Limit

  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!’

  Venice, Italy

  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.

  Apart from that, nothing in the city had changed. As ever, the clock tower diagonally opposite, with its passageway to the Mercerie, showed the phases of the sun and moon and the star signs on a background of lapis lazuli, and sent out bronze guardians to segment the earth and the universe into hours with its booming chimes, while faint breezes drifted across the one-and-a-half-square-kilometre mirror and rippled the architecture without dissolving it, as if the ghosts of Dalí and Hundertwasser were frolicking in the square.

  Palstein scraped the sticky and delicious crust of sugar from the bottom of his espresso cup. His wife hadn’t wanted to come and was preparing to leave for an Indian ashram, which she had been visiting at increasingly close intervals ever since an exhibition opening where she had met a guru who had a knack of luring what he wanted from people’s souls and bank balances. In point of fact Palstein preferred it that way. Alone, he didn’t have to talk, or pretend to be interested, or see things that he would rather block out. He could live in the pleasant stillness of Venice reflected in the water, just as Alice had passed through her mirror to visit the world that lay on the other side.

  Noise. Shouts. Laughter.

  A moment later the illusion passed, as a group of teenagers splashed their way through the surface of the water and everything turned into a wild, splashing daub.

  Idiots, destroying a masterpiece!

  The illusion of a masterpiece.

  Palstein watched after them, too tired to get angry. Wasn’t that always the way? You took such trouble building something, brought it to a state of perfection, and then a few hooligans came along and destroyed it all. He paid the exorbitant cost of the espresso and chamber music, strolled through the arcades of the piazzetta to the Bacino di San Marco, where the Doge’s Palace lay along the deeper water, and followed the footbridges to the Biennale gardens. Near there, by a quiet canal in the tranquil sestiere of Castello, he had an early dinner at the Hostaria da Franz, which experts held to be the best fish restaurant in Venice, had a chat with Gianfranco, the old proprietor, a man whose life was a Humboldt-style exploration of the world along paths both straight and winding, who would stir himself for nothing except perhaps the sight of a few empty glasses, hugged both him and Maurizio, his son, as he left, and boarded a water taxi that brought him to the Grand Canal and the Palazzo Loredan. EMCO had bought the magnificent early Renaissance building in better days, and had forgotten, during the insanity of its systematic decline, to get rid of it. The building still stood open to the company executives, though it had not been used for ages. But because Palstein loved Venice, and thought nothing was more appropriate to his position than the symbol of everything transient, he had come here for a week.

  By now the sun was low over the canal. The rattle and chug of the vaporetti and the barges mingled with the hum of elegant motorboats, the sound of accordions and the tenor voices of the gondolieri, to form an aural backdrop unlike anything anywhere else in the world. Now that the ground floor was underwater, he entered the palazzo via a higher entrance, and climbed the wooden staircase to the piano nobile, the first floor. Where the late sunlight came in through the windows, sofas and armchairs were gathered around a low glass table.

  In one of the chairs sat Julian Orley.

  Palstein gave a start. Then he quickened his pace, hurried the cathedral-like width of the room and spread out his arms.

  ‘Julian,’ he exclaimed. ‘What a surprise!’

  ‘Gerald.’ Orley got to his feet. ‘You weren’t expecting me, were you?’

  ‘No, absolutely not.’ Palstein hugged the Englishman, who returned the embrace, a bit firmly, it seemed to him.

  ‘How long have you been in Venice?’

  ‘Got here an hour ago. Your concierge was kind enough to let me in, once I’d persuaded him I wasn’t about to steal the Murano chandeliers.’

  ‘Why didn’t you call? We could have gone for dinner. As it was I had to make do with the best turbot I’ve ever eaten, all by myself.’ Palstein walked over to a little bar, took out two glasses and a bottle and turned round. ‘Grappa? Prime uve, soft in the mouth, and drinkable in large quantities.’

  ‘Bring it over.’ Julian sat back down. ‘We must clink glasses, my old friend. We have something to celebrate.’

  ‘Yes, your return.’ Palstein thoughtfully considered the label, half filled the glasses and sat down opposite Julian. ‘Let’s drink to survival,’ he smiled. ‘To your survival.’

  ‘Good idea.’ The English
man raised his glass, took a good swig and set the drink back down. Then he opened a bag, took out a laptop, flipped it open and turned it on. ‘Because drinking to yours would be like drinking to the future of a hanged man. If you catch my meaning.’

