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‘Salamander doesn’t live by a code. He twists the rules any way that suits him.’
Blue Fan seemed to consider this for a moment. ‘I am not my grandfather. You will have a five second head start.’
Nadia scanned the bushes and trees descending at a thirty-degree angle to the beach, five hundred metres below. Dense vegetation. Almost no light. There would be roads crossing her path every now and again. It was a chance, a slim one. And there was one good reason to try.
Jake.
She turned back to the four men. Three of them looked eager for the hunt, removing their jackets, revealing heavily-tattooed torsos and arms. The fourth one stood back. At his feet was a long holdall. A sniper rifle. Just in case. There was an open, flat stretch of land between the tree line and Repulse Bay. He’d have a clear shot.
She spoke to Blue Fan. ‘If we meet again, just bear in mind that for me, there are no rules.’
‘Everyone follows rules. Most are not aware of the rules they follow. Now, run, Nadia Laksheva. Run for your life. One.’
Nadia sprinted across the tarmac into thick bush, ducking just in time beneath a low hanging branch. In her head, she counted. Two. She tripped over a root, and tried to roll in the soft earth and leaves, but ended up sliding on her front. Three. She got up and start running again. Four. Taking large, loping strides, each one threatening to twist her ankle on treacherous undergrowth, she thought about alternative tactics: lying low, climbing a tree, breaking off to the left or right. No. The quickest route to life was a straight line. Five. She heard the thrashing of the three men entering the bushes behind her, their footfalls thumping the ground. They probably knew this terrain, and would spread out in case she was stupid enough to hide.
The headlamps of a car rounding a bend lit up the foliage below, and a clearer passage emerged to the left. She bolted for it. Darkness flooded in again, but the route was etched on her retinas, and she ran as fast as she could. Suddenly she spilled onto asphalt, an empty road, her knees buckling as she hit solid terrain. No cars, just the men closing on her. A high-pitched pfft sound to her right announced a bullet from a silenced weapon. She dashed for the other side of the road and dived into the bushes.
She rolled the way she’d been taught, knowing that at this speed, if she hit a tree trunk, she’d be stunned long enough for them to catch her. But she came up on her feet and continued, arms in front of her in a crude triangle, hands in front of her head. A thick branch whacked her ribs, making her spin around, but she kept her balance. She kept her arms up. Protect the head, always. That’s what the Chef had taught her. She heard the whine of a motorcycle, maybe a local on his way home on the road she’d just crossed. But Salamander’s men were already charging through the bushes behind her. She had maybe another four hundred metres to go. She wasn’t going to make it. Not even close.
She kept running.
A second pfft told her they were trying to down her in the woods before she reached the next road, so that became her goal. Just make it to the road. A branch exploded to her left, so she began zigging and zagging. Maybe if she was lucky, she’d hit the road just as the motorbike was coming along it, and maybe … Too many maybe’s.
Just fucking run!
She spotted the white lines of the road through a gap in the trees, and pushed off for one final sprint, but the next bullet found her left shoulder and sent her sprawling forward. Her hands instinctively went down to brace against the fall, and a branch struck her in the face. It felt like she’d been punched on the nose, and she tumbled out of the woods, her head smacking onto the warm tarmac.
Through ringing ears, she heard the motorbike’s engine, the driver braking, crunching through the gears. She crawled towards the white line, her final goal. She touched it. If she was killed here, bleeding, wounded, at least somebody might ask why a kill shot had been necessary. A seed of doubt before the investigation was closed. She imagined the headline. Russian assassin-bitch gets what she deserves.
Shoes skidded to a halt in the dirt. The men didn’t venture onto the road. Of course, three men chasing an unarmed, wounded woman would look suspicious. They’d either have to leave her, or kill the motorcyclist if he stopped. She heard the crackle of static followed by a low, urgent voice. One of the men was asking Blue Fan what to do.
The motorbike was slowing. She regretted it. An innocent passer-by was going to be killed.
The men stepped out into the road, fanning around her. She looked up into the glare of the headlamp, unable to see the rider, the motorbike’s engine humming calmly.
Three quick silenced shots. Tap-tap-tap. Three pairs of legs around her buckled as the men slumped to the ground. Neck shots, all of them, cutting the spine. A shot like that gave the soon-to-be-dead person a few seconds to get over the shock and make peace with their maker. Only one person she knew preferred this tricky target.
