‘I’m about to puke,’ countered Lucy. Grace had done her shape-shifter thing again, changing her manner to fit the situation, becoming a woman that Cassidy would want to keep alive as opposed to the dangerous, unpredictable opportunist she really was. ‘She’ll gut you in your sleep, you can count on it.’

  ‘I’m aware of her quirks.’ Cassidy smiled. ‘My long-standing contacts within the Central Intelligence Agency were happy to turn over the details of asset REGAL, as your friend here was formerly known. I pride myself on knowing good material when I see it . . . Grace understands the realities at play in this situation. The Russki’s boy Andre went looking for her when he figured out that Jap assassin grew a conscience. But this young lady is delightfully unburdened by that kinda thing.’

  Lucy shifted, moving to make sure her legs wouldn’t go numb resting too long in a stress position. Watching for a moment to make a move, she kept up the conversation.

  ‘She’s messed up in the head.’ For as long as Cassidy ran his mouth, they were still breathing, and men like him loved to hear the sound of their own voices. ‘Shit. Maybe you all are. The cruelty is the point, right?’

  Cassidy scowled at the accusation. Grace wasn’t the only one who knew how to push someone’s buttons. The older man didn’t like the inference that he was involved in the Combine’s scheme for less than noble reasons. He had a personal narrative that cast him as a hero, doing what must be done in order to save a wounded nation, and suggesting otherwise raised his ire.

  ‘Why is it your kind think you’re on the right side of history? You’re wrong. You’re a drag on the rest of us, with your bleeding heart bullshit!’ Cassidy spat again, angrily this time. ‘You and that African, getting in the way . . . Well, let me tell you, he’s gonna be dead for real this time, you can take that to the bank.’

  ‘Solomon’s a ghost,’ said Marc, steel beneath the words. ‘You’re not going to get him.’

  ‘I beg to differ.’ Cassidy made an exaggerated show of looking at the big, expensive watch on his wrist. ‘Right now he’s either dead in some Istanbul shithole or wishin’ he was.’ He chuckled once more. ‘The Russki, he’s got himself a serious hate on for that fella, yes sir. Sent ALEPH’s shooters in there to get him.’

  Against the cold and the rain, a new heat burned across Lucy’s face as Cassidy’s words hit home. It was possible that Grace’s betrayal had not just ensnared Lucy, Marc and Malte, but she could also have given up Solomon and the others in Turkey. The brutal possibility of losing the man who had been a surrogate father to her was hard to take.

  As they always did, Lucy’s fears crystallised into fury and she glared at the man in the chair.

  ‘This whole damn game of yours is a piece of shit, you dumb redneck.’ Cassidy reacted in disgust at her snarled retort, and she carried on before he could respond, jerking her head in the direction of the darkened island. ‘You know what that is? That’s N-Y-fucking-C. World’s biggest collection of people who take no shit and give no fucks. You reckon a power cut will knock it down? We’ve had worse.’ She sucked her teeth in mockery. ‘New York don’t play. Hicks like you never get that.’

  Cassidy’s face darkened, turning as thunderous as the skies overhead.

  ‘You think so?’ He growled the words. ‘Let me tell you what you don’t get, girl. While you and everyone infesting that cesspool you call home strut around and make noise, the adults are running the show!’ He snapped his fingers and one of his men brought him a silver tablet computer, which Cassidy flicked around contemptuously. ‘Understand what this is?’ He held it up so they could see the screen.

  Lucy recognised a stock market track, stark lines against the black backdrop like the ones that would turn up in stern financial reports on cable news. She wasn’t an expert in that kind of thing by any stretch, but anyone could see that the graph’s leading point was in free fall, plummeting endlessly downwards.

  ‘That, girl, is the dollar bill dropping off a cliff.’ Cassidy snorted and toyed with his cigar. ‘Like a good soldier fallin’ on his sword, Ol’ Bill is gonna take one for the team.’ He waved in the direction of the blacked-out city. ‘This is the last part of something we’ve been planning for years. Thousands of operations, big and small. A push here, a pull there, makin’ ready for a catastrophic financial collapse.’ He sat back and sucked on the cigar. ‘I’m already richer than shit, but when the smoke clears, I’m gonna make trillions from currency buys – me and my associates. Why, God himself will be a pauper before the Combine, when all is said and done. We will own the debt of the world.’

