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  No. Reems knew better. She knew it had to be a lie.

  The CIA craft had pulled alongside and they had conducted a rather terse conversation. Reems had demanded that the other captain contact someone higher in his organisation, someone who would have the authority, if not the inclination, to answer her questions fully. To her surprise they told her someone would arrive in a few hours. She sent Croft back to London ahead of her to get matters moving at headquarters; the cruiser carried a smaller powerboat that was far faster than the larger craft. He would take that some of the way and then be met by a sea-plane.

  A few hours later she watched a military tilt-rotor aircraft land on the CIA vessel. Then she was invited aboard, where she was shown to a secure conference room. In it, Connor Truman was waiting. "We need to talk," he said simply.

  "That would be an understatement."

  "You're not the only one with a grievance."

  "You just destroyed my operation."

  Truman leaned forward, knitting his fingers together. "I knew nothing of your op because you didn't share it with us. We're in international waters. We were fired upon. Our response was proportionate." He frowned. "We were surprised by the magnitude of the blast. There was something volatile on his boat."

  "You were following Bern. For some reason. I want to know more."

  "If you didn't want him followed, why did you authorise his release?"

  "Only to home detention. I will admit we expected him to try and escape. Clearly, however, you had your own plan. The whole black ops raid was a distraction, wasn't it, while you got him out some other way."

  Truman spread his hands. "We provided the distraction, but we're still not clear exactly how he got out."

  "You had some kind of deal with him."

  "I can't say--"

  "He's been playing us off against each other. It's what he does."

  "I wouldn't say the deal's been that successful for him seeing as he's gone and gotten himself killed."

  Reems paused and smiled. "It certainly looks that way."

  Truman narrowed his eyes. "You're suggesting he isn't dead? How would that be possible?"

  "With considerable planning and near-infinite resources. It wouldn't be the first time, as you know. Look, humour me. Let's assume he's alive. We can work out later how. It may well explain how he stole whatever he took from you. For that to work, it's time we started cooperating. And by that I mean actually cooperating."

  He stared at her, then walked over to a cabinet and removed a bottle of bourbon and two glasses. He set them on the table.

  Reems picked up one of the drinks. "Does this mean 'yes'?"

  Truman raised his own glass. "What do you want to know?"

  Fifty-Seven

  THE FIFTY METRE LONG, ZAT class 78 submarine headed north, making a steady twenty knots. It was cruising at a depth of thirty metres, a thousand kilometres off the coast of the United States, no other craft within range of their radar. The submarine's modified German design meant that, due to its considerable stealth-related enhancements, even if something was much closer, it was very unlikely they would be detected. But you could never be too careful.

  The captain monitored his instruments, aware that he wasn't really in charge of the vessel. All the important decisions were made by the woman.

  "I want the cargo brought onboard," she said, in her soft french accent. Most of the crew were turned to butter by that voice. But he knew there was a malicious steel in it. In him, it induced chills.

  "Are you sure you want us to surface?" he said.

  She raised an eyebrow. "Do you have a way of bringing it on board without surfacing?"

  He preferred not to risk exposure and they would lose valuable time. But there had been no sign of pursuit or that anyone was trying to monitor them, so what could he say? He forced a smile and gave the order. She nodded and folded her arms.

  Five minutes later they were opening the hatch and stepping out onto the main viewing platform, rivulets of salt water streaming back into the Atlantic Ocean all around them. Grey clouds streaked the sky and light wind made the water choppy. Three of his crew busied themselves detaching a large metallic pod that had been clamped to a rear cargo-mount. With great care, they winched it up to the platform. The woman walked over to the steel keypad and pressed in a long sequence of numbers. The pod beeped loudly, hissing as it began venting. Then the top hinged up.

  "Six hours?" croaked a voice from inside. "Did you have to leave me in there for six hours?"

  "Our primary objective was escaping unnoticed," said the woman, waving a finger at him, then smiling. "You were lucky. The captain wanted to leave you in there another six." She blew him a kiss. "Welcome on board, William."

  Bern sat up and embraced her. "Should I call you Fabienne, Felicia or Fiona today?"

  "Fabienne, my darling. And can I stop pretending to be a lawyer now?"

  He nodded as he stood up stiffly and looked around. "Where are we?"

  The captain stepped forward. "North Atlantic, Mr Bern. Twenty hours from our destination. More if we don't get back under way. And since you are expected, we really should..."

  Bern nodded, clambering out of the pod. "A man who keeps to a deadline. I respect that." He held out his elbow to Fabienne. "Shall we go below?"

  "You used the device I placed in the pod? To neutralise the subcutaneous transmitter?"

  He rubbed his shoulder. "Of course. It would rather frustrate the plan if they could follow me that easily. Is there anything to eat? There was nothing but emergency rations in the escape pod."

  "It got you off that boat in one piece," she replied, "so don't knock it. But I'm sure we can find you something more befitting your status."

  "You know," he said, "this is the second time I've died."

  "On this occasion, hopefully you can stay that way."

