Midnight Empire (24 page)

I am sorry.

He felt weightless. He felt again that there was no way she would do it to him, then he was again sure that she had.

He kept his eyes open and on the ceiling. This was one for the books, he told himself. He must have been the most naive simpleton ever to go to war.

It was galling, it was the biggest trap that anyone, anywhere had never seen coming. He pictured her. He felt her mouth on his lips and he detested her, he was disgusted; he felt her pressing against him and it was vile, she was repulsive, she was filthy. The idea that he'd felt something for her appalled him. He felt furious. He glimpsed suddenly the extent of the humiliation, the most intimate details about him written up and reported on in offices abroad, committees of management, this dope who we all of us are fucking, ha ha.

It must have been quite the shock for them, when he'd shot their man dead.

This I would not have picked.

This city. It had taught him only how out of his depth he was. How dark was the world. It was his own inadequacy; his inability to imagine and to realise, to see how others saw, to latch his thinking to the shape of things.

He closed his eyes. There was the taste of metal in his mouth. He thought if he could escape this, if he could check out and bury himself somewhere far away, that would be a relief. If he could cut himself free and find a way to withdraw. It wouldn't be not facing up to things—it would be a rejection of all of them and all of it, a declaration of enough.

What was going to happen when they discovered it, the fact of Ania, the reason for their compromised network and the vanquished drone?

He felt sick, everything swirling, unsteady, impossible to grip.

•

Come morning, and the LinkLock team remained unable to find a solution. Daniel was still working with them when Gray appeared. He gave the CIA man the speech that Sett had instructed him to give, about how the system was probably working.

Gray stood coldly with the door open to the desert and gave a look that said, ‘Suggest that again and I'll tear you apart.'

They'd be going after Abu Ja'far at first light. Daniel went to the communications hut on the pretence of checking things over, confirming that the systems would this time function correctly.

What he kept thinking about was the ease with which she'd done it. That was the worst: what an easy mark he'd been, how unsuspecting, how eagerly he'd fallen for the ruse. She'd had to convince him of nothing. All she'd had to do was touch him. He'd done the rest of the work himself.

He imagined her laughing. ‘This ridiculous boy, I have only to show an interest. I go missing downtown and how heroically he rushes to save me!'

How effortlessly she'd manipulated him. Whoever they were, they had to be congratulated for picking the weakest link.

He remembered her clothes all of a sudden: those he'd found in that fleapit motel. He realised now that they meant she'd been there—that she had probably been with that man, whoever he really was.

It was that thought that did it. He felt abruptly that he had to let her know that he'd come to comprehend things. That she might forever have what she'd managed to do over him, but that she shouldn't have the satisfaction of believing he'd never figured it out. He sent a single-line email:
I should never have trusted you
,
bitch
, and he was pleased with its brutality, its sense of conclusion.

The MQ-9 launched an hour later. Daniel switched on the encryption and they watched. For a moment, everything ran normally. But then it appeared.

*** Interception alert ***

He had Sett in one ear and when he said the words the silence on the line was pure. The message began to fill the screen and the latency also started; one second, two seconds, three.

‘Park it,' Gray demanded. ‘Get it down before it dies.'

Ellis turned the drone. By the time he got the machine to where it needed to be it was landing nine seconds ahead of him. ‘Airspeed,' warned O'Grady. The strip rushed up into the cameras but the fact they could see it meant the machine had survived.

That was when Gray turned around. ‘No answer, Daniel? No fucking idea?'

‘I—'

‘Because this is a good way to let us down. It's a good way to hang us out to dry.'

Gray snatched the headset for the phone and what followed was a cloudburst of abuse. If Sett got a word in it was monosyllabic, Gray's voice pounding down the line. Daniel sat quietly and tried to give the impression that he was taking responsibility for what was happening, just not too much. When Gray threw him the headset it bounced from his hands to the ground and he fumbled to get it back on.

‘He shouldn't be blaming us,' Sett said. ‘Let's fix this before we're ruined.'