  ‘You’re greedy and deluded,’ said Marc, with a sneer. ‘There are backups. Fail safes. You can’t tank the whole US economy with one power cut, no matter how many banks or stock exchanges you knock out.’

  ‘You people never see the big picture,’ countered Cassidy. ‘What is it your boss was always sayin’? Small actions with large consequences, right? Let me tell you, my organisation took a leaf outta that book. The plan you know about isn’t the only one in play. You have no idea.’ He glanced at the stub of his cigar, and regretfully flicked it over the side of the boat. ‘You’re right on the money about those emergency backups, son. But oh no . . .’ He made a mock-scared face. ‘They don’t appear to be kickin’ in! Almost as if we dealt with that already.’

  ‘The interrupt . . .’ Marc stared at the deck, thinking it through. ‘The other part of the equipment – that’s what it was for . . .’

  ‘Keep goin’, son, let’s see if you can get there on your own.’

  Cassidy signalled and one of his men brought him a tumbler of bourbon.

  ‘Titanpointe,’ said Marc, with a sudden flash of understanding.

  The name ran a vague bell with Lucy – something to do with a National Security Agency operation – but she couldn’t place it. Marc was clearly right, because the moment he said it, Cassidy gave him an indulgent nod.

  ‘You’re sharper than you look,’ he smirked.

  ‘How did you get it in there?’ Marc challenged Cassidy for the answer.

  ‘Well, I could tell you my boys here did some clandestine black helicopter raid, but honestly?’ His smirk widened into the shit-eating grin of a man who believed he was the winner. ‘That’d be a lie. Human weakness is the best key for any lock. You know how hard it is to get promoted in the NSA? My organisation helped facilitate a vacancy in exchange for some unrestricted access.’

  ‘Shit.’ Marc looked grim. He stared out towards the dark water.

  ‘Indeed.’ Cassidy finished his drink and handed off the empty glass, before rising to his feet. He pulled his pea coat closed. ‘You’ll forgive me, but I’m a mite cold now, so I’m goin’ to retire for the evening and discuss Miss Grace’s future here with our group.’

  ‘What do we do with these three?’ said the man with the Uzi.

  ‘Why, Mr Bragg, I would imagine that is obvious.’ Cassidy nodded towards the man with the scar. ‘You and Mr Weldon are gonna take our guests below decks.’ All his false bonhomie vanished in a flash. ‘Kill them and put ’em in the chiller. We’ll mail their corpses to Glovkonin when we’re done here.’

  Lucy stiffened as the gunmen came in to grab them, and she caught sight of Grace leaning in to speak to Cassidy.

  ‘Can I do it? I gotta admit, I’ve been thinking about offing them since forever.’

  Malte glanced in Marc’s direction.

  ‘Will you tell her? Or should I?’

  Lucy frowned, sensing a joke she wasn’t getting. She remembered Marc and Malte talking to Kara before they left Queens, and now she wondered, did they set something up without me knowing?

  When Marc looked back at Cassidy, there was a cold glitter in his eyes, as icy as the driving rain.

  ‘Thing about scorpions,’ he began, ‘you know they’re going to sting you sooner or later. It’s in their nature, yeah?’ He turned his attention to Grace. ‘We knew you were going to double-cross us. And knowing what’s coming, that’s what keeps you alive. That’s how you survive.’

  From the corner of her vision, Lucy saw a shadow moving on the water, and the flicker of dim lights. She kept her eyes straight ahead, betraying nothing.

  Grace laughed out loud. ‘You’re not going to survive this, Dane.’

  ‘I’ll take that bet,’ he said.

  From out of the storm haze, a shift in the wind brought the rumble of approaching engines to the rain-lashed sun deck, and without warning the stern of the yacht was flooded with the brilliant white glow of a searchlight.

  ‘This is the United States Coast Guard,’ bellowed a voice across an amplified PA speaker. ‘Stand to and prepare to be boarded!’

  NINETEEN

  The light was so powerful that it stung Lucy’s eyes like acid, and she cried out in pain, bringing up her arm to shield herself.

