by Karen Guyler
Luke seemed unfazed at how their day was going. As Eva pulled off her second fleece, she was already shivering, even in her merino wool base layer.
“That’ll do.” Finch said. “Boots off.”
She sat down to unzip them.
“Stuff in a pile in the middle, trousers, phone, keys. Any other weapons.”
She placed her phone on top of her salopettes, the frigid air rushing around her, stealing away her warmth.
“Move.” He stepped aside, nodding at the open doorway.
“Are you mad?” Eva asked. “We can’t go out there like this.”
“You’ll go out there naked if I tell you to. Don’t make me take those off you.” He gestured at her with the barrel of the Scorpion. “Move, left out of here, last building on the right.”
Towards the house, on the opposite side of the property. Figuring that out didn’t help her, it was a long way to walk through snow in socks.
“Any tough guy tactics and I’ll shoot. I’ll probably get a bonus if I do, so, go ahead, try something.”
As though it had been waiting for them to come outside, a gentle waft of tiny flakes, snow breadcrumbs, the kornsnö Eva loved, drifted around them. That wasn’t so much the problem as the snöfyk, the very wet snow on the ground. Eva’s toes grew numb in only a handful of steps as the icy liquid squelched up through her ski socks.
The wind had dropped, but the air sucked at her core temperature like a hungry vampire.
The hut to which Finch directed them was a twin of the one Luke had crashed into. An enormous chest freezer lining this back wall was all Eva noticed before Finch slammed the door and the lights went out.
The access panel on the outside bleeped.
“Take off your socks, them being wet is worse than wearing none.” She told Luke. “Rub your feet to warm them up.”
She laid her socks on the floor beside the wall so she could find them again in the pitch black, patting at them to pull them straight.
“I’m wishing I’d stayed at the consulate.” Luke said. “Or we’d just gone back for dinner.”
“This isn’t how I thought my first mission would go.”
“If you’d have shot the idiot, I’d have given you top marks. Now? You’ve got some ground to make up.” Having discounted doing anything to the door, Luke was walking around the inside perimeter, running a hand over the walls, pushing and knocking at the panels.
“You’d have shot him?” Eva moved the stiff tarpaulins and fingertip searched the floor beneath them. A grooved cut out of another trapdoor which disappeared under the freezer. He probably didn’t use that one.
“Of course. He had a gun on us and, judging by what we found, he’s not shy of shooting if he has to. More paperwork but I’d take that.”
“You’re probably a lot better shot than me.”
“One on one, you never put your weapon down. Did they not teach you that? Think of holding on to it like breathing.” Eva shut her mouth on pointing out that he’d surrendered his gun too. “Three or more against you, probably then, but always be thinking of a back-up plan. And how you’re going to get it back.”
That her instinct had been right was no comfort as the frozen air crept obscenely into the tiniest chink in her base layer, feeding greedily on her numb toes, her nose and chin.
She steeled herself to open the lid of the freezer. The light jabbed at her eyes, making her squint at the white labels on the top-facing cuts of meat wrapped in cling film, arranged Tetris-like to fit in the space. Blue ink spelled out words in Norwegian close enough to the English that she could understand ‘reindeer’, seal’,’ whale’, ‘beef’. She held a leg joint out to Luke.
“I’m hungry but I’m not that desperate yet.”
“It could be a passable weapon, in a caveman kind of way.”
She took one for herself; it thunked onto the wooden floor. There was enough in there to build a barricade of meat in front of the door which might slow Finch down when he came back for them but did she want to help him keep them in the cold? Not really. Instead, she placed a couple more in the corner behind it and beneath the tarpaulin, then closed the freezer lid to preserve the little warmth that remained. It made the darkness bleaker.
“We need to keep moving, to stay warm.” she said. “I’m pacing on the right, you do the left, your left, so we don’t collide.”
