She'd had a couple of glasses of champagne since they'd arrived at the restaurant and her cheeks felt warm. There were two fresh glasses of bubbly on the table, and a candle flickering in the centre of the white tablecloth. Oysters had come and gone.

This had been a good idea. This restaurant was booked out weeks in advance for a Friday night; he'd done well to get them in. She was pleased that he'd made the effort.

'I love this,' she said and smiled. She didn't want to talk about his flight to Virginia, or his impending three-month absence. For now she just wanted to bask in the champagne glow and relax in his presence. It felt like it had been ages since they'd dined together-or made love.

How long have we been together?

Five years.

It had been just over five years since they'd first met on the beach at La Perouse. It had hardly been an ideal encounter, considering that she was at the time the traumatised witness to the body of her murdered best friend, Cat, and the site of her brief initial meeting with Andy was a bloody crime scene. But somehow, in the ensuing weeks, and despite the horror of that beginning, an attraction had blossomed. It had been a rocky five years, but despite their on-again, off-again start, they had managed to spend the past year living together.

'It's great to be here, just you and me,' she said. 'The bubbly is nice, too.'

Mak waited for him to respond as she smiled and sipped from her glass of champagne. He returned her playful look, which she found encouraging.

'You look great tonight. It makes me wish I wasn't leaving,' he said.

That's the idea.

Mak crossed her legs and leaned back into the chair. 'You scrub up okay yourself, detective. I have to grudgingly admit that I'll probably miss the sight of you...a little.' She laughed and he looked at her with one of his sexy, lopsided grins.

'Andy, I'm really sorry I was so late tonight. I didn't expect my meeting to go that long,' she apologised again.

'Don't worry about it. It worked out perfectly. Stop thinking about it.'

'Okay,' she agreed. 'We haven't been to this place since...' She paused. 'Years ago,' she said, avoiding a discussion of the circumstances of that last dinner here.

'I pulled a few strings to get us in,' Andy admitted. 'Someone owed me a favour.'

It had been more than two years since they had dined here. And that had been at the end of the first triumphant day of the Stiletto Murder trial. That night everyone had been delighted, not least her and Andy. They had broken up for several months and had dated other people-or at least he had-but they found themselves coming together that night over more than a few champagnes, the stress of the trial lifted. Mak vividly recalled their erotic reacquaintance, how they had found themselves entwined in a rocky overhang by the nearby cliffs, eagerly making up for their time apart. He'd had to go to work the next day with rock rash on his palms and elbows, from fucking her over and over at the cliff's edge. She wondered if she could lure him back to that rocky outcrop once more, on this eve of his Quantico trip.

Mak craned her neck in the direction of the crashing waves outside the large windows, and said, 'It really is beautiful out there.' The spectacular view-which they could see but not fully enjoy from their table-overlooked famous Bondi Beach, which was lit up in a speckle of lights at night, the fine white sand and crested waves moonlit.

'What was your meeting tonight? You said you were in someone's bathroom.'

Mak smiled. 'Yes. Meaghan Wallace's parents. I've been hired to look into her murder. I'm really excited about it, actually,' Mak finished the last of her champagne. 'The case is complicated, and interesting.'

Andy frowned. 'Hunt told me about it. A junkie kid stabbed someone for cash for his next fix. It happens all the time.'

Mak pulled back a touch from the table. He had a way of subtly belittling her work that sometimes irritated her.

'It's not that simple, Andy,' she retorted.

'Isn't it that simple? Sweetheart, really...' He took her hand. 'Try telling that to that girl's parents.'

'I did. Only a couple of hours ago,' she shot back and pulled her hand away. 'That's why I was late. It's interesting, but the victim's mother doesn't think the suspect the police have is the right one.'

He didn't have a response to that. At least a minute passed with Andy looking awkwardly at the table, and Mak looking off at the distant window and the view, obstructed by the other diners, her jaw held tight.

Fuck. The mood could change just like that.

'Let's talk about something else,' she suggested.

'Tell me about what's happening with you, really,' said Andy. His tone was apologetic. 'I want to listen.'

'Well, Loulou has a new boyfriend,' she told him. And she'll be in Melbourne with him. In Melbourne, where Meaghan Wallace's friend Amy lives. 'I think I'll make the effort to meet him this weekend,' she found herself saying. 'Apparently he lives in Melbourne. Loulou will be there with him, so I'll visit.

'I think I'll leave tomorrow,' Mak said with more conviction. 'I don't want to be in that empty house this weekend, knowing you won't be back for so long.'

'Oh, Mak, I'm sorry.'

'Don't be. It's great for your career. It's the right thing to do. You have to. I just wish I had the money to visit you a few times. Three months is...a long time.'

'It will go past before we know it.'

Mak offered him a smile.

I hope so.

CHAPTER 17.

Luther Hand sat in the window seat of the business-class cabin of a 747 headed for Sydney, Australia. The breadth of his shoulders allowed him just enough space to turn on a slight angle and watch the ground fall out from beneath him, the palm trees and masses of scattered buildings of the Mumbai Chattrapathi Shivaji international airport shrinking to dots behind him. The view from the air always pleased him, giving him a glimpse of the gods, he felt, and Luther always took the window position to enjoy that special vantage point.

