Now she has killed once, she knows she can do it again…

After two long years spent in a secret British prison, Nadia Laksheva is suddenly granted her freedom. Yet there is a dangerous price to pay for her release: she must retrieve the Russian nuclear warhead stolen by her deadliest enemy, a powerful and ruthless terrorist known only as The Client.

But her mysterious nemesis is always one step ahead and the clock is ticking. In 37 hours, the warhead will explode, reducing the city of London to a pile of ash. Only this time, Nadia is prepared to pull the trigger at any cost…

The deadly trail will take her from crowded Moscow to the silent streets of Chernobyl, but will Nadia find what she is looking for before the clock hits zero?

The gripping second 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

J.F. Kirwan

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 Parisian writer colleagues Chris, Dimitri, Marie, Gwyneth and Mary Ellen, to my pre-readers Beatrice, Ruth, Andy and Gideon, to Maxi and my fellow HQ authors, and to my editor Charlotte, the HQ cover designer and the entire HQ team. Last but not least, thanks to all the readers of 66 Metres who demanded a sequel.

For Kevin

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Book List

Title Page

Author Bio

Acknowledgements

Dedication

Prologue

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Part Two

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Part Three

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Part Four

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Epilogue

Extract

Endpages

Copyright

Prologue

Vladimir was cuffed and hooded, but his guards had made a fatal mistake. His hands were behind him, but not attached to the inner structure of the military van, a standard Russian UAZ 452 – he’d know those rickety creaks and the pungent blend of oil and diesel anywhere. The vehicle trundled towards some unknown destination where he would be interrogated, beaten some more, then shot in the back of the head.

Three of the four men chattered as they picked up speed down a straighter road. Their second mistake. Clearly they weren’t Special Forces – Spetsnaz – like he’d been until recently. They were regular army. He’d only seen the two heavies who’d snatched him from breakfast with his daughter. Now he knew there were four – one other had engaged in the banter, another had remained silent but was referred to as the butt of several bawdy jokes. The hierarchy of the men was also clear. The leader was in the front passenger seat, the silent one the driver, leaving the two musclemen in the back with him.

He waited. They’d been driving for an hour or so, initially dirt tracks, now a highway, which meant they were on the E119 to Vostok. If they turned right, he had a chance, as they would have to cross the Volga River. Then he would make his move.

If they turned left, he was a dead man.

Vladimir wasn’t one for options, or for hedging his bets. Not a question of making the right choice, but of making the choice right. In all his missions he’d never cared much for a Plan B. Leave too many options open, and events control you. You invite failure.

The van would turn right.

Vladimir mapped the van inside his head. The van layout was standard: two seats in the front facing forward, two benches in the back facing each other. Two front doors on the driver and passenger side, a double door at the rear. He was on the left-side bench, a heavy beside him, one opposite. The leader was in the left-hand front seat, the driver on the right. He needed to know if there was anything between him and the driver, in front on the opposite side, such as a vertical strut, or a metal grill. Because if there was either of those things, his plan wouldn’t work.

Nobody had talked to him since his arrest. Why talk to a hooded, dead man? But they were military, or at least they had been at one stage or another, so it should work. He waited for a pause in their talk fuelled by bravado – they were probably wondering which one of them would get to pop him in the skull. He reckoned they’d make the driver do it. A rite of passage. Probably a rookie, not yet blooded.

The pause came.

‘Cigarette?’ he asked, nodding through his hood to the one opposite. ‘My last, we all know that.’

Silence, except for the van’s creaking suspension and the drone of its throaty engine. He imagined questioning looks from the musclemen to the leader, the driver fixing his eyes on the road, maybe a glance in the rear-view mirror.

The dead man had spoken.

A sigh, the rustle of clothing, a pocket unzipped, the sound of a cigarette tapped from the pack. He could smell the nicotine despite the strong diesel fumes. A hand heavy on his shoulder – the muscleman by his side – while the hood was pulled up, just above his mouth, by the one opposite. Vladimir felt cool air on his lips, and smelt the stale coffee breath of the man about to give him a cigarette.

The smack in the mouth wasn’t entirely unexpected. Stunned him all the same. He slid off the bench onto the floor, and while three of the men burst out laughing, he stretched out his left leg towards the rear of the driver’s seat – nothing in the way, no vertical strut. But there could still be a wire mesh separating the rear compartment from the front. He rocked back onto his knees, and addressed the one who’d hit him. He lowered his head, bychit-style, a bull about to charge, and spat out the words amidst spittle and blood from a split lip.

‘Mudak, suka, blyad!’

This time the punch was fully expected. He railed back and up, travelling with the force of the uppercut, his head in the gap between the driver and the leader. That cost him a whack from the latter on the top of his head. Didn’t matter. No wire mesh. Rough hands slotted him back on the bench where he’d started. Profanities poured forth. Nothing he hadn’t heard before, or said himself. His face stung. He ignored it. Things settled down. The banter resumed.

He began drawing long breaths, oxygenating his body. He was chilled, because he had no coat. The other men were wrapped in thick commando jackets. It was early spring, still cold. The Volga would be near freezing. Not a problem, he bathed in it every morning. For them, though, it was going to be a different story.

The van slowed. The tick, tick, tick of the indicator. They slowed down further. Stopped. A truck passed fast ahead of them, rocking the high suspension van in its wake. The leader bellowed a command, though he wasn’t stupid enough to name the destination. ‘This way, this way.’ Another lorry – no, a tractor, given the smell of manure – the leader cursing the young driver for not pulling out sooner. The engine revved, the gears engaged, the van pulled forward.

And turned right.

After five minutes the squeaking of the suspension was replaced by hammering as the van powered onto a timber bridge across one of the tributaries to the Volga. Probably towards deserted marshlands where they wouldn’t have to dig too deep to bury him. He’d been keeping time in his head, knew roughly where they were – there weren’t too many bridges before Vostok.

His father had taken him fishing on this one in the summer, a lifetime ago. Lightweight, wood and iron, swirling rapids below as the chill waters funnelled towards a large basin. Two hundred metres shore to shore, five metres deep with the spring run-off. Deepest point in the middle, which was also the highest point of the bridge. Every ten seconds, the daka-daka-daka-dak of tyres running over logs shifted to a metallic shring, as the van skipped over the reinforced sections where iron girders spiked down into the riverbed.

He counted. As they approached midway he exhaled fully, emptying his lungs. The instinct to breathe in was based not on lack of oxygen, but on the carbon dioxide in the bloodstream. An apnoea diver’s secret. He’d spent time in a naval unit, and could hold his breath for two minutes. But the cuffs around his wrists were a problem. He had to get his hands in front. In his younger days he’d been able to do it, earning the nickname Zmiya – serpent – for his ability to worm out of restraints. He hadn’t tried it for years.

Midpoint arrived. He inhaled fully.

He readied his stomach muscles and edged forward on the bench. His thighs engaged to take his weight. Shring. He took three fast in-breaths, then pushed off the bench in a spiral and shot out his left leg behind him. The heel of his boot cannoned through the driver’s headrest, whacking the young soldier’s head into the windscreen.

The two in the back grabbed Vladimir – as he’d predicted they would – which actually stabilised him. His boot back-kicked viciously into the leader’s face, then flicked forwards to the driver’s head just as it was rebounding off the glass. The driver squealed. The van swerved and crashed through the guard rail, the soldiers’ panicked shouts lost amidst the sound of tearing metal and the engine whine as the van’s axles spun furiously in mid-air.

Right now, hooded was better.

The other men would see the world spinning around them. One of them screamed. Vladimir, on the other hand, had only to pay attention to the vestibular system in his ears to tell him the position of the van as it slowly somersaulted and yawed to the right. It would fall for less than two seconds. He held his breath. The van was going to strike the water on its right side. He focused on the man opposite, listening in case he moved. Vladimir brought his knees up to his chest.

The van smacked onto the river. Vladimir shot forward. His knees crushed the chest of the guy who had slapped and punched him earlier, imploding his lungs. The thug would drown in his own blood before the water had a chance to kill him. The one who’d been next to Vladimir grunted as his skull smashed into the side of the van, then went silent. Freezing water seeped in. The leader cursed, his seat belt jammed, while the driver made moaning noises. The van began to sink, amidst a loud hissing as water flashed to steam on the engine block.

He had to get the hood off his face before the windows caved in. He rolled onto his back, banging his head against the rear doors, brought his knees up until they touched his chin, then worked his handcuffed wrists over his buttocks and behind his knees. Scrunching himself into as tight a ball as he could, he got them past his boots. He pulled off the hood.

The leader sawed frantically at his seat belt with a serrated knife. Then he turned towards Vladimir. More expletives, and then his final mistake. He stuck the knife into the dashboard so he could take out his pistol to shoot his prisoner. The driver-side window was a quarter open, and the water pouring in made the van roll until it was upside down. The bullet grazed Vladimir’s shoulder and shattered the rear window behind. Water gushed inside, rising quickly.

Vladimir waded past the two floating bodies and stood behind the leader, now hanging upside down, trapped by his seat belt. Vladimir leaned forward, retrieved the knife from the dashboard, and slit the man’s throat. Searching inside his jacket pocket, he found the keys to the cuffs. The van pitched upwards, so that he had to hang on to the front seats. He worked methodically to get the cuffs off, then took a deep breath as the van gave one last gulp and slipped beneath the surface.

He blinked hard in the stinging, ice-cold water. That was when he noticed the face of the unconscious driver. A girl, not much older than his eldest, Katya. What the fuck were they thinking, bringing her on such a mission? He made his decision, and sealed his hand over her mouth and nose to stop her drowning. Luckily she’d not been wearing her seat belt.

It was going to be a real bitch towing her to shore.

***

A month later he watched his own funeral from a safe distance through a sniper scope. No coffin, just an urn of ashes that could have been anyone or anything. He was gone. The authorities presumed he’d drowned, because the girl had sworn silence in exchange for her life. Even if they suspected he’d survived, they wouldn’t expect him at his own funeral. He’d seen a couple of Spetsnaz haunting the village the past couple of days, snooping around, but they weren’t making a serious effort. Besides, he knew how not to be seen.

He focused on his three family members. The wife who’d grown to hate him – he didn’t blame her – weeping now. Relief or grief, he couldn’t say. Then the two girls. Katya, the eldest, the strongest. She’d be fine, a born survivor, with her mother’s good looks that would either see her happily through life or buy her trouble. He lingered on the younger one, Nadia. His favourite. She was like him, saw things and people as they truly were. More a curse than a gift.

Other family members, uncles and cousins, led the three women back towards the church. He put down the scope. He’d never see them again. He knew he should leave, but he stayed put. Family mattered more than anything. That’s all he’d lived for. Now, in order to protect them, he had to stay dead. But to never see them again? His wife could move on, though he suspected she wouldn’t. Katya would go to the big city, what she’d always dreamed of. She would be fine. But Nadia…

His own father, Nikolai, had been killed in a mining accident when Vladimir had been twenty-five. That’s when he’d decided to transfer into the military and work his way up into Special Ops, letting the GRU intelligence service train him as an assassin, to give him the tools of the trade he needed to avenge his father.

It took him a decade to piece it together, to find the four men guilty of pilfering away money from the mine, instead of installing even the most basic safeguards, and then botching any and all rescue attempts by trying to hide the collapse from the authorities until it was too late. Those small-time corrupt officials had, in those ten years, risen higher. One of them even made it to the Politburo.

He tracked them down and made his move while on detachment in Moscow. One by one he kidnapped them and buried them alive, so they could die just as his father and thirty other men had in the collapsed mine. The last one, the Politburo member, had only been a week ago. Afterwards, Vladimir had taken leave and spent the past days with his family.

Frankly, after that last hit he was surprised it had taken the GRU a week to join the dots. Perhaps he should have just cut and run. But then they’d have come after his family. This way was better. And now his father could finally rest.

