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  “Well,” Fox said, “if you’re so concerned about us lugging in MREs, you could have checked it out instead of playing tonsil catch-up with your lady.”

  “Yeah, well, at least I have—”

  He stopped himself and Fox punched him in the arm.

  “Okay, I deserved that … almost,” Gammaldi said. “Anyway, corned beef, hash, biscuits and paté—that’s the bomb of MREs.”

  “Dude, corned beef and hash is the devil’s own vomit in a foil bag, and the paté is like cat food,” Fox said, laughing. “Your guts are made of rope.”

  “So, what, you’re all Chicken Tetrazzini?”

  “Actually, I think they stopped making them.”

  “Oh, what a pity,” Gammaldi said, adjusting his head gear.

  “Well, at least I didn’t cry about it like you did when the Jambalaya went out.”

  “It was an emotional day,” Gammaldi said, flicking on the seatbelt light in the rear of the aircraft for the two security men. “Anyway, so long as they gave us some with those jalapeño cheese spread things, I’ll be happy.”

  “Yeah, well, the greatest thing about MREs is still the lemon pound cake,” Fox said, taking a drink of water from a bottle. “No contest, nothing comes close.”

  “Freak,” Gammaldi said and nudged the aircraft forward as another took off; they were now next in line. He took a HOOAH! chocolate bar from a bag by his side and barely got the package off before chomping on it. He looked across at Fox with more than the usual amount of mischief in his eyes.

  “What?” said Fox.

  “What yourself,” replied Gammaldi, smiling.

  “Come on, spill: what are you so damn happy about?”

  Gammaldi demolished the last of his bar, adjusted his seatbelt and earphones and looked out the front window.

  “Nothing my best man needs to know right now.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  Fox squinted at his mate, who looked back at him, amused, so Fox squinted harder and Gammaldi laughed.

  “You look like Brad Pitt in Burn After Reading,” Gammaldi said. “You know, that scene where he’s in the car with John Malkovich trying to sell him back his secret spy shit.”

  They were both laughing as the call came in with their take-off clearance. Al replied and started the final turn to approach the runway, where he moved into take-off, gunning the twin Rolls Royce BR725 engines as the aircraft turned on a dime and took off into the headwind within seconds.

  “I am going to get to the bottom of whatever is going on with you by the end of this trip,” Fox said as they began banking hard to starboard, the thrust of 17 000 pounds-force per engine forcing him back into his seat.

  “Mate, knock yourself out.”

  20

  KOCHI, INDIA

  Kolesnik walked up the single flight of stairs and followed the numbers down the hallway. The apartment complex was nineties style: low-rise, middle-class, harbour-fronted. The only aspect that reflected the country he was in was the smell of Indian cooking; otherwise, he could be anywhere in the world. The hallway was empty as he inserted a lock-pick in the single tumbler; he was inside Art Kneeshaw’s apartment as quickly as if he had used a key.

  In a single, swift motion he took his pistol from his jacket pocket: the Glock 26 fitted neatly into his hand, a little front-heavy with a Gemtech suppressor screwed in. He clicked the door closed gently behind him and walked softly, his rubber-soled boots silent as he scanned the dark room.

  Silence. No one home. He tucked the pistol into the back of his belt.

  He worked quickly, going through Kneeshaw’s things, aided only by a pen light. He quickly noticed a pattern of gaps: between the luggage on the top shelf of the wardrobe, between the uniformly spaced hanging clothes. Kneeshaw had left in a hurry. Kolesnik closed the wardrobe and walked through to the study, where he spent fifteen minutes checking for documents on the water project, unrolling blueprints and then stuffing them back in their box. Nothing. He opened the curtains in the lounge room to let some rays through the windows. The place was clean. There was nothing on the water project, nothing at all.

