Hunter Killer - Alex King Series 12 (2021)

by A P Bateman

  “There’ll be loads more before long. Some of the rigs offer better food, simply by having better chefs. Everybody has a card with credit on it, or spare cash for when the credit isn’t applied for something like chocolate or sweets. Most of the rigs cater well, but the last one in the ring has an American chef and he does great burger nights and makes a mean stacked pizza. Chicago style. You know, like a pie with the cheese on the bottom, then the toppings and the tomato sauce on top. He does proper Mac and cheese as well. When the conditions allow and the boats can go out or the booms are tethered, his refectory will be heaving.” He paused. “The Aurora corporation tends to practice what they preach, so a lot of the food is normally plant-based, and of course, each rig has fishing lines out. Fish features high on the menus out here.”

  King nodded. “It’s like a town on the sea.”

  “It can be, but don’t let this fool you. I’ve seen fifty-foot waves for a month and a real shortage of supplies. When the rigs get together it gets a bit hectic, especially if people are seeing someone on another rig. Aurora only allow people to purchase alcohol on a Saturday night, so if the stars align…”

  “Are you married?”

  Grainger nodded. “Five years now.”

  “Is she understanding?”

  “He is, and I can control myself…”

  “Oh.”

  “Does that bother you.”

  “No. Why should it?”

  “You just assumed.”

  “No, but I guess I can see how the Mereweathers trying to set you up with Horsey Harriet was always going to be a non-starter…” King smiled wryly. “Actually, because it sounds like this place has a bit of a party vibe, I assumed your other half would have to be understanding. That was wrong of me. I’m sorry. And being gay has nothing to do with me, nor does it bother me.” He paused. “Besides, I’m one to talk about understanding partners. I met a girl out here who clearly likes me, and I’ve been leading her on because it may aid my mission. I’m engaged and my fiancée is at home recuperating after a terrible accident. I’ve actually been working out how far is too far in this sort of scenario.”

  “Oh, what like a kiss?” Grainger laughed. “Trust me, if you’re contemplating what is too far, then it’s already too far.”

  “I suppose.”

  Grainger shrugged. “Why don’t you just reverse it.”

  “What?”

  “What’s your partner called?”

  “Caroline.”

  “And what does she do?”

  King shrugged. He thought Grainger was on the level, and he liked him, too. “The same line of work as myself.”

  “Ah, well that’s easy! Just suppose that Caroline has to find out something and going down on a man is…”

  “No!”

  Grainger laughed. “Okay, she lets the man go down on…”

  “Still a big fucking no!” King paused. “Okay, I get it.”

  “Maybe a mutual fondle, a passionate, kiss with lots of tongue…”

  “You’ll be swimming in a minute sunshine…”

  “Hah! You’re welcome!”

  “For what?”

  “For working out the boundary thing for you. In a mutually exclusive relationship, if that is indeed what both you and Caroline have, your boundaries should be identical. I’m guessing you got your answer.”

  King nodded, but he would have to mull over on Grainger’s words later, as they had reached the end of the last segment of boom and were at the neighbouring rig. He checked his mobile phone, but there was only a weak signal.

  “The signal varies, but it’s an at sea network, like the operating system used on cruise ships. They changed it because it was costing people a fortune to call home.” Grainger paused and said, “Anyway, there was nothing wrong per se with Horsey Harriet, she just wasn’t my type. I didn’t truly find out that I was attracted to another man until I met my partner. I never considered myself to be gay, or in the closet when I dated women at university.”

  King didn’t answer. He wasn’t adept at personal conversations. He was watching the signal bars on his phone. He knew the display was wildly inaccurate. You either had a signal or you didn’t. Phone networks and phone handset manufacturers added the five-bar system to give people hope and to hedge their bets that the user would soon reach a signal. That was why that one or two-bar signal lurking on the screen disappeared to zero when you tried dialling. There was no point in calling Rashid for an update, but he typed a quick text to say they had arrived at the first rig in the chain and slipped the phone back into his pocket. It would send if or when the signal increased.

  “What’s the plan?” Grainger asked, steering the conversation back to business.

  “Just look for Shirazi.” King paused. “But don’t confront him. He’ll be dangerous.” King knew the agents of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence to be well-trained and ruthless. He had heard that during the war with Iraq they trained their assassins on Iraqi prisoners of war, and each agent honed their skills in every conceivable method from simply using their bare hands to knives and small arms and even sniper rifles. Chemical and biological agents were also tested on the prisoners. King had no idea whether the Iranians employed similar training today, but he knew of the human rights violations and the lack of judicial rights. With many people still ‘disappeared’ in the system in Iran, it wasn’t a stretch of the imagination by any means.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t,” Grainger replied nervously. “I haven’t had a fight since I was twelve, I don’t want to start now. Christ, what the hell has Simon got me into?”

  King patted him on the back as he took the steel grate staircase. “Just look out for him. I’ll find you and we’ll move onto the next rig.”