His mind switched back to Nadia. His own turning point in life had been at twenty-five years of age. It would be a good time to revisit her. She’d be not too young, nor old enough to be set in her ways. He made his decision. He would find Nadia when she was twenty-five, walk back into her life, and if she wanted him to disappear again for ever, he would. Eleven years. If he lasted that long.

The mass of people had disappeared into the church. He hadn’t expected so many. He picked up the bag he’d retrieved two weeks earlier. Several passports, plenty of money including US dollars, some small arms. But not his Beretta. Nadia owned it now.

He headed off. His face would be posted at every border crossing, even though he was officially dead. He could easily slip into Afghanistan, but he had no desire to work with the Taliban any more, training them to fight against the Americans. He knew where he must go. The one place they would not look for him, because no one wanted to go there.

Chernobyl.

One of his Special Ops commanders, Borya – who’d saved Vladimir’s life more than once and taught him most of what he knew – had been summoned there back in April 1986. He’d flown those helicopters in and out, in the desperate effort to bury the glowing, split-wide-open reactor core in cement. Borya had been lucky, had lasted longer than most, but cancer got him in the end. His widow still lived there, in one of the surrounding ghost towns.

‘Go see her, Vlad,’ Borya had pleaded. ‘I played the hero, but she will pay the price longer than I.’

He’d not seen Borya again. His funeral had been seven years ago.

Vladimir began walking.

Time to make another man’s choice right.

Part One

The Barents Sea

Chapter One

Nadia heard the familiar rattles and clanks down the corridor. Steel bar gates unlocked, opened, locked again. Distant footsteps. Coming her way. She stopped her third round of push-ups and sat back on the wooden bench in the cell she’d barely left in almost two years. No visitors, no phone calls, no internet, no television, no papers. Books occasionally, classics. Minimal human contact.

They kept her in the dark, because they still weren’t convinced she’d given up all her secrets, and had classified her ‘need to know’ status as zero. They kept her hidden, afraid she’d talk about the Rose, and shame the British government over what it had created and almost let loose on its own kingdom. Afraid she’d let the public know they’d narrowly dodged a nuclear war with Russia. The government could invoke plausible deniability. Just another foiled conspiracy. But it wasn’t over. Cheng Yi was dead, but the unknown client was still out there. The threat was still real.

He would try again.

Maybe they’d keep her there for good. She’d killed two people. The world was better off without them, but British justice took a dim view of unlawful killing. British justice… She’d not seen a lawyer, nor been charged as far as she was aware. No visitors. She tried not to reopen that particular can of tarantulas; it never helped.

In the first six months, the thought of someone visiting her, Jake, maybe, or Katya, kept her going. But after a year the pain became unbearable. Nobody came. Nobody cared. And so she worked out, she read, and the rest were just bodily functions. She often sang the Cossack lullaby before lights out, just to practise using her voice, and to reach out to her older sister who used to sing it to her when they were young, soothing her while their parents screamed at each other downstairs. Nadia prayed Katya was all right, and comforted herself that above all, Katya was a survivor.

The sounds drew nearer, the telltale rattle of iron keys on a large ring. She knew the routine. She wiped sweat from her forehead with a mouldy towel, and stood to attention at the end of her cot, next to the washbasin. No mirror, no glass anywhere, a metal sink and lavatory in the corner. Light filtered through the misted glass and steel bars. She faced the solid metal door. Maybe she’d get coffee today. It would be cold, but that didn’t matter.

Footsteps grew closer. Two sets, not one. Another routine medical inspection? There hadn’t been an interrogation for months. Jake’s ice-bitch ex-lover and current boss, Lorne, had come regularly in the first nine months, until she could extract nothing new. Initially Nadia had played tough, until Lorne showed her photos of Ben’s funeral – the man who had helped her so much in the Scillies, yet asked for nothing in return – whereupon she’d cracked and told Jake’s MI6 handler everything she knew.

Lorne informed Nadia she would receive no visitors, because no one knew where she was: some British military high-security facility. Probably not even on the books. Nadia doubted anyone would visit even if they did know, after what had happened back in the Isles of Scilly. Unless it was to spit in her face, something she’d welcome after two years of solitary. But Jake must have known, and yet he never came. That was a kick in the stomach. And inevitably, she’d become angry. Now, after two years, it had cemented into a deep resentment. She might just lash out at the first unfortunate soul who came to see her.

The footsteps stopped right outside the door. A double-clank as the deadbolts retracted. A small scratchy noise as someone slid the latch and peered through the glass eyehole. The door didn’t open. Nadia stayed absolutely still. Come on, you bastards, give me my bloody breakfast! The routines of each day were sacrosanct, propping up her sanity. Still the door didn’t open. Voices, muffled, she couldn’t make anything out. A high-pitched cry, female, stifled.

Nadia was suddenly gripped by panic. What if they were going to kill her? Take her outside, shoot her and bury her? Nobody would know; no one would care. She clenched her teeth and fists, suppressed the fear. This was England, not Russia. But her arms and legs tensed like coiled springs, just in case.

The heavy door swung open slowly. She smelled her sister Katya before she saw her, the perfume she knew so well. Katya walked around the door, into full view, tears sliding down her cheeks as she held out her arms.

‘God, Nadia, I’m sorry it took so long.’

But Nadia was already in her arms, squeezing her, gripping her, two years of pent-up emotions erupting. The anger fled, chased away by a deluge of relief. She shook so much she couldn’t speak. Katya whispered soothing noises while the guard waited patiently. Nadia’s face was wet, like the rain she hadn’t felt in two years. She gathered herself, knowing this visit would be kept short. She wiped her eyes and cheeks, and spoke to her sister urgently, taking in every line of her face, details she might have to remember and savour for another two years.

‘How long can you stay?’ Nadia asked. ‘How long have we got?’

Katya bit her lip then pulled Nadia’s face tight to her chest, struggling to get the words out. ‘Time to come home, my Cossack,’ she said.

Nadia’s legs gave way.

***

Nadia gazed through the scratched plane window the whole flight. Not surprising after almost two years with only a barred window with frosted glass. She couldn’t help herself when they rose above the clouds, so her sister Katya held her while the tears came.

A tall man wrapped in a heavy wool overcoat sat in the row in front. He’d been waiting in the car for them outside the military facility. He had a square, black beard and fierce dark brown eyes topped by bushy eyebrows. On the back of his left hand was a tattoo of a hawk, wings spread wide, as if hovering above prey. He occupied two business class seats: on the second one sat his briefcase.

When they’d passed through customs he’d shown a diplomatic passport, so the briefcase hadn’t been scanned. But when he carried it she noted from the way he leaned slightly that it must be very heavy. He didn’t turn around once during the three-hour flight from Heathrow to Moscow. No doubt he had been the one who had gotten her released, a favour in return for Katya’s sexual attentions, perhaps. Nadia sensed he had plans for her as well. Whatever they were, she didn’t want any part of them.

London’s busiest airport had been a nightmare. Luckily Katya had thought ahead and brought dark sunglasses Nadia could barely see through, and an iPod with serious noise-cancelling headphones, blaring out the latest Russian clubbing anthems. Nadia didn’t crave dancing or nightlife. No excitement, thank you. Just an open field, or mountains. To lie down somewhere – anywhere – and watch the sky. To feel the naked sun, wind and rain on her face.

But she needed to know. ‘What’s his name?’ she asked, nodding forwards.

‘Bransk,’ Katya answered, a sparkle in her eyes.

Nadia hoped her sister hadn’t sacrificed too much. ‘Is he…a good man?’

Katya’s face hardened. ‘Men are what men are.’

Nadia dropped it, and stared out the window during the descent into Moscow, wondering if she and Katya could finally have some normality. But as they passed through the cloud layer, the world below was grey and full of shadows, and Cheng Yi’s last words came back to her, when he had talked of the client.

‘He is blind, but can see. Water and air are the same to him. He will find you in the darkness. You will not hear him when he comes for you.’

She felt a shiver and reached for Katya’s hand. A thought struck her, something she’d not considered until now. That maybe she’d been kept hidden away in solitary for her own protection. Who would have – or even could have – done that? There was only one person.

Jake.

***

They hung around the baggage carousel in Sheremetyevo airport, but their luggage never arrived. An official walked up to Bransk, flashed a badge, and invited them all into an office with mirrored windows, then left them there. A minute later a group of armed military entered, a straight-backed colonel with a peaked military cap, three gold stars and two red bars on the sleeve of his olive green uniform. He was blond-haired with glacier-blue eyes, and had a boyish face, his cheeks soft and slightly flushed. He looked too young to be a colonel. He was flanked by a striking female lieutenant, a green-eyed brunette whose beauty rivalled Katya’s, and three fully armed commandos.

Nadia didn’t wish to be incarcerated again. The idea of launching a chair at the mirrored glass, diving through it and making her escape flickered through her mind. But how far would she get? She moved behind Bransk, then noticed the sixth member of the group: a man in a grey polo-neck sweater, black leather pants and matching full-length leather coat. On one sleeve was a military insignia: three gold stars and two gold bars. Naval captain. He carried a fur Ushanka hat in his hand, goat-black like his hair, a Soviet-style red star on it.

She wasn’t sure, but didn’t think that was regulation. He had an air of casual authority, as if he was the leader of this meeting. He took a measured look at Bransk, an appreciative and lingering glance at Katya, as any man would. Then his eyes locked on to Nadia, and didn’t budge.

‘Mr Bransk,’ said the young-looking colonel. ‘We have a situation.’

‘Just Bransk.’

It was the first time she’d heard Bransk speak. Talk about a tombstone voice. Yet she couldn’t figure him out – businessman with a diplomatic passport, and the military being almost deferential to him. Questions for Katya later.

The colonel nodded towards Nadia. ‘Is she fit for duty?’

‘What kind of duty?’ Bransk answered.

‘Wait just a minute,’ Nadia began.

But the colonel ignored her, addressing Bransk. ‘As I said, we have a situation requiring…specialised work.’

The naval captain walked around Bransk and stood close to Nadia. He looked her up and down, especially her shoulders. Then he spoke, his voice like smooth Scotch, no rocks.

‘I must touch you,’ he said to her, as if they were alone.

She laughed, incredulously. ‘We haven’t even been introduced.’

He smiled, and any indignation she felt at his directness evaporated. She felt Katya’s eyes on her, though Bransk still faced the colonel.

‘Captain Sergei Petrovich Romanov. Submarine Commander, at your service.’ He made a short bow, still not taking his eyes from hers. He pulled out a measuring tape, made a large loop, then passed it over her head to her shoulders. He measured their girth, then frowned. He released the tape.

‘Lift your arms straight up, please.’

He measured her again, then his hands moved to her shoulder blades and rounded her back. Nadia tried to keep her breathing under control. She’d had zero physical contact for two years. Well, not quite. But interrogations didn’t count. He measured her again, then looped the tape around her chest, careful not to touch her breasts.

‘Breathe in fully, please.’

She complied.

‘Now tilt back your head as far as you can.’ He measured an oval space around her, encompassing her chest, her shoulders, and the back of her head. She wondered what exactly he was measuring her for.

He dropped to one knee and measured her hips, then got up and put the measuring tape away. His eyes grew serious. Foreplay over, evidently.

‘Can you hold your breath for ninety seconds?’

She nodded.

‘I have to be sure. Lives will depend on it. Take three deep breaths.’

Bransk turned around.

Everyone stared at her. She did as instructed.

After the third in-breath, Sergei cupped his left hand behind her head, and pressed his right palm over her mouth. His finger and thumb sealed her nose. He glanced at his watch.

Bransk moved closer, made eye contact with her for the first time. Oddly, they were eyes you could trust. And in those eyes she sensed a promise, that he would let no harm come to her. She heard the commandos’ rifles shift in his direction. Nobody in this room was stupid; everyone highly trained. She wouldn’t have even made it to the window.