  Kolesnik inspected the closed-in balcony; it was glazed like a greenhouse with a dining table and bench seat covered with tomato and cucumber plants, dozens of them. There were tomatoes of so many colours—blacks, vivid greens, striped, orange, bright yellow, crimson—that Kolesnik had never seen in such fruit. He poked his finger into the soil of a potted plant—it was dry, but not bone-dry; it had been watered this week. He picked off a large black tomato and sniffed it—it smelled ripe. He bit into it as he would an apple—it was juicy and sweet. He ate it as he poked around the apartment. In the kitchen he opened the fridge—the power was still on, and nothing was rotten. He took a bottle of grape juice and sat on the couch.

  As he drank he noticed marks on the walls, from where frames had once hung. Now, thought Kolesnik, why would Kneeshaw take his … The frames were in the bin, all emptied. He was travelling light. He wasn’t coming back—

  Kolesnik heard a key in the door and slipped through to the study. He grabbed the box of blueprints and returned to the lounge room a few seconds later, his aimed gun concealed behind the box.

  The man—Indian, mid-forties—looked as surprised as shit, wide-eyed. He clearly wasn’t expecting company.

  “Art left some things of mine here,” Kolesnik said casually, with a smile. “Asked me to pick them up.”

  “Oh,” the guy said, looking a little more relaxed. “He didn’t tell me—you need a hand?”

  “No,” Kolesnik said, tucking the pistol into the belt at the small of his back, under his jacket, as he walked towards the door. “Oh,” he added, turning back, “did he leave a forwarding address with you? I only have his cell number.”

  “No,” the guy said, shaking his head. “He left a note under my door last night saying he wouldn’t be back.” He looked around the room, perhaps calculating how much all this stuff would be worth.

  Kolesnik nodded thanks and walked out, dumping the box of plans as soon as he made it outside. He headed for his car.

  21

  EEOB, WASHINGTON DC

  McCorkell was making his sojourn back from a West Wing meeting when his cell phone chimed with a local page. His secretary, Anne. All White House and senior executive cell phones had this local paging function, delivered via an encrypted internal wireless network.

  “Yes?”

  “Good morning, Bill, you have Special Agent—”

  McCorkell walked into his office foyer and she stopped talking into the phone. McCorkell saw a guy sitting in wait there.

  “This is Special Agent Andrew Hutchinson of the FBI.”

  McCorkell nodded his thanks, and Anne handed him his messages and mail before leaving to make tea.

  “Mr McCorkell,” Hutchinson said, standing and offering his hand.

  “Call me Bill,” replied McCorkell with a firm handshake. “Come on through.”

  McCorkell motioned Hutchinson to a chair while he flicked though his mail and added it to the overnight pile already on his desk.

  “How do I know your name?”

  “We spoke late last year about the Umbra connection to—”

  “Michael Rollins,” McCorkell finished.

  “Yes. Nigeria. And Steve Mendes, former CIA shooter turned Umbra employee.”

  “I remember,” McCorkell nodded, taking off his jacket and hanging it over the back of his chair. He cleared some room from his pile of notes on the Russia–Georgia situation and then sat down. “I’ve got an eleven o’clock—most people make appointments around here.”

  “I know, I rang on the way in from the airport. You’ve got a few minutes,” Hutchinson said.

  “I’m ribbing you. I did my time in the Bureau, spent most of it overseas,” McCorkell said with a smile as he fingered his tie and collar button loose. “This is about Fox?”

  Hutchinson
nodded. McCorkell’s secretary came in with his tea—Irish Breakfast in a pot, his old rowing mug on the small tray—and a coffee for Hutchinson.

  “Thanks,” McCorkell said, pouring tea and milk.

  “Bill, DoD just rang. GSR Gulfstream has permission to land at Morón Air Base in Spain.”

  “Thanks, I’ll let them know,” McCorkell said, tapping an email into his computer.

  She nodded and left, closing the door behind her.

  “So, where are you at with the Bureau—National Security Branch?”

  Hutchinson nodded, took a sip of his coffee.

  “Counter-espionage, CT—”

  “Ops Two?”

  “Yes.”

  “TFOS?”