The Chef stuck the bike in first and drove closer, then leant over and scooped her up off the ground as if she weighed nothing. He swung her around behind him on the bike, and they sped off. She held on as best she could. Then she remembered the sniper. He’d not been able to get a fix on her or the Chef while they were under tree cover, but as soon as they took the corner, they’d have to slow down, and he’d take the shot. They approached the bend, and the Chef again braked down through the gears. She tried to shout Sniper! but she had no voice.
He braked further, and she guessed this was it. But the Chef didn’t take the turn. He ploughed straight into the forest. Despite being whipped by leaves and small branches, and nearly being knocked off several times, Nadia wished she could see Blue Fan’s face right now.
But she was losing blood, and the wound burned like hell. Each bump was like a screwdriver jabbing at her shoulder. She was growing cold, going into shock, unconsciousness not too far away. She buried her head into the Chef’s back, and listened to the rhythmic whine of the engine as he shifted through the gears. She slipped, caught herself, and he pulled up a ramp. The bike skidded to a halt, and she felt something like a belt tighten around her lower back, securing her to him.
They sped off again, into a tunnel, where the engine’s whine became a throaty drone reverberating off the tall arched walls, headlamps flashing past her, the Chef weaving in and out of traffic. She tried to stay awake. Even with the belt she could still fall off, or upset the bike and get them both killed. Suddenly they were out of the tunnel, and she saw banks of floodlights up above, which meant they were near Happy Valley stadium, not far from Wan Chai, Blue Fan’s territory. What was the Chef thinking?
Suddenly men and women in white coats were all around her. She was on a gurney. What had happened? She must have blacked out. Where was the Chef? Had she fallen off, caused an accident? She couldn’t remember, could barely feel anything. People in pale blue masks, smocks and hats were animated above her, the ceiling lights moving fast. They were running, shouting. A bespectacled face appeared, asked something urgently, she had no idea what. What would he need to know? Of course. Blood type. She told him, in English. He barked something to somebody she couldn’t see.
The gurney stopped. Rough hands grabbed her all at the same time, lifted her in a practised way, and her bare back met cold metal. Where were her clothes? What had happened? Was the Chef still alive?
And then she remembered the video. By now they’d have spliced it together, released it on the net. A clear scene of her smacking Hanbury in the face, then executing him. Jake would see it. Everyone would see it. She’d be on the most-wanted list everywhere. The first sniper bullet back at Hanbury’s apartment had been Russian. There was going to be hell to pay. The Brits and the Russians – those most obsessed with finding Salamander – would be at each other’s throats. A smokescreen, allowing Salamander to get on with whatever he was planning. The bastard was several steps ahead, as usual. But then she wondered. Why had he really taken Jake? She didn’t buy this ‘live by a code’ bullshit, not from him. He had something else in mind.
The bespectacled doctor held up a syringe, transparent liquid squirting out of its silver needle. No … no sedatives … need to stay awake … She tried to sit up, but firm hands held her fast to the metal, and a pricking in her upper arm told her it was too late. Her arm became desperately cold, as if her blood was being replaced by ice, then it spread to the rest of her body. It reached her head and her thoughts grew sluggish. In her mind’s eye she dropped into a pit of cloying, glutinous quicksand, Hanbury nearby. He was struggling, clawing at the air, almost submerged. She reached for him, screamed for him to take her hand, but he didn’t hear her, and then he was gone.
Chapter Six (#ulink_98b6b2e0-103d-5df6-b377-21e19a3c59c4)
Nadia swam with Jake in the crystal blue waters of Anspida. The water was warm and the sun beat down on her head, glistening off the tops of the wavelets, the white sand beach fringed by swaying palm trees just metres away.
‘Nadia,’ he said, his eyes deep ocean blue. She took a few strokes toward him. But he was drifting away.
‘Nadia,’ he said again, more insistently. She swam harder, faster, but she was dragged backwards. Someone else surfaced right in front of her. Blue Fan, who raised her arm and slapped Nadia hard across the cheek. ‘Nadia!’
Nadia jerked awake. Not Blue Fan. Jin Fe.
‘Finally. Get up. Dress. We need to leave. Now.’
Nadia tried to move, but her left shoulder felt like a stake was driven through it, nailing her to the bed. She took in her surroundings. A small room with a bed and a lopsided cupboard. A drip in her left arm, leading to a half-empty transparent plastic bag on a metal stand beside her.
‘Get up, lazy bones.’ Jin Fe said it with sincerity, perhaps thinking it was a way of chiding her, whereas it made Nadia smile.
‘Lazy bones?’ Nadia felt light-headed. Morphine?
