The Persona Protocol

  That produced a stir around the room. ‘So it’s more than a crate of RPGs, then,’ said Holly Jo.

  ‘It looks that way,’ Morgan replied. ‘For that kind of money, we’re talking high-end anti-aircraft systems, NBC materials, armoured vehicles or gunships – the works.’

  ‘NBC?’ Bianca whispered to Levon, whose workstation she was standing beside.

  ‘Nuclear, Biological, Chemical,’ he told her. ‘Germ warfare, dirty bombs . . . nasty stuff.’

  ‘Oh. Great.’ She felt a sudden chill.

  ‘Whatever it is,’ Morgan went on, ‘if al-Rais wants it, it’s not to make the world a better place. Now, other agencies will be working on this from their own angles, but since it was STS that learned about Lamplighter in the first place, we’re being given the chance to follow up on it and prove the Persona Project’s worth.’ He looked over at Harper and Sternberg, who were standing with their respective aides between them like human barricades. ‘So, as of now, our mission is: find out what Operation Lamplighter is, and stop it. Start thinking, people.’

  ‘Snatch team,’ said Baxter, who was standing near the front of the audience. ‘We go in and grab Zykov like we did Syed.’

  ‘If it were that easy, you’d already be on a plane to do it,’ said Morgan, shaking his head. ‘Zykov isn’t a small-timer like Toradze. He’s . . . connected. He’s former FSB, and still has close links to the Russian secret service – and also the Russian government. At very high levels. As you can see from the photo, he’s also paranoid enough to have constant protection from bodyguards, most of whom are also former FSB. His dacha outside Moscow is like a fortress. Grabbing him by force would be tough – and if anything went wrong, it would cause a serious diplomatic incident between Russia and the US.’

  Sternberg spoke. Even though his voice was quiet and calm, it dominated everyone’s attention. ‘The President has made it clear that cannot be allowed to happen. Any operation in Russia will be under condition of maximum deniability.’

  ‘Sounds like we’re being disavowed,’ Kyle muttered to Levon.

  Levon nodded. ‘Your mission, which you don’t have a choice about accepting . . .’

  ‘There may be a way to catch him outside Russia, though,’ Tony told the room. ‘According to his file, he’s a serious gambler. He’s often dropped half a million dollars or more on poker games. And usually won.’

  Kyle whistled appreciatively. ‘Dude’s a real player.’

  ‘NSA also went through all Zykov’s other communications and found that two days from now, he’s going to be in Macau. There’s a regular high-stakes VIP game at the Imperial Casino there – quarter of a million dollars minimum buy-in. And he’s buying in. That’s where he’ll be vulnerable. Macau is Chinese territory, and he won’t be able to call on the kind of backup he can in Russia.’

  Sternberg cleared his throat. ‘Deniability of operations extends to China just as much as to Russia. The State Department is not willing to jeopardise the current round of trade talks.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Alan,’ growled Harper. ‘How the hell are we supposed to operate if State keeps sticking its nose in? We’re at the sharp end here.’

  ‘I’m aware of that, Gordon, but State had to patch up the tears the sharp end made in our relationship with the Pakistanis after the last STS mission. They don’t want to have to do it again with Russia or China. And that’s direct from the President. State’s still in shock after Sandra Easton’s assassination – and the international situation is already tense enough without American agents causing a diplomatic incident.’

  Morgan was unhappy with the development, but had no choice but to take it on board. ‘So, we need a deniable plan, then. Suggestions?’

  Levon raised a hand. ‘Are we talking a straightforward grab, like Mr Baxter wants, or do we need this guy to stay oblivious?’

  ‘The latter would be better,’ said Morgan. ‘If Zykov’s contacts realise we got to him, they might go underground, and take Lamplighter with them. If al-Rais is willing to pay seven million dollars for it, he’ll be able to find another middleman to replace Zykov. And we might not know who that middleman is until it’s too late.’

  Bianca hesitated before speaking, feeling extremely self-conscious and out of place. ‘Ah . . . what else do you know about this Zykov?’ All eyes turned to her. ‘You said he was paranoid – was that based on any specific assessment, or just because he’s got six guys with no necks surrounding him?’

