‘I didn’t,’ he shot back. ‘I can handle myself. I learned from watching you.’

  Her annoyance blew its bounds. ‘That fucking asshole Glovkonin was in the room, Marc! If he saw you—’

  ‘He didn’t,’ Marc insisted, and he came forward, reaching out to put a hand on her shoulder, softening his tone. ‘Lucy, listen . . .’

  She batted the hand away and gave him a fierce look.

  ‘Don’t you dare give me that don’t worry your pretty little head routine, I mean it.’

  Her retort stung him more than he’d expected.

  ‘That’s what you think I was going to say? Really? Have I ever once, in all the time we’ve known each other, patronised you?’ She didn’t reply and he felt his colour rise. He realised her response wasn’t just about what had happened in the VIP lounge, and he backed away. ‘See, this second-guessing? This is what happens when two people cross the line with each other. Ever since Paris, ever since we . . .’ He faltered over the words.

  Lucy raised an eyebrow. ‘Ever since we knocked boots?’

  Marc scowled. ‘It’s different between us.’ He shook his head. ‘I knew it was a mistake. Less bloody complicated before.’

  ‘Well, I got flash traffic for you.’ She prodded him in the chest, her eyes bright. ‘Things don’t stay the way they are forever. Have you been asleep for the past year? Everything has changed! You, me, them . . .’ Lucy gestured in the direction of the others. ‘Rubicon doesn’t exist anymore, it’s just a name, it’s just us! We have to move with that. A second ago you were saying you’re not the guy you used to be, but now you’re going back in the other direction? It doesn’t work both ways, Marc!’ She took a long breath, cooling her temper. ‘You really think it was a mistake?’

  ‘No, of course not. I didn’t mean that.’ He couldn’t meet her eyes. ‘I’m . . . afraid I’m going to ruin what we have, Lucy. I don’t want that to change.’

  ‘Too late.’ She waved at the air. ‘It’s gone. Broken into a million pieces. But that’s okay, because we can build something else. You just have to know what that is.’

  He tried to find a reply, and he couldn’t. There was a void in Marc. A place where he hadn’t looked since his lover Samantha Green had died, on an operation that had taken the lives of his team and almost ended his as well. Deep in that hollow lay the question: where is this leading?

  Marc Dane had a mission; he had a reason to move forward and a reason to fight. But what existed beyond that? Everything moved so fast, and he never settled down long enough to let that question catch up to him.

  Lucy Keyes was right here, the first person who had ever made Marc feel like he could be someone better, that he could have something more. But looking that truth in the eye would give it a shape and a form, and if he did that it became real.

  And if it was real, it could be taken from him.

  ‘When we lost Solomon, you picked up the mantle,’ she said. ‘You didn’t debate, you just did it. And the rest of us followed you because we believe in you. But you’ve gotta decide if you are that guy or the lone wolf. You can’t be both.’

  At length, Marc gave a rueful nod.

  ‘I’m still getting to grips with this,’ he admitted. ‘The leadership thing . . . And the . . . uh . . . the other thing.’

  ‘Figure it out,’ she told him.

  *

  Saito looked up as Andre entered the reception of the Princess Grace Hospital, and the other man caught sight of him. Glovkonin’s errand boy was startled to find him in the lobby of the clinic, and his jaw actually dropped open.

  Which was exactly the response Saito wanted. The ex-mercenary hacker was getting in the way, with the Russian using him for work in the field. It was imperative that Saito made sure he remained inside the Combine’s circle of trust, and the last thing he needed was Andre trying to sideline him and curry favour with Glovkonin.

  Andre stalked across to him, frowning deeply, followed at a remove by a pair of grimacing ALEPH operatives who surveyed the room for potential threats.

  Saito glanced at his watch. ‘I was beginning to suspect you would not appear.’

  ‘What are you doing in Monaco?’ Andre’s hands clenched. ‘I wasn’t told you were coming—’

  ‘You are not told everything,’ Saito informed him. ‘I came to check on your progress. My arrival is timely.’ He nodded slightly, in the direction of the offices deeper inside the building. ‘Did you cause this?’

