Книга - 66 Metres: A chilling thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat!

66 Metres: A chilling thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat!
J.F. Kirwan


‘Masterfully paced…a cinematic and action-packed read that will have readers following Nadia to the ends of the Earth!’ – BestThrillers.comThe only thing worth killing for is family.Everyone said she had her father’s eyes. A killer’s eyes. Nadia knew that on the bitterly cold streets of Moscow, she could never escape her past – but in just a few days, she would finally be free.Bound to work for Kadinsky for five years, she has just one last mission to complete. Yet when she is instructed to capture The Rose, a military weapon shrouded in secrecy, Nadia finds herself trapped in a deadly game of global espionage.And the only man she can trust is the one sent to spy on her…The gripping first novel in a thrilling new series from J. F. Kirwan. Perfect for fans of Charles Cumming, Mark Dawson and Adam Brookes.‘A hearty mix of suspense, action, and a bit of espionage.’ Kirkus Reviews







The only thing worth killing for is family.

Everyone said she had her father’s eyes. A killer’s eyes. Nadia knew that on the bitterly cold streets of Moscow, she could never escape her past – but in just a few days, she would finally be free.

Bound to work for Kadinsky for five years, she has one last mission to complete. Yet when she is instructed to capture The Rose, a military weapon shrouded in secrecy, Nadia finds herself trapped in a deadly game of global espionage.

And the only man she can trust is the one sent to spy on her…

The gripping first novel in a thrilling new series from J. F. Kirwan. Perfect for fans of Charles Cumming, Mark Dawson and Adam Brookes.


66 Metres

J. F. Kirwan









Copyright (#ulink_4a8e5c3a-7119-5eab-94cc-76d27f7a31a2)

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2016

Copyright © J.F. Kirwan 2016

J.F. Kirwan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition © August 2016 ISBN: 9780008207748

Version date: 2018-06-27


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.


Contents

Cover (#u106ccc7d-505e-5675-b3b0-60c1e0d605ae)

Blurb (#ucd361273-a027-5ba2-baf1-fd692dd61070)

Title Page (#u5ea2011a-776f-5d89-b702-66eef0228067)

Copyright (#u99df7a91-f517-5017-a278-3796139686cb)

Author Bio (#u13d6adc5-fb17-5123-a5c5-f46574e008ed)

Acknowledgements (#u34fc9bc7-5cb9-5cc7-a99d-d272a6cdd0d9)

Dedication (#u7d0d5e77-78ce-5402-ba9f-474eb0e19227)

Prologue (#ulink_9a8028bb-5f52-5c71-87b8-d3fee721e857)

Chapter One (#ulink_a22d77c5-ef90-509b-9209-7ce585d190f0)

Chapter Two (#ulink_37703db9-814b-552d-ae79-02280ee78463)

Chapter Three (#ulink_df803232-5f61-5416-9316-71c18c8018cb)

Chapter Four (#ulink_7dbbf0f5-8cb1-566f-982e-43153142cd1f)

Chapter Five (#ulink_cf67766d-a97f-5790-8047-25ffa4fcd367)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Endpages (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)


Thanks to my writer colleagues – Chris, Dimitri, Marie, Gwyneth and Mary Ellen – and to my pre-readers, Beatrice, Andy, Ruth and Simon, as well as to author reviewers Eve Seymour, Laura Wilkinson, Dionne McCulloch and Dave Poyer, and a very special thanks to my editor at Harper Collins, Charlotte, for helping me raise my game. Thanks also to my former diving buddies at the Birmingham University Diving Club and the Halden Diving Club, and anyone else I’ve had the pleasure of diving with on this blue planet, from Stoney Cove to Sipadan.


For my father, who loved thrillers.




Prologue (#ulink_b05b542f-b5f4-5232-a3ca-1d43ddd21447)

The only thing worth killing for is family.

Her father’s words to her, the day they’d come for him.

She’d been fourteen when two men in combat fatigues and balaclavas burst into the kitchen where she and her father were enjoying breakfast. The armed commandos hadn’t seen his pistol lying beneath a folded newspaper. While her father struggled with the men, his eyes flicked between her and the weapon. She could have darted for it, threatened them, helped him. But she hesitated. The moment slipped past. They threw a black hood over his head, cuffed him, and dragged him away to be interrogated, tortured, executed and buried in the woods. A single thought haunted her ever since.

Had he known they would come?

***

Four years later, Nadia picked up his Beretta, its dark metal cool in her hands. She checked and re-loaded the magazine. She walked to the window, took one last look at the wild garden where her father had taught her to shoot, and the gravel path leading through the pine forest to the banks of the Volga. There, she’d learned first to swim, then to dive. Turning away, she stashed the pistol in her backpack and crept downstairs, hoping to escape unseen.

But her mother was waiting for her on the doorstep, arms folded. ‘You’ll end up a killer just like him, Nadia. Or a whore, like your sister.’

Nadia pushed by without replying. She passed through the creaking gate that had so often announced her father’s return, and breathed easier after the turn of the road. She waited an hour for the bus, partly hoping – but mainly dreading – that her mother would come running around the corner begging her to return.

Fifty miles from Moscow, where her sister Katya lived, everyone had to get off the bus at a security checkpoint to show papiren. Nadia left her backpack under the seat. When she reached the front of the line, a young soldier flicked noisily through her passport, then glanced up, surprise lighting his smile.

‘Happy birthday,’ he said. ‘Eighteen. A special day.’

***

Nadia moved into a grotty studio flat in Old Arbat, where each night she fell asleep exhausted from working in the local bakery from four a.m. until three p.m., then at a supermarket until nine at night. She kept her hair cropped, dressed for comfort, and was often mistaken at first sight for a young man, which was fine with her. She liked boys well enough, but hated the unsubtle flirting, the vodka-fuelled race to unconsciousness, the lies. She’d loved her father, but he’d been one of the worst with women, and she’d seen the damage it had done to her mother.

She didn’t get enough time with Katya, but on Wednesdays they’d go to the Sevastopol Hotel, the rock-bottom market. They’d start on the sixteenth floor and work their way down, Katya usually buying her little sister Chinese or Afghan trinkets to brighten her dingy flat, seeing who could negotiate the hardest, laughing about it afterwards over ice cream. And every Sunday afternoon they’d head to Gorky Park, taking turns to push each other on the swings just like when they were younger, and ice skating as winter approached, always hand in hand. Sometimes they talked about their parents, but only back in the past, during those good, early years. But when they’d hug, Nadia remembered how they used to hold each other in bed during their parents’ screaming matches downstairs.

Katya never invited Nadia to her place, never spoke about what she did with the rest of her time. Nadia didn’t want to probe, didn’t want to break the spell. Besides, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

Then the ever-gorgeous Katya invited her dark-haired kid sister to a party at a luxurious country dacha owned by a wealthy businessman, Kadinsky. Nadia was never formally introduced, though Katya clearly knew him very well. Nadia was mesmerised by the women with perfect skin in glittering, low-cut dresses, the handsome and not-so-handsome men, their jewellery and fancy cars and easy talk of big deals. Viktor, a man twice her age, who turned out to be someone in government, seduced her. He wasn’t bad-looking, took his time in bed, and left cash for her breakfast in the mornings.

She let things coast for six months, no demands or promises on either side. She presumed he was married. She never asked, and he never said. She gave up the early morning bakery job, and thought about getting a cat.

Then one day Viktor was on the news, handcuffed, being forced into a police van. She leapt off the sofa and began packing a bag, but within minutes a loud rapping sounded on the door. The Beretta was on the table, fully loaded. She hid it under a loose floorboard, then opened the door.

Receiving misappropriated funds. That’s what they told her at the station, though she was never formally charged, never saw a lawyer. Once inside Lubyanka prison, Nadia was informed she’d be their guest for twelve years, ten if she behaved. On the anniversary of her father’s death, she gazed through the prison bars, studied the sad faces staring back at her from the ugly block opposite. She turned away, took in the inside of her cell. The double bunk with rancid sheets under which she shivered each night, curled up in the foetal position. The iron toilet that stank of her own piss and shit – they wouldn’t give her the bucket of water to flush it until lunchtime. The cold grey bars, faded whitewashed brick walls, not even graffiti to lighten her mood. And the lone hook in the ceiling that her former cellmate had used to end everything while Nadia had been out in the exercise yard. The fourth suicide since her arrival.

Ten years? She wouldn’t make it.

Shouting erupted down the corridor. Wolf-whistles, tin mugs clanging against cell bars, lascivious remarks from several lesbian inmates, one of whom already had her eye on Nadia. And then a gruff man’s voice, more like a growl. Silence. Nadia stared at the bars. It couldn’t be anyone for her. No one had visited her since her incarceration. But she listened. A man’s shoes, heavy, impatient, and high heels clacking behind, almost running to keep up. Nadia smelled her sister’s perfume, and took a step forward as the footsteps approached. But Katya wasn’t alone. Nadia took a step back.

Kadinsky.

Since being locked away, she’d heard on the grapevine that he was a gangster, not a businessman, and now she saw him close up for the first time, he fit the bill. He had a gleaming bald head, like he actually polished it every morning, and was fat without being flabby, as if his weight was there to throw around, to crush you if necessary. He wore an expensive, baggy beige suit, and gold jewellery dripped from his wrists and neck. Katya stood behind him in a skimpy red dress and high heels, tousled hair falling behind her shoulders, her large eyes hopeful and scared at the same time. There was no guard with them. Kadinsky held a ring of keys in his hand. He selected one that looked indistinguishable from the twenty others dangling from the ring, shoved it into the slot, turned it with a resounding clank, and stepped inside.

Nadia wanted to hug her sister, but Kadinsky stood between them. He turned his head to the side, not enough to see Katya, but just enough so she’d know he was talking to her.

‘One word, and I walk. Turn around. Give the other inmates a treat.’

Katya gave one last look at her sister, then dutifully turned around and faced the bars. There was silence outside. Everyone was listening. Especially Nadia.

Kadinsky glanced at his gold Rolex, as if bored, somewhere else he’d rather be. Anywhere. He glanced at Nadia, then folded his chubby arms, stretching the fabric of his suit.

‘I’ll ask you a single question, girl. You have three chances to give the right answer. If you do, you come with us. If not, you stay, and see your sister in twelve years.’ He glanced at the toilet bowl, grimaced, pulled out a silk handkerchief, blew his nose noisily, then stuffed it back into his pocket. ‘And be quick.’

Nadia tensed, stood almost to attention, and waited for the question.

‘What did you do wrong?’

Nadia’s reply was too fast, a prison reflex, what everyone here said when they first met someone new in the canteen or the yard.

‘Nothing,’ she said.

‘Wrong answer,’ he said. ‘Second try.’

Of course it was the wrong bloody answer. He was a gangster, so in his mind everyone had done something wrong. She stared at the keys in his hands. The door was open. Soon, one way or another, it would be locked shut. Think! Maybe just the facts…

‘I met Viktor Romanovich at your dacha. We had an affair. It lasted six months. One day I saw him on TV, being taken away, arrested on corruption charges. While I was packing, they came for me, threw me in here.’ But what had she done wrong? She’d just enjoyed the ride, a little life, a little luxury, someone who’d looked after her. She pictured Viktor. A man twice her age. Old enough to be… She shuddered. ‘I should have found out what he was up to, asked where the money came from.’

Kadinsky made half-fists, turned them palm upwards, and studied the fingernails of one hand, then the other. He stared at her like she was a waste of skin. ‘One last try. What did you do wrong?’

Nadia looked at her sister’s outline; she was trembling. What had she done wrong? She didn’t know. Been born, maybe? So, she’d stay here, die here. Could she do that to Katya? If her father hadn’t got messed up in God-knew-what, if he’d still been around, things would have been different. What had he done wrong? She never knew. But then she realised what it was she’d done wrong, both times. She’d not picked up the gun for her father, that fateful day. And when they’d come for her, his Beretta – the only keepsake she had from him – had been right there, on the table.

She looked Kadinsky in the eye. She didn’t know if it was the answer he was looking for. Whichever side of those bars she ended up on, she had a feeling it would be her epitaph.

‘I let them take me.’

Kadinsky grunted. Looked at his watch again. ‘We’re leaving,’ he said.

Katya spun around and Nadia found herself wrapped in her sister’s arms, felt her sister’s hot tears on her cheeks. Nadia’s head tilted upwards, and while she succumbed to the embrace, she stared at the lone hook in the ceiling. Fuck you.

***



Kadinsky got Nadia out with bribes and promised favours. Of course, she’d have to work it off.

Once back at Kadinsky’s country dacha, she stood in the large lounge with its single bay window overlooking the dry fountain, a chipped statue of Pan in its centre. Inside, oil paintings of battles, including one above the fireplace featuring a victorious Napoleon, hung around the white, corniced walls. Kadinsky ordered Katya not to speak, then walked around Nadia. He looked her up and down, then shook his head. He dropped into a wide leather armchair. Katya was perched on an antique wooden dining seat opposite. Nadia stood between them, and Kadinsky’s two henchmen – one grossly fat, the other slim as a snake and with pockmarked cheeks – leaned against the far wall.

‘You have grey eyes,’ he said, wagging a finger at her. ‘Like a fucking tombstone. Who’d want to make love staring into such eyes?’ He glanced at Katya. ‘Are you sure she’s your sister?’

Katya’s gaze dropped to the carpet. She nodded, her own eyes a deep blue, like her mother’s. Nadia had her father’s eyes. Killer’s eyes, he’d once joked, when she’d been too young to realise it was a confession.

Kadinsky swirled the ice in his whiskey tumbler with a pudgy index finger. ‘What else can you do, girl?’

Nadia never knew where her answer came from, possibly revulsion against a life of prostitution, but she thought of her father, and the words slid out of her mouth. ‘I can shoot. I never miss.’

Kadinsky’s thugs laughed. He didn’t. ‘I detest exaggeration,’ he said. ‘So American.’ His mouth moved as if he was going to spit.

‘Let’s see if you can really shoot. Give her your pistol,’ he said to one of the henchmen, the one with a pockmarked face – Pox, she named him – who immediately lost his sense of humour.