  Kiddrick was about twelve feet from her, but his mutter of ‘So now we’re listening to the hired help?’ was perfectly audible. Others also voiced similar feelings, though more quietly.

  Tony stared them down. ‘Dr Childs makes a good point. He is paranoid, yes – because people really are out to get him. He has friends in high places, but he’s also made a lot of enemies. His file – and criminal record – says he’s prone to violence. He’s even attacked close friends because they did something to make him mad.’

  ‘Sounds like a nice guy,’ Bianca said sarcastically. ‘But could you use that against him? Do something that makes him mad enough to drop his guard?’

  ‘Something like taking him for a quarter-million dollars at poker?’ Everyone looked round as Adam spoke. He was standing unobtrusively at the edge of the group.

  Tony grinned. ‘Something like that, yes. If we use the persona of a world-class card sharp . . .’

  ‘I’m sure we’ve got someone suitable,’ said Morgan. ‘All right! We know the person, we know the place. What we need now is a plan. Get on it. I want first proposals by eleven a.m., and we’ll take things from there.’

  The assembly broke up, everyone dispersing with purpose. As Morgan departed with Harper and Sternberg, Tony came over to Bianca. ‘Good call.’

  She felt a little embarrassed at the praise. ‘It was fairly obvious – someone else would have said it if I hadn’t.’

  ‘But you said it first. Looks like Roger was right – you really are the perfect choice to take his place.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far. But thanks for backing me up.’

  ‘No problem.’ He smiled at her, then addressed his colleagues. ‘Okay, I want everyone to divide up into working groups. We need as much information as we can find on Zykov, Hadrami, known associates, and the Imperial Casino in Macau, plus any local assets we might have. We have less than forty-eight hours to work out how to crack this guy, and seventeen of them will be taken up by flying there. So get those brains started, people!’

  For the second time in a few days, Bianca found herself aboard a private jet.

  This aircraft was considerably larger than the one that had brought her to Washington; she didn’t know the type, but she had been aboard similarly sized airliners on regular commercial flights. It seemed excessive, since the team going to Macau only comprised thirteen people including herself, but she assumed that STS had simply requisitioned the first available US government jet.

  It gave her room to stretch out, though. A general plan had been worked out in Washington, and was now being fine-tuned en route, Levon and others offering contributions from the other end of a satellite link with the Bullpen. Tactics were not her concern, however, so she was taking a break from the discussion in the VIP section at the front of the cabin.

  She looked out of a porthole. Nothing was visible beyond except blue, the empty sky and the Pacific mirror images against the pale line of the horizon. A shift of focus, and she caught her own reflection in the window. ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ she whispered.

  It was not the first time recently that she had asked herself the question.

  Someone opened the dividing curtain. She looked round. ‘Hey,’ said Tony, coming to her seat.

  ‘Hi. What’s up?’

  ‘Work, I’m afraid. We have a plan. We’re about to present it to Martin.’

  Bianca stood and followed him out. Most of the team were seated at a large table, others overflowing on to the rows of standard aircraft seats behi
nd it. There was a space at the table for her. She took it, then looked up at the screen on the bulkhead.

  It was divided into three windows, the faces of Morgan, Levon and Kiddrick occupying them. Morgan finished talking to someone off-camera and tapped a button to unmute his microphone. ‘Okay. Let’s have it.’

  Tony took his own seat between Bianca and Adam. ‘Right. We know that Zykov is staying in one of the Imperial’s penthouses, and Levon got the plans from the French firm of architects who designed the place.’

  Levon beamed on his screen. ‘Right down to the position of the last faucet. There might be a lot of security in the casino, but there was hardly any on the architects’ servers!’

  ‘The penthouses have private elevator access and twenty-four-hour concierges, as well as full CCTV coverage of the hallways outside,’ Tony went on. ‘The chances of entering unseen that way are almost zero. We thought about getting into his penthouse from the roof, but it’d be tricky – especially for Dr Childs.’

  Bianca blinked in surprise. ‘What?’

