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  The act of mercy surprised him. He did not owe these men anything, after all. They were cogs in the same machine that had made his life a misery. He put the weapon across his lap and searched the dead man, finding the keys to his handcuffs.

  The yokel cried out in alarm, and when the prisoner looked up, a new figure was standing at the edge of the dusty road. Tall and imposing, his head was wrapped in a scarf so only his eyes were visible, and he had a camouflage cloak that was the same hue as the rocky hillside. The figure held a rifle, a gun that the prisoner was much more accustomed to. It was a Type 56, the PRC’s copy of Russia’s workhorse AKM assault weapon. It was clear the user knew exactly how to wield it to best effect.

  One hand came up to pull down the scarf and the prisoner saw a foreigner’s copper-shaded, leonine features. The man walked over to the smoker, kicked his rifle aside and put a shot through his skull. Then he closed in on the yokel, ignoring the guard’s entreaties, and finished him too.

  The prisoner held his stolen rifle close, ready to defend himself if the need arose. Instead, the foreigner walked to the front of the truck to make sure he had killed the driver. His thoroughness was remarkable.

  The prisoner rose slowly and kicked open the drop gate, before dismounting. The yokel’s sightless eyes stared up at him where he lay slumped against the Jiefang’s bloodstained rear wheels. The prisoner looked away, and for the first time he saw why the truck had stopped. Up ahead, slewed sideways and blocking the road, was the black car he had seen near the gate of the labor camp. From this distance, the crimson smeared over the windscreen and the holes in the glass made it clear that everyone inside was dead.

  Presently, the foreigner came back around the far side of the truck, his rifle shouldered. Unhurried, he pulled a photograph from his pocket, comparing the image to the man in front of him, then nodded toward the crags.

  “I have food and water, clean clothes,” he said, in accented English. “Also medicine, if you require it.”

  He moved to a gulley at the side of the road and pulled away another camouflage covering, to reveal a long, heavy bag that he dragged back toward the truck.

  “Who … are you?”

  The words sounded strange coming out of the prisoner’s mouth. He had not spoken the other language in a long time.

  “Does it matter?”

  The foreigner unzipped the bag and there was a corpse inside. A man around the prisoner’s age, dressed in a threadbare laogai laborer’s uniform identical to his. The foreigner reached past the body and pulled out a pair of magnesium road flares. They would burn all remains and leave nothing recognizable.

  “I want to know the name of … the man who liberated me,” said the prisoner.

  The foreigner shrugged. “I am Khadir. And I am not the liberator I once was.”

  “Khadir,” repeated the prisoner. “I remember, it means one who is powerful.”

  “For now, less than I would wish,” admitted the other man. “But I am patient.”

  “I know a lot about patience.” The prisoner nodded as an understanding came to him, as he saw the reason for all of this. “I think I have become useful to someone. Yes?”

  Khadir nodded. “I’ll take you to him.”

  * * *

  It was after midnight in Monaco, and Delancort cradled a cup of potent espresso, breathing in the aroma. He stared out through the conference room window, out at the black expanse of sea. Beneath the Rubicon tower, the city extended in either direction along the coastline in a glowing belt of light, glittering and moving like streams of molten gold. Delancort was oblivious to it, lost in the distant dark. He blinked and adjusted his rimless spectacles, catching sight of his reflection in the bronzed glass.

  Outwardly he was, as always, carefully managed in his appearance and poise, lacking nothing. Inwardly, the situation could not have been more different. A day ago, Ekko Solomon had retreated to his yacht, the Themis, down there on the black water. Solomon had made it clear that Henri’s services were not required and he was not to be contacted unless the matter was of the utmost urgency.

  This wasn’t an uncommon occurrence. Solomon’s executive assistant didn’t live in his boss’s back pocket, despite what other Rubicon personnel might have thought, but years of working for the African billionaire meant Delancort had a clear sense of what the man meant when he didn’t speak as much as when he did.

