In the dilapidated tin-sheet hangar behind him, lost in the shadows, Assim Kader’s body rested inside a shapeless black sack. Beside Marc’s dead friend, the bullet-riddled ammunition case with the salvaged hard drives lay close to where Malte Riis was sleeping. The Finn stayed near, ready to protect what little they had recovered from this mess.
Marc dwelled on what to do with Assim. He had a family that would want his remains returned to them, but so did Ari Silber, and there was nothing of the pilot to send home.
And Solomon?
It troubled Marc deeply to imagine the man’s body buried beneath that hill of rubble. It was an undeserved fate for someone who had fought so hard to do the right thing.
Shuffling footsteps approached, and presently Barandi appeared at Marc’s side. He offered him a cracked mug of strong coffee, and Marc took it gratefully.
‘Did he come back here to die?’
Barandi had a low, whispering voice that carried in the still morning air.
‘I don’t think that was his plan,’ Marc offered. ‘If anything, he was trying to find a way to keep us alive.’
Barandi nodded. ‘That sounds like him. Carried the weight of the world, that one. Every sorrow was his burden.’
‘Yeah.’
After a while, the other man spoke again.
‘A long time ago, I told Ekko not to return to this place. Not because of bad blood between us, you understand? But because I knew it would only end poorly for him.’ He shook his head. ‘I am sad I was right.’
Bit by bit, Marc parcelled out the events that had brought them to this moment, and Barandi listened in solemn silence. It seemed the least he could do – to give this man the facts that had led to his friend’s death.
When he was done, Barandi gave a slow nod.
‘So now you are lost. You have paid for your escape with your dearest blood, and your home is in ruins.’
‘That’s about the size of it,’ Marc agreed. ‘Rubicon belongs to our enemies. We have nothing but the clothes on our backs and a few rounds of ammo.’
Barandi gave Marc a measuring look, the same kind of expression that Solomon had often challenged him with.
‘Is that all you have? I do not think it is.’
‘I’m not sure a plucky attitude and a disregard for danger will be enough this time.’
A radio clipped to Barandi’s belt gave a flat crackle of static, and he reached for it.
‘In the worst of days,’ he replied, ‘it is best to go with what you know.’ He held the handset to his mouth and looked towards the shabby control tower hundreds of metres away down the length of the airstrip. ‘What?’
One of Barandi’s crew up in the tower waved and a rapid-fire babble of words came out of the radio, too fast and too garbled for Marc to interpret them.
Barandi seemed to understand, however.
‘Let me hear.’
The radio spluttered and a new voice clicked in, speaking in lazy Portuguese.
‘Homem de ferro chamando ganso selvagem, over.’
‘What’s he saying?’
As Marc spoke, he heard the sound of aero engines coming in from over the sea, and turned to look. The cloud was low, but there was no mistaking the familiar, husky form of a C-130 Hercules as it dropped out of the haze and angled towards them.
‘Your ride is here,’ said Barandi.
*
Alerted by the snarl of the cargo plane’s engines, Lucy emerged from the hangar and jogged across to them, as the aircraft made a pass over the runway. The Hercules turned inbound, the glass panels of the flight deck catching the morning sun as it lined up with the rough strip, and the crew put it down with a skill that spoke of great experience in bush landings.
As the aircraft turned and rolled to a halt, Lucy leaned in and talked into Marc’s ear.
‘What are we expecting here?’ She had one of the AKs over her shoulder, her hand on the strap and ready to pull it. ‘No insignia on that thing. Who’s it belong to?’
Marc shrugged. ‘No idea. This was Assim’s work. He called it in.’
‘Pulling favours from his buddies on the dark net,’ she noted. ‘Black hat hackers and techno-anarchists. I know I don’t need to remind you what happened the last time we met those kinda folks.’
‘We’re not the position to be choosy right now.’ He held out a hand. ‘But . . . just keep your eyes open, eh?’
‘Always.’
The wide cargo ramp tucked beneath the tail of the plane dropped like a drawbridge, and the first person out was the last one Marc expected to see.