She took the weapon from his outstretched hand, weighed it in her palm. An old-style Smith & Wesson. God knows why the guy had it. Most blatnye preferred semi-autos, Makarovs or the older but higher-velocity Tokarevs. She checked that it was loaded, all six bullets nestling in their chambers. She glanced at Kadinsky, thought about killing him. But the other henchman, the fat one with slicked black hair – hence, Slick – had his Glock trained on her, his lopsided leer daring her.

Kadinsky waved a hand towards Katya, five metres away. He tilted his head left and right, then settled back against the soft leather, took a gulp of whiskey, and smacked his lips. ‘The red rose in the bowl of flowers behind her left ear. Shoot it. From where you stand.’

Slick’s eyes flicked toward Katya, gauging the angles. His leer faded.

Nadia stared at her sister and the rose. Most of it was behind her head. Only one leaf of the scarlet blossom was exposed. She swallowed, then lifted the revolver, and took up a shooting stance like her father had taught her. Right arm firm, elbow not fully locked, left hand under the fist, prepared for the recoil. She had to do it before anger built and disrupted her concentration. She cocked the hammer, lined up the shot, then spoke to Katya’s serene, trusting face: ‘Love you,’ she said. Then she breathed out slowly, as if through a straw, and squeezed the trigger.

Masonry exploded behind Katya. The crack was so loud that three other men burst into the room, weapons drawn. Kadinsky waved them back as Pox peeled the revolver from Nadia’s stiff fingers. Petals fluttered to the floor amidst a plume of white powder from the impact crater in the wall. Katya sat immobile, pale, the hair on the left side of her head ruffled as if by a gust of wind. A trickle of blood oozed from her left temple, and ran down her cheek.

Katya, lips trembling, beamed at Nadia. ‘Still alive,’ she said, her voice hoarse. She touched the graze with an unsteady forefinger.

Nadia began to shake. She folded her arms, refusing to give Kadinsky the satisfaction.

***

Later that night, while she slept in Katya’s bed, holding close the sister she’d almost killed, Slick and Pox burst into the room. Katya woke, leapt out of bed and told them to fuck off, for which she received the butt of a revolver across her mouth.

Nadia half-planned to try to grab one of the guys’ guns at a crucial moment, but they knew what they were doing. One held her down, while the other did whatever he wanted. She retreated into a corner of her mind, a memory, the first time her father had taught her to hold a gun, his arms around her, helping her aim, shooting at empty beer bottles. He’d been so proud of her when she’d hit one. But she couldn’t hang onto the memory. It hurt, what they were doing, it fucking hurt, and she knew this was a wound that would never heal. She tried to scream STOP! But Slick clamped his hand over her mouth. Katya leapt onto his back, aiming to pull him off, but Pox punched her in the stomach, then in the mouth. Katya went down, didn’t reappear. Nadia continued to struggle, thought of her father, how he’d be raging in hell if he could see this, knew what he’d do to these two bastards if he were there. She clung to his rage like a lifeline…

Eventually they left, and Katya, her chin smeared with blood, an ugly bruise rising on her left cheek, came back to the bed and held Nadia tight. Nadia’s body was strangely still, as if it belonged to someone else. She wished it did. While her eyes stayed dry, her elder sister cried and whispered apologies, repeating how it would all be all right, the worst was over, and the important thing was that they were together. For the first time ever, that night, Nadia held her sister until she fell asleep, rather than the other way around.

At dawn Nadia woke to find her sister gone, presumably to Kadinsky’s bed. She considered their predicament. Katya was locked into Kadinsky’s world, and now she owed him too, and he wasn’t about to simply let her off. She was trapped. Her mother’s prediction came back to her: a killer or a whore. Maybe both.

She dressed, crept downstairs and stole outside, timing it to get past the guard by the main door when he went to take a piss. Snow crunched under her boots. She got a couple of miles from the dacha before she collapsed from the biting cold, and lay down in the crisp silence. ‘It’s okay,’ she heard her mother say inside her head, with a kindness she’d not heard from her in years. ‘Better this way.’ She closed her eyes and went to sleep, hoping never to awaken, unless to join her father.

But she did wake, and found herself back in the dacha on a sofa, buried in blankets and fur coats. She shook violently. People were shouting in the room next door. Katya, Slick, and Pox, then that low growl that cut off everyone.

Katya came in. She wiped away tear streaks on her bruised face, and closed the door behind her. She braved a smile and walked toward Nadia. ‘They won’t touch you again,’ she said, her voice shaky. ‘Nobody will.’ She sat down next to her.

Kadinsky entered, a gold-rimmed coffee cup in his hand, a sad-looking golden retriever trailing him. ‘Here’s the deal, girl.’ He spoke to the bay window rather than her, and took a swig before continuing. ‘I could use a female operative who doesn’t wet herself under pressure. Maybe that could be you. You’ll work for me for five years. Your training will take three, including eighteen months in Britain. I want your English impeccable – not like a newsreader, like a local.’ He stared at her, his gaze hard. He stooped to pat the dog ineffectually, as if he didn’t really know how, then stood tall, downing the last of the coffee. He spoke to the window again. ‘Katya stays here. Do ten ops for me, then I’ll let you both go.’ He nodded to himself as if concluding the contract. ‘Ten ops, five years. Then, svoboda… freedom.’

He left, not waiting for an answer. The dog followed, its head bowed.

Kadinsky’s words echoed in her mind. Five years. Half the life she would have lost in prison. If she’d have lasted. Thinking of her cell helped. Katya had gotten Nadia out of her own personal hell. But would Kadinsky really let them both go afterward?

Katya hugged her, and she succumbed to the embrace, because the only person she cared for in this brutal world was Katya. ‘It’s going to be all right,’ Katya said. ‘You can trust him. Pyotr Aleksandrovich is a hard man, but he keeps his bargains.’

She knew what Katya was trying to do, using Kadinsky’s first name and patronymic, making him seem like family. But something inside her hardened, as if the tears that should have come earlier turned to glass. She promised herself she would go and retrieve her father’s Beretta the very next day, strip it, clean it, begin practising again.

Ten ops. Five years. Then, one way or the other, she and her sister were through with Kadinsky.

‘It will be all right, Katya,’ she said. ‘Whatever it takes, I promise one day I’ll make it right.’


Five Years Later


Chapter One (#ulink_4e5736cd-b3fb-5943-99e8-1cc347de23af)

Nadia held up a hand to blot out the glare from the London Eye’s neon lights, and scanned the night sky for the helicopter. No sign. Checking her watch, she spoke into the VHF.

‘Where’s the package?’

The reply from Janssen took longer than it should have. ‘Stand by.’

She needed five minutes to get into position. The longer they waited, the more chance of her being seen. She was the only one of the team out in the open, albeit underneath the darkened arches of Lambeth Bridge. She switched channels. ‘Sammy –’

‘I know, Nad, Janssen’s being a real dick. He must have it on radar by now. Maybe you should get in the water, the bridge is pretty clear. Don’t forget the chopper’s blades.’

How could she forget? ‘When are you going to make the call, Sammy?’

‘Thirty seconds. Can’t leave it any longer.’

She spat into her dive mask, added a little water and used her forefinger to clean the glass, to prevent it fogging up later.

‘Make the call, Sammy, I’m going in.’

She zipped the radio in its waterproof case, donned the hood of her all-black wetsuit, and shrugged on the black, waistcoat-like stab jacket that would control her buoyancy and support her air tank at the back. Regulator in her mouth, she breathed quietly to avoid the usual Darth Vader sound effects. Fins in one hand, radio in the other, she took one careful step at a time down the muddy bank into the Thames. The tide was full, so there was close to eight metres of water in the centre – deep enough. To her right, half a kilometre away, the walls of the Houses of Parliament gleamed gold, Big Ben standing proud at almost ten pm.

She could just make out tourists loitering on Westminster Bridge, awaiting the big clock’s chimes, unaware of the spectacle they were about to witness. She’d better be in position by then, because when it happened, a few hundred smartphones would swing in her direction. She glanced the other way towards MI6, farther along the river on the opposite bank, the helicopter’s destination.

A lone siren wailed in the distance. One meant nothing. Then two more split the murmuring night sky. Within thirty seconds two police speedboats, prows high in the air as they banked their way through Lambeth Bridge’s central arches, raced downriver towards the Mirage, a party boat moored on the other side of Tower Bridge. Sammy had just used an old but valid IRA code – Shamrock – to make a credible bomb threat.

Chill water lapped over her shoulders. The radio floated next to her while she pulled on her fins. She had to bend forward to do so, and her head slid underwater. The sirens were immediately muffled, the water a murky green lit by mustard streetlamps on the bridge above. She snapped the fin-straps tight around her Achilles tendons, then lifted her head.

‘– into position. Three minutes. Don’t be late.’ Janssen, finally.

She snatched the radio out of the water, and hit Transmit. ‘Moving out.’

‘Any problems, use the spear-gun.’

‘Sure,’ she said.

Janssen’s voice grew an edge. ‘Not good enough, Nadia. I want to hear you repeat it.’

She breathed out long and slow before answering. ‘If the pilots aren’t out, I use the spear-gun.’

‘Be prepared to do it. Because any bullshit whatsoever, Nadia –’

‘I know. Look, I have to move.’

‘See that you do. And if you don’t get the package, don’t bother surfacing. That way Kadinsky might at least make it quick for your sister.’

She clicked Janssen off. Her chest heaved. Kadinsky’s latest protégé never missed an opportunity to remind her, to twist the knife. But it was almost over. This was the tenth op. Not a moment too soon, as she suspected Katya had recently turned to drugs, probably krokodil – Russian magic – in order to cope. Nadia squeezed her thumbs hard inside her fists for seven seconds, the way her dad had taught her. He’d never explained how it worked. Maybe he never knew, but her breathing came back under control.

Tethering the radio to her jacket, and without making a splash, she flipped onto her back so she could survey the night sky and Lambeth Bridge above her. As she finned away from the shore, she took one last look at the spear-gun propped up against the bridge wall, its razor-sharp arrowhead glinting silver.

Cold water flooded around her ears inside her neoprene dive-hood, then quickly warmed due to her body heat. Powerful fin-strokes propelled her under the bridge, only her face breaching the surface, arms folded across her belly. She reached midway along the bridge, used the inflate button to hiss some air into her stab jacket, then floated vertically, head out of the water, listening, waiting. It was up to Sammy now.

At last she heard the fast wapa-wapa beat of the rotors, as the two-seater helicopter swooped along the Thames, well under civil radar because of its military cargo. She didn’t know much about the package – the Rose – something to do with nuclear subs, a way to break their communication codes. She didn’t need to know. This was her and Katya’s ticket to freedom. A job, nothing more. What she did understand, having overheard one of Janssen’s phone conversations, was that it was a huge deal. It would make Kadinsky a major player, move him up in the Russian Mafia world. She wasn’t sure that was such a good idea, but that would be his problem.

Big Ben did its chime thing leading up to the ten big gongs. She searched the sky, not for the helicopter, but for the drone Sammy was piloting. Grasshopper. State-of-the-art Chinese tech, able to hover perfectly still, as well as dart in fast, precise moves. She heard it before she saw it. It buzzed just above the small waves and hovered a few metres from her, its six propellers whirring like a chorus of dentist drills. It shot upwards out of sight. The helicopter’s rotors grew louder. In the distance she spotted its pulsing red beacon as it swerved past the London Eye.

Big Ben struck. She finned hard. It took three more strikes of the giant clock before she was out from under the bridge. The tide had begun running out, and she had to push against the current. She kept her fin strokes long and deep, working thighs not calves, and stared upwards. A few people on the bridge gazed outwards in her general direction. Breathing out, she arched her back and slipped beneath the surface.

The night sky rippled above her, serene. White, yellow and blue lines shimmered across the wavelets. Beautiful, almost hypnotic, and she suddenly recalled why she loved diving, how it rescued her from life’s viciousness. At moments like this she imagined she could stay underwater indefinitely. But she shook herself and finned harder. She needed to get at least fifty metres from the bridge. Sammy had buzzed her with the drone to check where she was under the arches, and would drop the helicopter as close as possible, but away from the bridge. She could then drift back to it with the outgoing tide.

Three more dulled strikes of the clock. The helicopter’s staccato pounding shook the water around her. Suddenly, a blur of lights, its white underside with the red beacon pulsing. It was directly above her, still high up. That wasn’t right.

Big Ben’s last strike gonged. She stopped finning. If the chopper fell now its blades would shred her. The current washed her back towards the bridge. Still it hovered. She surfaced, and stared upwards, no longer caring if she was spotted. It was a stand-off, the helicopter thirty metres up, the drone in its face, manoeuvring to stay directly in front as the helicopter pilot tried to go around it.

Why wasn’t the drone’s cyber-spike working? It should overload the helicopter software, shut down the engines. She resisted calling Sammy, he had his hands full. But the pilots would be calling this in, initially thinking it was a tourist’s drone, not an attack. Either way, police speedboats would be here pretty quick, with navy divers on board, just in case.

Something caught her eye. A large dark shape ploughing its way downriver, silent and sure, its white bow wave glimmering in the darkness. A massive, unstoppable barge. It shouldn’t be there. Janssen said he’d checked everything. She looked up at the helicopter, then to the oncoming barge. It would be close.

Bright flashes lit up the chopper’s cockpit, then it suddenly went dark, including the red beacon. The Grasshopper’s spike had fired, frying the chopper’s electronics. Shouts and gasps erupted above her on the bridge. People pointed, watching, clicking smartphone cameras. The helicopter tilted left, then right, then began spiralling downwards. Some people even laughed, thinking it was some kind of publicity stunt, as the helicopter alternately swayed and dropped.

Nadia stared hard at the barge, gauging its speed, and how long she had before it would run right over her head. A minute, give or take. Its wake would suck her along with it. She took a long breath and mentally flicked through the event chain: helicopter ditches; pilots evacuate; she retrieves the package; the barge misses the helicopter; she escapes before divers find her. One goal, four points of failure. And she’d forgotten one failure point, she was sure of it. Never mind. No time. She breathed out. Any sane person would abort. But Janssen would find her and kill her, and Katya would follow.