  King took the stairs two at a time, veered off at the first deck, which mirrored the dive centre on the other rig. There were two men filling tanks and another working his way down a checklist on a clipboard. Neither man looked up and after a glance inside, King took the other staircase up to the next deck, where the walls and floor were enclosed, powerful heaters circulated warm air from knee level and the suites of offices, recreation rooms and kitchen were situated. People were heading out in tracksuits and running gear, others were reading magazines and sipping coffee. King glanced at his watch – a vintage Rolex Submariner he had bought with his first three month’s salary all those years ago with MI6. Only, it hadn’t been a vintage model then, but it had barely left his wrist since and never let him down over the years. He’d lost track of time, the dark hue from early afternoon onwards had confused him. It was still only four-pm, and some people were jostling between offices or working at computer terminals. He wondered whether typical office hours even applied out here. Just a month or so ago, the rigs would have been in three months of perpetual darkness, and in a couple of months the summer would give them three months of constant light. He supposed a different work ethic would be required, making use of the warmer water and constant daylight.

  As King rounded the corner outside one of the recreation-rooms he saw Madeleine ahead of him in the corridor walking towards him.

  “Alex!” She beamed, hastening her step before flinging herself at him. “You’ll never guess what?” she asked but gave him no time to answer. “I got orcas!”

  “Sound’s painful…”

  She punched his arm playfully and said, “Silly… No, there is room for me to study the pod of orcas, you know… killer whales… they patrol between here, Bear Island and Svalbard. They almost stick entirely to the green zone. It’s uncanny. We, or rather the other marine biologists think they dive deeper here than anywhere else on the planet. They feed on king crabs that have spread from when Joseph Stalin did a deal with America and introduced them to the northern Russian waters to help feed the nation. The species were hugely invasive and have spread prolifically to Norway and beyond. The team have recorded an orca diving to three-hundred and fifty metres. Normally they do not dive deeper than a hundred metres, although th
e previous recorded deepest dive was just over two-hundred and fifty metres.” She paused for breath, excitedly recounting what she knew, then shrugged when she saw King’s expression did not match her own enthusiasm. “But I’ll get to fit trackers to them and use the data for my thesis in my master’s degree,” she added excitedly.

  King smiled. “That’s amazing,” he replied. He could see that she was genuinely fired-up about it, and she had a new project. He was no longer the source of her affection, and somewhat bizarrely, he felt rejected. “We’ll have to meet up, so you can tell me more…”

  “Yeah, sure… I have so much work to do first, though. So much reading to get up to speed, to see what the other scientists have observed and noted. Behavioural, anecdotal, and then of course there’s the work. After tomorrow I’ll be on the Amity, the ship used for the project. She’s berthing tomorrow evening, and then we’re off in the morning.” She paused. “I don’t think I’ll see you after that, what with your work raising the submarine, I mean…”

  King was a good judge of character. He recognised a young woman, scared of the choices she’d made. To go and work for a company based in the middle of the ocean, a thousand miles from the mainland. Not knowing a soul. That was why she had interacted with him when he helped her with her equipment back in Oslo. And that was why she had bonded with Daniel on the flight, and with them both at the hotel. She wasn’t a naturally confident person and needed company and reassurance. King was in no doubt that he could have slept with her if he’d wanted to. Her confidence would have been bolstered by the bond between them. People like her craved company. And if it hadn’t been him, then it would have been someone else. Perhaps even Daniel. He could see now that the man had pulled her in, used her as a stalking horse to get closer to him.

  “No problem,” King replied. He held her gently by the shoulders and kissed her on the forehead. More out of relief than anything else. He had suspected her to be working with Daniel, and he could well have killed her by association. “Go study your orcas and nail that thesis. Good luck!”

  “Thank you,” she replied, her eyes still sparkling with excitement.

  King released her and carried on down the corridor. He saw Grainger heading down the stairs and the man shrugged. “Anything?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Right, let’s try the next rig…”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Geneva, Switzerland

  “Admit it, you’d have done anything not to have kissed him,” Caroline teased.

  “Yeah, probably,” Big Dave replied. “I’ve buggered things up good and proper, though.”

  “So, what do we do?” asked Durand. He had lit a Gauloises Blondes cigarette and was sucking on the thing so hard that the tip glowed like the bright embers of a fire in a draught. Ramsay, normally an anti-smoking authoritarian hadn’t seemed to notice the smoke wafting around them.

  “We call the police,” Thorpe said emphatically. “A man has been killed…”

  “What, and hand ourselves in?” Caroline shook her head. “The Swiss take an extremely dim view of foreign intelligence agents operating on their soil without their express permission. They handed over to Interpol, not MI5.”

  Thorpe frowned. “No more than a ticking off, surely? Dave on the other hand, will have to answer for what he did and if it was as he says it was, then he should be in the clear. It was self-defence.”

  “No,” Ramsay replied quietly. “We’d all remain in custody either until they gathered enough evidence for a trial, or they came to an agreement with the British government. There’d likely be a few years of diplomatic wrangling, and we wouldn’t get bail while that was going on.”

  “Indeed,” Durand agreed. “We’ve seen this with French agents. And we’re their neighbours. Nobody likes the British,” he added with a wry smile, trying to ease the tension.

