‘What kind of crisis?’

  ‘If your system has been infected by malware and you want to prevent it propagating. A life-threatening security issue. A cascade failure. There are many scenarios . . .’ He coughed again. ‘It is a high-level safety measure, designed to protect critical infrastructure systems.’

  Yerli talked about the device in positive terms, but Benjamin’s soldier mindset immediately sensed the potential for havoc with such technology.

  ‘How large a network does the interrupt affect?’

  ‘That depends on where it is placed,’ said Yerli, dabbing at his face with a dirty kerchief. His attention kept wandering back to the other survivors. ‘The specifications of the design stipulated that it would be used in Rubicon’s head office, yes?’

  He glanced at Delancort for confirmation.

  ‘Yes,’ lied Delancort.

  It was clear that no one at Altin Elma was aware that the Rubicon tower in Monaco had already been sold on to a new owner.

  ‘If it was going to Monaco, why ship it to the United States?’

  ‘For testing. We were told the analysis facility is in upstate New York . . .’ Yerli drifted off, once more looking towards his colleagues. ‘Please, would you excuse me? I need to check in on my team.’

  ‘Of course.’ Delancort waited until the man was out of earshot, then spoke again. ‘Merde. My skin crawls to think of what use the Combine could put that device to.’

  The police officer from the line came towards them, his hand raised.

  ‘I need you to move outside the perimeter.’ His English was halting but his manner firm, and his other hand resting on the butt of his holstered gun made it clear he would not take no for an answer. ‘This is now a criminal investigation.’

  He nodded towards another police car that had arrived, and the officers gathered next to it.

  ‘Does that mean this is arson?’ Benjamin threw out the leading question.

  ‘Witnesses saw men running from the building,’ said the policeman, as he ushered them back towards the line. ‘Shots were fired.’

  ‘Mon dieu.’

  Delancort feigned surprise, but a glance towards Benjamin told him that the other man had expected such a revelation.

  Outside the warning tape perimeter, they made their way back to the SUV. Benjamin’s gaze swept the faces of the onlookers, a few of whom were recording the conflagration with their cellphone cameras.

  ‘It has to be ALEPH,’ said Benjamin, quietly furious at the brutality of the act. ‘This is their method. Burn and kill. It’s how they cover their tracks.’

  The SUV’s rear passenger window dropped and Solomon leaned forward as Delancort relayed what they had learned. At length, the African gave a grave nod.

  ‘If we had been here a few hours earlier, it might have been us in there along with these people.’

  ‘We can’t remain here,’ said Delancort, with sudden impetus. ‘If ALEPH did this, they’ll be watching. They’ll want to be sure that they succeeded. If we stay, the police will have questions . . .’

  ‘Questions we don’t have time to answer,’ agreed Benjamin.

  He jumped into the driver’s seat and started the engine, scanning the crowd as Delancort climbed in behind him.

  For an instant, he thought he saw a hard-faced woman in the black military-style jackets favoured by the operatives of the Russian PMC – but then the bystanders moved and she disappeared among them.

  ‘Where to?’ he asked.

  ‘Into the city,’ said Solomon. ‘Rubicon had a safe house – we may still be able to make use of it.’

  ‘Understood.’

  Benjamin threw the SUV into gear and sped away, retracing their route back out of the area.

  He didn’t see the woman in the dark jacket watching them go, tracking the vehicle’s departure with a tactical camera concealed in the palm of her hand.

  SIXTEEN

  Lucy marched to the 4 × 4 parked near the overgrown trees, and the evening air prickled on her bare arms. She carried a gear case, hauling it up to put the container into the back of the vehicle.

  It took more effort than she’d expected, and she wobbled as the weight of the thing overwhelmed her. With a terse grunt, she shoved the case onto the UAZ’s cargo deck and then rested against the flank of the vehicle, panting hard.

  She didn’t want any of the others to see her like this, showing weakness. Lucy did her best to make it appear as if her scarred lungs were fully healed, but she would always be, at best, 70 per cent of the soldier she was before – and while that was still pretty damned good, it wasn’t enough for Lucy Keyes.

