He looked at Lucy and ran a fingertip over his cheek, beneath his eye, as if scratching an itch.
Stay alert.
She nodded and dropped back into the flatbed as Malte put the truck in gear. With another lurch it set off in the wake of the Hummer, and the technicals, now stuffed with soldiers, followed on behind.
‘That seem weird to you?’ Marc asked the question as he scoped out the closest pickup. ‘And Solomon being up there on his own with that bloke? They could be talking about anything.’
‘That Simbarashe dude had time and opportunity to smoke us back there,’ Lucy noted. ‘This is Solomon’s old turf, Marc. We gotta let him play this out his way.’
‘Do we?’
He let the question hang.
*
It was the middle of the day by the time they reached the site, and the sun was high and hard, bringing up mirage shimmers from the landscape.
The convoy parked in another nameless settlement, another grid of single-storey houses, with a low, squat structure crouching next to the highway that merged petrol station, general store and cafe. Further back Marc spotted a blockhouse-type construction that could have been a community hall or maybe a school. He noted that the buildings looked in better order than those of the hamlet where they had spent the previous night. Walls were sturdier, roofs were better made, and the tracks between them had been flattened out.
Simbarashe’s soldiers disembarked and encouraged the cafe owner to feed and water them, and Marc watched the way the locals acted around the militia. They were cautious of them and their weapons, but it didn’t look like the buttoned-down fear of a captive populace. Simbarashe didn’t appear to be running a police state here, and there were even nods and smiles as the soldiers played a kickabout with some youngsters.
Malte put the truck close to their objective, a square plot of land on the edge of the little town, about half the size of a football pitch. In the centre of the square stood a ten- by ten-metre concrete cube, and emerging from its upper surface was a tall, spindly antenna tower. Rattling gently in the midday breeze, the tower was weathered metal and clusters of enclosed antennae, one of hundreds of similar masts scattered throughout the country to relay cellular telephone signals.
Civil infrastructure in this part of the world could be patchy at best, sometimes due to the remoteness of locations, sometimes because of cost, sometimes the victim of institutionalised corruption. Wired telecommunications were sparse, but the rise of cheap cell phone technology had leapt ahead of its cable and telegraph counterpart, and now the continent had one of the largest user bases for mobile phones in the world. People knew well enough to leave the cell towers alone, aware that each of the gleaming metal trees was a lifeline.
A fence of densely packed stainless steel chain-link surrounded it, rising to a height of around twenty metres, and there was only one way in or out, through a gate best described as ‘substantial’.
Shouldering his daypack, Marc climbed out of the truck and peered at the lock on the gate. He expected to see a thick, industrial-grade deadbolt but instead there was a heavy-duty magnetic mechanism with no visible keypad or card slot.
Arranged in rings around the base of the tower, the black panes of solar cells captured the harsh daylight and channelled it into the cube. Marc guessed that surplus power would probably be passed over to the people in the town. The tower’s base had the same kind of construction as the other buildings in the settlement.
‘It was a deal they were happy to accept,’ Solomon told him, walking up. ‘One day, men came to this settlement and offered to build new homes for everyone, a new school . . . In return, they put up this cell tower and asked the locals to keep an eye on it. Everyone was given free smartphones when it went on line. We repeated the same trial in several places along the coast of East Africa.’
Marc took that in. A key part of Rubicon’s corporate wealth came from managing telecoms subsidiaries in the developing world, and as he looked in through a gap in the fence, Marc could make out the company logo on a steel door in the side of the cube.
‘So what are we doing here?’
Solomon leaned close to the hatch. He placed his heavy titanium signet ring with the onyx stone on the lock’s blank face.
‘We will recover the Grey Record.’
The hatch’s bolts retracted with a loud thud that drew everyone’s attention.
The cube beneath the antenna looked too small to house a server of the same dimensions as the one Marc had destroyed in Monaco, and he gave Solomon a questioning look.