  Operations II included three sections: Weapons of Mass Destruction and Domestic Terrorism; Communications Exploitation Section; and Terrorist Financing Operations Section—TFOS—the latter of which, McCorkell knew, had been putting huge resources into the Magellan fuck-ups that had led to Umbra and its unique strength. Magellan was a CIA-instigated NATO operation; they’d managed to pick up a lot of Russian spooks who found themselves unemployed after the USSR collapsed, but many slipped through and went on to the more lucrative work of applying their skills to crime, Umbra being the most organised of these alumni.

  “I’m mainly responsible for finding links between terrorist and national security dangers abroad and finding threats from within here at home,” Hutchinson said. “It’s a bit of an open slate. Right now, all focus is on Umbra.”

  “So you’re running that unit?”

  “Yes.”

  It was McCorkell’s turn to nod. He knew about this man, knew about his mission. He had pushed to help get it established after a few serious flaws in the intel community were raised after 9/11. Hutchinson was part internal affairs cop to the nation’s intelligence agencies, while working across every national security department and overseas ally to shake up entrenched networks of crooked spooks. McCorkell knew that Hutchinson’s outfit, formed in relative secrecy after the 9/11 commission’s findings, did much more than appease those on the Hill who were calling for carte blanche reform of the intel community—these guys got results, big-scale, measurable ones. They were part of the new model of what could be achieved in twenty-first century intelligence.

  “Bill,” Hutchinson said over the steam of his coffee, “I met with Lachlan Fox this morning.”

  “About his water story?”

  “Roundabout.”

  “Tas Wallace is an old friend of mine,” said McCorkell. “I’m in the loop on your recruitment efforts to get Fox to pick up on some of Michael Rollins’ investigative work.”

  “We don’t have to worry about any of that now.”

  “Oh?”

  “Umbra—they’re coming after him.”

  “How?”

  “International hit list, looks like they’re freelancing it. Six targets: one down already, an attempt on another one failed, and another one not on our list got hit,” Hutchinson said. “We intercepted the intel overnight.”

  “Jesus…” McCorkell put down his tea and looked absently towards the world map that was framed on the wall to his right. “You think this goes back to Roman Babich?”

  “Fox has made a lot of waves for him and his company, and at the very least it’s pissed off his friends.”

  “But you’ve got nothing to pin on him.”

  Hutchinson shook his head: “You know the score.”

  “What’s Fox hoping to find?”

  “Hopefully not too much trouble. He’s going back, right now, to file more story, see what he missed the first time around.”

  “He’s like that,” McCorkell said. “What are you doing?”

  Hutchinson sat forward in his chair. “We know Babich has good access inside the CIA,” Hutchinson said. “I’m meeting with them straight after this. This is a once in a lifetime chance to draw them out—”

  “And use that leverage to get something concrete on Babich?”

  “It’s the best shot we’ve ever had. Forget his wealth and companies, he’s got people everywhere. He’s an ex-spook who knows the score and how to play. We’ve got courts in several countries willing to try him—we just need to keep probing, keep bugging him, force him into further action, into making mistakes that are big enough to catch him out.”

  “And Fox is your man?”

  “Could be.”

  “And what do you want from me?”

  22

  GORI, GEORGIA (EASTERN EUROPE)

  Petro Sirko’s cell phone beeped a designated tone: a new text message from Roman Babich. The contents of the SMS were disappointing—a job in Spain; two targets. Disappointing that it was work again, disappointing that he was being used as a back-up option, disappointing that until last night Babich had not contacted him for, what, more than six months? But interesting that he had already been booked for the Spain job by another source; that meant two separate pay cheques. Time would be an issue; it would be very tight getting to Spain and setting up, but then he would charge accordingly.

  Sirko wore a Georgian police uniform and was sweating despite the cold. He dried his hands on the uniform and put the phone back in his pocket. In the other pocket rested a little plastic box. He ran a hand through his thinning brown hair and kept walking towards the square in the centre of town.