  ‘Indirectly,’ Andre said, then switched back to his previous questions. ‘You should have informed me you were coming. I would have had the men meet you at the airport in Nice.’

  ‘And give you time to prepare?’ Saito shook his head. ‘To conceal this mess?’

  If he made his presence sound like a test, the Frenchman would be less likely to speak of it to Glovkonin or anyone else. Andre still had the hacker mentality from his old life before joining the Combine, where even the slightest questioning of his competence was taken as a grave challenge. It made him predictable. Now he would be concentrating on that imagined slight, and less likely to discover that Saito had actually been in Monaco for the last two days.

  Andre’s jaw stiffened. ‘I wanted to make sure the facts were certain before I reported in.’

  ‘I have the facts.’

  Saito showed him a scan of a document – what appeared to be a preliminary report from the duty coroner. It was a decent fake, already inserted into the hospital’s database, designed to reflect the false narrative that Solomon and his people had set up.

  The fabricated paper trail would reflect that an unknown female and a male matching the description of Henri Delancort had perished in a fatal car accident. If the Monaco police were inclined to dig deeper, the cracks in the falsehood would eventually show, but it would be weeks before that happened.

  ‘Delancort is dead, then.’ Andre said it with a smirk, recovering his poise. ‘It saved us the effort.’

  Saito ignored the comment. ‘You have a vehicle?’

  ‘Outside—’

  ‘We will make the call together.’

  Saito felt a faint satisfaction as he watched the colour drain from Andre’s face.

  The ALEPH operatives flanked them from the Princess Grace’s entrance to a parking structure where a silver BMW waited. Saito noted with a raised eyebrow the cosmetic damage the vehicle had suffered, then climbed in with Andre quick to follow. The two black-jackets took up places outside the car, standing sentinel while Saito dialled a number on his satellite phone.

  ‘Wh-what are you going to tell him?’ said Andre, shifting uncomfortably in the other seat.

  Saito didn’t answer, instead raising a single finger to silence the other man as he activated the speakerphone setting. The line connected, and the Russian spoke.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Henri Delancort died in Monaco this morning.’

  There was a long pause as Glovkonin took that in.

  ‘You are there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  The Russian had expected him in Sochi, and his irritation at being disobeyed was immediately clear.

  ‘My job is to ensure that you and your colleagues in the committee remain untroubled by any unexpected or problematic events. I am acting in that capacity now.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Glovkonin gave a sniff. ‘Explain, then. Did that fool Andre exceed his remit?’

  The Frenchman stiffened at the mention of his own name and made to speak, but again Saito raised his finger.

  ‘Andre is not to blame. He attempted to intervene, but the situation was beyond his control.’ Saito gave a curt precis of the circumstances, describing the crash in the Louis II tunnel and the fire that followed. ‘Delancort paid someone to get him out of the city, but they lacked the competence required. It cost him his life.’

  Andre was eager to speak up, so Saito gave him permission with a nod.

  ‘Sir, it appears that Delancort accessed the remaining elements of the Rubicon server and implemented a number of executive-level commands. I am in the process of determining what they were.’

  ‘How was that possible?’ Glovkonin’s voice crackled harshly over the satellite link. ‘You were told to monitor his every move!’

  ‘He used a back-door access protocol,’ said Andre. ‘A code we didn’t even know existed!’

  ‘Solomon,’ Glovkonin growled. ‘Even in death, he still interferes.’

  ‘Quite,’ offered Saito.

  ‘Find out exactly what Delancort did, and put a stop to it.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Andre nodded, clearly relieved to be off the hook. ‘And I will make sure—’

  ‘Go away,’ said the Russian. ‘I wish to speak privately to Mr Saito.’

  Andre blinked, then exited the car. Saito watched him loiter outside the BMW, his arms folded tightly across his chest.

  ‘We can proceed,’ he said.

  ‘I want you here in Sochi by the day’s end,’ he snapped. ‘I don’t need you to act on your own initiative. I need you to obey me – is that understood?’

  ‘As you wish.’

  ‘Measures are being taken and you are required. There will be – how did you describe them? – certain problematic events to deal with in the immediate future. The removal of impediments.’