‘Can you bring that, please?’ Solomon indicated an empty ammunition crate that one of Simbarashe’s men had left on the ground. He looked across to Lucy. ‘I am leaving you in charge.’
‘Copy that,’ she replied.
As Marc gathered up the crate, Simbarashe approached, smiling that alligator grin of his.
‘You came out here for this place?’ His manner became mocking and sly. ‘Did you hide something there?’ He laughed. ‘I’ll bet you did! It’s so like him!’ Simbarashe looked at Marc. ‘He did this all the time when we were young, Ekko loves to play with secrets.’
There was a little bite on the last few words, but only Marc caught it.
Solomon was nodding. ‘I apologise, old friend. This is your territory and I did not tell you I had buried something here. But it was necessary for everyone’s protection. And I knew you could be trusted to keep these townships safe.’
Simbarashe bobbed his head. ‘It is true, I am the guardian of these people. I’ll forgive you . . . if you give me a cut! Ha!’
‘We will talk about that when we return,’ Solomon agreed. ‘There is more we can do together, and you will be well compensated.’
Simbarashe made a fluttering motion near his head.
‘Music to my ears!’
Solomon moved through the gate and Marc followed, picking his way around the strange metallic orchard of the solar arrays. At the steel door in the base of the cell tower, Solomon did the trick with the signet ring again, using embedded circuitry inside the ring to open a concealed lock.
They went inside, into a hot, dusty chamber no bigger than a prison cell. The air within was dry and heavy with ozone, and there was barely enough space to move. Racks of automatic routing gear and electronics crowded in.
‘I don’t see any backup server,’ said Marc.
‘We are standing on it,’ Solomon explained.
He tapped the signet ring on what appeared to be a safety warning sign and the floor beneath Marc’s feet twitched.
He stepped back as a seam opened in the metal panelling and a gust of cold, processed air washed upwards through the widening gap.
Lights blinked on, revealing a narrow steel stairwell extending down into the red earth.
NINETEEN
The creaking steel stairs descended into the sweating earth, and Marc found himself in a concrete chamber with a low ceiling. An anteroom, he guessed, dominated by a heavy steel hatch on slide runners. Hidden below the floor, he heard the humming of power and cooling systems.
As Solomon approached the metal door, automated lights flicked on and revealed a covered control panel, which he unlocked with a final touch of his signet ring key.
Marc put down the empty ammunition crate he was carrying and folded his arms, watching intently. Behind the panel was another voice-recognition mechanism, like the one in Monaco. Solomon whispered his King Lear quote once more, deactivating the first set of locks.
‘Did you have a plan for opening this without Delancort?’ said Marc.
‘I brought you,’ Solomon replied. ‘You are one of the most resourceful men I have ever known—’
‘Flattery will get you everywhere.’ Marc cut him off and dropped his pack on the ground, rooting through it to pull out his laptop computer. He opened the device, folding it back on itself to turn it into a tablet screen, and ran his fingers over the touch-sensitive surface. ‘Same code as before?’
/> ‘Correct.’ Solomon frowned. ‘You can circumvent the voiceprint, yes?’
Instead of answering, Marc tapped out a string of text, and after a moment the computer spoke in a passable synthetic imitation of Henri Delancort’s clipped French-Canadian accent.
‘Chacun voit midi à sa porte.’
‘You sampled his speech?’
Marc typed something else.
‘Correct,’ said the artificial Delancort. ‘He likes the sound of his own voice so I had plenty to draw from.’
‘Henri would be unhappy if he knew.’ The second set of locks retracted and Solomon took a step towards the hatch, then paused. ‘Tell me, how many other patterns do you have stored on that device?’
Marc tapped in another code string, and Solomon’s voice answered.
‘A few,’ said the computer.
The computer ran the same software the team had used to bypass the security of the Horizon Integral Corporation in Sydney a couple of years earlier. Marc’s work on improving the code was an ongoing side project during his downtime.
‘I have no recollection of authorising that,’ Solomon noted, after he explained.
‘Well, part of being resourceful is being prepared for any eventuality.’
