Frank Schätzing - Limit

Jennifer Shaw was on her way to her son’s birthday dinner when she received a call from a very senior authority. She switched to receive, and C’s voice filled the leather-scented interior of her freshly restored Jaguar Mark 2. In most people’s eyes, the head of the British Foreign Secret Service was, after thirty-one James Bond films, called M, which was quite close to the reality, except that Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming, the legendary first director, had introduced the letter C, and since then all directors had been called C – not least because it happened to stand for ‘control’.

‘Hello, Bernard,’ said Shaw, in the certain knowledge that her evening was stuffed.

‘Jennifer. I hope I’m not disturbing you.’

A set phrase. Bernard Lee, the current director, couldn’t have cared less if he was disturbing her, or how. The only disturbance that he would have acknowledged was the disturbance to national security.

‘I’m on my way to Bibendum,’ she said truthfully.

‘Oh, always excellent. Especially the skate wing. I haven’t been there for ages. Could you call in on me for a moment beforehand?’

‘How long’s a moment?’

‘Only if you have time. On the other hand—’

‘The traffic’s not too bad. Give me ten minutes.’

‘Thanks.’

She called her son from her mobile and told him to go ahead and order a starter without her, but to get her a double portion of the iced lime soufflé.

‘Which means that I won’t see you before pudding,’ her son complained.

‘I’ll aim to be there for the main.’

‘Has this got anything to do with Orley’s moon trip?’

‘No idea, darling.’

‘I thought the bomb went off and didn’t do any harm, and they were all coming home safe and sound.’

‘I don’t really know.’

‘Oh, well. I guess the Prime Minister’s kids see their mother even more rarely.’

‘How nice to have brought positive-thinking people into the world. Don’t be cross with me, sweetie, I’ll call as soon as I can.’

At Wellington Arch she turned from Piccadilly into Grosvenor Place and followed Vauxhall Bridge Road over the Thames. Soon she was sitting in full evening dress in Lee’s office, with a glass of water in front of her.

‘We’ve reconstructed Norrington’s deleted emails,’ the director said without any preamble.

‘And?’ she asked excitedly.

‘Well.’ Lee pursed his lips. ‘You know, all the clues pointed to him, but we didn’t have any real evidence—’

‘The fact that Kenny Xin shot him full in the face seems pretty convincing to me. Have you found any trace of Xin, by the way?’

‘Not the slightest. But we have come across something alarming. Our American colleagues are worried too. Norrington’s mails didn’t make any sense at all at first, he had deleted nothing but white noise, so we tried it with the Hydra program. And suddenly we had a complex correspondence in front of our eyes. Unfortunately there’s nothing to tell us who Hydra is, and it isn’t clear who else received the messages. What is certain is that Norrington must have had access to a secret router, to which he sent encrypted emails.’

‘All from the central computer of the Big O?’

‘Definitely. Without the mask, that snake-headed icon, we can’t do a thing with the emails. It wouldn’t have occurred to anybody that they are encoded, and he was too clever to install the decoding program on his work computer, and instead carried it around with him on a memory stick. However, we’re getting some insights into the planning and construction of the launching pad in Equatorial Guinea, and learning some amazing things about the black market in Korean atom bombs, things that even we weren’t aware of. Okay, the bomb went off, as we know, without doing any damage.’

‘Indirectly it caused a lot of damage,’ said Jennifer. ‘But okay, Julian, Lynn and most of the guests are on the way home. They should be at OSS in a few hours.’

‘You see; and now it’s imperative that you talk to Julian.’

‘Will do.’

‘As soon as possible, I mean. Within the next hour. I need his assessment.’

Shaw raised an eyebrow. ‘About what?’

‘According to Norrington’s correspondence, the whole business isn’t quite over yet.’

‘Tell me quite clearly. I have to know that it’s worth leaving my son to celebrate his thirtieth birthday without his mummy.’

Lee nodded. ‘I think it’s worth it, Jennifer. Last year, there wasn’t just one mini-nuke sent to the Moon.’ He paused, sipped on his water and set the glass down carefully in front of him. ‘There were two.’

‘Two,’ echoed Jennifer.

‘Yes. Kenny Xin bought two, and both were put on Mayé’s rocket. And now we’re asking ourselves: where’s the second one?’

Shaw stared at him. Lee was right, this was alarming. This meant no lime soufflé. What it did mean, she didn’t want to think about.

Evelyn Chambers saw Olympiada Rogacheva floating from the sleeping area into the lounge with an expression of grim contentment. The spookily unreal aspect of her appearance had vanished. For the first time, the Russian seemed to see herself as the chief indicator of her own presence, as someone who didn’t only exist thanks to her association with other people, but who would continue to be there even if her life’s coordinators took their eyes off her.

‘I told him to kiss my ass,’ she announced, and settled next to Heidrun.

‘And how did he take that?’

‘He said he wouldn’t do that, exactly, but he wished me luck.’

‘Seriously,’ said Heidrun, amazed. ‘You told him you were leaving him?’

Olympiada Rogacheva looked down at herself with the shy sensuality of a teenager exploring the new territory of her body.

‘Do you think I’m too old to—’

‘Nonsense,’ Heidrun said stoutly.

Olympiada smiled, looked up and floated away. An imaginary Miranda Winter somersaulted weightlessly, shrieked and squeaked. Finn O’Keefe read his book, to keep from seeing her red lips forming a blossom of promise, or uttering words of breathtaking banality. They were hurrying through space in the constant presence of Rebecca Hsu, they heard Momoka Omura making her acid comments, and Warren Locatelli boasting, Chucky telling bad jokes even more badly than they deserved, Aileen making bouquets of brightly coloured flowers of wisdom, Mimi Parker and Marc Edwards finding fulfilment in togetherness and Peter Black telling the latest news from time and space. They even heard Carl Hanna playing guitar, the other Carl, who wasn’t a terrorist, just a nice guy. Walo Ögi played chess under the ceiling and lost his third game against Karla Kramp, Eva Borelius was trapped in the hamster-wheel of her self-reproach, and Dana Lawrence, the self-declared heroine, was writing a report.

Evelyn Chambers said nothing, glad of the emptiness in her head. For the first time since leaving the Moon, she felt distinctly better. Looking back, that strange experience in the mining area had been too embarrassing for her to mention, but she would have to find words for it sooner or later. She felt a vague sense of dread, as if a monstrous presence in that sea of mist had become aware of her, and had been watching her since then, but even that she would deal with. She gently pushed herself away, left Olympiada to her own devices and floated over to the bistro.

‘How are you?’ she asked.

‘Fine.’ Rogachev, strapped into a harness, looked up from his computer. ‘You?’

‘Better.’ She rubbed her temples with her index fingers. ‘The pressure is easing.’

‘Glad to hear it.’

‘But what if I yield to my professional curiosity?’