They drove through the gate in the screens surrounding the landing field. There was moderate activity taking place all around them. One of the grasshopper-like forklifts was corresponding soundlessly with a manipulator, whose segmented arm rose in their direction like a final greeting, then froze. So far as could be seen, the tracks on the rail station gallery lay there abandoned. Beneath the harsh, uneven light, the lonely route wound off into the valley. The activity of the machines had a ritualistic quality to it; one could even say post-apocalyptic mindlessness, an image of strange self-contentment.
What would they find at Aristarchus? Suddenly, he was overcome by the desire to go to sleep and wake up in the timelessness of a Dublin pub of somewhat ill repute, where the customers were more concerned with the accurate proportion of foam to black stout than all the wonders of the Milky Way put together, and often sighed in remembrance of allegedly better times as they raised the glasses to their lips.
London, Great Britain
The night crawled by.
Yoyo was off somewhere on the phone to Chen Hongbing, Tu was discussing the possibility of a joint venture with Dao IT, his still-furious, abhorrent competitor, and Jericho was struggling to keep his eyes open. Three hundred metres above London, his brain had turned into a swamp, gurgling and mumbling with decaying theories, all paths either reaching a dead end or getting lost in the unknown. He was finding it harder and harder to concentrate. Vic Thorn on his journey into eternity. Kenny Xin, slinking towards Palstein’s planned assassination. The nine heads of Hydra. Carl Hanna, on whom Norrington hadn’t yet managed to find even the smallest blemish. Diane with her ever increasing messages about Calgary and the massacre in Vancouver. Sinister representatives of the CIA, living up to the cliché. From a great height, he could see himself running around in a circle so big it felt like he was going in a straight line, but he always ended up back in the same place.
He was absolutely shattered.
Yoyo came back from her phone conversation just as he was about to stretch out on the floor and close his eyes for a moment. But then he might have gone to sleep, and his overtaxed brain would have conjured up dreams of hunting and being hunted. He was actually pleased that Yoyo was keeping him awake, even though her mercurial vitality was increasingly getting on his nerves. Since their arrival in the Big O, she had single-handedly polished off a bottle of Brunello di Montalcino, had the ruby-red tones of Sangiovese Grosso in her cheeks and the never-tiring look of youth, and all without showing any sign of drunkenness. For every cigarette she smoked, two new ones seemed to grow out of her fingers. She was even more unpredictable than the Welsh weather: gloomy and glowering one moment, bright the next.
‘How’s your father doing?’ he yawned.
‘As can be expected.’ Yoyo sank down into a swivel chair then jumped right up again. ‘Really well actually. I didn’t tell him everything, of course. Like what happened at the Pergamon Museum, he doesn’t need to know that, right? Just so you know, in case you speak to him.’
‘I can’t see any reason why I should.’
‘Hongbing is your client.’ She went over to the coffee machine. ‘Have you forgotten that already?’
Jericho blinked. He suspected that, if he looked in the mirror, he would find his eyes had been replaced by computer monitors. He forced himself to look up from the screen.
‘I brought you back to him,’ he said. ‘So the honourable Chen is no longer my client.’
‘Oh great.’ Yoyo studied the selection on the machine. ‘There’s a thousand varieties of coffee, but no tea.’
‘Look more closely. The English are tea-drinkers.’
‘Where is it then?’
‘Bottom right. Hot water. The box of teabags is next to it. So what did you tell him?’
‘Hongbing?’ Yoyo rummaged through the box. ‘I told him that we had a heartfelt conversation with Vogelaar and that he filled us in on what was going on, and that Donner turned out to be a cover.’ She put her cup under the nozzle, dropped in a bag of Oolong and ran boiling water over it.
‘So in other words you said we were having a lovely holiday,’ mocked Jericho. ‘And have we been to Madame Tussaud’s and shopping on the King’s Road?’
‘So should I have told him about the experience of pressing the eyeballs out of a dead man?’
‘Fine, enough said. A mocha, please.’
‘A what?’
‘Coffee with chocolate. Left row, third button from the top. So how far did you get with Thorn?’
They had divided up their tasks, which meant that Yoyo was evaluating the data relayed by Edda Hoff and completing it with information she found online.
‘I’ll be finished in a few minutes,’ she said, watching as the machine spat out a mixture of cappuccino and chocolate. ‘Would I be correct in assuming that you’re tired?’
Jericho was just about to answer when he realised that Diane was simultaneously uploading 112 new reports about Calgary and Vancouver. He sank into a depressed silence. Yoyo put the steaming cup in front of him and began to slurp down her tea in front of her monitor. He listlessly decided to have one final look at the message that had set everything off, then to go and sleep.
Just as the text appeared on his screen, Yoyo whistled lightly through her teeth.
‘Do you want to know who was project leader for the Peary Missions from 2020 to the end of 2024?’
‘From the way you say it I take it that I do want to know.’
‘Andrew Norrington.’
‘Norrington?’ Jericho’s slumped shoulders tightened up. ‘Shaw’s deputy?’
‘Wait.’ She wrinkled her brow. ‘There were a number of project leaders, but Norrington was definitely in the team. It doesn’t say to what extent or how direct his contact with Thorn was.’
‘And you’re sure it’s the same Norrington?’
‘Andrew Norrington,’ she read. ‘Responsible for personnel and security, transferred in November 2024 to Orley Enterprises as deputy head of security.’
‘Strange.’ Jericho wrinkled his forehead. ‘So it should have rung a bell with Hoff when I spoke to her about Thorn.’
‘She’s Norrington’s subordinate. Why would she be concerned with the details of his past career?’
‘But Norrington didn’t say anything either.’
‘Did you speak to him about Thorn?’
‘Not directly. Shaw and he were in a meeting. I came over and said that some unexpected event must have stopped the mini-nuke being ignited the year before.’
‘Mind you, Shaw already knew about your Vic Thorn theory.’
‘That’s true, probably from Hoff. Hmm. She must have clocked that Norrington was with NASA at the same time as Thorn. Sure, she had a hell of a lot on her plate – but Norrington—’
‘You mean, he should have thought of Thorn himself?’
‘Maybe that’s asking too much.’ Jericho rested his chin in his hands. ‘But do you know what? I’m going to go and ask him.’
‘Victor Thorn—’
Norrington was sitting in his surprisingly small office, one of the few rooms that weren’t open-plan. Jericho had turned up unannounced, as if he were just passing.