He called Barranco at the Hilton.

‘You heard?’

‘Yes, it’s on the TV. I’m watching it now.’ For the first time that Chris could remember, Barranco’s voice sounded unsure. ‘You are okay?’

Chris grinned in the dark. ‘Yeah, I’m okay.’

‘I, would not have believed. Something like that. To do something like that. In front of your colleagues. In your situation. I did not expect—‘

‘Skip it, Vicente. The old fuck had it coming.’

Barranco was silent. ‘Yes. That is true.’

And more silence across the connection, like snow drifting to the ground on the other side of the world. For a beat, Chris could feel the cold out there, like something alive. Like something looking for him.

‘I saw him die,’ said Barranco.

Chris shook himself. ‘I, uh. Good. I hope that was worth something to you, Vicente. I hope you feel. Avenged.’

‘Yes. It is good to know he is dead.’

When the Colombian showed no further sign of speaking, Chris cleared his throat.

‘Listen, Vicente. Get some rest. With what’s coming down in the next few weeks, you’re going to need it. Plane’s not ‘til noon, so sleep in. Lopez’ll get you up in plenty of time.’

Silence, sifting down.

‘Chris?’

‘Yeah. Still here.’

‘They aren’t going to punish you for this?’

‘No one’s going to punish me for anything, Vicente. Everything’s under control, and you and I are going right to the top of this thing, together. I give it six months before you’re in the streets of Bogota. Now get some sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

He waited for a reply. When there was none, he shrugged, cut the connection and gave himself to the driving.

changemaker!

He got off at the Elsenham ramp, and picked up the road east, pushing the Saab faster than was smart. The car jolted in potholes and the engine grew shrill as he dropped gears late on the bends. Trees stood at the roadside, sudden and dusty-looking in the glare of the Saab’s lights. When he got to Hawkspur Green, he shed some of his speed, but he was still rolling too fast. The car snarled angrily to itself as he took the turn into the driveway, and he had to lean on the brakes.

He killed the high beams and up ahead in the sudden dark, the house security lights flared to life. He frowned and glanced at the ID broadcast set. A tiny green active light glowed back at him, reassuring as far as it went. He felt tension go stealing along his nerves, wondering if Notley had, after all, gone conservative on him and sent night-callers with silenced guns. The Saab crunched up the winding drive. He reached across to the glove compartment and opened it. The Nemex fell out into his palm, still slightly greasy from the factory wrapping oils. He straightened up again and cleared the last bend.

Carla was waiting for him, wrapped tight in a towelling robe, hair wet and straggling. Backlit by the security system’s lamps, she looked like the ghost of a drowned woman. When she bent to his window, face hard-boned from the wet and the lack of make-up, he almost jumped.

He stopped the Saab short and opened the window.

‘What are you doing out here? You’ll catch your death of cold.’

‘Vasvik,’ she said. ‘He just called.’

The rest of the week snapped by like scenery.

He got Barranco out of the country, got final signatures on the regime term sheets on the way to the airport. Sandwiched between Lopez and Chris in the helicopter, Barranco signed it all like a man under sedation. Chris waved him goodbye from the asphalt.

He dropped in on Mike at the hospital. The other executive had nothing worse than severe bruising across the ribcage from the machine-gun fire, but it seemed politic to keep him in the intensive care unit for a few days at least. There were news crews queuing in the corridor outside, but Shorn security had them managed.

‘So now you’re a fucking celebrity?’

Mike grinned from a chair beside the bed. There were a couple of small cuts on his face, and his left hand was bandaged. He got up, wincing with the effort.

‘You see Liz out there?’ he asked.

‘No. You expecting her?’

‘Never know.’ Mike poured himself a drink from a pitcher beside the bed. ‘Nah, to be honest, she’d be the last thing I need right now. I’m in enough pain just breathing heavily. You want some of this?’

‘What is it?’

‘What does it look like? Juice.’

‘Maybe later. What happened to your face?’

‘Ah.’ Mike waved dismissively. ‘Did it myself with a broken bottleneck, beforehand. Good for the media to see a real wound or two, I reckon.’

‘And the hand?’

A scowl. ‘Sprained my wrist going down on the pavement. Like a fucking idiot. I was trying to keep Carrasco upright for the machine gun, like this. And then dive out of the way, this way, when they tossed in the grenade. It was awkward.’

‘Any witnesses?’

Bryant shook his head. ‘Monday night, and it’s a quiet street, anyway. A couple of people might have looked our way once the firing started maybe, but too late to notice anything odd. There’ll be footage from the hotel security cameras, maybe that street scanner we couldn’t mask out at the corner of Stafford Street. Elaine’s already on it. No problem, she says. Barranco get off okay?’

Back at Shorn, Chris sat in the covert viewing chamber while Nick Makin and Louise Hewitt talked to Francisco Echevarria by uplink. The young man was pale and hollow-eyed, and it was clear he had been crying. From the way he kept looking off to the side, it was also clear he was not alone in the projection room at the other end. Hewitt conveyed smooth corporate sympathies, and encouraged him not to concern himself with contractual details at such a time. Shorn’s own principal officer for the NAME account was, in any case, unable to leave hospital for the foreseeable future. There was no sense in rushing into anything. Shorn CI would be very happy to put the whole issue on ice until the family felt more able to deal with the negotiations.

by which time, Barranco will have your worthless nuts in the fucking vice, you and your whole stinking hacienda clan

The sudden violence of his own thoughts took Chris by surprise.

Francisco Echevarria flickered out. They adjourned to Hewitt’s office to discuss a tentative calendar for Barranco’s revolution.

He went down to the forty-ninth floor to thank the junior execs that had covered the other accounts for them while the crisis was in full swing. He took gifts — cask-strength Islay single malt, Galapagos bourbon ground coffee, single estate Andaluz olive oil - and got into mock sparring sessions with a couple of the known hardcases in the section. No full-force blows, he stayed just the right side of friendly, but he pushed hard and fast and got close-up body contact each time. It wasn’t wise to show raw gratitude, untempered by signs of strength. It could get taken the wrong way.

He got back his caseload. Started mechanically through the detail, building back up to operational pitch where necessary.

He took a basket of Indonesian fruit and a crate of Turkish export beer up to the hospital, and found Liz Linshaw sitting on the corner of Mike’s bed. Mike sat there grinning like a post-blow job idiot, Liz was a study in her usual off-screen rough-and-ready elegance. She showed Chris exactly the civilised blend of camaraderie and casual flirtation that he remembered from their earliest meetings. The downshift cut him to the quick.

‘Listen, Chris,’ Mike said finally, waving a hand at the bedside seat Liz wasn’t using. ‘We’ve been talking about your no-namer problem. Liz says she could ask around, no problem.’

‘That’s great.’ He looked across at her. ‘Thanks.’

‘My pleasure.’

It was more than he could handle. He caught himself with a barbed comment about Suki rising to his lips, and called time. He made workload excuses and got out.