‘Well, as to that.’
‘Am I somehow not your client?’
‘Actually that’s Chen, and he doesn’t have a—’
‘No, actually it’s me, and I’ll pick up the tab!’ Tu said emphatically. ‘The main thing is that your friend hands over the dossier.’
‘Well that’s very – noble of you.’
‘Don’t fall on my neck weeping. This is what we call expenses.’ Tu dismissed the topic. ‘As for myself, I can report that after some hours spent in the pleasant but somewhat sexless company of your Diane, we’ve identified the provider who hosted those dead letter boxes.’
‘You decoded the message?’ Yoyo yelped.
‘Shhh.’ Tu twinkled merrily at the waiter, who had come to exchange the empty bowl for another, brimming with nuts. He chomped away and waited until the man was out of earshot. ‘First of all I tracked down the central router. Very sophisticated system, that. The web pages were bounced from server to server until they appeared to be hosted in several different countries. If you track them all back though, you end up at one single, common server. And that – marvellous to report! – is in Beijing.’
‘Blimey!’ Yoyo exclaimed. ‘Who’s the host?’
‘Hard to say. Mind you, I’m afraid that this server might turn out not to be the last link in the chain either.’
‘If we had some way of tracking each and every page routed out from there—’
‘There’s no list, if that’s what you mean. Anyway, Diane is working with the latest miraculous software from Tu Technologies, so she found some more dead letter boxes in the web which respond to the same mask.’ A reverential look passed over Tu’s features. He looked at each of them in turn. ‘The text is now a little longer.’
Jan Kees Vogelaar is living in Berlin under the name Andre Donner, where he runs an African private and business address: Oranienburger Strasse 50, 10117 Berlin. What should we continues to represent a grave risk to the operation not doubt that he knows all about the. knows at least about the but some doubt as to whether. One way or another any statement lasting Admittedly, since his no public comment about the facts behind the coup. Nevertheless Ndongo’s that the Chinese government planned and implemented regime change. Vogelaar has little about the nature of Operation of timing Furthermore, Orley Enterprises and have no reason to suspect disruption. Nobody there suspects everything. I count because I know, Nevertheless urgently recommend that Donner be liquidated. There are good reasons to
‘Orley Enterprises.’ Yoyo frowned quizzically.
‘Interesting, isn’t it?’ Tu grinned slyly. ‘The world’s biggest technology corporation. We were just talking about them! If you ask me, that throws a whole new light on the matter. It seems to have less to do with some violent handover of power in Equatorial Guinea and much more to do with who’s top dog—’
‘—out in space.’ Jericho felt his ear. Right now he felt as though he’d been slogging and stumbling along a rutted country road for hours, and had just found out that the main road was running alongside. According to Vogelaar, their problems had begun in 2022 when a delegation paid a visit, supposedly from the Chinese aerospace ministry; Mayé had seen all his hopes dashed and was ready to take any deal. He signed a contract which could hardly have been more absurd, but Kenny stood for Beijing, and so Mayé had believed that he was dealing with an official delegation.
‘Good.’ He steepled his fingers. ‘Let’s forget Mayé for a moment. Yoyo, do you remember what Vogelaar said about the launching pad? Who built it?’
‘The Zheng Group.’
‘Exactly, Zheng. And who is Zheng’s biggest competitor?’
‘America.’ Yoyo frowned again. ‘No. Orley Enterprises.’
‘Which more or less amounts to the same thing, if I’m not mistaken. Orley helped the Americans towards lunar supremacy, and he’s always just ahead of Zheng, any way you look at it. So Zheng turns to espionage—’
‘Or to sabotage.’
‘I see that you’ve got it.’ Tu scrabbled around in the Brazil nuts and pistachios. ‘They’re talking about an operation, and the fact that Vogelaar continues to represent a grave risk because he knows all about something. But what kind of operation could this be where people have to die in droves to keep it secret?’
Yoyo’s face clouded over.
‘An operation that’s not been carried out yet,’ she said slowly.
‘I think so too,’ Jericho said, nodding. ‘Vogelaar doesn’t seem to know anything about the nature or its timing, but he could send the whole thing sky-high if he made a public comment about the facts behind the coup. The whole world still believes that Ndongo got the presidency back under his own steam, or with Beijing’s help—’
‘Quite, and just for once we’re not going to fall into the usual trap,’ said Tu. ‘Then there’s more. Furthermore, Orley Enterprises – blah blah – have no reason to suspect disruption. And—’
‘Nobody there suspects everything.’
‘So they suspect something.’ Yoyo looked from one to the other. ‘Isn’t that right? I mean, that’s what you’d say if they know something.’
‘We can’t assume that the second phrase is actually complete, just because it looks it,’ Jericho said. ‘What’s quite clear is that Orley Enterprises is part of the picture somehow. Then Zheng stands on the other side. The disaster in Equatorial Guinea is all down to some faked-up space programme that he got onto its feet. Zheng represents Beijing, although he could be acting on his own account. Julian Orley stands for Washington, he’s the saviour of the American space programme and Zheng’s natural enemy—’
‘That’s only true to a limited extent,’ Tu butted in. ‘Julian Orley is English himself, if I’m not mistaken, and he only plays that game with the Americans because they’re useful to him. Even he’s just acting on his own account.’
‘So what’s going on here? A proxy war?’
‘Possibly. We’ve known since last year if not before that the Moon’s got the potential to cause a crisis.’
‘Vogelaar sees things differently,’ Yoyo threw in. ‘He reckons that Beijing was just a bluff on the part of whoever was actually behind the Equatorial Guinea satellite programme.’
‘Call it Beijing or call it Zheng.’ Tu shrugged. ‘Do we really want to rule out the possibility that if a global corporation planned an attack on a rival, its government would give tacit approval?’
‘Do dogs get in dogfights?’
‘Wait a moment.’ Jericho put his fingers to his lips. ‘Orley Enterprises – haven’t they just been in the news? There was a report about the Moon crisis a few days ago, and—’
‘Orley is always in the news.’
‘Yes, but this time there really was something new.’
‘Of course!’A spark of recognition lit up in Yoyo’s eyes. ‘Gaia!’
‘What?’
‘The hotel! The hotel on the Moon! Gaia!’
‘That’s right,’ Jericho said pensively. ‘They’re planning a hotel up there.’
‘I think they’ve even built it by now,’ Tu said, frowning in thought. ‘It was supposed to be ready last year, and then there were delays thanks to the helium-3 flare-up. Nobody knows what it looks like. Orley’s big secret.’
‘You can find all kinds of speculation on the net,’ said Yoyo. ‘And you’re right, it is ready. Sometime round about now there’s even supposed to be— Hmm.’
‘What?’
‘I think there’s supposed to be an inaugural trip. Some gang of filthy rich guests are flying up there. Maybe even Orley himself. Utterly exclusive.’