Man on Edge

by Humphrey Hawksley

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  A Selection of Recent Titles by Humphrey Hawksley

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-One

  Fifty-Two

  Fifty-Three

  Fifty-Four

  Fifty-Five

  Fifty-Six

  Acknowledgments

  A selection of recent titles by Humphrey Hawksley

  The Rake Ozenna series

  MAN ON ICE *

  MAN ON EDGE *

  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

  MAN ON EDGE

  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.

  This first world edition published 2019

  in Great Britain and 2020 in the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7SY.

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2020 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  eBook edition first published in 2019 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2019 by Humphrey Hawksley.

  Map by John Plumer, copyright © Humphrey Hawksley.

  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: 978-0-7278-8914-0 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-666-1 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0364-9 (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 godmother, Lois

  ONE

  Murmansk Oblast, Russia

  Colonel Ruslan Yumatov recognized the unlit flatbed truck parked at the side of the road. He flashed his headlamps, turned them off, and slowed his Land Cruiser to pull up behind the vehicle. The terrain was flat, dark, and cold with gales that shook the ground, not a night for any human to be out. Yumatov kept the engine running, touched his companion on the shoulder, and said in English, ‘Sorry, Gerry, we have to help this guy.’

  ‘We’re on the clock, Colonel. What’s happening?’

  Gerald Cooper looked at Yumatov with a mix of confusion and irritation. They had driven three hours from the drab, filthy city of Murmansk to meet a Norwegian businessman who would take him across the border into Norway. The rendezvous was in ten minutes, and half an hour from now Cooper was to deliver a tiny flash drive containing classified Russian information destined for the Pentagon. His job would be done, and he’d be well paid.

  Yumatov zipped up his jacket, rolled a woolen hat over his ears, and tightened a scarf around his neck. ‘Let’s find out.’

  He opened his door. Cooper did the same. A stream of iced air streaked through the vehicle. The two men were very different. Yumatov loved and understood his country. Cooper was an adventurer from Britain, resentful of his country, craving to fill life’s emptiness after the army. He was here for the money.

  Yumatov’s boots sank into inches of freshly fallen snow. Condensation from his breath created a cloud that vanished in the gale. He pulled his scarf around his face. A man got down from the truck, walked around to the other side of his vehicle, and out of sight. ‘Come,’ Yumatov said to Cooper. ‘It looks like he’s hit an animal, a bear or a reindeer.’

  He snapped on a flashlight, swept its beam along the side of the silver-gray truck stained with dirty ice. The beam picked out a set of antlers speckled with snow, curving up majestically like a candelabra.

  Cooper held Yumatov’s arm to keep him back. ‘Our mission, Colonel, is to get to the border. Now.’

  Yumatov kept walking. ‘In my culture, you do not drive past a person in trouble in a place like this.’ His flashlight showed the full body of a beautiful buck reindeer, six feet long from head to tail, with a dark-tan hide. He played the light over the carcass. The legs were strong, but slender and agile for the unpredictable lay of its home landscape. When standing, the animal would have been at least four feet high. Instead, it lay on a large, thick green groundsheet which Cooper had also seen.

  ‘Don’t seem like a bloody accident.’

  ‘You’re right.’ Yumatov nodded, his expression stern. ‘Give me a moment.’

  He walked around the carcass to the driver, who stood by the reindeer’s rear legs, appearing unfazed by the cold. He wore no gloves, a black wind-screening jacket, and a flat black cap that didn’t cover his ears. He was a solid officer from one of Russia’s elite special-forces units.

  ‘On course?’ Yumatov asked.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Yumatov walked back to Cooper. ‘You’re right, Gerry. It is not exactly as it seems.’ He beckoned Cooper to join him as he crouched at the reindeer’s head. He pulled back the ear to reveal an insignia, carved on the inside, shaped like a rugby football. ‘This is a herder’s individual marking. From the way it’s shaped, we know he’s from across the border, probably jumped the fence piled wit
h a snowdrift. There’s been an agreement between the countries for many years to return reindeer that have got through from Norway. The Norwegians pay, not much, but for a trucker like him, it’s worth it.’ Yumatov pointed to the vehicle. ‘See, no damage on the truck. He could have found the reindeer, killed him, then waited for people like us to roll up.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake!’ Cooper stood up, bristling with frustration. ‘He’s not in trouble and this is nothing to do with us. We need to—’

  ‘This isn’t the London rush hour. It’s the Arctic. We’re going to lift this beast onto his truck. The driver will deliver him to the border guards who will give him his money and we will have helped oil the wheels of corruption that keep my poor country afloat. Within the hour, you will be enjoying fine whisky at the bar of the Thon Hotel in Kirkenes.’

