IES couldn't take the damage. They went under, bankrupted along with a dozen or so others, and about forty per cent of the low-end commercial sector in Ethiopia at the time. They say it precipitated the civil war.'

'Ah yeah, I remember this.' Mike snapped his fingers. 'The Ayele Protocol, right? Read about it in Reed and Mason.'

'Right. Quain walked away with a huge commission, Hammett McColl repositioned for regional dominance in the Red Sea zone, and my father woke up with a walletful of dead plastic he didn't know about.

He got shot the same day, arguing with a supermarket security guard.

His card wouldn't scan at checkout, they wouldn't take him seriously and it got.' Chris watched his knuckles whiten around the whisky gla.s.s with absent fascination, as if they belonged to someone else. 'Out of hand. My mother says, said, if he'd been dressed better that day, it would never have happened. Hated suits apparently, my old man.

Dressed scruffy as he could, outside the office. Maybe they thought he'd stolen the card or something. They tried to throw him out, it got rough. Blare. Some fat over-the-hill f.u.c.k with a d.i.c.k extension blew his f.u.c.king head off.'

He looked at the whisky gla.s.s. Let go of it abruptly and stared at the palm of his suddenly liberated hand.

'We lost everything. The house, both cars. Health insurance, savings.

Stock options. My mother got rehoused in the eastern zones. My father's friends helped out as muchas they could, but most of them were going under too. They were all at IES or working in related firms.'

Chris picked up his drink again, knocked it back. 'And then, even that early, they say you could see the domino coming if you were paying attention. It was still nearly a decade off, the worst of it, but people were314already running scared, just hanging on with whatever they had. And Quain had just seen to it that we had nothing.'

'You remember all this?'

'Not really, no. I was two when my father was killed. I was there but,'

Chris shivered, dodging the dream. 'I don't remenber it. I just remember growing up in the zones with this accent everybody hated. This vague sense that things were better once. Bej0re. But I could have picked that up listening to my mother. No way you remember stuff from when you're two years old.'

'No. But.' Mike gestured helplessly. 'How the luck did you. I mean, Quain. Didn't he see you coming, the day you joined HM? How did you even get into HM, come to that?'

'I changed my name. My father wasn't called Faulkner, it was my mother's maiden name. She died of thorn fever, when I was seventeen. I took her name, sold everything else we owned and cut myself a new ident.i.ty. Got a gangwit datarat in Plaistow to fix my records. Probably did a s.h.i.t job, the money I gave him, but it was what I could afford. I doubt it would have stood up to close scrutiny, but when you're from the zones who the f.u.c.k cares. You're just cheap, faceless labour. And by the time I got to Hammett McColl, I had five years of new ident.i.ty behind me. I'd made a lot of money for Ross Mobile and IS Euro, I could drive. That's all the HM recruiters cared about.'

'Sloppy. Was that their own people?'

'No, contracted out. Some cut-rate two-room outfit off Ludgate Circus. They tendered for HM on straight cost. No duel requirement.

Lowest offer wins.'

Mike shook his head. 'f.u.c.king amateurs.'

'Yeah, but you know what. It wouldn't have mattered anyway. Quain wouldn't have recognised my father's name. Some guy he ruined twenty years ago, one name out of hundreds he probably didn't even know back when it happened, let alone two decades on. What are the chances?'

'Yeah, figures.' Mike puffed out his cheeks. 'Jesus, what a stoW. Does Carla know all this?'

'No. She knows I grew up in the zones, she knows my parents are dead, but we don't talk about it. I met her after Quain. I'd already buried it all. She used to ask, back when we started seeing each other.

Think it might even have been some of the attraction for her, the zone connection. I told her I wasn't interested in looking back:' He stareddown the receding perspectives of the memory. 'Snapped her head off whenever she asked. She stopped asking after a while.'

'Yeah, it's true. You never talk about it, do you.'

Chris shrugged. 'Nor do you. Nor do any of us. We're all too flat-out 315f.u.c.king busy trying to inake it big right no,v to talk about the past.

You'd think none of us had parents, the way we live.'

'Hey, I've got parents. I see them pretty often.'

'Good for you.'

Mike shook his head again, a little blearily this time. 'Still can't believe it, man. It's like a f.u.c.king movie. All the way back from the zones to take down Edward Quain.'

Chris finished his drink. 'Yeah, well. Some of us have got what it takes, some of us haven't. Remember.'

'Ah, s.h.i.t, Chris, I didn't mean you. I'm not saying everyone in the zones deserves to be there, you know that. If I'd known, you know, about your parents and stuff, I wouldn't have said--'

'No? You must have known my background, Mike. You said yourself, that first day I met you in the washroom, Hewitt was batting my details about before I arrived. And it's not a secret where I grew up. It's on the rdsumd.'

'What?' Mike squinted at him. 'Well, yeah, but I a.s.sumed. I don't know, accidental son of some slumming exec and a bargirl, a dancer or something.'

'Thanks.'