Sergei spoke, this time to Bransk. ‘Someone has taken command of a submarine. Mine. Ukrainian militia, so they say, though most in the Crimea are pretty happy to be part of the Motherland again. Nevertheless, the sub is in the Barents Sea, north of Murmansk. The sea state is not good, even though it’s technically the height of summer. I need a diver, a very slim one. Somebody who can enter my submarine via a torpedo tube with a 550-millimetre diameter, one which can be opened from the outside.’ He checked his watch.

Katya spoke. ‘You want her to enter without scuba gear? What if the torpedo room is flooded?’

‘It will be.’

Nadia was counting. Thirty seconds. So far, no problem. She thought about the torpedo tube. A smooth steel coffin. She’d fit easily enough. Moving around would be another matter.

‘Blow the sub up,’ Katya said. ‘Or storm it from the main hatch.’

Nadia knew about submarines from her former training with Kadinsky. But Katya? Since when did she know anything about subs? Was Bransk teaching her? In any case, the men standing here now would have already considered both options, and they were probably still on the table as last resorts. Russia rarely met terrorist demands.

Sergei continued. ‘There are twelve nuclear warheads aboard. We need to account for every one of them.’

Forty-five seconds. Her stomach muscles contracted of their own accord. The urge to inhale tugged at her. She swallowed twice, and the urge went away. A trick she’d learned from her father. But it wouldn’t last long.

Sergei continued. ‘These terrorists – they made ridiculous demands – hand back Sebastopol, withdraw from true Ukraine, bla bla bla. But we have reason to believe they – whoever they really are – are there to steal a warhead.’

One minute. Thirty seconds left. His hands were a vice. The gnawing in her lungs resumed. She’d done ninety seconds with her father numerous times, but she was out of practice. It hadn’t seemed relevant in her cell. Katya’s face appeared in front of her, worried.

‘This isn’t a game,’ Katya said to Sergei, her voice like acid.

‘On the contrary, it is a very real game, with very high stakes. But I don’t give people a task unless I know they can execute it.’

Ten seconds more. Her fists tightened, she blinked hard.

‘For instance,’ Sergei said, ‘things can go wrong. You may have less time than you need. Or you may have more time than you want.’

Ninety seconds. He didn’t release her.

Her eyes watered. Her hands shot to his wrists, but they were iron, his black eyes on hers, large, searching, but also willing her to continue. Like her father.

‘Let her go!’ Katya shouted.

Nadia’s body trembled. She tried not to squirm or claw at his hands, or even knee him in the balls. But the gnawing feeling in her gut and lungs lashed at her in furious waves.

‘I need to see how people react under pressure, how they face the unexpected.’

Nadia understood. A test. She dropped her hands, stared back at him. Her body continued to tremble. Her vision grew blotchy, and the spasms in her diaphragm decreased. Her ears started to ring. She knew what came next.

Bransk spoke, his voice a distant boom above the ringing. ‘You’ve made your point. So has she.’

Sergei released her. She dropped into a crouch on the floor, gasping, coughing, sucking in air, Katya’s arms around her.

The colonel spoke. ‘We leave now. There’s a transport plane waiting.’

Nadia wiped her mouth. ‘I need a coffee with sugar.’

A silver hip flask appeared next to her, in the same hand that had almost asphyxiated her. She took it. Coffee, sugar, and something else.

Katya shouted at the colonel. ‘And if we refuse?’

The female lieutenant produced a clutch of papers. ‘She is wanted on three counts of crimes against the state. However, if she does this for her country, she is free.’

Nadia got up, addressed the colonel. Now was the time. She didn’t want to be kept by Bransk, or even Katya. She craved independence. ‘I want recompense. Fifty thousand US dollars equivalent – I haven’t been keeping up with the exchange rates.’

‘Done,’ said the colonel.

I should have asked for more.

Sergei gave her a smile. ‘Now, we really do have to go.’

She handed back the hip flask. ‘How deep is the sub?’

‘Forty-two metres.’

A deep dive after two years in solitary. But she would manage. ‘Your divers better be good,’ she said.

He didn’t answer, and besides, she already guessed they’d be the best.

Chapter Two

As it turned out, Sergei was going to be one of the divers. Unorthodox by any military standards, let alone Russian ones, but she sensed this man was a maverick. He must have delivered good results in the past, or else his wings would have been clipped by now.

The inside of the old Antonov AN140 military transport plane was noisy, uncomfortable and cold. The loud thrum of the twin propellers muffled all communication. At least she’d been given a parka coat and a warm Ushanka fur hat with earmuffs. The bench was hard, the hull khaki-painted metal covered with elastic webbing. It meant there was always something to grab on to.

The diving equipment lying on the heavily scuffed aluminium deck was well used but also well maintained. She inspected it, shouting one or two questions above the din at Sergei when she wasn’t absolutely sure about something.

Four other divers sat in the aircraft hold, wetsuits under their coats, neoprene dive hoods up. None of them spoke. No jokes, no banter, no engagement with her. They each carried a blue and grey plastic assault rifle, which she presumed would work when wet, though not necessarily in water. That was what their spear guns were for. There were two motorised sleds, the same size as motorbikes. When Sergei left the compartment for a while, she moved towards one of the sled control consoles, to see how it worked.

‘Don’t touch!’ one of the divers barked.

‘Show me the controls, just in case.’

Another diver – she reckoned the leader after Sergei – spoke to her slowly. He had a voice that had seen a million cigarettes, and clearly didn’t appreciate her presence on the mission.

‘There is no “in case”. We will get you to the submarine, get your skinny ass inside the tube. Hope you like tight holes as much as we do.’ No smile.

‘I’m Plan B, aren’t I? You had someone else in mind. One of your own.’

‘You are Plan F,’ he said, no longer looking at her.

Nothing she said would make any difference. Only how she acted underwater. She continued examining the assembled equipment. Along with what looked like welding equipment, there was something else on the floor: a gold-coloured cylinder a foot long and four inches thick. It looked heavy. She had no idea what it was, and decided not to waste her breath asking.

Last, she checked her dive gear. A single, thin tank strapped to a harness that also had pockets she could inflate to keep her buoyancy neutral no matter the depth. A skinny stab jacket. She’d never seen one so pared-down. She looked around for a diver’s weight belt – the other half of buoyancy control – but there wasn’t one, and she noticed the other divers weren’t wearing them either. If she got separated from the sled, that would make a controlled ascent difficult. No, make that impossible. Perhaps that was the point. Asking these men about it would only make her standing with them worse.

Sergei reappeared and signalled her to follow him. They walked towards the plane’s fore-section, a small chamber just before the cockpit, where Bransk, Katya, the colonel and the brown-haired lieutenant all leant on a white table. Once Sergei and Nadia entered, it was pretty snug. At least it was quieter, and the seats were cushioned. Sergei unfolded a map and pointed to a location ten miles offshore, marked with a red cross.

‘I don’t see an airport,’ Nadia said.

‘Are you afraid of heights?’

Crap! They were going to para-dive into the sea. That’s why all the equipment was so streamlined. She shook her head, as much in disbelief as in resignation.

He placed another smaller piece of paper on top, a line drawing of the sub shown from three different angles. He pointed again. He had long, agile fingers. They moved fluidly like a pianist’s. Nadia had a thing about hands. Partly why she’d let him hold her mouth closed earlier. She refocused on what he was showing her.

‘We’ll cut off the bow cap of torpedo tube number three, here. It’s already flooded because they went to high alert when the sub was taken.’

Katya spoke in a pissed-off voice. ‘Which was how, exactly?’

Sergei ignored the question. ‘You will remove your tank and make your way through the tube. There will be a line around your waist. If you get stuck, you give three hard pulls, and we drag you out.’

And how would she give three hard pulls in such a confined space? Her hands would be forward. She doubted she’d be able to reach back once inside the tube. Trapped like a worm. Added to that, they would seal her in to prevent flooding the torpedo room when she breached the inner hatch.

‘You’ll have lights on your mask, and a camera. We can see what you see, but we can’t talk to you.’ He held up a thin canister with a mouthpiece attached. ‘This will give you ten good breaths at that depth. No more.’

Sergei outlined the complete plan. She would secure the torpedo room. There was a computer workstation there. She had to insert a USB key into it. A cyber-virus. It would wreak havoc with the sub’s systems – lighting, aircon, engines. Most importantly, the weapons launch and guidance software would be erased. It would be the distraction Sergei needed; otherwise he’d be killed as soon as he tried to enter the sub.

Once she uploaded the virus, Sergei and two others would enter via the conning tower, though he didn’t explain how. Sergei had an identical black USB key – the antivirus. He went over the plan a second time. Both times he was vague about what would happen to the terrorists. But something had been bugging Nadia since the outset.

‘Why me?’ she asked.

He pointed at the torpedo tube at the front of the sub.

Her size. Although a man could get into the tube, and even be launched by it, only someone very small could move around and manipulate controls inside, and lift their head to see what they were doing – hence the elaborate measurement foreplay earlier. But still… ‘Not enough of a reason,’ she said, because for Russian military, it wasn’t.

Sergei nodded to the colonel, whose name she still didn’t know, and likely never would.

‘Three additional reasons,’ he said. His voice was higher-pitched than Sergei’s, but sharp, used to command, the type of guy who knew the rules backwards and could dice you with them if you didn’t do as ordered. ‘First, you are all Black Ops. We cannot risk this leaking out. Imagine the headlines. Any one of you leaks anything, we’ll bury you for ever. And if you are captured or killed, we will disavow you.’

It figured. Best of both worlds.

But he had a point. Nadia imagined the headlines: Terrorists seize nuclear sub, a dozen warheads at their disposal. The political wound would cut deep, even if resolved overnight. Putin would lose face. Heads like this particular colonel’s would roll.

‘Second, your performance in the Rose affair had already come to our notice. You are resourceful, not afraid to kill, not afraid to sacrifice.’

So, her antics back in the Scillies were now a matter of record. She’d like to see those files.

‘The third reason…is your father.’

Her heart skipped a beat. ‘What?’

The young colonel cast her a searching look. ‘He was Spetsnaz, but he also wrote pamphlets under a pseudonym. The Black Cossack. He wrote a manifesto on why the Crimea should remain Ukrainian, not Russian. He foresaw the future. His writing is still quoted today, but now with his real name: Lakshev. Your name. So if you are captured…’

She stared at him. Though he’d tried to suppress it, when he’d used the male form of the family name, the acid in his tone had come through loud and clear. Had he known her father? Unlikely – too young.

The colonel gave her a searching look. ‘You didn’t know?’ he said.

She shook her head. Her father had never mentioned it. They’d lived in Uspekh, not that far from Ukraine geographically. She remembered he used to write, but he’d kept it all in a locked drawer. My secret diary, he’d once told her. And after his death, her mother had burned it all. So, if they really were Ukrainian freedom fighters – or even Ukrainian Secret Service – maybe her name would cut some ice. But it seemed like a long shot. It was her turn to search the colonel’s face. There was something else, something he wasn’t telling her. But clearly he’d finished.

Of course there was the real reason. She was expendable. Just released from a secret prison. No one would mourn her except Katya. But she had no intention of dying on her first day of freedom. She sat up, gripped the edges of the sub layout schematic and spoke to Sergei.

‘I’m going to go through the plan again. You will correct me on the tiniest detail I get wrong.’

He nodded, a faint smile lifting the corners of his mouth. Her eyes hovered for a moment on those coarse seafarer’s lips, then she cleared her throat, and began.

***

The toilet was cramped even for her. But outside there were too many people. Too much contact after solitary. She’d wanted to see Katya, then try to find Jake, either to make love with him, or to slap him really hard, probably both; she hadn’t decided the order yet.

It was three days before her birthday. She studied her reflection in the mirror, the short dark hair, her grey eyes. Not much to work with. Prison had changed her. The softness Jake had known was gone. Maybe she’d lost her looks, or whatever Jake had found interesting in her. He might not want to see her. Two years. Two fucking years. He’d have found someone else. One of his exes – Lorne or Elise – might have reclaimed him. A hundred other girls.

