Zero Alternative (29 page)

Friedman twitched, his eyes widening as he recognised him. ‘Walker? Yours, what the hell are you…?’

‘Get your arse into the station.’ Walker twisted the blade hidden in his hoodie, pushing it into the CEO’s kidneys. The tip pricked the heavy wool coat, and he felt it rest against something more solid. ‘I’ll rip into your guts right here. Don’t try anything dumb.’

‘Okay, okay.’ Friedman nodded and started walking again. ‘Have you gone mad? Look, I know you didn’t kill DM, but you shouldn’t have run from the police…’

Walker almost broke his neck there and then. ‘Just shut up. Once you’ve gone past the bookshop turn left into the small passage, away from the Tube.’

‘Fine.’

They walked on in silence for a few hundred yards, inside Liverpool Street Station and then back out, along a little tunnel and onto a pedestrian way running parallel to the train tracks. The crowds thinned, until they were almost alone. Walker had scouted the place earlier and knew exactly where he wanted to go. He steered Friedman past an empty construction site, towards the bottom quarter of Finsbury Square. The walkway descended below street-level, bent in a couple of doglegs and finished in a cul-de-sac barred by the gate of the vacant building yard. Walker pushed Friedman away, making the big man stumble, and then he pointed to the husk of a half-finished disabled lift. ‘Get in there.’

Friedman straightened. ‘Or what? What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

Walker stepped forward and hit him with a left jab, his fist crashing into the Englishman’s jaw and sending him staggering against the concrete wall. Before Friedman could react he had grabbed his coat and shoved the CEO inside the narrow shaft, then followed him into the dark cluttered space. He stumbled over some discarded junk and the knife fell from his jumper’s pocket, clattering to the floor and into some deep crack. He swore and regained his balance, slipping in a boxer’s crouch.

Friedman glanced down in the semi-darkness, then back up with a narrow smile. A thin line of blood sneaked down the side of his mouth. ‘A carving knife. You
have
lost your mind. What do you want, then?’ He straightened up and brushed away some dust, almost composed again. ‘If you need money…’

‘You have no idea, do you?’ Walker spat.

‘About what? Calm down, Yours. Please,’ he sighed. ‘I know people at Scotland Yard. You shouldn’t have run, but we’ll prove you are innocent.’

‘Really?’

Friedman opened his arms, tried to sound reasonable. ‘You are, aren’t you?’

Walker hesitated for a second. The Englishman still looked surprised but relatively calm, and sounded sincere. He had thought he could glimpse the truth just by staring into the CEO’s eyes but
now that he had… he was less certain than ever. His need for revenge, of any kind, might have clouded his senses. He could be making a monstruos mistake.

The evidence he’d been shown? Just a voice-recording from some pub, listened to in a restaurant in Rome. Hackernym could have faked it – God knew they had the capability. They probably could have faked an entire bloody movie, if it suited their purpose. Maybe
they
were the ones after DeepShare, and it was all part of some weird plan to force him to hand the software over.

‘Scott, please. I know DM’s death must have hit you hard.’ Friedman shuffled forward, away from the back of the shaft. ‘I think you’re confused, and in shock. But…’

‘What do you know of DM’s murder?’ Walker heard his voice shaking and cursed himself for it. But the world felt like it had once again tilted on its axis, and he didn’t know how to go on. Too many things had been happening, too quickly. And now he was out of time, with a decision to make. He stared at Friedman, tried to see beyond the man’s eyes, into his thoughts.

Friedman shrugged. ‘Just what the police told me. They thought it was drugs, but then you disappeared and – still, I’m sure we can sort it out. Dorfmann’s lawyers will help you, if you want…’ He tailed off.

‘What about DeepOmega?’

‘It wasn’t on –’ Friedman froze for a split instant, realising he’d blundered. He shouldn’t have known about Omega’s existence.

Walker almost smiled as he tensed but the big man moved faster than he expected, jumping him in a bear hold and crashing him into the wall before they both rolled to the ground. Walker’s head slammed against the concrete and his brain exploded in pain, his vision failing. By the time he’d recovered Friedman had straddled him, kneeling on his lower chest and pinning his arms to the floor. The CEO lowered his head and spat in Walker’s face, blood dripping from his mouth. ‘Almost had you there – but no matter now. What do you know?’