'f.u.c.k, I don't mean. I mean, it doesn't mean anything, but I just a.s.sumed. It happens, you know. Seen it happen. Come close a couple of times, myself. I just figured, something like that, that's how you got your break at Ross Mobile, maybe a leg up into IS as well.'

'No.' Chris smiled tightly. 'I got Ross through an old friend of my father. Everything else I clawed down myself. Don't worry about it, Mike. You were right. Some of us have got what it takes, and what it takes is hate. I had enough hate to paint a towerblock. I grew up hating.

It was like fuel. Like food. You don't need much of anything else when you've got hate.'

'Look--'

'And then one morning I woke up and I'd killed Edward Quain, and the world was still here. I had a job, I had a life, well, a lifestyle anyway.

Hammett McColl had just promoted me. I had money, a lot of money, for the first time in my life.' He tipped his empty gla.s.s horizontal.

Looked into it and laughed. 'It seemed a little ungracious not to go on living.'The two of them sat there in silence for a while. Finally, Mike shifted uncomfortably and cleared his throat.

'Chris.' He hesitated. 'You, uh, you want to stay at my place tonight?'

'No. Thanks, no. I've got to be alone for a while, Mike. There's stuff I need to sort out. I'll get a hotel. But thanks. And.' He waved vaguely.

'Thanks for, you know, saving my life and everything.'

316Bryant grinned.

's.h.i.t, i always owed you for MitsueJoues. Just call it even.'

The hotel would not hold him.

fie poured hinself a whisky - alotherf.u.c.king hisky - and stared at the phone as if it were poisonous. His mobile was still switched off. No one outside of Mike knew where he was. He'd have to pick up and dial.

He picked up the TV remote instead, and zapped through the channels. Endless, nindless, brightly-coloured s.h.i.t and an upbeat report just in from Cambodia. fie recognised the editing.

He shut down the TV's painted window and went out on the balcony. Varm night air gusted over his face. A well-lit Kensington street angled past seven floors below. A couple walked along it, arm in arm. Laughter floated up. A cab idled by in the opposite direction, cruising for custom.

He retreated to the bedroom. He lay face up on the bed and stared at the perfectly moulded plaster ceiling. Tension itched down his limbs.

He prowled the suite and gnawed a thumbnail down to the quick.

He lit the laptop and tried to carry out simple database tasks.

He hurled the whisky gla.s.s across the room.

He grabbed wallet, Nemex, jacket, and he left.

She was waiting for him.

She must have heard the cab in the street outside. The door opened as he pressed the bell. She stood in the clothes she'd worn at treak Point, black leggings and a loose grey running top, face scrubbed clean of make-up, hair gathered back. They stood looking at each other, an arm's reach apart.

'I've got to talk to you,' he started, but she shook her head.

She reached for him as he crossed the threshold. It felt like falling. He was close enough to smell freshly drunk coffee on her breath, behind that the swirl of female scent mingled with orange blossom. The kiss was an open-mouthed collision that squeezed tears into his eyes, a mutual a.s.sault of tongues, of teeth tugging on lips and hands on clothing below. She was laughing excitedly into his open mouth as they clinched and his hands felt impossibly full of her body, unable to grasp the substance of it with enough fi)rce. He kicked the door shut and found a.breast beneath the sports top, unsupported and surgically perfect - the p.o.r.n segnent .p:ang through his mind like .-a'eat hard under soft, a swath of stomach sprung with taut muscle, the hard length of onethigh and the lift of a.r.s.e cheek above it. He could not settle on any of it.

Her leg thrust between his and ground upward against his p.r.i.c.k. He was already hard. She bit him on the neck. Hands dragged him down 37the hall, past the kitchen and bathroom and left into an untidy bedroom.

Cluttered bedside unit, a teetering pile of books and a gla.s.s of stale water. A pale blue quilt crumpled across an unmade bed. He drank it in and the new intimacy was a tiny itching in the pit of his stomach, an opening to an inner sanctum, built into his prior knowledge of the rest of the house. She let him go with a sudden motion as if he was hot, sank to the bed in front of him and peeled off her leggings in two single stripping motions. Fingers touched the mound beneath the white cotton thong she wore underneath, rubbing the groove up and down.

She grinned up at him as she did it. Her free hand scrabbled across to the bedside table, ripped open a drawer and reached inside.

'No, wait.'

He shed jacket and shirt, dropped to his knees beside the bed and buried his face in the white cotton, breathing in the undiluted scent of her. She gasped and sank back on the folds of the quilt. The heated heart of flesh between her thighs was moist. He slid his hands up the insides of her thighs, fingers first, pulled aside the cotton and sank his tongue into her. A hard spasm and her hands came to grip the sides of his head. Her legs lifted and folded over his back like wings. She was panting.

Vghen she came, she ground up hard against him with a deep grunting sound, then flopped to twitching stillness. He shouldered his way gently out from under her legs and straightened up. In the drawer she had opened, he found the Durex can. He rolled its chilly length along the plain of her stomach, got another twitch as it touched her, then lodged it between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and rolled it idly back and forth in the indelible cleavage surgery had given her. She raised herself on her elbows.