  The echo of the conversation with the board members still hung in the air, like the scent of the rich coffee turning sour as it cooled. There was an unpleasant inference in it that Delancort was unable to shake off. First and foremost, he was an employee of the Rubicon Group, and his loyalty was to the corporation, but Ekko Solomon was his superior, and the plain truth of it was that Henri would not be alive now without the man’s intervention. Solomon liked to say that Rubicon in general and the Special Conditions Division in particular were places that gave people a second chance. That was an undeniable truth for Delancort. But for all he had done and his laudable intentions, Solomon was just one man. Rubicon was his life’s work, yes, but it had a life of its own. Then a soft chime sounded through the room and he was spared any further introspection.

  Delancort straightened in his chair as a rectangular shape drew itself into being on the window glass, transforming into a video screen. A thin layer of transparent electrosensitive polymer coating the inside of the window allowed it to become a display like any desktop monitor, and he preferred that to the peculiarly disconnected conversations that took place through the VR rigs in the room. Speaking to someone on a screen gave Delancort a sense of control over the discussion that the other method did not. The VR system lacked the theater of being able to hang up on someone if the moment demanded it, for example.

  An encryption chyron marched across the top of the screen, promising that the video link was scrambled and secure, and presently a dim image of an ill-lit room appeared on it. Dane and Kader were framed in the foreground, peering into the eye of a digital camera, and he could make out Keyes perched on the edge of a chair behind them.

  “Still awake, Henri?” said the woman, with a cat-eyed glance.

  “You know me well enough to understand what a foolish question that is.” His reply was instinctively sharp. “I have been monitoring your uploads of the intelligence taken from this hard drive—”

  The Englishman opened his mouth to speak, but Delancort did not give him the opportunity. The reckless recovery of the device had Dane’s fingerprints all over it, with his usual disregard for his safety and that of the larger operation. Delancort wasn’t about to allow him the chance to make excuses.

  “That material, along with the connections it suggests, are disturbing,” he concluded. “The involvement of a Triad group, the thefts of our equipment … But first, I need more context on these ‘black masks’ you encountered.”

  “The men we could identify belong to a far-right activist group called the Lion’s Roar,” said Kader. “Once they were small-scale, largely confined to Belgium and the Netherlands, but in recent years the shift in the political landscape has allowed them to expand. Now they’re active all the way out to Russia, and there’s evidence they have alliances with white power groups in America, and violent identitarian factions elsewhere in Europe.”

  “These creeps aren’t sign-wavers and social media tough guys,” added Keyes. “They’re the real deal. An active terrorist organization.”

  “And they have abducted Dr. Park, and you suspect, murdered her new family.”

  “I don’t suspect any bloody thing about that,” said Dane, with grim-faced certainty.

  Delancort swore under his breath, quietly enough that the room’s microphones didn’t pick it up. His first instinct was to advise they cut their losses and disengage from this mess while they were still able. It could be done, quickly and discreetly, turning over what data they had to Interpol and the local authorities in Singapore. But on the other hand, doing that would open up Rubicon to a whole raft of liabi
lities, and force them to answer unpleasant questions about Ji-Yoo Park’s defection from North Korea and the falsehood of her new life as Susan Lam. There were some situations that not even Rubicon could buy its way out of.

  “Is there anything you can tell me that won’t fill me with dread,” he went on, “or is that too much to ask?”

  “Assim’s rebuilding some fragmented data trails from the recovered drive,” said Dane. “You know what Bitcoin is, right?”

  “I am not completely ignorant about digital technology,” Delancort replied.

  Granted, he was not steeped in esoteric hacker lore like the Englishman, but he knew how the so-called cryptocurrency operated.

  As he understood it, Bitcoin was a form of virtual money that could be instantaneously traded around the world, allowing parties at both ends of the transaction to remain essentially anonymous. Difficult to trace, it was perfect for dealings that were less than legal. Certain black book operations undertaken by the SCD needed just such an invisible finance stream in order to remain viable. But it wasn’t infallible, and in Delancort’s eyes it was no substitute for a bag of untraceable diamonds or a suitcase full of used bills.