  Long ago on a live-fire exercise, she had been subjected to the effects of a flashbang grenade as part of a ‘hardening’ experience designed to acclimatise her to the sense-deadening properties of the weapon, and getting a million-candlepower spotlight in the face brought that flooding back.

  She cursed through the pain and the temporary blindness, letting her other senses take over. Her one advantage was that everyone else on the yacht’s sun deck would be in the same situation, but they wouldn’t be equipped to deal with it like her.

  Lucy fixed in her mind’s eye where that asshole with the Uzi had been standing, and she bolted up from her crouch, throwing herself in the right direction. Her wrists were secured together in front of her, so she made fists and pushed them, double-barrelled, into the place where she thought Bragg would be.

  She was off by a few degrees and the punch missed. Instead, she collided bodily with the gunman, and he panicked under the sudden, unexpected attack.

  Lucy heard him yell as he floundered backwards, and then the Micro Uzi discharged in a fizzing, ripping whine of bullets as he mashed the trigger. She dived for the deck, bouncing off and behind an emergency life raft case. Bragg stumbled and went over the edge of the sun deck with a yell. She heard him hit the water with a heavy splash.

  The wildfire burst from the sub-machine gun must have clipped the hull of the Coast Guard ship, because in the next second there was a shout from the direction of the other vessel.

  ‘Taking fire!’

  The response was exactly what she’d expected.

  ‘Weapons free!’ barked the voice over the PA, and before the echo of the command faded, sharpshooters on the ship were opening up.

  Lucy shrank into her meagre cover as the firing began in earnest. Cassidy’s men shot back, and the wet air was filled with shrieking rounds crossing back and forth over the water. Her vision was clearing, but blurred with purple after-images seared into her retinas. She saw one man go down with a torso hit, then a second take one in the leg and crumple.

  Feeling her way down to her boot, Lucy found the length of flexible saw concealed in its heel loop and tore it out, working the cutter quickly through her wrist ties.

  Chancing another look, she spotted Grace as the other woman grabbed the startled Cassidy by the folds of his bulky coat. The man was slow and out of shape, and he couldn’t stop her from pivoting him right into the line of fire, giving her cover as she moved away from the yacht’s open stern. Lucy saw the sudden flush of abject terror as he realised the woman was using him as her meat-shield.

  Cassidy had reflexively drawn a weapon of his own in the chaos of the Coast Guard’s arrival – some shiny nickel-plated replica of a Wild West-era Colt Peacemaker. A smarter man, someone in the habit of following rules other than his own, might have left the gun in its holster in this situation. Cassidy wasn’t that man, waving the weapon around impotently, dazzled by the searchlight beam.

  One of the Coast Guard shooters saw the gun, and Cassidy gave a sudden, twitching jerk, falling against Grace as a bloom of wet crimson appeared on his belly. She pushed him away before they could get entangled, and fled through the open glass doors into the main deck.

  Lucy knew that the smart play was to stay exactly where she was, keep her head down until the shooting stopped, then surrender to the Coasties when they boarded and take it from there. But the thought of letting Grace bury the knife in their backs again, and then get free and clear, was like fire in her veins.

  Her instinct about the woman had been right from the start, and if she allowed Grace to escape now, Lucy would not be able to forgive herself.

  The ties around her wrists gave way and as she threw them aside, the spotlight from the Coast Guard boat shifted as the other vessel moved closer. Lucy used the moment and burst out from behind the cover of the lifeboat container. She sprinted past Cassidy, where the man’s cooling corpse lay in an ugly heap on the rain-slick deck, following Grace deeper into the yacht’s interior.

  *

  Marc ducked away from the glare of blinding white, into the sharp-edged shadows cast by a dinghy mounted off the deck. Still, it felt like being at ground zero for a nuclear detonation, as the wash of searing light hit him as a physical blow. It was day and night compared to moments earlier in the dimness of the rainstorm, and his dark-adapted eyes ached in their sockets.

  Blinking away the after-images, he cast around, searching for Lucy or Malte, but saw only vague, undefined shapes. Then there was a sudden movement, resolving into one of Cassidy’s thugs coming after him. Weldon, the one with the scar that made everything he said come out in a jeer.

  The gunman had a pained expression on his face and a heavy Kimber pistol in his hand, the weapon extended out at the end of his arm as he followed Marc into the shadows.

