He was on the raised section that ran across the northern zones when he suddenly remembered where Mike Bryant and Hernan Echevarria were that morning.

He floored it again.

The damage was done.

He knew. Jolting the Saab into a space as close to the lifts as he could get, he knew and wondered why he was still bothering. Riding up alone with the chatty elevator voice for company, he knew and nearly screamed aloud at the waiting. Shouldering past a brace of startled admin assistants on the fifty-second floor, he knew beyond doubt. Staring at the coded entry door to the covert viewing chamber, the nightmarish confirmation of its carelessly ajar angle, he knew. Still, through all the knowing, as he threw the door all the way open and saw Barranco standing there, it hit him like sludge in his guts.

Beyond the glass, Nick Makin and Mike Bryant sat with Hernan Echevarria and another uniform, apparently discussing interrogation training. Their voices strained through into the chamber. A brittle burst of laughter rang so sharp it was almost static.

‘Vicente ...’

Barranco turned the face of a corpse towards him. He was pale beneath his tan, mouth drawn down tight. A vein beat at one temple.

‘Hijos de puta,’ he whispered. ‘You—‘

In the conference room, Echevarria was nodding sagely.

‘Vicente, listen to me—‘

He flinched back, went halfway to a karate guard as he saw Barranco’s eyes. The Colombian was trembling. He wondered fleetingly what combat skills honed in genuine combat would look like up against his corporate Shotokan training. Barranco looked at him with sick wonder and then turned away. He stood staring down at the desk where someone had left a bound copy of the Echevarria schedule.

‘I did not believe,’ he said quietly. ‘When the assistant told me. Asked me if I was with Hernan Echevarria. If I had got lost, and brought me here, smiling, fucking smiling. Let me in here to watch you—‘

‘Vicente, this isn’t what it looks like—‘

‘It is exactly what it looks like!’ The yell rang in the confines of the chamber. It seemed impossible those beyond the glass wall could not hear. Barranco lashed out with one foot. The desk skidded, spilled schedule, associated discs and papers. A chair fell, caught Mike’s baseball bat and sent it rolling.

‘Vicente.’ In his own ears, Chris could hear the pleading in his voice. ‘You must have known Echevarria was still at the table. But he’s out now. You’re in. Can’t you see that?’

The Colombian turned back to face him, crook-handed.

‘In,’ he hissed. ‘Out. What is this, a fucking game to you? What do you have in your veins, Chris Faulkner? What the fuck kind of human being are you?’

Chris licked his lips. ‘I’m on your side, Vicente—‘

‘Side? On my side?’ Barranco spat on the floor. His voice scaled up again. ‘You grinning, fucking whore, don’t talk to me about sides. There are no sides for men like you. A friend to murderers,’ he gestured at the glass, eyes glistening. ‘To torturers, if it pays. You are a fucking waste, a soulless gringo puto, a stench.’

Something ripped open behind Chris’s left eye. He felt himself flinch physically with the impact. Red-veined wings billowed upward in his head. The HM file opened for him like a brightly-coloured trap door. He saw helicopters hanging from a tattered-cloud rain-forest sky, whine and clatter of gatlings, whoosh-thump of rockets. Villages in flames, cremated trees, charred bundles scattered across the scorched earth. He heard discordant jail-cell screams spiking a tropical night. A visitation he hadn’t had since the death of Edward Quain was there beside him, shouting hoarse in his inner ear.

The bat.

It was in his hand.

The door code. Five tiny queeping touches across the keypad. The glass door hinged back and he erupted into the conference.

‘Faulkner, what the fuck are you doing?’

Makin, voice almost girlish in shock.

Mike, turning from a side table where he was building drinks.

Echevarria, eyes fixed past Chris on Barranco. His swollen, old man’s face mottled and worked as he struggled to his feet. Voice reedy with outrage.

‘This is—‘

Chris hit him. Side on, both hands, full swing with the baseball bat and all he had behind it. Into the dictator’s ribs. He heard the bones go, felt the brittle crunch through the bat. Echevarria made a noise like a man choking and slumped against the edge of the table. Backswing, in again. Same spot. The old man shrilled. Mike Bryant waded in. Chris stabbed him handily in the solar plexus with the bat end. Bryant staggered and sat down against the wall, whooping for breath. The other uniform bellowed and tried to get round the table to his boss. He tangled in his own chair and went over backwards. Chris swung again. Echevarria raised an arm. The bat broke it with an audible snap. The old man screamed. Back up, and swing again. He got the face this time. The dictator’s nose broke, the bone over one eye caved in. Blood ripped out, spraying warm and wet on his own face and hands. Echevarria went down and lay on the floor, curled foetally and still screaming. Chris spread his stance low and wide, and chopped down as if he was splitting logs. Head and body, an indiscriminate frenzy of blows. He heard hoarse yelling, and it was his own. Blood everywhere, running off the bat, in his eyes. The white glint of exposed bone in the mess at his feet. Choking, bubbling sounds from Echevarria.

The other uniform came flailing round the table at last. Chris, down now to adrenalin-cold clarity, swung about and let him have the bat sideways across the throat with full swing. The man jerked back as if tugged on an invisible string. He hit the floor like an upturned beetle, strangling noisily.

Everything stopped. On the floor, Echevarria made a bubbling sigh and fell silent. A metre and a half off, Nick Makin had finally made it to his feet.

‘Faulkner!’

Chris hefted the bat. His face twitched. His voice seemed to come from the bottom of a well, rasping tones unrecognisable in his own ears.

‘Back off, Nick. I’ll do you, too.’

He heard Mike crawling to his feet. He looked back to the door he’d come in, where Vicente Barranco stood staring at the carnage. Chris wiped some of the blood off his face and grinned dizzily at him. The trembling was starting to set in. He tossed the bat to the floor, next to Echevarria’s crumpled form.

‘Okay, Vicente,’ he said shakily. ‘You tell me. Whose fucking side am I on?’

‘You know, that wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever seen you do.’

Mike Bryant handed him the whisky glass and went back to sit behind his desk. Chris huddled on the sofa in the blanket the paramedics had lent him, still shivering. In front of him on the table, the chess board pieces faced off against each other in the silence. The onyx gleamed.

‘Sorry I hit you.’

Mike rubbed at his chest. ‘Yeah, with my own fucking bat. Could have done without that as well.’

Chris sipped at the whisky, both hands cupped around the glass as if it was hot coffee. The spirit went down, warming. He shook his head.

‘I just lost it, Mike.’

‘Yeah, no shit.’ Bryant glared at him. ‘Think I spotted that one too. Chris, what the fuck was Barranco doing at Shorn unsupervised? You knew we had Echevarria in for budget review today. Why didn’t you take Vicente out for a drive or something? Or at least keep him in the Hilton until you could check with me.’

Chris shook his head again. The words limped out of his mouth. ‘I was running late. He went out without me.’

‘That doesn’t explain how he got in here. Who cleared him for the tower?’

‘That’s what I tried to tell you earlier. Hewitt authorised a limo to bring him here.’

Mike’s eyes narrowed. ‘Hewitt?’

‘Yeah. Louise fucking Hewitt. I’m telling you, she’s been gunning for me since the day I walked in here. She wants—‘