It’s not fair, Katya had said earlier on the plane. Damned right. But they were Russian. History had stripped the belief in fairness from the gene pool a long time ago. What had her father said a thousand times? Make the choice right. Especially when you don’t have one.

She came back out and signalled to Katya that she wanted a private word, which in this case meant shouting to each other in the noisy corridor between the fore-section and the main hold. She told her about Jake, whom Katya had met briefly on the cargo ship that had turned into a bloodbath.

‘I’m so happy you found someone during that awful time.’

‘If I don’t –’

‘You will.’

‘If I don’t… I want you to meet with Jake. He deserves to know…’ To know what? She’d leave it up to Katya, who was better with words.

‘All right, Nad. But you will come back. You’re strong, like Papasha.’ And then Katya clearly realised what she’d just said – because one day their father hadn’t come back.

They went back to the cabin. Sergei got up and knocked on the cockpit door. It opened. He talked to the pilot, and Nadia glimpsed the stormy weather outside, another factor stacking up against them.

Sergei came back in. ‘Twenty minutes,’ he said. ‘Suit up.’

She grabbed the thin cylinder of compressed air that might just sustain her long enough to reach the interlocks on the torpedo tube’s inner hatch. She had a feeling someone would be waiting for her on the other side. Armed, naturally.

‘I’ll need a knife,’ she said to Sergei as they entered the bay where the other divers were assembling everything, including voluminous grey parachutes for the sleds. She’d never jumped out of a plane before.

‘Absolutely,’ he said. He handed her a small, short, stubby one, flat-bladed at the top, with a sharpened edge. It looked useful in many ways, except as a serious weapon.

As she strapped it in its sheath to her inner thigh – so it would be out of the way inside the torpedo tube – she recalled Jake’s obsession with diving knives. She wished he was there, but was also glad he wasn’t, as she didn’t need any distractions right now.

Some of the fear dropped out of her, displaced by adrenaline. She imagined Jake watching. He’d laugh, tell her to look on the bright side: she was going to dive a nuclear sub, an opportunity many wreck divers would relish. She smiled, and as she stripped down to her underwear, still thinking of Jake, Sergei’s eyes hooked hers. She swallowed, turned away from him and squeezed into her wetsuit. Evidently she hadn’t lost all her looks. One of the other divers tossed her a thin belt, heavier than it looked, and she fixed it around her waist.

But she remembered what was down beneath the waves. Armed terrorists intent on stealing nuclear weapons. They’d shoot her on sight. The colonel had said she’d been resourceful, ready and able to kill. She hadn’t thought much about it in the past two years, assuming neither the need nor opportunity would arise. But two years in solitary had hardened her. Maybe it would come easier next time.

She sat kitted up, the regulator from the main tank fastened to her chest. She was perched on the front of a movable skid next to Sergei. She’d thought it was noisy before, but now the Arctic wind roared just a few metres away from her, through the open cargo door at the back of the plane. Six hours ago she’d fallen in love with white puffy clouds above London. Now she was going to fling herself into dark storm clouds that would lash her with rain as she freefell.

Of all the crazy things she’d done in her life, nothing matched this. She watched the red light to the left of the open hatch, and listened to the countdown. Breathe normally, Sergei had said. Fat chance. The countdown grew louder. Tri – Dva – Odin. The light turned green.

The skid rolled towards open space.

Nadia held her breath.

Chapter Three

Falling out of a plane at night, above a raging sea, lived up to its reputation. Sergei had said the chute would open after ten seconds, long enough to get below the wake from the propellers but not drift too far from the drop zone. But Nadia couldn’t count. She was too busy trying to catch her breath as the wind tore at her mouth.

Goggles protected her eyes, though she could barely see anything as she plummeted through gun-metal-grey clouds. She bit down on an urge to scream, panic rising from her heart up into her throat. Freefalling. It was so damned dark. The sea was racing towards her, but all she saw below was blackness. A cloudy night, no stars, no moon. Must have been eight seconds by now. Nine. Ten. She braced herself for the chute opening.

Nothing.

Where was Sergei? He’d been right beside her on the plane. He was heavier. He’d be below her, wouldn’t he? Or did everyone fall at the same rate? She couldn’t remember. He could be above her if his chute had opened. She looked up. Nothing, just the wind howling in her ears through her neoprene dive hood. How high had they been? How long before she’d hit the water?

At this speed her harness with its air tank would snap her back in two on impact. She had no emergency cord to operate the chute. He’d said it wouldn’t fail. The chute would open. Fifteen seconds now, for sure. Another five and she’d be splattered on the wave-tops. Sergei, where the fuck…

He slammed into her from behind, then spun her around as effortlessly as if they were trapeze artists in that sweet spot where gravity blinks. But they were plunging at terminal velocity, close to two hundred kilometres an hour. His face loomed close, but he was looking down at her chest. He hit her. No, he thumped the buckle to release the failed chute. She slipped away from him. Shit! She lunged for one of his shoulder straps, grabbed it, tugged herself towards him, flailing in the wind like a rag doll. They twisted in mid-air, no longer falling feet first. He looped an arm around her, pulled her close to him, yanked something, and then Nadia realised how the end of a bullwhip felt when it was cracked.

It winded her, but Sergei’s arm pressed her against him, locking them together. Her left hand clung to his harness strap; the other gripped the back of his tank. Finally he looked at her. And smiled. He fucking smiled. Cool bastard. He mouthed something. Then something else. Two. One. She took an urgent breath.

The surface of the sea whacked into her, pounded her feet, ripped off her goggles. The rushing wind was replaced by the soft, numbing sounds of the undersea that she’d loved since her first dive in the Volga at the age of eight. But it was cold, bloody cold. She fumbled for the regulator pinned to her chest, exhaled once to flush out the water, then breathed in. Air – the only thing that really mattered underwater.

Eyes still closed, she fished inside her jacket pocket for her dive mask, donned it, tilted her head back and breathed out through her nose to clear the mask of seawater, equalising pressure in her nose and ears at the same time. She opened her eyes and blinked hard to rinse out the stinging salt water. Sergei was attaching his fins, a torch in his hand.

She unfastened the fins strapped tight around her calves, slipped them on, then found her own halogen lamp. At least the seawater inside her wetsuit had warmed a little from her body heat. Sergei shone a cone of light down into the gloom. He put his hand in the beam and gave her the OK signal. She did the same, careful not to shine it anywhere near his face and render him temporarily night-blind. His smile had gone.

To business.

She checked her depth on the dive computer attached to her left wrist. Fifteen metres. The swell from the roiling waves above swayed her gently, rocking her. But she knew they must be off-course due to the late opening of her chute. The drop had been carefully calculated – vertical height, wind strength and direction, sea state – and now they might be up to half a mile in the wrong place. Sergei showed his hand in the light, fingers spread open, palm down. Stay. Of course. The others had sleds. Let them come to us.

But waiting meant thinking. About Sergei? No, don’t go there. Jake? Ditto. The job. Fanatical-but-smart killers below. Probably executed the crew already. The question that had dogged her in the Scillies came back to her. Was she ready to kill?

She’d killed for the first time there. Drowned a man – a lot harder than pulling a trigger. She’d done it to save Jake and the others, though it had been too late to save Ben. And she’d shot another. No hesitation that time, because the bastard had just killed a bunch of innocents and had raped her years earlier. But there was no one down below she cared for or hated. Yet it came down to this. There was a line. Before the Scillies she’d been on one side of it. Now she was on the other. Her father’s side.

So, yes, she could kill.

A dull buzzing interrupted her thoughts. Sergei was staring behind her. She finned to spin around and saw a light, then two. The sleds, two divers apiece, one on top, one hanging at the side. They didn’t slow down. A sled approached, and she finned to get a head start, and then grabbed the sled’s rail as it passed. Sergei was on the sled in front. He glanced back once to check she was aboard, then both sleds accelerated to make up for lost time. They stayed at fifteen metres for a good ten minutes, then she felt the pressure on her ears increase, and cleared them – they were descending.

They hit thirty-five metres and levelled off. Still she saw nothing, but the sleds both slowed, and then she saw why. The forward light picked up the huge black tail fin of the Borei Class nuclear sub, like the fin of a shark, which happened to be the nickname for this class of sub. Sergei’s sled circled behind, his forward beam illuminating the massive propeller. She tried to gauge how long each blade was. Maybe three metres.

Sergei took point again, and fired a flare that fizzed forward like a lazy yellow firework. The sub was one hundred and seventy metres long, only slightly shorter than its predecessor, the Typhoon. But seeing it, positioned at one end while the flare swept forward over its dark beauty, was something else. The flare continued its arc over the conning tower, all the way to the prow, her destination. The light faded and plunged them back into darkness save for the sled’s lights. But the after-image was etched onto her retinas. Russian subs didn’t really go in for names, they were usually referred to as Projects and given a number, but Sergei had told her this one was the Yuri Gagarin. He’d have been proud.

Yet shark was the right label, too. Subs like the Yuri were the ultimate predator, patrolling the oceans, undetectable yet carrying Armageddon on their backs, a dozen missiles, any one of which could obliterate a major city, incinerating hundreds of thousands of people in a heartbeat. They had to stop its warheads falling into the wrong hands.

They picked up speed, the sleds’ beams angled downwards, two ellipses of light tracing the narrow walkway on the foredeck. Both sleds slowed as they reached the missile hatches, a dozen lined up in neat pairs. One was open.

Sergei descended from the sled to the deck, and peered inside with his torch. Nadia wanted to take a look, but the sled driver’s hand clasped around hers, welding it to the sled’s rail. Sergei could clearly see something, but she had no way of knowing what. He rejoined his sled, and both sleds surged forward. She glanced down as she passed the open tube, but could see nothing there, not even the telltale white and red cone of the missile itself. She felt a shiver. It looked as if at least one warhead was already missing.

They arrived at the conning tower, its antennae bending in the current, a sturdy metal ladder running down the outside. She wondered how Sergei and the other two were going to board the sub through the conning tower. They tethered their sled to the tower, and as her sled continued its journey, she glanced back, watching Sergei and the others setting up some equipment. She realised two things. The first was that they could easily be killed as soon as they entered the sub. The second was that she didn’t want that to happen, not to Sergei at any rate. She turned her gaze forwards.

The foredeck began to narrow in the beam of light, until it reached the sleek prow of one of Russia’s finest. As they drifted down to the torpedo hatches, she realised she couldn’t see the sea floor. Which didn’t make sense. The sled driver evidently had the same concern. He circled the sled while the second diver fired up a flare, then let it drop. It fell for a full minute before it was lost in the depths. Shit.

The driver gunned the motor and they levelled off on the starboard side with nothing beneath them but a yawning abyss. He fired a flare horizontally, along the sub’s hull, and she watched, unbelieving. Nearly half the sub was hanging over an underwater cliff.

Had Sergei known? Clearly his men hadn’t. The driver prodded the sled’s keypad, presumably sending a message to Sergei, then did an about-turn back to the torpedo tubes. She checked her dive computer. Forty-two metres. Her head felt a little groggy due to the inevitable narcosis, as if she’d downed two vodkas. The adrenaline would more than compensate. But as she stared at the enormous sub right in front of her, she wondered what it would take to tip it into the abyss.

The other two divers had backpacks like hers, but with larger twin tanks, as they would remain outside in the water. She checked the sled. Her spare tank, for the return journey, was fixed to its underside. Now the operation became tricky.

The driver keyed a command into the sled’s control pad, dismounted, and left it hovering in one spot, despite the constant slow current. She was impressed – she hadn’t known such underwater navtech existed. He then unhooked some gear, finned to the sealed torpedo tube, lit an underwater burner, and began burning through the tube’s bow cap. The blue flame was shrouded by a torrent of expanding bubbles heading for the surface. The other diver fixed a small camera and head torch to Nadia’s head. Then he hooked a lanyard around her neck, attached to the thin breathing cylinder that should keep her alive long enough to get to the other end of the tube.

