Rogue

by James Swallow

  ‘Let me make this clear,’ he said without preamble. ‘I don’t like having armed contractors in our principality. It sets a bad example.’

  He put withering emphasis on the word contractors, pushing it to get a response.

  The female ALEPH operative leaned close to her colleagues to translate the officer’s words into Russian, but her stone-faced comrades showed no reaction.

  ‘Your name, sir?’ Lau took a couple of steps, using his cane to support him.

  ‘Dupuis,’ the officer said sourly, as if unwilling to give even that much away.

  Lau adopted the same mild tone he had used on a lifetime’s worth of bored and belligerent prison guards.

  ‘Monsieur Dupuis, many private security staff are employed by the more affluent residents of Monte Carlo and its surrounding wards. If you can work with them, I hope you can work with us.’

  He made a show of offering up the Interpol identity card that the Combine had provided, designating Lau as an official investigator dispatched by the agency’s liaison office in Bangkok.

  Quite how the Combine had been able to falsify the card and the paperwork required to back it up was unknown to Lau, but it was airtight. Along with the credentials, Lau also carried a legitimate Interpol Blue Notice, an alert document naming Ekko Solomon as a person of interest in an investigation into the Nicosia attack. Monaco’s criminal police division had grudgingly accepted the notice, and now they were about to execute it.

  Dupuis chewed his lip, and Lau saw how this would go. The SIU officer was being pressured by his commanders to keep this quiet, to do nothing that would disrupt the smooth running of the principality and frighten the indolent rich who fed its coffers. It would not do for Monaco to be seen in the world’s eyes as a safe haven for corporate criminality.

  These people are greatly invested in appearances, Lau noted. I can make use of that.

  ‘Interpol will take full responsibility for this operation,’ he said, granting Dupuis a cloak of deniability. Lau indicated himself and the ALEPH operatives. ‘With your permission, I will serve the notice personally. Mr Sigalov, Mr Gera and Mr Adaksin will provide general security . . .’ He gestured to the three men, who responded with a nod to the sound of their names. ‘And Ms Milost will act as close protection for me.’

  The woman inclined her head, brushing a thread of short dark hair back behind her ear, revealing a pale cheek.

  ‘We anticipate no real opposition,’ she noted, her Moscow accent blunt and without affect.

  Lau began moving again, ending the conversation.

  ‘Everyone understands this is a delicate situation,’ he concluded. ‘Trust us to handle it discreetly.’

  *

  Marc found an empty conference room and went to the window, leaning forward until his forehead rested on the glass. The cool aura of the night air pushed through, and he drank it in like it was a tonic.

  Marc imagined the cold spreading over him, down his body, into his flesh. Turning him numb, until he couldn’t feel a thing. He welcomed it.

  Succumb to the chill. Lose yourself in it.

  Anything to get away from the questions he couldn’t answer and the emotions he couldn’t master.

  I’ve led us into this mess, he told himself. And for what? Chasing the memory of a woman I thought I knew, and a relationship that doesn’t exist.

  ‘I know this is hard for you,’ Lucy stood in the doorway behind him, ‘but you have to put your history aside, Marc. There’s people out there who wanna end us, and they’re using you against yourself.’

  ‘You were right,’ he told her. ‘Back in London, I should have walked away.’

  ‘Don’t beat yourself up over that.’ She moved closer to him. ‘We’re all of us who we are, for better or worse. There’s no world where you turned your back on this. It’s wired into you.’

  ‘That doesn’t make me feel any better.’

  ‘I would have done the same thing if it was my brother or my mom.’ She shook her head. ‘The Combine – their whole deal is finding pressure points and exploiting them. You know that better than anyone.’

  Marc gave a nod, recalling how his sister Kate and her family had once been used to coerce him. He’d made sure that could never happen again, but his enemies were smart enough to find a different angle of attack.

  ‘We’ve been fucking up their plans for long enough,’ he said. ‘Makes sense, they’d get sick of it after a while.’

  ‘We made ourselves too big a pain in the ass to ignore.’ She showed her teeth. ‘Should we be flattered?’

