‘Yes, Thorn,’ he nodded. ‘He could be our man, don’t you think?’
Norrington gazed at an imaginary point in the room.
‘Hmm,’ he said distinctly, very distinctly. A clearly audible H, followed by a time-winning mmm. ‘Interesting thought.’
‘He died three months after the launch of the satellite. It would fit time-wise.’
‘You’re right. Why didn’t I think of that myself?’
‘People often overlook the things that are right in front of them.’ Jericho smiled. ‘Did you have close contact with him?’
‘No.’ Norrington shook his head slowly. ‘I’m sure I wouldn’t have been so slow on the uptake if I had.’
‘No contact at all?’
‘My role was related to the general project security. Sure, we crossed each other’s path now and then, but other people were responsible for personnel issues.’
‘And what was Thorn like?’
‘As I said, we had nothing to do with one another. Rumour was that he was a playboy, which may have been an exaggeration. I think he just enjoyed life, but on the other hand he was enormously disciplined. A good – a very good astronaut. People don’t normally get put forward for a second Peary Mission that quickly.’
‘Think back, Andrew,’ asked Jericho. ‘Any information would be helpful.’
‘Of course. Although I fear that I won’t be able to offer anything that enlightening. Is Jennifer already in the picture on this?’
‘Hoff seems to have mentioned it to her. She knew about my suspicion.’
‘She didn’t tell me.’ Norrington sighed. ‘But you can see what it’s like here: we rush from one meeting to the next; everything’s so chaotic. Hanna is driving me insane. I can’t find anything dodgy in his background, and God knows it’s not the first time I’ve looked.’
‘You were responsible for the tour group?’
‘Yes. We didn’t know much about Hanna, but Julian was adamant about taking him along. Believe you me, I X-rayed the guy thoroughly. And nothing: he was clean.’
‘Anything new from Merrick?’
‘No. He’s trying to make contact. His botnet theory is probably correct.’ Norrington hesitated. ‘Owen, I don’t mean to suggest I don’t trust your instincts, but we have to look at other Orley organisations too. We can’t be certain that we’re not dealing with a concerted action. Give me a bit of time with Thorn. I’ll be in touch as soon as I can.’
‘He’s lying,’ said Yoyo, when Jericho came back and filled her in on the conversation. ‘Norrington knew Thorn.’
‘He didn’t say he didn’t know him.’
‘No, I mean he really knew him.’ Yoyo pointed at her monitor. ‘Thorn attracted a lot of interest from the media, because of Peary, but also because he was good-looking and talkative. There are dozens of interviews with him, but I found the best one while you were away. A special report about the Peary crew of 2024, plus a human-interest piece. Vic Thorn, sought-after bachelor, on the Moon for the second time, blah blah blah. They took a film crew to his house and were given access while he threw a birthday party, and guess who was on the guest list?’
She started the video. An open-plan kitchen, a relaxed atmosphere. About two dozen people gathered around platters of finger food. Light jazz breezing over a sea of chatter, classics from the Rat Pack era. People dancing in the background, and a lot of dedicated drinking. Thorn laughs into the camera and says something about how wonderful friendship is, then can be seen in animated discussion with a man who slaps him familiarly on the shoulder a few frames later.
‘Is that what people who don’t have any contact with one another look like?’
Jericho shook his head.
‘Most definitely not.’
‘That some of these men will soon spend six months on another celestial body,’ said the female commentator, ‘seems strangely unreal on an evening like this, where—’
‘It could be coincidence,’ Yoyo conceded. ‘We can’t necessarily assume that Norrington is our mole, or even that Thorn had something to do with it. It’s pure speculation.’
‘Nonetheless, I want to know more about his time with NASA. What exactly he was responsible for, how close the contact really was. We know one thing for sure: he lied when he denied knowing Thorn well.’
‘—already his second mission in the Mountains of Eternal Light,’ the commentator was saying. ‘So called because the sun never sets at the lunar Pole. Originally, this played a decisive role for the energy supply to the Peary Base, but since then the construction of a fusion reactor has—’
‘Mountains of Eternal Light,’ whispered Jericho.
Yoyo looked up at him, confused.
‘Yes, that’s what the Polar regions are called. You know that.’
The cogs were turning in Jericho’s mind. As if in a trance, he went over to his desk and stared at the text of the fragmentary message:
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 MoonLight 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
There was very little of the text that still puzzled him. In essence, just one single word, added before the dark network went silent, and only because it occupied the space between Operation and of timing in such an odd way, as if it didn’t belong there.
MoonLight
That’s what he’d assumed it said, at any rate.
‘Diane. Fragment analysis. Attribute the origin data to the text building stones.’
‘Colour recognition?’
‘Yes, please.’
A moment later, words like payload rocket and Enterprises were transformed into colourful chains of alphabet letters. Ent erpr ises was, for example, assembled from three sections of data and other terms like Operation and implemented, came from a single data section.
Four fragments created Mo o n light.
‘Oh, God,’ whispered Jericho.
‘What’s wrong?’ Yoyo jumped up, came over and leaned over his shoulder.
‘I think we’ve made a mistake.’
‘A mistake?’
‘A huge mistake.’ How could he have missed it? It was right in front of him. ‘We may have put them on the wrong track. The bomb isn’t supposed to go off in Gaia—’
‘Not in Gaia? But—’
‘There would be no point if it did, and we knew that the whole time. Idiot! I’m such a stupid, blind idiot!’
Operation Mo o n Light
Operation Mountains of Eternal Light.
Chinese Mining Station, Sinus Iridum, The Moon
Jia Keqiang was no politician. He was a taikonaut, a geologist and a major, in that order, or possibly the other way around depending on his mood, but he was no politician, that was for sure. In his experience, the only difference between Chinese and American spacemen, or indeed Russian, Indian, German and French, was the ideology behind them, and whether they were called astronauts, cosmonauts or taikonauts. What they all had in common though was a way of looking at the big picture which politicians, in his experience, never had, except of course for those few statesmen who had been in space themselves. Hua Liwei, his predecessor up on the Moon, had been an American captive for a while and still took every official appearance as an opportunity to accuse the Americans of hair-raising breaches of the lunar peace, but this couldn’t shake Jia’s opinion that spacemen were easygoing, unpolitical people. It was just that each and every one of them followed their script faithfully. Even Hua Liwei, once he had a drink or two inside him, in private, would happily admit that he liked the Yanks, that they had treated him very well and that, as it happened, they had some excellent Scotch tucked away in the catacombs at Peary Base.