88° North. J.F. Kirwan

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ – boy-next-door Chinese dudes – manning them. Pro-looking camera gear. What were they going to do, make a snuff movie? Demand ransom from someone? There was also a tall sheet of glass behind her and to her left. She wondered what it was for.

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

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

      Salamander needed to be put down.

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

       They will pay.

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

      It wasn’t the Chef.

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

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

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

      ‘The video footage?’

      ‘It shows them entering. No one else.’

       Wait a minute …

      ‘The sniper bullet?’

      ‘Standard Russian military issue.’

      Russian. Like herself.

       We’re being set up!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      ‘Hit him in the face,’ Salamander said.

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

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

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

      Yet here she was.

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

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

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

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

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

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

      ‘Again.’

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

      ‘Again.’

СКАЧАТЬ