Ice Islands, page 1
Contents
Cover
Also by Humphrey Hawksley
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
Prologue
Chapter One: One month earlier
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Author’s Note
Also by Humphrey Hawksley
The Rake Ozenna series
MAN ON ICE *
MAN ON EDGE *
MAN ON FIRE *
The Kat Polinski series
SECURITY BREACH
HOME RUN
FRIENDS AND ENEMIES
The Future History series
DRAGON STRIKE
DRAGON FIRE
THE THIRD WORLD WAR
* available from Severn House
ICE ISLANDS
Humphrey Hawksley
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
First world edition published in Great Britain and the USA in 2022
by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE.
Trade paperback edition first published in Great Britain and the USA in 2022
by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.
This eBook edition first published in 2022 by Severn House,
an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.
severnhouse.com
Copyright © Humphrey Hawksley, 2022
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The right of Humphrey Hawksley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-5062-1 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0751-7 (trade paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0750-0 (e-book)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.
This eBook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited,
Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland
To my brothers, Jeremy and Tom
PROLOGUE
Tokyo
She was out, clear of the death house. She had to get away. Completely. Long distance. Free from dread. From guilt. From paralyzing fear. An airport. Another country. Sara Kato rode in the back of one of the family sedans, her brother Michio beside her, window down, city noise in her ears and drizzle splattering on her face. In the bag strapped around her shoulder was her passport, credit cards, vaccination certificates, a few hundred euros and her phone from London which worked in Japan. She still had the American soldier’s phone in her jeans pocket.
Shibuya’s lights shone around her, massive futuristic images of gadgets, celebrities, fashion wrapped around skyscrapers. Umbrellas bobbed up and down as people ducked around each other in the rain. It would be so easy to slip away, vanish in the crowds. Easy, if she did it right.
‘Why don’t we walk?’ she suggested. ‘And I need an ATM to get some yen. I only have euros.’
‘There you are.’ Michio peeled off a wad. ‘That’ll keep you going.’
‘Thank you, but no.’ Sara lay a hand on his arm, trying to hide a repulsive shiver on showing any affection. ‘I need to do something normal, be on the street, go to an ATM, get some money, feel people around me, feel cold.’ After the horror in that stifling house, she made it sound believable. First step, out of the car. Second step, run as fast as she could.
‘Of course. I wasn’t thinking.’ He squeezed her hand and instructed the driver to pull up. ‘We’ll get out here. The rain, getting a bit wet doesn’t worry you?’
‘It’ll be refreshing.’ She took her hand off his arm.
The driver turned into a narrow road and stopped behind a green taxi. Sara pulled the handle to open her door. It was locked. The driver glanced at Michio who gave a single nod. There was a click. The door opened. She gripped her bag’s shoulder strap and stepped out. She drew in the bustle and buzz, eyes scanning on how best to escape. ‘There’s an ATM.’ Michio pointed to a bank of three along the sidewalk, green and yellow lights glowing from their screens.
She saw two men ahead. She turned. Another two behind. A motorcyclist, engine running, foot on the sidewalk, looked toward her. They would be trained to stop her going anywhere. She needed to slow down and work out how to get past them.
‘They’re with us?’ she asked.
‘Sorry.’ Michio shrugged. ‘If you’re a Kato in this city, you can’t just go for a walk.’ He took her arm. ‘Ignore them. Come. Get your money.’
She stood in front of the cash machine, the cordon around her, taking her time, checking her PIN, her balance. Michio was a man she adored more than any other, her brother whom she trusted completely. What she had just seen shook her to the core, even though it wasn’t against her. Michio was picking up as if nothing had happened, which made it worse, more confusing. She craved to understand him.
She concealed trembling, fought hard against a choking sense of more despair. She withdrew 50,000 yen. Turning to Michio, she forced a smile, ‘Now, at least I can buy my big brother a drink.’
Michio led her into a tiny, winding street with poky counter bars and sushi places crammed next to each other. The same six or seven men trailed or went ahead of them. They were recognized. Bar owners bowed or raised hands in greeting. Not just to Michio, also to the men with him. They moved from place to place. One moment they were in an old red-light district of hodgepodge narrow streets. The next they were guests of honor at a bar decked out like a film set, with cameras, spotlights, fake sand dunes and thumping music.
She let Michio talk. Justifying. Explaining. Most in Japanese. Some in English. About being Japanese. Bloodlines, Family.
