Free Black Sun: A Thriller by Graham Brown Page B

pale, his eyes almost gray. Apparently his host was a confident man. His henchmen had vanished and no gun or weapon could be seen.
    “Who are you?” Hawker asked.
    “My name is Ivan Saravich,” the man said.
    “Are you my contact?”
    “No,” Saravich said.
    “What happened to him?”
    Saravich waved a hand in a manner of swatting away an insect. “Don’t worry about him. He chose a bribe over a job. I treasure men like that.”
    “What do you want from me?” Hawker asked.
    Saravich explained. “I want to help you get at Kang, to help you recover your missing person.”
    “And in return?”
    Saravich stepped into the light, shielding his eyes from the sun. He walked to the rail, looking toward the Tower Pinnacle in the distance.
    “Kang is not a very discriminating man,” he said. “In addition to your missing friend, he has taken one of our citizens, a child, whose mother is a prominent member of our Science Directorate.”
    That sounded like a legitimate possibility from what Hawker had been told, but there had to be a reason. “Why would he do that?”
    “She’s an expert in high-energy physics,” Saravich said. “What Kang cannot buy he steals; what he cannot steal, he extorts. He wants information from her.”
    Information on high-energy physics
. Hawker wondered if it were related to what Danielle and McCarter had been working on.
    “For weapons?” Hawker asked.
    Saravich shrugged. “No one knows,” he said. “Kang is rumored to be very strange, obsessed with exotic areas of science and compulsive in regard to other things like medical oddities and genetic deformation. It is said he has a zoo of humans born defective.”
    “Charming,” Hawker said. “Why do you need me to deal with him? Why not take him out yourself?”
    Saravich exhaled. “I would prefer it,” he said. “But certain niceties must be observed. You, on the other hand … well, a man with no home does what he does. There can be no proof of whom he works for or why.” He shrugged. “There can be suspicions, yes. Whispers and rumors. Of course. These things will always fly, but in the end it will never be clear, and that is what we prefer. Just as your people do.”
    “Of course,” Hawker said. “Everyone’s afraid of the dragon these days.”
    “Don’t want to wake it,” Saravich said.
    “You want me to get the kid back?”
    Saravich nodded. “You can get them both at the same time.”
    Hawker might have asked what the alternative was, but it was fairly clear to him that there was none. He was now working for Moore and the Russians. He smiled at the irony, wondering what Moore would think, footing the bill personally with his cold war enemies riding along for free.
    Perhaps it was for the better not to try this act alone. He turned back toward Kang’s fortress of a tower. “You think they’re inside?”
    Ivan nodded. “We have surveillance video showing them entering the building and no indication of their departure.”
    It had been eight days since Danielle’s capture in Mexico. “That’s not exactly conclusive.”
    “We know Kang.” Saravich was insistent. “We know his ways. If your friend is alive, then she’s there. And he wouldn’t have brought her here if he planned to kill her quickly.”
    He studied the building. “Well, that narrows it down to a hundred floors or so.”
    “Actually,” the Russian said, “we have only one floor to worry about.” He handed Hawker a spotting scope. “Look at the foundation.”
    Hawker trained the scope on the black bedrock from which the tower seemed to sprout. He saw the remnants of fortifications and old stone walls, even a broken set of stairs leading down to the water.
    “Kang built his tower on the ruins of Fort Victoria,” Saravich explained. “A fort those hardworking Brits carved out of solid rock in 1845, before building Fort Stanley a few years later. Kang uses the old brig as his private gulag. Down there he keeps those who owe him what they