88° North

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

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

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

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

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

Also by J.F. Kirwan

Nadia Laksheva Spy Thriller Series

66 Metres

37 Hours

88º North

J. F. Kirwan

ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES

J.F. KIRWAN

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

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

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

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

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Also by

Title Page

Author Bio

Acknowledgements

Dedication

Prologue

PART ONE

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

PART TWO

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

PART THREE

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Epilogue

Extract

Endpages

Copyright

Prologue

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

She was worth more.

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

A mistake.

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

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

‘Lights!’ she shouted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘You must prepare,’ he said.

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

‘I am always prepared,’ she replied.

‘We shall see.’

***

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

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

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

It was 12:03.

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

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

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

Now it was just the two of them.

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

Make that exceptional.

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

She turned and ran.

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

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

She closed her eyes.

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

But at least she still had a life.

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

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

‘He was one of the best,’ he said.

Not the best, then.

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

The five triads who still held to the old ways.

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

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

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

‘Your grandfather failed.’

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

‘He escaped.’

Now she really wanted to go.

‘They are looking for him. And you.’

Finally he nodded, and she left.

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

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

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

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

PART ONE

Chapter One

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

Salamander.

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

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

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

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

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

‘I called for reinforcements.’

He sat back. ‘Greaves? Mallory?’

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

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

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

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

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

Good question. ‘Nobody knows.’

‘You never asked?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘We’re taking the MTR.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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