The Alex King Series by A BATEMAN (free ebook reader for ipad TXT) 📕

nodded. He was photographing the damage to the ice and looked back at the doorway as Huss strode in.

“These people shouldn’t be here!” he snapped at the manager.

“Well, Mister Huss,” King paused. “In lieu of any police presence, we are the best you could hope for.”

Caroline took out her MI5 identification card and showed it to the owner. “We’re here to follow up a lead, with the full knowledge and cooperation of the Finnish government,” she lied. “We can take over, utilising the skills we have and hand over to the police when they get here,” she paused. “But I imagine that will be after the storm now.”

Huss looked at the manager, and his look was returned by someone clearly out of their depth. He had other matters to attend to, like terrified guests and half his hotel’s accommodation being destroyed, or at least, rendered uninhabitable. An ice hotel was one thing, but one without a roof and open to the elements of the biggest storm in modern history merely hours away. Huss looked back at Caroline and nodded.

“Okay,” he said as he scrutinised her ID. “Miss Darby. Whatever you want, just ask. My staff will be only too pleased to help.”

“Thank you,” she said amiably.

Huss did not look at King as he left and walked back down the ice tunnel.

“I don’t think he likes me,” King said.

“Well, you could try not shoving him into the furniture for a while. That ought to do it.”

King shrugged. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Let’s get back to the main hotel,” she said. “Get warmed up and see if they’ve got the hot chocolate on the go.”

King couldn’t think what else to do, but now he was out in the open and had the cooperation of the owner, the CCTV system would be a good place to start. He didn’t buy that the entire system had been taken out in the squall. He nodded. He could do with something warm to drink as well.

43

 

The near-perpetual darkness had thrown him. He had never glanced at his watch more. In the end he had taken off his gloves, undone the strap and fixed the watch on the outside of his jacket, threading the black rubber strap through one of the toggles on the chest pocket. Like a ward nurse. He had managed to turn the luminous dials towards himself, so that it no glow was given off, but even the few minutes without wearing the gloves had rendered his hands numb and useless. Now they tingled as they warmed through.

It was truly an inhospitable place. He knew the Sami lived here year-round. Tending to their herds of reindeer, hunting for meat and fur, and occasionally heading out to the coast where in winter the icepack made the hunting of seals possible by digging out holes through which the seals would breath, and waiting with a harpoon. He wondered how they could survive such a place but realised they would probably say the same about his native Birmingham. He smiled as he thought they’d have that in common. He tried only to return for family gatherings. Since joining the army, he preferred to be in one place no longer than six months. The SAS had certainly given him that, and MI5 was working out well on that front too.

The hide he had made had utilised the terrain. The elements were such that he had to think smart. He had found the GPS coordinates of the rendezvous, or at least the location he had deemed most likely. Given that it was unlikely the defector had military or specialist survival training or experience, he had plotted the easiest route rather than the most direct. The location gave him a terrific overview of a small plateau fringed with wispy pines on all sides. It was the ideal place for a killing ground. And that was what had drawn him to it. While Ramsay had seen the operation as a defection, Rashid had seen it as an operation culminating in an assassination. Somebody had gone to great lengths to see that Fitzpatrick did not get what MI6 was after. The defector in that operation had either not shown or had been killed also. He would bet his life that this defection was lining up the same way. Rashid was playing a hunch, but he had played them before and he was still alive to tell the tale.

He had chosen the high ground. Rule one of any conflict. He had used a fallen tree for both cover and camouflage. It was a natural feature and he could dig below it using the snow shovel he had stolen from beside the main steps to hotel. Once he had broken through the crust, he had dug out a tunnel just ten percent larger than his own mass. He used the excavated snow to create a ledge in front of the entrance. Rashid got himself into position, wriggling in feet-first and positioning himself back from the entrance with the rifle shouldered to utilise the scope, but without the muzzle protruding. He loaded the rifle, worked the bolt-action and pushed the safety forwards so that the weapon was ready to fire. Rashid no longer left safety catches in the ‘safe’ position. Experience had seen to that. When he needed to fire, he did not need extra obstructions to slow him down or cloud his mind.

Rashid had hired a snowmobile at the hotel desk. He had been issued with maps and a GPS tracker, which he had immobilised. He had also been warned to return the machine before eleven-AM – the time the storm was estimated to arrive – and under no circumstances was he to deviate from the prepared course that had been scraped and banked throughout the forest. A myriad of roads and tracks designed to take users to various lookouts and