Chapters (124)
- Cover
- About the Author
- Acclaim for Frank Gardner’s Luke Carlton thrillers
- Also by Frank Gardner
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
- 37
- 38
- 39
- 40
- 41
- 42
- 43
- 44
- 45
- 46
- 47
- 48
- 49
- 50
- 51
- 52
- 53
- 54
- 55
- 56
- 57
- 58
- 59
- 60
- 61
- 62
- 63
- 64
- 65
- 66
- 67
- 68
- 69
- 70
- 71
- 72
- 73
- 74
- 75
- 76
- 77
- 78
- 79
- 80
- 81
- 82
- 83
- 84
- 85
- 86
- 87
- 88
- 89
- 90
- 91
- 92
- 93
- 94
- 95
- 96
- 97
- 98
- 99
- 100
- 101
- 102
- 103
- 104
- 105
- 106
- 107
- 108
- 109
- 110
- 111
- 112
- 113
- 114
- 115
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgements
- THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING
He saw the body the moment he switched on his phone torch. It was Kristian Berge, lying face up, eyes wide open, legs at an awkward angle, the blunt end of a carpentry screwdriver sticking out of his throat. There was a glistening pool of blood beside him, not yet congealed. Luke swept the room with his torch, checking for movement, then rushed over and knelt beside him, calling his name, his eyes hunting around for something to staunch the blood. He held the tips of two of his fingers to the side of Kristian’s neck, feeling desperately for the pulse in the jugular vein. Nothing. He was gone.
Another crash, and Luke whirled round, the knife braced in his right hand. But the room was empty, the killer was gone. The open window was slamming back and forth in the wind. The unseen attacker had jumped through it. Of course he had. It was only a first-floor window and there would be a soft landing on the snow. Luke raced over to the window and heard a mechanical roar erupting from below. The sound of a snowmobile being kicked into life. Their snowmobile. Damn! How could they have been so careless as to leave the key in the ignition? The roar swelled and faded, vanishing into the night, as the snow swallowed the retreating sound. The bastard had got away.
He returned to Kristian’s side, trying to process what had just happened. A Norwegian intelligence officer had just been murdered on his operation, and now Luke felt sick with guilt and remorse. Who had insisted they came to this evil, godforsaken place today, against Kristian’s better judgement? Clutched in the dead officer’s hand Luke could see there was a small object. It was the fob, the useless, impotent bleeper that was never going to save him at a critical moment like this. Luke closed his eyes and said a silent prayer. Kristian probably had a wife and family back home in Bergen, he thought, and he, Luke, had never even got around to asking him about them.