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‘Good idea.’ The Englishman 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?’

‘Thousands of people who would have lost their jobs,’ yelled Palstein. ‘A damaged global economy! Look around you! Wake up! How many countries, how many people who depend on oil will be damaged by your helium-3? Have you thought about that?’

‘And you were once called the green conscience of the energy sector.’

‘Because I
am
!’ Palstein cried. ‘But sometimes you have to go against your convictions. Do you think four more decades of oil economy would do more damage to the planet than it’s done already? We might be a gang of lunatics, but—’

‘No,’ said Jericho’s voice from the laptop. ‘You’re not insane, Gerald. You are calculating, and that’s the worst thing about you. Like any other halfwit, you find a reason to blame your crimes on circumstances. You’re not special.’

Palstein said nothing. He slowly dropped back into his chair and stared at his feet.

‘Why the flight to the Moon?’ Julian asked quietly.

‘Because something got in the way in 2024.’ Palstein shrugged. ‘An astronaut called Thorn was supposed to have—’

‘I don’t mean that. Why that one and not the next one? Why the one my children and I were on, people like Warren Locatelli, the Donoghues, Miranda Winter—’

‘I didn’t care about your guests, Julian,’ sighed Palstein. ‘It was the first opportunity that offered itself since Thorn’s failure. When would the next trip have taken place? Only after the official opening. This year? Next year? How long would we have had to wait?’

‘Perhaps you also factored in the possibility of Julian’s death,’ said Jericho.

‘Nonsense.’

‘His death would have strengthened the conservative forces at Orley. The people opposed to the idea of selling off technologies. The smaller the number of countries that can build a space lift, the smaller the chance that a second—’

‘You’re fantasising, Jericho. If you hadn’t spoiled everything, Julian would have been back on Earth ages before the explosions took place. And his son and daughter too.’

The muffled chugging and thudding of the boats reached them from outside. Right below their window someone was singing ‘O Sole Mio’ with businesslike ardour.

‘But we weren’t on Earth,’ said Julian.

‘That wasn’t the plan.’

‘Fuck your plan. You went beyond the limit, Gerald. In every respect.’

Palstein looked up.

‘And you? You and your American friends? How is what you’re doing any different from what we’ve been doing for decades? You extract something from the ground until it’s all gone and you find you’ve destroyed a planet in the process. What limit do you lot go beyond? What limit do you in particular go beyond when you run your company like a state that dictates the rules of play to real states? Do you think you’re being public-spirited? At least the oil companies served their countries. Who are you serving, apart from your own vanity? There are no social states without state organisations, but you’re behaving like a modern Captain Nemo and spitting on the world as it happens to work. We merely played the game that the circumstances required. Only look at mankind, their clean, just wars, the cyclical collapse of their financial systems, the cynicism of their profiteers, the unscrupulousness and stupidity of their politicians, the perversion of their religious leaders, and don’t talk to me about limits.’

Julian stroked his beard.

‘You could be right, Gerald.’ He nodded and got to his feet. ‘But it doesn’t change anything. Owen, thanks for giving up your time. We’re going.’

‘Take care, Gerald,’ said Jericho. ‘Or not.’

The picture on the screen went out. Julian snapped the laptop shut and put it back in its bag.

‘A little while ago,’ he said, ‘when I was stepping inside your lovely residence, I noticed a little plaque: in the mezzanine of a building across the courtyard from this palazzo, Richard Wagner died. You know what? I liked that. I like the idea of great men dying in great houses.’ He reached into his jacket, took out a pistol and set it down on the table in front of Palstein. His clear blue eyes had a penetrating expression, almost friendly and encouraging. ‘It’s loaded. One shot is generally enough, but you’re a big man, Gerald. A very big man. You might take two.’