  He sat heavily on a long sofa, his dark-adapted eyes picking out Lucy’s shadow in the half-light.

  ‘You know, I tell myself I knew Sam Green but I must be a fool. She was always wild, always following her own path through life, and sod everything else.’ Marc sighed. ‘But as hard as I try, I can’t square up the woman I knew with the person I saw in Nicosia. How could she work with the Combine after what happened to Nomad? For all her faults, Sam was never ruthless. She wasn’t callous. She couldn’t do what Grace has done.’ He let that thought drift away.

  ‘People change,’ said Lucy. ‘The Samantha Green you cared about, that ain’t her. That woman is gone.’

  ‘What else am I wrong about?’ he said, the bleakness of the realisation reaching up inside his chest. ‘I’ve been running after the illusion of something I never really had to begin with.’

  Did Sam feel the same way I did about her? Was I seeing a connection between us that wasn’t there?

  Lucy sat down next to him.

  ‘Let go of the ghost,’ she said, after a long moment. ‘And we’ll deal with what comes next, like we always do.’

  Her hand was on his, and that made it a little better. But as he turned to look at Lucy, a sharp trill sounded from the smartphone in his pocket.

  ‘What now . . . ?’

  Marc pulled out the phone and glared at it. A string of hash-symbols and non-numeric characters showed where a caller ID should have been, immediately making him tense. He tapped the answer key and waited.

  ‘Dane.’ Tracey Lane’s voice was rough with fatigue, rendered metallic by encryption systems at the other end of the call. ‘Don’t talk, just listen. I don’t know what Farrier sees in you, but I respect him so that counts for something.’

  ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘I said don’t talk,’ she shot back, then paused, her tone softening slightly. ‘He’s still in a coma. Docs say he’ll come out of it, but in his own time. You know John, always does it his way.’ When Lane went on, she was back to being blunt and quick. ‘This shit we’re in . . . Six is scrambling to put the blame somewhere else. Welles is throwing Rubicon under the bus, and sticking it to John because he can’t defend himself. He’s going to Whitehall today to give a statement, and your mates won’t come off well, believe me.’

  Marc’s jaw set in a grim line. ‘Thanks for the warning.’

  ‘Now we’re even,’ she told him. ‘And we’re done. I have to protect mine, you understand?’

  ‘I do—’

  Lane never heard Marc’s reply, as the line abruptly went dead.

  TWELVE

  ‘The board is ready, sir,’ said Delancort.

  He stood on the threshold of the apartments, and in the corridor Solomon’s bodyguards were waiting.

  Solomon stood, taking a moment to smooth the line of his jacket and adjust the cuffs.

  ‘No blindfold for the condemned man?’

  Delancort showed a pinched, false smile at the gallows humour, but said nothing.

  ‘I will make do.’

  Solomon marched past his assistant, and paused in front of the guards. The two men were well-built figures in suits of similar cut to Solomon’s, and for years he had employed them as his personal close protection detail. But today, he was going to meet a threat that neither of them were equipped to deal with.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘you are relieved. Take the rest of the day off.
’

  ‘Sir?’ One of the men shot his employer a wary look. The dark-skinned Brazilian was an ex-commando, and fiercely loyal. ‘Are you sure you want to do that?’

  Solomon patted him on the shoulder, then glanced at the other guard, an American who had joined Rubicon from a career in the Military Police.

  ‘This is not Ancient Rome. My Praetorians do not need to stand with me if I fall.’

  He walked on, leaving the men behind, with Delancort rushing to keep up with his long-legged strides.

  *

  The central meeting room on the seventeenth floor of the Rubicon tower was a masterpiece of understated design, a minimalist assembly of chrome and white leather seating around a long table of bleached blond wood. Low morning sunshine, the glare lessened by the smart-glass of the broad windows, filled the space. To Solomon’s eyes, the combined effect seemed sterile and bloodless. Ironic, considering that by the end of this meeting, he expected there to be plenty of metaphorical blood on the pale carpet.

  He scanned the room, seeing familiar faces, each wearing a mask of professional detachment, each of them offering perfunctory handshakes or nods performed for the sake of decorum.

