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‘Of course we weren’t so naïve as to assume that we’d invented the trick,’ said Yoyo. ‘But it’s really not that likely that you’re going to come across an email that already has a stowaway.’

‘And whose official mail did you intercept?’

‘It came from some government authority or other.’ Yoyo shrugged. ‘The Ministry of Energy or something.’

‘Where exactly?’

‘Wait, it was – it was—’ She frowned and looked defiant. ‘Okay, don’t know.’

‘I’m sorry?’ Jericho looked at her in disbelief. ‘You don’t know who—?’

‘For the love of heaven! It was only a test! Just to see if I could get into it!’

‘And what did you write?’

‘Just something.’

‘Come on! What was it?’

‘I—’ She seemed to chew the sentence a number of times before spitting it out at Jericho’s feet: ‘
Catch me if you can.
’

‘
Catch me if you can
?’

‘Am I talking Mongolian? Yesss!’

‘Why that?’

‘
Why that?
’ she said, copying him. ‘Doesn’t matter. Because I thought it was cool, that’s why.’

‘Very cool. In a test—’

‘Oh, son-of-a-turtle!’ She rolled her eyes. ‘No – one – was – supposed – to – read – it!’

Jericho sighed and shook his head.

‘All right. Go on?’

‘The protocol was set to real time. Stop mail, take out noise, put in own message, encode, pass on, all at the same time. So, I write, and at the same time I notice there’s something in it already! That I haven’t taken out any white noise at all, but some kind of mysterious stuff.’

‘Because someone else was trying to do the same thing as you were.’

‘Yes.’

Jericho nodded. In fairness, he had to admit that Yoyo couldn’t have anticipated this development.

‘But by then the email was already on its way again,’ he said. ‘To the person that the mysterious stuff was meant for. Except that it never got there, because you’d taken it out and swapped it.’

‘Unwittingly.’

‘Doesn’t matter. Imagine this. They’re waiting for some complex, secret information. Instead they read:
Catch me if you can
.’ Jericho couldn’t help it. He raised his hands in the air and applauded. ‘Bravo, Yoyo. Lovely little provocation. My congratulations.’

‘Oh, fuck you! Of course they immediately worked out that someone had broken in.’

‘And they were prepared.’

‘Yes, unlike me.’ She pulled a sour face. ‘I mean, I don’t know if they’d expected something like that
exactly
, but their defences work, you have to give them that. Some kind of watchdog program immediately started barking: woof! An extra hub has appeared in the predetermined route, it shouldn’t be there. Grrr, where are our data?’

‘And traced you back?’

‘Traced me back?’ Yoyo gave a short, sharp laugh. ‘They attacked me! They attacked my computer, I don’t know how, it was absolutely terrifying! While I’m still gawping at what I’ve pulled out of the water, I see them starting to download my data. I couldn’t get online quickly enough as they went through my stuff. They knew exactly who I was – and
where
I was!’

‘Does that mean you don’t have an anonymiser—’

‘I’m not stupid,’ she hissed. ‘Of course I use an anonymiser. But if you’re implementing something completely new and playing around with it, you’re forced to open up your system for a moment. Otherwise the protection tools downstairs would get in your way, that’s what they’re there for.’

‘So you turned various things off.’

‘I had to take that risk.’ Her eyes flashed with fury. ‘I had to be sure we could work like that.’

‘Well, now you know.’

‘Lovely, Mister Brain Box.’ She folded her arms. ‘What would you have done?’

‘One bit at a time,’ said Jericho. ‘First take out the attachment and check it for land mines. Then put my own thing in there. Leave myself the option of cancelling everything before I send it off. And most importantly, don’t put any smug little phrases in there, even if you’ve encoded it as noise a thousand times over.’

‘What’s the point of data transfer that doesn’t make sense?’

‘We’re talking about a test. As long as you don’t know for sure whether your data transfer is safe or not, you’ve got to sound like a communication error. They might have wondered where their message ended up, but it wouldn’t immediately have occurred to them that someone was tapping off their communication.’

She looked at him as if she was thinking of tearing his throat out. Then she spread her arms and let them fall back helplessly by her side.

‘Okay, it was a mistake!’

‘A big mistake.’

