Frank Schätzing - Limit

She looked levelly at him with her grey-blue eyes.

‘I would have nailed you to the wall.’

‘Quite!’ Jericho slapped his hand down on the desk. ‘And what does he do? Comes slinking in, lets the MI6 fellows haul him over the coals and then rushes off again. Now, you told me that it was Edda Hoff who passed on my theory that Thorn had been supposed to arrange the attack, and that she told the security services too. Shouldn’t we suppose that she told Norrington as well?’

‘She’s certain to have done so. Edda is extremely conscientious.’

‘But when I went into his office to talk to him about it, he acted as though it were a complete surprise! Even though, by that point, he must have known we were thinking along those lines. And don’t you get the feeling that all his activity is actually slowing down the Big O’s attempts to find anything out, rather than helping?’

‘I have told him that we’re fighting on too many fronts at once.’ Shaw gave him a level look. ‘And what should I do about that, in your opinion? Relieve him of his duties because of one or two odd bits of behaviour? Have his data searched?’

‘I think you know quite well what you should do.’

Shaw was silent.

Two doors down, Norrington was dialling a number on his phone, his fingers trembling.

He had made mistakes. He’d reacted without stopping to think. The noose was tightening, since they would find proof, and once they decided to put him through the wringer he would lose his nerve, he’d break down, he’d spill the beans. He was an idiot to have got involved in the whole thing to begin with, from the moment they offered him money to suggest Thorn for a second mission. But it had been so much money, so incredibly much, and there was the promise of much more once Operation Mountains of Eternal Light was done with, once the course of history had been changed. He had been a quick learner in the school of corruption, and had risen to be one of Hydra’s chief planners, had fed the many-headed monster with information about the OSS, about Gaia and Peary Base. He had even come up with the shadow network which the conspirators used to communicate their murderous plans. A white-hot inferno, disguised as mere white noise. He had met Hydra’s immortal head, the brains behind the whole scheme, the criminal mastermind whose identity only six other people knew. It had been seven, but one of them had got cold feet. That was when Norrington had learned that if need be Hydra would sooner cut off one of its own heads than let it turn blabbermouth.

He mustn’t end up in Secret Service hands.

Xin picked up.

‘We’ve been found out, Kenny! Just like I told you we would be.’

‘And I told you to keep your nerve.’

‘You go to hell with your know-it-all remarks! MI6 blew Gabriel’s identity. Jericho and the girl hacked into my data. I don’t know when Shaw’s going to shut the trap on me – it could be that I already wouldn’t be allowed out of the building. Get me out of here.’

Xin was silent for a moment.

‘What about Ebola?’ he asked. ‘Do they know about her, too?’

Norrington hesitated. For some reason, he just couldn’t get used to Dana’s code-name.

‘They don’t know anything about her, nor about the rest of it. They just know that the bomb’s at Peary. But of course the next thing they’ll do is make use of all my data, and then they’ll take another look at everybody whose appointment I approved.’

‘Are you sure that Jericho’s been talking to Shaw about you?’

‘No idea,’ he groaned. ‘I hope he hasn’t yet. Under the circumstances, nothing’s certain.’

Xin thought.

‘Good. I’ll be on the flight deck in five minutes. Maybe you should try getting Jericho’s computer out of the building.’

‘Maybe we should try painting the Moon yellow and putting a smiley face on it,’ Norrington snapped. ‘They mustn’t get their hands on me, Kenny, don’t you understand? I have to get out of here! ’

‘Everything’s all right.’ Suddenly Xin’s voice took on that soft, sibilant note. ‘Nobody’s going to get their hands on you, Andrew. I promised to be there, and I keep my promises.’

‘You hurry up, damn you!’

While the street lights of London faded away under a magnificent dawn sky, Yoyo decided to call Jericho again. During the night, she and Diane had become fast friends. She’d never worked with such excellent search programs or selection parameters.

‘I have some news,’ she said. ‘Where are you?’

‘In Jennifer’s office. We can speak openly. Wait a moment.’ He listened to a soft voice in the background, then said, ‘Look, the best thing to do is call again, direct to her number, okay?’

‘You can tell her straight away that—’

‘Tell her yourself.’

He hung up. Yoyo squirmed around impatiently on her chair. She was burning to tell him about the dossiers Norrington had put together on the guests and staff at Gaia. Diane had done a lightning search, comparing Norrington’s supposed findings with publicly available biographies on the net and found no significant discrepancies, except perhaps for the fact that Evelyn Chambers was telling some whopping lies about her age. As for the staff at Gaia, two Germans, an Indian and a Japanese, they had been chosen by the director of the hotel, Dana Lawrence, who in turn had got the job on the strength of a report from Norrington, knocking four other highly qualified candidates out of the running. Norrington hadn’t actually turned any of these other four down flat, quite the opposite, it was rather that Lawrence’s track record put all the others in the shade. Lynn Orley had made the final appointment, and she would have had to have been insane to refuse Lawrence the job, given such excellent references. It was only when you looked closer that you realised that Lawrence’s official CV on the net was strangely different. Certain jobs that she had supposedly held made her just the right woman for the job in Gaia, but online they were missing, or didn’t quite match up. It was certainly the career of a dedicated professional, but if you wanted to assume the worst, you could easily say that Norrington had massaged the facts to help Lynn make her decision. Yoyo saw nothing at all wrong in assuming the worst.

Eager to know what the others would make of her findings, she typed in Shaw’s name and was just about to let the computer make the call when she heard a noise.

A lift had stopped outside on the gallery. She heard the doors slide apart.

Yoyo froze. Nobody was supposed to be in the Big O right now except for the security patrols and the tireless crew down in the situation room. She strained her ears, becoming aware of her surroundings for the first time. She was sitting at somebody’s workplace, an entirely interchangeable, uniform cell; employees kept their personal possessions in the mobile units that let them log in anywhere needed, throughout the building. Diane lay to her left, beneath the holographic display, a slim, shimmering machine, while on her right was a wheeled set of drawers, probably containing all the clutter that a computer still couldn’t replace, even in 2025.

She opened the top drawer, peered into it, opened the next one down.

She glanced at the panoramic windows. London’s night was slowly giving way to early morning light, but over in the west it was stubbornly dark. She could see the office interior reflected in outline in the windowpane, the workstations, the door in the wall behind her that led through to the hallway and the gallery.

She could see a silhouette in the hallway.

Yoyo ducked. Whoever it was hesitated. A man, judging by the height. He was just standing there, staring.