But the drones stayed on the ground. They activated LinkLock-equipped units at three bases across the globe. Even with the system disabled and the machines resting cold on the apron, the latency numbers began to grow. They were left with a strange air force sliding into the future, nothing they could do to stop it reaching the end of days.

They decided that Daniel should disassemble the system, this side. It was the company's idea—Sett still wanted to prove that it was not their fault. Gray agreed to it very quickly. In fact he told them to take as long as they liked. It seemed to Daniel that Gray would never let the system go back online.

Daniel broke down the components. For each piece of equipment the engineers wanted him to burn copies of the logs and the diagnostics before performing a hard reset. He wondered if the proof that would condemn him was on one of these discs.

Several hours into the process it was O'Grady who came to inform him. There was a body. Or at least the rumour of one. A headless corpse roadside in a village just outside Afghanistan. Raul was going to try his utmost to get DNA, but it was exactly where Abu Ja'far could have been.

‘Then he's dead,' Daniel said.

‘Well, as dead as anyone in the circumstances can be.'

They left him alone then. He worked in the hut and when it was done he told Sett. Sett wanted him to start the rebuild straight away, but that could take days and he stood in the nothing zone out by the fence and decided that he'd had enough. He'd go back to the loft, switch off his phone, and rest.

The gateman offered a wave. He took the slip road to the highway. There was a tiredness that wouldn't leave him. At the loft, he climbed into bed and set no alarm.

At midday the sun was strong on the windows, its forever glare. They'd soon be missing him at the base but he wasn't sure that he cared.

He felt like a swim. He took a long one; stretched out in the water and blew deep breaths.

The call came on the loft's line, a black wall mount. He didn't think it had ever rung before.

‘Daniel?'

‘Yes.'

For a moment he didn't recognise the voice.

‘It's Jake, your liaison.'

‘Hello, Jake.'

‘How are things? I notice your BlackBerry's off?'

‘Yeah. Um, battery.'

A pause. ‘Listen,' the man said. ‘You're at the loft?'

‘Yes.'

‘Right. But, um, you were planning to come to Creech today.'

Daniel sighed. ‘I'm not feeling well.'

‘Oh,' Jake said. ‘Okay. But listen. There's someone who's asked me to find you, who wants to catch up with you. John Henderson.' The CIA interviewer, bifocals and a gut. ‘Yeah,' said Jake. ‘So, perhaps just hang around. I'll tell him you're at the Nexus.'

Daniel said nothing.

‘All set?'

‘Sure thing.'

‘Good,' said Jake.

‘Can you tell Gray I'll be late?'

‘Yeah, um, I will. Just wait there for now. Charge your phone if you can.'

‘I will.'

‘Okay, good.'

‘All set.'

‘Top man.' He hung up.

Daniel put the phone in its cradle.

John Henderson—clearly an internal security person of some kind, someone whose job was to watch over programs, to investigate and interrogate, take care of problems.

There were very few things that it could be about.

The leak.

The murder.

The leak and the murder.

The interception.

They knew something. They'd cottoned on. He thought about it, and he understood: he was only moments from everything unravelling.

He felt unsteady. He sat for a time at the dining table and then lay for a time on the bed. He waited; ended up looking at the wall safe that contained his bankroll, passport, and telephone in pieces.

It felt like he'd been robbed of something, cheated. If they came for him, what purpose would it serve, spending thirty years in a cell? Who would benefit? Abu Ja'far was dead, and they could argue whatever they wanted about that but he knew it was just, what he'd done. And the intrigue he'd fallen prey to, the body on the floor? Blame his naivety if you had to, but surely what was most at fault was the position he'd been put in, this never-never world between war and peace.

The fact was, he didn't deserve it. Whatever would be meted out would be superbly unfair. It would be not punishment but vengeance. It was a case of blurring the lines magnificently, then destroying whoever tripped over them.

He turned on the secure BlackBerry and rang Jake back.

‘Daniel?'

‘Can you tell Henderson that I'll meet him at Creech? I'm going to come out. There's a lot to do.'

