By the time they were on the second – or maybe third – bottle of champagne, Sunny had come around to unloading all the gripes she had about the whole damned thing.

  ‘Honestly, babe, I’m starting to hate it here,’ she said. ‘Wish I could take a break, but we’re in for this race and then two more events, New York and the final in San Diego.’ Sunny shook her head. ‘No one takes me seriously ’cause I’m a woman. These mob guys treat the gig like a combo meat-market and booze-up. And don’t get me started on the bloody paparazzi! I can’t even piss without some dickhead trying to jam a camera in the dunny.’ She took a breath. ‘I’d rather be on a beach in the Maldives, but I can’t even kite off for the weekend.’

  Lucy and Grace exchanged looks.

  ‘How’d you like us to make that happen for you?’ Lucy put down her glass and smiled. ‘If you’re serious.’

  ‘I’d love it!’ But then Sunny made a face as she caught up to the reality of what that would mean. ‘I can’t. The manager can’t leave the team.’

  ‘Grace can cover that.’

  The other woman picked up Sunny’s discarded hat and glasses. She put them on, and then arranged herself on the couch in exactly the same pose that Sunny had been in all afternoon.

  ‘Have fun,’ said Grace, and her voice became fluid, shifting into a near-perfect impersonation of Sunny’s. ‘I’m gonna chill.’

  ‘Holy shit.’

  It was like looking in a mirror. The woman’s mimicry was amazing, and if Sunny was honest, quite unsettling.

  ‘Holy shit,’ imitated Grace. ‘You ever read that story, babe? The Prince and the Pauper? We can do that.’ Then she leaned in, and Sunny blinked. ‘You find a little getaway . . . Just you and Shayla, spend some quality time together, yeah?’

  ‘How did you . . .?’ Sunny stopped the question halfway, and once again she looked down and found Shayla on the dockside. Thinking about her made Sunny smile. After a moment, she gave Lucy a level look. ‘Say I agree – what do you get out of it?’

  ‘We need a cover for a little while,’ Lucy told her. ‘We’re gonna mess with Giovanni Da Silvio. He’s up to some shady shit, and we can’t get to him without being inside the circus. Will you help us?’

  Sunny thought about how small Da Silvio had made her feel, and her smile widened.

  ‘Tell me what you need.’

  *

  Marc stared into the middle distance, out through the 4 × 4’s tinted windscreen and across the lights of the city, brooding on what Glovkonin’s assassin had given him.

  As much as he knew he should be keeping an eye on Lucy and Grace, he couldn’t stop himself from drifting back to that day in Belgium. It had been Marc’s choice to follow up on Saito’s information, Marc’s choice to force Lucy into helping him chase down the virus weapon and the men who had created it. Lucy had almost died because of the decisions he had made, exposed to a dose of weaponised Marburg that could have proven fatal.

  But that had been the stone hitting the water, the first of the ripples. The effects didn’t stop there. Assim Kader, the bright Saudi hacker whom Marc had treated like a little brother, was dead. So was Ari Silber, the team’s imperturbable veteran pilot. Rubicon itself was in ruins, and Ekko Solomon himself had almost died into the bargain.

  None of that might be true if Marc had made a different choice in Brussels. He had only seen the short game, the most immediate outcome. He saw two moves ahead, but Glovkonin’s game was five . . . no, ten moves past that.

  I’m out of my depth. He felt cold, sickly dread coiling in his belly. I have always been out of my depth. If I get it wrong again, it’s the end of everything.

  Marc’s breath came fast, and his heart pounded. He had sat still too long, and allowed the fear to catch up to him.

  The trill of his smartphone broke through the dark reverie and vibrated against him. He pulled the device, slipping out of the vehicle. From the driver’s seat, Malte shot him an odd look, but he ignored it and walked away to the edge of the dock.

  ‘Yeah?’ Marc pressed the phone to his ear.

  ‘We are ready to depart.’ Ekko Solomon’s level tones rumbled across the distance. ‘Henri and Benjamin have prepared legends and equipment for us. We will pick up our flight in Stavropol.’

