‘And if we don’t want you that badly?’

Chris shrugged. ‘Then I’ll stay here.’

‘Yeah? You sure you’ve still got the stomach for that?’

‘I’m not like you, Vasvik.’ Chris wiped at the gouge in his cheek and his fingers came away specked with blood. ‘I’ve got the stomach for whatever they can feed me.’

Vasvik left in the back of a covered truck, supplied by Mel and on its way to Paris for Renault parts. Jess drove, no shotgun rider along. UNECT operatives would vanish the ombudsman at the other end. No questions. Carla had sold the whole thing to Mel as wrangling over preferential supply contracts, a new covert bid from Volvo coming in to upset the BMW status quo at Shorn. Both Mel and Jess hated BMWs with a deep and abiding passion, and as far as they were concerned anything that might reduce the number of them on the streets of London just had to be a good thing, dear, just had to be.

Carla came in a couple of minutes later, a welding mask still pushed up on her head. Chris was trying to assess the damage to his face in a propped-up fragment of mirror he’d found on the floor.

‘What did you say to him?’ she asked angrily.

Chris pressed at his cheek, peering at the gouge in the mirror shard. ‘I told him our terms. And I gave him the disc. Went like swimming.’

‘You had a fight, didn’t you.’

‘We had a minor disagreement.’ He gave up on the mirror and turned to face her. ‘I said some things I shouldn’t have. Then he said something he really shouldn’t have. Took a while to straighten out.’

‘He’s trying to help you, Chris.’

‘No.’ He couldn’t keep the snap out of his voice. ‘He’s looking for benefits, Carla. Just like every other fucker in this world. Quid pro fucking quo.’

She stared at him, wordless for a moment, then turned away and walked out of the workshop. He let her go.

Chapter Twenty-Six

It rained hard most of the next week, and the roads turned treacherous. As usual, patchwork repairs hadn’t stood up to the summer weather, and the various service providers were still squabbling about whose responsibility it was to put it right. Chris drove the Saab at careful velocities, getting in to Shorn later than usual and doing a lot of his phone work from the car. The datadown ran remote scrambling and patched through flagged callers on automatic.

Back to work. Back to the pretence.

It was easier now he was committed. Two weeks of jittering uncertainty, of not knowing if they’d get away with it, knowing even less what would come of the meeting - now it all gave way to solid data. He knew they wanted him now, knew at a level he could trust more than Carla’s wishful thinking assurances and his own mixed feelings. Now it was just a matter of waiting to see if they could afford him. A no-lose situation. They could afford him, he went. They couldn’t afford him, he stayed. Either way, he had work, he had guarantees. He had income.

A small part of him knew that he would lose Carla if he stayed, but somehow he couldn’t make that matter as much as he knew it should.

Back to work.

Wednesday morning, turning onto the Elsenham ramp, he heard from Lopez. Confirmation of Vicente Barranco’s arrival date.

‘It’s good,’ said the Americas agent through the crackle of the scrambler and a bad satellite link. ‘The way I figure it, you’ve got North Memorial on. You could show him round, maybe buy him a few assault rifles.’

‘Yeah, that’s. Fuck.’ His foot came off the accelerator as the realisation hit. He nearly braked.

‘Chris?’ Lopez sounded concerned. ‘You still there?’

He sighed. The car picked up speed again, down the ramp. ‘Yeah, I’m still here. I don’t suppose there’s any way you can set that date back about a week?’

‘A week? Jesus, Chris, you said as soon as possible. You said you’d move things around to—‘

‘Yeah, I know.’ The rain intensified as he came off the ramp. Chris turned up the wipers. ‘Look, forget it, send him anyway. My problem, I’ll deal with it here.’

‘Is this something I need to worry about?’

‘No. You did the right thing, it’s fine. I’ll be in touch.’ He cut the connection and redialled.

‘Yeah, this is Bryant.’

‘Mike, it’s Chris. We’ve got—‘

‘Just the man. You in yet?’

‘On the way. Listen, Mike—‘

‘How about lending me some of that old Emerging Markets background you don’t like to talk about these days, huh? You wouldn’t fucking believe what happened in Harbin this morning.’

‘Mike—‘

‘You remember that thing we were putting together with the guys in EM? The transport net sell-off?’

Chris gave up and searched his memory. The north-eastern end of the former People’s Republic of China wasn’t his sphere of interest. Outside the tendencies of ethnic Chinese where Tarim Pendi was concerned, he didn’t pay the area much attention. And his dealings with Shorn’s Emerging Markets division had been minimal so far. They were a hard enough bunch, but still pretty urbane by CI standards.

Still, listening to Mike’s tale of woe might help take the sting out of the minor fuck-up he had to report.

So think.

He recalled a late night wine bar bitching session a week back. Mike and some elegant Chinese woman from Shorn EM. Crossover with an old CI account, guerrilla figures from the last decade, now snugly installed as political leaders. Privatisation schematics and character assassination of the major players. Who could be trusted further than they could be thrown. Macho stuff. The wine had been crap.

‘Chris?’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ He groped after a name. ‘The Tseng thing, right?’

‘Right.’ It was hard to tell if Bryant was angry or amused. ‘Had it all lined up and ready to roll. Now some shithead civil servant has taken out, get this, a fucking injunction to prevent the sell-off. They’re claiming it’s unlawful under the ‘37 Constitution.’

‘Well, is it?’

‘How the fuck would I know? I’m not EM, am I. Irene Lan’s team handle the legal stuff.’

‘Well, can’t you, I don’t know, pass a law or something? Change the current law? It’s not like this is Conflict as such. You are the government out there.’

Mike sighed audibly. ‘Yeah, I know. Fucking politics. Give me a Kalashnikov and a dickhead to fire it any day. So. What’s up?’

‘What?’

‘You sounded worried.’

‘Ah, yeah. Just a glitch. Barranco’s down to arrive in London on the eighteenth—‘

‘The eighteenth. Ah, fuck, Chris. That’s two days after Echevarria.’

‘I know.’

‘Couldn’t you have—‘

‘Yeah, my fault, I know. I gave Lopez carte blanche to get him here asap. No other parameters.’

‘Carte Blanche?’ He could hear Mike grinning. ‘Who’s she? Yeah, alright, I don’t suppose it matters much. We’d better just make sure they don’t bang into each other in a corridor.’

‘Or at the North Memorial. I was thinking—‘

Impact!

The meaty crunch of metal on metal. The Saab jolted hard left and started to skid from the back. His foot slipped on the accelerator and he felt the treacherous slither as the wheels spun in water.

‘Fuck!’

‘Now what?’ Bryant, through a yawn.

He fought the skid, shedding speed as fast as he dared. Eyes ripping across the mirrors, searching for the other car. Teeth gritted.

‘Where are you, motherfucker?’

‘Chris? You okay?’

Another crunch from the rear. He wasn’t yet fully out of the skid and it sent him slithering again. He hauled on the wheel.

‘Motherfucker!’

‘Chris?’ By now, Mike had got it. His voice came through urgent. ‘What’s happening out there?’

‘I’m—‘

Impact, again. He thought the Saab might spin clear round this time. Fighting it, he caught a glimpse of the other vehicle as it pulled clear. Primer-grey, looked like an old Mitsubishi from what he could see of the lines, but with the amount of custom-built armouring, it was hard to tell.