With one last look at the barge, she began a countdown, then submerged and finned harder than ever, the opposing current tugging at her mask. She needed to get below the draft of the barge and its propellers. A boom rang loud in her ears, as a pressure wave smacked the back of her head. The helicopter was in the water. She rotated onto her back. It was right above her. Sammy had told her the mechanics: it would flip upside down, the rotors still turning. He’d told her to wait ten seconds. She began counting then stopped. Dammit, she’d lost track of the barge.

Dumping air from her jacket, she sank while the white underside of the chopper rolled away from her as it capsized, red and blue lights flashing through the water as its remaining electronics popped and died. A chainsaw whine drilled into her ears as the blades macheted the river. A semi-circle of boiling water swept towards her. She kicked to get away, but the slowing rotors chased her, the blades visible as they took turns to scythe past her fins.

She thought she was out of harm’s reach, until a blade whacked into her right calf and dragged her along for a couple of metres before it slowed to a stop. She groaned, squeezed her eyes shut and almost bit off the rubber mouthpiece. She ran her hand along the length of her calf.

Not broken, so get on with it.

She grabbed the rotor, drifting downwards with it as the chopper sank. But another noise grabbed her attention. The chugging of the barge’s engine. Pulling herself along the blade towards the cockpit, she glanced up just as all lights above the surface blanked out, sealing her in darkness. The barge was right above her, though she and the helicopter were sinking. It had missed. But in about twenty seconds the barge’s prop would go over her head. Just after that, the wake would suck at her and the helicopter. She needed to get inside, grab the package, and get the hell out of there.

The pilots should have evacuated by now and be swimming towards shore. Pulling out a torch from her stab jacket, she lit up the inverted cockpit’s glass bubble. It was completely flooded. But one of the pilots was still there, crouching on the console, breathing from a small bail-out tank, clutching a bright orange box to his chest. He held a pistol in one hand, wrapped in a transparent plastic bag. Smart. Because of the bag she couldn’t tell what make it was, but it would be dry, and so would still fire underwater. He pinched his nose between finger and thumb to equalise pressure as the helicopter continued to sink, and stared towards her, blinking hard. The chomping of the barge’s propeller ramped up. Nadia had one advantage – she could see clearly because she had a mask. He would only see a blur. She switched off the torch, anchored arms and legs around the rotor, and waited.

She’d surfed once, a lifetime ago, and when the barge’s wake came, it was like a giant swell picking her up. An underwater wall of water seized the helicopter, and began rolling it. She held tight as she rose then plunged. It was a nightmarish fairground ride, water swirling around her, pulling at her mask and regulator. All the time she watched the pilot, hoping he’d bolt for the surface. He didn’t. He knew that divers would be coming to rescue him. And he was right; as the barge’s engine receded, a speedboat’s engine revved somewhere above them. She couldn’t wait any longer. She switched on the torch again, and pulled herself along the rotor as the helicopter continued to cartwheel in the black water. Then she remembered what she’d forgotten during her rapid risk assessment. The bridge, with its supporting arches. She glanced up, and had just enough time to fold her forearms in front of her face.

The cockpit didn’t shatter when it slammed into the angled concrete, instead it ripped apart like paper, spilling the pilot into open, churning water, tearing the small air tank from his mouth. One arm gripping the orange box, he raised the gun and fired three shots. The first two fizzed past her, leaving slug-like trails in the gloom. The third punched into her chest, too slow to do serious damage. He might have fired again, but the wake slapped him into the arch wall, knocking him out.

She swam fast toward him. Divers above splashed into the water, cones of light from high-powered torches filtering through the blackness. They would find her in seconds. She grabbed the box, and readied to kick away from the wreck. But the pilot… The divers might not find him in time. Switching off her torch, she took out her regulator and rammed it into his mouth, purging it so it jetted air into his lungs. She closed off his nostrils with finger and thumb to stop him drowning through his nose, and checked he was still breathing. Then she finned fast, one arm wrapped around his torso, as they washed along with the current and the barge’s wake, away from the helicopter the divers were about to infest.

After thirty seconds her lungs were bursting. She found her stab jacket deflate hose and breathed from it, swallowing a mouthful of rancid Thames first. She and the pilot sank as she slowly breathed her jacket empty, until they hit the clay-like bottom. They drifted to a stop, and she tried to think. She dug out a nose-clip and clamped it to seal the pilot’s nostrils, so she would have a hand free. They were probably fifty metres the other side of the bridge. Lights flickered in the distance behind her from where the divers would be crawling all over the helicopter, looking for the box, presuming the pilot drowned, knowing he’d wash up later. Armed police would be scouring the area up top, looking for the drone and its pilot, who’d need line-of-sight to operate it at night. Added to that, Janssen wouldn’t wait long.

The solution was obvious: leave the pilot. Let him drown. There were all sorts of ways to rationalise it later. Instead, she knelt on the cloying river bottom, the Rose locked between her knees, and undid her stab jacket harnesses. She freed the tank and, with some effort, strapped the stab jacket around the pilot, and pumped a little air into it, so he’d be buoyant and she could still breathe. Then she disconnected the inflate hose. She clipped the VHF to her weight belt, held the tank under one arm, the Rose under the other, the regulator still in the pilot’s mouth, and finned up to the surface. The beauty of a stab jacket was that it was designed to keep even an unconscious diver’s face above the water-line.

She surfaced awkwardly, made sure he was still breathing, and removed the mouthpiece. Flashing red and blue lights lined both banks. A cacophony of sirens assaulted her as water trickled from her hood and ears. Searchlights from two police helicopters zigzagged methodically across the river, heading her way. Struggling to hold onto the box and her tank, using the diver as a float, she fished for the VHF and clicked it on.

‘Janssen, I have it.’ She switched channels. ‘Sammy, I’m coming.’

She let go of the pilot and immediately sank, weighed down by her belt and the tank. Suddenly everything was brilliant white, the pilot silhouetted above her on the surface. But then it grew dark again. Dammit! She finned hard, hovering just below the unconscious pilot. The searchlight swung back and stayed. Good. She descended again.

Nursing the tank under one arm, she swam along, hugging the bottom of the Thames, finning towards the Mirage pleasure boat that had now been evacuated due to Sammy’s hoax call. By the time she got there it would be deserted; the police would have worked out that it had been a distraction. It was the one place they wouldn't be. But she was late, and the banks were crawling with police.

She surfaced briefly, to get her bearings. The Millennium Bridge was right above her, people walking quickly across it. A few stopped to take selfies. Re-oriented, she descended again and began finning. What if Sammy wasn’t there? Worse, what if Janssen was there alone, or with his two cronies? She didn’t trust him an inch, he might just take the Rose from her outstretched arms and then shoot her in the face.

Calm down. Janssen was on the other side of the river. Sammy would wait, he’d never let her down before. Nothing ruffled him. All that would be waiting on the Mirage would be Sammy, a ladder, a towel, her clothes and backpack, and Sammy’s Suzuki to get them both out of central London before roadblocks locked down the capital.

Nadia’s heart rate eased off a few notches, and she got into a smooth, powerful finning rhythm. She had the package. Soon Kadinsky would have it. Then she and her sister could get an apartment somewhere, stay out of trouble, and live a normal, inconsequential life.

She craved normal.

Twenty minutes later, on the abandoned Mirage, she dried off and sipped bitter Irish coffee from Sammy’s flask. Sammy, as usual, wore a full-face crash helmet. All she could see were his ink-black eyes. He was still on an unofficial Irish-British blacklist due to IRA activities, and there were too many surveillance cameras in London.

As she took a last sip, she dared to think it was all over. Five years, tenth op. And in the previous nine she’d never had to kill anyone. The ops had all gone pretty smoothly, a few guards or rival mafia hoods had ended up in hospital. No graves. And all they had to do now was get the package to Kadinsky. Then she and Katya… She held back the thought. It’s not done yet. But she allowed herself a moment to savour the coffee and whiskey.

She donned her crash helmet, ready to escape London with Sammy and the package. She glanced at the bag where Sammy had stashed it, and for the first time wondered what it could actually do, how dangerous it really was. But as she swung her leg over the back of the bike, three gunshots rang out clear across the Thames, from a tall tower block. Janssen’s location. She and Sammy held their breath.

Sammy’s VHF crackled, and she heard Janssen, panting as if he was running, his voice more excited than scared.

‘Three police down, we switch to site B, tomorrow.’

Sammy shook his head. ‘Site B, affirm.’ He clicked off the VHF. ‘Fuck!’

Nadia stared across the river, a gnawing certainty in her gut that all hopes of a normal life had just slipped beneath the placid waves.

Sammy nudged her arm. ‘Let’s go.’

As he threaded them through London’s smaller streets, she rested her crash helmet against his back. No matter how tough it had been up till now, everything was about to get harder. This had been their biggest operation ever, and Janssen had just upped the stakes by spilling blood. She might have to fight her way out of this one. And the question that had dogged her for the past five years, the one she’d hoped to finally put behind her, rose to the surface.

Did she really have killer’s eyes?


Chapter Two (#ulink_cfc05962-63dd-585e-ba42-34f4cfcf056c)

Her father struggled, screamed at her. ‘For God’s sake, Nadia, pick up the gun, shoot them!’

The two commandos didn’t seem to know she was there. She walked calmly over to the table, lifted the newspaper, and picked up the Beretta. Odd. It had a silencer. She’d never noticed that before. As they threw the hood over his head, she stood sideways to them, feet splayed, raised the gun with a straight right arm, competition style, and fired two head-shots, one for each commando. The trio slumped to the floor. Her father lay still. She walked over, nudged his leg with her foot. No movement. Then she heard her father behind her. He sounded disappointed.

‘You must always look your enemy in the eye. You must make sure. You must let them know, let yourself know that you mean it.’

So who was the corpse? She crouched and lifted the hood. Katya. Two shots. One in each eye. Nadia tried to scream, but she had no voice.

She jerked bolt upright, gasping for breath, her heart hammering in her chest, and opened her eyes in darkness. The same fucking nightmare. Sometimes Katya, sometimes her father, once her mother. Whoever she shot, her family got killed. She lay back down. Rain pelted the wooden roof, and the previous evening’s events slammed into her mind. She closed her eyes. Out of one nightmare…

Sammy stirred next to her. They were both fully clothed, lying on stale towels inside a beach hut he’d broken into no more than four hours ago, her backpack serving as a pillow. She could smell his scent. Six ops with Sammy, and he’d never made a move on her. Not even a flirtatious remark. She’d been happy with that. But right now she wouldn’t mind some comfort.

‘You awake, Nad?’ he asked.

‘Afraid so.’

He touched her brow. It was slick with cold sweat. ‘Nightmaring again?’

She didn’t answer. She’d never told him what they were about. Not a good idea.

Sammy sat up and switched on an interior light, a single harsh yellow bulb hanging from a twisted cord. She covered her eyes, rubbed them, then forced them open again.

‘Almost six,’ he said. ‘Time we found out exactly how much shit Janssen has dumped us in.’

He turned on a portable radio. The early morning shipping forecast was just ending. They listened to the first five BBC news items, then he switched off the radio. The rain eased.

‘What the fuck?’ he said, facing her.

She didn’t get it either. No mention of the downing of a helicopter in front of hundreds of tourists. No mention of gunshots in the centre of London either. None of it had made the news.

She propped herself up on an elbow, and nodded to the black leather bag concealing the package.

‘Tell me about the Rose, Sammy.’

He shook his head. ‘It’ll only distract you. You’re so close, Nad. Just get the job done. Then you and Katya are home free.’

He was about to get up. She touched his arm, stopped him.

‘What does the Rose do?’

He leaned close, his breath raw.

‘If you can detect and localise a nuclear submarine, the Rose – Rosetta is its full name – will let you send it an encoded message the sub’s crew will trust.’

She stared at the bag. ‘What kind of message?’

‘You know, war has broken out, fire a nuclear missile, a target, that kind of stuff.’

It took a moment to sink in. ‘Jesus Christ!’

‘Exactly.’ He turned back to her. ‘But we didn’t make it. Those English bastards did. And now they’re shitting in their pants. Even blocked it from the news.’

‘But who’s Kadinsky going to sell it to? If Al Qaeda or IS –’

‘Not terrorists, Nad. Kadinsky’s greedy, not insane. Another government. The highest bidder. Look, these things never get used, they’re just leverage in global power games.’

He got up, peered through a crack in the door, then unlocked it and let in some fresh sea air. He glanced from the bag to Nadia, and walked outside.

Nadia had learned to trust Sammy, but knew this time his judgment was clouded by his hatred of the English. The Rose was Armageddon a la carte. If it got into the wrong hands… She didn’t want an exploding nuke on her conscience.

She stood up and walked outside, and stopped short when she saw Sammy taking a piss. She couldn’t help noticing he had quite a handful. His head swung towards her, and he continued urinating, as if she was just another guy. Suddenly she got it. She shook her head then smiled.

‘At least now I know it’s not personal,’ she said.

‘You’ve been a bit slow on the uptake, Nad.’ He grinned, shook himself, put it away and zipped up. ‘You don’t have what I want.’ He winked, then stood close to her, and put a hand on her shoulder. His grin vanished. ‘Besides, you’re not even in the game, are you?’

She flinched under his hand.

‘Look, most of us know what Slick and Pox did to you. I’m betting you’ve done almost nothing with a guy since.’

She reached for his hand, removed it from her shoulder.

‘Pox is dead, by the way,’ Sammy said.

‘I know.’ An op gone bad in Hong Kong. No one would talk about it, but someone had let slip to Katya.

One down…

She thought about the Rose again. Images of nuclear detonations – billowing mushroom clouds, thousands of lives snuffed out in an instant – crept unwanted into her mind. Knowing it was probably a bad idea, she had to ask. There wasn’t much time. ‘Sammy, the Rose, it’s too dangerous. Maybe we should –’

Sammy’s hand slapped over her mouth as he half-shoved, half-lifted her until her back smacked into the wooden beach hut. He leant into her, so there was no way she could even knee him in the balls. She smelled urine on his fingers. Her hands gripped his wrist, but he was too strong. He could snap her neck if he wanted to.

