‘They were—‘

‘Fucking going to trash us, right?’

Chris gestured. ‘Uh, yeah.’

‘Right, that’s what I said. It’s what Suki says, it’s what the fucking corporate police enquiry says. So, what’s the big deal?’

‘She doesn’t buy it?’

Bryant glanced at him. ‘What’s to buy? I told her the truth.’

‘What about the machetes?’

‘Machetes? Wrecking bars? What’s the fucking difference. I don’t even remember which thing I told her.’ Bryant swallowed more whisky and waved his glass laterally. ‘Didn’t matter. She said I was a fucking animal. Get that. I, I was an animal. Never mind the fuckers with the crowbars, I was a fucking animal. You understand that?’

Chris crowded Carla’s voice out of his head with a pull at his own drink. ‘She wasn’t there, man.’

‘That’s right, she wasn’t.’ Bryant stared broodingly at the bottles behind the bar. ‘Fucking reporters.’

Chris snapped his fingers and the liveried barman arrived as if on rails. Bryant didn’t look at him. Chris indicated their glasses.

‘Fill us up.’

The liquor drizzled down, catching the light.

‘Got work to do tomorrow,’ said Bryant gloomily. ‘Makin’s right, you’ll see. They’ll want twenty-five fucking drafts of that contract before it’s put to bed. Bentick from the DTC, I know that motherfucker and he wants every ‘i’ double-dotted, just in case his precious minister runs into embarrassing questions on civilian casualties or some such shit.’

‘Worry about it tomorrow.’ Chris raised his glass. ‘Here. Small wars.’

‘Yeah, small wars.’

Crystal chimed between them. Bryant knocked back the whisky in one and signalled the barman again. He watched the glass fill up.

‘I’m an animal,’ he muttered with bitter disbelief. ‘I’m a fucking animal.’

They kicked it in the head about an hour later, when it became clear that no amount of drinking was going to extract Bryant from his sudden puddle of gloom. Chris half-carried his friend to the lift and along the corridor to his room, where he propped him against the wall while he fumbled with keys. Once inside the room, he hauled Mike most of the way onto the pristine expanse of king-size bed and set about unlacing his shoes. Bryant began to snore. Chris took off the shoes and shovelled Mike’s unshod feet up onto the bed with the rest of him.

As Chris bent over him to remove his tie, the other man stirred.

‘Liz?’ he queried blearily.

‘Not a chance,’ said Chris, loosening the knot on his tie.

‘Oh.’ Bryant heaved his head up and made an attempt to focus. ‘Chris. Don’t even think about it, man. Don’t even think about it.’

‘I won’t.’ Chris finished unknotting the tie and stripped it from around Bryant’s neck with a single hard tug.

‘That’s right.’ Bryant’s head fell back on the bed again and his eyes rolled sluggishly closed. ‘You’re a good guy, Chris. That’s you. You’re a. Fucking good guy.’

He drifted off to sleep again. Chris left him there snoring and let himself quietly out of the room. He slipped into his own room like a thief and went to his hotel bed, where he lay awake a while, masturbating to the thought of Liz Linshaw’s tanned thighs and cleavage.

It was very quiet inside the limo now. The torrential rain of the storm had died back to a persistent drizzle that smeared the windows but no longer drummed on the roof. The limo’s Rolls Royce engine made slightly less noise than the rush of its tyres on the wet asphalt outside. The loudest sound in the rear cabin was the chirrup of Louise Hewitt’s laptop as it processed data.

Maps and graphs came and went, summoned and dismissed by the deft ripple of Hewitt’s hands across the deck. Projections for the Cambodian conflict, altered minutely as new potential elements were factored in. Crop failures, what if? Typhoon impact, what if? Hong Kong federation cuts diplomatic ties, what if? Bryant’s preliminary work was an inspired piece of modelling, but Hewitt believed in tracking her subordinates and pushing for potential weaknesses until they emerged. It was an exercise in basic security. As with any alloy, you didn’t know the material well until you knew what would break it.

The car mobile purred up at her from where it was curled on the seat like a red eyed cat. She killed the phone’s video option and picked up the handset, eyes still fixed on the Hong Kong federation variant.

‘Yes?’

A familiar voice crackled in her ear. She smiled.

‘On my way to Edinburgh, why?’

Crackle crackle.

‘No, I didn’t think there was any point. I’ve got breakfast with a client in the Howard at eight and contracts to go over before that.’

Crackle crackle SNAP. Hewitt’s smile broadened.

‘Oh, is that what you thought? Well, sorry to disappoint you, but I wouldn’t have come all the way up here just for that. Good enough to eat though you looked.’

The phone crackled some more. Hewitt sighed and hoisted her gaze to the roof. Her voice became soothing.

‘Yes, media exposure’s a powerful thing. But I was sitting there, remember. I really wouldn’t worry about it if I were you.’

The voice in her ear grew agitated and Hewitt’s good-natured exasperation hardened. She sat forward.

‘Alright, listen. You just let me worry about Faulkner. You leave him alone.’ The crackling stopped on a sharp interrogation mark.

‘Yes, I know. I was there, remember. It’s no big surprise, to be honest. Look, it’s just an angle.’

Snap, crackle. Incredulous.

‘Yes, I do.’

Snap, question.

‘Because that’s what they pay me for. I don’t have the details worked out yet, but it shouldn’t take much leverage.’

Crackle, crackle, crackle.

‘Mike Bryant will do as he’s told. That’s the difference between them, and you need to remember that. Now, we’ve talked about this enough. I’ll be back in London day after tomorrow, we can meet and discuss it then.’

Sullen crackle. Silence.

Hewitt cradled the phone and grinned to herself in the quiet gloom.

Chapter Fourteen

‘Seen enough?’

Erik Nyquist got up and held the cracked remote closer to the screen. The red active light winked feebly a couple of times and the programme credits continued to scroll down, superimposed over an aerial view of Nakamura wreckage. Finally, Erik gave up on the failing remote and snapped on the blue standby screen manually. In the glow it cast, he turned back to face his daughter. Carla sat, glass in hand, and stared at the place where the images had been.

‘The hero of the hour,’ Erik grunted. ‘Jesus, the irony of that. Butcher a couple of fellow human beings to maximise neo-colonial profiteering half the globe away and you’re a goddamn hero.’

‘Dad,’ Carla said tiredly.

‘You heard her. This is a great moment for you, Chris. And your beloved husband sitting there grinning like a Mormon. I wouldn’t be in this line of work if I didn’t like it, Liz. Christ!’

‘He had no choice. The woman on the left was his boss, and from what I hear she already doesn’t like him. What was he supposed to do? If he stepped out of line the way you want, he’d probably lose his job.’

‘I know that.’ Erik went to the table that served him as an open-plan drinks cabinet and began to mix himself another vodka and orange. ‘Been there, bought the T-shirt. But sometimes you have to stand by the odd principle, you know.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Carla snapped, surprising herself. ‘And where did that get you in the end, standing by your much-vaunted principles?’

‘Well, let’s see.’ Erik grinned down into the glass he was pouring. Having provoked her, he was now cheerfully backing down again. It was one of his favourite drinking games. ‘I was arrested, held without trial under the Corporate Communications Act, shunned by my so-called friends and colleagues, blacklisted by every news editor in the country and refused a credit rating. I lost my job, my home and any hopes for the future. Nothing that a young man of Chris’s calibre couldn’t take in his stride. The trouble is, he just lacks the vision to make it happen.’