Ekko Solomon looked up and his one good eye found Saito, his brow furrowing.

  ‘You’ve arrived too late for this evening’s match.’ He caught sight of Grace and his frown deepened.

  ‘The Réti endgame,’ said Saito, indicating the board. ‘You’ve already won.’

  The ex-soldier saw it, too, and admitted defeat, conceding with a gruff nod. He rose, finishing his tea in a gulp, and stepped back. Without hesitating, Grace slipped between the men and dropped into the vacated chair, peering at the chess pieces. She picked up a crimson-coloured queen and toyed with it.

  ‘I have had plenty of time to improve my game.’ Solomon gripped the handle of his walking stick and leaned forward. ‘What do you want, Saito?’

  ‘Already asked that,’ noted Grace.

  At length, Saito gestured for the guards to give them some privacy, and he found a third chair, bringing it closer. He looked over the river towards the Giza side, putting his thoughts in order.

  ‘I regret the circumstances that have brought you here,’ he began. ‘It was necessary.’

  ‘We are both alive because of you,’ rumbled Solomon. ‘When those soldiers dug me out of the rubble in Mozambique, you were the one who concealed my survival from the Combine.’ He nodded at the woman. ‘Her capture should have ended in her execution. Instead, you had me cared for and Grace confined. Then you sent us north, to this safe house. You have never said why.’

  ‘I’ve got some ideas,’ said the woman. ‘Keeping us as bargaining chips. As trade for something he wants.’

  ‘That is not his way,’ noted Solomon. ‘Is it?’

  Saito did not reply.

  Grace made a show of looking around.

  ‘This isn’t a Combine enclave, though. Far too déclassé for them.’ She pulled a face. ‘I’m guessing . . . GRU Fourth Directorate?’ The Russian intelligence agency’s Mid-East and African division had numerous covert stations throughout the Arab nations, and Saito admired the woman’s perception. She saw she was right, and smirked. ‘Which means either you’re running this yourself as a side deal, or that rat-bastard Glovkonin is pulling the strings.’

  ‘It is not Glovkonin,’ said Solomon, dismissing the notion. ‘He would not have let us live this long.’

  Saito gave a curt nod. ‘An exiled Russian general whose life I once spared repaid that favour, by providing this place and these men.’

  ‘So, what’s changed?’ Grace eyed him, her tone light but the question sharp. ‘I mean, me and handsome here are still breathing, and you show up out of the blue . . .’

  ‘We are alive because we have value to Mr Saito.’ Solomon sipped his own tea. The motion was slow and steady. He was still learning to deal with his new limitations. ‘I await his answer to my previous question.’

  ‘I want . . .’ Saito hesitated. Saying the words aloud would make it real, and he would not be able to turn away from that truth any more. He pressed on. ‘I want an end to it. I want to get out.’

  ‘Don’t we all, honey.’

  Grace poured herself some of the tea and spooned a large amount of raw cane sugar into it.

  ‘I have an offer,’ Saito continued. ‘If you help me with my goals, then you will have your lives and your freedom.’

  Grace gave a bitter chuckle. ‘I’m eager to hear the details, really, and this may be dumb of me to say the quiet part out loud, but why the hell would you ever trust me? Or him, for that matter?’ She made a to-and-fro gesture. ‘What’s our transaction?’

  Saito glanced at Solomon, then away.

  ‘As long as the Combine exists, neither of you will be safe.’ He nodded towards the African. ‘You are a living embodiment of their failures – a man of similar means to them but uncorrupted by wealth’s power. They cannot allow you to exist.’ Then he turned to Grace. ‘And you . . . You are a tool, a weapon they bought and then discarded when it became inconsequential. If you are not dealt with, they look weak. And believe me, these men have murdered indiscriminately in order to appear strong.’

  Grace scowled at his description of her, but she did not reply. Saito saw two real, authentic emotions flicker in her eyes: hate and fear.

  For his part, Solomon said nothing, but his silence spoke volumes. Saito had their full attention now.