His black eyes blazed. ‘You trying to get me killed, Nad? Janssen and Kadinsky would hunt us down.’ He backed off a fraction. ‘Would you take your Beretta and shoot your pretty Katya in the face?’

She recoiled and tried to break free, but he gripped her mouth harder. She glared at him.

‘Because that would be a kindness compared to what will happen if you do something stupid, or even mention it, which is why my hand is over your mouth, stopping any more shit coming out of it.’

She broke their gaze.

‘The Rose goes to Kadinsky, Nad. What happens after that is above our pay grade. Are we clear?’

She nodded as far as she was able. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I like you Nadia. Just don’t go soft in the head on me.’ He released her.

She wiped her mouth, spat onto the wet concrete.

He re-entered the beach hut.

Nadia stared towards the dark sea. The tide was leaving, waves dragging stones noisily down the pebble beach. She hoped Sammy was still on her side. She had no allies in Kadinsky’s world. Everyone was too shit-scared of him, or else dead. She wanted to believe Kadinsky would let her and Katya go, keep his side of the bargain, but why would he? What was in it for him?

Sammy emerged with his crash helmet and the leather bag holding the Rose.

‘Are we good, Nad?’

Despite wanting to deck him, she had to stick to the only plan she had. Get it back to Kadinsky. Maybe Sammy was right. The Rose would never actually get used, especially by a sane government. Otherwise it would trigger instant retaliation, maybe global war. Even IS didn’t have much use for a radioactive planet. She knew she was trying to convince herself, but Kadinsky was going to get it with or without her. Focus on what you can control.

Save Katya.

She nodded. But Sammy looked at her sideways through hooded eyes.

‘Seriously, Nad, I need to know.’ he said. ‘Because right now Janssen is more lethal to us than this package.’

She stared at him. ‘Why?’

‘He’s one of those pricks who believes the world owes him everything. Ego big as a house. Hands soft as a girl’s because he always gets others to do his dirty work. Kadinsky only let him run this op because Janssen got the intel from a friend. But the guy’s ambitious, and he’s got two of his cronies with him. I know you can shoot, but I’ve never actually seen you put someone down. At first I thought they got lucky, those two guards in Sebastopol last year, the ones who would have killed me except you stopped them. But it was precision shooting, Nad, minimal damage, the soft fleshy zones between the major organs. Hard to hit, easy to miss. You study biology to do that?’

She gazed towards the sea. ‘Anatomy, actually. Kadinsky’s camp. With the guy we called the Butcher. Had us practise all the pressure points on captives, and made us shoot, knife and garrote cadavers.’

‘You ever killed, Nadia?’

No. Never. Can’t.

‘Never had to.’ She looked him straight in the eye, as she always did when the only way out was a lie. ‘But I will when I have to, Sammy.’

‘Good. Because I need to know you’ve got my back, Nad.’

She cleared her throat. ‘We’re good, Sammy.’

‘Okay. And keep an eye on Kilroy. I’ve seen the way that creep looks at you. Don’t know where the fuck Janssen recruits his men, or why Kadinsky lets him use his own team.’ His voice, and the way he looked at her, became normal again. ‘I’ll see you at the warehouse. I’m going early to set up the meet. Be there at seven.’

‘What?’ She felt a stab of panic. He was taking the Rose, her only leverage. ‘That wasn’t the plan!’

He shrugged. ‘We turn up the same time… Too dangerous. Too easy for Janssen. This way I arrive first, check out the Rose, and Janssen knows you’re coming, so he has to wait, and I can see the lie of the land.’ He hefted the bag as if to make the point. ‘Don’t worry, you’re my insurance, Nad. Just be there at seven. And bring your Beretta.’

He turned and walked off to find his Suzuki. Cold, she re-entered the beach hut and gathered her stuff. She checked the Beretta. Fully loaded. When she came back out, a few strands of luminous blue had split the dark cloud layer just above the horizon. Dawn was arriving. She walked along the seafront, fast at first, burning off the residual adrenaline until the sun peeked above the sea.

She wandered the slippery, cobbled streets of Penzance, their ‘B site’. It was low-key there, but with an airstrip nearby. Janssen had rented a plane and could fly them across to Dublin, and then Sammy’s contacts could get them to Helsinki. Then she’d get them across the border into Russia. A nice, neat little plan. But so far this one was going south fast, just like Sebastopol…

The guards she’d shot there. She’d checked afterwards. They’d survived, though one had retired early. Good for him. The eight other ops had been bloodless, more or less, a little roughing up here and there, but she’d stayed in the shadows. This should have been the final op, after which she could stop pretending to be a killer.

She found a Starbucks. It hadn’t opened yet, but the young guy setting up let her use the loo anyway. After splashing water on her face and wiping her armpits with damp paper towels, she ordered a soya cappuccino and a skinny blueberry muffin. She only ate half, watching the sunrise. Sebastopol. If only Sammy knew the truth…

Six months prior to that botched mission, Katya had told Nadia their mother was dying. Ovarian cancer. Stage Four. Metastasised. Dead woman walking. Katya had already been to pay her last respects. Amazingly – or more likely due to Katya – Kadinsky let Nadia go back to Uspekh for the weekend. None of her relatives there wanted to talk to her; they had an idea of her line of work, and after her father’s death all sorts of stories had come out. Some of them true. So, she was already judged and shunned. Like father, like daughter. She didn’t care. She had nothing to say to them.

Her mother didn’t look too bad – mainly bloated with dark rings around the eyes – but that was because she’d refused chemo, said it would only prolong the inevitable, that she’d had enough of this world, was anxious to try the next. As usual, her mother had something to say, and didn’t indulge in pleasantries before jumping straight to the point, after first clasping Nadia’s hand so she had to listen.

‘Your father is in hell, Nadia,’ she said, her voice strong, her eyes full of fire. ‘All those people he killed, they were waiting for him.’

Nadia felt the familiar knot tightening in her stomach, remembered why she’d left all those years ago. It was as if her umbilical cord had been shoved up inside her rather than cut, and her mother could pluck at it any time she wanted. Nadia still loved her father, even though she knew what he’d become, and didn’t want to think of him trapped in hell with only his victims for company.

Her mother tightened her grip. ‘I know I will pay for my sins first, but I’m going to heaven eventually, and I hope your sister, despite her slutty whoring –’

Nadia snatched her hand away. Her mother paused. Her eyes softened.

‘I know Katya will join me one day.’ She held out her hand. Nadia hesitated a moment, then took it.

‘Nadia. If you kill, you can never come to heaven. Never. I want you there with me. So I need you to promise.’

Nadia recoiled. She’d never wanted to kill, wasn’t even sure she could. But this…

‘I’m dying Nadia. You’re still my daughter.’ Her eyes grew hard. ‘You owe me.’ She looked away, to the window, perhaps realising she’d overplayed it. ‘And Katya.’

Nadia wanted to storm off, to tell her to go to hell, that it wasn’t reserved only for killers. But this was her mother’s deathbed, this was their last conversation. In a few weeks, she’d be standing over this woman’s grave.

Her mother looked at her then, the way she had before all their lives had turned to shit, and Nadia remembered the sweet mother who’d brushed Nadia’s hair when it had been wild and long, told her stories, taught her to bake cakes, and held her when she’d been frightened by thunderstorms. Something cracked inside Nadia. She tried to hold it back, but it was no use. A torrent of painful longing tore through her, heart-wrenching pangs for the mother she’d lost a long time before she’d lost her father. If there was a heaven, maybe this was the part of her mother they’d let in.

Her mother released Nadia’s hand. ‘Promise me, Nadia. Promise me you’ll never kill.’

Nadia knew she’d regret it, that in her line of business this was at worst a suicide pact, at best Russian roulette. Maybe her mother knew it, too, and that this way Nadia would end up in heaven faster, even if she’d rather be with her father. She wouldn’t have put it past her mother. But the bond was too strong, and images of those happier early years flashed across her mind, and child-like tears for the loss of a mother-daughter relationship that could have been so much more, tumbled down her cheeks. Her mother smiled, knowing she’d won. Right now it didn’t matter. And so the two words Nadia knew could seal her fate passed between her lips.

‘I promise.’



Nadia downed the last of the cappuccino, paid, left a ridiculous tip, and headed towards the disused docks where she was to meet with Sammy, Janssen, Toby and Kilroy. At least they were far from London, which would be locked down, airports and Eurostar heavily screened. Not that she could leave the country alone – Janssen had her passport. But they had some breathing space in this provincial tourist town, four hours by train or car from the capital. She suddenly remembered the helicopter pilot, wondered if he was okay, then ditched the thought. She’d done all she could.

She neared the older part of town and slowed. If one or more of the policemen had died last night, she was an accessory to murder. Approaching the iron door of the dilapidated warehouse, she paused, and had a final futile thought about doing a one-eighty. Then she heaved open the door. The hinges shrieked, setting her nerves on edge. She took a deep breath and stepped inside.

The warehouse reeked of mould. Fetid pools of water lay scattered across an uneven, cracked concrete floor. The large space was devoid of furniture save for a metal table and three rusted chains hanging from iron crossbars close to the roof. Sammy’s Suzuki stood near the door, the only remarkable item in the grim daylight filtering through a broken skylight. She heard faint slapping sounds as waves beat against the pillars underneath the floor.

‘Close the fucking door!’

Nadia glared at Janssen, and tugged the door shut with a definitive clunk. Sammy wandered over and flipped the latch, locking them in. His crash helmet hung from his left hand. With his back to Janssen, Sammy caught Nadia’s eye and raised an eyebrow.

Katya had also warned Nadia about Janssen. Said his ideas were a lot bigger than his delivery. She’d had to be careful with him in the bedroom. But Katya had said something else – which Nadia had not quite understood at the time – that Janssen was most dangerous when he turned his back on you.

She and Sammy joined the others at the battered table, a cylindrical device in its centre, smooth silver metal except for a couple of red LED displays that pulsed slowly, like a heartbeat. It was about the same size as a large tin of vegetables. The Rose.

A siren wailed in the distance, made all five of them glance at one another. Janssen, his bone-white hair lashed back in a ponytail, spread his arms wide.

‘Stay cool. They have no idea where we are,’ he said. His pale blue eyes were relaxed, as if he didn’t care about anything.

Nobody spoke, least of all Janssen’s men, Toby and Kilroy. They stood to his right, Toby bald and paunchy, eyes darting here and there, mainly toward the door. Kilroy was a good two heads taller, unmoving. Tattoos on his fingers, like rings, marked him as hard-core Mafia. The type you never spoke to. Neither Kilroy nor Toby looked happy, but there was resignation there. Clearly this wasn’t the first time a job with Janssen had been screwed up.

Nadia knew she should stay quiet. She’d never spoken out when her dad had been around, no matter what he’d done. Once he’d gone, though, she’d developed what her mother called a trouble-mouth.

‘The policemen back in London… Are they dead? The news isn’t saying.’

Janssen leaned forward across the table. ‘Less you know, the better.’

She folded her arms. ‘Theft of this magnitude is five years’ hard time. Accessory to murder is fifteen. Especially a copper.’

Sammy moved away from her, cradling his helmet in his arms.

‘Then you’ll get thirty,’ Janssen said. ‘Girl like you’ll go down well in prison.’ He leered, and Toby and Kilroy half-snorted, half-laughed at the innuendo.

Nadia wasn’t laughing. Nine ops for Kadinsky. Two wounded, zero fatalities. She had a hunch Janssen had a different scorecard.

‘What now?’ she asked.

Janssen prodded the Rose with a forefinger. ‘Sammy-boy, you sure the homing beacon is deactivated?’

‘I know my job.’

Janssen nodded.

This was the point at which Janssen should pay them the first half, give her back her passport, and head to the airfield. But he didn’t move, and said no more. The silence hung in the humid air, and the mood around the table shifted. Nadia couldn’t put her finger on it, but Toby stopped glancing around, and Kilroy’s lips curled into an ugly smile. The back of Nadia’s neck prickled. She tried not to react. Her gut told her to sprint for the door.

Janssen turned his back on them all and walked a few steps from the table. Toby watched Sammy. Kilroy studied her. Nadia did a rapid risk analysis: Janssen was going to double-cross Kadinsky. She and Sammy were corpses-in-waiting. Three of them against her and Sammy. Bad odds. She stared at the Rose. It was the key. She’d told Sammy she had his back, but did she? Could she kill one of these men? Nadia imagined her father rising up out of wherever the hell they’d buried him, watching her, waiting, willing her to become like him. And her mother… Christ! It was like a custody battle that reached far beyond the grave. Forget it. Focus.

Janssen’s voice echoed around the desolate room. ‘Nadia, you ditch your pistol on the way down like we agreed?’

‘Sure,’ she lied. She kept her arms folded, and did the thumbs-inside-fist trick again.

It calmed her breathing. She unfolded her arms casually. She met Kilroy’s eyes. He looked at her like she was already a piece of dead meat on the floor, and screwable into the bargain.

She kept her voice level. ‘We take the package back to Kadinsky, Janssen, as agreed.’

She reached out and picked up the Rose. It was heavier than it looked. Kilroy’s eyes narrowed. The fingers of his right hand uncurled. She ignored him and studied Janssen. He still had his back to them. His head turned halfway, as if listening, but she noticed his right arm move slowly, as if searching for something inside his jacket.

‘Afraid not, Nadia,’ Janssen said.

She took a breath, knowing that when shit happened, it only took seconds.

One.

Toby went for his gun, but Sammy was quicker, and slam-dunked his crash helmet down onto Toby’s flabby face. Nadia tossed the Rose into the air. Kilroy had been going for his weapon but his mouth dropped open as his eyes followed the vertical arc of their prize, his large hands reaching to catch it.

Two.

Toby staggered backwards, blood streaming from a pulped nose, and drew his gun, but a sharp crack exploded in the room as Sammy shot him in the chest. Toby toppled backwards onto the floor, eyes wide open. Nadia slid the safety off her Beretta, but it got caught in the folds of her anorak, wouldn’t come out of its pocket. She pulled her empty hand out just as Janssen whirled around, gripping a silver Magnum. Kilroy caught the Rose, but was staring down the barrel of Sammy’s Glock.