  ‘Right.’ Marc took that in. ‘What do you need from us?’

  ‘I hope we require no aid from you,’ Solomon went on. ‘But I would ask that you have Kara remain on standby, should we need some technical assistance.’

  ‘I’ll make sure she’s available.’

  Solomon was perceptive, and he picked up on the tension in Marc’s tone despite his best attempts to mask it.

  ‘You are troubled.’

  ‘Is it that obvious?’ Marc sighed.

  It didn’t take much for Solomon to intuit the root cause.

  ‘You spoke with Saito.’

  ‘He has plenty to say,’ admitted Marc. ‘He told me about what Glovkonin did. Manipulating us.’

  ‘Yes.’ He could almost hear the change in Solomon’s expression. ‘We have all been prey to our better natures.’

  ‘We can’t afford to be wrong this time,’ Marc told him. ‘We’re burning through our luck faster than our money . . . and I’m responsible.’

  In the background of the call, he heard the soft mutter of Benjamin Harun’s voice, as the Frenchman said something to Solomon, summoning him away.

  ‘If we had the time, I would tell you of all I am responsible for,’ said Solomon, with the weight of the world in his reply. ‘The decisions I have made that I regret. But we cannot change who we are, my friend, not at the core of our selves. We can only strive to make the just choice, when the moment is upon us.’

  ‘Easier said than done,’ Marc noted, with feeling.

  ‘Oh yes,’ agreed Solomon. ‘But if it was easy, it would not be worth it.’ He let that lie for a moment, then he was back on mission. ‘We will be in Austria tomorrow. The girl is there.’

  Marc considered that for a moment, wondering what kind of person Saito’s daughter would be. Did she even know what her father was?

  ‘You have a plan for extraction?’

  ‘We have options,’ replied Solomon. ‘Calling it a plan would be . . . overly generous.’

  Despite the seriousness of the moment, Solomon’s words cut the tension and Marc couldn’t help but give a wry smile.

  ‘Yeah. I’m familiar with that.’

  ‘We will talk again when it is done,’ said the other man. ‘Trust in yourself, Mr Dane. Because I do.’

  ELEVEN

  It had rained earlier in the day, while Miki Kadohawa had been in her classes, but by the afternoon the clouds had parted and bright sunshine came to Vienna’s elegant streets. The honeyed light gilded the baroque buildings, and the view never failed to delight her. On days like this one, parts of the city resembled something from a dream, a perfect fairy-tale Europe conjured from the pages of the romance manga she loved to read as a child.

  She sat at the terrace of a cafe on the banks of the Donaukanal, soaking in the moment for a while, before turning back to the notebook before her. Wide glasses accented her oval face and expressive brown eyes, her short dark hair pulled back behind a polka-dotted Alice band. In her sensible skirt and blouse, she completed the picture of the bookish international student.

  The black iron clock across the way from the cafe told her she had a few minutes before her boyfriend arrived – in fact, she knew she would have more than that, because he was always late.

  She had made her peace with such behaviour, after all this time together, and decided to consider his behaviour as endearing rather than careless. Daichi always blamed it on his training schedule at the fencing academy, and she had learned to accept that.

  She liked the way Daichi made her feel like the centre of the universe. He could be mercurial and moody, but then that was part of his appeal. And she loved the idealistic notion that destiny had brought the two of them together – a pair of students who might have passed on the streets of their native Japan and never known it, finding each other half a world away in the heart of Europe.

  Smiling to herself, the young woman flipped through her notes, running a slender finger over a page of dense text. She had taken down much of the day’s lecture, assimilating the examples from contemporary maritime law and their cross-connection to transnational regulations. She was passionate about becoming a lawyer, and she envisioned a future for herself where she would be able to give back to the world. International law was a complex subject, but she excelled in understanding the minutiae of it, the lines of association and the possibilities they represented. She hoped to one day start a legal practice of her own, and help those who were lost in the gaps between nation states.

