But then everything had spun out of control.
At the same time, Hydra seemed to have emerged strengthened from its setback with Thorn, and they had agreed to give it a second try, with a team this time. No one was being recruited from NASA now. Thorn had been a happy chance: a generally popular bastard, yet in spite of his ostentatious joviality he was nobody’s mate, and was free of any moral principles whatsoever. Years ago, Hydra had sensed his corruptibility; when he had still been training in simulators on Earth, they had observed him and finally made him an offer that he, by now elevated to the rank of moon base commander, had turned down without a flicker of an eyelash, but also with a request for double the money. When this turned out not to be a problem, everything else had gone like clockwork. In the jungle of Equatorial Guinea, work was coming to an end, Hydra’s buyers had been successful in the black market of international terrorism. A masterpiece of criminal logistics was taking shape, conceived by a phantom that Dana had never met, but whose master of ceremonies she knew very well.
Kenny Xin, the crazed prince of darkness.
Even though he was the very model of a psychopath, and she found him in many respects unappealing, Dana could not conceal a certain admiration for him. For the architecture of the conspiracy of which she had been a part for years, crossing continental and cosmic bridges, Hydra couldn’t have wished for a better stress analyst. Immediately after Thorn’s death, Xin, more familiar than anyone else with the pandemonium of freelance spies, ex-Secret Service men and contract killers, had engaged in a conversation with Dana – a former Mossad agent, specialising in the infiltration of luxury hotels, which meant that she was particularly qualified for Gaia – and had also come up with the ideal cover of a Canadian investor to win Julian’s trust.
But judging by events, the prince of darkness had lost control of the situation.
Dana wondered if there was anyone still alive in the hotel. The area that she was trapped in looked deserted, but she didn’t know who had been in Gaia’s head when the oxygen had gone up. If luck had been on her side, they would all have been there. Not that she had any particular predilection for mass murder, but the group’s fate had been sealed the minute Carl Hanna’s cover had been blown. Dana was sure that the man would reach the moon base, but she couldn’t know when and whether she would be able to contact him. By blocking communications, she had tried to allow him a little time; however, if Jennifer Shaw and that detective managed to contact Peary Base via NASA, it would be a real disaster. Hanna had a better chance of carrying out his mission if there was no one waiting at the North Pole to stop him.
The idea of the communications block had also been a well-aimed and timely arrow from Kenny Xin’s inexhaustible quiver of far-sighted ideas. Sending the staff off in search of the bomb had been a doddle. Like listening in on Tommy Wachowski, the deputy commander of the base, although of course not asking him for help in the search for the Ganymede. To her great relief, they had known nothing at the Pole about a planned attack, a clear indication that neither Jennifer Shaw nor NASA had been able to get a warning to them before communications had broken down. Then she had manipulated the laser connection so that calls from the base were received only on her phone. Now she just had to wait until Hanna called, and leave the hotel for good.
But first she would have to get rid of the guests. With the best will in the world, she couldn’t send that crowd to the Pole and risk them getting there before Hanna and telling stories about atom bombs. No one from the group must reach the base.
Who had survived?
Lynn, she thought. And Tim. Those two at least. They were somewhere in the hotel, possibly in the control centre.
Time to make contact.
Cape Heraclides, Montes Jura
The behaviour of bodies in a vacuum has always inspired vivid speculation. Some of these stories correspond to fact. Objects of soft consistency with air pockets, for example, stretch apart like dough as the gas forces its way out. This isn’t caused by the vacuum sucking it out, but by the atmosphere exerting pressure. Some things deform, others explode. Frothy, chocolate-coated marshmallows balloon up to four times their volume. If the original ambient pressure were then to be reinstated, they would transform into shapeless grease, indicating profound structural dilapidation. A knotted condom, however, would regain its original form after a temporary existence as a balloon. Of course, it certainly wouldn’t be advisable to use it for its originally intended purpose. A cow’s lung would collapse into shreds, while holey cheese and aubergines would show no visible change, and nor would chickens’ eggs. Beer foams up like crazy, pommes frites secrete fat and solidify, and ketchup sachets buckle.
When it comes to human beings, the rumour stubbornly persists that we would explode if exposed to a vacuum. After all, we’re more like marshmallows than condoms in consistency: soft, porous, and interwoven with gases and fluids. And yet, something much more complex happened when Warren Locatelli’s helmet came off. Pressurised water in deep-sea trenches on Earth doesn’t start to boil until it reaches 200 to 300 degrees Celsius, whereas in the rarefied air of Mount Everest it would start to boil at 70 degrees; on the same principle, the liquid components in Locatelli’s skull boiled within a fraction of a second of being exposed to a complete lack of pressure, then immediately cooled again due to the induced loss of energy. Anything that vaporises in a vacuum creates evaporative cooling, so the now liquefied Locatelli froze as soon as he had boiled. His skull didn’t explode, but his physiognomy went through rapid changes and left behind a mask-like grimace, coated with a thin layer of ice. As he was in the shadow of a rock overhang, the ice would stay until the beams of light stretched across and evaporated it. Lastly, Locatelli would suffer terrible sunburn, but luckily he wouldn’t feel a thing. He died so suddenly that the last thing he noticed was the beauty of the starlit sky.
Hanna sat up straight.
It was just as he had said. The act of killing was neither a burden nor a source of pleasure. His victims never came back to haunt him in his sleep. If he had been convinced that Locatelli posed a danger to him, he would have shot him. But at some point in the course of the last two hours, he had become convinced that he didn’t need to. Locatelli’s bravery had won his respect, and even though the guy had been a pompous, arrogant jerk, Hanna had developed something akin to a fondness for him, accompanied by the desire to protect him. The prospect of saving Locatelli’s life had, in some indefinable way, done him good.
At least he had saved him from suffering.
He turned away and erased the dead man from his memory. He had to finish the job.
The buggy lay on its side, having been pushed against the rock face by the Ganymede. Hanna heaved the vehicle back upright and inspected it. He immediately noticed that one of the axles had been so badly damaged that the question was not whether it would break, but when. He could only hope that the buggy would hold out until he reached the mining station.
Without giving Locatelli or the shuttle another glance, he drove off.
Gaia, Vallis Alpina
It was unbelievable, thought Finn O’Keefe, how deathly pale Mukesh suddenly looked. Incomprehensible that someone whose natural pigmentation resembled that of Italian espresso could ever look so pale. His blood-drained face was as empty as the words he used in a vain attempt to raise their morale.
‘They’ll come for us, Sushma, don’t worry.’
‘Who’s “they”?’