Hunter Killer - Alex King Series 12 (2021)

by A P Bateman

  “Let’s get some perspective,” said Ramsay. “I see what Caroline has done. Either Noventa works for us, or he works against us. If a genuine assassin gets wind of who is hiring, then we could have a situation where an assassin is in place and the contract is activated without us being in the loop. With Caroline posing as an assassin, and with Noventa coerced into presenting her to Fortez, we can now control the situation.”

  “It’s called entrapment!” Thorpe paused. “It’s what we wanted to avoid, not least because it will never stand up in court.”

  “Excuse me…” Caroline stood up, shuffled a step then used her crutch to walk towards the balcony door. She had overdone it earlier, exerted herself too much. She would have to take it easier, but she wasn’t the best patient for that. “I need some fresh air.” She opened the glass door and stepped outside, the hubbub of the city below, the tranquil waters of the lake in the distance above the rooftops in front of her. She took out her mobile phone and scrolled to the number King had given her before their last operation. She would need it now and she looked at the number, working out the simple code in which she had entered it into her phonebook. She had left the zeros and sevens in place, but every number was altered either one up, or one down numerically. There was no sense in altering zeros and sevens because they appeared in all UK mobile numbers, but by altering the subsequent numbers so simply it was easy for her to remember, and almost impossible for someone else to recognise. She looked up as Captain Durand stepped outside and lit a cigarette. He offered one to Caroline, but she politely shook her head and continued to text. She sent the opening text and waited.

  “She is not used to operating in such a manner,” Durand ventured.

  “No, she is not.”

  “And I think both you and she have not taken to each other.”

  “I’m a pro, Durand. I don’t partake in idle office gossip. Thorpe has her remit and I have mine, but I’ll be damned if I let someone stand in my way when I see an opening.” She paused. “I’m a big girl and I’ve been doing this long enough to know when to hold and when to fold.”

  “Or when to walk away?”

  “Meaning?”

  Durand looked at her leg, the crutch, and the way she was holding herself up against the balcony. “She is right about one thing… You are not fit for active service.”

  “Bullshit. I can still hold my own.”

  “You must appear credible to Fortez. He won’t buy it if he thinks you cannot complete the contract.”

  “I’m not taking a real contract. I need to get past the man’s security and speak to him face to face.”

  “You need evidence of a crime for an effective and successful arrest to be made.” He paused. “Far enough along the process that Fortez makes a payment.”

  Caroline nodded. She read the reply to her text, then typed out one word: Reaper. The text was replied to almost at once and she typed out what she required in just two short lines. She glanced up at Captain Durand before sending it. “I know what needs to be done,” she said, sending the text and smiling as she thought about her request. “Like I said, I’ve been doing this long enough…”

  Chapter Twenty

  Fifty miles south of Spitsbergen Island

  Svalbard Archipelago

  King looked at the pistol in the man’s hand. He’d been there before, and he’d never got used to it. The impotence of being unarmed and staring down the wrong end of a gun. The man wore thick thermal gloves against the cold and his trigger finger was still nestled against the frame. The sign of a pro. Little chance of a negligent discharge, but given the cold, the thick gloves and the immediate proximity, King would have had his finger on the trigger. But then again, King did not have the gun and the man in front of him did.

  The ship trundled onwards, its diesel engines thumping and droning lazily in the background, the steel hull striking occasional slabs of sea ice the size of a single bed. King could see the man’s breath in front of him, almost frozen by the time it reached his own face. The breath crystalising slowly and falling to the deck like a snow globe that had been given only a lacklustre shake.

  “They warned me about you in Moscow…”

  King shrugged. “Whereas I don’t even know who you are.”

  “That makes for the better operative, don’t you think?”

  King looked at the man’s gloves. They seemed thick and cumbersome and half an inch in diameter too big for the trigger guard of the Makarov pistol. But then again, the man was a Russian and they tended to be at home in the cold. Although as he felt the sharp, icy chill on his face, he seriously doubted anyone could get used to this. But King knew that if the tables had been turned, he would have taken off the gloves before he had reached for the gun. Experience counted for so much in this game, and the thought that his opponent hadn’t thought this through as thoroughly as he would have, gave him some hope at the very least.

  “What do you want?” asked King.

  “The same thing as you do.”

  “I seriously doubt that.”

  “Well, I suppose I want what’s ours, and you want to make sure the world never finds it.” He paused, his breath all around him and falling steadily to the frozen deck. “But essentially, we’re after the same thing. We both want something and are prepared to kill to stop the enemy getting their hands on it.”

  King glanced at the ice under the man’s feet. Behind him, the rail was heavy with a build-up of icicles, large stalactites hanging down several inches. Eight inches or more in the darker recesses behind the lifeboats. King had the advantage of standing on galvanised steel grating, his footing feeling both firm and secure under him. He realised he was still holding the mug of tea. He looked around for somewhere to put it, then simply dropped it on the deck between them, the tea flooding around the man’s feet, the tin mug clattering across the deck towards the lifeboats. “There’s a manifest,” he said. “If you kill me, they’ll know in no time.” He nodded at the gun in the man’s hand. “And you certainly can’t kill me with that, or they’ll be looking for a murderer.”