  Cooper first glared at Yumatov, then switched to a shrug of acceptance. ‘What can I do to make it quicker?’

  ‘Help us lift him.’

  The snowfall was heavy, the wind too harsh for it to settle. Some tracks would be covered, others randomly revealed. The driver switched on the headlamps, lighting up the reindeer as if on a stage. Cooper shielded his eyes so he could see Yumatov. ‘Why are you doing this?’

  ‘No man can lift an animal alone in this weather.’ Yumatov smiled. ‘You try it.’

  ‘No, I mean why are you working with me, because you know what I’m carrying.’

  ‘I know more about what you’ve got in your pocket than you do.’

  ‘Don’t that make you a traitor?’

  Cooper’s flash drive contained naval technology on submarine warfare. He’d been hired by an American intelligence agency to bring it out of Russia.

  Yumatov stepped closer so the wind wouldn’t drown his voice. ‘No, Gerry, I’m not a traitor. Russia is deciding whether it looks east toward Asia or west toward Europe and America, and I am more afraid of China than I am of Europe. I want my children to grow up as Europeans, and to do that we have to show that Russia is Europe’s friend. What you are carrying is a gesture, a symbol of friendship, a handful of naval secrets, none worth dying for, compiled by a senior vice-admiral who, like me, is a patriot. It is technical information that most of your guys know anyway, to show we are willing to share our future with Europe, not fight over it.’

  ‘Good, sensible words, wasted on the likes of a foot soldier like me, so are you talking now or when your President Lagutov quits?’

  ‘It’s a process. I’m hoping Sergey Grizlov wins the job.’

  ‘The new Foreign Minister?’

  ‘Very pro-European.’

  The driver killed the headlamps and made a phone call. Cooper checked his watch, annoyance spreading back across his face.

  Yumatov said, ‘He’ll be calling the border guys, telling them he’s on his way. We need to work with him. He and they are as thick as thieves. You and our contact need to have a smooth ride through.’

  Cooper clapped his hands together. ‘Fuck, it’s cold.’

  ‘A couple of minutes. I’m sure you didn’t know that during the Cold War spies used reindeer to take microfilm across the border.’

  ‘You’re bloody kiddin’.’ Cooper examined the carcass. ‘What’d they do, strap it to an antler?’

  Yumatov knelt with the flashlight and ran his hand over the coarse brown hair of the haunch. ‘They’d cut open a flap of hide, slip it underneath, and sew it up again. Then send the reindeer back across the fence.’

  ‘Reindeer aren’t that obedient, so I know you’re ’aving me on.’

  ‘And if I’m not, you buy me a pint and fish and chips in a London pub.’

  ‘I’ll buy your whole family fish and chips.’

  Yumatov showed Cooper his phone wallpaper. ‘That’s my wife, Anna. On her left is Max. He’s seven and says he wants to be a soldier like his dad, and that’s Natasha. She’s five and dreams of dancing ballet at the Bolshoi.’

  ‘You from Moscow, then?’

  ‘St Petersburg, the city Peter the Great built to make sure Russians knew they were part of Europe.’

  Cooper had his phone out, a wallpaper of a blond boy holding a football. ‘Meet Ricky, turns eleven next week and I’ll be back for his birthday.’

  ‘That’s a good-looking young man you have there. His mother?’

  ‘With someone else.’ Cooper snapped off the phone. ‘She married me, a soldier, and didn’t like when I went off to war.’ He zipped the phone back into his pocket.

  The driver got out of the cab and shut the door. Yumatov turned off his flashlight. ‘Finally, we’re good to go. Come. Next to me. You do the legs. I’ll take the middle. He’ll handle the head and antlers because he knows how.’

