‘I’m sorry, we had to – we had a few problems to solve.’
‘Where’s Miss Dana?’
‘Not here.’
‘Sophie?’
‘She’s not here either, none of the staff are. Just the Ögis, my sister and I.’
Funaki fell silent for a moment. ‘Then I fear you’ll have even more problems to solve, Tim. We’re stuck up here.’
‘What happened—’
‘Control centre!’ Dana’s voice. ‘Please respond.’
‘Excuse me a moment, Michio.’ Wrinkling his brow, he tried to orientate between the two flashing indicators. ‘I’ll be back in just a moment – I have Dana Lawrence – just a moment, for God’s sake, how do I switch over?’
His sister heaved herself up from the chair with a blank expression, pushed him aside and tapped a flashing section of the controls.
‘Dana? It’s Lynn here.’
‘Lynn! Finally. I’ve been trying for half an hour—’
‘You can save the speech, Funaki already did it. Where are you?’
‘Locked in. In the right shoulder.’
‘Fine, we’ll be in touch. Stand by.’
‘But I have to—’
‘Shut your mouth, Dana. Just wait until someone’s ready to play with you.’
‘What did you say?’ Dana exploded.
‘Oh yes, and you’re fired. Michio?’ Lynn put the enraged hotel director on hold. ‘This is Lynn Orley. Can you tell me your location?’
‘Okay, yes. The Mama Quilla Club, the Luna Bar and the Selene are accessible, but the Chang’e is sealed off. According to the computer the conditions beneath are life-threatening. A fire in the neck of the automatic system must have caused the area to be sealed off. Miss Miranda saw a jet of flame—’
‘Saw one?’ They heard Miranda’s penetrating voice in the background. ‘I was practically barbecued by it.’
‘—and only just managed to get away.’
Lynn leaned heavily against the control console. To Tim, she looked like a zombie trying to do something its body was no longer capable of.
‘Who was in the neck when the fire broke out?’ she asked, her voice flat.
‘We’re not entirely sure. It seems like there was an argument there. The Donoghues left the bar to find out, and we heard Miss Dana’s voice, and—’ He hesitated. ‘And yours, Miss Orley. Sumimasen, but you probably know better yourself who was there.’
Lynn fell silent for a few seconds.
‘Yes, I know,’ she said softly. ‘At least for the time before I – left. Your observations are correct. Just after Tim and I left, it must have—’ She cleared her throat. ‘Who’s with you right now?’
Funaki said nine names and assured her that, apart from Miranda’s minor burns, they were all uninjured. Tim shuddered at the thought of the neck, now completely sealed off. He didn’t dare imagine what fate had befallen Chuck, Aileen and the chef.
‘Thanks, Michio.’ Lynn’s fingers wandered over the touchscreen, altering controls, changing parameters.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Tim.
‘I’m stopping the convection in the elevator section and in the ventilation shafts.’
‘Convection?’ echoed Ögi.
‘The air circulation. There could be massive amounts of smoke forming up there. We have to stop the ventilators from distributing it and encouraging the fire to spread. Dana?’
‘Lynn, damn it! You can’t do this to me, I—’
‘Are you alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘What happened?’
‘I – listen, I’m sorry if I accused you of being in the wrong, but everything indicated that you were the one we were looking for. I’m responsible for the safety of the hotel, so that’s why—’
‘You were.’
‘I had no other choice. And you have to admit that your recent behaviour hasn’t exactly been normal.’ Dana hesitated. As she continued, her voice suddenly sounded sympathetic, as if there should be a leather psychologist’s chair and a diploma on the wall. ‘No one is angry with you. Anyone can stumble now and then, but maybe you’re ill, Lynn. Maybe you need help. Are you sure you still have things under control? Would you have trusted you?’
For a moment, the incapacitating tone seemed to be taking effect. Lynn sank her head and breathed deeply. Then she stiffened and jutted her chin out.
‘The only thing I need to know is that I have you under control, you scheming little bitch.’
‘No, Lynn, you don’t understand, I—’
‘You won’t do this to me twice, do you hear?’
‘I just want to—’
‘Shut it. What happened in the neck?’
‘But that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you the whole time.’
‘What then?’
‘Kokoschka. He betrayed you! It was him.’
‘Ko-Kokoschka?’
‘Yes! He was Hanna’s accomplice.’
‘Dana!’ Tim walked over. ‘It’s me. Are you sure about that? I think he wanted to give me something.’
‘No idea what, but that’s right, yes. He got really angry when you didn’t pay attention to him, it seemed things didn’t go as he had imagined. Then – right after you and Lyn left the neck, Anand appeared. I don’t know exactly what she had found out and how, but she said straight to Kokoschka’s face that he was the agent, and Kokoschka, my God… he just snapped. He pulled out a gun and shot her, then Chuck and Aileen too, everything happened so horribly quickly. I tried to knock the gun out of his hand, and it went off, then one of the oxygen tanks suddenly started spitting out fire and – I just ran, just got out, before the bulkheads closed. He came after me, but he didn’t make it. He burned. The gallery burned, everything. I—’ Dana’s voice ebbed away. As she continued, her attempt to control her emotions was audible. ‘I managed to get him out and close the bulkhead, to extinguish the flames, but—’
‘What is it? Are you okay?’
‘Yes, thank you, Tim.’ There was a muffled cough. ‘I’ve probably inhaled a little too much CO2 into my lungs, but I’m okay. I’ll keep myself going with oxygen masks until the pressure comes back and the bulkheads open.’
‘And – Kokoschka?’
‘Dead. I couldn’t get anything else out of him. Unfortunately.’
Silent horror and complete incomprehension descended over Heidrun and Walo’s faces. Lynn stepped away from the console, swayed a little, staggered and then crashed down into the chair.
‘It’s my fault,’ she whispered. ‘All of this is my fault.’
Nina Hedegaard had long suspected that Julian might be a reincarnation of the Comte de Saint-Germain: the alchemist and adventurer regarded as ‘immortal and all-knowing’, as Voltaire once wrote to Frederick the Great, and whose mysterious elixirs and essences he had wanted to use in order to unleash the lasting strength and stamina of a thirty-year-old. During her two semesters of studying history – which she passed inadvertently due to the blossoming of a brief liaison with a historian – the mysterious count had been Nina’s favourite figure. An ingenious gambler, companion to Casanova and teacher to Cagliostro, even the pompadours hung on his every word, because he claimed to be in possession of an acqua benedetta, a potion which stopped the ageing process. Born sometime in the early eighteenth century, official date of death 1784; biographers swore blind that they still found traces of him in the nineteenth century. Rich, eloquent, charming and – behind the façade of wanting to make the world a better place – thoroughly unscrupulous, it could only be Julian! The twenty-first-century Comte de Saint-Germain had created a space station and hotel on the Moon, making gold out of earth just as he had since time began, this time by transforming his alchemical genius helium-3 into energy, creating carbon tubes instead of diamonds, making a fool of the world and breaking the heart of a petite Danish pilot.