Something nagged her brain about the plan. Something was wrong. But the trouble with narcosis was that it made it hard to think. One of the golden rules of diving – plan the dive, and dive the plan – was there for exactly that purpose, to stop you changing your mind at depth, when you were no longer thinking clearly. While she was diving on air, because she’d be going inside the torpedo tube on her small canister of air, the other two would be on a Nitrox mixture in order to stay outside longer. So, they should be thinking clearly, no narcosis at this depth. They didn’t seem bothered. Maybe it was just her. Still it nagged, like an unscratchable itch inside her skull.

The driver was halfway through cutting the bow cap off. The other diver fixed the modified Glock to her inner left arm. Once she’d defeated the interlock, she’d open the inner door. Water would flush her into the torpedo room, surprising anyone there. She’d have about two seconds to spot anyone, draw her weapon, and shoot them.

The sled driver was almost through. The bow cap was heavy. It would fall into the abyss. She gazed down while the other diver began unfastening the stab jacket straps holding her air tank on. She’d have to switch to the small cylinder any second. Dammit! What was it? What was she missing? She was positive they were about to make a fatal mistake.

She mentally went through the steps again: cut off the bow cap; lay it on the seabed floor, because it’s heavy. Prepare Nadia. She goes in. Pick up the plate again, then, using the sled for buoyancy, reseal the cap in position like a plug, so the torpedo room doesn’t flood when she opens the inner hatch… But the conditions had changed. She stared downwards. There was no sea floor. And half the sub was hanging over a cliff. It wouldn’t take much to tip the sub over…

She looked up.

The burner switched off. With his gloves, the driver began to tug at the bow plate. She kicked hard with her fins towards the sled driver, pushing away from the other diver, the regulator slipping from her mouth, leaving her tank and harness in his hands, her eyes fixed on the bow plate. He was about to let it go, let it drop to the floor. But there was no floor, just the abyss. She angled herself down and kicked hard, and caught it just as it fell from his hands, its edges still hot from the burner, cooling quickly due to the water.

It dragged her down headfirst. She was out of her harness, which meant she had no buoyancy. She was sinking fast, but dared not let it go. And she couldn’t breathe. The flimsy regulator from the small cylinder was out of reach, and if she let go of the cap with even one hand, it would slide from her grip.

The sled’s engine whined, and she hoped to God they were chasing her. She could see her dive computer. Fifty metres. Fifty-two. Fifty-four. A hand grabbed her ankle, hauling her back upwards. Fifty-six. Her lungs screamed at her to breathe. He shoved a regulator – not hers, his spare – into her mouth, and pulled her upright. But the sled got free of him, the engine still revving. It careened sideways, then slalomed into the depths, taking her return tank with it. Screwed didn’t cover it. She and the diver stared awhile, watching the sled vanish into the chasm.

When they arrived back at the torpedo tube, she half expected the lead diver to shoot her with his spear gun, or at least give her the hardest glare he could muster. Instead, he pointed to his temple with a finger and drew a circle. Technically it meant he had narcosis – but he couldn’t have, he was on Nitrox – so it meant instead that he’d not realised the mistake he’d been about to make. The other diver who’d rescued her must have figured it out as well, because if they let the torpedo room flood when she entered, it could have sent the sub over the ledge.

She held the steel bow cap to her chest with one arm, and pointed at herself, then the opening, then the cap, then the blowtorch. The driver nodded, for the first time a hint of respect in his eyes. She would have to enter, and he would seal her in. If she failed… No point going there. He took the cap from her, and she turned to face the other diver. She took several deep breaths while he switched on her head torch. She let his spare regulator fall from her mouth, and brought up the small breathing tube from her cylinder, took a short breath to check it was working, then finned to the opening.

Her torch lit up the mirror-shiny passage all the way to the inner hatch eight metres away. She put her arms in front and kicked to manoeuvre her head, then her torso, then her thighs, then her feet and fins inside. One of the divers unbuckled her fins. Of course, they’d just get in the way, especially if – when – she got the inner hatch open. She began crawling through the tube, having to hunch her shoulders to fit, the way Sergei had rounded them back at the airport. She moved forward, taking fast baby steps, with the occasional lurch. A bubbling sound began behind her, followed by clanks and flashes of blue lightning flickering down the steel tube. They were sealing her in. She’d taken four breaths so far.

Six left.

She reached the end, rewarded herself with a fifth breath, and prayed they’d selected the correct tube. It had been a carefully guarded secret, a ‘back door’ in case a submarine was ever hijacked or disabled and the normal points of entry were unusable. The missile bays couldn’t be used as the missiles were in place, but torpedo tubes had to be loaded. This one had a special device inside, just near the inner hatch. The operation had only been tested in training, until four years ago when a Russian sub had almost been lost in a fjord in Norway. Three Special Services divers entered the same way. Must have been pretty slim. Probably women like her.

She reached the inner door and prised open a square flap. The bubbling behind her ceased. They probably hadn’t sealed it completely, just enough to keep it in place – suction and outside pressure would do the rest. There were two buttons: one red, one green. She took another breath, and pressed the green one firmly with her index finger. Nothing. Wait – let it work. Pressing it again might cancel the first press.

She heard a rattling noise, like a chain rolling over steel cogs. She waited some more. Another breath, number seven. Nothing. A popping sound. And another. A creaking noise from the other side. She pushed with all her might against the inner hatch, grinding the neoprene on her knee pads and boots against the tube’s slippery floor to gain traction. No way. Eighth breath. A big one. Don’t panic. Think. Sergei had said push the green one. Not the red. He’d not said what the red one did. She could hear clanks on the other side of the hatch, but it wouldn’t open. Then she understood why.

Someone was on the other side, holding it shut.

The shock of realisation forced her to take another breath. Nine. There was a thick glass eyehole, but it was covered on the other side. She wondered if her Glock could shoot through it. She didn’t even know if it could fire underwater, only that it was meant to work once she was on the other side. Her two dive buddies could see her predicament via the camera. She heard banging behind her, then the fizzing of the blowtorch. Nice thought, but she’d never make it out in time. She squirmed to retrieve the Glock, then stuck the end of the muzzle against the eyehole. Closing her eyes in case it blew up in her face, she squeezed the trigger.

A muffled click.

She should have had one more breath. But when she tried, she was sucking on empty. Story of her life. Sergei had been right with his little extra-time trick, when he’d stopped her breathing earlier, because she didn’t panic. Instead, she stared at the red button. No more options. It might blow up in her face, might try and fire her from the tube for all she knew. But there was no going back.

Her father came into her mind. Maybe she’d get to see him, finally, more than ten years after his death.

She pressed the red button.

Chapter Four

Nadia gained some idea of how a bullet felt. She was glad she’d closed her eyes and put her hands over her head immediately after pressing the button. The small explosion blew off the inner hatch, shattered her dive mask, and squirted her into the compact room full of unforgiving metal pipes and valves.

Miraculously she didn’t gouge herself on anything. But she was deaf – temporarily, she hoped – a loud ringing in her ears like a perpetual cymbal. She touched her finger to one ear to see if there was blood, but there was only water. She touched her face: grazed, nothing serious. Water trickled in from the tube, but not much. The sub was stable. Her left ear popped, and she could hear again, though the ringing continued.

The guy who’d been jamming the hatch closed was in bad shape. She sloshed towards him through ankle-deep seawater, the Glock in her right hand. He was armed, but his right elbow was mangled, his gun hanging from broken fingers, and his jaw was badly lopsided. The hatch must have hit him in the face.

‘How many men?’ she asked.

He gurgled something. Blood dribbled from his mouth, and then he tried to move, grimaced, and stayed put. She took a look. He was impaled on a length of shiny copper tubing that had transected his spine midway up his back. Soon to be dead. Beyond him, piled in a corner, were three dead sailors. A Borei sub had a full complement of a hundred and seven men, but this had been a skeleton crew according to Sergei. Twenty men, making a test run.

‘Pizda!’ he snarled, referring to the uniquely female part of her anatomy.

‘You’ve not got long,’ she replied. His pain must have been off the scale.

He told her to go and do something with herself.

She shrugged. ‘Have it your way.’ Nothing she could do anyway except speed him on his way. She figured he and whatever he believed in needed some alone time. She paused a moment, wondering what she would say to her maker when the time came, then decided she’d just give Him the silent treatment until He explained Himself.

The workstation was thankfully waterproof, a light transparent gel casing over everything including each key on the keypad. She inserted the USB key. A message in Russian came up, asking for a password. Sergei had said nothing about a password. Not the kind of thing he would have forgotten. So, the terrorists had inserted one of their own. She wondered why. She moved back to the man bleeding out.

‘Password?’

He spat blood on the floor.

Sergei and the others didn’t have unlimited time; at forty metres they were going to go through their nitrox pretty quickly. They could abort their mission, but Sergei didn’t seem the type. He’d go in anyway, and be killed as he did so.

Not going to happen.

Back in Kadinsky’s camp, she’d been trained in torture techniques. Not just the theory. She’d not slept for days afterwards, and swore she’d never do it for real.

Yet here she was.

But this scenario was tricky. The man was dying. He had little to lose. Which meant she’d have to inflict extreme pain, as well as psychological terror. And she’d have to give him the Promise. She wasn’t sure she could do it. An image of Danton – sick torturer that he’d been, back in the Scillies – arose in her mind, taunting her, calling her a pussy, telling her she could never do what was required, never be what was required.

She visualised Moscow, Katya in Gorky Park with a hundred other people, kids playing, taunting the geese on the lake, people laughing, a father holding his son up to the sky, then a blinding flash, and half a million people reduced to ash in the first seconds of the explosion.

No.

She steeled herself. ‘Last chance,’ she said, for which she received a string of stuttered expletives.

She took out her stubby knife, and thrust it into his left shoulder, severing the tendons that controlled his arm. He half-grunted, half-cried out through gritted teeth, gave her his remaining repertoire of swear words, then began combinations. She took off his belt and strapped it around his forehead, securing him so he couldn’t move a millimetre.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked, his breath thready, his voice less sure.

She didn’t answer. The divers outside, and Sergei no doubt, would be watching via the camera. She retrieved the knife, stole a breath, then made an incision in the middle of his forehead, and dragged the knife sideways, both hands on the hilt so as to exert constant pressure. She felt sick as the blood oozed out, but she continued. She needed the password. Now.

So many nerves in the face. He held out for five seconds then began shouting, another five struggling, another five kicking. She continued. His shouts turned to screams.

She paused.

‘Password,’ she said, keeping her voice level.

Tears flowed down his bloody cheeks. Her guts churned, but she gave him a cold, hard stare. Then raised the knife again.

‘Vengeance!’ he half-screamed, half-shouted.

She went over to the terminal, entered the word. The computer came to life, and she downloaded the contents of the USB key. The computer screen began to flash streams of incoherent data, half-formed disjointed images, then it blanked. The lighting in the room flickered, then went out, replaced by red emergency lights.

‘Kill me,’ he said, squinting from blood that dripped from his brow into his eyes.

She took off the camera and placed it on a ledge, facing the other way. Kneeling down next to him, her face close to his so he could spit in it if he wanted to, she spoke. ‘My father was Vladimir Lakshev. Does that name mean anything to you?’

His eyes flared, maybe with recognition, perhaps blinding pain, almost certainly hatred for her. ‘You’ve had all you’re going to get from me, suka. Just do it.’

Fair enough. The Promise. His arms weren’t working, so he couldn’t do it himself. She prised the pistol from his broken fingers, stood up, and aimed it downward at the top of his skull, execution style. Her uncle had shot a horse with a broken leg once, right in front of her and her sister. Katya had cried. Nadia hadn’t. She squeezed the trigger. The gunshot boomed around the closed room. He quivered, then stilled. A torrent of emotions threatened to explode inside her, but she held it all back. Solitary had taught her how to do that.

Later. Much later.

