As the sun came up fully the next morning – its rays reflecting off the blanket of white that covered the Arctic scenery of northern Norway – the Nordlys moved gently into the harbour of a port.
Hammerfest was a small town. No more than a few hundred houses shivering with cold underneath a pair of mountains and a gigantic glacier wedged between them. The port was a nondescript row of ageing three-storey office blocks. Unremarkable. Empty. Bleak. And around it miles and miles of snow and rock.
They were now as far north as you could go on mainland Europe.
Once the boat had docked, two electronic ramps dropped down. The larger one was to allow a truck to leave the ship, chains attached to its tyres to help it grip the roads. The smaller ramp was lowered to let the crew and a few passengers on to the harbourside. Some of those passengers stood holding up their cameras, capturing the spectacular scenery, stamping their feet in the fresh snow. Others were met by locals. But it was early. There were really very few people about and those who were disappeared quickly, climbing into cars and vans to escape the bitter cold.
Two other people – at the back of this group – moved purposefully off the ship, wrapped up in coats, hoods up, heads down, looking like they knew exactly where they were going. They moved past a crane that was lifting wooden boxes on to the back of the ship, then round the back of a painted wooden building, out of sight of the great ship.
Lily and Kester stopped and pulled their hoods away from their faces.
‘Shall we contact the others now?’ Lily asked.
‘Let’s wait until the ship goes,’ Kester replied. ‘In case anyone could intercept us.’
Lily frowned and wished the boat would hurry up and leave so that they could warn Lesh, Hatty and Adnan. Warn them that it was the American who was causing trouble – not the Russian – and that they were sure something was going to happen in Tromsø. Soon.
They both kept watch on the boat from behind the wooden building. No one had disembarked after them. Certainly not Hawk. Everyone else who’d left the boat had returned up the ramp. The only other thing that had disembarked was the truck – and that was long gone. Eventually, the ship sounded its horn. More deep booms echoing off the mountains, announcing its departure. Then it began to move away, slowly at first, churning its great propeller to reverse a little before heading out into the fjord.
Lily looked from the boat to the small town they’d arrived at. She knew about it because she’d read up about every town in the area on the plane coming into Norway, as well as the transport links between those towns. And, because of that, she knew that the main way of getting in and out of Hammerfest was by the Hurtigruten, even more so now as winter approached. Once the snow set in, many of the roads in the area became impassable, often for the whole of the winter.
The boat had almost gone round the corner of the fjord now. The pair walked to the front of the wooden building to watch it disappear behind the headland, a wind coming off the water.
‘I thought there’d be a police car or something,’ Lily said.
‘Me too.’
‘I mean, don’t you think they found the injured crew member – or did they miss the gunshots?’
‘It was noisy in the engine room. Perhaps they concealed the body. If they killed him.’
‘Let’s text Lesh,’ Lily said, feeling suddenly uneasy, like she wanted to be away from this town, even though they’d only been there minutes. ‘It’s safe to now.’
‘Not as safe as you’d like to think,’ said a third voice. An American voice.
Kester and Lily turned in horror to see the silhouettes of two men behind them. They’d emerged from where Lily and Kester had just come from. It was two men they knew well. Frank Hawk and one of Katiyana’s killers from the night before. Both holding rifles.
For a few seconds neither of the Americans spoke. Hawk was smiling. Almost laughing. He was watching them, waiting for them to make the next move.
Lily took the time to glance around her. There was neither sight nor sound of anyone else. She wondered if this was an inhabited town at all. It looked more like a set of concrete boxes that people had abandoned, left empty for the entire winter. Perhaps forever.
The situation was stark. They were alone. They were unarmed. So they had no option but to do what they were told by the Americans.
‘Move,’ the second American said eventually, pointing to the far end of the harbour.
Lily and Kester glanced at each other, sharing a sense of hopelessness rather than fear. They walked along the edge of the harbour on to a path that led round the side of a huge rock. Lily placed her feet carefully as the snow was fresh. Then she wondered why she was bothering. What did it matter if she slipped and fell? Weren’t they being taken away from the buildings to be killed? Just like Katiyana had been. She kept her mind alive and alert for any chance to escape this situation. She knew Kester would be doing the same.
Never surrender.
They walked for fifteen minutes, even passing reindeer eating vegetation, unworried by this small group of people walking by.
‘You’re not terribly effective spies, are you, kids?’
Neither Lily nor Kester answered.
‘I mean,’ Hawk went on, ‘it almost seems a shame to do this to you. We’ve led you all the way. This trip, for instance. You followed us because you thought we were heading out to trigger a nuclear device. Didn’t you?’
No reply.
‘You did. You listened in on the bug in my hat. The hat I left on the top of the cable car mountain. You put all your resources into investigating some Russian ecologist who wouldn’t know a spy from a skylark.’ The American laughed. ‘Because of some papers we left in his hotel room. But do you know how we knew who you were?’
Lily, like Kester, remained quiet.
‘Go silent to your graves if you like,’ Hawk said in a darker voice, ‘but I’ll tell you anyway. When you were in my room that night, when I came back in up a secret way I know. Well, I needed to know who you were, but not for you to know I knew. So I sprayed you – as you hid behind that sofa – with a chemical that showed up on your clothes when I saw you in the bar. I shone a laser on you and knew immediately you were the ones.’
‘The ones we had to kill,’ the second American said.
‘I liked you two,’ Hawk said, ignoring his colleague, and he looked genuinely disappointed. ‘But needs must.’
‘Needs must what?’ Lily asked, speaking at last, her voice hard. She was shivering now, because they’d stopped walking. But Hawk wasn’t listening. He was staring up at the mountains above Hammerfest.
‘Look at that,’ he said. ‘A beautiful wilderness. Doesn’t it look beautiful to you, kids?’
Lily said nothing. She just stared at the unforgiving emptiness of rock and snow and ice. It looked anything but beautiful at this moment. It looked desolate. It looked dead.
‘Do you know, that whole business with that Canadian girl, it troubled me,’ Hawk said. ‘Because … because it was too easy. Bang bang, she’s dead. It just doesn’t seem fair. You wouldn’t do that with one of these reindeer, would you? You’d chase it a bit, give it a chance, or at least make it think it had a chance. And, deep down, not know for sure you were going to catch it. Hunting. That’s what I’m talking about. So, kids, I’m going to give you a sporting chance.’ Hawk suddenly dropped his rifle at his side. ‘You have half an hour.’
Lily and Kester couldn’t believe what they were hearing. Hawk was telling them that they could go. And that he was hunting them.
It was sick.
It was terrifying.
But it meant they had a chance.