The flight was busy. Every single seat in the entire aircraft was taken, save for the one beside him. It was equipped with a headset, blanket and toiletries kit, and yet it sat empty. He was happy for his privacy but, truthfully, Luther seldom had to worry about sitting next to nosy passengers. He was a big man; imposing, some said. Passengers usually found ways to avoid sitting next to him, and so Luther always had space to stretch out in and to think. He would be well rested for his work in Sydney.

Luther had a new assignment.

Madame Q, one of the contacts through which he was given new assignments, had confirmed his urgent job in Australia only hours before. Luther had been born and raised in Sydney-not that he bore much resemblance to the boy he'd been. His reputation and his familiarity with the city made him a good choice for this assignment. And, although Luther had spent much of his life in Sydney, he was still a safely anonymous figure there, as he had not returned in nearly five years. His presence would be unexpected, and his knowledge of the suburbs and culture would be an asset. Interestingly, though, this was the first job of this kind for him in the country of his birth since he had moved overseas, most likely because he was now priced well outside the range affordable to the majority of Australian clients.

Luther had found success since leaving his homeland and he had built a formidable reputation for his trade among the right international circles. The spoils of his success had afforded him a stunning, modern high-rise apartment in the district of Colaba in Mumbai-not that any amount of money would clear away the beggars or the stench of the betel juice that was spat on the sidewalks. But, as a foreigner, he was not bothered there. He could go about his business as he chose. Apart from his apartment, his freedom and his work, Luther did not have anything; men like him rarely did.

Still, his freedom was more than many in his occupation had.

Luther, 'the hands of Lucifer'-or 'Mr Hand', as he was called professionally-was what was referred to as 'a cleaner' in some circles, but naturally he did not specialise in windows, or bathrooms, or hotel rooms.

Luther was an exterminator.

He removed problems. He cleaned.

This new assignment paid a top-dollar retainer. It was open-ended, but would contractually require not less than two hits. A few more jobs like this and Luther could retire...though he did not know what he had to retire to.

He had a pleasant enough feeling about the impending job, despite the potential for a number of last-minute variables. For instance: the client had not been able to specify precisely how many marks he would require Luther to take care of. The deposit, however, had been confirmed in his Swiss bank account before his departure, despite the short notice of the booking, and the amount comfortably covered a number of targets. The price agreed upon had been high, and had the potential of rising, which gave Luther sufficient reason to feel satisfied.

Luther was an adaptable contractor, and experienced. And, as it turned out, the world was a very big place, filled with a lot of people who needed a lot of cleaning.

Unlike a Mafia hit man, Luther had no family ties, no affiliations and no favours owing. He was a free agent, and he could work anywhere and for anyone. He could go in, do the job and get out with no established connection to the crime, or to the client. And Luther did not cling to any idealistic codes. He would clean anyone, regardless of age or sex, and he could handle multiples, or the kind of uncertainties that his job in Sydney held. As a cleaner, he was adaptable and unattached-all considered great assets in his trade.

Luther now had a thriving international practice. He had contact with good agents who got him frequent bookings, and he was even able to select jobs and in many cases name his own price, as he had on this occasion.

All this-the money, the clothes, the apartment, the jet-set life beset with carefully planned acts of termination-was a long way from his humble beginnings in Redfern in inner Sydney. Luther had grown up with his mother, Cathy, in a two-room flat on a street where no taxi would dare to stop. His childhood stomping ground was an area of housing-commission flats and back-alley deals for drugs and sex, where the 'blackfellas' liked to stage the occasional riot to express their discontent. It had been a law-enforcement black hole during the years of his youth; a poor suburb invisible to the authorities, deemed either too unimportant or too troublesome to deal with. The streets governed themselves.

That hard youth had set Luther up just fine. He had been in a lot of scraps as a young boy, many of which left noticeable scars to his face and hands, and by the time he was a young man he was working as muscle, and he looked the part. His appearance had caused his mother sorrow, but certainly had not bothered Luther.

Until he had become interested in girls.

Luther had witnessed his repellent effect on women many times. In his teenage years it had been hard for him, but despite this extreme side effect, his appearance became a clear asset in his fledgling career.

Luther had started out enforcing for small-timers and slowly worked his way up the food chain to bigger players. Luther was ugly. He was big. He was strong. People gave him money to be imposing. It was as if he had been designed for his profession. But the real money was in killing, as he discovered. He found it ironic that clients still put such a lofty price on life. Why be paid less to rough a guy up and leave him alive to identify you when you could kill him instead, get away clean and be paid more for the pleasure? As a cleaner, he earned more than he could have possibly imagined back in Redfern.

Berlin. Paris. Rome. Moscow. Dubai. Johannesburg. Bangkok. Hong Kong.

Luther had a stake in a number of markets. Anywhere there were already plenty of thugs and killers, it seemed that certain clients with enough financial backing periodically needed a cleaner to simplify their employee structure. Luther was perfect for the job.