  In the powerboat’s cockpit, when the water filled her mouth and she was seconds from drowning, she had blamed herself.

  I can’t afford to be fragile. There’s too much at stake.

  She looked back at the derelict school, where the Brit helped Kara and Malte tear down the remaining kit so they could get the hell out of Dodge. They thought she was fearless, but that wasn’t true. The one thing that truly terrified her was failing her team-mates.

  A twig snapped and Lucy reacted with speed, pivoting to draw her sidearm. A figure moved out of the trees, picking its way carefully across the weed-choked playground.

  ‘I know you wanna shoot me,’ said Grace, as she stepped into the spill of weak light. ‘Could we postpone it? I’m beat.’

  Lucy put up her pistol but she didn’t holster it. She scanned the area, disturbed by the fact that Grace had managed to get this close before she noticed her.

  Note to self, don’t get distracted.

  Grace put her hands on her hips. ‘I didn’t bring any friends, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  She’d ditched her Sunny Wehmeyer disguise somewhere for threadbare joggers and a hoodie.

  Lucy weighed her reply. ‘After it went to shit, I figured we’d seen the last of you. I mean, self-preservation is your thing, right?’

  ‘Yeah . . .’ Grace replied, with a sniff. ‘Not gonna lie, the thought did cross my mind. But I have what they call a transactional attitude to life, so . . .’

  ‘You figured you’d have a better chance getting out of here with us, than without.’

  ‘There it is.’ She sighed. ‘As long as that Russian prick is still breathing, I’m not safe. I’m in this ’til it’s over.’ She looked Lucy up and down. ‘But enough about my day. You look like shit, sis. I miss a fight?’

  ‘Something like that.’ At length, she holstered her gun, and beckoned Grace to follow. ‘C’mon.’

  Inside the tumbledown school, Lucy heard a voice speaking over an open channel as they approached the gutted music room.

  ‘Where is the helicopter now?’ Solomon’s sombre tones were unmistakable as they carried down the corridor.

  Inside, Kara, Marc and Malte sat around a Rubicon-issue spyPhone and a battery lantern.

  ‘I put it down in a clearing a few miles away,’ said Marc. ‘It’s too risky to use it again.’

  ‘I’ve been monitoring local police radio bands,’ added Kara. ‘They’ve mobilised a surprising amount of men for a stolen helicopter, so it’s only a matter of time before someone finds it.’

  She worked as she talked, her candy-coloured nails whispering over her laptop keyboard.

  ‘Look what I found,’ Lucy broke in, from the collapsed doorway.

  Grace gave them a cheery wave. ‘Miss me?’

  ‘She didn’t sell us out?’ Marc raised an eyebrow. ‘Huh.’

  Malte held out his hand with an expectant look on his face. After a long moment, the Brit sighed and passed the other man a crumpled ten-euro note.

  Lucy pitched her voice towards the smartphone on the table.

  ‘How did it go at your end?’

  ‘Not well,’ rumbled Solomon. ‘We will get to that in a moment. Were you able to interdict the second unit?’

  All eyes turned to Marc.

  ‘No. We got close, but we had to disengage surveillance of the transfer. I made the call.’

  ‘Unfortunate.’

  ‘They broke off to come for me,’ Lucy cut in. ‘I’d be dead if they hadn’t.’

  ‘The correct call, then.’ She could almost hear Solomon nodding. ‘What were you able to learn about the device?’

  ‘Oh, that’s my cue.’ Kara’s head jerked up from her screen. ‘Well . . . uh . . . a lot of unpleasant things.’ She spun her screen around so the rest of them could see it. ‘Sir, if you check your secured email link, you’ll find some images mirrored from my stack . . .’

  Lucy moved closer to get a better look at the stills on Kara’s monitor, shots taken from a drone’s perspective. She saw an aircraft hangar interior, and a team of men moving a block of unfamiliar hardware on a wheeled dolly.

  ‘That’s the thing?’

  ‘Recognise it?’

  She gave a Kara a glance. ‘Should I?’

  ‘Yes.’ The hacker’s cat-like expression soured. ‘As much as I hate to dredge up bad memories, if you go back to what happened in Korea . . .’ She paused, trying to find the best way to carry on. ‘Remember the Antonov? A device like this was installed on board.’