Jin Fe’s brows locked together. ‘Get. Up. They are coming for you.’
Nadia tried to remember, and then everything flashed back to her. She tried to sit up, but couldn’t do it on her own. She hated relying on anyone, but …
‘Help me, Jin Fe.’
Jin Fe got her off the bed and onto unsteady feet.
‘Clothes?’ Nadia couldn’t walk around Hong Kong in a hospital gown.
Jin Fe grabbed a rumpled plastic bag, and began pulling out trashy dresses that would make Nadia look like a cheap prostitute. She picked the least tarty one and again had to enlist the girl’s help.
‘Thank you,’ Nadia said. Jin Fe didn’t seem to notice.
‘That man’s scary. He threatened me.’
The Chef. Good, he was alive. If she had any chance of finding Jake, she’d need him.
Nadia pointed to her feet. Jin Fe dipped into the bag and pulled out two bright red stiletto-heeled shoes.
You have got to be kidding …
Jin Fe produced a cheap blonde wig, and some large sunglasses. ‘Come on! No time, we need to leave now. They are coming!’
Nadia supposed it was a good cover, and tried on the wig. Her scalp began to itch. She donned the sunglasses and staggered into the brightly lit corridor. She hadn’t worn heels in years, and was weak from whatever patch-up work they’d done on her shoulder. She knew she must look like a drunken whore. A clock on the wall told her it was 8:15. Jin Fe was right, she had to get out of the hospital before her description was linked to the video, which was probably all over YouTube and the TV channels by now. At the end of the corridor, they waited for a lift. Nadia would have preferred the fire escape, but not in her condition, and not in those heels. As the lift doors opened, she flinched at seeing the four Hong Kong policemen inside. One of them looked her up and down, lingering, holding the doors open for her. He gave her a toothy smile.
Jin Fe ushered Nadia into the empty lift, and rattled off something in Cantonese. The cop’s smile foundered, and he let go of the doors to go catch up his colleagues. The lift doors closed.
Nadia grabbed the waist-high bar for support as they descended. ‘What did you say to him?’
‘I told him you here for HIV treatment.’ Jin Fe said, matter of fact.
The lift doors opened into the garage. ‘This way,’ Jin Fe said.
Nadia suddenly wondered why she was trusting this girl she’d met less than twenty-four hours earlier. But a limousine pulled up, and as the driver’s window hummed down, she saw the Chef, and hobbled over to the car and got in the back seat. Jin Fe followed.
In the front passenger seat was a Japanese man, fifty-something, an unruly mound of salt and pepper hair. He seemed agitated, with fingers that drummed incessantly on the dashboard, and a deep frown that looked like he slept in it.
‘I guess we’re not going back to the hotel?’ Nadia asked.
The Chef didn’t answer. One of his rules. Never reward stupid questions. She tried a different tack.
‘Who’s your friend?’
‘Later,’ the Chef said, his accent less Russian than she remembered. He pulled out of the garage. They hit the exit ramp and she was blinded by the sun. Almost immediately they were in a fast-moving river of cars, and she saw white-and-red taxis everywhere. The traffic weaved around tower blocks via concrete overpasses that made her imagine snakes and dragons writhing around the city. Must be the morphine. She needed an espresso to clear her head. Maybe a double.
As they climbed a slope – Fortress Hill according to the road signs – she glimpsed a bay full of expensive-looking yachts, then the Chef swung left into another underground garage, beneath a bland rose-and-cream apartment block.
The four of them got out and crammed into a tiny aluminium lift with crude fans instead of proper aircon. She began sweating as soon as the door closed. Upstairs the Chef dug out a set of keys and opened an iron grill before unlocking the main door. It was homely inside: net curtains, a painting on the wall of an elegant Chinese man, a plastic-coated table with a jug of water and mugs, and a stash of toys next to an ironing board propped up by the kitchen entrance. Someone’s home for sure, rather than a safe house, but it was deserted. Nadia knew better than to ask. She headed to a threadbare sofa and parked herself carefully while Jin Fe sat at the table and poured four glasses of water. Nadia recalled the bar where they’d rescued Jin Fe, and the young girl who had poured them champagne. She wondered how early Jin Fe had started in the business.
The Chef remained standing. She’d rarely seen him sit in a chair. He said chairs killed more people than assassins and cars put together, only more slowly. She hadn’t seen him in five years, yet he hadn’t aged. She guessed he was close to fifty now – chief assassin wasn’t an old man’s job. He had the same chiselled, square Russian jaw she remembered, jet black hair with just a sprinkling of grey near his ears, and a solid-looking brow good for head-butting. The only jarring features were his green eyes, almost reptilian. At least that’s what you thought when he looked directly at you. His body was the same fluid dancer’s frame it had always been. As if to prove it, his legs coiled down effortlessly into a cross-legged position on the floor, his back straight, eyes alert.