Coming to Sydney, however, brought up another issue he had not thought about for some time.

Cathy Davis.

Should he try to see her?

Perhaps not. How could a man like Luther explain his long absence, his appearance, his changed name, his fine clothes, to his own mother? He had changed a lot in the five years since he'd last been home to Australia. He had been small-time then. Luther drove a good car and wore good clothes now, and looked different as well-almost unrecognisably so. He'd used some of his money for surgery in Asia to try to fix the damage done to his face from earlier jobs; damage inflicted with fists, and iron knuckles and crowbars.

No one touched his face now.

No one ever got that close.

CHAPTER 18.

Jack Cavanagh lay restless in the master bedroom of his huge waterfront mansion, next to the warm sleeping body of his wife, Beverley. While she slumbered soundly, his eyes were wide and staring into black shadows.

Why, Damien? How did I fail you?

Jack was deeply troubled by what his son had done, and he was troubled too by what he had just consented to. There were things that The American would make happen, terrible things that would be done in the pursuit of damage control. And though the true seriousness of Mr Hand's work was never uttered, the word 'murder' not actually stated, that knowledge was implicit.

Jack would never pull a trigger, but neither was he innocent. He knew full well that his consent to Mr Hand's activities would mean death for some human being, or beings, out there. Mr Hand meant to murder those who would topple the hard-earned Cavanagh empire, and Jack would pay him handsomely for it.

Jack's throat tightened. His eyes grew sore, fighting tears he would not allow.

He felt ashamed.

Jack Cavanagh felt the weight of his own father's judgment on him. What would he have done in Jack's place? Would he have given consent to what was about to take place-those unmentioned, terrible things he 'did not need to know about'?

Why, Damien? Why?

How did I fail you?

Such musings were pointless.

It was done. The wheels were in motion.

While Jack Cavanagh stared at the dark ceiling of his luxurious bedroom, lying next to his wife, his highly paid security consultant was hard at work. No idealistic concerns entered the mind of The American; he was trained for such eventualities, and familiar with making the hard choices necessary to ensure the security of his clients.

Bob had a lot of work to do.

In the interests of his billionaire client, it was of paramount importance that he track down all communications that the girl at the party, Meaghan Wallace, had made in the time leading up to her death; specifically, any SMS and video messages from her mobile phone that might contain evidence of Damien Cavanagh's involvement in criminal activities. He had to establish the level of threat and the seriousness of the leak, and he needed to stay under the radar of the Australian authorities and the public as he went about his work.

Having spent over a decade of his career as the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's headquarters in California, The American was well connected and well respected, even now as an independent contractor. He had people he could call on in instances such as these.

George would be an asset in what he had to accomplish, albeit an expensive one.

The American dialled using his personal Iridium satellite phone-the signals from which were non-geostationary and too fast-moving to be effectively tapped-and reached his contact at his home in Maryland around six in the morning.

'George, it's Bob calling from Australia. I am sorry to wake you.'

'Bob? I don't believe it.' George gave out a good-natured laugh, his American accent sounding more prominent than Bob had remembered. With the years he had grown used to the Australian twang. 'Nah, I wasn't sleeping. At my age you don't need much sleep. Tell me, how are things down unda?'

'Very well, George. Very well.' After some friendly chitchat he got to the task at hand. 'George, I have another favour to ask...on similar terms...'

George was high in the command at the US National Security Agency. And the NSA, along with Britain's GCHQ, ran an intelligence program codenamed 'Echelon' which was of particular value in solving Bob's problem for his client. Australia was one of the five countries cooperating in the signals intelligence (SigInt) program. The secretive, decades-old UKUSA alliance bound together signals intelligence agencies in the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and Australia with the NSA to scan every single phone call, fax, email and SMS message in Australia-and the world-for the interests of security. Thus the communications of Meaghan Wallace had already been intercepted by the electronic ears at the Geraldton facility in Western Australia and automatically sent on to the US, where the men at the NSA could now retrieve them. Strictly speaking, the system was used for spying on communications in the interests of national security: communications relating to North Korean military plans, Pakistani nuclear development and, since 9/11, terrorist activity. Every single communication in the world went through the sophisticated program called 'The Dictionary', which flagged topics of interest based on relevant keywords, names and phone numbers. The giant global spy system had other commercial and political uses, too. When she was in office, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously ordered a tap on two of her Cabinet members, and also used the Canadian arm of Echelon to bug the mobile phone of Margaret Trudeau, wife of the then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Bob himself had personally ordered the surveillance of certain multinational companies through Echelon's vast capabilities in the lead-up to one of Jack Cavanagh's biggest international commercial deals, and it had given them a great edge over the competition.

Bob's latest request would go against SigInt's new rules, but it could be done.

For a price.

To see that his client's multimillion-dollar transportation deal went through smoothly, there was little Bob White would not, or could not, do. Within twenty-four hours he should have traced the call received by Jack Cavanagh, tracked down the potential blackmailer, Warwick O'Connor, and traced all of Meaghan Wallace's recent communications. By then, Madame Q's man Mr Hand would be on the ground and ready to move on the list of targets.

CHAPTER 19.