  Cooper squatted down, feeling for a good grip of the ankles and hooves through his gloves. He looked up. The driver had his back to them, staring out into the empty night as gusts dusted snow along barren land that stretched to a dirty white horizon.

  Yumatov took a step toward him.

  Cooper stood up. ‘Now what?’

  Before Cooper could react, Yumatov plunged a double-bladed steel knife into his neck and cut through arteries and muscles from side to side. He lowered Cooper to the ground sheet as he bled out and died. Yumatov took the flash drive from Cooper’s jacket and zipped it securely inside his own pocket.

  TWO

  Kirkenes, Finnmark, Norway

  Rake Ozenna woke in an apartment, not a hotel room, nor a home, something temporary without personal touches, stylish with timber frames on the ceiling and snow covering half a window that winds had blown in overnight. A doorbell broke his sleep, an alien sound in a bed never slept in before, with indents and crumples in the sheets showing that someone had lain beside him. No one answered the door. The bell rang a second time.

  Rake stepped into his pants that lay heaped on the warm tile floor, plucked his vest from there, and his white down jacket hooked over a bedroom chair. He chambered a round in his revolver and slid it down behind his belt, before remembering he was in Norway, but he kept it because he wouldn’t have felt right handling an unknown doorbell unarmed.

  A short corridor led from the bedroom to the kitchen, part of an open-plan, Scandinavian-style living area with floor-to-ceiling windows and a view over a snow-laden landscape. An icy road ran past, heading straight and long and flanked by trees. On the other side was a frozen lake, a streetlamp, and a road-salting truck parked for the night. Rake looked through the front-door spyglass to see the distorted face of his friend Mikki Wekstatt. He opened the door. Mikki’s face creased. ‘Oh, Jesus, Rake. What the hell you doing here?’

  Rake knew. Mikki knew. Rake said, ‘You looking for Nilla?’

  ‘Who else? This is her place.’

  Rake didn’t know much about Nilla except anyone able to leave a bed without him knowing meant he had either been too far gone or had skills he needed to learn. He remembered she was taller than he, something Rake, who was only five ten, had a habit of noting in women. She spoke fluent English and had a strong body with long black hair that ran halfway down her back.

  ‘We’ve been asked to pick up a dead reindeer,’ Mikki said.

  ‘A reindeer?’

  ‘Yeah. Like Santa Claus and his sleigh. They live up here. Think “caribou”.’

  Rake corralled his scattered thoughts into a pattern that made sense. Two days ago, he’d been wrapping up an operation in the Uruzghan Mountains in central Afghanistan. This morning, he was in an Arctic town on the border with Russia because Mikki had asked him to help with a baby-sitting job, someone due to cross from Russia.

  Mikki and Rake had been raised on the Alaskan island of Little Diomede on Russia’s eastern border, a remote place and small community of less than a hundred. They were orphans, whose parents had died or vanished. Their adoptive parents were now in their sixties, and Mikki was ten years older than Rake. They hadn’t been close until Rake had joined the National Guard on Mikki’s urging. They had been deployed together in Afghanistan, Mi
kki made it to sergeant. Rake broke through to officer.

  Mikki left the military to join the Alaska State Troopers, and was now a detective, technically on secondment to the Norwegian Police Service. There was a lot of common ground with Alaska, people going crazy with nights that never ended, foreign enemy, the border. Rake only learned he was going to Norway when his commanding officer signed off his deployment and told him Mikki was already there. Rake got in in the late afternoon. On the way from the airport, Mikki told him they were a security backstop to a classified US government operation. They were expecting someone across the border in the next few days. Mikki wanted Rake with him, just in case.

  Kirkenes was small, a handful of streets, ugly concrete buildings, and a fjord where the police station was. They had dinner with local cops at the Thon Hotel. Along the evening, people slid away, Mikki, too. When Rake was left with Nilla, the dynamics changed. He became alert. It took a day or so to switch mindsets from being in a dangerous place to a safe one. He could have left but didn’t. Nilla surprised him by drawing from her bag a locked case with his pistol and ammunition inside. Rake had taken a military flight from Kabul to Germany, but civilian to Oslo and then Kirkenes, so had to check in the weapon, which was taken straight to the police station for registration. Nilla had collected it for him. ‘Don’t tell me,’ she said, pushing it across the bar table. ‘You feel naked without it.’