  He continued. ‘First, as you are both no doubt considering how you might collaborate to kill me and escape, let me make it clear that if I do not make a call to a certain telephone number in the next hour, a data packet revealing the facts of your survival and your location will be transmitted to Pytor Glovkonin and the active measures group at the CIA. If that were to happen, I imagine neither of you would live to see the dawn. If you agree to comply with my requests, that packet will be held back, only to be released if you deviate from the task.’

  ‘There’s the stick,’ muttered Grace. ‘Got a carrot, too?’

  ‘You both have good cause to seek the Combine’s destruction. I am within the bounds of their cabal.’ Saito placed a hand on his chest. ‘Imagine what access I have. Think of how you could use that against them.’

  Solomon and Grace sat silently as Saito told them the story of a man – a good man in a bad place, who had been forced into making terrible choices. His code and his decency were cut away from him piece by piece, until the day came when he was nothing but a killer in the employ of the venal and the vicious.

  That man could never walk back from those choices. He had shaken hands with the Devil. But he still had a chance to make one thing right.

  Saito felt his daughter’s name on his lips again.

  ‘I’ve sold my soul,’ he said, at length. ‘This act of defiance is the only thing left to me.’

  ‘You think you can buy it back? Your soul?’ Solomon gave him a level look. ‘Believe me when I tell you that redemption is not a thing of scales and balances. It is a road that never ends.’

  Saito stood up, and the two guards reacted, fingering their weapons. He waved them off with a raised hand.

  ‘Do you accept?’

  The two of them gave a wary nod.

  ‘What the hell else am I going to say?’ sniffed Grace.

  Saito considered her for a moment. ‘I will continue to monitor your movements. If either of you attempt to betray me, there will be consequences.’

  ‘Understood,’ said Solomon. ‘Where are my people?’

  Saito shook his head. ‘I do not know. There have been sporadic sightings, but nothing confirmed. Both the Combine and Interpol have operatives watching for any appearance of agents from the Rubicon team.’

  ‘Could be dead,’ offered Grace.

  ‘Like us?’ Solomon eyed her. ‘No. If that were so, it would be apparent. The Combine would not keep it quiet.’ He looked back at Saito. ‘To do what you ask, I’ll need to find them.’

  Grace’s lip curled in a smirk.

  ‘Well, there is one of them who’ll be easy to track down. I mean, unless things have changed more than I expect in the last few months, I imagine he’ll still be right where you left him.’

  FOUR

  The gold tower on the Avenue de Grande Bretagne became obsidian as night fell, the sheer face of the building shot through with streaks of light where certain floors remained illuminated, even though the working day was done.

  The city-state of Monaco never really rested. Down in the streets spreading out towards the dark waters of the ocean, the energy of the place was constant, an invisible background hum of money and power.

  Once, Henri Delancort had considered being here the summit of his achievements, living amid the glamour and glitz of the mega-rich, a far cry from the Montreal suburbs of Pointe-Claire where he had grown up. Delancort had worked hard to achieve all he had, and for a while it had been worth it. As the personal assistant and confidential aide to the founder of the Rubicon Group, he had made something of himself. He was proud of what he was.

  Strange to think I ever felt that way.

  Delancort exited the elevator on the fourth floor and began his march through the ruins of that life, his footsteps echoing as he threaded his way towards his office space.

  Rubicon’s presence in the tower was a pale shadow of what it had once been. A year ago, every level of the building had been given over to the operations of the corporation, with hundreds of staff administering Rubicon’s holdings in aerospace, medicine, engineering, telecommunications and private security. Most of them were gone now, their workspaces relocated, their contracts forcibly terminated in the wake of the hostile takeover that had sounded Rubicon’s death knell.

  The tower was a honeycomb of ghost floors, atriums and rooms that had previously buzzed with activity now vacant, silent. Like the assets that had been under the Rubicon aegis, the building was being sold off for parts. A large Ukrainian banking and shipping concern had bought much of the complex, and they were already in the process of moving their people in. What remained of the Rubicon Group was little more than a shell, reduced to paying for tenancy in the tower that the company had built.