  So this is how it will be, he thought. All cards played close in this game. I expected no less.

  He sat at the head of the table, and Delancort took a seat to his right. Just beyond Solomon’s reach, the woman who carried the axe this day was studying a sheaf of closely printed pages in a file; Esther McFarlane had called the meeting, pulling in every member of Rubicon’s governing body to discuss the corporation’s future. That all of them had come in person attested to the seriousness of the matter at hand.

  McFarlane didn’t look up at him, distractedly pushing a thread of henna-red hair back over her ear as she marshalled her thoughts.

  Whetting her blade, Solomon told himself.

  To the left, Gerhard Keller rested his fingers in a steeple. The German financier remained grave and silent. Under any other circumstances, the broad, barrel-chested man would have been thrilled to be in Monaco, indulging his prestigious numeracy skills at any one of a number of gambling salons. Instead his gaze was turned inwards, and Solomon imagined Keller’s mind ticking over like a mechanical counter, as he dwelled on the losses incurred by Rubicon’s wounded share value. Keller was a good man, but sometimes he had to be reminded to see past balance sheet numbers to the realities of the world around him.

  Keller sat across from Victor Cruz, the other man’s deep tan turning his face uncharacteristically sullen. The Chilean energy innovator’s typically thoughtful demeanour was absent, his mood as far off beam as Keller’s was from his usual median.

  There was something accusatory in the way that Victor studied Solomon, as if holding in a question he could barely contain. How could you let this happen?

  Solomon had been asking himself the same thing since the incident in Cyprus became public knowledge.

  ‘Here we are again,’ said McFarlane, still staring down at her papers as her assistant hovered nearby. Like Solomon, she had brought her aide into the meeting room. ‘It only seems like yesterday when we were enjoying a nice cocktail on your boat out there, Ekko . . .’ She gestured vaguely in the direction of the windows and the bay of Monaco. ‘And you were making assurances that Rubicon’s operations would not be jeopardised by the exploits of your pet project.’ She finally looked up at him. ‘The Special Conditions Division. I’ve never really liked the idea of Rubicon having a hand in private military contracting. The whole mercenary thing feels boorish and needlessly macho. But the fact that you have a subdivision of that dedicated to your own agenda is just . . .’ She trailed off, shaking her head.

  Solomon opened his mouth to speak, but Keller headed him off.

  ‘Before you move to defend yourself, know that we understand what the SCD was intended for. You’ve said many times that it is the moral responsibility of the wealthy to look after the poor. Those of us with agency and strength are obligated to protect the weak and the oppressed. And sometimes those actions might require drastic measures. We do not dispute that.’

  ‘I do,’ snapped McFarlane. ‘I’m sick of hearing myself say this! We’re a Fortune 500 conglomerate, not an international peacekeeping agency. Rubicon is not a playbox of toy soldiers made to indulge vigilante fantasies! It’s one thing to protect our own interests and that of our employees, it’s quite another to go looking for trouble.’ She closed the folder and held it in place with the flat of her hand. ‘You know, we could sit here and I could list the intelligence agencies around the world that have been pissed off by the exploits of the SCD. The criminal and terrorist groups that we have made enemies of. The governments who now consider us rivals instead of business partners.’ She pointed at Keller. ‘Gerhard could put a dollar figure on it, no doubt, explaining what we’ve lost in earnings. In the name of Ekko Solomon’s crusade for justice, and whatever sense of redemption he is grasping for, he’s sent armed agents into sovereign countries, had cybercriminals spy for him . . .’

  ‘And then there is the database of secret intelligence files maintained by the SCD.’ Keller looked at a digital notepad in front of him, searching for the name. ‘This so-called Grey Record. The existence of that alone is a violation of dozens of international laws.’

  ‘You’ve put us at risk,’ McFarlane told Solomon. ‘Over and over again. We warned you to hold back. You didn’t.’

  ‘And now, this is where we are.’ Cruz broke his silence, shaking his head. ‘This attack in Cyprus . . . This blood on our hands!’

  ‘It is a fabrication,’ Solomon insisted, glancing at Delancort.

