Free Black Sun: A Thriller by Graham Brown Page A

looked up. His eyes darted toward the elevator door. Nothing happened, no sound could be heard, but seconds later the car slid into place at the bottom of the shaft and the doors opened.
    The guards stepped out with their Tasers in hand.
    “What’s your name?” she asked.
    “Petrov,” he said. “Alexander Petrov.”
    He went into another coughing fit, his body racked with spasms for twenty long seconds, and this time when he pulled the rag from his face, it was covered in blood.

CHAPTER 13
     
    W hen Hawker didn’t respond to the man who questioned him, one of the thugs raised a gun and aimed it at his eye.
    “You really won’t get much out of me if I’m dead,” he told them.
    The thug was unmoved but the man behind him laughed. “Bring him with us,” he said.
    Hawker was blindfolded and dragged into a waiting van. From there it was a short trip to the waterfront and a forced walk onto a waiting vessel, a diesel-powered junk.
    As they rumbled out into the harbor, Hawker tried to guess their direction or speed.
    “Where are you taking me?” he asked after a minute or two.
    “I’ll gladly answer that, once you tell me what you’re doing here,” the Russian voice said back to him.
    Hawker gave no answer. He was still trying to figure out the dynamics of the situation. Why should he, an American, have to explain to a Russian what he was doing in Hong Kong?
    The motor beneath the deck cut back to idle and thendied away. Soon the boat’s momentum ceased and the vessel began to rock back and forth in the chop of the waves.
    “Stand up,” the man said.
    Hawker stood, holding the rail, as one of the man’s guards pulled the blindfold away. He began to turn.
    “Eyes forward!”
    A rifle jabbed him in the back.
    Hawker did as he was ordered. They were a mile out into Victoria Harbour, looking back at the skyscrapers of Hong Kong.
    “You are a man without a home, or so I hear. A man with debts to pay, who is wanted even by his own country.”
    Hawker did not respond.
    “You go by the name Hawker,” the Russian said. “An interesting metaphor this word. Where I come from, it means a seller in the marketplace, a shill, offering goods or services.”
    The name had come to him as a code, one he’d kept for his own reasons. He didn’t try to explain.
    “At any rate, you are here plying your trades, both gross and fine, only in this case, it is at the behest of your own nation’s security apparatus. Care to tell us why?”
    Hawker held the rail. He guessed that the man already knew the answer, or some version of it. He remained quiet.
    “Come now,” the Russian said. “You’re among friends here. To prove it, I’ll answer for you. You’re here to do something that might infuriate the Chinese. Something the people who hired you don’t want to be known for. Murder?”
    “I’m not a killer,” Hawker said.
    “You are a killer,” the man replied, emphatically. “But not a murderer, perhaps. What then?”
    Hawker thought of leaping over the rail, but guessed he’d be riddled with bullets before he hit the water.
    “It’s not so complicated,” the man said. “In fact, the answer is right in front of you.”
    Hawker looked across the water, staring straight ahead. The boat had been lined up with Kang’s Tower Pinnacle, its white marble façade gleaming in the morning sun.
    “They have something your people want back,” the man added.
    Hawker’s eyes followed the contours of the tower down to the bedrock at its base. Whatever cover he’d once thought he had was nonexistent at this point.
    He turned around slowly, and this time no one stopped him.
    Ten feet away, hidden in the shade of the boat’s pilothouse, stood a short, gaunt figure of a man. He wore a black peacoat and leather gloves. No more than five foot six, his round face was marked by sunken cheeks and whitish stubble the same length as the buzzed gray hair on his head.
    Hawker guessed the man’s age was close to seventy. His face was