  Delancort stalked past darkened offices, his angular reflection a captured phantom in their glass partitions. He felt numb, going through the motions, doing what was expected of him and nothing more. The man he saw in the windows, with the fox-like face and the prim manner, was a facade. As hollow as the building, Delancort had more than enough space to hold his regrets.

  Someone was waiting for him in the office, and when Delancort saw who, he smothered his worried reaction with a blank look.

  ‘Finally here,’ said Andre, getting up from behind Delancort’s desk. He made no attempt to explain what he had been doing there or why he was invading the other man’s privacy, vacating the chair with an idle shrug. ‘I was starting to wonder where you were.’

  ‘I was told to come in, so I came,’ Delancort replied flatly, refusing to rise to the bait.

  He put down his briefcase and slid around the side of his desk, bumping into a filing cabinet as he moved. When he was Ekko Solomon’s number two, Delancort had a workspace three times this size, a corner office with an excellent view of the hills. Here, they were in the armpit of the tower, in a spot constantly in shade during the day and darkened during the evening. He firmly believed that the current owner of the dregs of the company had put him there deliberately.

  As if the thought of that man conjured his name, Andre invoked it.

  ‘Mr Glovkonin asked me to bring these new directives here personally.’ He waved a USB drive in the air.

  ‘Doesn’t he know how to use email?’

  ‘He has me to handle that.’

  Untidy piles of storage boxes filled the corners of the office, giving it a claustrophobic feel. Andre wandered around them, picking at their lids.

  The other man had a slender frame, dressed in a suit that hung so badly on him, it was clear he had no idea how to wear it. Andre had a coarse French accent but he chose to speak English to Delancort, who wondered if that were some sideways insult towards his Québecois origins.

  ‘What’s wrong, Henri? Don’t you like my company?’ Andre finally sat in the room’s only other chair, flicking the drive stick around in his fingers.

  ‘You’re really not my type.’

  ‘I’m not,’ he agreed. ‘Not like the guys at that club . . .’ He feigned confusion. ‘What’s it called? La Bleue? You go there a lot on your downtime, don’t you?’

  The rumours about Andre – no last name, just always Andre – said that the man had been a criminal hacker before he worked for Pytor Glovkonin, and Delancort saw no reason to doubt it. Andre liked to drop broad hints suggesting he knew intimate details of everyone’s lives, using that to intimidate whoever wasn’t automatically cowed by his connections to the Russian oligarch.

  Tonight, Delancort was too tired and too irritated to let it go, and his mask of weary compliance slipped. He glared at the other man.

  ‘Do you think for one moment I give a shit about your opinions of my lifestyle? I have been threatened by more impressive specimens than you.’ He made a dismissive gesture. ‘Deliver your message and then go away.’

  Andre hesitated. He clearly had not expected Delancort to push back, and now that Henri had, the ex-hacker did not have a response.

  ‘Here.’ Scowling, Andre tossed the memory stick on the desk. ‘Read it.’

  Delancort woke his computer and inserted the drive. He found the files it contained and set to work decrypting them.

  Andre stood up again, reminding Delancort of his superior position by looming over the desk.

  ‘It must be hard for you to watch this happen, eh?’ He gestured vaguely at the walls. ‘Seeing the other board members pull away one by one. Keller, Cruz, McFarlane, cashing out. You can’t blame them. Leaving the sinking ship, right?’ He shook his head, blowing through his teeth. ‘Your boss Solomon pretty much dragged this place down to the grave with him.’

  Delancort’s fingers froze over the keyboard and he closed his eyes. Every day he was forced to come back to this place was a reminder of Ekko Solomon, of the mentor who had given him a second chance.

  The man I turned my back on.

  He tried – and failed – to push the poisonous thought away. When Glovkonin and his allies in the Combine had launched their attack on Rubicon, Solomon had fled and asked Delancort to join him. But he had refused, believing that to carry on the fight would only result in more destruction.

