‘They’ll find your body out here, in a day or two. Dead from exposure, or perhaps heart failure,’ said the Russian, his voice soft so it did not carry.

  He pulled the spectacles from his pocket, wiped them clean of any fingerprints, and dropped them in the snow before setting off back towards the main house.

  He heard Bremmens cry out once, but the man’s voice grew faint, and by the time Glovkonin returned to the house, there was no sound at all.

  Misha waited by the fireplace, warming his hands over the crackling flames. He stiffened, coming to attention as Glovkonin entered.

  The banker’s tablet computer was where he had left it, sitting on the bar, and the Russian glanced at it. The money in the Combine’s coffers continued to rise, while the balances of countless others sank ever lower. Thanks to the work of Andre and others in his employ, those trillions would be laundered through countless blinds and a myriad of shell companies, eventually coming to rest in the dark corners of G-Kor’s corporate empire. The Russian’s company would quietly become one of the richest private interests in the world.

  All the power, the wealth, and the influence those fools hoarded, I have taken, Glovkonin told himself, savouring the sweet rush of his victory. As of this moment, I am the Combine.

  ‘Sir.’ Misha coughed discreetly. ‘While you were . . . taking your stroll . . . another message came.’

  ‘From New York?’

  ‘No, sir. From the ALEPH team in Turkey. They have captured the African. The other men with him were killed during the recovery operation.’

  Glovkonin tipped back his head and laughed. Misha flinched at the sound. He had never seen such a display from his employer, and he did not know how to take it.

  ‘If there is a fate at work in the world,’ said the Russian, showing his teeth in a fierce, feral grin, ‘then this is a sign that it hates the weak and righteous, and favours the strong and ruthless.’

  *

  Malte slowed to a halt on the steel landing in the echoing stairwell, and turned back as Kara climbed up after him. In the sickly green glow cast from the chem-light in his hand, she looked unwell, taking the metal steps one at a time with laboured motions, huffing and puffing.

  ‘I hate you,’ said the hacker, without heat. ‘You and your fit Scandinavian dad bod. Mister I can run up fifty flights and not break a sweat.’ She drew level with him and sucked in a shuddering breath, pulling up the daypack she dragged behind her. ‘How much further?’

  Malte held up four fingers.

  ‘Carry me?’ She gave him a pathetic look, which he rebuffed with his silence. ‘I know this is like the tenth time I’ve asked . . .’

  ‘Not far,’ he said.

  ‘Okay, okay.’ She waved at him. ‘Fine. Let me catch my breath. Can’t show up looking out of character.’

  Malte nodded, adjusting the heavy bag over his shoulder. He drew a Sig Sauer P220 pistol from his waist holster and checked the weapon’s slide.

  ‘Hey,’ warned Kara. ‘Let’s not go waving that around unless we have to.’ The hacker straightened the dark blue FBI windcheater she wore, and nodded towards Malte, who was similarly attired. ‘I mean, we’re already committing a felony by impersonating Federal Agents, I don’t want to make it worse.’

  Malte said nothing, and looked up. Above and below them, the white-painted steel stairs ranged away into the dark. Glow-in-the-dark numerals designating each floor were the only visible signs of their progress up the inside of the exclusive residential tower, but they were close to their destination.

  Kara straightened up, the colour returning to her face.

  ‘All right, let’s do this.’

  They marched up until the glowing numerals changed to the letters ‘PH’. A security panel that proved no obstacle to Kara’s skills got them into the sky lobby for the penthouse. She strode past the stalled executive elevators to a heavy door of oak and glass.

  ‘Watch and learn,’ she told him. ‘This is how you knock like a Fed.’

  Kara balled her hand into a fist and banged hard, one-two-three, left it for a breath, then repeated it.

  Malte didn’t bother to remind her that in another life, he had been a police officer, and concentrated on looking imposing. He didn’t have to do much work in that department.

  ‘Who’s out there?’ said a man’s voice, pitching up to make himself heard through the door. He sounded equal parts afraid and pissed off.