‘Mes amis,’ said Benjamin Harun, offering his hands. ‘How is it going?’
‘Could be better.’
Marc shook off the moment of surprise. It was surreal to see the Frenchman here, when he was so used to meeting him in the soothing pastel context of the Rubicon therapist’s office. But it was equally good to see his colleague, and Marc felt a little of the gloom about him lift.
The ex-legionnaire nodded and looked to Lucy.
‘I’m glad you are both okay. I came as soon as I received the message . . .’ He trailed off, sensing something amiss. ‘Where are the rest?’
‘It’s just Malte and us,’ said Lucy, holding the control of her voice. ‘Solomon and the others . . . They didn’t make it.’
‘Oh.’ Benjamin stiffened and took a moment to process that. Marc watched him take in his own jolt of grief, then put it away, making himself ready to support them. ‘My friends, I am so sorry.’ He was still holding their hands, and he gave them a final squeeze before disengaging. ‘We couldn’t get here any faster—’
‘It wouldn’t have made any difference,’ Marc told him. ‘I’m just glad Assim could reach you, otherwise we’d be stranded down here.’
‘It wasn’t Assim who contacted me,’ Benjamin corrected, as someone else emerged from the interior of the Hercules. ‘She did.’
He nodded towards the new arrival, a slim East Asian woman in a red leather jacket.
The woman peeled off a pair of mirrored sunglasses and showed them an unreadable, cat-like expression.
‘Hey,’ she said, by way of greeting.
‘You gotta be goddamn kidding me!’ Lucy’s tone flipped from muted to iron-hard and angry in an instant. She glared at Benjamin. ‘What the hell is she doing here?’
‘I know you two have a lot of unresolved issues,’ began the Frenchman, ‘but it was Kara who called me, and—’
‘Kara fucking Wei.’ Lucy ground out the name of her former friend as if she were chewing shards of glass. ‘You’re the dark web source Assim was keeping secret from us.’ She made a spitting noise. ‘Sure you are. Because the universe isn’t done screwing with me yet.’
She turned and walked away a few steps, swearing under her breath, unable to look the other woman in the eye.
Kara gave Marc a questioning look.
‘She’s still not over what happened in Korea?’
‘Well, you did lie to us about who you were, betray us to mercenary hackers, and then ghost on us when the hammer dropped.’ Marc glanced in Lucy’s direction. ‘She trusted you, more than anyone.’
Kara Wei had been a key member of the Special Conditions Division, working alongside Marc, Lucy and the rest of the unit as their cyber-operations specialist; but she had concealed her true origins from them. When her former comrades in a radical cybercrime collective embarked on a plan to drag the nations of North and South Korea into war, Kara had ultimately put her own agenda before that of the team. She had almost got them killed in the process.
‘I left a note,’ Kara countered. ‘I’m not good with apologies. Or people, really.’
‘The Combine killed Assim,’ Lucy shot back. ‘And they’re responsible for killing Ari and Solomon. Does that mean anything to you? Or are you too clockwork to feel it?’
Kara said nothing, her expression unchanged. Marc searched her eyes for some hint to how she was processing those harsh facts, but the w
oman seemed distant and removed from the moment.
‘That’s upsetting,’ she said, after a long pause. ‘Assim asked me for my help, so I’m here. I’m here to help you.’
Lucy grabbed Marc’s hand and pulled him away so they could speak privately.
‘We can’t rely on her,’ she hissed. ‘Assim kept his contact with her a secret because he knew that, but he didn’t want to admit it!’
Marc nodded. ‘Okay, but the intel from her was solid. Like it or not, she’s already helped us.’
‘Yeah,’ Lucy retorted, ‘and Kara’s good at what she does, that’s not in doubt. But she left us twisting in the wind, Marc! We can’t trust her motives.’
Lucy’s words brought Marc up short, and in his mind’s eye he saw the woman Grace, smiling Sam Green’s smile at him.
‘Kara’s not our enemy,’ he said. ‘She made bad choices, but she’s not on the wrong side.’
Lucy let go of him and her anger faded.
‘You sure about that?’