  Mistake, thought Marc.

  Weldon’s advance showed he was someone who relied more on the weapon than his ability with it to get what he wanted. Holding the gun out at arm’s length was a street thug’s move, not the mark of someone properly skilled in wielding a firearm.

  Back in Fort Monckton during his MI6 training, Marc had had small arms lessons barked at him by SAS instructors who were deeply aggrieved at having to teach novice spooks like him – but what they taught had stuck, including the warning to always keep your gun close, where only you could control it.

  Half-dazzled by the searchlight, Weldon let his weapon lead him, and Marc took advantage of his error. He rocked forward, slipping inside the man’s guard, and threw a punch that landed in Weldon’s chest.

  The gunman swore and fired, the loud bang of the Kimber’s discharge sounding over Marc’s shoulder, the round tearing a hole in the dinghy. Marc swung again and Weldon ducked, but the gunman overcompensated and slipped on the wet deck.

  Marc seized the opportunity and shot a kick at Weldon’s ankle to send him down, but he didn’t account for the motion of the yacht as the vessel sank into a trough between waves. The blow connected, but Marc’s balance was gone. He felt his right leg bend underneath him and he crashed backwards into the side of the dinghy, striking his head on the gunwale.

  ‘Fucker,’ snarled Weldon, and he came up again, aiming the pistol at a point right between Marc’s eyes.

  *

  ‘Quit running, Grace!’ Lucy shouted the words down the corridor before her. ‘You’ll only die tired!’

  The main deck dining area of Cassidy’s yacht led into a central walkway with doors leading off to staterooms. The corridor floors – not just the one beneath her feet, but those below that – were made from some kind of turquoise tempered glass that let you look straight down to the levels below.

  Shimmering light glowed from the lowest deck, and Lucy guessed there might be a moon pool there – an opening in the bottom of the yacht below the waterline where divers could go straight out into the water. Maybe that was where Grace was headed, but the thought of it gave Lucy pause. Even in a wetsuit and scuba gear, even if it had been a calm summer’s day, she didn’t relish the idea of swimming in the heavy murk of the East River.

  Up ahead where this floor ended, twin marble-effect staircases coiled away in an open space that led down to the keel deck, and Lucy tried to catch a glimpse of what might be waiting for her, searching for some ghost of Grace’s presence. She could see some gaudy art thing made of gold ropes and porcelain sea shells, an impressionistic idea of a fisherman’s net filled with ocean bounty.

  As if she read her mind, Grace’s voice came echoing back along the corridor.

  ‘This tub, huh? Cassidy ought to get a refund from his interior decorator. I’ve been in greasy clam bars with more class.’ She was putting on a Long Island accent, dialling it up to mock Lucy. ‘Hey, but he’s dead – too bad. And so are you.’

  A shadow moved near the edge of the stairwell and Grace leaned out of cover with Cassidy’s gun in her hand. She fired three rounds in quick succession, both shots hitting close, blasting divots out of the panelling near Lucy’s head but not tagging her.

  Instinct told Lucy to draw back and seek cover, as she had out on the sun deck, but training overruled the innate reaction and she ran towards the danger, kicking off the wall of the narrow corridor so the other woman couldn’t draw a bead on her.

  Lucy gambled that Grace was unfamiliar with the Peacemaker, a gun she doubted Connaught Cassidy III had ever fired in anger. Another shot cut past her, the buzz of the heavy round loud in her ear.

  She wanted to force Grace to react instead of act. The other woman wasn’t a soldier and she didn’t possess the warrior mindset that US Army Special Forces had drilled into Lucy Keyes until it became second nature.

  Grace was an infiltrator, a runner not a fighter, and Lucy remembered what she had said back on the deck. When you’re under pressure, you go with what you know best, right? Lucy cranked up the stress to make Grace revert to type.

  The other woman saw Lucy coming, eyes alight with controlled rage, and true to form, she broke cover. Grace fired blind as she ran, abandoning her position to seek safety elsewhere. She dashed towards the staircase, taking the steps two at a time.

  With a yell of effort, Lucy leapt off the upper deck banister, out over the open space, coming down on her target like a tiger pouncing on its prey.