  Fifty-Eight

  IT WAS MIDNIGHT, BUT LENTZ, who was working in her underground workshop, was not in the least tired. After Tom and Alex had left, she triple-checked her security and changed all the access codes, just in case: the assassin would not surprise her again. That issue dealt with, it had been time to get back to work, particularly given what she had witnessed that evening.

  Lentz held up the square of fabric she had just dipped in a vat of fluorescing liquid and prepared to start the next test: the eleventh of the night. Seeing Sharp use the suit had confirmed that progress was being made. But it also showed the gap that had yet to be closed: it was one thing to be able to make yourself difficult to spot, when the conditions were already helpful, like at night. It was another thing entirely to become impossible to see in any situation. The designer had progressed matters to a point. But they had not gone all the way. The suit still only offered advanced camouflage.

  Could she do better?

  If she could get the maths right, with the level of resolution provided by these suits, coated in the new nano-particles, in theory it could be done using a two-way system. At the moment, the nanocells made a reading of the colour and light levels around them, then varied their own properties accordingly: crude but effective. What she needed was some way of conveying a perfect image of the space around the material. If that could be copied and projected onto its surface, then the entire suit would appear to disappear.

  She held up the fabric square and frowned. She was thinking about this wrong. She couldn't test it on a flat piece of cloth. She had to test it on the suit, to make it work wrapped around an object in three dimensions. The trick was connectivity: the different nano-particles had to transfer data from point to point. She would have to write a program so that the image from the back of the object covered by the fabric could be passed through to the object's front.

  Lentz smiled. She could model it on her computer, simulating the particle-to-particle communication. If she got it right, it should happen so quickly the effect would appear instantaneous to the human eye.

  It took two hours to design the routine, culling work from oth
er projects with technical overlap. The main programming framework already existed, but the new code had to interlock perfectly. Her first two attempts produced streams of error messages and caused dangerous overloads in the modelled version of the coating. If it had been real, it would have caught fire.

  But the third attempt seemed to mesh. She held her breath, watching a virtual suit on the screen. There was a soft chime indicating no errors produced. Then there was a slight ripple on the screen and the suit vanished.

  It was invisible.

  Of course this was just a simulation, but, presuming they could manufacture the nanite-covering correctly, it would work. She almost rang Hallstein at home to tell her the good news. It was a huge moment. The first significant technological advance she had made since the Tantalus incident. She permitted herself a brief, luxurious moment of pride. It was broken by a sound that was slightly out of place.

  Lentz knew the rhythm of all her computers. She knew when they were running efficiently. And she could also tell when they were overloaded and in need of maintenance or when the cooling systems were providing insufficient heat extraction. Right now, the vibrations were wrong. The fan was spun to max, which meant something was overdriving the processor. She frowned, running her finger over its surface. There was the smell of excessive heat.

  Why had she not noticed this before? Had she been that distracted? Lentz called up a diagnostic tool and quickly saw the issue had only presented three minutes previously. She leaned back and thought. That was when she had finished running the simulation. Was it merely the increased load of running the new program? It seemed unlikely. A coincidence then? Frowning, she looked around the outside of the machine. And then she saw it. A tiny black capsule, plugged into one of the spare ports. She had no idea what it was.

  Cursing she reached forward and pulled it out. Her computer protested with a myriad of error messages. She held the device in her hand. It was some sort of transmitter and it felt hot in her palm. But what had it been transmitting and where? Lentz called up the network logs and saw a huge burst of data sent three minutes ago. It had ignored the outwards firewall, something that should have been impossible. She tracked the transmission to a relay and then the trace was lost. Was Reems spying on her? Or someone else?

  She wasn't sure which would be worse.

  Fifty-Nine

  TRUMAN'S VTOL AIRCRAFT WAS A Bell Boeing V-25 Osprey, a tiltrotor design. It flew eastwards at 370 knots: more than six times faster than Reems' boat, and considerably smoother, but for Reems it was not nearly fast enough.

  "Why didn't you tell us about the details of the theft sooner?" she said through her headset; normal conversation would have been impossible above the noise of the rotors.

  "You know how this works," Truman replied. "I'm told what I can share in the interests of national security. I have no latitude."

  "You were just embarrassed having someone walk out with your top tech."

  "It wasn't just someone. It was Tom Faraday."

  "That still doesn't add up for me. Not if Bern's organisation is behind it. Faraday hates his father. Are you sure of your footage?"

  "Beyond reasonable doubt."

  "Anything else you haven't told me?"

  Truman shifted in his seat, looking uncomfortable. "We found Faraday."

  Reems' eyes bulged. "Why didn't you say so sooner?"

  "We picked him up in Lima." Truman paused. "He denied the theft allegations."

  "You didn't torture him?"

  "The US government does not condone torture of any form."

  "Of course not. Did you question him rigorously then?"

  "We didn't have a chance. He escaped."

  Reems ground her teeth. "What were you holding him in? A tent?"

  "A cell at our Air Force base in Lima. We don't know how he got out, but he stole one of our aircraft."

