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‘Thanks. You’ve been a great help.’

The initiator—

Jericho smiled grimly. He saw the Hydra stretching its necks, darting its heads forwards, baring its fangs. It hissed at him, but its mighty serpentine body bent and started slowly retreating.

That night he slept a deep and dreamless sleep.

* * *

The next day, radio silence till lunchtime. Then Ho rang, and he sounded just as excited as he had two and a half weeks previously, when Jericho had passed on the news of the capture of Animal Ma Liping.

‘Incredible,’ he said. ‘You were right.’

Jericho’s heartbeat did a drumroll.

‘What exactly did you find?’

‘The icon. That snaky thing, what’s the creature called again?’

‘Hydra.’

‘On Song’s company computer! Hidden among other programs. To make his deleted emails visible again. However, we’ll have to get at his hard disk.’

‘No problem. You have sufficient grounds to arrest him officially.’

‘Owen, that could—’ Ho caught his breath. ‘That could make my promotion to Beijing—’

‘I know.’ Jericho smiled. ‘Bust the guy. You’ll find data that look like white noise, but using that icon you’ll be able to get a message out of it without too much difficulty.’

‘I’ll call you. I’ll call you!’

‘Wait!’ Jericho started to pace back and forth, kept in motion by adrenalin. ‘We need the other participants in the meeting. It only looks like a plot by a business sector, it’s really a conspiracy by a small number of people. We’ve got to get to them. Focused and fast, so that none of them has a chance to get away. Perhaps you’ll manage to wring a confession from our friend by pointing out the mitigating circumstances.’

‘Like him being able to keep his head attached to his neck,’ sniffed Ho.

‘Oh, come on. I thought the death penalty was abolished in 2021.’

‘So it was. But I can always threaten to bring it back specially for him. Soon we’ll know who the other participants were, you can be sure of that!’

‘Fine. If he doesn’t talk, we’ll have to check out every single alibi. I know that’s going to be a big job.’

‘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.

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.’