  Saito had no illusion as to what those impediments were. Glovkonin’s ambitions to raise himself to the leadership of the Combine were his driving motive, and not for the first time, Saito wondered how the others on the committee could be ignorant of that fact. But then these were men of the most towering conceits that Saito had ever known. It was likely they knew full well of the Russian’s desires, but believed themselves to be untouchable.

  Saito wondered what might happen if he revealed what he suspected to the Italian, the Swiss and the American. What would they do? Would they be grateful?

  Would they release him?

  Across the distance between them, Glovkonin seemed to reach into Saito’s silence and pull those thoughts from his mind.

  ‘I want to remind you of something, Saito. I know the bargain you made with the Combine. The leverage you willingly gave them so that your daughter would live an untroubled life.’

  Rumiko’s face shimmered in Saito’s mind, as if he were seeing her through a veil of water. His throat tightened as two intense, opposed emotions gripped him. Fear for the girl’s life. And rage at the Russian’s casual threat to hurt her.

  ‘We approach a critical juncture,’ continued the voice on the sat-link, the man’s tone becoming silky, almost reasonable. ‘And I need your complete focus. So I want you to remember what you have to lose.’

  ‘I know,’ Saito said stiffly. His fingers tightened around the case of the phone. He felt powerless and furious, torn apart by the conflict, and desperate not to allow any of that to show in his voice. ‘I am fully committed to your service.’

  Glovkonin’s silence extended, becoming unbearable. Then the Russian spoke again.

  ‘I hope that is true, for her sake. It is far, far too late for you to grow a conscience.’ He paused again, then gave his next orders. ‘The transfer of the equipment is in three days. Everything must be in place by then.’

  ‘I am on my way,’ said Saito, but the words came from a ghost that spoke with his voice.

  *

  The team gathered around an electric heater in the middle of a gutted classroom. The derelict school didn’t have a single window that wasn’t broken or missing, so the wind cut right through the place, and after sunset it turned stone-cold.

  In a threadbare folding chair, Lucy leaned forward with her elbows on her knees, her attention fixed on Kara Wei. The hacker stood stiffly in front of a laptop screen as she conducted her briefing.

  ‘I’ve completed my analysis based on the software implants we now have in the hotel and the race operations networks, the telemetry from Marc’s spyPhone, and some additional data I gathered.’

  Kara’s diction became mechanical. One summer when they were kids, Lucy and her brother had made it to Disney World with their mom, and she remembered the Hall of Presidents there, the animatronics of old white guys moving stiffly as they uttered pre-recorded snippets of speech. Kara behaved like that, rooted to the spot, doling out chunks of information with all the warmth of a data download.

  Marc weighed in from where he stood, leaning against the far wall.

  ‘If we want to disrupt the Combine’s current operation, we need solid, actionable intelligence on their plans. That means names, dates, places . . . We need to know who they are talking to and what they’re using before we can throw a spanner in the works.’

  Kara nodded. ‘With that in mind, I’ve formulated an approach vector.’ She tapped a keypad and the laptop screen flicked to a grainy image of a Germanic-looking blonde in a grey trouser suit, holding a large digital tablet in the crook of her arm. ‘The device you see here is a hardened portable logistics and intelligence hub. Basically, it’s a secure hand-held databank used by Giovanni Da Silvio’s personal assistant to manage his day-to-day affairs. His whole life is on that thing.’

  ‘Sounds like my mother with her smartphone,’ offered Benjamin. The Frenchman scratched his chin with a thick finger. ‘She’d be lost without it.’

  ‘The top dogs running the OpTeams at MI6 use similar gear,’ said Marc. ‘Tough nut to crack.’

  ‘They call it a SecuredBook, or just “the book” for short,’ said Kara. ‘I have the model number and details of what software it uses. If we can access it, we have the keys to the kingdom.’

  ‘Steal it?’ In another lawn chair beside Lucy, Malte asked his question around a steaming plastic mug of black tea in his hand.

  ‘If the book goes missing, the Combine will know their operation is compromised, so that’s a no straight off,’ said Marc.