They kept moving from place to place, sometimes on foot to a bar or café nearby, a couple of times, a short journey by car. She lost track of where they were. She had never known Tokyo well, hadn’t lived here since she was ten. The security cordon stayed. Even in the rest room, a woman appeared from nowhere to keep watch.
She tried to leave. They were perched on stools in a tiny counter bar, Michio discussing with the owner the outcome of the Pacific War. Sara touched him warmly on the shoulder and spoke in English, ‘I’m beat, Michio. We both know why I can’t go back to the house. You stay. I’ll check into a hotel.’
Michio laid a hand on hers, gently but firmly. ‘It’s late. We’re all tired. There’s a hotel just around the corner.’
She was terrified to show anger. To survive, she had to show she supported him in his evil. She felt suffocation. Her mind didn’t know where to go. Stop, she wanted to scream. Stop controlling me. Stop giving me surprises. Stop being so bloody nice.
‘Let me treat you. Just tonight.’ He smiled at her.
‘I need to—’
‘I know,’ interrupted Michio. ‘You need to be by yourself. You will be, and early tomorrow morning I want to show you something about our family.’
She didn’t want to hear anything more about her family. Her father had banished her from Japan when she was just ten. He was a monster. She knew the Kato family were stinking rich. She had never asked details because she had never felt part of them. She had been smart enough to keep her distance, but not smart enough to stay completely away. She had come back because she loved Michio, her elder brother and her protector. Everyone needs family. Now, she had seen that Michio was a monster, too.
‘Our businesses are much more than just hotels, golf clubs, airlines and karaoke joints,’ Michio was saying. ‘We help people all around the world. I want you to see that, then you can decide what you want to do. Let’s all get a good night’s sleep.’
Her hotel room was vast with a huge bed, a sunken bath, a rain shower and windows with a surround view of the city. Sara walked around and around, sinking her bare feet into the thick yellow carpet. Michio’s men were outside the door. Her brother had taken the room next door with an adjoining door to hers. She knelt and lowered her head to the carpet like in prayer. She let her mind go blank for five seconds, ten, more, until she realized that Michio could be watching her every move. She tried to rid herself of the thought that he would harm her. She couldn’t. She had seen his eyes, his determination, the way he wiped blood off his hand. She pushed herself up, went to the bed and, fully clothed, enveloped in exhaustion, she crawled under the covers, pulling the sheet over her head.
She pulled the American’s phone from her jeans pocket and scrolled through to see how it worked. She recognized neither iPhone nor Android technology. It was something different. Surely, they could pinpoint where she was. The American had made her register a thumbprint. It worked. She remembered the four-number pass code. The screen lit. Her heart pounded as she typed out a message in capitals. HELP. She thought a moment on how to make it clearer so it didn’t get lost in some bullshit American bureaucracy. She deleted it, rewrote the message and sent it. R-A-K-E O-Z-E-N-N-A. H-E-L-P M-E P-L-E-A-S-E.
ONE
One month earlier
Douro Valley, Portugal
‘Slow,’ said Rake. Their headlights swept across vines on both sides of the driveway.
‘You worry too much, Ozenna.’ Jo Duarte turned impatiently from the front seat. ‘We’re here. This is it.’
Duarte had come with the job, a freelance agent hired through Portugal’s Security Intelligence Service, its counterpart to the CIA. Rake had been assured Duarte was the best for the job. He knew the players and was raised in the area.
Rake was in Portugal because one of its colonies used to be Macau, an enclave on the southern Chinese coast. Now run by China, Macau was filled with casinos and dirty money. A trail of Asian organized crime that Rake picked up there had led him to the vineyard in the Douro Valley above the northern city of Porto.
A Japanese businessman, who claimed to be close to the North Korean dictatorship, wanted to set up a vineyard in there. He was a pitiful character, a chancer who had stepped on the wrong side of America’s anti-corruption laws. In exchange for dropping charges, the Japanese was to give Rake a channel into the network of a far more dangerous and disciplined player, Michio Kato, heir to one of Japan’s most dominant crime families. Michio had gone off radar more than a year, and Rake needed to find him.
‘Stop,’ Rake instructed. They were two hundred yards from the sweeping gravel driveway where there was a white Mercedes SUV. To the left was an open carport with vehicles. ‘Cut the lights.’