  ‘Mr Schell?’ Kara yelled back. ‘Mr Matthew Schell?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Sir, this is Special Agent Parker of the FBI. My colleague Agent Banner and I need to speak with you on a matter of the utmost urgency!’ She put on a commanding tone at odds with her slight frame.

  Malte heard Schell moving around inside, and the indistinct burble of other voices.

  ‘What do you want with me? Haven’t you noticed, but there’s a major goddamn power outage going on right now?’

  ‘Why do you think we’re here, sir?’ Kara made a face at Malte, but kept up her performance. ‘If you can please open the door . . .’

  ‘Do you have a warrant?’ Schell yelled back. ‘Do I need to talk to my lawyer?’

  ‘By all means, if you have a working phone, go ahead,’ Kara shot back. ‘But do you really think the Bureau would make us climb this many stairs if it wasn’t serious?’

  Schell pondered that for a moment.

  ‘Is this about the power cut? Oh God, it’s not terrorists, is it?’

  ‘Sir. This is the last time I will ask you.’ Kara squared off in front of the door. ‘Don’t make me force the issue.’

  Mechanical locks rattled, and presently the crack opened. A worried-looking white man in his fifties appeared in the gap, holding a lit scented candle.

  ‘Can I see some ID?’

  Kara and Malte produced the facsimile Federal badges that had been in storage with the FBI windcheaters at the MI6 safe house. They were high quality fakes, enough to satisfy Schell, who opened the door wider.

  Kara strode in, looking around the darkened apartment. Malte followed, wary of the dark corners.

  Dotted on every surface were more scented candles, giving off a riot of floral and woody odours as they burned. A woman around the same age as Schell stood to one side, her hands knitting together, and she noted Malte’s attention.

  ‘It’s the only thing we had,’ she explained. ‘Lights, phones . . . nothing works!’

  ‘I understand, ma’am,’ said Kara. ‘Good thinking.’ She looked around. ‘Just you two in residence?’

  ‘Our daughter . . .’ The woman called out. ‘Tiffany, come in here!’

  A sullen young lady in her late teens emerged from a darkened doorway. She clutched a gold-plated smartphone in one hand, peering morosely at the device’s blank screen.

  ‘I got no bars, no nothing,’ she said glumly. ‘I am officially socially dead.’

  ‘What’s this about?’ said Schell.

  ‘Let’s talk in the lounge, shall we?’ Kara gestured to lead the way, and Schell grumbled but obeyed.

  With glass floor-to-ceiling windows on all sides, the penthouse sat at the top of the apartment tower, on the corner of the streets one block down from the building where Titanpointe was situated.

  On a clear day, the views from this level – as high as the Empire State Building’s observation deck – would have been unparalleled. But in the grip of the storm and the blackout, all that could be seen were dots of illumination down on the streets and the occasional flicker of light from one of the neighbouring towers.

  The lounge was part of a long single space that took up one third of the penthouse’s footprint, including a library and what looked like a dining area. An actual log fire burned in a recessed pillar, throwing orange flame-glow over the windows, reflecting off a mirrored sky balcony that wrapped around to an open-plan kitchen. Malte wondered if they had their firewood brought in by helicopter.

  ‘I’m not going to lie to you, Mr Schell,’ Kara said briskly, dumping her pack on the floor. ‘What’s happening right now is an attack on New York City and the United States of America. You have been targeted.’

  ‘I told you we should have stayed in Bel Air,’ snapped the wife.

  ‘Why me?’ demanded the husband, ignoring his partner’s jibe. ‘Is this about the petrochemical deal in Indonesia? Because my attorney assures me that is legal and above board!’

  ‘Actually,’ said Kara, ‘this is about geography, not history.’

  ‘What’s she talking about?’ said the daughter. ‘Mom, get rid of these people, they’re freaking me out.’

  ‘There.’

  Malte walked to the glass and indicated the dark planes of the Long Lines building. The uppermost level of the hardened tower was a few storeys below them and to the south-east. The direct distance from the penthouse balcony to the roof was no more than two hundred metres of open air.

  Schell followed Kara to the window, and he scowled.

  ‘That thing? It’s an eyesore! Some sort of government facility, we were told. You know they run security checks on everyone who lives in this building, just because we are neighbours?’