'So what do you want now ?' she asked, mock tough.

'I want to flick you, Liz.'

She seemed to consider that for a moment, head tilted slightly. Then she sat up, tugged her hair loose of its binding and set about unfastening his belt buckle. She liberated the engorged length of his p.r.i.c.k from the cloth it was trapped in, handling it with greedy care and sliding it back and forth into her mouth. Then she gripped it at base between thumb and forefinger, picked up the Durex can and sprayed him steadily from end to end.

It was a long time since he'd needed to use the stuff, and the sudden, cold tightening of the instant membrane was a shock. He gasped and Liz Linshaw grinned again as she heard it.

'That's just for starters,' she said in the back of her throat and held up the can for his inspection. 'This is c.o.c.ktail-laced. Expensive stuff: Youwait 'til the contact sensitisers kick in. You're not going to last long.'

318He reached for her and she scooted back on the bed, opening herself for him. He sank all the way into her with a groan, cupped one breast in both hands, working the flesh.

He sucked in the nipple and it touched the roof of his mouth.

She was right. He didn't last long.

'Can you feel my heart?' she asked him, later.

He nodded drowsily against her chest.

'It's still beating like a fucldng drum, Chris. That's with thinking about what you did to me. I want you to do it again.'

'What, right now?'

She laughed. 'Well, ideally yeah. But I can wait.' She craned her neck to look at his face. 'Are you staying the night?'

'If you ask me to.'

'Stay the night.' 'No, I got to go.'

'You b.a.s.t.a.r.d.' She slapped at his flank. 'That's not funny. I want you to stay, Chris. I want access to you.'

'You've got access to me. Look at me.' But beneath the comfortable humour, he felt a vague stirring of alarm. Not at what she wanted. At what he might want from her.

'So we're going to do this again?'

He thought about Carla. Pushed the thought away again. Let go.

'Yeah, we are. I'm living out of a hotel now, Liz. No more complications.'

And in the back of his head, something heard and lifted its throat to the sky, and laughed like a hyena.

Mnidst the plinthed Grecian sculpture, Louise Hewitt sat on the edge of the grey-sheeted bed and stared past the white blast of a bedside halogen lamp. The room was silent around her. She had hung her jacket away with automated care on her way into the apartment, and now her shoulders slumped under the soft silk of her blouse. There was an unaccustomed ache in her throat.

She looked down at the bed and pressed her lips together. Then she lay sideways on the covers and lowered her face to the pillow. His scent came off the grey cotton and she clenched her eyes shut.'Oh Christ, Nick,' she murmured, and her throat clicked as she swallowed. 'Didn't I tell you? Didn't I zt, a,7 you?'

She lay there for a while, and a single tear leaked out from under her right eyelid. It trickled jerkily to the edge of her face and soaked into the pillow.

When the second and third tear slipped out, she sat up abruptly and 319wiped them off her face with the angry gesture of someone ripping off a mask. She cleared her throat, got up from the bed and went through to the study. She stabbed the datadown awake and seated herself before its soft, multi-coloured glow.

She worked.

320FILE#5:.

FINALAUDITFORTY.

There were tiines over the next few weeks when Chris had to forcibly remind himself that this was his own life he was leading.

Partly it was the hotel. There was something insulated about living out of a box of high-cla.s.s services long-term, something that felt like wearing thin rubber gloves. Household tasks he was used to performing himself happened distantly, almost invisibly. He put out his dirty laundry and it came back again pristine, as if cleaned by elves. Fresh towels, and little bottles of soap and shainpoo appeared daily in the bathroom by a similar magic. He ordered food and it came to his door from a kitchen he never saw, or he fed himself in one of the hotel's three internal restaurants. Either way, he was saved the tiny increments of physical and emotional effort involved in going outside to look for a place to eat.

At Shorn, he performed with a slightly numb, mechanical competence.

The work piled up into account overload as Nick Makin's abrupt departure took its toll on everyone. He cut a path through it like someone working through dense bush with a blunt :nachete. Focus ahead, swing, grab, clear and step, focus ahead, s-wing. Occasionally he sagged, but habit kept him on his feet.

The pellet wounds in his side healed, fading rapidly from actual pain to inconvenience to vague memory. Dreams of Carla stubbornly refused to follow the same path.

Covert reports came in from the NAME via Lopez. Barranco had taken his first dose of Shorn beneficence - three hundred Kalashnikovs plus ammunition, thirty of the Aerospatiale plane-killers, an even thousand King grenades, all brought ash.o.r.e in the dead of night on some Pacific beach, courtesy of a privatised Epsilon-cla.s.s Russian attack sub and her demobbed crew-. The best international bulk-by-stealth couriers money could buy.

On the other side of the globe, Nakamura played Cambodia the way Vasvik had told him they would. Planning for the military coup lurched into motion. Chris had the relevant local tools to hand - he'd mustered them almost absently - days before the indesp intelligence came through. He pretended to study the reports, phoned through prearranged authorisation codes to Langley an hour later, sat and waited.