Up and down, bare feet slapping on the wooden floor as she marched, her hands tucked under her armpits, listening to Luke do the same. She could feel the tension of her body bracing against the extreme temperature across her shoulders, down her spine, in her jaw, her neck. She focused on breathing out all the way, but her breath in was too icy to help.
“Aren’t we supposed to huddle together for warmth?” She could hear the smile in his voice.
“Glad you haven’t lost your sense of humour. It might come to that. Unless you have something in your boxers that you could get us out of here with?”
“Not this time. I’ll have to have a word with Sadie, she’s left me sadly lacking. But I have a little something, a knife. Nothing to get excited about but up close it could be enough to get us away from the bodyguard.”
“If the roof would fall inwards, you think we could do anything to get it to lift upwards?” Eva asked.
“Gravity was helping. Watch your eyes.”
He opened the freezer, releasing a cloud of below zero air into their space and balanced on its corner edge, using the light to check where the roof met the walls. “Nothing doing, we’re not making any impression on that. Its weakness is clearly its straddle.”
He closed it and they paced in silence again, Eva swinging her arms across her body and out. “Does this find redeem me from earlier?”
Luke took three laps of the building to reply.
“Depends how it plays out. There’s no redemption in any of this right now. I’ve always thought the worst of people, that way I’m not disappointed.” Luke said. “But I didn’t see this coming.”
The dark silence stretched until Eva’s question burst out of her.
“Agnetha’s a target now, isn’t she, now I told him?”
“Probably, but hard to feel sorry for her, under the circumstances.” He walked up and down a few times, then added. “Sadie would love to get her hands on some of the stuff Rubin’s hiding. Reverse engineering things, rebuilding, redesigning, that’s her happy place.”
Eva matched his pace. She was completely sober now, but the pizza and cereal bar felt like yesterday. Even her shivering wasn’t keeping her warm.
She could feel Luke running through her chain of failures leading to their current mess and the likelihood they’d freeze to death in an outbuilding in remote Norway with no one knowing what happened to them.
Lily. On Eva’s first time out of the country she was placing her in exactly the same position she’d been in when she was eight years old and her father didn’t come home from assignment. There had to be something she could do, it couldn’t be that she wouldn’t make it home. But the pacing didn’t give her any brainwaves. Were her thought processes failing already?
Up and down, up and down in a failing attempt to fight the all-pervading cold.
“Can I ask you something?” She wouldn’t have been able to do it if she could have seen Luke’s face.
“Go for it.”
She pulled in a breath that scraped at her throat. “Why do you think I can’t do this job?”
Before he could answer, a muted beep stole the silence. No time to grab any of Eva’s carefully placed frozen weapons before the door opened and the overhead lights stabbed at their eyes.
16
Eva blinked away the blinding intrusion of bright light. She wrapped her arms around her body, trying to buffer herself from the blast of air that pulled its way inside.
“You realise you’re in serious trouble imprisoning Interpol officers.” Luke was right on the offensive.
“I didn’t imprison you.” Rubin was back. “Unf
ortunately, my bodyguard’s rather zealous about my protection, he didn’t know who you are. Breaking and entering is something I’m certain your superiors don’t condone. I’ve come to let you out, of course.”
Dressed in a dark blue parka and black hat, Rubin clumped up to Eva, his snow boots on the wood thumped like he was wearing the weighted metal shoes deep sea divers used to wear to hold them on the seabed. Sean Finch filled the doorway, holding the Scorpion.
“Hello, Eva Janssen.”
Eva tried not to give away her surprise, but her own name was perhaps the last thing she expected to come out of his mouth. He shook his head at the start of her denial.
“I knew you were familiar. Your husband, Charles Buchanan, now he’s a kindred spirit. His outside the box thinking is truly revolutionary. I can only hope to emulate him in my field.”
“Gunrunning?”
“I prefer the term arms dealer. Gunrunning is a little restrictive.”
Eva shivered, a shudder at what Charles had become, at Rubin, a concession to the plummeting temperature. The frozen air hurt. Her lower jaw juddered.