  His aide spoke up. ‘Our technicians are working to prove that—’

  ‘It happened!’ Cruz’s voice rose, silencing Delancort. ‘Men are dead, damn it! Real people with real families, soldiers who were killed for nothing! A military base in a nation that we trade with was bombed, and the whole world sees the faces of your private soldiers in collusion with rogue spies! The British have already disavowed this, and now every eye turns to us for an explanation. Do you have one?’

  ‘This is an attack on Rubicon.’ Solomon stiffened, working to maintain an even tone. ‘Our enemies are moving against us, and their aim is nothing less than our destruction.’

  ‘It’s an attack on you,’ countered McFarlane. ‘Enemies you brought to our door. And now we’re paying the price.’ She shook her head again. ‘I warned you months ago that one day you would cross a line that could not be walked back. This is that day.’

  ‘Our division plays into their hands,’ insisted Solomon. ‘It is what they want.’

  ‘Who are they?’ said Keller. ‘The Combine?’

  Solomon half-expected McFarlane to dismiss the notion of that group out of hand, as some fevered conspiracy theory. But she did the opposite.

  ‘We should have stayed out of their way. Left it to others to deal with the Combine. Now we’re in their sights.’

  ‘You’ve spoken of our ethical imperative to do right.’ Cruz made a visible effort to calm himself. ‘But at what cost? You have gone too far this time, Ekko. The truth is, it doesn’t matter if that drone footage is real or not. Rubicon is seen as culpable, and no one is standing with us. Everyone who wants us to fail is pouring fuel on the fire. Our reputation is collapsing. We are bleeding money on the stock market. Something must be done.’

  ‘I advise that all elements of the Rubicon Group’s private military contracts be terminated as of today,’ said McFarlane. ‘We get out of the PMC business. Close protection, kidnap and ransom, escort services, the lot of it.’ She made a cutting gesture. ‘Wound up and done. And that includes every last piece of your Special Conditions Division. Not a suspension, not a temporary halt, not like last time. Your private little war is over.’

  ‘I will not allow that.’ Solomon placed his hands on the table. ‘You do not have the power to enforce such demands.’

  ‘Not alone,’ said Keller. ‘But togeth
er, we do.’

  ‘I’m calling for a vote of no confidence in Solomon’s leadership of this organisation,’ said McFarlane.

  ‘Seconded.’ Cruz gave a nod. ‘I am sorry, but this is the only way forward.’

  *

  ‘Are you in here?’

  Assim burst through the door and into the conference room, almost falling over his own feet in haste.

  He cast around and found Marc and Lucy lying together on the wide couch, with Dane’s jacket draped over them like a blanket. His expression fell into one of open shock.

  ‘Oh. Ah. I didn’t expect to find . . .’ He coloured a little. ‘Awkward.’

  Shaking off sleep, the two of them disentangled from one another, stifling yawns and stretching. Marc grunted at the stiffness in his back.

  ‘Ugh. Not as comfortable as it looks . . .’ He found Assim staring at them and gave him a quizzical look. ‘What?’

  ‘I didn’t know you two were in here,’ replied the hacker, his tone becoming conspiratorial. ‘Together.’

  ‘Why’d you say it like that?’ Lucy eyed him. ‘It’s not like you caught us—’

  ‘Of course not.’

  Assim flashed a weak smile, and briefly thought about the money he had in the office pool on exactly when Marc Dane and Lucy Keyes were going to get caught, as it were.

  ‘I told you to get some sleep,’ said Lucy.

  ‘I thought about it,’ Assim admitted, ‘but then I ate a whole packet of caffeine tablets and suddenly it seemed less important.’

  ‘Keep that up, you’re gonna have a heart attack. You’ll be dead before you’re thirty,’ Marc admonished, getting to his feet. ‘Why did you come looking for us?’

  ‘We have a big problem,’ he told them.

  ‘That’s not news.’ Marc exchanged looks with Lucy. ‘Be more specific.’

  He beckoned them to follow him back into the crisis centre. Now lit by daylight, the empty space seemed even stranger than it had in the dark, vacant and echoing.