‘No. I've spoken to Gray. They say you're fine to stay to meet John, then come out in the afternoon.'

‘I'm coming now. Like I say, there's a lot of work to get done.'

‘You—' He terminated the call, turned the phone off and left it lying on the bed.

In the car park, the Toyota started with its customary purr. He drove to Flamingo Road. Things were bright out on the Strip. He drove by the Bellagio, where the fountains weren't firing, and he came to the freeway.

He drove past the Aria. The Excalibur went by, the Luxor and the Mandalay Bay. He arrived at the Las Vegas Beltway and took it, soon turning along Paradise Road.

At McCarran he kept in the middle lane, following the red triangles for short-term parking. He pulled into a spot, locked the car and put its keys on top of the front left tyre.

The man at the ticketing desk hardly looked at him. The next departure was Amsterdam, however the only remaining seats were first class.

‘That's fine.'

‘Carry-on only.'

‘Yes.'

‘Gate seventeen, sir.'

He queued to remove his shoes and pass through the detectors. He showed his passport at customs, staring blankly into the agent's face.

At the gate, the flight was already boarding. US Airways. The people were ready in their comfortable clothes.

Things you could never imagine yourself doing. He sat in the fourth row, watching the tarmac out the window, wondering whether the flight would take off.

Disconnection

H
e crossed the river using the old bridge and arrived at the café. He took a table under the shade of the awning and asked for eggs. The sky was blue and he watched the river. When the eggs came, he ate them. Then he studied a small map. Having left money at the table, he crossed the street and entered the train station. He bought a ticket for the next town and boarded the train. When he arrived in the next town he found a small hotel and took a room. He showered then sat on the bed, looking out the window. The porter knocked at the door with someone else's bags. It was a quarter past two.

The casino was not large. When he arrived there was no game. ‘Six o'clock,' said the cashier. ‘Come back at six o'clock.' He returned to the hotel. He took a newspaper from the lobby but when he got to his room he did not read it. Instead he kicked his shoes off and fell asleep.

He woke when a cleaner came in.

‘Sorry,' she said in English. ‘I am thinking it is unoccupied.'

‘It's alright,' he said. ‘I'm going out.'

At six o'clock there were four others and a game was underway. He sat down and folded a dozen hands. He was small-statured and quiet and he knew that if he was conservative to begin with they would extend him credit the whole night.

Ac 4d in the cut-off. Fold.

Qd 10h in the hijack. Fold.

Three players were old men. One wore glasses to see the cards.

The other player was young, perhaps twenty, and French. At some point in the evening, he could already tell, the Frenchman would make a very large and very aggressive bluff.

Ad Qd in middle position. Raise three blinds.

By eight o'clock the table had filled and another had opened beside it. Daniel drank coffee and stayed tight, watching events unfold. The man with the glasses bet a flat thirty euro if he raised pre-flop and missed, more than thirty euro if he hit—this was his rule. The man in the next seat held his cards in his left hand if he was going to fold them when his turn came. He checked the flop if he did not connect, sometimes checked it when he did.

These would be the rhythms of the session, what to watch to pass the time.

Ad Ac on the button. Raise three blinds and hope for a re-steal.

The dealers changed tables. At the roulette wheel there was an argument over a late bet. The Frenchman pushed everything when a flush draw completed on the river. Daniel called with top-pair, top-kicker and won the hand. That had him five hundred euro up. Later, he was three hundred up, then six. When he returned to his hotel it was empty, the reception deserted. He took a beer from the fridge behind the front desk and drank it in his room before going to bed.

Two days later he changed cities by train. He watched the landscape go by the windows and it made him feel hollow, cleft from something, hills and riverways sliding past, barns and squares of fields cut by furrows and stonework and channels for irrigation. Beyond small towns where the train did not stop he felt an urge for distance, a yearning for dimension. He imagined himself out there, standing centrally on the earth, it sinking underfoot, and by the time he'd arrived in the next city he was desperate for the tables.