‘A fair point,’ Solomon allowed.
He pulled a lever and the hatch slid back.
Cold air from the chamber beyond prickled over Marc’s exposed skin and it was a relief from the dense heat up on the surface. He let himself enjoy it for a moment before following Solomon inside.
The backup server was smaller but functionally identical to the primary they had destroyed in the Rubicon tower. Racks of removable solid-state hard drives whirred in the air-cooled quiet, green ready lights blinking in unison to show they were powered and active. Marc looked up, finding a communications hub mounted on a support above his head. The device showed only crimson indicators, confirming that the backup’s links to the wider world had been shut down according to plan.
He ran a hand over one of the drives. Each one was labelled with the name of a mythological figure. Marc saw Charon, Athena, Phobos, Callisto, and a dozen more.
‘What’s on these? Really?’ he asked.
‘The deeds that many men and nations would rather remain unknown,’ said Solomon. ‘And more than that . . . Access data for black bank accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. Discretionary funds that not even the Rubicon board are aware of.’
‘Parachutes,’ Marc said quietly.
Solomon leaned across to take the handle of Callisto, and pulled it out with a smooth click, the light on the fascia fading. The drive was no larger than a paperback book, and he put it inside the ammo crate.
‘We should proceed. I do not wish to remain down here any longer than we need to.’
‘Right.’
Marc grabbed a drive labelled Deimos and did the same. The two men set to the work of detaching the modules, one after another.
After a moment, Solomon spoke again, and when he did there was something different in his voice – a vulnerability.
‘I am sorry, Marc. For bringing you to this. For everything I have kept from you, and the others.’
‘I understand why,’ Marc told him. ‘But don’t ask me to excuse it.’
‘What I told you and Lucy on the flight, about the shooting at the mine – I have revealed that to no one.’ Solomon’s gaze turned inwards. ‘It is my responsibility to carry that guilt.’
Sam Green’s face rose briefly in Marc’s thoughts, along with those of his lost Nomad teammates.
‘Yeah, I know how that goes.’
‘You do,’ said Solomon, with a nod. ‘As do Lucy, and Malte and the others. All of us seek a way back from something we regret.’
Marc shot him a hard look. ‘Yeah. But we need trust, Solomon. If we want to survive this, we need to believe in one another. No more secrets.’
‘That is a difficult request,’ said the other man. ‘I have always been guarded. It is how I endured growing up under the gun.’
Marc tried to imagine what that had been like: forced to fight while still a boy, dragged through atrocities and firefights, unable to show the slightest sign of weakness for fear of being killed.
How would that shape you? What kind of man would you become?
‘I’ve been searching for trust all my life.’ Marc voiced the thought before he was even aware of it. ‘When I was a kid, my dad dumped us. My mum and my sister Kate and me. Took everything, walked out of our lives and left us to fend for ourselves. We had nothing – no one to protect us from the wolves at the door. I know it doesn’t compare to what you went through, but—’
‘We fight the battles before us in our own way,’ offered Solomon. ‘There is no reward for greater suffering.’
‘You’d think that after growing up like that, it would harden you. Make you doubt everyone and everything. But not me. I kept looking for what I didn’t have. In the Navy, in Nomad. With Sam.’ Marc paused, musing. ‘I used to tell myself it was a flaw in my character. That it made me weak. But being part of Rubicon was the first time trust felt real to me in a long while. You understand that?’
The other man gave a solemn nod.
‘No more secrets,’ he intoned, and offered his hand.
Marc took it, but Solomon saw the flicker of doubt in his eyes.
‘There is something else,’ he said.
‘Lau . . .’ Marc saw Solomon stiffen at the mention of his nemesis. ‘He reached out to me, after we escaped. Left me messages where he knew I’d find them.’
Solomon stepped away, his expression clouding.
‘What did he offer you?’
‘Lucy and me . . .’ Marc began, ‘He said he’d let us go if we gave you to the Combine.’
‘Of course. I sacrificed him. He would have you sacrifice me.’