  Reems shook her head. "Yes, he does that. Consider yourself lucky."

  "Oh?"

  "He took five of ours."

  "There was a woman with him. She hospitalised five of my men during their escape. We didn't identify her until afterwards. It was quite a surprise when we did, since Alex Marron's supposed to be dead."

  Reems almost choked. "Impossible."

  "Apparently not. I'm hoping it will be leverage over Marron. From what I hear, the only time he ever speaks is to ask after his daughter. If he knew she was alive--"

  "Why would he believe you?"

  "I have footage. Quite a lot. I'm sure he'll recognise her fighting style." He blinked, as if in pain. "It was brutal."

  "The apple didn't fall far from the tree there." A light started flashing inside Reems' helmet. She heard the pilot's voice cutting in, telling her she had a priority call from London. She listened carefully to the short message, confirmed she had understood, then turned back to Truman. "There's been an incident at Northwell A, where Marron is being held."

  "What sort of incident? An escape?"

  "We don't know. The whole place has gone offline. It could be a hardware fault. We're sending in emergency teams. They'll be on site in thirty minutes and I've re-routed Croft to attend."

  "We'll be there in less than two hours."

  Reems shook her head. "Let's hope that it's soon enough."

  Sixty

  TOM AND ALEX CROUCHED IN the cover of bushes, looking at the external gate of Northwell A. It was hanging open, the padlock lying in the dust. "You know, I may not be an expert in prison security," said Tom, "but I don't think it should be like that."

  "We need to move," Alex said, hefting the shotgun that Lentz had given her.

  Tom tapped the metal barrel. "Did you have to bring this? I thought you were a deadly weapon?"

  "Sometimes nothing says 'I'm about to kill you like a loaded shotgun. If I just wave my fists people don't always get the message." Alex coughed. "And then I actually have to kill them."

  "I suppose, when you put it like that..."

  She raised her eyebrows. "OK, android boy, what does the security system tell you?"

  Tom closed his eyes and concentrated. "It tells me... nothing." He grimaced with the strain. "It's off-line." He pointed at the open gate. "I don't like this. Perhaps we should reassess."

  "You know what's at stake here, for you as much as anyone. Now follow me."

  They sprinted between the front gates then along the lane, and through a series of further gates. All hung open. All were unguarded. After the last gate they found themselves outside a huge glass wall. Three guards lay on the floor.

  "Glass walls?" Tom asked. "Is that usual?"

  "I haven't spent much time inside prisons," Alex replied, "but I imagine a transparent wall is pretty hard to hide behind." She stepped over the body of one of the guards and inside the compound. "Let's keep moving."

  They crossed the courtyard, making their way towards one of the central buildings.

  "The whole place is empty," Tom said, looking around.

  "It was still under construction. They brought the completion date forward just for my father." They reached a junction and she pointed to the left. "This way."

  "How do you know where to go? I couldn't find any plans of this place. And I'm good at finding stuff like that."

  "Before I tracked you down, I found a guard and persuaded him to brief me."

  Tom swallowed. "That's your standard MO, isn't it?"

  "I do what I need to do." They reached a cell with the glass doors standing open. They entered the room. A man's body lay slumped on the floor. He was clearly dead, and he had clearly died in pain.

  Alex knelt and rolled him over, revealing a bloody, smashed face. "It's Sharp. I guess he upset my father."

  "Your father did that?"

  "Just because he delegates the fighting, doesn't mean he can't fight. He taught me everything I know." She paused. "Well, everything I used to know."

  "So where is he now?"

  "I don't--"

  The lighting in the room flared on, and the door
slid shut. Tom turned to Alex. "The building systems are coming back online."

  She ran to the door, trying to slide it back, but it did not move. "There's not even a handle. You need to persuade it to open."

  Tom closed his eyes and extended his perception. He felt the network flowing around him. He opened his mind to it, started issuing commands automatically. He would have this door open in... Something was wrong. It would not let him in. It was like there was a steel wall between him and the flows of data, for all he could access them. He opened his eyes. "This isn't good."

  She put her hand around his throat. "Don't think for a moment that I won't kill you if I even suspect you are trying to double cross me."

  Tom tried to breathe. He felt the anger in her face, the flow of electricity in her skin. He could almost touch it, but he could do nothing to weaken her grip.

  "I'm... not..."

  She tightened her hand. "I need you to take me seriously, Tom."

  He reached his hand down, resting the palm on her bare skin. He focused his thoughts. And he felt electricity flow.

  Her hand opened and flew backwards. He collapsed to the ground.

  She held her arm, as if she'd been stung. "What the hell was that?"

  They were interrupted by a knocking on the glass. They turned and saw four heavily-armed special-forces soldiers. One was gesturing to them to get on the ground.

  Alex growled. "Only four. Is that all they sent?"

  "I don't think they plan on coming in," Tom said, pointing to air vents on the ceiling. A cloudy gas was coming through.

  Alex whirled like a cornered animal, then launched herself at the glass door, her shoulder striking it. She just bounced off.