  Lucy couldn’t stop herself from scowling. The incident in Seoul was still a sore point for her – the moment when her friendship with Kara broke under the revelation that the other woman had been lying to her for years about who she really was. Kara Wei had been born Wong Fei Song, a criminal with a mile-long arrest record – and worse, she had been part of the notorious Ghost5 hacker group. In the end, Kara had chosen the right side, but too late to mend the damage between the two women.

  A lot had happened since then, and maybe they were in a better place now, but part of Lucy would not forgive that betrayal.

  She pushed that memory away and concentrated on what mattered in the moment.

  ‘I remember it. Big Russki cargo plane. Ghost5 used it as their mobile op-centre. It blew up on the runway.’

  Kara shook her head. ‘More accurate to say, it self-destructed. It had a fail safe to destroy the servers and data on board. “Better off TED”, we called it. A Transient Electromagnetic Device, powered by an explosive trigger.’ She tapped the object on the screen. ‘That is its bigger, uglier brother.’

  ‘An EMP.’ Marc cursed under his breath. ‘Well, that is a show-stopper.’

  ‘I estimate this at four times the size of the one from the Antonov,’ continued Kara. ‘It’s definitely the same design. Ghost5 acquired their TED from a research facility operated by the Russian air force.’

  ‘And this one was hand-delivered by a Blackjack bomber, so . . .’ Marc let that hang. ‘We have a genuine weapon of mass destruction in play.’

  ‘What does it do?’ said Grace, cocking her head as she peered at the screen.

  ‘It kills anything with an unshielded electronic circuit,’ Lucy said flatly. ‘Sends you back to the Stone Age at the push of a button.’

  Solomon cleared his throat. ‘Can you estimate the device’s effect from its size?’

  Kara sucked in a breath through her teeth. ‘A hundred square city blocks, maybe more? Depending on where it is activated and what it knocks out, you could conceivably cause a domino effect. Failures across dozens of networks and power grids. In the right place, you could black out a major city, maybe even a small country.’

  ‘And this thing is on its way to New York,’ said Marc. ‘I pulled the flight log from the Triple-Seven that took off from Sochi. It’ll be landing in the States in a few hours.’

  Heat rose in Lucy’s cheeks and she sat on one of the classroom’s broken desks and pictured her mother’s face.

  What would happen if I called her right now and told her to take off out of town? Would she listen to the daughter who disappointed her, the woman she believes is a criminal?

  A sudden rush of emotion made her eyes prickle, and Lucy turned away, taking a shaky breath.

  ‘It’s not like a nuclear weapon,’ said Kara. ‘It won’t be picked up by radiation detectors or explosive sniffers at the border. The TED’s trigger is a binary fluid compound. Both chemical components are inert and harmless when separated, but highly explosive when combined.’

  ‘Your analysis corresponds with the information we have from Altin Elma.’ Solomon gave them a terse summary of what he and the others had learned in Istanbul. ‘The other device, this so-called interrupt, is most likely already in the United States. All roads appear to lead to New York City.’

  ‘Now we know where we have to go.’ Marc turned to Kara, but the hacker raised a hand before he could say more.

  ‘Already working on it. Give me twenty to get some travel options in place.’

  Home.

  The notion of going back to the place where she had grown up buzzed in Lucy’s thoughts, threatening to stir up a storm of powerful emotions. Since the incident that had seen her dishonourably discharged from the US Army, Lucy had felt like an exile from her own nation – a harsh reality affirmed by the fact that she was technically still a federal fugitive. It took work for her to put that aside and concentrate on the facts.

  It’s just another mission. Doesn’t matter where.

  She found Marc watching her, and knew he sensed her misgivings. Before he could speak, she threw out a question to forestall any inquiries about her state of mind.

  ‘What about Glovkonin? He hopped a jet, so where’s he at now?’

  ‘G-Kor’s Gulfstream filed a flight plan to Geneva, Switzerland,’ noted Kara.

  ‘Rutger Bremmens’s backyard,’ Lucy replied. ‘So odds are, he’s gone to see the Combine’s banker.’