  “I’ve been running a cluster analysis remotely, via the main server in Monaco, trying to backtrack a series of Bitcoin transactions that terminated here in Singapore,” Kader said quickly. Delancort raised an eyebrow. He had not authorized that. “And it’s likely that payments to the Ang Soon Tong fronts came from the same real-world location that has been sending money to other places as well. Transfers have gone out to India, Syria, Russia, Croatia, and a few other nodes I haven’t been able to identify as yet.”

  “It’s gotta be the bankroll for this entire op,” added Keyes.

  “What is the location?”

  “Unclear.” The young Saudi’s hands knitted together. “There’s a number of possibilities.” He paused to study a list on a tablet screen. “One in Cyprus, one in Senegal, another in Iceland, and a fourth in Mauritius.”

  Delancort leaned back in his chair, assimilating this new information.

  “How long will it take you to be certain?”

  “Too long,” insisted Dane, reaching over to take the tablet from Kader, to look more closely at it. “I heard these creeps talking about a deadline. Four days until who-knows-what. It won’t be something pleasant.”

  “I could run this faster if I have access to a mainframe,” said Kader. “Can you clear me to use the system at Rubicon’s local office over here?”

  Delancort didn’t hesitate over his answer.

  “No. I am afraid for now, you will need to work with what you have to hand.”

  It would be better for Kader’s work to be confined to a system other than a company server, one a long way out of sight of the visiting board members and their staff.

  “Wrap up warm…” Dane was staring at Kader’s tablet, lost in the lines of data there. He sounded like he was talking to himself. “Huh. Iceland is the one. Yeah, it tracks. The Bitcoin connection is dead on.”

  “How are you so sure of that?” said Delancort, but now Dane was ignoring him as he continued to think out loud.

  “Bitcoin from Iceland, though, that’s like saying someone sent chocolate from Switzerland.” He made a vague gesture with his hand and Delancort felt his patience eroding. “Iceland has cheap geothermal power and a cold environment, which is ideal for big server farms to mine Bitcoin by the virtual truckload.”

  Now Delancort really was at the limit of his knowledge, and it irritated him to admit it.

  “Explain,” he snapped, and nodded at the little cup in front of him. “But if you continue to veer into the realm of technobabble, I’m afraid not even this espresso will keep me awake.”

  Dane gave him a withering look back through the screen.

  “For the noob, then. Bitcoin isn’t just digital cash you trade, yeah? You can create it as well, out of mathematical code. Run the right algorithm through a high-powered computer, you’re in with a chance of getting free money. But the algorithms are extremely complex and you need some heavy iron to do the computing. That takes a lot of electricity and generates a lot of heat.”

  “Which is why Iceland is a prime location for such activity,” added Kader. “Hotter countries, not so much.”

  Dane continued, returning to the conversation he had overheard where one of the Lion’s Roar suspects spoke of the four-day deadline. There had also been mention of moving to another location.

  “She told him to wrap up warm,” he concluded, and held up a hand. “The only cold place on our list is Iceland. And I know, I know, before you say it. It’s a slim lead.”

  “Slim?” From behind him, Keyes gave a derisive snort. “Hell, it’s so thin I can see through it.”

  “We don’t have the option of dispatching operatives to each one of these places,” Delancort said firmly. “Not with the limits currently in place.” He fell silent for a moment.

  The standing orders in this active operation were to follow Susan Lam’s trail wherever it led. But if the Englishman’s lead proved useless, the blowback would be considerable. He frowned. This was the core of his dislike for Marc Dane—the man’s reckless tendency to trust his instincts over more measured and calculated actions. It didn’t help that he was often right, but Delancort was convinced his luck would run out one day.

  “Lucy,” he said, at length, “what is your evaluation?”

  Her expression shifted, hardening into something taciturn and calculating.

  “We know what the stakes are. Park is in the wind, and so is tech that can pump out the worst kind of bioweapons imaginable. Both are Rubicon’s responsibility.” She glanced at Dane. “I don’t like going out on a hunch, but what else we got?

