'Just finish it, will you.'

She pulled a glum face. '"In populist recognition of this underlying truth, the cry during the latter half of the the last century became if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." Aaaagh, new paragraph. "What any survivor of late Marxist ideology would be forced to recognise in the politics of the twenty-first century is that the contradictions are now so heavily disguised that it would be the work of decades simply to reveal them, let alone sharpen them into anything resembling a point." A bit like this prose style, huh? Alright, alright, nearly there. "An overall problem is now no longer perceived, therefore an overall solution no longer sought. Any distasteful elements within the world economic order are now considered either candidates for longer term fine tuning or worse still an irrevocable by-product of economic laws supposedly as set in stone as the laws of quantum physics. So long as this is believed by the vast majority of the populace in the developed world, the contradictions identified by Marxism will remain hidden and each individual member of society will be left to resolve for themselves the vaguely felt tensions at an internal level. Any effort to externalise, this unease will be disdained by the prevailing political climate as discredited socialist utopianism or simply, as was seen in chapter three, the politics of envy."' She laid down the book. 'Yeah, so what?''That's your problem, Carla.' Erik had not sat down while she was reading. He stood with his back to the fire and looked down at her as if 73she were one of his students. She felt suddenly fifteen years old again.

'Unresolved contradictions. Chris may still be the man you married but he's also a soldier for the new economic order. A corporate samurai, if you want to adopt their own imagery.'

'I know that, Dad. That's nothing new. I know what he does, I know how his world works. I help build and repair the vehicles they use to kill each other, in case you'd forgotten. I'm just as involved in it all, Dad.

What?'

He was shaking his head. He crouched to her level and took both her hands gently in his own.

'Carla, this isn't about you and Chris. It's barely about you at all.

Benito's talking about internal contradictions. Living with what you are, with what your society is. At Hammett McColl, Chris could do that because there was a thin veneer of respectability over it all. At Shorn, there isn't.'

'Oh, bulls.h.i.t. You've read what these people are like. Dad, you used to write about what they were like, back when there was anyone with the guts to publish it. The only difference between Conflict Investment and Emerging Markets is the level of risk. In Emerging Markets, they don't like conflict or instability. The guys in CI thrive on it. But it's the same principle.'

'Hmm.' Erik smiled and let go of her hands. 'That sounds to me like Chris talking. And he's probably even right. But that's not the point.' 'You keep saying that, Dad.'

Erik shrugged and seated himself again. 'That's because you keep missing it, Carla. You think this is about a rift between you and Chris, and I'm telling you it's not, it's about a rift inside Chris. Now you're saying there's no difference in what he used to do and what he's doing now, and aside from a few semantic quibbles that may be true. But Chris hasn't just changed what he does. He's changed where he does it, and who he does it for, and that's what counts. Along with Nakamura and Lloyd Paul, Shorn a.s.sociates is the most aggressive player in the investment field. That applies to their Arbitrage and Emerging Markets divisions just as much as to Conflict Investment. They're the original hard-faced firm. No gloss, no moral rationalisations. They do what they do, they're the best at it. That's what they sell on. You go to Shorn because they're mean motherf.u.c.kers, and they'll make money for you, come h.e.l.l or high water. f.u.c.k ethical investment, just give me a fat f.u.c.king return and don't tell me too much about how you got it.'

'You're making speeches, Dad.'

There was a taut silence. Carla stared into the fire, wondering why she found it so easy to sink these barbs into her father. Then Erik Nyquist chuckled and nodded.74'You're right, 1 am,' he said cheerfully. 'Sorry about that. 1 miss seeing myself in print so much, it all just b.a.l.l.s up inside me. Comes out whenever I have someone to talk to.'

'I don't mind,' she said distantly. 'I just wish . . .'

'Wish what?'

She had a vivid flash of recall, toothpaste-white. She would have been about six or seven at the time, staying with grandparents in Troms6 and coc.o.o.ned in the cold outside/warm inside security the visits there always brought. She remembered Erik and Kirsti Nyquist on skis, propped against each other for support on the hill behind Kirsti's parents' house and laughing into each other's faces. Having fun in the definitive Nyquist fashion that she, as a child, had always imagined would characterise her future married life, the way it would always characterise her parents'.

The flash faded, into the dull red glow of the electric fire. She reached for her father's hand.

'Nothing.'

75ELEVEN.

'Drink?'

Mike Bryant shook his head. 'Still dealing with a hangover, thanks, Louise. Just water, if you've got it.'

'Of course.' Louise Hewitt closed the steel-panelled door of the office drinks cabinet and hefted a blue two-litre bottle from the table beside it instead. 'Sit down, Mike. Drinking - or whatever - mid week, that can be a pretty lethal mistake.'

'Not lethal,' said Bryant, ma.s.saging his temples a little as he sank onto the sofa. 'But definitely a mistake at my age.'

'Yeah, must be h.e.l.l being thirty-four. I remember it vaguely.' Hewitt poured water into two gla.s.ses and sat on the edge of the sofa opposite.

She looked at him speculatively. 'Well, I won't toast you with water, but congratulations do seem to be in order. I just got off the phone to Bangkok. That sketch on Cambodia you dropped last time you were out there finally landed on the right guerrilla head.'