  Palstein blinked, still smiling.

  ‘Quite honestly, no.’

  The screen lit up. A camera showed the picture of a man who looked familiar to Palstein. A moment later he remembered. Jericho! Of course! That damned detective.

  ‘Good evening, Gerald,’ Jericho said in a friendly voice.

  Palstein hesitated.

  ‘Hello, Owen. What can I do for you?’

  ‘The same thing you once did in the Big O. Help us. You helped us a lot back then, you remember?’

  ‘Of course. I’d have been happy to do even more.’

  ‘Fine. Now’s your chance. Julian would like to know a lot of things, but first there’s something I’d like to tell you. You’ll be pleased to hear that we’ve solved the mystery of the Calgary shooting.’

  Palstein said nothing.

  ‘Even though I was worried I would have a tough time of it.’ Jericho smiled, as if remembering a hurdle overcome. ‘Because you see, Gerald, if someone had wanted you out of the way – someone who had managed to infiltrate Lars Gudmundsson into your security men – why would he have needed a spectacle like Calgary? Why didn’t Gudmundsson just quietly get on with it and shoot you? Even in the Big O it seemed to me that the whole assassination attempt was a staged event, but who was it for? Eventually it occurred to me that Hydra – an organisation I don’t need to tell you anything more about – had decided to present the world with a Chinese assassin, if Xin was captured on camera in Calgary. And that was certainly one of the reasons, just as Hydra went on leaving trails back to China – on the one hand because the Chinese were the ideal scapegoat, but probably also because open conflict would have further held up the lunar projects of the space powers after the success of Operation Mountains of Eternal Light. But even seen in this perspective, the attack made no sense. Anyone as intimately acquainted with Kenny Xin as we are knows, for example, that he is infatuated with flechettes. In Quyu, in Berlin, on the roof of the Big O, it’s the ammunition he’s always used. But in Calgary he settled for decidedly smaller projectiles. Your injury will have been painful, but entirely harmless, as a conversation with your doctors should confirm.’

  Palstein stared into his glass.

  ‘Take this from someone who’s managed to escape Xin several times. He was ahead of us in London and Berlin, and he cost us a lot of lives. He’s a phenomenal marksman! Definitely not somebody who’s going to miss a target just because he trips, especially when he’s got an unobstructed view. But even if we were willing to accept that stumbling drew the first shot to your shoulder rather than your head, the second would have got you before you reached the ground.’ Jericho paused. ‘You were hit, nevertheless, Gerald. But certainly, however much you’ve risked and invested, it can’t have been in your interest to come away with a serious injury. And I know very few marksmen who could pull off such a precision shot as the one in Calgary: hitting a man while he pretends to slip, without giving him anything more than a completely harmless flesh wound that will heal very quickly. A masterpiece, after which with the best will in the world, no one could suspect that you’d cleared the way for Gabriel – or shall we call him Hanna? – to join Julian’s group. Even in the unlikely event that someone discovered details about the operation, you’d covered your tracks. Against this background, Loreena’s discovery of the video can hardly have troubled you that much, can it? It too was factored in.’

  ‘I admired Loreena for her sharpness of mind,’ said Palstein. He was listening with great interest to the lecture.

  ‘Of course you did,’ said the detective. ‘Except that you wouldn’t have predicted in a million years that she would dig out Ruiz and establish a connection with a very particular meeting in Beijing three years ago. At that point things got tight, very tight.’

  ‘I warned Loreena,’ sighed Palstein. ‘Several times. You may not believe it, but I was very keen to spare her that death. I liked her.’

  ‘And Lynn?’ Julian said, quietly severe. ‘What about Lynn? Didn’t you like her?’

  ‘I was prepared to make sacrifices.’

  ‘My daughter.’

  Palstein thoughtfully slipped his finger along the edge of his glass.

  ‘Seven people in Quyu,’ Jericho went on. ‘Ten in Vancouver, Vogelaar, Nyela. Even Norrington couldn’t have imagined that working with you would be quite like that. And purely out of interest, who took care of Greenwatch?’

  ‘Gudmundsson.’ Palstein stiffened. ‘We had to make sure that there was no editorial conference. I told him to disappear immediately after the operation.’

  ‘Which wonderfully confirmed your victim status once again. Gerald Palstein, betrayed by everybody. Might I also take the opportunity to ask you what happened to Alejandro Ruiz?’

  ‘We had to disassociate ourselves from him.’