  ‘Likely,’ said Malte.

  ‘Do we let that happen, or do we stay on him?’

  ‘Fair point,’ said Marc, with a nod. ‘If the Combine are close to kicking off something big, we can’t afford to lose track of the top players.’

  He gave Lucy a searching look, silently offering her the choice to drop out of the New York operation.

  But then Solomon closed that door. ‘We can monitor Glovkonin’s movements from here,’ he said. ‘The resources at our current location should prove sufficient.’

  ‘Copy that,’ said Lucy, making her choice.

  ‘He’s not coming back here, that’s for damn sure,’ muttered Grace.

  Marc eyed her. ‘What makes you so certain?’

  ‘I guess you haven’t seen the local news?’ She nodded at Kara. ‘What nerd-girl said about the Sochi cops before – they’re not just looking for a chopper, they’re looking for Glovkonin’s buddy, the Italian.’ Grace explained that reports about the ‘fatal collision’ during the powerboat race had been overshadowed by an unconfirmed rumour that Giovanni Da Silvio had gone missing. ‘Do I have to draw you a picture? The Italian ghosts at the same time the Russian flies off to a country with a non-extradition treaty? Da Silvio is either on that plane with Glovkonin—’

  ‘Or he’s been taken out of play,’ concluded Lucy. ‘Someone’s making moves.’

  ‘Either way, it changes nothing for us. We stay on task,’ said Marc, getting to his feet. ‘Solomon, Benjamin and Henri keep a low profile in the safe house, the rest of us go to New York under separate covers and attempt to intercept the devices before they’re deployed.’

  ‘The Big Apple’s a big town,’ said Grace. ‘How do we find those needles in that haystack?’

  ‘Saito,’ said Solomon. ‘I made good on our agreement. He will repay the favour.’

  *

  The view from the suite on the upper floors of the Hotel President Wilson was magnificent, catching the reflection of the white and orange lights from the city and the boats bobbing on the choppy waters over Lake Geneva.

  In the distance, the mountain peaks were fading into the coming night, and on the balcony, Glovkonin took a deep lungful of the chill air. With the sun long set, the bitter nor’easterly wind the Swiss called the Bise made itself known, blowing in from Siberia to drag the temperature below zero.

  He savoured the burn through his chest as if it were a shot of fine vodka. He wore only a pair of silk boxer shorts beneath his dressing gown, his feet bare on the stone tiles of the suite’s terrace. His breath left his lips in a cloud of vapour as he exhaled.

  Cold was a familiar companion. The Russian thought of it as one might consider a trusted friend, a reliable constant in an otherwise unpredictable life. Cold kept him grounded. It reminded him of where he had come from. He closed his eyes, letting the icy breeze off the lake caress him.

  In the past, he had hated it. The numbing, wintry chill that grew in his extremities. The talons of invisible ice that gripped his chest, squeezing. The cold had tried to kill him more times than any other enemy Pytor Glovkonin had faced, but he had beaten it. He had endured.

  No, more than that. It tempered me. Made me stronger.

  Once, a malnourished boy from an inconsequential town in the Soviet Union had struggled to survive the poverty he had been born into. That boy knew only hunger and anger, the last fuelled by the first. A warm hearth and a full belly were unknown to him. Perhaps that boy would have died there, if he had not possessed the will to survive.

  When the poor boy came to understand that the corruption and greed of others were the roots of his troubles, he walked out into the cold, embracing it. On the frozen wastes, he lied about his age so he could join the Red Army to escape his fate. But the cold found him there as well, the hunger and the anger close behind. As the boy became the man, it tried to murder him, in storms on the frozen steppes and bitter nights atop mountain passes in Afghanistan. He endured and he learned.

  It was not the cold that taught him to be ruthless. It revealed a quality already in him. The cold stripped away pretence and doubt. It gave him insight into himself, and it made him valuable to men who needed soldiers devoid of pity. That brought him influence, wealth, and eventually, control of his destiny.

  That past was behind him, but its lessons were always close at hand. Glovkonin opened his eyes, his gaze finding the streets below, where tourists and locals alike suffered through the chill in heavy coats.