One of her fellow trainees used to call him Cobra back at the training camp in Siberia, partly because his movements were so fluid, but mainly because he seemed poised to strike at any moment. The Chef had also perfected an assassin’s technique called snake eyes, which he showed each of his students only once, along with a short lecture:
‘Your enemy must see their imminent death in your eyes. Then they will falter, they will hesitate, and they will blink, clinging to life. This is the moment you strike. It is physiological, predator and prey, and is the way of things, hardwired into all of us. You must always be predator, never prey. You must perfect this look.’
Nadia hadn’t, had never wanted to. She shivered. Only one other person she’d ever met had mastered that look, and he was currently holding Jake captive.
The Japanese man dragged a chair from the table and parked himself there. His handsome face was deadpan. Or just dead. There was more light in the eyes of the man in the portrait on the wall. His thick accent required him to speak slowly, to navigate his tongue around consonant-heavy English sentences.
‘My name is Sakuro,’ he said, turning to look directly at her. ‘I am an oncologist.’ His face darkened, as if a thundercloud had passed behind his eyes. ‘I was an oncologist. I was summoned to Fukushima. I treated radiation victims.’ His gaze lingered on her, studying her in a way that was totally opposite to the cop in the lift, then he gazed towards the window, or to nowhere, or maybe back to Fukushima. His hooded eyes were haunted. He’d seen terrible things.
Or done them.
Nadia felt her anger rise. Why had the Chef brought an oncologist? She didn’t need this.
‘This wasn’t part of the deal,’ she said, speaking to the Chef.
‘My deal is not with you, Nadia.’
True. The Colonel, her handler back in Moscow – the Chef’s deal was with him. The Colonel must have offered him something to work with her. She had no idea what, and didn’t want to know.
‘If we are to work together,’ he said, ‘I need to be sure you won’t collapse on me or start puking at a crucial moment.’
‘That will never happen.’ Because she’d eat a bullet before she got that far.
Sakuro spoke. ‘I wish to speak to Miss Laksheva alone.’
The Chef ushered Jin Fe out of the room, though not before she cast a worried glance back at Nadia.
Sakuro pulled out a silver cigarette case and opened it, revealing a row of white filterless cigarettes. He extracted one, produced an old-style silver lighter, and lit it up. Some kind of ritual, perhaps to calm his nerves. He inhaled long and deep, then stood and approached the window. He seized the brass lever and let some air into the stuffy room. The gap was narrow, the window held in place by a steel rod so that it couldn’t be opened fully, so that children couldn’t fall and parents couldn’t jump. Despite the narrow gap, the room was immediately inundated with the relentless hubbub of cars, taxi horns and shouting below, mixed in with hammering and drilling from the skinny tower-block-in-progress opposite. The heat and humidity of the city seeped in and easily conquered the air conditioning. Sakuro didn’t seem to notice. He leant his head against the glass and gazed downwards. He spoke quietly, so that she had to strain to hear his words. But then, she had the feeling he wasn’t really talking to her.
‘I knew the Prime Minister of Japan, and several ministers. I treated a few of their wives. I saved them. We live for the ones we save, because so many succumb, if not the first time, then later. So, I was trusted. When the tsunami hit, crippling the nuclear power plant, the country was thrown into chaos. The Prime Minister and his aides needed someone there they could trust. The scientists were contradicting each other, and as for the plant owners … So, I went, with my medical team.’ He inhaled again, then dropped the cigarette out the window, and watched it fall. He tugged the window shut, and turned to face her.
‘I did not believe in hell until that mission. There are few who were not there who could even begin to understand. But you were in Chernobyl, Nadia. You saw Fukushima-Daichi’s future, what it will become in twenty years.’
Nadia’s breathing slowed. Sakuro probably hadn’t intended it, perhaps didn’t even know what had really happened there, but images from her brief sojourn in Chernobyl – her sister lying dead in a pool of blood, her father putting a bullet into his skull after Salamander had chained him to a mound of radioactive slag – slapped into her. Hell didn’t cover it. She didn’t want to go back there. But who was she trying to kid? She’d never left. Because Salamander was still alive and breathing.
Sakuro took a few steps over to an armchair and sat down like an old man.