‘Could I have guessed, out of all the billions and billions of mails, I would hit on one that had already been infiltrated?’

Jericho looked at her. His rage had flared up for a moment, less about the mistake than about the fact that someone with Yoyo’s experience could have made it. With her complacency, she hadn’t just put her own life on the line. Almost the whole of her group had been killed, and Jericho didn’t feel exactly safe. Then his fury evaporated. He saw the mixture of fear and dismay on her face and shook his head.

‘No. You couldn’t.’

‘So who’s on my case?’

‘Our case, Yoyo, if you’ll forgive me. If I might just remind you about me and my problems.’

She averted her head, looked out at the sea and back at him.

‘Okay. Ours.’

‘Doubtless someone with power. People with money and influence, technically advanced. To be quite honest I doubt that their communication is still at the experimental stage. You’ve tried something out. They’ve been doing it for ages. Just by chance you’re using the same protocol, which allowed each of you to read the other’s data. From that point it gets speculative, but I also believe that they’re influential enough not to be dependent on other people’s emails.’

‘You mean—’

‘Let’s assume they’re sending mails from their own servers. Quite officially. They’re based in public institutions, they can check incoming and outgoing traffic, and pack anything in there as they see fit.’

‘They sound like senior officials.’

‘You think it’s the Party?’

‘Who else? All the Guardians’ operations are – were – directed against the Party. And we have no illusions about it, the Guardians are – were—’

‘—another word for Yoyo.’

‘I was the head. Along with Daxiong.’

‘I know. You mouthed off, which got State security on your back. Since then you’ve tried to find ways of protecting yourself. Second Life, parasite emails. And in the process, without meaning to, you break into a secret data transfer, and your worst fears become reality. There’s something about “coup” and “liquidating” in connection with the Chinese government, and a minute later they’ve tracked you down.’

‘What would you have done in my place?’

‘What indeed?’ Jericho laughed mirthlessly. ‘I’d have got the hell out, just like you did.’

‘That’s comforting.’ She hesitated. ‘So did you – were you on my computer?’

‘Yes.’

Jericho expected another blaze of fury, but she just sighed and looked out at the ocean.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I haven’t been snooping. I’ve just tried to introduce some clarity into the whole business.’

‘Did you get anywhere with the third website?’

‘The Swiss films?’

‘Mm-hm.’

‘Not so far. But there must be something on there. Either you need a separate
mask or there’s something we’ve overlooked. At the moment I think it’s about a coup in which the Chinese government was – or will be – involved, and that someone knows too much and that his liquidation is being considered.’

‘Someone called Jan or Andre.’

‘More likely Andre. Did you research the address in Berlin?’

‘Yes.’

‘Interesting, isn’t it?
Donner be liquidated
. Somebody called Andre Donner runs a restaurant specialising in African delicacies at that address.’

‘The Muntu. I’d got that far.’

‘But what does that tell us?’ Jericho reflected. ‘Is Andre Donner in danger of being liquidated? I mean, what does a Berlin chef know about Beijing’s involvement in some sort of planned coup? And what about the second man?’

‘Jan?’

‘Yes. Is he the killer?’

Or, is Jan the same as Kenny? Jericho thought, but kept the thought to himself. His imagination was fizzing. Basically the fragment of text was too mutilated to provide any useful conclusions.

‘It’s an African restaurant,’ Yoyo said thoughtfully. ‘And it hasn’t been around for very long.’

Jericho looked at her in amazement.

‘Okay, I’ve had more time to look into it,’ she added. ‘There are reviews on the net. Donner opened Muntu in December 2024—’

‘Only six months ago?’

‘Exactly. You can hardly find any information about the man himself. A Dutchman who lived in Cape Town for a while, perhaps was even born there. That’s it. But the African connection is interesting in that—’

‘—in that Africa’s familiar with coups.’ Jericho nodded. ‘That means we need to take a closer look at the more recent chronology of any dubious or violent government takeovers. An interesting approach. Except that South Africa is ruled out. They’ve been stable for a long time.’

They fell silent for a while.

‘You wanted to know who we were dealing with,’ he said at last. ‘To engineer coups you need money and influence, both political and economic. But above all you need to have a capable executive, and one that’s willing to engage in violence. So these people have managed to set an expert with reinforcements on your trail. Equipped like an army. So let’s assume that certain government circles are behind this. Then I think I can put your mind at rest in one respect.’