‘Everything. Walsh, Pienaar…’ Walker bent his neck forward and tried to flex his arms but the pressure from Friedman’s weight and strength was too much. He rasped out a breath, struggling to think as his battered brain spun with nausea.

‘How?’

‘You –’ Walker coughed – ‘you have more enemies than you think.’ He sagged back to the floor, relaxing his muscles. Waiting for a chance.

‘I hope they’re all as fucking dumb as you.’ Friedman spat more blood in his face, then lowered
his head, so close that his nose was almost touching Walker’s. ‘Where… the fuck… is… Omega?’

Walker slammed his head forward, head-butting Friedman for all he was worth. His forehead connected with the bridge of the Englishman’s nose, shattering it, and as he howled and reared back Walker slid to the side, rolling away. He pushed off and pivoted on his right hand, then twisted and rammed his knee into Friedman’s chest as he struggled up from his crouch.

The CEO fell back into a corner of the shaft, on all fours; Walker rushed him, aiming a kick at his midriff. He swung back with all his strength and almost lifted the big man off the floor before he crashed back to the concrete, chin first, beaten. Walker took a deep breath and stepped nearer, bending to grab his head by the hair, pulling it up a few inches. ‘I’ll come after you forever, you son-of-a-bitch.’ He smashed Friedman’s face against the wall, hearing teeth cracking, then swung back for another go. Blood dribbled onto his free hand from the CEO’s broken features and he paused, inhaling deeply. It would be easy to kill him now.

The adrenaline still pumped and his muscles twitched, but Walker forced himself to unclench his fist and let go of Friedman. He stood up, still trembling, and stepped back.
No. I’m better than this
. He exhaled, turned around without a second glance and ditched his jumper, hurrying back towards the pedestrian walkway and Liverpool Street Station before he could change his mind.

Within twenty minutes he was back at City Airport, heading for the Transatlantic Lounge. He found a small sofa and sat down with a sigh, struggling with a wave of nausea. His head felt like some critter was trying to dig out of it, and he was exhausted. Going after Friedman had turned out to be a really dangerous idea.

But at least now he knew some of the truth.

And it was bloody time for someone else to feel hunted.

Santa Monica

LA’s sun burnt through the open windows of the Georgian Hotel as Walker fiddled with one of the high-capacity storage drivers he had just rebooted, making sure it was working. After landing in Vegas he had jumped on a Greyhound to San Diego to buy the equipment, before making his way to Santa Monica. He was reasonably proud of himself: even if Pienaar had somehow managed to get his details from the Sicilians, Blackspring should have lost him again in the immensity of the States. Until he was ready to go after Frankel, at least. He glanced at the thick metal boxes – soon they would contain the DeepShare code, which he needed to collect from the servers where DM had hidden it, behind super-secure firewalls.

He had located half of the software at one of Stanford’s Cloud facilities in La Jolla, while the other half sat at DM’s alma mater, MIT. The access keys had been hard-coded in the tablet but he had copied them to a couple of new smartphones, just to have a backup. And one for Layla, perhaps.

Walker sighed and stood up, pacing around the living room in his suite; he studied the furniture again, trying not to think. A chaise longue, a fifties-style wooden table. An ancient cupboard. The hotel was trying hard to look Art-Deco. Almost succeeding. Like him, but thinking was difficult to avoid. He shrugged and dialled the reception, asking the guy to bring up a drink.

Luigi’s smiling face broke through his mental walls and he dropped onto the small sofa, fighting to remain in control. Then DM’s broken body grimaced at him and he lit a cigarette, strangling his emotions. There was no time to go to pieces. He had to keep his cool, to gauge whether Layla could really be trusted. Whether he could face working with her once more. Or even being in the same room as her.

Someone knocked and he went to open it, preparing a tip for the porter.

Layla burst through the door and hugged him fiercely, almost knocking him over.

‘Thank God,’ she whispered, kissing his eyes and face. ‘I thought… I was sure I’d never see you…’

Walker pushed her away and stepped back, slamming the door shut. He forced some steel into his voice. It cost him a lot: more than he had thought he would need. ‘Go and sit down. And start talking, or this is going to be short.’
And not painless
.

Layla nodded, then she shrugged out of a new black leather coat and curled up on the chaise
longue, checking the room. She took a deep breath, unable to keep her eyes on his face. ‘Of course. What do you need to know?’