“I have a proposition for you. Because of my admiration for your husband, I’m prepared to give you the chance to live. Him,” he gestured at Luke, “he won’t be so lucky. But it’s a shame for you to follow.”
“Are you prepared for the fallout on you, the microscopic examination of everything to do with you if we don’t report back? Our superiors and back-up know where we are.” Eva spat. “You’re not a stupid man, the only sane choice is to let us go.”
“Are you accepting my offer?”
“Go to hell.”
He tutted. “Eva Janssen, is that any way to treat a gift?” And then he said the worst words. “What about your daughter?”
“You shouldn’t make a child an orphan,” Luke said. “Let her go, this can be between you and me.”
“Didn’t you tell me she’s the lead on your investigation? Doesn’t the fallout of any decisions land on her as your superior?” Rubin asked.
Luke laughed, an unexpected sound in the tenseness. “You think she’s my superior? This is like an extended job interview where I’m watching her, and she’s failing, I might add.”
Rubin shook his head. “Women just can’t do certain things, as I’ve tried to show Agnetha when she wanted to have her own clients. Men trust men, it’s that simple.”
Luke nodded. “Have to agree with you there.”
“So, Eva, you want to go home to your daughter, or shall I send flowers?”
“You have my answer.” She got the words out through her juddering jaw. Now she’d started, it’d be hard to stop.
He stepped away from her, closer to his bodyguard. “Where are my manners? I’m not a barbarian. Sean, help these people out.” The bodyguard picked up a black holdall and threw it at Luke. “Eva can tell you about the dangers of hypothermia being caught out in the snow without adequate gear. I’m actually doing you a favour, what you were wearing wouldn’t last five minutes out there.” His voice tightened. “Of course, it’s nothing like it should be. This winter the Arctic ice is at a record thinness, its coverage less still than it was last year and it was a colder year then. Did you know scientists believe that the thinning of the ice at the poles is actually changing the Earth’s axis? People are tipping the balance beyond recoverability.” He shook himself, gestured at the bag. “Put them on.”
Luke hadn’t moved, braced against whatever unexpected either of their enemies would do.
“Sean won’t shoot you, while you’re doing what I ask.” Rubin laughed, sounding delighted. “But you should see the Scorpion in action, it really is quite something.” It was scarier that he didn’t sound deluded, irrational, or even a bit mad.
Luke unzipped the bag as though there might be a live one in it. When he tipped it out, it turned out to be white snow suits, with fur-edged hoods and dry ski socks.
“One set for both of you.” Rubin said.
Eva didn’t need to be asked twice. Grappling the socks on with numb fingers twisted them. She rubbed her toes, the soles of her feet wishing Rubin’s benevolence extended to two pairs each and their fleeces back. But the snowsuit zipped on, hood up, would help.
“Better?” Rubin asked, standing over her.
Eva stood her ground.
“Your mind is made up?” he asked. “I can still save you.”
From what? He’d given them warm clothing, was he just now going to shoot them anyway? What kind of sick joke was this? A trick to win their confidence and still he’d dispose of them?
“I’m not abandoning my partner.” Eva ground out. “It’s human decency as well as Interpol protocol. As is investigating missing officers. The alarm will already have been raised because we missed our check-in.” That wild gamble had paid off for her before, but this time her opponent was apparently less easy to fool.
He lifted a hand and caressed her cheek. The brown leather gloves he wore were soft, but didn’t mute his touch enough. She stepped backwards, beyond his reach.
“Pity.” He said.
Rubin walked over to Luke. Grasped his chin, pushed him backwards, away from him. Eva wondered where Luke’s knife was, Rubin was close enough to take out. But the bodyguard, the Scorpion. “I can’t see it, the reason she would sacrifice her life to save you. You’re a lucky man.”
“And you must be stupid.” Luke retaliated.