  ‘It’s creepy,’ bleated the daughter. ‘That’s why my bedroom’s not on this side! I don’t want some stalker watching me with their spy cameras!’

  Schell suddenly jolted back in surprise as he realised the red anti-collision lights atop the tower at 33 Thomas Street were still on.

  ‘How come they still have power and the rest of the city doesn’t?’

  ‘That’s classified,’ Kara said firmly.

  ‘Oh no.’ Schell’s wife raised a hand to her mouth as terrible possibilities warred with one another in her thoughts. ‘This is like what happened in San Francisco a couple of years ago, with that bomb in the bay . . .’

  ‘Worse,’ said Malte, seeing the opportunity.

  ‘I assume you have a panic room?’ Kara looked Schell in the eye, and her tone became steely and uncompromising.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I think it would be best if you go lock yourself in there.’

  Schell raised a hand, as if to disagree, but then he saw the hard look on Malte’s face and decided otherwise.

  ‘You know . . . That’s a sensible idea. Come on! You heard the agent!’

  He propelled his wife and daughter out of the lounge, leaving the others alone.

  ‘Go lock yourself in.’ Kara mimicked herself, dialling up the menace. Then she laughed. ‘Honestly, how do you guys keep a straight face with that badass-speak?’

  ‘Practice,’ offered the Finn.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  Kara opened her pack, and tipped the contents out onto a sofa. She unfurled spools of cable and connected it to a cluster of military-grade tactical lasers taken from the safe house armoury, the kind of add-on that soldiers would clip beneath the barrel of a rifle to paint a red dot on their targets.

  Malte removed the car battery he’d been carrying in his bag.

  ‘Will this work?’

  ‘Sure.’ Kara wired up the lasers, attaching them with duct tape to chairs, a lamp, a coffee table. She sighted down each one, so that their five-megawatt emitters were aimed at security cameras and alarm sensors on the roof of the Long Lines building. When she was done, Kara stepped back and raised her hands. ‘Okay, ready up. Give them the signal.’

  Malte pulled a heavy Maglite torch from the inner pocket of his windcheater. The sliding door to the balcony opened with a sucking pop of air. The wind came howling into the penthouse, raking through loose papers, dragging the rain with it and snuffing most of the candles. Acting quickly, Malte moved to the north end of the balcony, pointing the torch down towards the street.

  ‘Do it!’ he called.

  Inside the penthouse, Kara completed the last connection, and a fan of thin crimson threads extended out across the darkness.

  With his thumb on the torch’s button, Malte sent a word in Morse code. Two dashes, one dot. A pause. Three dashes.

  Go.

  *

  ‘That’s it,’ said Lucy, shielding her face from the downpour, looking up towards the Tribeca tower’s penthouse. ‘Maybe you should let me drive . . .’

  She adjusted her grubby disposable coverall, pulling the zip up to her throat, and walked back to the heavy truck idling at the corner of Church and Duane Street, picking her way through stalled late-model SUVs and modern hybrids as the rain lashed the asphalt.

  Marc leaned out of the boxy cab and gave the grubby, white-painted vehicle a friendly pat.

  ‘What, and miss out in this? Nah.’

  The three-axle Mack snorted like a mechanical rhino as he revved the engine. Lucy’s brother had owned a toy trash hauler that looked just like this one when they were little. The battered old vehicle was worse for wear, coated in patches of rust and layers of dirt that had to be years thick. Her nose wrinkled at the rotting stink wafting from the rear compartment, so she breathed through her mouth as she climbed into the narrow cab.

  Marc crunched the gears and they rolled away, the windscreen wipers thudding back and forth across the glass. They picked up speed as he weaved around the stalled traffic, splashing through potholes filled with rainwater.

  ‘My maths teacher once said to me, Marc, she said, if you don’t buck your ideas up and do your homework, you’ll end up driving a dustcart for a living.’ He grinned. ‘Turns out she was on to something.’

  ‘A dust-what?’

  ‘Dustcart. Bin lorry.’ He banged the steering wheel with his hand. ‘This thing.’

  ‘Garbage truck,’ she corrected, then jabbed her hand to the left. ‘There! That turn!’