She checked the small glass porthole to the next section. Empty. The hand wheel turned easily enough and she stepped into the bunkroom, then froze. Sixteen corpses, all shot at point-blank range. Most were only in shorts and vests, suggesting at least some had been gunned down while asleep. Precision shooting, heart or headshots, a few in the neck, dead centre.

Whoever had done this, it wasn’t their first mission. Nor was it the work of your average terrorists, whatever they were. Such men would be patriots, passionate, dreaming of glory or martyrdom. They’d cut corners, make mistakes, go over the top when killing – rage or whatever fuelled them evident in their handiwork. This was the work of flawless, stone-cold killers carrying out their tasks with military precision.

She thought back to her own training at Kadinsky’s camps. This resembled the work of highly trained hard-core Special Forces operatives. People like her father. She thought of what she’d just done. Who was she kidding?

People like her.

Staring at the corpses, she recalled what her mother had once said, in front of her father, a jibe at him when he couldn’t respond because young Nadia had been there. She’d said that if you kill people, they wait for you. They are there waiting for you when you die. If she’d been right, the man she’d just shot was about to have his hands full. Which also meant that if she was killed, the man she’d just tortured and shot would be waiting for her too, with a carving knife to sculpt her face.

She was about to move on when she noticed something odd. Two of the corpses had an identical tattoo on their upper arms. A lizard. Maybe they were brothers. They had both been shot in the back. They were at the far end of the bunkroom, by the opposite entrance. The layout of corpses didn’t make sense, unless…these two had been the killers, infiltrators, who had dispatched most of the men but then someone else heard the shots and cut them down. She stared again at the lizard. Some kind of gang tattoo?

The next compartment was empty of bodies: on one side tall fridges and a kitchen, on the other side weapon racks behind padlocked glass doors. She listened. Distant creaks and clangs. Sergei should be aboard by now. She used her Glock to smash the glass, and selected an MP-443 Grach from the rack, attracted by its chunky grip. She checked the eighteen-round magazine, fired a single nine-millimetre round through a fridge door to check it was functional, and walked on.

Under the control room she found another body, this one in a wetsuit like hers, shot in the back. She crouched, did a three-sixty sweep, but neither heard nor saw anything. She aimed her pistol at the spiral staircase leading to the control room.

‘Sergei, you up there?’

No reply. She started to creep up the metal steps, when suddenly she began coughing, at first as if her throat was irritated, then more violently. She backed up, hunched over, her lungs on fire. Her eyes watered, and she stumbled towards a glass case housing an oxygen mask and cylinder, yanked it open, and put it on. As soon as she did, she could breathe again. Once the attack was fully passed, she carefully climbed back up the steps.

Four more corpses awaited her: two with pistols in their hands, lying beneath the periscope; the other two slumped over their control yokes, heads propped up on the dashboards where myriad red lights blinked. No entry or exit wounds. Staring around, she saw no clue of how they’d been killed, until she spotted blackened flakes of paint on the floor.

Looking up, she saw a round hole in the roof, scorch marks all around it, the tough ceiling paint bubbled and black. The hole was about the same size as the cylinder Sergei had been carrying. Must have been a fast-acting neurotoxin, released as soon as the cylinder cored through the submarine’s double hull. Then Sergei and his two men had entered, but the one downstairs had been shot. She needed to find Sergei. She descended to the main deck.

The next hatch porthole revealed the second of Sergei’s divers, face down in a pool of blood still oozing from his throat. Sergei was deeper in the room interrogating someone. Well, that was one word for it. She spun the wheel and entered. Sergei glanced her way, then back to his prisoner, a bald man with a curved scar on his left cheek, naked to the waist, his back covered in tattoos reminiscent of Dante’s Inferno. He was handcuffed to a valve wheel above his head. His legs didn’t look right. Sergei must have smashed the man’s knees with the large wrench lying on the floor. She swallowed, surprised the man was still conscious.

‘Thanks for uploading the virus, Nadia,’ Sergei said.

The prisoner looked her way. ‘Nadia. Nice name.’

Sergei punched him in the gut, clearly not for the first time. ‘Where is it?’ he said.

The man coughed, spat, and continued talking as if having a casual conversation. ‘I knew a man who had a daughter called Nadia. Always talked about her. Said he missed her like the rain.’

Nadia grabbed a pipe for support. That’s what her father used to say. Not to her. To her mother. A bittersweet joke between them. Love had withered early in the marriage.

Sergei took out a knife, and slid it slowly into him, just below the left rib. The man bit down. Spittle and blood bubbled from his lips as he ground his teeth. A groan turned into an angry roar.

‘Where is it?’ Sergei asked. No anger, only a sense of urgency.

The man breathed rapidly, then glanced again in Nadia’s direction. ‘You’d be about the right age. Nikolai called you his Bayushki bayu, his little Cossack.’

The lullaby Katya sang to her. But her father’s name was Vladimir, not Nikolai. That had been the name of their grandfather.

Sergei twisted the knife. This time the man screamed.

‘Leave, Nadia, it’s about to get ugly,’ Sergei said.

‘No, stay,’ the man said. ‘I’ll go.’ He looked up at Sergei. ‘You will join me very soon, comrade, at the bottom of the ocean, where you belong.’ He then moved his jaw, as if chewing something.

Sergei gripped the man’s jaw, tried to force it open. ‘Blyad!’

The man thrashed and bucked, then swallowed something. Sergei hit him in the stomach, trying to make him spit it back out, but it was no good. The man’s body relaxed, and hung limp from the cuffs. But he was still breathing, in shallow gasps.

Sergei groped for the keys in his pocket, but Nadia raised her pistol and fired at the chain between the man’s cuffs. The prisoner slumped to the floor, Sergei breaking his fall.

Sergei spoke to the prisoner again. ‘What did you mean we’re going to join you?’

The man simply stared into space.

She glanced at Sergei. ‘Cyanide?’

He shook his head. ‘TTX.’

She knew it, the deadly toxin from the blue-ringed octopus. ‘It’ll block his ability to breathe.’

‘I know what it does, Nadia.’ Sergei faced her. He spoke quickly. ‘There’s one warhead missing. And he must have set some kind of device to sabotage the sub, blow it up or take it over the ledge.’

‘He’s not going to tell us where it is.’ She knelt next to the prisoner. ‘You said you knew my father. When he was working with the military?’

His body had grown still. Paralysis was setting in. His diaphragm would stop working, and he’d suffocate. But his eyes turned to hers, his speech slurred. ‘After,’ he said. ‘Eight…years ago.’

That couldn’t be right. Her father died eleven years ago. His face took on a blue tinge.

‘Where?’ She thought about mouth-to-mouth to keep him alive, but the toxin…

He stared at her intently. ‘Eyes…like his.’ He tried to breathe in, but couldn’t. ‘T…ch.’ His body trembled once, then his eyes glazed, and the air came out of him in a long sigh, like a deflating balloon.

‘He was the one who killed two of my men, despite the gas,’ Sergei said. ‘We need to find the case. It’s ten to midnight. My guess is there’s a device set to blow the sub at midnight.’

‘Wait, slow down. Case? What case?’

Sergei wasn’t really listening. His eyes darted everywhere, as if searching the compartment. ‘If the warhead is still outside –’

‘It can’t be. What would be the point? It’s gone, somehow. Which is where we need to be.’

He gazed around him again. She understood. This was his sub, his command. And his tomb? Go down with the ship and all that bullshit? Sergei didn’t seem the type.

‘We have to find it, Nadia.’

She grabbed his arm. ‘Sergei, what case? What are you talking about?’

His gaze turned back to her, as if seeing her for the first time. ‘Of course, why would you know?’ He took a breath, and spoke quickly. ‘Each warhead has a series of arming codes, exactly for eventualities like this. Even if you steal a warhead, you can’t arm it. Best you’ll have is a dirty bomb. The arming codes are kept in a reinforced steel case, like a briefcase. Only the Commander and the Executive Officer can access it. And it’s gone.’

‘Do we know if the warhead – or any of the others – have been armed?’

He shook his head.

Shit.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘The warhead is probably long gone. But there are still eleven warheads on board. If there’s a bomb, it’ll be an unholy mess.’

‘He said bottom of the ocean. The sub was obviously grounded on a cliff edge for a reason.’

He nodded, frowning. ‘So, something to tip it over the edge.’

She imagined the sub toppling over the cliff, the two of them trapped inside while it plunged downwards like a stone, until pressure or impact cracked its hull. She recalled watching the sled dive downwards on full thrust. And then it came to her. An image of the sub rose in her mind, the first thing she’d seen. In truth, the second.

The sub’s massive propeller.

‘What if it’s not a bomb? The engines… If they started the propeller…’

His brow creased further, then flattened. ‘The virus you uploaded stopped the main engine room computers. But there’s an auxiliary control room back near the propeller. Quick, this way.’

She ran behind Sergei as fast as she could through chamber after chamber. A hundred metres, trying not to trip or smash her head. He was much taller but knew his ship backwards. She had a hard time keeping up. On a good day she could run a hundred metres in fourteen seconds, but this was taking for ever, having to open a hatch every ten metres.

At last they reached the final hatch, the one to the auxiliary engine room that controlled the sub’s propeller. She glanced at her dive watch. Two minutes to midnight. Sergei gripped the hand wheel and tugged. It wouldn’t budge. A stoic, heavily bearded face appeared at the porthole, taking on a grim, twisted smirk when he saw Sergei. He pointed to his watch and mouthed something she couldn’t decipher, but didn’t really need to. Clearly he wasn’t going anywhere, except down, and he intended to take them along for the ride. He turned his back and began flipping switches.

‘Is there any way we can override him?’

‘No,’ Sergei said. ‘We have to go back to the conning tower.’ He punched the porthole with his fist. ‘Fuck!’ he shouted. ‘Dammit, we have to abandon ship.’ He spun on his heel and bolted back the way they’d come.

Still chasing Sergei, she heard the deep stutter of the diesel engines starting up, a bass growl that accelerated into a hammering, the steel floor vibrating, setting her teeth on edge. Soon, the blades of the propeller would start to turn. Initially the submarine’s twenty-five thousand tons of mass would fix it on the ground, but as the engines rose to maximum power, the propeller would nudge it over.

Five compartments later, Sergei stopped, and flung open two cupboard doors. Inside were one-size-fits-all bail-out suits, with full-face masks, and small air bottles that looked like they were for children. He tossed a set to Nadia.

‘Ditch the suit, just put on the mask; check that it fits.’

It did, barely. ‘How do we get out?’

‘Viktor is coming,’ he said.

The engine’s pitch rose, and there was another sound now, like a helicopter underwater. The sub’s propeller blades were turning.

Sergei grabbed her hand. ‘This way. Leave all the doors open.’

She didn’t get it. For a submariner it was practically second nature to seal hatches behind you, just in case, to stop the whole sub being flooded should it spring a leak. She added it to her list of questions for later, hoping there would be a ‘later’.

The sub began to judder, the engine noise rising to a high-pitched whine. The propeller whirred like a dentist’s drill. And then it happened. The ship moved. A small, juddering lurch forward. Sergei stopped and tapped something into the dive computer on his wrist. She hoped Viktor was receiving the message, whatever it was. Sergei looked her way as he made the final tap.

The explosion almost knocked her off her feet, as a booming blast of air cannoned around the close quarters. Suddenly knee-deep in seawater, she waded to the hatch entrance to the conning tower section. Water jetted in with the ferocity of a rocket engine. She fought the instinct to run.

This was their way out.

‘Put your mask on,’ Sergei yelled.

She did, checking none of her hair was trapped under the rubber seals, securing the straps behind her head, pulling them as tight as they’d go.

The sub lurched forward again. Stopped. And then. No, no, no! The water, chest height, began running away from her, towards the front end. The sub began to tilt forward. Sergei dived into the broiling water and was gone. Water continued to thunder into the room, the level rising quickly, to her shoulders, her neck. It splashed over her mask, and then her ears and head were underwater, the sounds suddenly muffled, the gushing of water shifting to a deep grumbling. The air cylinder wouldn’t last long. She needed to get out. Right now.