Three.

Janssen levelled the Magnum first at her, saw she was unarmed, then tried to draw a bead on Sammy. But Kilroy was directly between Sammy and Janssen. Janssen took a step forward. Sammy mirrored the movement, keeping Kilroy in the line of fire.

‘Stay there, Janssen,’ Sammy said. ‘Nadia and I are leaving. Keep the Rose, and the money. We’ll give you a twelve-hour head-start before we call Kadinsky.’

Nadia glanced at the door ten metres behind them. They’d never make it. Janssen looked confident. She backed away to the side, in full view of Janssen.

‘Sammy, you go, you know I can’t,’ she said, continuing to back away, trying to gauge the angle. Both Janssen and Kilroy had the hungry eyes of men who thought they were in control, about to inflict mortal harm. Kilroy shifted the Rose to his left hand, leaving his gun-hand free, fingers flexed.

‘Nad, what are you doing? You are coming with me,’ Sammy said, his voice taut. ‘They’ll kill you for sure.’

She took one more step backwards. The angle was right. One-twenty degrees. If Janssen looked straight at Sammy, she’d be in Janssen’s blind spot. She watched his eyes.

‘Looks like you’re on your own, Sammy-boy.’ Janssen took a small step forward.

Nadia’s right hand slipped into her anorak pocket again, found the cool grip of her Beretta. She reckoned she could maim Janssen without killing him. Inserting her finger in front of the trigger, she took a breath, and pulled out the Beretta. Janssen’s head turned first, then his Magnum swung in her direction. Look into their eyes, her father had said. But she blinked as she fired, the recoil punching back into her shoulder, the gunshot like a smack across both ears. The pungent smell of the expended cartridge stung her nostrils.

Janssen went down.

Another crack from Sammy’s pistol made her glance left to see Kilroy wavering like a man on a tightrope, a pistol hanging from his right hand. The Rose slipped from the other hand and fell to the floor with a dull thud. Kilroy had a blackened hole in the centre of his neck. His mouth opened and closed a couple of times, as if he had something to say, but all that came out was a gurgling noise as blood rushed forth. He collapsed onto the dusty floor.

‘Fucking… lying… BITCH!’ Janssen tried to get up, but his hand slid in the puddle of blood trickling from the wound in his chest. She’d aimed to wing him, but he’d moved the wrong way at the last second. Missed his heart, punctured his lung. Not fatal. Not yet.

‘Give it up, Janssen,’ she said. She imagined her father shaking his head.

Janssen coughed, the silver Magnum still in his right hand as he tried to prop himself up on the other arm so he could take aim.

Sammy picked up the Rose, inspected it for damage, and waved his Glock in Janssen’s direction. ‘Finish him.’

Janssen’s body shook. He muttered something she didn’t catch, then suddenly flung out his arm. He fired. The bullet ricocheted off the wall behind Nadia’s right shoulder. The sound clanged in her ears. She took another deep breath, let it out slowly, firmed her firing arm and rooted her feet on the floor. But her trigger finger wouldn’t move.

‘Finish him!’ Sammy shouted.

Janssen half-choked, half-coughed, as blood from his mouth drooled onto the concrete.

‘Doesn’t have it in her, Sammy-boy. Crack shot, can’t kill. Just another pussy.’

He took aim, steadier this time. Nadia’s heart pounded, and she lost control of her breathing. She felt as if all the blood had drained out of her body. Her gun hand shook. Fuck! She couldn’t do it. And now Janssen was going to kill her. Her mother was going to win. Her eyes welled. Sorry, Katya.

Janssen leered. ‘You’re going to be my bitch in hell, Nadia, for all eter–’

Sammy fired.

The bullet cleaved Janssen’s forehead in two. Bloodied flesh, brain matter and shattered bone blossomed, then Janssen slumped forwards, quivered a few times, and stilled.

Nadia felt cold, unable to tear her eyes from Janssen’s corpse in its spreading red pool. She imagined his soul slipping from his body through the floor, down into the sea beneath them, falling through the Earth to the place where it belonged, where her dad would be waiting for him, and would beat the crap out of him for all eternity.

Sammy appeared in front of her, seized her shoulders. ‘Nad, listen to me. We have to split up. I need to get out of the country, explain this fuck-up to Kadinsky personally, but I’ll never get that through customs.’ He stared at the Rose. ‘It’s emitting a very faint signal. I’m not sure but I reckon the authorities might have a way of detecting it if they get close enough. You take it.’ He shook her. ‘Nad, are you listening to me?’

She was, though his voice was muffled by the ringing in her ears. She gazed past him to Janssen, then to the other two corpses. Her personal fast-track ticket to hell. Would her father be able to protect her from these three when she arrived? But she hadn’t actually killed them herself…

She barely registered the slap, then stared into Sammy’s eyes.

‘Again,’ she said.

Sammy obliged, striking her face harder the second time. She swallowed, took a couple of jagged breaths.

‘Get a grip, Nad, for Katya’s sake.’

Sammy was right. Her sister. Focus on the living. She pocketed the Beretta.

‘Tell me what to do.’

Sammy hauled open the trapdoor. A couple of metres below, the sea splashed against concrete pillars. The tang of sea water and seaweed helped clear her head.

Sammy searched Janssen’s corpse. ‘Your passport,’ he said, tossing it to her.

She caught it, but her fingers were numb. She watched as Sammy methodically wrapped chains around the three men’s legs and shoved them one by one into the water below. He siphoned most of the petrol from his Suzuki’s tank and scattered it around the inside of the warehouse. Then he rigged a crude fuse to set the place on fire half an hour after they’d left. He let the iron trapdoor fall back down with a loud clank. Like a metal coffin lid snapping shut.

‘Give me your gun,’ he said.

She took a step back, shook her head. The Beretta was all she had left from her father.

‘Okay, just don’t get caught with it. At least one of the bullets in Janssen’s corpse will match. Lie low for a week,’ he advised. ‘You’ll never get that device through customs, X-ray machines everywhere. I’ll get word back to Kadinsky. He’ll extract you.’

Nadia nodded. But the Rose was a death magnet. Five dead already on its account. Those who knew what it could do would happily ramp up the body count to get hold of it. She’d be lucky if she survived a week. Sammy told her to get out of Penzance, get off the mainland – the remote Isles of Scilly off Land’s End might be a good bet. She said nothing. The less they knew of each other’s plans, the better.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘Kadinsky will get his package, and you’ll get your sister back. This is so big he’ll let you both go for good this time.’

She stared at him till he broke their gaze.

Outside on the deserted dock, the weather was clearing up. She watched him disappear on his Suzuki. I hope you make it, Sammy. She turned and walked in the opposite direction, slowly, as if drugged. She clung to Sammy’s words. Get the device back to Kadinsky. Then leave with Katya. If he’d let them go. Or at least be alive, with her. She picked up her pace.

When she heard fire engines far behind her thirty minutes later, she didn’t turn around, just kept walking, clutching the bag holding the Rose. She tried to erase the image of Janssen’s shattered face. But she couldn’t. It was all she saw. She found a public lavatory on the seafront, went straight to an empty stall, locked herself inside, and threw up.


Chapter Three (#ulink_909817e2-8f0e-5770-a63a-5881bac6e6b4)

The cold hit the nape of Jake’s neck as he rolled backwards, holding mask and regulator in place with one hand, torch in the other. Cool fjord water seeped into his hood and gloves. A single droplet defeated his drysuit neck seal and ran down his spine as he righted himself. Finning to the back of the boat in the moonless night, he shone his torch onto his left hand to give Andreas the ‘OK’ signal. In that brief moment he caught the concerned look on the skipper’s face while he lowered the green nightlight into the water to help them find the boat later.

Jake turned to the others, gave them time to get adjusted. Their torches, dangling from lanyards attached to their wrists, shone downwards, two cones illuminating the depths below, sharp halogen light diffusing into shadows. A few silver fish scurried away from the searchlight beams, unwilling to be lit up as tonight’s main course for larger fish. Beneath them the abyss of the fjord sucked downwards. Jake knew the lure of the deep only too well. He lifted his mouth out of the water.

‘Fin to the wall. We need a frame of reference as we descend, it’ll help to stop narcosis setting in.’

Jan Erik and Bjorn turned and finned towards the shore. Jake put his head underwater again and shone the beam down until it caught the green, orange and red fauna of the underwater cliff face. He lifted up his head. ‘This will do.’ He angled his torch upwards, still underwater, just enough so he could see their faces clearly, the water refracting the light through the thin layer of glacier run-off hovering near the surface, turning their faces a ghostly green. He searched their eyes. Anticipation had taken over concern. Good. Jan Erik grinned behind his mouthpiece, and Bjorn’s eyes adopted the look usually reserved for sharking blondes at discos.

They were both hungry for this, like he’d been two years ago when he first dived this deep. The adrenaline rush caught him, too. This is why I dive. He replaced his regulator, gave them the ‘OK’, then the thumb-down signal. They returned both signals, and the trio slipped below the surface.

Jake dumped air out of his stab jacket and sank backwards, breathing out a little through his nose into his mask to prevent redeye, and watched them do the same. He pinched his nose between forefinger and thumb and equalised the pressure in his ears. At six metres he gave them another OK signal, and they returned it. He did his trademark reverse pirouette and dove down head first, arms folded in front so he could see both dive computers, equalising his ears every five metres. Like free-falling, like flying, like surfing, like – diving. All his problems, petty concerns, worries and unsatisfied desires, condensed into the trail of bubbles behind him, cascading up to the real world where they belonged. He didn’t fin, and every ten metres he jetted a little more air into his stab jacket, compensating for the rising water pressure.

Bjorn shot down in front of him, finning hard. In Jake’s headlight Bjorn looked like a fireball. Clearly he wanted to be first. Jake had told him not to do this, warned him that it rammed nitrogen into the brain and could trigger narcosis, the drunkenness that sometimes occurred below thirty metres when diving on air, and was far more likely at their target of fifty. He turned to Jan Erik to stop him from following suit, shaking a flat hand horizontally. Jan Erik rolled his eyes inside his mask.

Jake looked down again but could only see the glow of his light below in a stream of rising bubbles growing larger as they ascended. Bjorn had disappeared. Dammit! Fatality scenarios swirled into his mind. Blocking them off, he followed the stream of Bjorn’s bubbles, and checked his computer. He dolphin-kicked once to arrive faster, but not so fast as to unleash nitrogen narcosis on himself. Out of the grey the cliff-face appeared again, a seventy degree slope, and there was Bjorn, propped on it with his fins. Jake sighed through his mouthpiece, and relaxed.

Jake realised he hadn’t been breathing much, and took three slow breaths. As he neared Bjorn he checked his own air gauge: two hundred bar. Plenty. He and Jan Erik touched the silt with their fins, a couple of metres from Bjorn. Jake checked both his computers. Fifty metres. Exactly. This was a bounce dive. Touch fifty, then ascend to decompress, to let the nitrogen flush back out of their bloodstreams, at nine metres, then six metres. He took a few more measured breaths. He didn’t bother to look around – mainly silt anyway – his job now was to get them back up to safer depth. He signalled to Jan Erik ‘OK’, then ‘Up’. Jan Erik pretended to wipe a tear from his mask with a gloved finger – he wanted to stay longer. Jake shook his head, and Jan Erik nodded, returning the ‘Up’ signal. Jake turned to Bjorn, who was still balanced on the tail edge of his fins, staring down into the abyss. Jake gave him the ‘OK’ signal, then Jan Erik’s torchlight lit up Bjorn’s eyes. They were bloodshot, glazed, half-closed, as if he was drunk. Narcosis. Shit. At the same time that Jake reached out for him, Bjorn gave the ‘Down’ signal, and did a pretty good impression of Jake’s reverse pirouette. He dove deeper into the fjord.

Jake’s fingers just missed Bjorn’s trailing fin and he watched, unbelieving, as Bjorn spirited downwards. In the two seconds that followed, he calculated the odds of catching Bjorn before they went too deep, and whether he should focus on stopping a single fatality turning into a three-diver fatality, then traded that risk against trying to explain to Bjorn’s sister Vibeke and the authorities how he’d stood by and done nothing while watching Bjorn plunge to his death. He flicked his wrist to Jan Erik, gave the ‘Down’ signal and dolphin-kicked hard after Bjorn.

Jake finned fast down the escarpment, exhaling steadily. Depth and time were the dual enemies. The faster he caught Bjorn, the better. One of his computers, the Aladin, beeped an alarm. Sixty metres. The rising partial pressure of oxygen would begin killing them soon. Breathing hard, with Jan Erik close behind, Jake raced for Bjorn’s red fins. The second computer, the Suunto, beeped. At last he grabbed one fin and then a leg, and yanked Bjorn around to face him. Both he and Bjorn were still sinking. They bumped into the sludge-covered escarpment like two drunken men falling down a hill in slow motion. Jake had to let go of his torch. It spun around wildly, strobing like a disco light as he gripped Bjorn’s harness with one hand and inflated his stab jacket full of air with the other. Bjorn’s eyes were nearly closed. Nitrogen narcosis had taken him elsewhere. Jake checked his second computer, the Suunto – the Aladin had stopped working – sixty-eight metres. His fins found purchase on the slope. He flexed his knees and with both hands shoved Bjorn’s body upwards.

Jan Erik arrived.

Jake could hear his own heart pounding. But there was another, stranger, pulsing white noise, growing louder. The beginnings of oxygen poisoning. He pointed to his inflate button, and he and Jan Erik both pumped air into their jackets. Jake had just given the ‘Up’ signal when Jan Erik’s eyes went wide, seeing something behind Jake. Jake turned just in time to see a snowstorm of descending silt they must have kicked up whilst chasing Bjorn. In the next second it enveloped them like thick soup. He couldn’t see his outstretched hand. He reached for Jan Erik but he was already gone, hopefully upwards. The white noise was now a din in Jake’s head. He knew what it meant. He was going to black out. Then he would sink. And then it would all be over.

