost imperceptibly then laughed some more at the smartphone screen.

The Chef sat next to the old man and placed the brown bag between them.

‘Good students never forget,’ the man said, in English.

He looked sixty. The Chef knew he was closer to eighty, and resembled Hotei, the laughing Buddha. He’d been the Chef’s teacher – his Sifu – for three years back when Hong Kong was a British colony. The Chef had learned Iron Shirt chi gung, a gruelling, body-hardening process that worked on the fascia – thin layers between muscle groups inside the body – and rendered the body resilient to blunt force attacks, and quicker to heal. It had taken nine months, during which the Chef had had to abstain from sex – and then he had stayed longer to perfect the internal arts.

He recalled asking, on his first day, what the difference was between external and internal martial arts. In the West it was the subject of years of chatroom discussion. His Sifu had replied, matter of fact, that the internal arts were so called because you couldn’t see what was going on. He’d then added that in the West people often sought depth when the water was shallow and the bottom was clear enough. The Chef realised later what a perfect fighting strategy that was, especially for an assassin, because an enemy’s weak spots were often on the surface, not hidden. And at the end of the day, everyone is a bag of flesh and bone, containing a heart, brain and other vital organs. Countless ways to end somebody. Shallow, clear water.

‘I must challenge Blue Fan,’ he said. ‘Will I defeat her in combat?’

The old man sighed, a wrinkle appearing on his shiny forehead before it flattened out. ‘Hand-to-hand, yes, though she is the best Hsing Yi fighter I have ever seen. But if she has her knives, you will not survive.’

Not what he’d hoped for. But fighting – and war – were about more than single combat. The Chef had always relied on two guides: the Chinese text compiled by Sun Tzu – the Art of War, the distillation of lessons learned from five hundred years of war – and the legendary Japanese swordsman Musashi’s Book of Five Rings.

‘I need to know the ground. I have been away for a long time. What are the forces in play.’

‘You seek Salamander.’

It wasn’t a question. The Chef didn’t insult his master by asking how he knew.

The old man leant forward and grunted as he rose slowly to his feet. Suddenly the two young men were by his side, supporting him. It was an act. The old man would only show his prowess behind closed doors, and then only to a chosen few. It was when such teachers neared their end that they became more generous, finally imparting their secrets. Most students wanted to train with younger teachers who looked good; a few smart ones knew where they could gain the deepest knowledge.

The Chef remained seated. He’d not been invited to join them.

‘You must not kill Blue Fan,’ the old man said. ‘Salamander is another matter. He has brought shame on us all.’

He started to walk away.

The Chef pushed his luck, given that the interview was over. ‘I need her to get to him.’

The old man paused, then turned around. ‘Find the Judge. Demand ritual combat for the White Tiger triad. Tell him I sent you.’

The Chef rolled it around in his mind. If he challenged Blue Fan to ritual combat, it was her right to choose the weapon, and she would select knives, the one weapon he had never been taught. His Sifu, the man standing in front of him, had refused to teach him knife unless he agreed to remain in Hong Kong. There was one more thing he needed to know.

‘Who trained her in the knife fighting form?’

The old man beamed. ‘We Chinese seek longevity. You Westerners like to live fast and die young, while your gonads are still full of fire.’ His eyes softened. ‘You could have been so much more if you had remained here. Goodbye, Chu Shi.’

The Chef stayed while the sky darkened and night closed in, immersing him in a cacophony of traffic, horns, and the squawks of chattering starlings seeking somewhere to sleep amidst the brightening neon. Many years ago, his master had given him his nickname. In Cantonese it meant head chef, or boss. His Sifu

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.