Walker studied her, taking his time. Her face had fallen in a bit, and she looked thinner in a long-sleeved cotton dress. He didn’t know where to start, anger and attraction warring inside him. ‘Why the hell did it take you so long to help me?’ His voice cracked, the distrust still burning.

‘I… I didn’t know what to do.’ Layla paused, searching for words. ‘I was about to run away so many times – I didn’t want to get involved.’

‘Why?’

‘At the beginning I just thought you were… only another banker, a man with no morals, only money.’

‘Whom you wanted to rob.’ Even after she’d seen what had been done to DM. Walker shivered, uncertain. A part of him wanted to let her back in, but there were too many holes in her story.

‘I was afraid of Pienaar. And yes, I still believed I could get Deep from you. Then Reims happened…’

Walker groaned, his guts twisting in knots. ‘And after that, you still didn’t say anything. You must have thought I had no chance.’

‘I didn’t see the point – it was not my fight, and I wasn’t even sure I liked you. Besides I was wounded, in pain: I couldn’t think clearly.’

True
. But Luigi had ended up dead because he had tried his best to help them. Perhaps, had she come clean earlier… Walker shook his head. No, that was unfair. Pienaar would have been unstoppable anyway. Probably.

‘Go on,’ he sighed.

‘Then you saved my life. But, beyond that… what really struck me then was your steel, your resilience.’

‘In running about like a doomed, headless chicken?’

Layla glared at him. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’re still around. You’re still fighting.’

‘I couldn’t let DM’s death be for nothing.’ And he wouldn’t. Even for her.

‘That’s when it hit me. You were not just a money guy. God – I’m not good with words…’ She took a deep breath. ‘There was more. A lot more.’

‘So much that you still wanted to leave.’ Walker’s mouth tasted bitter, dry. ‘Even in Sardinia, you just made up more stories, instead of telling me the truth.’

‘I needed more time.’

‘For what?’

‘To…’ Layla stopped, tears glinting in her eyes. ‘I was falling for you, and it’s always bad, in these… situations. You need focus, not –’ She broke off and looked away, out of the window.

Walker waited for a few seconds. The way she had hesitated… Maybe there
was
a key to the hidden Layla. It was time to find out, once and for all. He went for the chair but decided to grab one of his cigarettes instead, and started pacing the small space. ‘It’s happened to you before, hasn’t it?’

Layla nodded wordlessly, her face still turned away from him.

‘Who is Rafael?’

She spun back to him then, shock flickering across her face. ‘How do you know that name?’

‘You called out to him, on the ferry. When you had a high fever.’ When her defences had been at their weakest.

Layla squirmed, readjusting her short dress before answering. ‘He was… When I worked for the Mexican police, I was sent undercover for almost two years – after a drug baron, in the Chiapas. Rafa was one of his younger sons. He was twenty-three and had dreams – he wanted a normal life, to get away from the family. We fell in love, but I never told him anything.’

‘You just continued with your job. It sounds familiar.’

She nodded, wiping away a tear. ‘I collected proof, told the army how to get around their security to catch them unprepared. The raid, when it came, was successful.’ She sniffled, straightened her back. ‘Only three people were killed, and the boss was caught alive.’

‘What about Rafa?’

‘He was one of the three. He died protecting his father, knowing I was just a government agent.’

‘I’m sorry.’

She ignored him, the words tumbling out in a rush. ‘I betrayed him. Apparently that’s what I do. I should have opened up, told him to get away… I loved him, and his blood is on my hands. I can’t trust myself, not after what I did to him.’

‘And you thought the same thing might happen – with me.’ And some of it had, he guessed.

Layla nodded, her hands worrying away at one of the buttons on her dress. ‘I’m just damaged goods, Scott. You were right not to trust me.’

Walker crossed the room and sat on the other side of the chaise longue, concentrating on her
face. She looked drawn, almost beaten. The last few minutes seemed to have taken a lot out of her. And it felt as if she hadn’t lied this time. He wondered if he was going to regret the next few minutes.

‘Maybe.’ He shrugged.

‘Do you… do you want me to leave now?’

Walker could see the fear in her eyes but he kept his voice cold. ‘No. I still need your help, if you’re ready. And I think you are now.’