‘Not 100 per cent, no,’ he admitted. ‘But I don’t have a better idea, do you?’
Lucy frowned, and at length, she gave a bitter shake of the head.
‘I don’t. And I guess this is your show now, so I’ll go with what you decide.’
‘You can trust me if you don’t trust her,’ he said, hoping that there was more conviction in the words than he felt.
‘That’ll have to be enough,’ said Lucy.
*
Barandi refused to accept anything approaching payment for sheltering them.
He tapped his missing leg and told Marc that he was making amends for an old debt, and then warned him to get moving. His man in the tower had picked up radio messages on militia frequencies, and it wouldn’t be long before Colonel Simbarashe’s men came to the airstrip looking for answers.
Marc gathered them on the cargo plane’s ramp. Lucy and Malte carried Assim’s remains aboard with the martial dignity of a military burial detail, and one hard look from the Finn stopped the C-130’s loadmaster dead when he offered to help. Marc had the ammo crate, and he put it down on the deck, flipping over the lid to reveal the contents.
‘So what you’re looking at here is a bunch of parachutes.’ He beckoned them in and pointed at the damaged hard drive modules. ‘This is all that is left of Rubicon’s Grey Record database. We lost some of it getting here, but there’s still plenty left.’
Despite herself, Kara licked her lips.
‘I’d like to take a look.’
‘I am sure you would,’ said Marc. ‘There’s also money in there. Account codes for black bag funds that Solomon kept off the books. We can divide it up between us.’ He looked to Lucy and Malte. ‘Plus a generous share for Assim’s and Ari’s families. I reckon there’s enough that we can each take a cut and get gone. Go dark.’ He gestured out at the wilderness. ‘Let’s not sugar-coat it. We’ve lost. And when the Combine catch up to the fact that we’re still breathing, they’ll come gunning for us. They don’t like loose ends.’
‘You are suggesting that we walk.’ Benjamin’s broad face creased in a frown. ‘Go our separate ways, buy new identities and spend the rest of our days looking over our shoulders. That’s not much of a life, Marc.’
‘No,’ he agreed, ‘but it is a life.’
‘As long as it lasts,’ Malte said quietly. ‘The files?’
‘We destroy them.’ Marc nudged the crate with his boot. ‘We’ve seen how far Glovkonin was willing to go to get this shit. Better no one has it than he does.’
‘But that’s not Plan A, right?’ Lucy stared at him. ‘You have that look in your eyes, Dane. I always see it before you do something reckless.’
He smiled thinly. ‘There is another option. And if we take it, it’s the biggest roll of the dice any of us will make. All the chips in, a one-shot deal. We lose, and it’s the end. None of us come out of it alive.’ He crouched, and pulled out one of the intact drives. ‘We can take the black money, we can take what’s on these, and turn it on the Combine.’
No one spoke. Marc knew what he proposed was a big ask, especially in the wake of having lost so much. But time was against them, and a choice had to be made.
He did something that Solomon used to do, looking each of them in the eye as he spoke.
‘This has to be something we all agree on. There’ll be no judgement here if anyone wants to take the first option.’
He came to Lucy last and she met his gaze.
A silent communication passed between them. The unspoken thought was there.
Together, we could make it work. Become ghosts, watch each other’s backs. Vanish and leave this behind.
And for a moment, that was what Marc wanted to do. But then she gave the slightest shake of the head, and he knew, like him, she would not be able to live with that.
Malte spoke again. ‘How do we clear our names?’
‘The real, unaltered source footage from the Cyprus attack must exist somewhere,’ said Kara. ‘It can be found and released to the world.’
‘Even if you did that, it may not matter,’ Benjamin noted. ‘But I sense Marc is thinking of a larger goal. Something bigger than us.’
Each of them watched Marc, waiting for him to continue. He felt the world shifting around him, a change in the air that made him feel strangely renewed. Before, it was Ekko Solomon they had looked to, but now it was him. He felt the weight of that expectation, but he also drew strength from it.
‘Are we in?’ Lucy, Malte, Benjamin and Kara gave him a silent nod, and he returned it. ‘Then this is where we start. Whatever it takes. We don’t look back. And we don’t stop until we burn the Combine to the ground.’