‘We watched the emergency teams go in, working in total darkness, their dosimeters and Geiger counters going crazy. Did you know they had to hook up car batteries just so they could activate the controls and displays, to tell them what was going on inside?’ He didn’t look at her or wait for a reply.
‘We had to get the reactor under some kind of control, in the most atrocious conditions. Floodwater everywhere. Every little thing, even the most basic task, was made extremely difficult and hazardous. I had to report every hour, on the hour, back to Tokyo. I was not there for the victims. I was there to keep the workers standing so they could go in, deeper and deeper, until we could stabilise the core and prevent secondary explosions.’ His head tilted back. ‘I worked with a small team of engineers. My “core” team.’ He tried to smile, but was clearly out of practice. ‘Most are ill now. There is nothing I can do. But we got the reactor under control. They got it under control. The Prime Minister thanked me personally.’ The way he said it, it was a curse.
He coughed, and it caught in his throat and became deeper, more violent. His eyes watered. He took a silk handkerchief out of his pocket and raised it to his mouth until the episode ended. He glanced at it for a few seconds before folding it and putting it back in his pocket.
‘Towards the end, I became aware the workers had a nickname for me. Doctor Death.’ He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Before Fukushima I spent twenty-five years battling cancer for my patients. More often than not I lost. But I always fought for them, until the very end.’ He paused, his eyes studying the ceiling. ‘After Fukushima, I could no longer practise, could no longer look my patients in the eye. And so I switched to research. The government gave me a generous grant, to keep my mouth shut. There was no need. I had little desire to speak about it.’ He dug out his cigarette case again, looked around, then perhaps decided not to pollute someone else’s home. He laid his head back again.
Nadia got up, poured a cup of water, and walked over to him. He sat back up, for the first time his features shifting, perhaps surprised. He took the cup.
‘So, I am your last engineer,’ Nadia said. ‘You have drugs to keep me going, to keep me working even while my body is disintegrating on the inside.’
He pulled himself up so he was sitting on the edge of the chair, and his face suddenly became animated, no longer Dr Death.
‘Yes, Nadia. And no. I want to offer you something. Something I have not told your … colleague.’
She flared. ‘Don’t you dare say you can cure me. I know how bad my condition is, and I’ve accepted it. If you want one last guinea pig to ease your conscience, try yourself.’ She was guessing, but the scant energy in his face deserted him.
‘You forget, I am – was – an oncologist. I am accustomed to the storms of emotions of my patients—’
She stood up fast, standing over him. Her hands balled into fists. ‘I am not your fucking patient!’ She reckoned the Chef and Jin Fe could hear her. She didn’t care. ‘Just give me the drugs to help me get the job done.’
He rose from the chair, but slowly, calmly. He was tall, and towered over her. ‘I will. But first you will listen to what I have to say, because soon everything will be silent for you.’
Not what she’d been expecting. ‘Your bedside manner’s a little unconventional.’ She sat down. The pain in her shoulder started up, as if someone had inserted a corkscrew into the bullet wound, and kept twisting it.
‘Most cancers start inside the body,’ he said. ‘Something goes wrong, a few cells get the wrong message, and start producing malignant cells that the immune system cannot clean out. Your situation is different, as it was for my engineers. You have been attacked from the outside.’
‘The net result is the same,’ she said. ‘Corrupted cells reproduce, immune system can’t cope, too much damage.’
‘The situation is different for the immune system, and science has made tremendous advances in immunotherapy for particular types of cancer. But it all depends on genes. The engineers didn’t have the right gene make-up, and it was too late for them by the time I perfected the technique. But you, Nadia—’
She held up her hand to make him stop. The Colonel had told her before she’d left. A radical therapy that might work, because she had a particular gene. But he’d also said they’d have to start before symptom onset, and she was way past that point now. She thought of Jake. If he was still alive … But right now she was focused. She needed to free Jake and take Salamander down. For Katya, for her father, for Bransk, for Jones, and countless others she’d never known. But mainly because Salamander was still plotting something. He was smart, always one step ahead. She knew he would probably take her down with him. That was the best outcome she could realistically hope for. And she could only take him down if she had no future, otherwise there would be a sliver of hope holding her back, making her blink at the crucial moment. She folded her arms.
‘I’ve listened to you, as you asked. The answer is no. It’s final. Just do what the Chef asked you to do, give me something to keep me going, and nothing more.’
Sakuro nodded. He took out the cigarette case, lit another one, opened a briefcase full of medical equipment, and began pulling on rubber gloves.
