Salvation

She dressed in neutral clothes, blue denim jeans and a thick purple roll-top sweater; flat-soled pumps and a simple leather bag. Her long hair was plaited with practiced efficiency. To finish, she slipped into a pair of wire-rimmed screen glasses. She inspected herself in the mirror and nodded in satisfaction. Nothing special, nothing that would draw attention in a crowd. One of hundreds of thousands of identical young women thronging through Rome’s metrohubs, on their way to their corporate offices to fend off another day’s overfamiliarity from male managers.

Outside, the sun was making progress up the sky. Sharp, bright beams were slicing through the canopy of leaves as she walked back to the hub on the junction with Via Monte Eporneo. Five hubs took her to the center, where she switched to the national network. The Naples hub had a portal door into Connexion’s internal network. Eight hubs later she emerged onto the ground floor of a skyscraper in Sydney’s central business district.

The glass walls of the big lobby looked out onto a nighttime city, with pedestrian roads long since cleared of clubbers. Even with the air-conditioning thrumming away, she could feel the heat radiating in from the concrete pavement outside. A night watchman glanced up from his desk and gave her a quick wave.

She got into the lift and sensors performed a deep scan. Only then did the lift take her up to the fifteenth floor: the Security offices.

Here, Australia’s time zone didn’t apply. The fifteenth floor was wrapped in one-way glass that didn’t allow anyone to look in, day or night, so nobody could see a department that kept the same operational level twenty-four/seven. Its layout of corridors and offices was similar to any of the commercial departments in the building; but instead of the usual conference rooms, there were armories and special equipment centers. Right at the center, through another two sets of safe checks, was the active ops center.

Australia’s head of station’s office was next to it. The door slid open to allow Savi in.

Yuri Alster looked up from the semicircle of screens on his desk. “You’re late,” he said.

“No, I’m not.” Savi didn’t much like Yuri. Thankfully, that wasn’t a requirement of the job, but she certainly respected his toughness. His infiltration operations brought impressive results. She’d been on two of them so far and seen firsthand how his field agents were deployed to maximum effect. It didn’t matter what a new operative’s file said, or how well they’d done in training and simulations. Yuri was only interested how they performed in the field. If anyone showed emotional weakness, they were out, and he made sure your first mission would slam you straight up against cutting moral dilemmas.

For her first operation, he’d given Savi a case involving two brothers who were trying to sting a Connexion manager to pay for their mother’s medical treatment. The woman had a brain tumor that needed some very expensive drugs. Savi always suspected he’d known her own mother had been treated for cancer, even though it wasn’t in her file. She hadn’t wavered. The brothers had got seven years for attempted extortion. Their mother had died eight months later.

“I hope you enjoyed yourself,” he said. “We have the plastic explosive ready for you. Technical support tweaked the formula, so it’s only ten percent as powerful as the real stuff. Even so, be careful around it.”

“That’s good. Should prevent too much damage. Thank tech support for me.”

“You got a cover story?”

“Yes, sir.” She half expected him to ask for it. But this wasn’t high school, and she wasn’t sitting an exam. A cover story was required, so a cover story for her short absence had been fabricated to tie in with her fake identity. It hadn’t taken her long.

“All right.” He tilted back in his chair. Savi just knew she was being judged. He treated everyone like that—with suspicion. Rumor around the department said he was ex–Russian Federal Security. He’d been in the border security department of the Russian National Portal Transport Company when it merged with Connexion; plenty of his colleagues had been made redundant, but he’d made it through the reorganization and come out in a strong position. Connexion Security approved of his methodology and the efficient way he ran his intelligence gathering agents, infiltrating them into anti-Connexion groups. “When are you going back in?” he asked her.

“Right away. Akkar wanted the charges by tomorrow, so I’m guessing their attack will be timed for first fall. Maximize the publicity.”

“Okay. So you know, Ainsley himself will be at Kintore, too, for the starting ceremony.”

“Shit.”

“Which means Poi Li will be there.” His finger pointed at the wall between him and the active ops center. “Making very sure no one gets near Ainsley, especially anyone hauling plastic explosives around. So this needs to go right, or we’ll both be hunting new jobs.”

“Got it.”

“If the charges are for a suicide vest, we need to know right away.”