The track and vines fell into a darkness, lit by a murky moon.
‘You’re overreacting, Ozenna.’ Duarte’s right hand was poised to open the door. His left gripped the leather headrest as he turned to face Rake. ‘This is Douro, not Syria.’
Duarte had met Rake at an airfield near Lisbon, tall and confident in the way of a military officer clinging to past victories. They had driven through Portugal’s dry landscape of red-roofed villages and fields of livestock and crops, and Duarte showed himself to be a man with stories and opinions. He had lectured Rake on many things. Money, which Rake didn’t care much about. Marriage, which Rake had almost done, but not. Portugal, where Rake had never been until today. Duarte told him America needed to learn from Portugal which once had an empire that was now lost. Americans were heading that way, too. He had asked Rake nothing.
The mansion was a modern building with a red sloping roof, a whitewashed flat front and outbuildings on both sides. The left side of its double-fronted door hung open, a light shining from within.
‘Where are the other vehicles?’ asked Rake.
‘They came by bus from their hotel. The driver must have gone off for his dinner.’
‘And the one there?’
‘I don’t know.’ Duarte looked away. ‘I’ve known this family all my life.’
Duarte had given Rake a Glock 19, standard Portuguese police issue with a serial number scrubbed off. He carried a folding knife, which he moved from his pants pocket to his right hand. He tried to get the Mercedes SUV plate through his compact binoculars, but it was smeared with mud.
‘I grew up with them,’ pressed Duarte. ‘Everything is fine. Or they would have called.’
‘We wait,’ said Rake. The meal break and vehicles didn’t ring right. Portuguese and Italians might give drivers a meal break, but not Chinese, Japanese or Koreans. Anyone cutting a deal with North Korea through black money in Macau would be low trust, the type to keep vehicles close by.
‘You wait. You’re so jumpy. I’ll bring him to you.’ Duarte opened his door and got out. Fit and fast for his age, he jogged up the track onto the driveway and had the presence of mind to shine his flashlight into the Mercedes SUV, showing no one inside. He caught his breath on the mansion’s front steps, smoothed down his suit jacket, pushed open the door and walked inside.
Four minutes later, a stocky man, not Jo Duarte, appeared at the front door. He looked Asian, athletic, tough, and wore a green T-shirt with a brand-name logo. Rake focused the binoculars on a transparent plastic sack he was carrying, filled with a jumble of phones and documents. Looking around, he walked across to the driver’s seat of the SUV. He placed a stubby, folding automatic on the ledge on top of the dashboard. He dropped a magazine from a pistol and put in a new one.
‘You go,’ said Rake. The driver looked around sixty and had a weathered, sun-washed face. He met Rake’s gaze in the rear-view mirror. Rake was certain Jo Duarte would not be coming back out of that house and, if the driver stayed, he would most likely end up dead. Rake gave him two hundred-dollar notes. The driver understood. He flipped a switch ensuring the internal light stayed dark when Rake opened the door. The car was a hybrid. He reversed on the battery with no lights and no engine noise. Rake moved through the vines toward the house and found cover with a garden hedge that formed the boundary of the carriage driveway. He lay flat on damp, irrigated grass with a view to the front of the house. The night air carried a freshness and silence.
The entrance hall light went off. Lamps from the driveway were enough for Rake to be able to make out a second Asian-looking man, tall and more formally dressed in a dark suit, pale yellow shirt, no tie. His eyes swept the landscape. He carried a greater sense of urgency. In his right hand was a pistol with a suppressor attached, which would account for Rake not hearing any shots. He brought the weapon up again, ready for use, reached the SUV within seconds and quickly got inside. The SUV’s headlamps stayed off. Its tires crunched gravel stones as it turned. Rake played through scenarios in which he could stop the two men. None came to mind. They were better armed. There were two of them. They were trained. He watched the taillights fade into winter mist down the track. Rake matched the face of the second man to many images he had studied over the months. There was no mistake. This was Michio Kato, the man he was hunting.
Rake fired up his satellite phone, the military one, separate from his encrypted cell phone. He didn’t know what he would find inside the mansion. He had been on enough assignments that had gone rotten to sense it wouldn’t be good. He needed Harry Lucas, who was running the operation from Washington, DC, to secure resources to investigate, keep it quiet and get Rake out of the country. He sent Lucas a message, broke his cover and ran across to the mansion.