Bryant sat up straighter, and forgot his hangover.

'Cambodia? The smack-war thing?'

Hewitt nodded. 'The smack-war thing, as you so elegantly define it.

We've got a guerrilla coalition leader willing to deal. Khieu Sary. Sound familiar?'

Bryant drank from his water gla.s.s and nodded. 'Yeah, I remember him. Arrogant motherf.u.c.ker. Had ancestors in the original Khmer Rouge or something.'

'Yeah.' There was the slightest hint of mockery in Hewitt's echo of the grunted syllable. 'Well, it looks like this Sary needs arms and cash to hold the coalition together. The Cambodian government's on the edge of offering an amnesty to any of the heroin rebels who want to come in and disarm. If that happens, the coalition's gone and Sary loses his powerbase. But if he can hang on, our sources in Bangkok reckon he's in line to march on Phnom Penh inside two years.'

'Optimistic.'

'Local agents always are. You know how it is, they pitch rosy so you'll bite. But this guy's been on the money in the past. I'm inclined to go with it. So you'd better break out your copy of Reed and Mason, because this one's yours, Mike.'76Mike Bryant's eyes widened. 'Mine?'

'All yours.' Hewitt shrugged. 'You made it happen, you've got the executive experience to cover it. Like I said, congratulations.'

'Thanks.'

'The proposal is not uncontested,' said Hewitt casually.

Bryant grinned. 'What a surprise. Nakamura?'

'Nakamura and Acropolitic both. Nakamura must have parallel information on Sary, they're offering him essentially the same deal you put together in Bangkok, and the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's smart enough to know that forcing us all to tender will bring the prices down.'

'And Acro?'

'They've got the status quo mandate. Official economic advisers to the Cambodian regime. They're in it to squash the proposal before it gets off the ground. It's all already cleared with Trade and Finance.'

'What's the ground?'

'North. Three-hundred-kilometre duel envelope, contracts to be signed in conference auditorium six at the Tebbit Centre. Turn up with blood on your wheels or don't turn up. The word is Nakamura have pulled Mitsue Jones for this one. Flying her in to head up the UK team. Acropolitic don't have anyone in her league, but they'll no doubt be sending their finest. Against all of that, you get a team of three including you. Suggestions?'

'Nick Makin. Chris Faulkner.' There was no hesitation in Bryant's voice.

Hewitt looked dubious. 'Your chess pal, huh?'

'He's good.'

'You don't let personal feelings get in the way of professional judgment around here, Mike. You know that. It's bad for business.'

'That's right, I know that. And I want Faulkner. You said this was mine, Louise. If you don't '

'Makin doesn't like Faulkner,' said Hewitt sharply.

'Makin doesn't like anyone. That's his secret. The problem here, Louise, is that you don't like Faulkner. And it isn't much of a secret, either.''May I remind you that you're speaking to the executive partner of this division.' Hewitt's voice stayed level, just a shade cooler all of a sudden. She poured herself more water while she talked. 'For your information, Mike, personal feelings have nothing to do with this. I don't think Faulkner is up to a tender of this magnitude. I also think that you're letting a friendship cloud your professional judgment and I'm going on record with that. This is going to go badly wrong if you're not careful.'

'Louise, this is going to go like a dream.' Bryant grinned wolfishly.

77"Nlakan and 1 aulkner are both proven hard men on the road and as far as I'm concerned that's the bottom line. We don't have anybody better and you know it.'

There was a pause in which the loudest sound was Louise Hewitt swallowing water. Finally she shrugged.

'Alright, Mike, it's your call. But I'm still going on record against it.

And that makes Faulkner one hundred per cent your responsibility. If he f.u.c.ks up '

'If he f.u.c.ks up, Louise, you can fire him and I'll hold the door open.'

Bryant flashed the grin again. 'Or the window.'

Hewitt took a disc out of her pocket and tossed it onto the table between them.

'If he f.u.c.ks up, you'll all be dead,' she said shortly. 'And Shorn'll be out of a medium-term CI contract worth billions. That's the briefing.

Route blow-ups, road-surface commentaries. Make sure they both get copies. Make sure Faulkner understands what he's got to do. Blood on the wheels, Mike, or there's no deal.'

'I remember a time,' Bryant let just a hint of his American burlesque tinge the words. 'Used to be enough just to get there first.'

Hewitt smiled despite herself. 'Bulls.h.i.t, you do. You just heard Notley and the others talk about it. And even they barely remember when it was that cuddly. Now get out of here, and don't disappoint me.'

'Wouldn't dream of it.' Bryant picked up the disc and got up to go. At the door, he paused and looked back to where she was still sitting at the desk, sipping her water.

'Louise?'

'Yes.'

'Thanks for giving me this.'

'Don't mention it. Like I said, don't let me down.'

'No, I won't.' Bryant hesitated, then took the plunge. 'You know, Louise, you go on record against Faulkner now and you run the risk of looking very silly when he works out.'

Hewitt gave him an icy, executive-partner smile.

'I'll run that risk, thank you, Michael. Now, was there any other advice you'd like to give me on running the division?'