  And with that, the choice was made for him. Delancort gave a nod.

  “After the incident at the warehouse club, the Singapore authorities will be looking for you, so removing you from the country has its merits. Malte and Assim can remain in the city and continue to investigate from there.” He looked at Dane. “If you intend to insert into Iceland undetected, you will need to do so under your cover identities, via civilian routes.”

  “That’ll be tricky,” said the Englishman. “They know our faces. They know Rubicon is tracking them.”

  “It was your idea, Mr. Dane,” he replied. “So make it work. Quickly.”

  TEN

  The painkillers Marc had downed distorted the flight into a dreamless gray nothing, but they were not powerful enough to stop him from being bounced back to wakefulness as the narrow-body Airbus jet began a hard descent toward the Icelandic coast, and into Keflavík Airport. His drug-assisted doze broke apart as the airliner side-slipped through a dense wall of storm cloud, a heavy vibration shuddering up through the deck beneath his half-laced hiking boots.

  Straightening in his aisle seat, feeling unpleasantly dehydrated, Marc wiped a hand up over his face and through his hair. He chanced a look across the other passengers in his row and out of the window. A man wearing a rumpled suit was in the middle seat, his eyes screwed tightly shut and his knuckles white around the end of the armrests. The window seat was vacant except for a discarded copy of the Kleine Zeitung, and Marc watched the folded newspaper shuffle its way across the shuddering cushion before making a break for the floor and vanishing into the footwell.

  Through the oval window, Marc could see the Airbus’s port wing tip as it oscillated alarmingly against the wind and the lashing rain. The airliner fell through a stomach-turning drop and several of the passengers let out cries of alarm. Marc’s row-mate muttered something under his breath in anxious German. The plane dropped again, and a few rows back a baby wailed.

  The FASTEN SEATBELTS light on the bulkhead above him flashed a reminder and Marc straightened, looking ahead through the gaps in the headrests. Anyone releasing the latch during this kind of chop was asking to be thrown out of their seat.

  He made out a sliver of Lucy’s face, there about six rows
ahead in the business class section. She was running under a snap cover like he was. Her passport made her appear to be a wildlife photographer from Guyana coming to Iceland to shoot stills of the indigenous horse population. Marc’s legend played to his strengths, casting him as a Canadian blogger arriving to write an article about the country’s fastest-growing video games studio.

  From the moment they left the Interlace in Singapore, Marc and Lucy had been studiously ignoring each other’s existence, inhabiting their covers with as little fanfare as possible. He had modified his look by cleaning up his shabby beard, affecting a pair of thick-rimmed glasses and some visible fake tattoos. Lucy had changed her hair, pulling it into a topknot and doing something clever with skin toner to make the shape of her cheekbones change. She was a lot better at this than he was, Marc reflected. The American seemed to have a flawless, almost casual ability to slip into a disguise like she was putting on a new jacket. For Marc, it was a constant effort to be someone he wasn’t.

  Both of their false identities would be good enough to pass muster with Icelandic border control—but the point would be moot if they never made it to the ground in one piece. The aircraft gave a low, tortured moan as the fuselage fought the wind on the way down.

  Flat, craggy and beautifully desolate, Iceland sat in the North Atlantic like a defiant fist raised against the weather gods, and that was a challenge they frequently accepted. Squalls and gale force blizzards were regular visitors to the country’s glaciated shores and black volcanic beaches. Today was going to mark another such arrival. The Airbus powered in toward the runway, racing to stay beyond the leading edge of the monster storm front that was chasing it.

  There was a sudden blink of weak daylight as the jet broke through the base of the cloud, and Marc’s gaze was pulled back to the window. Vicious gusts buffeted the aircraft and he took a deep breath, seeing a snow-mottled plate of white and brown landscape rising up to meet them. Off in the near distance, the low, hard-sided shapes of military hangars from the old NATO airbase were visible, and the gray orb of a radar dome stuck up from the airport perimeter, stark against the distant hills.