  “Want to quit?” Caroline asked, staring at her. “I wasn’t exactly sure what you were bringing to the party, anyway.”

  “Now, now…” Ramsay said sharply. “We need to think what can be done to rectify the situation.”

  “I could get a shovel?” Big Dave suggested. “Noventa ain’t that big, it won’t take me long to did a hole.”

  “For crying out loud…” Thorpe shook her head in frustration and walked to the window. She stared out onto the quiet, tree-lined street below. She hadn’t spotted any surveillance on Noventa’s property earlier, and Durand had watched the area for twenty-minutes before circling the property. After a further twenty-minutes he had announced that he concurred with the former Metropolitan Police detective. Noventa was not being watched, and the all-clear was given for Caroline and Ramsay to proceed inside.

  “Right, let’s keep it simple,” said Caroline, moving on. “We’ve got a single blow to the face, a broken neck and fractured skull would be my bet. So, there’s Dave’s DNA on Noventa from the punch.” She looked at Big Dave and asked, “Did you rough him up, hold him in any way?”

  “No, the guy was compliant, right up until he wasn’t.” He stepped around Noventa’s twisted body on the parquet floor and held up his hands, re-enacting what had transpired. “He came at me with the knife, so I blocked…” Big Dave stepped forwards, swung his left arm out to the side, then twisted his hips and dropped his left knee a few inches as he drove through a straight punch from his hip, almost all the way out with his massively long and well-muscled arm until it was a few inches from fully extended, when he brought the punch upwards and rose to his full height. “Like that,” he said.

  “Like a steam hammer, by the looks of it,” Durand commented flatly. “Noventa must have lifted into the air. I’m surprised you didn’t knock his head off…”

  “Well, I imagine inside the skin, he did,” Ramsay said quietly.

  “It’ll have to be made to look like a robbery gone wrong,” Thorpe said with her back to them. “Get some gloves on and take what valuables you can. Don’t ransack the place, just pull out some drawers. It needs to look like they’d just got started and Noventa disturbed them. The guy’s wearing a Breitling watch. Probably worth ten-thousand euros, maybe more. Take it off his wrist. Someone will have to throw it into the lake later.” She turned around and nodded to Durand. “We’ll need a household spray cleaner. The type with a trigger pump. Empty it and fill it with one third bleach, and two thirds water. Spray over everything that has been touched. In fact, get a light spray on everything in the room, then spray all over Noventa’s body. That will corrupt Dave’s DNA, and any trace elements from ourselves.” She paused. “Neil and Caroline, go wait in the car. I’ll supervise… and Dave, you need to get some gloves on. The spray bottle comes with us, and we need to cover our tracks with it all the way to the pavement outside.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Beneath the Polar Icecap

  500 miles North of Svalbard Archipelago

  “Slow ahead, reduce speed to four knots and dive to six-hundred feet.”

  “Aye, aye, captain.”

  They were still silent running, so the orders were distinctly murmured. Not a whisper – that made the sound more distinguishable under water – more a gentle hum of the throat.

  “Dive to six-hundred feet, check,” replied the lead helmsman.

  Commander JT McClure turned to the WEPS and said, “WEPS load tubes two and four, countermeasures at the ready…”

  “They’re increasing speed, now at twenty-two knots.”

  “Slow to twelve.” McClure turned to his second in command and said, “Some distance and increase in their speed will allow our torpedo tubes to be loaded without detection.” He paused. “XO, do you concur?”

  “I concur, Commander,” the Lieutenant-Commander replied.

  McClure listened intently, the Russian submarine’s increase in wake and propulsion emitted a more distinct tone. The Russian vessel had dived as they left the icecap behind them and the only way to remain undetected was to travel directly in its wake. Six-hundred feet above them, floating sea ice pl
ayed havoc with the boat’s sonar, but it also gave them the advantage of irregular sonar pulses, which could be easily ignored by the Russian submarine’s sonar operator.

  “They’re changing course, Commander. Contact bearing one-twenty, south and east.” The lead communications officer paused. “Now at twelve-hundred metres.”

  “Helmsman, contact bearing one-twenty…”

  “Aye, aye, skipper.”

  Commander McClure looked up at the Perspex map. The heading would take them directly to the sunken British submarine. He was surprised, knowing he would have taken a different, and somewhat more devious route. Perhaps zig-zagged nearer, then made his course more deliberate with the last leg. He wondered what the Russian commander’s orders were. His own crew knew nothing of the task ahead of them, only that they were to patrol an area with the high likelihood of enemy activity. As standard operating procedure dictated, Lieutenant-Commander Jacobs knew the orders and the remit they sailed under. Should anything happen to Commander McClure, then as XO, Jacobs would be in charge.

  “Torpedo! Torpedo! Torpedo!” the sonar operator shouted, there was no point now in obeying the silent running protocol. “Port side, five-hundred metres and closing at twenty-five knots!”

  “Hard to starboard, bearing one-twenty! Depth two-hundred,” he ordered, the submarine already in a dive. “Maximum propulsion!” Everybody had their own job, and the three commands could hardly be missed. “WEPS countermeasures, now!”