Frank Schätzing - Limit

‘Not really. I’d say the companies will be very interested in getting the truth into the open. In times like these, they don’t want to cock up their reputations.’

‘Whatever. It will have to be a concerted action. That means you’ll have to bring in MI6 and the American Secret Service, as well as the Secret Services of all the countries affected. Then I’m going to phone Orley Enterprises, so promise me that the Chinese police won’t stonewall. You’re going to be bathed in glory.’

‘The glory will be yours, Owen!’

Jericho said nothing.

Did he want that? Did he want to be bathed in glory? A little bit proud, perhaps, as Yoyo had suggested. They’d earned that, Yoyo, Tian and he. And apart from that, he just needed one more good night’s sleep.

Early in the afternoon, Joe Song, the oil strategist, was arrested in his office, looked completely dumbfounded, and the investigators went to work. Just as restorers work their way through layers of paint to reveal much older art, they brought to light Song’s deleted emails, supposed white noise which, with the expert use of the decoding program, was shaped into a document whose contents were enough to put Song in jail for the rest of his life.

And yet he denied everything. For an evening and a night he denied having anything to do with the attacks, and nor did he know anything about an organisation called Hydra, or how the icon and the message had found their way onto the Sinopec computer. Meanwhile a police unit was raging around his house before the eyes of his terrified wife, and found another gleaming, pulsing Hydra on Song’s private computer, and the manager still claimed not to know anything. It took a night in jail and two consultations with his lawyers, before Patrice Ho, on the afternoon of 6 June – in a soundproofed room – vividly presented him with the bleakness of the rest of his life, but not without suggesting a possible way out in the event that he admitted everything.

After that Joe Song couldn’t stop talking.

Jericho listened ecstatically to what Ho went on to tell him. Immediately afterwards he dialled Jennifer Shaw’s number. It was nine in the morning in London, and he was almost pleased to be seeing her again.

‘Owen! You keeping okay?’

‘Pretty good now, thanks. You?’

‘The Big O makes an ants’ nest look like a Zen monastery. All the investigations get concentrated here so that you can’t take so much as a step without getting hopelessly entangled.’

‘Doesn’t necessarily sound as if you’ve achieved clarity.’

‘Still, by now we know that Gaia’s hotel manager was a former Mossad agent. Good that you called, though. Julian seems to have triplicated himself. He’s working round the clock, but I know he wanted to call you at the next possible opportunity.’

‘So is he there?’

‘He’s buzzing around the place. Shall I try to put you through?’

‘I’ve got a much better suggestion, Jennifer. Bring him here.’

Shaw raised a Mr Spock eyebrow.

‘I assume you have more on your mind than just saying hello.’

He smiled. ‘You’re going to like it.’

A short time later they were all gathered in Jericho’s loft, projected vivid and life-sized on Tu’s holowall, and Jericho played his cards. Orley didn’t interrupt him once, while his eyebrows drew together until they stood like craggy mountain ranges above his clear blue eyes, but when he finally turned his head towards Shaw, his voice sounded calm and relaxed.

‘Prepare a helicopter to the airport,’ he said. ‘From there we’ll take the jet. We’ll pay him a visit.’

‘Now?’ asked Shaw.

‘When else do you suggest?’

‘To be quite honest I haven’t the faintest idea where he is right now. But okay, of course we can—’

‘You don’t need to.’ Orley smiled fiercely. ‘I know where he is. He told me, right after we got back. When he called to express his dismay.’

‘Of course,’ said Shaw devotedly. ‘When do you want to fly?’

‘Give me an hour for hand luggage. Inform Interpol, MI6, but they’re not to steal the show. Owen?’ Orley stood up. ‘Do you want to come?’

Jericho hesitated. ‘Where to?’

Orley told him the name of the city. It really wasn’t terribly far – for a well-motorised Englishman.

Suddenly he burst out laughing.

‘I’m in Shanghai, Julian.’

‘So?’ Orley looked around, as if to prove that there were no problems in view. ‘This is your moment, Owen! Who cares about distances? I don’t. Take the next highspeed jet, I’ll book you a ticket.’

‘Very kind of you, but—’

‘Kind?’ Orley tilted his head. ‘Do you have any idea what I owe you? I’ll carry you on my shoulders if I have to! No, here’s what we’ll do, have we got one of our Mach 4 jets anywhere in his vicinity? Find that out for me, Jennifer, I think there’s one in Tokyo, isn’t there? We’ll collect you, Owen. And bring Tu Tian with you, and that wonderful girl—’

‘Julian, wait.’

‘It’s not a problem, it really isn’t.’

Jericho shook his head. I’ve got more important things to do, he was about to say. I have to marry a standard lamp and a carpet in a Confucian ceremony, that’s my life, but he didn’t want to insult Orley, particularly since, as Shaw had predicted, he actually liked him. The Englishman radiated something that made you unreservedly willing to plunge into the next adventure with him.

‘I can’t get away from here right now,’ he said. ‘I have clients, and you know how it is – you shouldn’t leave anyone in the lurch.’

‘No, you’re right.’ Orley stroked his beard, clearly displeased by the situation. Then he turned his sea-blue eyes back towards Jericho. ‘But perhaps there’s a possibility of staying in Shanghai and still being in on it – but honestly, Owen, can you sleep peacefully without having brought all this to its conclusion?’

‘No,’ said Jericho wearily. ‘But it’s no longer my—’ He paused, searching for the right word.

‘Campaign?’ Orley nodded. ‘Okay, my friend. I know. You have to finish off your own story, not mine. Still, listen to my suggestion. It involves putting in a brief appearance, but you shouldn’t miss out on that, Owen. You really shouldn’t!’

The record for the biggest man-made mirror in the world was disputed by the Large Binocular Telescope Observatory in Arizona on the top of Mount Graham – two individual mirrors, to be precise, each one eight and a half metres in diameter and sixteen tonnes in weight – and the Hobby Eberle Telescope in Texas, consisting of reflecting cells over a surface of eleven metres by ten. On the other hand, there was no disputing the most beautiful mirror in the world. In times of global flooding, the Piazza San Marco in Venice surpassed anything that had ever been seen before.

Gerald Palstein sat outside the Caffè Florian, buffeted by the unceasing stream of tourists that repelled him just as much as the flooded Piazza San Marco magically attracted him. For some years now the square had been continuously underwater. For the sake of it, he accepted the invasive spectacle, particularly since something was slowly changing in the behaviour of the visitors. Even in Japanese tour groups, you could now detect a certain reluctance to cross the square on sunny days like this and disturb the peace of the ankle-high standing water that perfectly reflected the Basilica di San Marco, the Campanile in front of it and the surrounding Procuratie, a world based on water and at the same time commemorated in it, a symbolic glimpse of the future. As inexorably as the lagoon rose, the city was sinking into the sea, like lovers seeking to unite even if it means that they merge together.