  The man shrugged like it was nothing. “People have accidents all the time. They slip on ice, fall overboard. It happens.”

  “Not with nine-millimetre holes in them.”

  The man waved the pistol to the port side. “Step this way…”

  King smiled and shook his head belligerently. “Not in a thousand lifetimes, sunshine,” he said. He watched the hesitation in the younger man’s eyes. “You shoot me, and there’ll be an investigation. People will recall conversations, they’ll have alibis. But where were you? As soon as we dock, you’ll be the number one suspect.”

  “I’ll be gone way before then,” he said, looking at the inflatable tender with its forty-horsepower engine.

  “There will be a reception committee at the rigs. You’re going nowhere before the ship gets there.” He paused, glancing down, and watching the spilt tea freezing around the man’s feet. “You made your move too soon, son. Inexperience, that’s all.”

  “Don’t you dare patronise me!” He stepped closer. King noticed the finger was inside the trigger guard now, the material of the glove had bunched up. He could see that the Makarov’s hammer was not cocked. The trigger could still be pulled, but the weight of the pull on the double-action Makarov was up there with gym equipment. Twice that of a Glock, at around fourteen pounds.

  “That RIB won’t do you any good out here.”

  “Let me worry about that. You should worry about yourself. The water will be cold, but it will make your death swift. Give into it, you’ll know next to nothing about it…”

  King moved quickly, grabbing the pistol, and pushing it back towards the man as he kicked him in the shin with all the force he could muster. Not to cause pain – which it invariably did – but to shove him backwards in the ice formed from the tea he had intentionally spilt. The man had pulled the trigger, but King’s grip had eased the slide of the weapon back just enough to disengage the striker
and as long as he kept up the pressure, the weapon was useless. The man slipped and tried to regain his balance, but King kicked out again, and followed up with a headbutt onto the bridge of the man’s nose. The younger man recoiled, his eyes closed, the pain excruciating, but King gripped him by the windpipe, adding a further dimension for the man’s instincts to wrestle with – three different areas for the pain receptors to signal the brain and for the brain to become confused how to deal with each - and pushed him back against the railing. King had the weight and strength advantage, and the man was struggling for traction on the ship’s slippery deck. Then King changed tactics and instead of kicking the man’s shin again, he hooked his foot behind the man’s heel and pulled his leg towards him as he pushed hard on his throat, forcing him backwards against the railing. Momentum, inertia, and gravity came together like the independent notes of a symphony and the man pirouetted over the railing and fell silently twenty feet or so into the icy water. Not even a grunt, let alone a scream, as the man’s instincts were to take a deep breath in mid-air, nothing more.

  King did not hear the splash above the monotonous thump of the engines. He had the Makarov in his hand, and he tucked it into his pocket as he walked the length of the railing and searched for him in the water. There was plenty of ice, but no yellow and red flashes of colour of the man’s ski jacket. King realised he had underestimated the ship’s speed, and he looked further out to the stern and saw the man floundering in the water. He turned around and watched the bridge. Above him he thought he saw movement on the upper deck, somebody stepping into a doorway. The light was dim and grey, and it was difficult to judge both distance and movement. But no alarm sounded and nobody else appeared. King turned and looked back at the water for his would-be killer, but the man had gone. Succumbed to the cold and the inevitability of death in such a hostile, merciless environment. Perhaps he had remembered his own hollow words and simply given up the struggle in favour of a swift end. A lungful of water and short struggle under the surface to end the searing pain of the cold. Whatever the scenario, the wake of the ship rolled on, there was no colour in the grey water and King’s mission was unimpeded.

  For now.

  King turned around and watched the bridge once more. Daniel was gone. Sinking to the depths. He had mentioned Moscow, and King’s suspicions had been confirmed. The man had tried to pass himself off as Polish, but there was something about him that had seemed so familiar, his mannerisms. The way they had toasted with drinks, King’s attempts to trip the man up. So, he had been proven wrong about the Northern Lights, the fact that they could occasionally be seen from the wilderness in Poland, but he’d been right about toasting that first drink. He’d used Russian, a subtle difference, but from Daniel’s later prickly attitude and the jibe about King being merely a diver, diving where people like Daniel told him too, he knew that he’d slipped up. Daniel would have corrected him, had the toast not been natural. From that moment on, King knew Daniel hadn’t been who he said he was.

  King slipped the Makarov into his pocket, then bent down and picked up the tin mug, which was rolling lazily on the deck. He was cold and he needed to get back inside the hubbub of the rec-room and prepare for the inevitable charade when Daniel was eventually noticed to be missing. But he wanted to make sure he was near Madeleine when it happened.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  King entered the recreation room as subtly as he could, but he was an imposing man at a shade under six-foot and weighing in at just over fourteen stone, but most of that weight was in his muscular shoulders, chest, and arms and as he discarded his jacket and hung it on the only spare hook, he could see people looking at him. Although he was oblivious to the fact, he was viewed by many women with interest, while most men saw him as a threat. There was an animalistic quality to him that gave off warning signs, backed up by the coldness of his glacier-cold, blue-grey eyes.