  ‘We couldn’t lift it even if we wanted to.’ Kara enlarged the image, zooming in on a tiny diamond-shaped tattoo on the blonde’s wrist. ‘See that? Beneath her skin is a radio frequency ID chip that pings the book every three seconds. If the book is more than two metres from the operator, an alert sounds. More than five metres, an alarm goes to Da Silvio’s security team. More than ten, and the book automatically frags its internal circuitry with an electrical charge. After that, its only use would be as a paperweight.’

  ‘The Italian brands his staff like cattle?’ Lucy scowled at the image on the screen. ‘Classy.’

  ‘There must be more than one person who has this RFID chip,’ said Benjamin. ‘Can’t we find another?’

  ‘We could,’ Kara agreed. ‘Da Silvio’s assistant Ms Willa here has her own flunky, a guy called Drake, and Drake has the chip, too. We’d need to abduct him and dig it out of his arm.’

  ‘Messy,’ noted Malte. ‘Noisy.’

  Marc nodded. ‘This has to be a zero-footprint operation. No traces, no unnecessary risks.’ He pointedly did not look in Lucy’s direction as he said the last.

  ‘In active mode, the book is shielded from wireless intrusion, as Marc found out the hard way,’ said Kara. ‘But it gobbles up power and it needs to be recharged roughly every seven hours. In the charging cradle, the book uploads all the data it has to a stand-alone, air-gapped server.’

  ‘So, the cradle is the weak link in the chain.’ Marc peered at the laptop screen. ‘We get to it when the book is offline, in charge mode. We mirror the download. Job done.’

  ‘There is always one device in the cradle being recharged, and one in Willa’s personal custody,’ said Kara. ‘My information suggests that the cradle is in the office of the penthouse suite at the Marine Luxe.’

  ‘Break into the most secure floor of Da Silvio’s hotel, copy the files, and extract without detection.’ Lucy ticked off the actions on her fingers. ‘I gotta admit, that kind of op isn’t this crowd’s specialty. We’re usually a little more on the . . . ah . . . kinetic side.’

  Malte let a breath out through his lips, making a soft explosion sound.

  Benjamin sat back in his chair, the plastic creaking under his weight.

  ‘Any other options?’

  ‘Yes,’ noted Kara, ‘which have progressively lower degrees of success, or are beyond our means with the resources at our disposal.’

  Marc pushed off the wall and crossed to stand before them.

  ‘Okay. This is the way we’re going. Prep your gear, then get some rest. We’ll brief individually on mission-specific tasks.’

  ‘We’re doing it tonight?’ Lucy cocked her head.

  ‘No time like the present,’ said Marc. ‘If it goes well, we’ll be back here by sunrise tomorrow with the take, and we can figure out our next move from there.’ He paused. ‘Any other questions?’

  No one said anything, and he dismissed the others with a nod. Lucy followed Malte and Benjamin to the door, but she hesitated on the threshold. Marc gave Kara a searching look.

  ‘What?’ said the hacker.

  ‘The telemetry you got from me bouncing an attack off the book, back at the hotel. There’s no way that would get you all the intel you have on the device.’

  He folded his arms, and Lucy waited, wanting to see how this played out.

  ‘I told you, I gathered additional data.’

  Kara turned away. She didn’t want to have this conversation.

  ‘You’re going to have to do better than that,’ he replied.

  Kara gave a frustrated hiss, a noise like a pissed-off cat.

  ‘It’s better you don’t know the full details. I acquired information from some of my trusted sources. It is genuine, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

  ‘What sources?’ Lucy demanded. ‘Your nasty little troublemaker pals down on the dark side?’

  ‘Yes, exactly.’ Kara didn’t hesitate. ‘Cyber-criminals. Digital radicals. If you have a problem with that, then too bad. We don’t have the luxury of dealing with the white hats anymore, Lucy – as if there even is such a thing.’

  ‘What did you give them in return?’ Marc said firmly.

  ‘I made some things go away and I made some other things reappear.’ The hacker nodded at her laptop. ‘The ends justify the means. A few mid-level lowlifes get what they want and we get a way into the Combine’s files. I call that a reasonable trade.’ She shot Marc a look. ‘Or would you rather we wing it, like you did today?’