  ‘Got it . . .’

  He hauled the wheel around and the truck complained, the rear wheels skidding over the wet street as he forced the tight corner. The vehicle clipped a Buick sedan and shoved it sideways out of their path.

  ‘Sorry!’ Marc called out of the window, putting his foot down.

  Lucy found the makeshift detonator control at the end of the wire trailing back into the truck’s trash compactor. Hitting the test switch rewarded her with a green light. She double-checked her seat belt, and grabbed the two gas masks sliding around on the dashboard.

  ‘You know when to jump?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘Go left!’ she yelled, as the next turn came up.

  Lucy pulled one of the masks down over her face as the vehicle lurched up and cut the corner, across the sidewalk. The cab knocked away a scaffold pole and something crashed to the ground behind them.

  She leaned across, slipping the other mask over Marc’s face so he didn’t have to let go of the wheel. The truck roared, the speedometer indicator twitching as it went flat out.

  ‘Here it comes!’

  Marc pushed back into his seat. Ahead of them, Thomas Street and the sheer, featureless facade of the Long Lines building rose like the wall of some alien citadel.

  They burst out of the side street and Marc jerked the steering wheel to the right, shouldering another parked car into the front of a darkened restaurant as they veered the wrong way across the single-lane road.

  The garbage truck thundered towards the building’s main pedestrian entrance. It was a narrow entryway, closed in by walls and a thick veranda, up two flights of stairs lined with metal banisters.

  They bounced off the kerb, mounting the staircase, and Marc threaded the truck through the eye of the needle, aiming into a set of revolving doors that led inside.

  Lucy mashed the detonator button and vaulted out of the cab a split second before it struck with a grinding, howling shriek of tortured metal. She landed hard on the wet concrete steps and rolled into the wall.

  A wall of thick grey smoke washed over her and visibility dropped to nothing. She heard alarms clanging and voices calling out in panic. Picking herself up, Lucy rushed back towards the garbage truck, feeling for the side of it.

  As planned, the heavyweight vehicle had done its job. If 33 Thomas Street was a modern castle keep, then the trash hauler was the diesel-powered battering ram that blew through the outer doors and security gate behind it.

  They didn’t have long to get inside. The cluster of smoke bombs wired up inside the rear of the truck were burning, spewing a screen of choking grey haze that filled the building’s lobby and gave them cover.

  ‘Marc!’ she called. ‘Sound off!’

  ‘Here,’ said a voice, and a white man-shape with a bug-eyed gas mask reared up out of the smoke. ‘Go, go!’

  Finding their way, the two of them picked a path over the broken concrete panels and smashed-in doors. Lucy’s boots hit marble flooring and she knew they were in the lobby proper.

  She made out the faint glow of lights in the ceiling above, and the yelling she heard before was closer.

  ‘Breach, breach!’ a woman shouted, coughing as the smoke curdled in her throat. ‘Entrance is compromised, repeat, compromised!’

  The burble of a radio replied and a fraction of the tension Lucy felt eased off. So far, the plan was working. The lasers Kara had set up to mess with the sensors on the roof had sent most of Titanpointe’s security detail rushing to the upper levels to investigate, leaving the entrance under-protected.

  ‘Is someone there?’ said another voice, a man on the verge of panic, closer than she would have liked. ‘Shit, I hear movement! I can’t see anything!’

  The first voice, the woman with the radio, called out again.

  ‘All right, fall back! That thing could be a truck bomb! We’re sealing off this level!’

  A blurry shape moved past her, and Lucy ducked low.

  ‘I can’t find you,’ said the other voice. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Here!’ the woman called out again, and in the distance, a rectangle of dull, faraway light appeared as a set of elevator doors opened. ‘This way!’

  Lucy felt Marc’s hand on her shoulder.

  ‘That’s it,’ he whispered.

  ‘Copy that.’

  Lucy made for the light and the voices, shrugging off the paper coverall and discarding the mask. Marc did the same, following close behind.

  People crammed into the wide, smoke-filled elevator car – a pair of uniformed security guards, one of them retching into the corner, along with a woman clutching a walkie-talkie and a man collapsed on the floor, coughing violently.