  The room was hot, the windows steamed up completely and after the stillness of the icy, clean air outside, the room had become a miasma of heat, voices, the smell of strong percolated coffee, and body odours. King eased his way through the crowd of people and reached the coffee station, where he found teabags, a flask of hot water and some milk. He made a strong mug of tea and spooned in some dark sugar, which was all he could find. He took a sip, then looked around the room at the groups of people. The conversation hadn’t changed much. He guessed he was used to a profession where one never really spoke about their work, and that even in the company of other intelligence agents, nobody talked about the job at hand. It was different within the team, and of course between himself and Caroline, although neither spoke about an operation the other was not involved in. His thoughts ran to Caroline and her recovery. She was such an athletic soul, so tenacious, too. She had been through the wringer and now carried the mental, physical, and emotional scars. King knew many of these scars would heal over time, but even time gave no succour to the deepest of wounds, the mental traumas that could not be seen, but always so painfully felt.

  “I was wondering where you had gotten to.”

  King turned around and Madeleine was right in front of him. She was a good deal shorter than himself, and he looked down at her and smiled. “I needed some fresh air,” he replied. He held up his cup. “Would you like a tea?” he asked.

  “No, thanks. But I’ll get a coffee and perhaps we can find somewhere to sit?”

  “Of course.” He watched her pour a cup of black coffee and she turned around, catching him looking at her. She smiled coyly and he could have sworn she pushed her bottom out a little. She certainly touched a lock of her glossy blonde hair. There wasn’t much more she could do than come right out and say she was interested in him. King could read most people like a book, but he had never been adept at reading whether a woman was interested in him or not. In his late teens he’d been invited in for coffee plenty of times, but he despised coffee and only drank tea and had made his excuses and left, only to realise later in life what the phrase had meant. To his consternation, now that he was in his forties and had found the woman that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with, he could now read the signs perfectly well and noticed that he was never short of female attention for long.

  Madeleine led the way through the crowd and to a row of seats near the starboard window. Outside the sky and sea were grey, but the windows were so steamed up it almost looked dark. She gave the window a wipe with her sleeve and said, “It looks monochrome out there. Like a black and white film. Like the fog as the boat approaches Skull Island in King Kong…” She sat down, the seats all facing forwards for riding out rough seas. “Have you seen Daniel?”

  “Not recently.”

  “Strange, he said he was going outside as well…”

  King shrugged, sipped some of his tea. “There are two sides to a boat.”

  “Ship,” she corrected him, then smiled.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Well, I thought a marine salvage diver would know.”

  King nodded. “I’m not entirely sure where the cut-off point is. I suppose it’s like when a pony becomes a horse. A definitive measurement. I don’t have a tape measure handy…”

  She laughed. “In sailing, a ship has to have square rigged masts and must have at least three masts. Anything else is a boat.”

  “Do you sail?”

  “Not so much lately,” she replied. “But at university I joined a project to recreate a tall ship, and that was the definition. I was invited back, along with other alumni over the ten years it took to build and finally sail her, but I was on a research vessel off the Great Barrier Reef involved in climate change research into the sun bleaching coral. It was that research that opened the door for the placement with Aurora.”

  “And you just met Daniel on the flight?” he asked. “It’s just that you two seem rather close. Are you two an item?”

  “No!” she protested a little indignantly. “What makes you ask that?”

  King shrugged. “
You were always together. He couldn’t wait to get one over on me. I think he resented my presence, saw me as competition.”

  “He is on the ship, you know. You’re using the past tense like he didn’t make the journey,” she chuckled. “Anyway, no, I’m not into him.” She paused. “But because you’ve noticed all these things, might I take it that you could be interested in me… even if just a little?”

  “You can,” he lied. He smiled as Madeleine glanced around and reached out to touch his fingers delicately. He gave her hand a little squeeze in return. “And it feels good…”

  “Yes, it does,” she said.

  King was quickly working through some boundaries. Attractive though she was, she was twenty years younger, more girl than woman, and as flattering as he found her attention, the fact she was declaring her attraction towards him made him dubious. And then there was Caroline. King had never cheated on his wife, Jane. And he had never cheated on Caroline. He took a serious relationship with all the name implied. But what if getting close to Madeleine aided his operation? He had taken an oath for Queen and Country when he was recruited into MI6. He hadn’t exactly been sworn into MI5, more swept along with events, but it amounted to the same thing. He worked, put his life on the line, for his country. Not for the government – governments and Prime Ministers came and went, made the same mistakes, and never learned from their time in power - but the citizens who relied upon him, and people like him, to do unspeakable things in the shadows, so they may live in the light. He looked down at her and smiled. Her lips were moist and plump, and she had a habit of nibbling at her bottom lip. It looked seductive and inviting. He could feel a surge within him and knew if he didn’t check himself in time, he’d be getting in too deep.