Rubin adopted a meek position, looking down at the floor, hands clasped in front of him. “I’m so sorry to hear about your missing officers, yes they were here, but they left after just a few moments. The roads around here are quite dangerous in the winter, if you’re not used to driving on them.” He straightened up. “We’ll drive your vehicle off the road where it won’t be found until the snow melts. And that discovery just corroborates my story. Of course, given that this isn’t Erika Miles,” he gestured at Eva. “I’ve no reason to suspect anything else coming out of your mouth is the truth.”
He strode towards the door, staying out of the Scorpion’s way, retrieved something from outside and threw a succession of heavy things into the middle of the floor. Their ski boots.
“I’m not a maniac. I’m letting you go, as you wanted, reasonably equipped. You have a chance.”
He took off his gloves, turning them inside out and laying them on the floor by the doorway as though they were his firstborn. He took the Scorpion from Finch. “Give them the gloves. Again, you see, I’m really on your side.”
Finch approached Luke and handed him a pair of white gloves, held out a pair to Eva. She’d like nothing more than to tell him where to shove them but, right then, keeping her fingers trumped short-term one-upmanship.
“Give him the walkie-talkie.” Rubin instructed Finch. “It’s only short-range and, as you’ll have noticed, this property is very remote. There’s no one to hear you if you use it to call for help.”
Luke put the device Finch handed him in his pocket.
Rubin gave the gun back to his bodyguard, clapped his hands together. “Right, I’ll deactivate the fence for, let’s give you five minutes. You can get through the trees if you’re motivated enough. Did you like the fence, by the way? It senses body warmth so it activates to keep the lynxes in, if they ever got out of their pen. And if they keep worrying at it, the voltage increases. It can pack quite a punch.
‘I assume that’s why you decided to go over the building. Not a bad choice but you were unfortunate to have selected the one with the weakest roof. And, of course, now I have to resite everything and get it repaired. All an inconvenience, I should probably bring that to the attention of your bosses at Interpol.” He laboured the word with heavy sarcasm. “More ingenuity, the fence, a by-product of something else. It’s how nature teaches us, to take advantage of the synchronicities. And that’s exactly what I’m doing with you. Off you go. You have five minutes to get off my property. And then you’re helping me test my new weapon, the Lynx Assassin.”
17
Eva grabbed up one of the slabs of frozen meat and threw it at Finch.
“Stop!” He roared. “This weapon will kill you both in one pulse.”
Eva paused in her dive for another of her makeshift defences.
“Drop it,” Finch shouted at Luke who had Rubin in an awkward grip, his tiny knife held at Rubin’s neck.
“You’ve got no play here,” Luke said. “One jab and your boss is history.”
Finch pointed the Scorpion at Eva. “One more second and your partner is.”
There was nothing she could do, nothing to use to distract him. Unless.
“You let us both walk out of here and I’ll tell you who’s coming after you.” Eva blurted out.
“They won’t get him.” Finch stated it matter-of-factly.
“That’s what the US Ambassador Hunter Malone thought until they blew him up in Moscow.” His hadn’t been a The Society kill, but the men after Eva and her family last year had blamed it on them. It had made a big enough media splash Finch might have seen it too. She didn’t know the names of anyone else to throw at him. “That’s what all their targets think.” It was a weak finish.
“They didn’t have me.” Finch said. “I won’t say it again, put it down or say your goodbyes.”
Eva snagged Luke’s gaze. He wasn’t happy with her, but he’d save her, wouldn’t he? He’d put down the knife.
“Don’t think she’s a mind reader.” Finch said. “Five.”
Luke wasn’t moving.
“Four.”
She was too far from the open door to make it in the second she had when he pulled the trigger.
“Three.”
Eva’s desperation distilled into two syllables tearing her apart.
“Two.”
Lily.
“Okay, okay,” Luke pushed Rubin away from him, put his hands up in surrender, flat palms empty.
Rubin adjusted his parka. “You’ve got five minutes to get off my property. At five minutes and one second Sean will fire the Scorpion.”