Bryant shook his head wordlessly and left.He stopped by Chris's office and found the other man standing at the window, staring out at the hail. Winter was hanging on unseasonably long in London and the skies had been gusting fistfuls of the stuff for weeks.

"s happening?' he asked as he stuck his head around the door.

Chris jerked visibly as Bryant spoke. Clearly he'd been a long way off.

78Coming across the office to the window, Bryant was hard put to see anywhere visibly more attractive than the fifty-third floor of the Shorn tower, and was forced to conclude that Chris had been daydreaming.

'Mike.' Chris turned away from the view to face his visitor. His eyes were red-rimmed and angry with something not in the immediate vicinity. Bryant backed up a step.

'Whoa, Chris. You've got to lay off the crystal edge.' It was only half a joke, he admitted to himself. Chris looked like s.h.i.t. 'Remember Rancid Neagan. Just say No, not 'til the weekend.'

Chris smiled, a forced bending of the lips, as he rolled out the time honoured Dex and Seth comeback.

'Hey, I don't do that s.h.i.t no more.'

'What, weekends?'

Reluctantly, the smile became a grin. 'You come up with a move or what?'

'Not yet. But don't worry, the turnaround is in sight.'

This time they both grinned. The match, currently their fifth, was well into the endgame, and, barring a brain haemorrhage, Chris couldn't lose. Which would make it four to one against Bryant, a score that the big man didn't seem to mind as much as Chris had thought he might. Bryant played a flamboyant, queen-centred game and when Chris inevitably worked out a fork and took that piece away from him, Bryant's strategy usually went to pieces. Chris's cautious defensive earthworks stood him in good stead every time and Bryant continued to be perplexed when his a.s.saults broke on the battlements of p.a.w.ns while a pair or a trio of innocuous pieces chased his exposed king around the board and pinned it to an ignominious checkmate. But he was learning, and seemed content to pay the price of that process in defeats. His calls at weekends came far faster than they had in the beginning, and Chris was taking longer to respond each time. This last match, at over two weeks, had already lasted twice as long as the preceding games. Chris thought it might be time to go up in the loft and bring down some of the battered strategy books his father's brother had given him as a child. He needed to sand off the rust if he was going to hold his lead.

Maybe in return, Mike was teaching him to shoot. They were down to the Shorn armoury a couple of times a week now, firing off Nemex rounds at the holotargets until Chris's gun hand was numb with the repeated kick of the big gun. To his own surprise, he was turning out to have some natural apt.i.tude. He hit things more often than he missed, and if he didn't yet have Mike's casual precision with the Nemex, he was certainly making, in the midst of the crashing thunder on the firingrange, a quiet kind of progress.

79tie wasnt sure now ne felt about tlaat.

'Got something for you,' said Bryant, producing the briefing disc from his pocket with a conjuror's flourish. He held it up between index and ring fingers. The light caught it and opened up a rainbow sheened wedge on the bright silver circle. Chris looked at the colours curiously.

'And that is?'

'Work, my friend. And this season's shot at the big time. TV fame, as many drive-site groupies as you can handle.'

Chris ran the disc at home.

'Look it over,' Bryant told him. 'Kick back and relax, take offyour tie and shoes, pour yourself a shot of that iodine-flavoured s.h.i.t you drink and just let it wash over you. I'm not looking for feedback for at least forty-eight hours.'

'Why can't I just run it now?' Chris wanted to know.

'Because,' leaning closer, with a secret-of-my-success type air, 'that way you're keyed up with antic.i.p.ation and you eat it up at a deeper level.

Your brain really sucks it in, just like the forty-eight-hour wait after gives it time to really stew, and by the time we meet to talk about it, you're ready to boil over with insight.' He winked conspiratorially. 'Old consultancy trick from way back.'

'This just you and me?'

Bryant shook his head. 'Three-man team. You, me, Nick Makin.'

'Oh.'

'Is there a problem with that?' Bryant's eyes narrowed. 'Something I should know about?'

'No, no.'

Watching the closing sequences of the briefing disc, Chris turned it over in his head and tried to work out why he did feel there was a problem with Nick Makin. Makin hadn't exactly come across as friendly, but neither had Hewitt, or Hamilton for that matter, and a lot of Shorn execs had probably heard the story of Elysia Bennett and Chris Faulkner's sentiment attack.

The disc ended with the Shorn a.s.sociates logo engraved into a metallic finish on the screen, then clicked off. Chris shelved histhoughts, picked up his drink and went to look for his wife.

He thought for a moment she'd gone to bed with a book, but as he pa.s.sed the kitchen he saw that the connecting door to the garage was open and the lights were on. Led by the clinking sounds of tools, he walked through, and around the bulk of the Saab, which was jacked up on one side. Carla's coverall-clad legs and hips protruded from under the car beside an unrolled oilskin cloth full of spanners. As he watched 8Oshe must have stretched out to one side for something, because the angle of her hips shifted and the plain of her stomach changed shape beneath the coveralls. He felt the customary twinge of arousal that her more sinuous movements still fired through him.

Hey, he kicked one of her feet. 'What're you doing?'