He finned hard, worked his thighs almost into cramp. He had to get up above fifty. Once he was moving upwards, the air in his jacket would carry on expanding and propel him to the surface. If he blacked out and didn’t wake up till he reached the surface, it would be a nasty decompression incident, but that was preferable to the alternative. It grew more difficult to concentrate. The porridge-like silt meant he could barely read the Suunto, even when he held it right in front of his mask.

He suddenly didn’t know which way was up, or where his torch was. All around him a sea of clay and bubbling blackness. White noise roared in his ears like a jet engine. Then he remembered – follow the bubbles. Watching their direction in front of his face, he righted himself, and kicked hard. Jake felt himself lifting. He dared to hope, and read the Suunto, counting down the metres. Fifty-nine, fifty-eight… He was going to make it. His eyes watered inside his mask. The crushing noise pressed inside his skull. Concentrate! Fifty-three … fifty-two … fifty-one … fifty-two … fifty-three… No! That wasn’t possible! How the hell could he be going down? There were no currents in the fjord. Numbness crept over him. Unable to fin any more. His legs not responding. Fuck. Not like this! Seconds, seconds… Then he remembered. He reached down to his right side and cracked open his emergency cylinder. It blasted air into his jacket, squeezed it tight around his chest and shoulders like an airbag. The white noise wailed like a hurricane in his head.

He blacked out.

It was like tuning-in on an old style wireless, trying to find a station in a forest of static. Mexican deep divers called it the wah-wah. The sound your brain makes when it has too much oxygen under pressure. But if you rise, the partial pressure of oxygen drops. The wah-wah goes away, and in theory you wake up. That’s what Jake was thinking when he came to.

He was peaceful. Then he recalled where he was. Still ascending. He dumped air out of his jacket fast, and checked his computers again. The Aladin said ‘Err’. The Suunto was flashing, but at least gave depth. Twenty-nine metres. Twisting around, he found the other two with him. They were conscious, hanging there in mid-water. Bjorn looked confused. Jan Erik’s grin was gone, but he did that Norwegian wink with both eyes blinking instead of just one. Jake swam up to each of them and read their air gauges, checked his compass, then led them towards the cliff. They trawled the edge one way then the other till they saw the green strobe under the boat. Jake checked his watch. Twenty minutes. They shone their lights under the boat so Andreas would know they were there.

They hung around for a further twenty minutes at nine metres, Jake checking their air every now and again. Occasionally one of the others would try an ‘Up’ signal. Jake shook his head each time. They ascended to five metres and waited. Andreas gunned the engine once or twice. Jake knew he was worried. They were late, but at least Andreas could see them beneath the boat. But they were way off the decompression tables, so Jake kept them there, five metres under the boat, until their air supply was down to twenty bar. At last he gave the ‘Up’ signal.

As Jake clambered last into the boat, Andreas was fussing. ‘Where the hell have you been for the past hour? I was having kittens!’

Bjorn’s eyebrows were knitted together, a deep frown puckering his face. Jan Erik’s grin resurfaced as he showed Andreas his depth gauge. Andreas laughed. ‘Sure. You moved the needle with your dive knife.’ The ensuing silence caused him to check Bjorn’s depth gauge, then Jake’s expression. ‘Holy mother of God! You’re all crazy. You should be dead!’

After that, nobody said much.

As the boat sputtered its way home, Jake inevitably found himself thinking about Sean, lost to the depths three years ago.

Almost joined you.

The boat neared the jetty, a single streetlight casting harsh light over them. Jake never imagined he’d be pleased to smell Sarpsborg’s soap factory.

As they unloaded the boat, Bjorn spoke, latching onto Jake’s eyes. ‘You saved my life down there, didn’t you?’

Jake matched his gaze, but said nothing. In his mind he’d almost killed them all. He’d taken them on this dive, breaking the rules of their club where the maximum depth limit was thirty-five metres, because Bjorn, Jan Erik and Andreas were heading to Lanzarote next week, and would go down to fifty. He’d wanted to prepare them. Now he felt like tossing his instructor card into the fjord.



Near midnight, the four of them sat at the bar in one of Halden’s few pubs, Siste Reis – ‘Last Stop’ – next to the train station, which was in fact the last stop on the line from Oslo. Bjorn looked sullen. Jan Erik was getting plastered, especially as Andreas was buying, and couldn’t stop talking. Jake didn’t really hear any of it, except when Andreas mentioned that Jan Erik had found out earlier that day he was going to be a father. At that point Jake switched from beer to Talisker whiskey. Then he remembered something. He waited till Andreas went to get the next round. ‘Hey, when I was coming up, at one point I couldn’t fin any more, and started sinking. But it doesn’t make any sense, I was positively buoyant by then, I should have kept ascending.’

Jan Erik cleared his throat, morphed it into a generous burp. ‘Ah, that was me.’

Jake stared at him.

‘You see, I didn’t know which way was up, and I saw these blue fins – yours – so I grabbed them and held on tight.’

Jake shook his head, and raised his glass. ‘Nice one.’

Jan Erik grinned again, beer froth decorating his upper lip. ‘If it’s a boy, I’ll name him Jake, poor sod.’ Then he fell about laughing. It was infectious, and Jake finally joined in.

He didn’t remember how he got home.

The next evening, Bjorn rang Jake’s doorbell.

‘Yes?’

‘You leave tomorrow, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can I come in?’

Jake paused. He wasn’t sure it was a good idea.

‘My sis Vibeke is with me.’

That was below the belt. Literally. Since arriving in provincial Halden six months earlier, he’d been mesmerised by Vibeke, but nothing had ever happened, too many local Vikings pursuing her. Bjorn had said she was interested, just choosing her time. Jake assumed Bjorn was winding him up.

He buzzed them in.

In fact there were a dozen people, mainly from the dive club. They had a short forspill, a light early-evening drinking session. The word translated uncomfortably as ‘foreplay’ in Norwegian, meaning the warm-up to more serious partying later. It was a nice gesture, but Jake and the other three looked like thieves trying to pretend they hadn’t just robbed a bank. Except Jan Erik; nothing fazed the guy. Jake envied him.

About eleven, they started leaving, Bjorn’s sister Vibeke had already disappeared. Bjorn was last to leave. He shook Jake’s hand and held it firm.

Jake smiled. ‘Dive safe in the Canaries. Look after the other two.’

Bjorn’s face lifted, a broad smile breaking across it. ‘Enjoy yourself.’ He winked, turned and left.

Jake was staring at the closed door, trying to work out the non-sequitur, when he heard soft footsteps behind him. He turned around, and his breath deserted him.

Vibeke.

As Jake stashed the last box from his rented flat into the Range Rover, he took a long look across the car park to the edge of the local fjord. A familiar orange Volvo estate crossed his gaze. It turned and parked right next to him, skidding to a halt. Fastasson. Jake took a deep breath.

Fastasson, head of the Halden dive club, short and stocky with strands of lank black hair trying to disguise a rampant bald patch, shot out of his car.

‘God Morgen,’ Jake said, in his best Norwegian accent.

‘Don’t fuck with me, Jake, I know all about your little night dive.’

Jake bowed his head. ‘Oh.’

Fastasson jabbed a finger. ‘Big fucking “Oh”. You should be ashamed of yourself.’

‘I –’

‘You don’t speak!’ Fastasson paced up and down a couple of times, then jabbed his finger again. ‘You broke the club rules, and you broke my trust.’ His voice quavered. ‘You leave now, and you never come back, understood?’

Jake spread his hands. ‘Mr Fastasson, look, I –’

Fastasson shouted. ‘Is that understood?’

Jake let his hands drop to his sides. ‘Yes.’

Fastasson turned his back on Jake. ‘Go back to England.’ He waved a hand in the air. ‘I could write to BSAC, get your licence revoked, you know that, don’t you?’

Jake nodded. ‘You could. Just… go easy on Bjorn and Jan Erik.’

Fastasson whirled around. ‘They’re suspended for three months.’ His voice quietened down. ‘I can’t stop them going deep in the Canaries, of course.’

Jake stood there, unsure what more to say.

Fastasson broke the uneasy silence. ‘Bjorn – he went too fast again?’

Jake nodded. He could have been angry with Bjorn, but it had been his decision to take him down when clearly – with hindsight – Bjorn hadn’t been ready.

‘Needs more training. Jan Erik was good, though.’

Fastasson nodded. ‘I’ll try to talk some sense into both of them.’ He walked over to the edge of the fjord, then turned back.

‘Do you remember the lecture you gave us on dangerous diving?’

Jake nodded.

‘You said there were three categories: adventurous diving, dangerous diving, and reckless diving. You said it was important to know the difference.’

Jake stared at him.

Fastasson walked right up to Jake. His voice was milder, but earnest. It cut deeper. ‘How many rescues have you done in the past year?’

Jake didn’t need to count. ‘Five.’

‘Rather a lot, don’t you think?’

Jake said nothing.

Fastasson laid a heavy hand on Jake’s shoulder. ‘There’s something broken inside you. Go home. Fix it. Before something tragic happens.’

Fastasson got back in his car, glanced one final time at Jake, then drove off.

Jake stood there for a long time, leaning his back against the Range Rover. Then he opened the trunk and fished around inside a holdall. He found his instructor’s licence card in its grey wallet, and stared at it. He’d been so proud gaining it. Sean would have been proud too.

Sean. There was the problem. The tragedy had already happened. And Jake was to blame.

He strode across the car park and hopped onto the jetty, and squatted down by the water. He gazed into the water, then let the card slip from his fingers, and watched it sink until he couldn’t see it any more.

Someone approached. High heels on the boardwalk. He recognised the gait – sure and confident, yet with a spring in her step. He resisted looking up. The sun was on his face, and then he was in shadow.

‘Lorne,’ he said. ‘Long time.’ And then, ‘How are you?’ Because she hated that question, and he no longer cared about the answer.

‘Hello Jake. Took a while to track you down.’

A lie. As usual coming from her. MI6 kept track of former employees, as any intelligence agency must. He glanced upwards, did a quick scan. White leather shoes, tan tights, short, form-hugging cream dress, and long, straight, sand-coloured hair coming halfway down her back. The morning sun was behind her, so he couldn’t see her face clearly. Better that way. He knew it well enough. Attractive, but something hard just underneath. Driven. Knew what she wanted, always got it in the end. Burned people up and moved on.

‘The Rose has been stolen,’ she said.

Not good. But the mere mentioning of it made everything flood back to him. How great it had been at the start, good for ten years, and then so bad at the end. He stared at the loose pebbles on the dusty concrete leading up to the sun-bleached oak planks where she stood.

‘I’m not coming back, Lorne.’

‘You can use my first name, you know.’

Sara. ‘Find someone else.’

She walked a few steps in front of him. ‘I need all my assets in place. This is too big. You of all people –’

He stood up, taller than her. The thought of shoving her into the fjord flashed through his mind. But despite everything, the chemistry was still there. He was glad of Vibeke last night.

‘I’m not coming back, Lorne. Tell them I’m damaged goods, no use any more.’

She stared at him, then turned to the fjord, and spoke on the breeze, so that he had to focus to catch her words. ‘You were the best, Jake. You see patterns in the data.’ She laughed. ‘You remember Loki? How you found him?’

Of course he remembered. That particular coup had gotten her a promotion inside MI6. That night he’d seduced her in her office. Who was he kidding? Other way round. She always knew what she wanted. But it had set him on the path to his personal Armageddon. Sean’s demise. It was why he’d quit MI6. She knew it. So why had she just played that particular card? Losing her touch? He didn’t know, didn’t care. He turned to leave. She had no hold over him any more. Others could – would – find the Rose. He walked away.

‘Anne’s not doing so well, you know.’

He slowed. Throwing her into the fjord now seemed lightweight. ‘Not my problem. Divorced, remember? You of all people…’

His ex had cited Lorne in the divorce, though Anne didn’t know her surname, so the document referred to her simply as ‘a woman named Sara.’ Not that that was the real reason for the break-up of his marriage, especially as Anne had been seeing someone else beforehand, for some time. Besides, Anne hadn’t talked to him in three years, not since… And would never talk to him again. Quite right. He took a few more steps, heard Lorne turn around.

‘She’s on a bad track, Jake. Drink, debt.’

He carried on walking, though it wasn’t easy.

She raised her voice. ‘And a boyfriend who hits her.’

He stopped. Replayed it again in his head, to hear the way she’d said it. She’d let some actual emotion slip into her voice. He knew Lorne’s history. Abusive father. This was one area she couldn’t – wouldn’t – fake. So, it was true. Jake felt his blood rise. If someone laid a finger on Anne… His fingers flexed, curled into fists. Anne was on a downward spiral. He wasn’t surprised. And it was his fault. In spades.

‘We can help her, Jake. Get her back on track. Persuade the new boyfriend –’

He stopped listening. He and Anne were over, done. But he still cared what happened to her. And she deserved so much better. If he was there, he knew what he’d do.

‘Break the boyfriend,’ he said, knowing full well what he was asking, given Lorne’s resources at MI6, both the official and the dark ones. But men who hit women… it was the one thing for which he had zero tolerance.

She didn’t miss a beat. ‘If that’s what it takes.’

He turned around. ‘The Rose, Lorne, and then I’m through. And I work wherever I want. Not the office.’

‘Deal.’

He walked right up to her, his face close to hers, into what she’d once called the kissing zone. ‘And then I never see you or hear from you again.’

Her hazel eyes, clearer now, became as hard as the pebbles at his feet.

‘Fine,’ she said. She opened her purse. Inside he glimpsed a pistol and two identical mobile phones. Nothing else. She handed him one of the phones, then walked away.

Something didn’t fit. ‘What aren’t you telling me, Lorne? Why me, in particular?’

She didn’t turn around, didn’t slow down. ‘The guy who stole it was a diver. Check your phone.’

He watched her disappear around the corner.

Back in his car, he switched on the mobile she’d given him. It asked for a code. He typed in 0-0-0-0. No good. Two more tries. He keyed in 1-2-3-4. Nope. One more try. He shook his head, swore, changed to text, and keyed in S-A-R-A. He was in. There was no option to change the password. Always got what she wanted.