And then she saw Sergei, on the opposite side of the room. He was closing the hatch. It made sense: water flooding the forward compartments would tip the sub further, whereas if it flooded the rear, it could delay the sub going over the edge. But another lurch confirmed the worst. The sub was on its way to a deep grave. The faucet eased off, then stopped. The chamber was full. She swam towards the hole in the ceiling. The sub began to move forward and tilt further at the same time. Seizing the ragged edges of the hole, she pulled herself through, and gripped a rung of the conning tower ladder. She glanced at her dive computer to check the depth of the dark water around her. Forty metres.

The halogen beam of the remaining sled, some thirty metres to port with Viktor and the other diver aboard, allowed Nadia to survey the scene. The sub was already at a thirty-degree angle. The propeller was at full thrust, its blades a ghostly blur. The only thing slowing the sub down was the friction of the sub’s hull against the bedrock of the ledge. But in a matter of seconds the sub would tip over and become one gigantic torpedo. She knew what she had to do. Get off the sub and swim towards the sled. But she had no fins, and the wake of the sub and its propeller would suck her in and shred her.

Where the hell was Sergei?

The halogen light focused on her. The sub began to tilt further. Her guts tightened as she looked down. The conning tower was located far forward on a Borei sub. She was already over the abyss.

Forty-five degrees.

Sergei’s head appeared. Then his shoulders. COME ON! One hand. He heaved himself up. He was carrying something. The sub began levering itself over the ledge. Tipping point. The halogen lights from the sled grew brighter, but the sled didn’t dare get too close.

Fifty degrees.

Sergei was out, carrying some piece of equipment the size of a briefcase. He reached for her hand. She grabbed it, and glanced backwards into the yawning abyss behind. The safety of the ledge was just within their reach but the sub was gathering speed. Now or never. She yanked Sergei to the left, and they kicked hard off the hull of the sub. She fell, while the massive black body of the sub, now at seventy degrees, thundered past, splintering rocks on its way, the grinding noise deafening.

She hit shaking ground, the jagged lip of rock separating her from the chasm, and she feared the entire ledge would give way. Her hands tried to dig into the rock for support, but her legs dangled over the edge in empty water, currents whipping over her body. At last the sub, almost vertical, powered past, the prop blades lost in a fury of dark foam. Instead of sucking her down, now the thrust of the propeller pushed her upwards, and she wasted no time in clawing herself fully onto the ledge.

Sergei was beside her. But whatever he’d tried to salvage – the case, she realised – was gone. She guessed he’d had to let it go or else follow his sub to the bottom. The halogen light grew brighter. But she lay there, as did Sergei, counting, waiting. A muffled boom rose from the abyss, but nothing else. No blinding flash. No detonation. The warheads hadn’t been armed. She dared to breathe again, whereupon her air became stingy. She sucked in a deep breath and held it.

The two divers on the sled were the ones she’d descended with. One of them held out a regulator for her. She had to take off her full-face mask in order to use it, so would be pretty much blind on her way back to the surface, but it was the only way. She caught a glimpse of Sergei, about to do the same. He caught her eye, initially sad, and then he smiled. He fucking smiled. She ripped off her mask and clamped her mouth over the regulator, and took several greedy breaths, then gave them the OK signal, and clambered aboard the sled as it began the slow climb to the surface.

God, she needed some new swear words.

Chapter Five

Nadia nursed a mug of coffee, inhaled the bittersweet aroma, and let the steam float over her nose, eyes and forehead. The ascent had been short, but they’d had to wait on the surface for half an hour before the helicopter plucked them from the roiling sea. They’d travelled to Murmansk airport, flying low over the Arctic’s northernmost city, where she glimpsed the Lenin, the famous nuclear-powered icebreaker, once the pride of the atomflot but now a naval museum. Then a quick transfer to the same aircraft in which they’d arrived. Now she was on her way back to Moscow. She shivered under the thin blanket wrapped around her.

Viktor, the driver of her sled, now Sergei’s number two on this mission, got up from where he sat opposite her, and draped his blanket around her shoulders.

‘Stay warm, little tovarich,’ he said.

The Russian word for comrade was only ever used with irony these days, but she took it in a good way. The other diver, who had not yet spoken, nodded to her.

‘Next time we need to get inside a really tight hole, we call you,’ he said, and then the two men burst out laughing. It was infectious, but was cut off when light from the corridor flooded into the room, and Sergei stood there, silhouetted. Her gaze lingered.

‘Come,’ he said.

She took her mug with her, and handed the blanket back to Viktor. ‘Spasiba,’ she said, and followed Sergei to the luxury cabin.

The same four people were there – the colonel, his aide, Katya and Bransk – but the mood was sombre. Sergei summarised what they knew.

‘A single warhead was taken. They knew exactly what they were doing, and we have no idea where they are, and whether it was armed or not.’

‘Is there any way to disarm it?’ Katya asked.

‘Yes,’ answered the colonel. ‘With the codes in the briefcase our brave captain accidentally dropped in a kilometre of water.’

Nadia had to admit, they’d come so close, and then lost their one quick way of disarming the warhead. She could understand the colonel’s frustration – and there would be hell to pay when they got back. The way the colonel was baiting Sergei would be nothing compared to what would happen back in Moscow.

Sergei’s face tightened as he glared at the colonel. ‘Easy for you to say, sat in a nice warm room while we were fighting for our lives.’

‘Frankly it would look better in my report if you hadn’t let go. Or if you’d left it in the damned submarine, then at least we might have a chance of salvaging it!’

Nadia watched the muscles on Sergei’s forearms go rock hard. She sought to defuse the situation. ‘Surely they can’t be the only codes?’

Sergei brooded for a moment then nodded. ‘There are backup codes in a vault in the Kremlin. I know which warhead was taken, so if we find it – and that’s a big ‘if’ – we can make it safe.’

‘And next time,’ the colonel said, leaning forward, planting his forefinger firmly on the tabletop, ‘I will have the case.’ He leaned back, and waved a hand dismissively. ‘Our forces are sweeping the area. There’s a chance we’ll catch them with it, whoever they are.’

Sergei stared hard at him. ‘Probably it was airlifted away long before we surfaced. It could be anywhere by now, flying low.’

The colonel shook his head dismissively, and held up a palm. ‘No. They would have landed somewhere close. We have roadblocks creating a cordon for a five-hundred-mile radius on land.’

The emerald eyes of the colonel’s aide met with Nadia’s as if to say, here we go again. Posturing and denial. They had lost a nuke. A head would have to roll. The problem was that there was a chance of Nadia and Katya somehow being dragged down with whoever was going to take the rap.

‘The tattoos,’ Nadia said, suddenly remembering.

‘What?’ the colonel replied, not hiding his irritation.

‘At least two of them – the terrorists, or whatever they were – had a tattoo like a lizard.’

Sergei stared at her, while the colonel threw up his hands.

‘Why is she here?’ he said.

‘The client for the Rose,’ she began, then paused. ‘How good are your files on what happened on the Chinese cargo ship?’

The colonel looked flustered, his cheeks reddening slightly. This was his territory, but he clearly had no idea what she was talking about. Sergei watched her, the hint of a smile there, as usual. Was he born that way? Wouldn’t surprise her.

‘Cheng Yi’s last words,’ she said, then closed her eyes to recall them exactly as he had spoken them. ‘He is blind, but can see. Water and air are the same to him. He will find you in the darkness. You will not hear him when he comes for you.’

‘Again, seriously, why is she still here?’ the colonel exclaimed.

‘Not a lizard,’ Bransk said. ‘A salamander. Some live underground in watery caverns. Not exactly blind, but they can survive in permanent darkness.’ He stroked his beard. ‘There is one who goes by this name. He has been in the shadows for years.’ His dark eyes bore into her. ‘You think he is the same client?’

She didn’t really know, but it seemed to fit. She nodded.

‘And how does that help us exactly?’ the colonel said, arms folded.

Nadia continued. ‘The client – let’s say it is this Salamander for now – wanted to attack the UK two years ago, via a nuclear strike. If it is the same man, then he now has a nuclear weapon to carry out the strike, to finish what he began.’

The colonel shrugged. ‘Nice story, but that’s all –’

‘Have there been any announcements by terrorist organisations, claiming what they’ve done? Any demands made, discreetly to the government, or even publicly?’

The colonel said nothing.

Nadia leaned forward, in his direction. ‘Because it’s the same client. The warhead isn’t for ransom, or as a political bargaining chip. He means to use it.’

No one spoke for a while, until Katya chipped in. ‘My sister can talk to MI6,’ she said. ‘By now they must have investigated every possible lead.’

Nadia stared at Katya, as if she was seeing a new side to her. But work with MI6? They’d imprisoned her these past two years. She raised an eyebrow and mouthed spasiba to her sister, hoping she’d pick up the sarcasm.

Sergei addressed the colonel, his tone conciliatory. ‘At the moment, the minute we land, we will both be taken into custody for questioning, because we have nothing to offer. I have lost a submarine; together we have lost a nuclear weapon. Our careers will be the least of our worries.’

The female lieutenant joined in. ‘Sir. If this Salamander has been operating undetected for two years, his influence may well reach inside the Kremlin. Imagine if you were the one to uncover him.’

Nadia was impressed. This woman’s career instincts were pretty slick.

The colonel reddened slightly again, then turned to Nadia. ‘Very well, Miss Laksheva. Tell us everything you know.’

She did, including the name of the man they would need to discreetly contact via a covert channel to MI6. Jake Saunders. The colonel’s aide said it would take a day to set up a telecom.

‘We will put you in military accommodation, our barracks –’

‘No,’ Nadia said. ‘The Radisson overlooking Gorky Park. And my money gets wired to my account before I talk.’

The colonel looked aghast. ‘You don’t even have an account.’

Katya smiled. ‘The banks open in four hours.’

‘Just do it,’ Sergei said.

‘Very well,’ the colonel said. ‘But you work for me, Nadia. As a consultant. And we have recently acquired files on your activities in Sebastopol three years ago.’

She swallowed. She’d been there on an op for Kadinsky. In order to save one of her team from being killed, she’d shot two guards. Very carefully, so they would live.

He folded his arms. ‘When the warhead is recovered, I can make those files go away. But if you fail…’

***

They gave her a decent room, a junior suite overlooking the park. Katya was on the same floor with Bransk. Sergei… She had no idea where he was. She wondered if he might come to see her, but imagined he’d have his hands full.

Someone at the door. Three sharp raps, then a quieter one, half a beat later. Katya. Nadia checked the eyehole anyway, then swung open the door. Her sister beamed.

‘Which first, ice cream or the swings?’

Nadia grabbed her jacket, and they headed for their favourite place in Moscow.

***

The sun lazed high in the sky, while they sat face to face at a small iron table on the boardwalk next to Gorky Park’s principal lake, watching the swans. People wandered past, a few single parents with toddlers, but mostly working people taking in the air during their lunchtime break: men in suits striding along at a brisk pace, women in twos or threes circuiting the lake more slowly, in deep conversation, and pairs of lovers dotted here and there holding hands or kissing.

She told Katya that one of the men on the sub seemed to know their father. Katya was dismissive until Nadia shared the part about missing her like the rain.

Katya’s features tightened. ‘He was just trying to bait you. Maybe he was Spetsnaz, knew Papasha in the old days. When they find the sub and his putrefied corpse, they can confirm it.’

Ah yes, the Yuri. Nearly a kilometre down, and the weather was still difficult back there. Sergei had said they’d have deep-sea divers in submersibles there within a week, depending on the weather. She had no doubt the colonel was using paperwork to cover his ass, hyping the intrigue around Salamander. Everyone loved a good conspiracy theory, especially Russians, for whom it was practically a religion.

‘Tell me about Bransk,’ she said.