  That made her smile broaden all the more.

  Not a bad dream for an ordinary girl from Osaka, she told herself.

  ‘Sumimasen,’ said a low, rich voice.

  She looked up to find a black gentleman in a smart suit, his patrician face marred by the dark disc of an eyepatch. He propped himself up on a cane, and he appeared very fatigued. He gestured to one of the two empty chairs at her table and continued, asking if she would allow him to sit for a moment and take a breath. He had been walking for some time and he was tired.

  It would have been the height of rudeness to ignore him, and as all the other chairs nearby were taken, it would also have been cruel. The man’s impairment was clearly wearing on him.

  ‘Please do.’ She inclined her head and gestured at the chair.

  He bowed slightly and sat. The man spoke excellent Japanese and she felt compelled to compliment him.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘It is not often I have the opportunity to use it.’ Her attention wandered back to her notes, but before she could read any more, he carried on. ‘You are kind to take pity on me. I’m sure you want your solitude, I won’t take up too much of your time.’

  ‘Actually, I’m meeting someone for an early dinner.’

  ‘How nice.’ He nodded at the textbooks and papers spilling out across the table from her tote bag. ‘Pardon me for asking, you are a student at the Universität Wien? A law student?’

  ‘That’s right.’ She showed him one of the books. ‘I am learning the finer points of international law.’

  ‘You have an area of specialisation? I understand that is the usual thing.’

  She nodded, warming to her subject. ‘Immigration legality and displaced persons. So many unlucky people are failed by the system and they need help.’

  He returned the nod. ‘A noble pursuit. That was my fate once, when I was a boy. I found my way out of it. I could have used someone like you to help me back then.’ He signalled a server, who brought him an espresso. ‘I am being rude. I should introduce myself. My name is Ekko Solomon.’

  ‘And what brings you to Vienna, Mr Solomon?’

  Something in the back of her mind rang a wrong note – something about the way the man observed her – but she paid it no mind.

  ‘I am performing a service for a colleague. A task he cannot do himself.’

  ‘Oh.’ She patted her chest. ‘My friends call me Miki, by the way. Miki Kadohawa.’

  ‘Your mother’s name.’

  ‘Pardon me?’

  Solomon sipped his coffee thoughtfully. ‘You go by your mother’s maiden name, not by your father’s.’ He glanced away briefly, towards an unmarked van parked on the other side of the street. ‘And Miki . . . Short for Rumiko, yes?’

  Her skin prickled, and suddenly the delightful, dream-world Vienna melted away, replaced by something threatening and foreign. She drew her hands close to herself, tensing.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Forgive me. I have not been entirely honest with you, Rumiko.’ Solomon put down his cup. ‘I am here because your father sent me.’

  Her pleasant features tightened into a glower. ‘My father is dead.’

  ‘You know that is not so.’

  ‘I wish he was!’

  The retort came out in a hot shock. A little girl’s undimmed anger and a woman’s buried pain flashed through her, dredged up from the deep place where she had hidden them. Tears misted her vision and she wiped them away with the heel of her hand, determined not to give her father even that much of herself.

  With a shuddering breath, she regained her composure.

  ‘I want you to go. My boyfriend will be here soon. I will call for the police if I have to.’

  ‘I cannot leave, Rumiko. Not yet.’

  All those years ago, when her father had ruined her life, she had discovered a strength in herself she never knew she had, a steel beneath the willow. In that, she’d gained the courage to carry on and find a way forward, away from his disgrace. She had left the worst of her life behind, but now here sat this erudite stranger, and he was trying to drag her back to it.

  She leaned across the table, her voice dropping to a whisper.

  ‘Has he paid you to come here? What lies did he tell you?’ She didn’t wait for him to reply. ‘Let me explain what kind of man my father is!’

  She told the sad story, the words falling from her in a rush. The story of Rumiko Saito, not Miki Kadohawa. The story that she had never told to her friends at the university, not to Daichi, not to anyone.