  For years, Delancort had tried to talk Solomon out of his private crusade, using the Special Conditions Division and Rubicon’s resources to fight the Combine’s machinations. It wasn’t a battle they could win – Delancort had truly believed that. And in the end, he had been correct. But Solomon would not accept his counsel. His mentor was dead because he’d refused to give up that battle, and Delancort was sentenced to remain here in the ashes of that defeat.

  Andre was right as well, in his own insulting fashion. Delancort had borne witness to the slow degradation and dissolution of everything Solomon had built. Trapped here, mired in the legal bindings of the contracts he had signed with Rubicon, sleepwalking towards his own end, with only his mistakes to keep him company.

  ‘I hope you’re not thinking of making a run for it yourself,’ Andre went on, insincerity oozing from his words. ‘That’d be a bad idea. I mean, technically you’re still under investigation by Interpol because of that whole corporate-sponsored act of terrorism.’ He gave a shrug. ‘I mean, maybe it was some big mistake, maybe it was a false flag thing, a fake? But until that’s decided, you take any kind of walk you’re not supposed to and you are a fugitive.’ Andre warmed to his subject, finding his feet again as he pushed home the point. ‘No nights out at the club for guys on the run, huh?’

  Delancort barely listened to him. The contents of the memory stick had his attention – the directives from G-Kor’s head office in Moscow. The man controlling Rubicon’s fate had ordered the transfer of hundreds of thousands of euros, from the company accounts in Monaco to a small technology provider in Istanbul.

  Altin Elma.

  The name of the Turkish company rang a distant bell in Delancort’s mind, but he couldn’t place it. He had the vague recollection of it being one of Rubicon’s former satellite companies, but nothing more than that.

  Usually, Glovkonin’s orders wouldn’t have passed through Delancort’s hands at all, but a quirk of Rubicon’s corporate structure meant that the ranking company man in the Monaco office had to sign off on a payment of this kind. And with Ekko Solomon dead, that man was Henri Delancort.

  He scrutinised the paperwork. Altin Elma had been tasked to work on a priority project but there were no details, only a payment due for its completion. He weighed up what he saw. This was not the first time that such unexplained movements of money and materiel had occurred since the hostile takeover. It was Glovkonin’s company G-Kor stripping assets and plundering resources, attempting to keep the details hidden from legal oversight.

  ‘So?’ Andre snapped his fingers in front of Delancort’s face. ‘What are you waiting for? Approve it and move on to the next one.’

  ‘This does not seem correct,’ he noted. ‘I need more details.’

  ‘You don’t need anything!’ Andre’s tone hardened. ‘You think I came here to argue with you? Shut up and do what you are told.’

  Delancort’s mouth thinned to a hard line, and he put aside the transfer authorisation for a moment, looking at what else Glovkonin demanded. There was a second and a third directive on the memory stick, and as Delancort read on, his stomach twisted into knots.

  The second directive was another transfer. This one specified the complete movement of all operating capital in Rubicon’s salary holdings. Effectively, it would see every last euro set aside to pay the company’s remaining caretaker staff siphoned off to Russia. It would leave them with nothing.

  He knew what the third directive would say before he read a word of it. It was a contractual termination order, the tool to fire the last few people who worked for what remained of the Rubicon Group. Delancort sat back in his chair, staring at the death warrant for the company he had dedicated his life to.

  Glovkonin had known this was how things would play out. Delancort always suspected the Russian had forced him to remain at his post out of spite, perhaps because he had not been able to take out his ire on Solomon.

  He wants me to personally sign off on these directives. He wants to make me pull the trigger.

  ‘Do I have to tell you again?’ said Andre.

  Delancort looked up at him, and for the first time he realised that there were shadows moving in the adjacent office. With the light of day gone, he could make out two men in the other room, the forms of figures in military-style jackets, prowling about and waiting for the call to violence.

  ALEPH. It has to be them.

  The Combine’s pet thugs were always hanging around the tower, menacing presences meant to keep Delancort and the others in line. Early on, in the first days after the G-Kor takeover, some people who were obstructive or overly vocal suddenly failed to report to work. There was talk of ‘accidents’ and after that, everyone toed the line.