Yoyo raised her eyebrows.

‘They’re not interested in dissidents,’ Jericho said finally. ‘They don’t give a damn about what you’re up to. They would have hunted down anyone who got in their way …’

‘Very reassuring,’ Yoyo sneered. ‘And instead they have hordes of cops who will, when time’s up, give me the pleasant feeling that it’s not because of my dissident activities that they’re going to kill me. Thanks Jericho. I can sleep again at last.’

He gazed along the beach. Shimmering in the double sunlight, it looked oddly vivid. Patterns formed spontaneously in the sand and immediately blurred again. Some of the flower-like creatures spread their wings, transparent and veined as leaves. Clouds of golden dust puffed up among them, and were carried over the edge of the island, where they scattered in the wind. Yoyo and Daxiong had programmed a world of unsettling beauty.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I have a few suggestions. First of all I need your permission to upload your data onto my computer. As far as I can tell, all your backup systems have been destroyed.’

‘Apart from one.’

‘I know. Can I ask what computer you’re connected to at the moment?’

She chewed her lip and looked round, as if there were someone there to advise her.

‘It’s at Daxiong’s,’ she said reluctantly.

‘Where? In the workshop?’

‘Yes. He lives there.’

‘And you’ll get away straight after the meeting.’

‘Daxiong’s cellar is safe, we—’

‘Kenny fires rockets,’ Jericho interrupted her gruffly, ‘which means that nothing is safe. The workshop is registered as Demon Point, under the name City Demons. It’s only a matter of time until Kenny turns up there or sends someone. Does Daxiong have a complete copy of your data?’

‘No.’

‘Then let me download it.’

‘Okay.’

Jericho thought for a moment and counted the points up on his fingers. ‘Secondly, we’ll follow the African trail. Thirdly, we’ll try to crack the Spanish website with the films of Switzerland. Both down to me. Diane has the relevant programs, she—’

‘Diane?’

‘My – my—’ Suddenly he felt embarrassed. ‘Doesn’t matter. Fourthly, what do all six pages, valid and invalid, have in common?’

‘That’s obvious.’ Yoyo looked at him uncomprehendingly. ‘They contain, or contained—’

‘And following on from that?’

‘Hey! Can you stop sounding like a bloody headmaster?’

‘Someone will have to check them,’ Jericho continued, unfazed, ‘to make sure that the mask – the decoder program – always fits. In terms of content there doesn’t seem to be a connection, all the pages are publicly accessible and registered in various countries. But who initiated them? If we can find a common initiator, we might be able to find out which other pages he controls. The more pages we find that fit our mask, the more we will decode.’

‘I don’t know how to do that. And neither does Tian.’

‘But I do.’ Jericho took a deep breath. For a moment he imagined it was the clear air of the ocean planet flowing through his capillaries, but he was only breathing whatever the air-conditioning was blowing into his room. With every word he uttered he felt strength and resolution returning. The certainty that he hadn’t been handed over defenceless to Kenny and the people behind him flooded his consciousness like a physical glow. ‘Fifth, we assume that Andre Donner is on the hit list same as we are. And that immediately gives us two reasons to get in contact with him. To find out more about our own case, and to warn him.’

‘If he needs a warning.’

‘So we have nothing to lose. Do we?’

‘No.’

‘Okay then.’ He hesitated. ‘Yoyo, I don’t want to keep coming back to it, but who else have you told about your discovery? I mean, which of them—’

‘Which of them is still alive?’ she asked bitterly.

Jericho said nothing.

‘Only Daxiong,’ she said. ‘And you.’

She crouched down and let nacreous sand slip through her fingers. The thin streams formed mysterious patterns on the ground before vanishing in a shimmer of light. Then she raised her head.

‘I want to call my father.’

Jericho nodded. ‘That would have been my next suggestion.’

He wondered if it mightn’t have been more sensible to make contact with Tu first. But that decision was entirely up to the girl at his feet, who was now slowly standing up and looking at him with beautiful, sad eyes.

‘Shall I leave you alone?’ he asked.

‘No.’ She gave an unladylike sniff, and turned her back on him. ‘Maybe it’s better if you’re here.’