He checked for photos. There were four. A helicopter at night, then at a crazy angle just above a bridge, then in the water, then… Hard to make out. A man in the water in a pilot’s uniform, with a stab jacket wrapped awkwardly around him, lit up by a powerful beam. Unconscious. Jake looked closer. Someone just beneath the pilot, underwater. The guy who stole the Rose. The photo was grainy. He played his fingers and thumbs over the smartphone to stretch the image until he could just about see the masked face.

Lorne had been right. Jake saw things in the data. Patterns, connections, but also faces. He saw things others didn’t. No idea why. But it was clear to him, maybe because he was a diver, and you learned to see behind the neoprene.

The diver was female.

Where to start? Easy. London. Scene of the crime. Get the measure of this diver. But in a sense he already had an idea of her. She’d gone to a lot of trouble to save the pilot. And the thought came to him unbidden, that he should find this woman before Lorne did.

He started the engine, and glanced over to the fjord. ‘Later, Sean,’ he said, then tore away, scattering pebbles into the water.


Chapter Four (#ulink_ea8ca792-ae58-5617-b4ee-2543e20c1906)

Nadia nursed her backpack as she tried to forget yesterday’s killing spree. In front of her the harbour was crowded with expensive sailing yachts and sturdy fishing vessels. The sun beat down on her face. The yacht rigging rattled in the onshore breeze. A distant ambulance siren was barely audible above the cawing of seagulls fighting over rancid morsels in the fishing nets left out to dry on the quay. The image of Janssen’s bloody corpse intruded in her mind. Fish would be eating away at what was left of his face. She opened her eyes, gripped the bag hiding the Rose, held it closer.

Sammy had saved her, but she should have killed Janssen, for Katya’s, if not for her own sake. Why couldn’t she pull the trigger? She’d been living in a fantasy world, believing that she could work for Kadinsky for five years and never kill anyone. Okay, there had been the vow to her mother, and she didn’t want to become her father, but still. She should at least be able to defend herself, or protect Katya. She had to get her head in the game, especially now Sammy was gone and she was on her own. She went over it again, for the umpteenth time. Why can’t I kill?

Of course she had, once. A bear. As a kid she’d loved animals. Her father taught her to shoot, but when he took her hunting in the woods she would aim to miss, to scare away a deer or a rodent. He never reproached her, just repeated the same phrase: ‘Next time’. Then one day a bear had been terrorising the village, and the men were called out to track it down and kill it. She and her father joined the search, and after several hours, spotted it. He gave her the shot. But even though it had maimed two people already, she aimed high, and it ran off. The other men were furious when they found out, and her father had to send her home with her rifle. As she neared the house she heard Katya screaming in the back garden. Nadia raced around and found the bear on its hind legs, incisors bared, Katya and her mother pinned against the shed. Nadia didn’t hesitate, shot it through the mouth, blew out the back of its skull, and put another two bullets in its chest to make sure. Nadia would never forget the look of horror on her mother’s face.

But a bear wasn’t a person.

Her father had been a killer. She’d not known before his death, but had found out later. Her mother had made sure of it. Maybe some of those he’d murdered had deserved it. But one had been a journalist doing an anti-corruption piece on the government. Later, during a short break from Kadinsky’s training camp, Nadia had gone to see his widow, tried to give her money. It didn’t go well, once the woman realised who Nadia was.

‘I don’t want your fucking money, suka, I want my husband back!’ She’d slapped Nadia’s face hard, then attacked her. Nadia could have defended herself, had been trained to, but she didn’t, just let the blows rain down on her. After a while the widow, exhausted, tears in her eyes, held up a trembling hand in the crude shape of a pistol, her second finger the trigger. ‘Back of the head. Just a small movement’ – she made a clicking sound with her tongue – ‘and my man’s life was gone.’ She looked down at Nadia. ‘Why the fuck are you crying?’

‘I don’t know,’ Nadia answered, because she didn’t. She left the money on the table, went to a bar and got seriously drunk.

But the question remained. Could she kill?

Next time.

She got up and walked around the crumbling edge of the dock. The horn-blast of the Scillonian, the massive blue and white ferry bound for the remote Scilly Isles, made the seagulls take flight. The Scillies. Her hideaway destination. Off the mainland. Smallville. Most people on the run wouldn’t go there, because it was difficult to get away from. Like retreating into the corner of a chessboard. Limited moves remaining. But that also made it a blind spot for the authorities, and the local police there would be little more than village bobbies. No detectives, no serious military presence.

She’d considered taking the ferry, until the heightened security made her think again. The heliport was out of the question. Hopping down a few steps onto the creaking gangplanks of the floating jetty, she searched for a smaller boat, ‘Scilly Boy’. She’d met Mike, the boat’s red-haired skipper, in a bar the night before. He’d said he was heading to the Isles. Mike had shown interest in her, though he’d seemed shy. She’d noticed that his second finger had a ring-shaped patch less sunburned than the rest of his hand. Probably married. Only wore his ring when back home. Not that she was interested. Since the ordeal with Slick and Pox, she’d forged herself into the female equivalent of a eunuch. Besides, Katya more than made up for Nadia’s abstinence. Maybe when this was all over.

Maybe.

At the end of the jetty she spied him preparing to leave. ‘You headed where I think you are?’ she shouted.

Mike raised his head. On seeing her, his freckled face lit up.

‘St Mary’s, Hugh Town.’ He paused, as if gauging his luck. ‘You want a ride? It’s a long trip, won’t be there till dark. The ferry’s much faster.’ Mike appeared to be standing perfectly still, despite the rocking of the boat. ‘You get seasick?’

‘Only on large boats.’ Flashing a smile, she passed her backpack down to him.

‘Hey, it’s pretty heavy; what have you got in there?’

Nadia locked her smile into place. ‘Oh, you know, lipstick. Girl stuff.’

Mike shook his head. ‘Whatever you say.’ He set it down on the short bench at the back of the boat, helped her in, and began casting off. She knew he’d be busy slaloming his way through the other boats anchored in the harbour, so she knelt down with her back to him and delved into her backpack. She’d bought some tape earlier, and tore off three strips and fixed them to one side of the Beretta. Glancing around to ensure that Mike was engrossed, she leant forward and fixed the gun to the underside of the bench, made sure it was secure, then slid her bag underneath it.

As they chugged their way out of Penzance Harbour, she laid her head back on the smooth fibreglass edge of the boat. Mike was still occupied, and left her alone with her thoughts. Unfortunately, these consisted of Janssen’s last moments, over and over again. She wondered what she could do to change the disk inside her head. She found herself staring at Mike’s fit body, especially his muscular forearms. But images of Pox and Slick kept intruding, and her hormones beat a hasty retreat, as usual. She pitied the next man she slept with. He’d have to be patience on a pedestal.

Relief spread through her as they quit the choppy waters in the sheltered harbour for the long, smoother rhythm of offshore rollers, finally putting some distance between her and the warehouse. Her right hand dangled over the side. A hissing, cool spray rinsed it every few seconds, and she inhaled the rich scent of the sea, letting it clear her mind.

Mike came over and planted a hat on her head so she wouldn’t burn, stared at her a moment, then returned to the front of the boat. Her thoughts drifted to Katya, wondering what she was up to, dreamy thoughts of the two of them living together in some small house somewhere, anywhere, nowhere.

Seagulls trailing the boat peeled off one by one, and headed back to shore. As the engine settled down, she listened to the slopping of the water against the hull, allowing it to lull her as she curled into a foetal position under her anorak, and closed her eyes.

When she awoke, it was night. Mike was gazing at her, a hint of a smile on his lips, his hair rendered brown by the red and green running lights. A dull yellow lamp behind him shone on the boat’s compact steering console. She returned his smile, but suddenly it stalled, as the blood-soaked image of Janssen pushed into her mind. She pulled her anorak close around her. Mike looked away, and got up to check the controls. He was a genuinely nice guy. Unlike most of the men she’d had to hang out with in the past five years.

She glanced toward the slowly rocking horizon, stars reflecting on smooth waves, and spotted the distant lights Mike hadn’t yet seen. Another boat, slicing like a shark through dark water towards them. It was moving fast, but was downwind, so they couldn’t hear it. Police boat. No, Navy. She sat up. Not long till intercept. They must be checking all boats that left Penzance. Her pulse sped up as she predicted the consequences of being found with the Rose: accessory to murder; a long prison sentence; Katya in a shallow grave in the woods.

The Rose was still in her backpack. She’d have to ditch it in the water, without Mike seeing. But once he saw the patrol boat, she might not get the chance. She dug out her satellite-linked smartphone – Kadinsky was generous with his gadgets – and activated the GPS app, then let it drop into her bag while it fixed her location. Joining Mike at the helm, she checked the depth of water beneath them on the sonar display: seventy metres. Seriously deep, but not irretrievable.

Mike cautiously placed a hand on her waist, their first physical contact. The patrol boat lights were behind him, gaining steadily. She needed more time for the GPS to locate their exact position. She remembered her training for a scenario like this. Distract and misdirect. And she imagined Katya reminding her younger sister that she was Russian, and Russians always did what was necessary. Katya had always said the best cover story was one that stopped people from asking questions…

Mike set the engine to idle, and moved closer. She swallowed. Maybe she could do this. He was attractive, after all. Confident about his job, yet quiet. Sensitive not pushy. Maybe, if given a bit more time… But the patrol boat was catching up. Mike leant forward and kissed her neck. Normally it would have made her spine tingle, instead she felt prickly all over her body. Her breathing sped up. That seemed to goad Mike on. A reasonable misinterpretation. She made her decision, and kissed him fully, his coarser seafarer’s mouth bitter from the coffee on his tongue. Both his hands gripped her, pulled her to him, his eyes closed. Hers stayed open, and over his shoulder she saw the patrol boat lights in silent pursuit. But as he held her wrists, that night with Slick and Pox came back to life as if it was yesterday, no, as if it was now. She tried to disconnect, to make her body go limp, but she remained tense, her rape memory screaming at her to fight back this time. Her muscles barely held back from lashing out at his pressure points.

Mike’s breath quickened as his hands went to work on her. Strong fingers slid under her t-shirt, fondled her breasts, his hands less sure on her than they were on the boat. She willed herself to play along, and led him towards the bench above her bag, keeping his back to the patrol boat trailing them. He kissed her harder, pushed her backwards onto the bench. He pulled off her top and savoured her breasts with his mouth, just like… She could hardly breathe. Concentrate. One more minute. The boat will arrive. Then you can dispose of the Rose.

He unzipped her jeans and one of his hands slid between her thighs, making her gasp. She slipped back on the bench as he peeled her jeans off, his index fingers hooking into the sides of her underpants, pulling them off, too. She wondered if this was how it was for Katya back in Moscow. She shut her eyes. Her lips trembled. And then the rape scene came flooding back to her in all its sick detail: Slick grabbing her forearms, licking her face like a dog, punching her in the stomach when she’d spat in his eye, thrusting inside her as violently as he could, while Pox… She opened her eyes. Her hands shook, her breathing was out of control. Mike was staring at her, a deep frown on his face.

‘Jesus! Are you okay?’ he asked. ‘You’ve gone white as a sheet.’

‘I’m sorry’ she said, because on so many levels, she was. ‘Mike, I –’

‘STAND TO! SWITCH OFF YOUR ENGINE! PREPARE TO BE BOARDED.’

Mike whirled around. ‘What the…?’ Pulling up his trousers, he hobbled to the canopied engine controls. Nadia sat up, her breasts momentarily lit up for all the crew to see, before the searchlight jerked towards a semi-naked Mike.

The loud-hailer blared again. ‘CUT YOUR ENGINES! NOW!’ The patrol boat loomed closer, its bow surging through the waves, water frothing white before dissolving into blackness.

Get a grip on yourself! She stood up, pulled on her jeans and top, then bent down as if to find and fasten her shoes, all the while trying to get her breathing back under control. She leant over the side and scooped some water onto her face. She reminded herself that one of those bastards, Pox, was now pushing up daisies.

She focused, opened the holdall and glanced at the GPS coordinates. They were still changing because the boat was still moving. She had to wait, or risk never finding the Rose again. Its battery indicator read fully charged. Checking first to see that Mike was distracted, she pulled out the Rose and placed it on the ledge behind her, upside down so as to conceal the slowly pulsing red LEDs. Now it looked like part of the boat. Like a brass fitting you’d loop a rope around. She walked over to Mike and handed him his sweatshirt. She kept her body between his line of sight and the Rose. In any case, he was glancing the other way, towards the patrol boat.

‘Thanks,’ he said, disengaging the engine. The diesel choked off, drowned out by the patrol boat propellers revving in reverse as its prow manoeuvred alongside. She glanced over Mike’s shoulder to the sonar display. Sixty-six metres of water beneath them. But there was something else there, something big – the edge of a shipwreck, judging from its shape. At least sixty-six was better than seventy. As a teenager she’d learned to dive in the Caspian Sea with her uncle Dmitry, though never so deep.

Mike caught her elbow. ‘Listen, I’m –’

She placed a forefinger across his lips, just as a gangplank clattered down on the port side. Nadia went back to her place on the starboard side while Mike tied the gangplank down. As she leant over the edge to scoop some seawater onto her face, she lowered the Rose into the sea, held it underwater so it didn’t splash.

She let go.

Two sailors stood at the other end of the narrow bridge, waiting for Mike to finish. They were armed, wearing white Navy-style belts and holsters. Nadia glanced into her bag and read the GPS on her phone. It had stabilised. She intoned the figures twice in her head. The two sailors walked across the plank and jumped down into the boat. She looked up at them, hands by her side.

The captain looked serious, a shock of white hair framing a face of granite. The younger one behind tried not to grin. The captain looked her over, then stormed up to Mike.

‘Licence,’ he barked.

Nadia noticed four more sailors on the patrol boat. One on the bridge was holding a radio. They looked earnest, which meant they knew something, though almost certainly not everything. Mike was briefly interrogated, but only mildly; he was local. The captain began speaking in low tones, and she pretended not to listen amidst the water chopping against both hulls, and the creaking of the gangplank as it see-sawed between the two vessels. The captain was asking Mike about her. She reached into her backpack, switched off the GPS app, and searched for her passport. The captain came over and stood above her, his right hand near his holster. She handed him her ID.