  ‘Wherever we grab Zykov, you need to be there, remember?’ said Tony. ‘You have to administer the drugs. And we figured that you probably wouldn’t want to climb along the edge of a fiftieth-storey rooftop.’

  ‘While carrying about twenty pounds of PERSONA gear,’ Kiddrick added with sardonic pleasure.

  ‘So the penthouse was out. But,’ Tony said, nodding at Baxter, ‘John came up with an alternative that we think will work.’

  ‘It follows on from what Dr Childs suggested,’ Baxter began. ‘We make Zykov mad as hell by having Adam clean him out, and get in his face about it. Really gloat, maybe even drop a hint that he was cheating.’

  ‘Which he will be, of course,’ said Holly Jo. ‘Every edge we can give Adam, he’ll have.’

  ‘Even Zykov won’t be dumb enough to do anything in the casino itself – there are cameras covering every square inch, and probably a couple hundred security guards. If he gets arrested, he won’t be able to complete the deal with al-Rais. But if we can get him outside the casino . . .’

  ‘That gives us freer rein to operate,’ finished Morgan, nodding. ‘What are you thinking?’

  Tony took over the explanation once more. ‘The Imperial is brand new; it only opened this year. It’s in a part of Macau called Cotai, which is reclaimed land between two of the other islands. The whole area is still being developed – right now, some parts of it are actually empty. Our thinking is that if we can get Zykov riled enough to follow Adam out of the casino to somewhere with nobody around, we can catch him there.’

  ‘How?’ asked Morgan.

  ‘We can’t just mug him, like we did with Syed,’ said Baxter. ‘We have to deal with his bodyguards at the same time. We’ve got to take them all out simultaneously.’

  Bianca was shocked. ‘Wait, you mean – kill them?’

  ‘That’d be kind of a giveaway to Zykov that something untoward was going on,’ Kiddrick sniped. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘He means knock them out,’ Tony assured her. ‘There are various fast-acting drugs we can use. It means setting things up very carefully – we can’t just shoot tranquilliser darts at them. But if we play things right, Zykov will have to follow Adam from the casino in a cab. And we can make sure he gets into one of ours. Billy,’ he glanced at the team’s technician, a skinny, taciturn young man who was typing on a laptop with intense concentration, ‘has worked out a way to rig the cab so that all the passengers will be unconscious just a couple of seconds after the collision. He’s sending the details on to our people in Macau. They should have started fitting it by the time we land.’

  ‘So, a staged car crash?’ Morgan asked.

  ‘Yeah. There are risks, but we’ve done it before. Like in Rio.’

  Adam spoke for the first time. ‘How did it go?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Tony. ‘The target suffered some minor scrapes, but he bought the story that he’d been knocked out. It gave us enough time to get his persona.’

  Bianca suddenly realised the comment’s implication: the Persona Project had been carrying out missions before Adam joined it. So he wasn’t its first agent?

  ‘If you’re sure you can make it work, then yes, do it,’ said Morgan. ‘So how are you going to make sure Zykov gets mad enough to follow Adam? Can you actually beat him?’

  ‘We think so,’ said Tony. ‘The persona Adam will be using is a top-flight card player. He knows every trick in the book – and some that aren’t.’

  ‘He’s a cheat?’

  ‘He spent three months in a Nevada prison for it.’

  Kyle was unimpressed. ‘So maybe he’s not that good.’

  ‘He was sold out by his accomplice – nobody caught him during the game itself,’ Tony reassured him.

  ‘And we can help Adam out as well,’ said Levon. ‘I’ve got a program that counts cards. It won’t be perfect, ’cause the casino switches decks every few games, but it’ll still give him an edge. If we rig him with a camera so we can see the other cards in play, the computer can calculate what the other players might have in their hands. Then Holly Jo tells Adam that through the earwig.’

  ‘It’s still not a guarantee that you’ll win, though,’ Bianca pointed out. ‘I read Zykov’s file – as well as being just a really unpleasant guy, I’d say that he has intermittent explosive disorder. It means he sometimes has a disproportionately angry response if he’s provoked,’ she added by way of explanation. ‘It’s often linked with other disorders like pathological gambling, and he fits the bill for that as well. But it doesn’t mean that he’s going to explode with rage whenever he gets a bad hand, or start sweating uncontrollably if he’s bluffing. His responses might be very subtle. I mean, he usually wins, so he’s probably got a very good poker face.’