  Having two sets of orders at once was not new to him—it had happened in Chechnya all the time—but it was odd that Babich and Kolesnik wanted the same targets eliminated. Sirko smiled. Kolesnik. The prodigal son. Babich’s hatchet man. His brother-in-arms and his competitor must really be in a jam.

  He walked across the cobbled square past a beautiful young woman being filmed by a young guy. She had long dark tresses and the kind of big brown eyes, pouty lips and porcelain skin that got most men into trouble—but not him. He preferred looking at the guy taking the video—her brother perhaps. Young, lean, just a hint of facial hair. Sirko watched him as he guided his sister, filming away in front of the statue of Stalin. Probably after some kind of artistic juxtaposition: beauty and the beast, gorgeous purity versus ugly monster. He had met such monsters.

  As he’d left his hotel he’d heard about the confirmation of his Omar Hasif hit in Tripoli. He had planted a brick of C4 on the vehicle when it was still at the dealership, timed it to go off the tenth time the ignition was started. He couldn’t wait around for the ID afterwards—he’d had to hightail it to Georgia for this job—but Fox News had named the deceased, God bless them. He believed that results spoke for themselves, and unlike Kolesnik, he preferred work that went boom.

  Even though this job in Georgia was last minute, he’d managed to plant the bomb in plenty of time—no need to worry about the counter-sniper protection the Americans insisted on when they transported senior politicians. He was just here to positively ID the entry of the targets, which he had just done using the intel supplied by the Washington contact, and detonate the device.

  Two successes in twenty-four hours, and another one around the corner. Soon, it would be time to create a successful mission of his own. No outsourcing, no instructions, no payment. His job. His target.

  Sirko’s phone beeped with another message: his jet aircraft was waiting for take-off on the tarmac. He walked faster towards the motorbike he had parked around the corner. He would be in the air in five minutes.

  Sirko smiled. He had been surprised by the message last night: Babich had gone through a repass recently, putting this kind of activity on the backburner, relying more on his divisional heads to control his business interests, using silver instead of lead. This situation must be really out of hand to be bringing back these old ways with such urgency—Sirko knew this was his opportunity.

  He had helped set up Babich’s security in Lake Como—he knew Babich’s movements, the frequency channels the security guys used to communicate, the features of the safehouse and the location of the fall
-back cash stash. It made him sick with envy to see those untold millions of dollars and euros and pounds. Here he was, doing contract jobs, private security on the side, mainly for wealthy Russians like Babich who were happy to take their cash and get out of Russia, set up new lives filled with soccer clubs and Ferraris and young girls. All that bullshit, the easy, painless lives of the rich, while he worked and worked and made do, but only just. Even Kolesnik took a cut from the jobs he outsourced to Sirko … Kolesnik, once a friend, a brother. But one day soon Sirko would get a break.

  Still, he was here and had a job to complete. The delegation of Americans had arrived in their typically high-visibility convoy; representatives from the EU were in rental and embassy cars. He was almost five hundred metres away when he hit the button in the radio-controlled detonator.

  After the deafening blast, glass, dust and debris drifted out in a sandstorm-like cloud from the Town Hall. He turned to see the statue of Stalin shrouded; pity he hadn’t thought to take that out as well. People close by lay still in the street; the brother helped his sister to her feet, both unharmed. As people began to run and scream and a siren started somewhere, he turned and headed west, following the sun to his next location.

  23

  NEBRASKA AVENUE COMPLEX, WASHINGTON DC

  It wasn’t the last place on earth he wanted to be, but he really didn’t have time for the cab commute, particularly in lunch time traffic. Hutchinson was meeting the CIA men on neutral ground—the headquarters of the Department of Homeland Security.

  They finally arrived, and he walked through the lobby, took the stairs and was puffing by the time he reached the third floor of the former naval facility. The hallways were busy; each one of the two dozen temporarily leased DC sites were overcrowded and disjointed, and it was clear that the staff were itching to relocate to their new headquarters: a sprawling campus out at St Elizabeths Hospital, Anacostia.