‘I’m here for some diving and sightseeing,’ she said. She knew there were plenty of Russians on holiday in Cornwall at this time of year, many of them divers. In Russia, she’d probably be taken into custody on suspicion, but in England the burden of proof was higher.

He shone a flashlight onto her passport, then to her face, then back to the document. Without taking his eyes off hers, he handed the passport to the other sailor, who dashed back over the gangplank as if everything was perfectly stationary, not two boats pitching in darkness, locked in a frenzied embrace.

She tried to stay calm, suppressing thoughts of Janssen’s bloated corpse, probably already found by police divers.

‘How long are you here, Miss Laksheva?’

‘Until Friday,’ she said, ‘then to London, then back home to Russia.’ She showed him the tickets. The flights were booked, so they could check her story, though she wouldn’t be taking those particular planes. She smiled, but his face remained stern, which meant he knew blood had been spilled.

Mike watched her from the steering console. She could see he was wondering.

‘Let me see your bag, miss,’ the captain said.

She handed him the backpack and he rooted around inside. He was thorough. But there was nothing inside to worry about. He handed it back to her. He didn’t look happy. From his pocket he pulled out something that looked like a phone, but was clearly a detector of some sort, and wandered around the boat, opening up the two small cupboards under the console. The detector made a small pinging noise. It was hunting for the Rose. Sammy had been right. She wondered what the detector’s range was. Thank God she’d tossed it over the side. The captain walked past her again. She held her breath as she suddenly remembered the Beretta hidden on the underside of the ledge where she sat. Shit! How the hell would she explain that? The gun was smaller and slimmer than the Rose, but if the captain bent down to look… The pings continued as normal, and he didn’t search further. She breathed out, trying to keep her face normal, not showing the wave of relief she was feeling. After a minute he put the device back in his pocket, and turned to Nadia.

‘Where are you staying?’

She’d booked yesterday. ‘Old Smithy’s Inn, Hugh Town.’

He called back to the boat. ‘Check her reservation. Old Smithy’s.’

The captain stared at her. She studied her toenails.

The other sailor returned, and they moved away from her, conferring. Nadia caught Mike glancing at her backpack. Had he seen inside it? Maybe nothing detailed, but might he sense there was less inside than before?

The captain returned her passport. ‘Have a nice stay, Miss Laksheva.’ He half-turned away, then came back to her. His tone of voice changed. ‘Are you all right, Miss? You seem a little shaken.’

‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Really.’

Without turning his head, his eyes flicked briefly to the left, where Mike was standing behind him. ‘Because if anything… anything improper, that is, uninvited –’

She made eye contact. ‘No, really. Thank you. I’m fine.’ She glanced at Mike. ‘He’s the perfect gentleman.’ Maybe not quite true, but everything was relative.

He gave her a measuring look, then turned to Mike. ‘We’ll escort you into the harbour.’ He paused, then added, ‘I’ll be calling Old Smithy’s at eleven to check her safe arrival.’

Mike nodded, looking a little shaken himself, and started the engine. The captain and his mate crossed back to their boat. Nadia sat down heavily. Once underway, when she was sure no one was looking, she put her head in her hands.

As they followed the grey patrol boat, she watched Mike. He’d said little since the boarding. She’d asked him what was going on, and he’d said the captain had told him there’d been a drugs-related Mafia killing in Penzance yesterday. Mike was clearly rattled. There was little eye contact or chat during the rest of the trip. She stayed at the back of the boat. He seemed to take that as a signal. As they neared the harbour, the patrol boat turned abruptly and headed back out to sea. Mike got busy, and she bent down as if re-arranging the contents of her backpack, retrieved the Beretta, and hid it amongst the clothes in her bag.

After they’d moored, she and Mike walked along the quay, next to each other but not too close, and without discussing their destination, he led her to Old Smithy’s Inn.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked. He stared at the inn, then back to her. ‘Listen,’ he started, ‘about tonight –’

‘Mike, I’m sorry, I led you on, but the thing is, I’m not really ready for…’ She felt she owed him more, and let out a half-truth. ‘Something bad happened to me back in Penzance… you know, a guy.’

Mike nodded knowingly. ‘Must have been a real arsehole.’

She stared right back at him, and thought of Janssen. ‘He was.’ Saying it outright, she acknowledged that Janssen was dead and gone, could do no harm to her or anyone else. In her mind she imagined Janssen, Toby and Kilroy beneath the waves where Sammy had disposed of them.

Mike shifted on his feet. ‘If you need anything…’ he glanced at the inn again, at the door. She realised he was worried someone might come out and see him with her. It was a small town, after all.

She took his left hand. ‘You’re married, Mike, aren’t you?’

He froze, then laughed, and for the first time since the boarding looked relaxed. He nodded, and fished a wedding ring out of his pocket.

She let go of his hand. ‘Don’t worry, what happens at sea, stays at sea.’

He nodded again. ‘Agreed, and… thanks.’ He kissed her on the cheek, then turned and walked away quickly.

Nadia went into Smithy’s and registered, picked up her room key, avoided the raucous smoke-filled bar, and ascended narrow wooden stairs to the top floor, amongst the roof beams. After a long shower she collapsed naked on the soft bed, switched off the lights, and gazed through the skylight to the stars. She thought of the family home back in Uspekh, and happier days when she’d been too young to understand what was going on, what was going wrong between her parents.

She focused on what mattered: the Mafia-drugs cover story would hold for a few days. Until word leaked out about what had really been stolen. Police were one thing, but others – far less civil – would come looking. Sixty-six metres. Before the heist in the Thames, Sammy had told her the Rose was originally destined for use on a submarine, waterproof-rated to a significant depth, so she wasn’t worried about it being damaged. But she’d need a good diver to help her find it. Someone she could trust, someone prepared to dive deep.

She typed the memorised GPS coordinates into a map program on her phone, and then sat up when it found the location. A WWII wreck, the Tsuba, lying near-vertical after being sunk atop an underwater promontory. She Googled it. The propeller was at sixty-six metres. Recommended only for technical divers on mixed gases or rebreathers. Nadia wasn’t trained for either, and that type of training took at least a week, time she didn’t have. But she had to be on the dive to retrieve the Rose.

Something about sixty-six metres snagged in her memory, so she Googled that in the context of diving. Sixty-six metres – 218 feet – was the depth at which oxygen poisoning started if diving on air. It would kill you, though not straight away. How was she going to find someone who was both experienced enough, and reckless enough, to dive with her to that depth on air?

She switched off the phone, too tired to think it through. Instead she thought of Katya, imprisoned in Kadinsky’s luxury dacha in the Khimki forest outside Moscow. Maybe Sammy was right: this time. After this job, Kadinsky would let Katya go, let them both go. Her mother would have called it magical thinking. But Nadia needed something to hold onto, and anyway she didn’t want her mother in her head.

Instead she thought of how Katya used to sing her the Cossack lullaby at bedtime. Never had the verses made more sense than now. Nadia hummed the simple melody in her mind, mouthing a few of the words until she fell asleep on her side, her fists clenched underneath the pillow, next to her Beretta.

I will cry because I will miss you,

I will wait for you forever for your return,

I will always pray for you whilst I am waiting,

And in the evening and when night comes,

I will wait and dream of where you are,

I will worry about you and fear for your troubles in some distant land.

Sleep now, and do not think of such sadness and sorrows,

Maybe it will never be

Bayushki bayu


Chapter Five (#ulink_d0d6a3a1-ded1-5a3d-910f-260f535d5160)

Danton nursed his big right knuckle. The blood on it wasn’t his. But his flesh had been grazed. So the soon-to-be-dead Irish shit in front of him, Sammy, was going to pay. He picked up the hammer and watched the bloodied and battered curly-haired prick’s eyes go wide.

‘I’ve told you everything, Christ Almighty. For the love of God, please!’ His supplication descended into sobbing.

Danton smirked. This was the point he liked best, when they realised that even after confessing everything, they were still going to die, and painfully too.

‘Not his jaw. I want to go through everything one more time.’

Danton turned and glowered at the CIA spook, seated far away enough to avoid getting bloodstains on his Hermes suit. He’d like to get one of them under the hammer one day, just to show them what it felt like. But this agent clearly had ideas above his station, paying a couple of grand for a suit. Danton doubted he wore it back at the office. No, he probably saved it for his European trips, believed he was a cut above the rest. His bosses back home would recognise it meant he was a risk. But for Danton it meant he knew the guy’s weak spot, his ego. Which meant they could do business together.

He raised the hammer backwards in a theatrical arc, then shattered Sammy’s knee. The screaming soothed him as it always had. He sat back, watched him writhe against the chains, incoherent with pain, and then the spook went to work, talking in soft tones, asking Sammy the same questions, promising not freedom, not even survival, merely an end to the pain. This was how it usually went, when the truth came out, as if the victim saw Death standing in front of him. Lies were no longer an option. They no longer held currency, because they belonged to life, not to where this prick was headed.

Danton heard nothing new, but the spook seemed content, nodded to him, deposited a stack of bills on the table by the heavily padded door, and left. Danton crouched down so his face was close to Sammy’s blood-and-tear-stained cheeks. The shivering wreck stank of fear, and wouldn’t look at his torturer, his lips trembling, murmuring the Lord’s prayer.

Danton walked behind him and uttered two words. The only kindness he ever offered. The last words those in the chair ever heard. The same ones his pig of a father had always said to him after the beatings, until at fifteen Danton had stuck a knife in his old man’s drunken guts and watched him die.

‘Sleep now,’ he said, as he raised his arm one last time, and aimed the hammer at the back of Sammy’s skull.

***

Adamson left the terraced three-storey house, and walked up the short steps onto the maple-lined street in one of the southern suburbs of Frankfurt. He was hugely relieved to step into the daylight, out from Danton’s soundproofed, below-ground interrogation chamber. Away from the stench of Sammy’s sweat and fear, and most of all, away from his screams. He inhaled the scent of drying leaves after last night’s rain, and gazed around, eager to reinsert himself into the normal world most people inhabited. Mothers walked their kids to school, hurried them along, and bent over every now and again to talk to them. A garbage truck jerked to a stop in front of him, its yellow lights flashing. Two black men leapt off the back to empty the environmentally-sorted trash from black, blue and yellow bins. The truck’s engine whined, and the men shuffled another ten metres down the street. Normality. Not reality for him. He’d seen too much to ever forget. But this was where he wanted to be, where he needed to be, with his family, with Sandy and little Arnie. Hence his retirement plan. He walked towards the city centre.

He still had time to turn back. It wasn’t too late. And now things had gotten complicated. Janssen was supposed to have killed Sammy and the girl, and then handed over the Rose to him, so he could take it to South America where one of the major drug cartels, the Kilanoa family, wanted it for leverage with the US authorities, to stop them fucking with their cosy cocaine business model.

The Rose should have been in his hands by now. He’d be boarding a plane to Bogota, and his CIA partner back in Langley, Jorgenson, also in on the deal for a cool two million, would meet him there with Sandy and Arnie. And then… No more reality. Instead, a lifetime of luxury in a coastal villa. But now it was complicated. But what the hell wasn’t these days? He’d handled complicated all his life. He closed his eyes a moment, recalled the hilltop villa near Cartagena where the deal had been sealed. He could almost smell the sea, feel the sun burning on his forehead in the warm breeze, the buzzing of the cicadas in the afternoon, fresh crushed mint in the mojitos.

Screw it, it was worth a little risk.

He called Jorgenson on the scrambled cell. ‘Her name is Nadia Laksheva. Probably not her real name, but he swore he’d seen her passport… He said Land’s End, Cornwall, south-west England, that’s where she was headed… It fits… All right. Listen, I have to call in… Right, next call in twenty-four.’

He pulled out the other phone, called the office at Langley, to give an update. The Joint Chiefs were seriously pissed that the Brits had developed the Rose without sharing. Hence his mission, to keep an eye on the Rose from a distance. Sweet. But now the office knew it was missing, and it was just a matter of time before they put more patent leather soles on foreign soil. He spoke to the boss’s aide, said he was following a new lead, needed seventy-two hours. Told her he was headed to London. Nothing doing in Frankfurt. He hung up. Closing his eyes, he rubbed the bridge of his nose with forefinger and thumb. Danton had rattled him as usual. But now, more than ever, he needed to stay focused. He headed towards a Thai massage parlour, one of several he knew in the district. The door jangled as he entered. A forty-something Thai woman appeared and beamed, recognising him.

‘Full body massage. One hour. Pretty girl,’ he said in fluent German.

A young girl in a short white skirt and purple tie-dyed tee shirt arrived and led him to the back of the parlour into a small room with a cushioned massage table, a padded oval hole at one end for his face. He inhaled the comforting smell of lavender body oil. Soft Chinese music tinkled from a cheap CD player. She left him while he stripped naked and lay face down. She returned and began massaging his back, commenting only once on the scars, picking up that he wasn’t in the mood for conversation. Sammy’s screams still echoed inside his brain. Sammy had been in the wrong team at the wrong time; crappy luck. For the girl too, when he found her.

The masseuse asked him to turn over, and he lay on his back. She massaged his thighs, her fingers occasionally nudging his balls. He hardened. She massaged him some more, her deft fingers ‘accidentally’ touching his penis, making his breathing deepen. She paused, leaned closer to his closed eyes.

‘You want happy ending?’

He nodded.

‘Fifty?’ she said, testing the water.

He nodded again. Today she could have asked five hundred. She went to work on him. When he was about to come, she placed her left hand firmly over his mouth, quietening his groans of ecstasy.

Adamson lay panting while she fetched hot water and towels. He relaxed. The screams were gone. He wouldn’t have to see Danton again – ever – if all went to plan. His mind drifted to his wife Sandy back in DC, and to Arnie, not doing so well in school. Attention Deficit Disorder. Adamson knew his being away so often didn’t help Arnie. He’d call later. They’d be waking up and having breakfast in a few hours.





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