  ‘He’ll have everybody at STS watching that face,’ countered Kiddrick. ‘The slightest tell, and we’ll see it.’

  Tony looked doubtful. ‘Maybe not. The Imperial’s VIP rooms have metal detectors at the entrance, according to the architects’ plans. With that much money at stake, they don’t want anybody sneaking in gadgets to help them cheat. The only camera we’d be able to get in there without tripping an alarm would be a skittle.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ said Bianca.

  ‘A skittle – it’s our nickname for a micro-video camera and transmitter. It’s about the size of a Skittle; you know, the candy.’

  ‘Oh, right. Wow, that’s tiny.’

  ‘Yeah. But because it’s so small, the picture quality isn’t great. It should be able to read cards on the table, but I don’t know about spotting tiny changes of expression on somebody sitting on the far side.’

  ‘We need more eyes in there,’ suggested Morgan. ‘Someone who can watch the other players as well.’

  Tony nodded. ‘We’ve got enough contingency cash to cover a second player.’

  Kyle immediately stuck his hand up. ‘I volunteer!’

  ‘Point one,’ said Holly Jo, ‘you’re not exactly an expert at picking up subtle changes in people’s emotions. Point two, nobody would ever believe you were worth a quarter of a million dollars.’

  ‘Hey!’ he protested.

  ‘Besides,’ said Tony, ‘we need you tracking Adam and Zykov with the UAV once they leave the hotel. No, it would have to be someone else. Someone with . . .’ he turned slowly to Bianca, ‘a background in psychology. How are your poker skills?’

  ‘What?’ she said, almost laughing before realising that he was serious. ‘Wait a minute! I’m only supposed to be here to work out the drug dosages, and now you want me to be an agent? Forget it!’

  ‘No, it could work,’ said Morgan. ‘Everyone else on the team will have an active role, either during the poker game or in capturing Zykov. But you don’t need to do anything until we actually have him. Someone else at that table working with Adam increases our chances of taking Zykov to the cleaners.’

  ‘Think of it as a night on the town – with two hundred and fifty k, on u
s,’ Tony added. ‘All you’ll have to do is make sure you lose to Adam. It might even be fun.’

  ‘I was thinking more that all that money could do an awful lot of good for society,’ replied Bianca. ‘Rather than risking it ending up in the pocket of some arms-dealing scumbag.’

  ‘It will be doing good,’ said Morgan, with a firmness that warned Bianca the decision had been made, no matter her opinion. ‘It’ll be helping to prevent the world’s most dangerous terrorist from committing a major attack. I think that’s worth an evening of your time, don’t you?’

  She couldn’t come up with any objections that didn’t sound selfish and petty. ‘You seriously want to give me a quarter of a million dollars and have me lose it all at poker?’ she asked instead. ‘How do you know I won’t just run off into the night with it?’

  ‘Because that wouldn’t be like you,’ said Adam. The quiet comment surprised everyone, not least Bianca.

  ‘Okay, then,’ Morgan said. ‘Unless someone comes up with anything better by the time you land, that’s the plan. Clean Zykov out, get him mad, set up a car crash, get what’s in his head. Tony, give me an update on the operational details in . . . six hours.’

  ‘Will do,’ said Tony.

  ‘All right. Good luck, everybody.’

  He disconnected, his third of the screen going blank. Kiddrick followed suit almost immediately. ‘If you guys need anything, let me know,’ said Levon. ‘I’ll get to work on this card-counting program.’

  Holly Jo raised an eyebrow. ‘I thought you said you already had it.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got it in my head – I’ve got to write it, obviously! Don’t worry, it’s just calculating probabilities. Ain’t no big thing. Catch you later.’

  He disappeared from the screen. Tony looked at the others round the table. ‘Everyone knows what they’re doing? Good. Let’s grab this guy.’