  ‘My father was a policeman in Osaka. Highly placed, respected. Part of a special unit that investigated only the very worst criminals. The yakuza. The clans who trafficked in people and drugs.’ She bit out each word, blinking back the tears. ‘But he was corrupt. He angered someone powerful, and to pay him back, my mother was murdered.’ She forced herself to speak with robotic detachment, as if discussing some theoretical case for her classes. She knew if she allowed herself to go back to those memories, it would wreck her. ‘He fled to save himself.’

  She muffled a sigh into a napkin, her cheeks colouring, afraid that everyone around her would suddenly see what she really was – the daughter of a liar and a criminal.

  ‘I am so sorry, Rumiko,’ said Solomon, and she believed he meant it, for all that mattered.

  ‘Now you know who Hiroshi Saito is, you can leave and never come back.’ She jutted her chin. ‘I have a life here.’

  ‘But you do not have the truth,’ Solomon said gently. ‘Only pieces of it.’

  She wanted to shout at the man to go away, but now the wound from her past had been reopened, she couldn’t look away from it.

  ‘He was police,’ said Solomon. ‘He was part of a task force working against organised crime across the Pacific Rim. And your mother did perish because his investigations threatened certain criminal enterprises. But what you do not know is this – your father killed the people who murdered her. He was aided in this by a consortium of rich men, for whom the deaths of those yakuza was highly profitable. He agreed to do it – to be their weapon from then onwards. The price was your safety.’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Your father cares for you. That is the reason he stayed away. So you could have a life untouched by his mistakes. But you are touched by it, even if you do not know it.’ Solomon nodded to himself. ‘He told me this. I sit here before you today because of a choice he made to save my life.’ He sighed. ‘He is a flawed man who has done many questionable things. But he does love you, Rumiko. And he wants you to be free.’

  ‘I am free!’ she snapped, her strident tone drawing the attention of one of the servers. ‘And you are lying to me!’

  ‘Hello,’ said the server, in concisely polite German. ‘Is there a problem?’ He smiled without warmth, scanning the tables.

  ‘When you were a little girl,’ said Solomon, ‘in the summer months your father would take you to the Ferris wheel at Tempozan Harbour, and you would have ice cream.’

  It was as if he had reached into her mind and plucked the memory from the locked box of her past. Only her parents would have known of those outings. Shaken, she drifted in the recollection for a moment, evoking the emotion of it. The endless, unconditional love. How had she forgotten that?

  ‘Miss?’ The server’s tone grew terse. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I . . . I am fine,’ she replied in German.

  The server scowled and retreated.

  Solomon leaned closer. ‘Rumiko, please listen to me. We do not have much time. You are in danger. You must come with me. I am duty-bound to get you to a safe place.’

  ‘I . . . I can’t.’

  Her mind was in turmoil. She could barely make sense of any of it. And now this stranger wanted her to walk away from her life?

  She was still trying to sort through her conflicted thoughts when she saw a familiar face approaching.

  ‘Miki-chan?’ Daichi came to her as she rose and accepted her hug. ‘Darling, what’s the matter?’

  Daichi Ito was briskly handsome, with the sort of sporty flair that only a career athlete could exude, and he switched instantly into a territorial mode as he took in both the stranger and his girlfriend’s flushed complexion.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she told him, but Daichi wasn’t listening.

  He gave Solomon a wary look. ‘And who are you?’ He spoke in clipped, accented German, moving to position himself between the woman and the other man.

  ‘No one of consequence,’ said Solomon, as he rose to his feet, tucking a fold of euros under the base of his espresso cup. ‘Pardon my intrusion.’

  ‘I want to leave,’ she insisted, as the tears threatened again. ‘Now.’

  She stepped away, letting Daichi guide her.

  ‘Ah, miss? Your books?’

  Behind them, Solomon held out her tote. In her distress, she had almost left without it.

  Daichi snatched the bag from the man’s hand and he directed her away, pulling her close to him.

  *

  Grace leaned in to give exaggerated air kisses to the maître d’ at the entrance, and she laughed loudly at something he told her.