Katya was instantly back on form, her eyes dancing as she talked about how they’d met at a diplomat’s party a year ago, how he seemed so serious, but was different whenever it was just the two of them. A high-flying businessman in the oil and gas sector, with mid-level contacts in the Kremlin. Another fairy-tale romance. Katya was a magnet for them. But Nadia was glad for Katya, especially after she’d had to endure five years with Kadinsky, and all that had entailed.

She took Katya’s hand again. ‘Ice cream time.’

As they meandered back towards the hotel, Nadia picked out the plain-clothes keeping an eye on them: two male, one female. Fine. She and Katya made one last ice cream stop, then they went to the bank, and an hour later she emerged richer and happier.

***

The call came through at ten p.m. on the mobile the colonel had given Nadia. It wasn’t Jake. It was his boss – and ex-lover – Lorne.

‘Where’s Jake?’

‘Unavailable.’

Nadia hesitated. ‘We think the guy who likes roses is back in the game.’

‘We?’

‘Me, Katya, and mother.’ As in Mother Russia.

There was a pause. The line sounded dead. Nadia waited. Thirty seconds. A minute.

Lorne came back. ‘Jake’s deepest dive,’ she said. ‘Your birthday.’

The line really went dead this time. Nadia clicked off her phone. It rang again. The colonel.

‘I need a flight to Kuala Lumpur,’ Nadia said. ‘Onward connection to Kota Kinabalu.’

‘What’s your final destination?’

‘I’ll tell you when I get back.’

‘Not good enough. They know where you’re going; we don’t.’

‘I’ll tell Sergei.’

The line clicked off. She called Katya, who answered the phone a little out of breath. Nadia told her sister she’d be away a few days, a week at the most, and that she’d come back to the hotel afterwards. Said she’d do some diving. Katya didn’t ask where.

After an hour, during which she watched some TV and remembered why she hadn’t missed it, her mind kept drifting to Sergei, his hands on her. She tried to dismiss it, but it had been two years. She started getting ready for bed.

There was a knock on the door. Two raps. She stole up to the eyehole and peered through, then opened it but stood with one hand on the door, the other one on the frame.

Sergei looked earnest. ‘Nadia, we need to talk.’

Her heart sped up. She tried to relax, then opened the door, and let him in. ‘It’s late,’ she said. An old song came into her mind – will you stay now? Two long, non-fucking years…

‘I’ll make it quick,’ he said.

No need. Really. Take your time. She caught herself. Stop it. Bad idea.

Sergei indicated the bathroom. She followed him in, unsure what was coming next. He turned the shower on full, as well as the taps for the sink. It made quite a racket. He leaned close to her ear, his breath hot on her neck. Her heart rate climbed. The steam from the hot water made her cheeks flush.

‘Tell me where you are going to meet MI6,’ he whispered. His head stayed close. His breathing was deep, measured. Hers wasn’t. She put her hands on his sides to stabilise herself. Pure muscle. Zero fat.

She gathered herself. ‘Anspida. A remote island off the coast of Borneo. A diver’s heaven, apparently.’

‘And this woman, Lorne, she will be there?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I could send one of my men. Get you a weapon out there.’

It seemed a bit extreme. ‘I’m not worried about MI6 –’

‘Not MI6. Salamander.’

She closed the door. The mirror had already misted over.

He didn’t blink. ‘It’s been a little strange since we both reported to our superiors.’

‘The colonel seems to think –’

‘Don’t be fooled by him, Nadia. He’s a lot smarter than he makes out. He’s gone far for his age; that doesn’t happen by accident. But it’s as if we’ve tripped over something. Things are in motion. We both now believe the Salamander theory may have some truth to it.’

‘I’ll find out what I can from the Brits.’

His black eyes bore into hers. His mouth was close, his lips moist. Her body was reacting. But it was a bad idea, even though it had been two years. She’d be okay, just, as long as he didn’t touch her…

‘Come back in one piece,’ he said.

He brushed her cheek with the back of a finger.

Dammit!

‘You were exceptional in the sub. I’m not easily impressed. Nor are my men.’ He drew back. ‘Get some sleep; you’ll need it.’ He reached towards the shower control. But her hand clasped his arm, pulled it back. He gave her a questioning look, and she made up her mind.

‘I can sleep on the plane,’ she said.

His smile returned. ‘Sure?’

She nodded, her breath loud in her ears, her heart pounding. She put her hands on his chest. Solid as a rock, while her fingers trembled. She touched his nipples, rubbed them gently between fingers and thumbs.

‘Just don’t disappoint me,’ she said.

His fingers traced the ‘V’ of her robe, glanced across her breasts, then he returned her favour, and teased her nipples. She gasped. He peeled the robe from her shoulders as she undid the belt, and the ensemble fell to the floor. She was naked, except for the soft silk around her toes.

Time to go with the flow. She gave him a crooked smile. ‘Not fair. You’re still clothed.’

Sergei’s lips collided with hers as she unbuckled his belt, and she felt the hardness there. He pushed his groin against hers. She pushed back. He mauled her mouth, her throat, her breasts. She started to unbutton his shirt, gave up, ripped it open instead. She grabbed the back of his neck with her left hand, pressed his mouth harder against her breasts. She glided her right hand down his torso, and felt tight bands of muscle.

She reached for his sex, but he knelt down. His tongue slid down her belly, lingered a second on her navel before continuing downward until she gasped, his hands squeezing and caressing her buttocks and the backs of her thighs. Just when she was losing control, she grabbed the back of his head by his hair, and pulled him back up.

‘Not like that,’ she whispered.

He stood up, lifted her off the floor, and then he was inside her, rocking her body against warm, slippery wall tiles. Her body caught fire, and her pelvis took over, remembering what to do, matching his thrusts. She kissed him hard, felt him grow bigger, his arms begin to shake. She pulled back from his mouth, gasped for air, sunk her fingernails into his back.

He sped up, and slammed her repeatedly against the wall. She let out one long cry as a shuddering orgasm engulfed her, and those two, long, desperately lonely years of solitary where she’d hit rock bottom, even thought about killing herself, could finally go to hell where they fucking belonged.

***

The next morning she had a late breakfast. Alone. Katya was out somewhere. But just as she was getting ready to leave, Katya appeared with Bransk. He stayed in the background. Katya passed her a slim box.

‘Happy birthday, Nadia. You’ll be away, but we can celebrate properly when you get back. I saw and bought it this morning, straight from the dive shop.’

Nadia tore off the cellophane and opened the white box. A Suunto dive watch, the latest D6i in black, with a graphite-tinted steel wristband.

‘Handsome,’ she said. ‘Very.’ She slipped it on. It was chunky, not the sort of thing most women would wear.

‘Suits you, Nadia.’ Katya scrutinised her. ‘You look different this morning. If I didn’t know better…’

Nadia tried not to grin, and kissed her sister. ‘Da Skorava.’ She nodded to Bransk, then headed through the revolving doors to a waiting limo. Inside, on the black leather seats were her air tickets – first class.

She stared out the window as the taxi trundled down cobbled boulevards towards the airport. She thought about last night, looked again at her flashy dive watch and the first class tickets. Not bad. Not bad at all.

But there was one thing missing. The man she’d not seen for two years, whom she’d frequently sworn to forget because he’d abandoned her – but she couldn’t seem to forget him. And so she wondered.

Would he come?

Part Two

Anspida, South China Sea

Chapter Six

The sand was already scorching hot at nine a.m. Nadia ran on the balls of her feet from her hut to the white sand beach down by the jetty, and let the warm crystal water lap over her toes.

‘Breakfast’s up,’ Dominic shouted, one of three dive instructors working on the island you could walk around in twenty minutes.

She half-ran, half-hopped to the main building, an open timber affair with a tall thatched roof supported by sturdy beams. Four long wooden tables and benches were filling up with divers, some already wet, others waiting for the ten o’clock shift. Many of them were Japanese, and Yukio, a dive instructor from Okinawa, breakfasted with them on the local rice dish, nasi goreng. It smelled good, and though it was more like lunch than breakfast, Nadia grabbed a plate and sat at the corner of a table.

She devoured the noodle-chicken-vegetable melange, washed it down with coconut water, and ordered an espresso. The only luxury item she’d seen on the island was a professional Lavazza coffee machine. She might have two. After all, it was her birthday.

She left the rest of the group – half of them sleepy from jet lag or late-night banter, the other half excitable from the morning’s plunge into the South China Sea, which had the most varied fish life in the world. She would wait, just in case he arrived. Besides, she needed to digest.

She nabbed one of the hammocks strung between two palm trees, their fronds swaying in the gentle breeze. Not easy climbing aboard while holding an espresso, but she managed it. Closing her eyes, the smooth cup at her lips, she inhaled the Arabica aroma mixed with the salty tang of the ocean. Small sips rolled over her tongue, warming her throat. She rocked slowly. Dappled sunlight danced on her eyelids.

Bliss.

She opened her eyes and gazed beyond the dive hut to the forest. She’d explored it yesterday, just before sunset. A challenge. Dense foliage, a dozen shades of green, roots and thorny bushes, the sound of the sea lost after only twenty metres, replaced by the loud buzz of invisible, bloodthirsty insects. After wading through fifty metres, her shins covered in small scratches and bites, she was almost lost. But she ploughed on, rewarded on the other side of the island by a close encounter with a huge green turtle as it lumbered up the soft sand slope to dig a hole and lay eggs.

She’d watched it from a distance until it grew dark and the mosquito shift came to feast on her, despite having plastered her skin with repellent earlier. The turtle struggled, terribly weary judging by its slow, jagged digging movements, but it never stopped. Nature imbued its progeny with an incredible will to prolong the species. She walked beside the turtle as it lumbered down to the sea, and clapped as it floated and then disappeared beneath moonlit waves. By the time she’d walked around the beach back to the dive centre, she’d missed dinner, and didn’t care.

In the hammock, she turned her head back towards the emerald sea that shifted to cobalt blue farther out in the depths. She heard the distant whine of an engine. Shading her eyes, she searched for the boat – not so easy with the sun low in the sky, flashes of white skittering across the wave-tops. It was the same speedboat she’d arrived on, a sleek five-metre affair with a rectangular orange canopy to stave off the sun, a single powerful engine at the rear. Several passengers. Her breath shallowed. One of them stood out from the others. At the prow. Only a silhouette, but his broad-shouldered swimmer’s physique gave him away. She rolled off the hammock and stood under the shade of the palms.

She thought about running to the jetty to greet him. But she was still pissed off with him. No visits, no letters, no communication whatsoever. He was probably with someone else, married for all she knew. After all, it hadn’t been a big romance. Made love three times, had a couple of deep conversations. Not a relationship. Barely an affair. A fling, that was all.

He disembarked, and saw her. He handed his holdall to one of the locals, and walked straight towards her.

As he approached, she folded her arms. ‘Nice of you to drop by,’ she said. But he didn’t slow down. He came right up to her, took her head in both hands and kissed her, hard, urgent, passionate. The opposite of Sergei, who had been seductive, smooth, confident.

She came up for air. ‘You have some explaining to do.’ But her body was already reacting to him. The chemistry between them burst alive, and was kicking. But her anger was there, too.

‘Why didn’t you come to see me?’

‘Later. Here’s what matters. I haven’t made love to anyone since the day you were taken away.’

She eyed him. Was it true? She searched those deep blue eyes.

Damn. She’d been looking forward to a storming row, him being guilty, begging her to forgive him. And now this? He’d been faithful, whereas she’d slept with Sergei less than forty-eight hours ago… She felt her face redden with embarrassment. She hoped he’d mistake it for sunburn. But she realised it touched her – if he wasn’t lying about it. No one had ever cared about her that much. She needed time to work out how she really felt about it, but sensed that time was the one thing that was in short supply.

‘Where’s your room?’ he asked.

Unbelievable. But at least now she was on more familiar ground. ‘What, the hammock isn’t good enough?’

He took her hands, held them behind her back with one hand and kissed her throat, his chest brushing against her breasts, while his other hand held the back of her head. He nudged her back towards the hammock. Cheering erupted from one of the breakfast tables. The Brits, naturally.

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