‘Hydra,’ he said.
His voice was recorded, checked, ID’d.
‘Orley have received a warning,’ his contact announced.
‘What?’ Xin exploded. ‘When?’
‘Yesterday, late afternoon.’
‘Details?’
‘Someone named Tu sent across a document. It was obviously a fragment of your message.’ The other man drew a deep breath. ‘Kenny, they must have been able to decipher more as well! How could that happen, I thought—’
‘What do you mean?’ Xin began to pace up and down the room. ‘What sort of fragment?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘Then I’m telling you this: you’ll take all of our pages down from the web.’
‘If we do that, our whole email communication breaks down.’
‘You’ve tried that argument on me before.’
‘And I was right.’
‘Yes, and look where it got you.’ Xin tried to calm down. He opened the minibar and mechanically began to shift the bottles until they were exactly the same distance apart. ‘The email idea was good for exchanging complex information and for using the global server; phones are enough for everything else. The die is cast. We can’t change anything now anyway. The only thing that could still go wrong would be if my message were cracked completely, so take the pages down from the web!’ He paused. ‘Have you already told him?’
‘He knows.’
‘And?’
The other man sighed. ‘He agrees with you. He thinks we should block the pages too, so I’ll do what’s needed. Your turn now. What’s happening with Vogelaar?’
‘He’s been dealt with.’
‘No more danger?’
‘He had created a dossier. Memory crystal. I’ve got the thing now. His wife was the only one who knew all about it; she’s dead too.’
‘Good news there for a change, Kenny.’
‘I wish I could say the same about yours,’ Xin snapped. ‘Why am I just hearing about this warning now?’
‘Because I only learned about it myself this morning.’
‘How did the company react?’
‘They called Gaia.’
‘What?’ Xin practically dropped the telephone. ‘They’ve told Gaia?’
‘Calm down. Probably because it’s in the news just now. As far as I know everything’s running to plan, they haven’t cancelled any of the trips, nobody wants to leave early.’
‘And who took the call at Gaia?’
‘I’m expecting more details any moment.’
Xin stared into the fridge.
‘Well, fine,’ he said. ‘Find out something for me in the meantime, and fast. Find Yoyo and Jericho in Berlin.’
‘What? They’re in Berlin?’
‘They must be staying somewhere. Hack into the hotel booking systems, the immigration databases. I don’t care how you do it, but find them.’
‘Dear God,’ the other man groaned.
‘What’s up?’ Xin asked threateningly. ‘Are you losing your nerve?’
‘No, that’s no problem. Okay then. I’ll do what I can.’
‘No,’ Xin snarled. ‘You’ll do more than that.’
Grand Hyatt
Just before Xin shot her, Nyela had spread her fingers as though to emphasise what she was saying. He had thought that it was only a gesture of exasperation, but in fact she’d been doing something different. She had been pointing to her face, and at that moment, it was supposed to be Vogelaar’s face. She had been pointing to her eyes.
He is the duplicate!
Vogelaar’s glass eye was a memory crystal. He carried the duplicate around with him, in his eye socket.
‘What a sly fox,’ Yoyo said, half admiring, half disgusted.
Tu snorted with laughter. ‘He could hardly have found a better place for it. An eye for the facts.’
‘So that they come to light once he dies.’ Yoyo had more colour in her face now. Jericho remembered last night. Not ten hours had passed since she had left his room with sunken, hollow eyes, looking dissolute, flushed, blotchy, stinking of cigarette smoke and red wine. She had gone pale again now – after all, life was playing them one dirty trick after another – but other than that, the night’s excesses hadn’t left a mark on her. She looked fresh, smooth-skinned and perky, practically rejuvenated. Jericho was depressed by what this said about youth and intoxicants. For himself, when he’d been drinking the night away, the enzymes only ever worked fitfully, at best, at patching him up again.
‘You know this sort of thing, Owen,’ Tu said. ‘What happens during a forensic autopsy? Will they look at the glass eye as well?’
‘They’ll certainly remove it while they work.’
‘And a memory crystal would stand out?’
‘Anybody with medical training would certainly notice,’ Yoyo said. ‘Assuming that Owen’s right, then the police will have our dossier in their hands in the next few hours.’
Jericho rubbed his chin. He didn’t much like the idea of tangling with the German police. They’d be interrogated for hours, treated with suspicion, quite likely they’d never get a look at Vogelaar’s data. Their own investigation would slow down to a crawl.
Tu handed him a printout.
‘Perhaps you should have a look at what we found out while you were away. We’ve bolded everything that’s new.’
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 payload rockets. knows at least about the but some doubt as to whether. One way or another any statement lasting Admittedly, since his Vogelaar has made 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 insight of timing Furthermore, Orley Enterprises and have no reason to suspect disruption. Nobody there suspects and by then everything is under way. I count because I know, Nevertheless urgently recommend that Donner be liquidated. There are good reasons to
‘Payload rockets.’ Jericho looked up. ‘That’s another thing that supports what Vogelaar said. That satellite launch was about more than just an experimental rocket.’
‘A payload rocket has to be delivering something,’ Tu said. ‘How did Mayé’s satellite get up into orbit?’
‘Payload rocket,’ Jericho suggested. ‘They’re called carrier rockets as well, I think.’
‘But there’s nothing here about a satellite.’
‘No. Looks like it has nothing to do with the satellite. It’s about some other pay-load.’
Tu nodded. ‘I took the opportunity to talk to some people who my people have helped out in the past. I couldn’t get any definite information, but they gave me some well-founded supposition. Apparently, the Chinese government has never launched its own space projects from foreign soil. That story about wanting to avoid the insurance treaties is as threadbare as Chairman Mao’s shroud. The whole thing must have been dreamed up for Mayé’s benefit; at any rate it doesn’t accord with current practice to shuffle the risk onto other states like that.’
‘So it could have been something that Zheng was doing on his own account?’