  Should he tell them how Xin and Gudmundsson had put the Spaniard on a boat while the city of Lima slept, and introduced him to the world of marine life? What sharks, crabs and bacteria had left of him rested in the silent darkness of the Peruvian ocean trench. No, too many details. They’d never get out of here.

  ‘He was a weakling,’ he said. ‘He was more than happy to do something about helium-3, convinced as he was that we were merely going to blow up a few digging machines. When Hydra met at Song’s house on the evening of 1 September, it turned out that I’d misjudged him. Unlike everyone else, by the way. I selected the heads of Hydra very carefully over a period of months. They had to have influence, and the power to divert large sums into fake projects without anyone asking any questions. But above all they had to be willing to do anything. As expected, when Xin and I presented Operation Mountains of Eternal Light, it only came as a surprise to Ruiz. He was completely horrified. Turned white as a sheet. Stormed out.’

  ‘He threatened to blow Hydra’s cover?’

  ‘His next step was predictable.’

  ‘Which meant that his fate was too.’

  Palstein ran his hands over his eyes. He was tired. Shockingly tired.

  ‘And how are you going to prove all this?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s been proved already, Gerald. Joe Song’s confessed. We know the heads of Hydra, and right at this very minute they’re all getting visits from representatives of their national authorities. They will find snake icons and white noise on the computers of some of the world’s biggest oil companies. Really titanic stuff, Gerald. Regardless of borders and ideologies. You were the initiator of the joint venture between Sinopec, Repsol and EMCO, you turned the meeting in Beijing into a summit, but it’s Hydra that’ll make you go down in history.’ Jericho paused. ‘Except that your name will not be mentioned in very flattering contexts. By the way, how did you get hold of guys like Xin?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that, Owen.’ Julian, who had until then been sitting with legs crossed, sat forward. ‘It should be: how did Xin get hold of people like Gerald.’

  ‘In Africa,’ Palstein said calmly. ‘In Equatorial Guinea, 2020, when Mayé was still of interest to EMCO.’

  ‘Why all this, Gerald?’ Julian shook his head. ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why did you go so far?’

  ‘You’re seriously asking me that?’ Palstein stared at him listlessly. ‘To defend my interests. Just as you defend yours. The interests of my sector.’

  ‘With atom bombs?’

  ‘Do you seriously imagine I wouldn’t have done absolutely anything to solve the problems in a peaceful manner? Everybody knows how much I fought to steer the dinosaur in a different direction to the one it was cheerfully heading in, towards the hurtling meteorite that would seal its extinction. In most alternative sectors we could have held our own. But we missed all opportunities, we neglected to buy Lightyears, to get
Locatelli on our side, even though it was already clear that helium-3 would mean the end for us. And I even tried to get a foothold in the helium-3 business, as you know, except that I wasn’t given permission to draw up an agreement with you.’

  ‘Which you were on the point of doing.’

  ‘In the event of failure, yes. Not if two atom bombs had just destroyed the helium-3 mining infrastructure and set things back by decades.’

  And suddenly, enraged by the wasted potential of his plan, he jumped to his feet, fists clenched.

  ‘I’d calculated everything, Julian! The consequences if we’d destroyed either the space lift or Peary Base, but it was only the double whammy that produced the best results. Like China, the Americans would have had to deploy conventional rockets to carry helium-3 to Earth, which would never have happened! Everyone knows that China’s extraction is running at a loss. But even if they’d taken such a step, the extracted quantities would have remained pitiful. You would have had to build a new space lift, a new space station, and that would have taken at least twenty years. You wouldn’t have had it financed as quickly as you did the first time. And only if shuttle transports had been possible from the orbit to the Moon would you have been able to rebuild the infrastructure up there, and even that would have taken years, maybe decades.’

  ‘But in forty or fifty years it’ll all be over anyway. Then you’ll be finished, because there’ll be nothing left!’

  ‘Forty years, yes!’ snorted Palstein. ‘Forty years of business left to us. Four decades of survival, in the course of which we could have made up for the mess made by all those idiots, my predecessors included. We could have reorganised. As long ago as 2020 I commissioned an analysis of all the possible scenarios of what would happen if helium-3 extraction were carried out successfully within a precise time frame. It meant our annihilation. We had to stand up to you!’

  ‘We?’ whispered Julian. ‘You and your gang of lunatics dare to speak for the whole sector? For thousands of decent people?’