TWENTY-THREE
The men on the screens toasted Glovkonin with their glasses, and he returned the salute with a tumbler full of Stolichnaya Elit, nodding indulgently as the light in the cabin shifted. The G-Kor Gulfstream was still a few hours from touchdown at Moscow-Sheremetyevo, and it amused him to imagine his flight home as some sort of victory lap over the heads of those who had doubted him.
The other members of the Combine’s committee took their turns to congratulate him. The American was the most animated, pleased with the financial opportunity that Rubicon’s disruption had provided, and he insisted on rehashing the details of the hostile takeovers he had initiated in the past week, savouring the way he had plundered the best cuts from the crippled corporation. The Swiss banker was his usual terse self, but even he had to grudgingly admit that Glovkonin’s complex plan to undermine Ekko Solomon had borne fruit. In particular, he highlighted the use of Lau as the critical element in destabilising Rubicon, and that was as close to a compliment as he was capable of giving. The Italian, of course, was all smiles and comradely affability, but that was undercut by a faint air of disdain that could not be completely hidden.
Predictably, it was the Italian who had to remind them that despite his success, Glovkonin had failed in one particular area.
‘It is a disappointment that you were unable to secure any of this Grey Record database,’ said the other man. ‘It certainly would have been a valuable asset.’
‘Do we even need that?’ snorted the American, still high on his own enrichment. ‘This is a goddamn windfall. In fact, the liquidation of Rubicon’s assets is gonna enable us to move up the programme with our next operation. I call that a win.’
‘And there is the other matter,’ continued the Italian, still smiling as he pressed his point, ‘confirmation of death.’
‘That is in hand,’ Glovkonin assured him. ‘Perhaps you’d like a physical sample as proof? I can arrange for something to be delivered.’
The Swiss banker made a snorting noise, his equivalent of a snigger.
‘There’s no need for that.’
‘No need,’ echoed the American. ‘I reckon we’ve kept our Russian friend here hanging long enough, gentlemen. Time to make it formal, huh?’
‘Indeed,’ said the Swiss, and he led another salute to
Glovkonin. ‘Welcome to the committee. You have earned your seat at our table.’
‘Thank you for this honour.’ He raised his glass once more. ‘I will strive to be worthy of it.’
I will destroy every one of you.
The words pushed at his lips, and Glovkonin smiled widely as he imagined saying them out loud. His life was one long struggle to gain what others had denied him, the rewards that some enjoyed and that he had always been told he was unworthy of.
It was not enough for Pytor Glovkonin to be rich and powerful. It was not enough for him to merely succeed. Others – all the others – had to fail for his victory to mean anything.
Walking through the debris of Ekko Solomon’s empire had reminded him of that singular truth. The energy he had felt at that moment, the near-sexual thrill of knowing that he had obliterated an adversary . . . Nothing compared to it. No drug, no vice, no pleasure could come close.
And so, even as the ashes of this battle were cooling, he smiled at his new enemies as he drew his plans against them.
*
Henri Delancort stood at the window and watched the vehicles coming and going on the Avenue de Grande Bretagne. For the past two days, unmarked trucks had backed up to the loading bays at the base of the Rubicon tower and filled up with everything that wasn’t bolted to the floor.
Who had instigated this purge and where the trucks were going was not something that Delancort was privy to. He only knew that there were entire levels of the building denuded of equipment, emptied of people. Rumours were already circling that a major corporate banking interest had made a bid to take over the property.
And where do I go then?
Delancort’s contract with Rubicon had not been terminated, unlike those of countless other employees, but he had no function to fulfil in this gutted, echoing place. If he resigned, there were harsh clauses in the agreement that would ruin him.
He suspected this was some petty punishment being inflicted on him by Glovkonin, forcing him to stand as mute witness to the steady dismantling of Ekko Solomon’s legacy.
On his desk, next to a laptop computer and a telephone, was the only thing he had been able to rescue from the stripping of Solomon’s apartments. A small metal sculpture resembling the wings of an abstract bird about to take flight.
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