But when she was on the transport back to England, one of Hawke’s colleagues in the SBS had gotten wind of the murder and told everyone on the plane. She phoned Hawke when she landed but he had already dropped off the radar. When he resurfaced weeks later she tracked him down to his house, sitting in a darkened room with his hands wrapped around a bottle of cheap Scotch.
She hoped nothing like that ever happened to him again, and she put the whole thing behind her and focused. All those years in the SAS had to add up to something other than a reputation, after all, and she returned her attention to McShain’s briefing, which, she hoped, might at some point get interesting enough to pay attention to.
Later, after the briefing, Ryan and Sophie made use of one of the laptops to get deeper into their research of Sheng and the Tesla threat. Scarlet walked over with Olivia Hart while Lao and McShain finalized details with their teams in preparation for the assault.
“I noticed McToughnuts over there never mentioned the Tesla device,” Scarlet said, gesturing at McShain. “Anything about that?”
Ryan nodded grimly. Scarlet had only known him a short time, but lately he seemed to have aged a lot. She could see rings around his eyes from the lack of sleep and he seemed to spend a lot of time drinking coffee and Coke to keep himself going.
“Yes, but not a lot,” he said in reply. “As you can guess, to say a device like that would be classified is a ludicrous understatement and I’ve been trying to look at stuff away from what McShain’s already given me, just to make sure we’re getting the whole picture.”
“But what have you got?” Scarlet asked, sighing.
“Hey! He’s doing his best!” said Sophie. “I’d like to see what you could come up with.”
“I’d like to see my fist in your face, but…”
“Enough, the two of you!” Ryan snapped. He rubbed his eyes in an attempt to energize himself. “As a matter of fact I was able to find a few buzzwords relating to the project on conspiracy theory websites.”
“Oh God,” Scarlet said. “Not the tin-foil hat brigade, Ryan! This is serious.”
“It’s a very reliable forum, actually,” he said patiently, as if explaining to an infant why putting your hand in a fire is a bad idea. “From there, I was able to get some kind of idea about what we’re talking about and managed to hack some intercepts between the US Navy and an American professor of physics in California.”
“You see now what good work he does, no?” Sophie said.
Ryan reached out and touched Sophie’s hand. She smiled and rubbed his shoulder.
“All right, all right,” Scarlet said, seeing the contact. “Either get a room or get on with the briefing.”
“It’s not much more than we’ve already got. All I can say from reading the intercepts is that the device is definitely real, definitely works and was definitely stolen by Sheng. They also make it clear that if this thing is used it will annihilate an entire city and according to InsideMan, if it’s anything like…”
“Sorry?” Scarlet said. “But who the hell is InsideMan?”
“One of my hacking colleagues.”
“One of your nerd friends?”
“He’s an expert hacker and one of the finest conspiracy theorists in the world,” Ryan said with pride.
“You mean he sits at his computer desk in his underpants surrounded by empty takeaway cartons and wishing for a girlfriend?”
“I mean,” Ryan said with exaggerated slowness as if talking to a young child again, “that he has a very good track record on predicting natural disasters, for one thing.”
“Explain.”
“I mean that not all natural disasters are what they seem, despite McShain’s protests, and that’s why when this came up I contacted him. It seems right up his street.”
“Have you ever met this guy, Ryan?” Scarlet said.
“Of course not. We’re all anonymous.”
“He could be bloody anyone then!”
“And?”
“And he could be giving you disinformation!”
“Maybe, but our lives don't depend on what he gives me. All he tells me is that if a big global city has a major earthquake in the next few days then the authorities will simply tell the public it was a natural disaster while in the background they’re racing around trying to find and either kill or bribe the perpetrator.”
“Not sure how this helps us.”
“Well for one thing, it tells us we can’t trust McShain, because in Hong Kong he told Hawke outright that the US has never used the machine to artificially trigger quakes.”
Scarlet raised her eyes from Ryan’s laptop screen and glanced at McShain, now talking in animated fashion with Jason Lao. “You can’t trust anyone, Ryan, didn’t you know that?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Lea Donovan’s mind was burning with questions and fears as Sheng’s private jet roared south along the Chinese coast. She had just woken up from the chloroform dished out to the three of them by Luk back in Beijing, and she had the headache to prove it. Sheng himself, with Luk and the Lotus were up front, talking quietly in rapid Mandarin. She didn’t understand a word of it. Either side of her were Hawke and Han, both still out cold.
The gentle hum of the luxury cabin and the softness of the leather seat almost made her forget she was a prisoner of these people, and as she watched the clouds flick past below her, occasionally revealing a snatched-glance of a yet another Chinese city, she was almost enjoying the flight.
Until she remembered why all this was happening. Until the hideous black ghosts of the past like Hugo Zaugg and Heinrich Baumann crept into her imagination like poisonous shadows. She shuddered when she thought of Baumann, on fire in the wine cellar, and when she closed her eyes she could sometimes feel Zaugg’s hands around her throat as the gondola swung in the snowstorm.
From what she had heard from Sir Richard Eden and Lexi Zhang, these people were even more dangerous, and now she and Hawke were disarmed and in their power. Would they kill them before they had a chance to escape or fight back? Would Hawke die before he knew the truth about what she had been concealing from him?
Lea was more sure than ever that Hawke deserved to know the truth, but she knew it wasn’t her place to tell him. As she looked at him, knocked unconscious by a brutal pistol-whipping delivered courtesy of Mr Luk, she began to wonder if he could be more than a lover.
Since their first night together in the Swiss Alps, Lea Donovan knew he was the kind of man she could really fall in love with — maybe even spend the rest of her life with, but there was always the issue of what she had kept from him. The way he had dismissed her concerns over what had happened in Syria had meant a lot to her, but this was different once again. This was out of her hands. How would he react to yet more deceit?
Slowly, Hawke began to moan and come back to life.
Lea leaned forward and hushed him.
“Don’t let them know you’re awake, Joe,” she said in a gentle whisper.
“Where the hell are we?” he said, confused. He tried to rub his head and then realized his hands were tied behind his back with plastic cable ties. “Damn it!”
“We’re in Sheng’s jet. That Luk bastard knocked you out back at the airport — do you remember any of that?”
“Yes… it’s coming back to me. Another private jet, eh?” He hauled himself up a little and stretched his neck to relax the muscles. His eye was swollen and bruised from the beating Luk had given him earlier, while he was held back by some of Sheng’s men, and it felt like at least one of his ribs was broken. “I’m starting to feel like a rock star.”