Solomon returned to the drives, removing the next in line.
‘Don’t you want to know if I took him up on it?’
‘That is not a question I need to ask.’ Solomon didn’t look at him. ‘I trust you.’
*
In silence, they loaded the last of the drives into the ammo crate and Solomon deactivated the server rack for the final time. The cooling units beneath the rig stuttered to a halt and the chill in the air began a slow fade towards blood heat.
Marc shouldered his bag and grabbed one handle of the crate, while Solomon took the other.
‘Now we have this, what are we going to do with it?’ He jerked his head towards the crate. ‘We made sure Glovkonin and his cronies don’t get their paws on a ton of covert intelligence, but what next? Do we drop it in the sea? Fry it like we did back at the tower?’
‘Destroy it in order to save it, you mean? Or do we use the Grey Record for the purpose it was intended?’ Solomon shook his head, pulling at the sweat-stained collar of his grubby shirt. ‘I confess to you, I have no good answer. I was uncertain we would even survive this long.’
‘Huh. I always thought you were the man who had a plan for everything,’ said Marc, as they stepped out into the bright, blazing sun.
‘Yesterday, perhaps. Today I am following your example,’ Solomon replied, with the hint of a smile. ‘I am making this up as I go.’
But then the smile faded as they stepped past the fence line, and Marc saw what had suddenly taken Solomon’s attention.
‘So much . . .’ grinned Simbarashe, making wide gestures with a Super Redhawk revolver in his fist. ‘So much has changed, old friend.’
His militiamen were arranged in a row, their rifles raised and aimed towards Marc and Solomon. The warlord ambled back and forth in front of the soldiers, and down in the dirt before him, Lucy, Malte and Assim were on their knees with their hands on their heads.
‘The problem with trust,’ Solomon said quietly, ‘is that one can misplace it.’
‘What did you say?’ Simbarashe’s false grin was gone in an instant, and the swaggering belligerence that lurked beneath th
e surface took its place. ‘Speak up, Ekko!’
He pointed his heavy-calibre gun in Solomon’s direction; the weapon was a bear-killer, loaded with big bore .454 Casull rounds that would tear through an unarmoured human body.
‘Do you know what saddens me most, brother?’ Slowly, Solomon bent to put down the ammo crate, and Marc followed along. ‘I would have expected this from Barandi, perhaps, but not you.’
Simbarashe gave a snorting laugh. ‘You have become slow and complacent, with your riches and foreign friends.’
Marc locked eyes with Lucy and she looked to Malte, then back at the warlord. He knew what she was leading towards.
She’ll wait until Simbarashe gets close to her, make a grab for him, and try to get him in a neck-lock before his men can shoot . . .
He shook his head. ‘Don’t,’ he said. Marc had a sudden, horrible vision of them falling in a hail of bullets, the dry earth drinking their blood as they perished. ‘You don’t want to die here.’
‘Dying here?’ Simbarashe thought the words were directed at him, and he advanced on Marc. ‘Dying is easy, intruso! Living, surviving here – that is hard!’ He pointed at Solomon. ‘That is why he ran away. Money made him weak.’
‘But that is what you want, is it not? Riches?’ said Solomon. ‘What did they offer you?’
Simbarashe stiffened. He clearly had his own ideas about how this drama would play out, and he didn’t like Solomon messing with the script.
‘The Combine made me a very fine proposal, very fine indeed.’ Simbarashe’s crocodile grin returned.
‘If money is what you desire, I will double what you were promised.’ Solomon spread his hands. ‘And unlike the Combine, you know I will keep my word.’
‘You could do that, couldn’t you?’ Simbarashe spat the question back. ‘You are so wealthy that it would mean nothing to pay your way out of this! The same way you got out of here and left the rest of us behind!’ He spat into the dirt. ‘You could pay me a hundred times what I was promised and it would not be enough, Ekko.’
Marc saw it then, the deep hate rising in the warlord’s throat. It was old resentment and sour bitterness held back for decades, spewing out into the air.
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