‘Do what?’

‘Blow Echevarria out of the water.’

‘Well,’ Bryant chased another Qwegg around his plate and after some effort managed to puncture it with his fork. ‘Believe me, I’d love to. But in this case, you know how it goes. Regime change is our worst-case scenario. We’ll only go that way if we absolutely have to.’

He gestured at Chris with his fork.

‘You just get Lopez on the case. Get the names to Makin, make sure there’s a clear strategy locked down for the uplincon next week.’

‘You want me in on that?’

Bryant shook his head, chewing. He swallowed.

‘Nah, you stay out of it. I want a clean break between current negotiations and whatever we need you to do. Echevarria doesn’t know about you, he doesn’t know about your contacts. There’s no line for him to follow. Better that way.’

‘Right.’

Bryant grinned. ‘Don’t look so disappointed, man. I’m doing you a favour. I tell you, every time I have to shake hands with that piece of shit, I feel like I need to disinfect. Murderous old fuck.’

They gave it another half hour to let the queues subside, then paid and left. Despite his grouching, Bryant left a tip almost as much as the cost of the whole meal. Outside, he yawned and stretched and pivoted about, face turned up to the sun. He seemed in no hurry to get in the car.

‘We going to work?’ asked Chris.

‘Yeah, in a minute.’ Mike yawned again. ‘Don’t feel much like it, tell you the truth. Day like this, I should be home playing with Ariana. Playing with Suki, come to that. Christ, you know, we haven’t fucked in nearly two weeks.’

‘Tell me about it.’

Bryant cocked his head. ‘Carla giving you grief about that?’

‘Only all the time.’ Chris considered the reflexive lie. ‘Well, recently not so much. We’re both tired, you know. Don’t see a lot of each other.’

‘Yeah. Got to watch that shit. Come the end of quarter, you ought to take some time out. Maybe get out to the island for a week.’

‘You see Hewitt signing off on that?’

‘She’ll have to, Chris, the profile you’ve got on Cambodia. It’s turning into the year’s premium contract. Shorn owe us all some serious’ downtime before the end of this year. Hey, who knows, maybe me and Suki’ll get out there the same time as you guys. That’d be cool, huh?’

‘Yeah. Cool.’

‘Well, don’t sound so fucking enthusiastic about it.’

Chris laughed. ‘Sorry. I’m wasted.’

‘Yeah, let’s kick this in gear.’ Bryant disarmed the BMW’s alarm and cracked the driver’s side door. ‘Sooner we get out of here, sooner we can get home and act like we have a life.’

They cleared the checkpoint without incident, threaded onto the approach road to the bridge and accelerated up across the river. Sunlight turned the water to hammered bronze on either side of them. Chris fought down a wave of tiredness and promised himself a take-out from Louie Louie’s as soon as they hit the Shorn tower.

‘Be good to get some real coffee,’ he muttered.

‘That coffee wasn’t bad.’

‘Ah, come on. It was about as real as the eggs. I’m talking about something with a pedigree here. Not fucking Malsanto’s Miracle beans. Something with a hit you can feel.’

‘Fucking speedfreak.’

They both laughed, as if on cue. The BMW filled up with the sound as they left the river behind and cruised into the gold-mirrored canyons beyond. To Chris, groggy with no sleep and the events and chemicals of the night before, it felt good at a level deeper than he could find words to explain.

Chapter Nineteen

Mike dropped him outside Louie Louie’s and drove off into the car decks with a wave. Chris shot himself full of espresso at the counter, then ordered take-out and another coffee to carry up to his office. Shorn was unusually quiet for a Saturday, and he barely saw anyone on his way in. Even the security shift was made up of men and women he barely knew well enough to nod at.

It was the pattern for the day. Outside of the datadown, there was no one to talk to. Makin had not shown, which was going to make for a tight squeeze when they tried to put together the NAME package on Monday. Irritated, Chris rang Joaquin Lopez anyway and told him what he wanted. Lopez, at least, was keen, but it was still the early hours of the morning in the Americas and Chris had got him out of bed. His conversation wasn’t sparkling. He grunted back understanding, possible flight times and hung up.

Chris rang Carla at Mel’s and discovered she’d taken the day off. He checked his mobile, but there was no message. He phoned home, and heard her voice telling anyone who rang she was flying up to Tromso to see her mother. She would probably stay the week. It sounded, to Chris’s tutored ear, as if she had been crying. He threw the mobile across the office in a jag of caffeine-induced rage. He rang Mike, who was on the other line. He retrieved the mobile, got a grip on himself and went back to talking to the datadown.

By five o’clock, he’d had enough. The work was a seamless plane, extending to the horizon in all directions. Cambodia, Assam, Tarim Pendi, the Kurdish Homeland, Georgia, the NAME, Parana, Nigeria, the Victoria Lake States, Sri Lanka, Timor - in every single place, men were getting ready to kill each other for some cause or other, or were already about it. There was paperwork backed up weeks. You had to run just to stand still.

The desk phone rang. He snapped the ‘open’ command.

‘Faulkner.’

‘You still here?’

Chris snorted. ‘And where are you? Calling from the island?’

‘Give me time. Listen, rook to bishop nine. Check it out. Think I’ve got you, you bastard.’

Chris glanced over at the chess table.

‘Hang on.’

‘Yep.’ He could hear the grin in Bryant’s voice.

It was a good move. Chris studied the board for a moment, moved the piece and felt a tiny fragment of something detach itself from his heart and drop into his guts. He went back to the desk.

‘Pretty good,’ he admitted. ‘But I don’t think it’s locked up yet. I’ll call you back.’

‘Do that. Hey, listen, you and Carla want to drop round tonight? I rang Suki and she’s just bought a screening of that new Isabela Tribu movie. The one that won all the awards, about that female marine in Guatemala.’

‘Carla’s away at the moment.’ He tried to make it sound casual, but it still hurt coming out. ‘Gone to see family in Norway.’

‘Oh. You didn’t mention—‘

‘No, it was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I mean, we’d talked about it.’ Chris stopped lying abruptly, not sure why he suddenly needed to justify himself to Bryant. ‘Anyway, she’s gone.’

‘Right.’ There was a pause. ‘Well, look Chris. Why don’t you come across anyway. If I’ve got to watch this fucking tearjerker, I’d sooner not do it alone, you know.’

The thought of escaping the silence waiting for him at home for the warmth and noise of Mike’s family was like seeing the distant lights of a village through a blizzard. It felt like cheating Carla out of something. It felt like rescue. On the other hand, given the fury of the last knock-down drag-out bare-knuckle bout with his own wife, he wasn’t sure he could face Suki Bryant’s saccharine Miss Hostess 2049 perfection.

‘Uh, thanks. Let me think about it.’

‘Got to be better than going home to an empty house, pal.’

‘Yeah, I—‘ The phone queeped. ‘Hang on, I’ve got an incoming. Might be Lopez from the airport.’

‘Call me back.’ Mike was gone.

‘This is Chris Faulkner.’

‘Well, this is Liz Linshaw.’ There was a dancing mockery in the way she said it, a light amusement that reminded him of something he couldn’t quite touch. He groped after words.

‘Liz. What, uhm, what can I do for you?’

‘Good question. What can you do for me?’

The last twenty-four hours fell on him. Suddenly, he was close to angry. ‘Liz, I’m about to call it a day here, and I’m not really in the mood for games. So if you want to talk to me—‘