The Covenant of Genesis

engine drowned him out. The cable was still slack: he tried to pull the looped end off the stump.

‘No you fucking don’t!’ Chase wheezed, shoulder-barging him. The pirate fell over the stump and landed in the junk behind it. Chase moved to kick him in the head—

The man slashed at his leg with a jagged spike of rusty metal. The tip ripped through his jeans. Chase lurched away as the pirate stabbed again, barely escaping having the six-inch shard plunged into his thigh . . . but catching his heel on a root and falling backwards.

Still clutching the makeshift dagger, the pirate leapt up. The RIB surged away from the jetty. The cable flicked back and forth on the ground beside Chase, hissing metallically.

The pirate dived at him, the spike plunging down at his chest. Chase whipped up both hands to catch the man’s wrist, stopping the bloodied point an inch above his heart. Face contorting, yellowed teeth bared, the pirate pushed harder, his weight forcing the trembling blade lower, lower . . .

Pressing into the skin, piercing it—

Whack!

‘Get off him!’ yelled Bejo, hitting the pirate across his back with a length of rotten wood, knocking him off Chase. The plank snapped in half, the blow only distracting rather than hurting the muscular pirate, but it was enough.

Chase grabbed the whipping cable and looped it round his neck.

Too late, Scarface realised what was about to happen—

The other end of the cable had been firmly fastened to the RIB’s outboard. The retreating boat reached the limit of its length - and jerked to an abrupt stop as the line snapped taut. The loop round the pirate’s neck closed to nothing in an instant, neatly snipping off his head. It thumped off the tree stump, expression frozen in shocked horror. The look on Bejo’s face was almost identical.

‘You okay?’ Chase asked as he kicked the decapitated corpse away and stood. Bejo nodded wordlessly, mouth hanging open as Chase retrieved his AK and looked out to sea. The RIB’s engine was still running, but the boat was drifting at the end of the cable, the propeller shaft broken. In the light of the burning hut, he could see that the sudden stop had caused Latan to slam head first into the boat’s steering wheel . . . then bounce back into his seat, leaving most of his face behind. He wouldn’t be giving warnings to anybody.

‘Mr Eddie,’ said Bejo in a strained voice. Chase turned - to find a gun pointing at his chest. The transsexual prostitute stood before him, shakily clutching a revolver in her uninjured hand. From the anguished rage on her face, her relationship with Latan had been more than merely that of hooker and client.

‘Oh, bugger,’ muttered Chase. Being gunned down by a ladyboy wasn’t even remotely how he’d pictured himself going out. ‘Okay, sorry about your boyfriend,’ he said, stalling, ‘but he was kind of a bad guy. Nice, er, lass like you could do a lot better . . .’

She spat something in Malay, thrusting the gun at his face. ‘Pretty lady is very angry with you,’ said Bejo, raising his hands.

‘Yeah, I got the gist.’ She thumbed back the hammer. ‘All right, so you’re a bit upset,’ Chase continued, getting worried, ‘but shooting me won’t make you feel any better. Trust me, I’ve shot plenty of people, and—’ His eyes flicked to something behind her, and he raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘Bloody hell, it’s Latan! Latan’s alive!’

It was a feeble gambit that would never have worked on anyone with training - but the young transsexual half turned to look, hope clear in her eyes. Chase could have simply whipped up his AK and shot her, but instead chose the less fatal option of kicking her in the groin. She crumpled to the ground and curled into a foetal position, moaning. Bejo winced. ‘Not very nice thing to do, even to angry lady.’

Chase pulled the revolver from her hand and tossed it into the sea. ‘If she really was a lady, that wouldn’t have hurt so much.’

As Bejo worked out what he meant and regarded the fallen figure with surprise, Chase surveyed the village. The blaze had spread to the other shacks, including Latan’s - which meant that not only had the money gone up in smoke, but so too had any clues there might have been amongst the pirate’s belongings. There was nothing more to be found here.

He made sure there was a boat the two prostitutes could use to get off the island, and then he and Bejo returned to their craft. As he’d hoped, the two remaining lookouts had decided that not investigating the gunfire and burning buildings on the shore would be their best bet for a long and healthy life, leaving the way clear.

As Bejo guided the boat back out to sea, Chase wondered once more why the tablet Nina had found had caused so much death. With Latan gone, he had lost one lead - but at least now he knew the identity of his paymaster, Vogler, and the organisation for which he worked.

But what was the Covenant of Genesis?

8

New York City

Despite having slept as much as she could during the long flight, Nina’s internal clock was still twelve hours out of synch when the UN jet landed, her body telling her it was evening while her native city was only just getting started for the day.

And it promised to be a long one.

Picked up by a driver and taken to the United Nations headquarters, she wondered what was in store. The expedition to the Java Sea had received the full backing of the IHA, and therefore the UN itself, and there was no possible way the pirate attack could have been predicted . . . but the fact remained that she had been in charge of an operation on which numerous people had died. Somebody would be held accountable, and in all probability it would be Nina herself.

What would happen next? She wasn’t sure. Despite having been a part of the IHA since its founding almost three years earlier, this would be her first time at the focal point of an investigation. She had faced senior officials before, but they had been debriefings following operations with a successful conclusion: not the least of which was saving New York, and the UN itself, from nuclear destruction.

This time, though, the conclusion had been anything but successful.

She took an elevator up through the glass and steel slab of the Secretariat Building to the IHA’s offices, her gloom weighing more heavily upon her with each passing floor. The moment she stepped out of the lift, it became clear the feeling was justified.

‘What’s going on?’ she asked as she hurried through the security doors into the IHA’s reception area, seeing the staff milling about in mixed states of confusion or anger.

‘Dr Wilde!’ said Lola Gianetti, leaving the reception desk to meet her. ‘Oh, thank God you’re back. I heard what happened - we all did. It’s terrible!’

‘I know, I know. But what’s all this?’ People were congregating outside the secure server room, one man repeatedly banging on the door.

‘The server’s gone down,’ Lola told her. ‘People have lost everything. ’

‘So why don’t they use the backups?’

‘No, I mean, they’ve lost everything,’ Lola clarified ominously, leading Nina through the throng. ‘Jerry and Al are in there trying to fix it.’

‘Wait, they’re both in?’ That definitely meant something bad had happened; the IHA’s lead computer technicians normally worked different shifts.

‘Yeah, Al’s been there all night, and he called Jerry in at about five a.m. Come on, coming through, move it!’

People peppered Nina with questions as she reached the door. ‘Whoa, okay, hold it!’ she said, raising her hands. ‘I only just got here, and I probably know less about what’s going on than you do. Everybody go back to your offices, have a coffee or whatever, and as soon as I know what’s happening I’ll let you know. Whatever it is, it’s not going to be solved by standing in reception re-enacting the storming of the Bastille.’

‘Nina, I’ve lost the entire Egyptian database!’ protested the door-banger, a historian called Logan Berkeley. ‘That’s over half a terabyte of material, and they’re saying it’s completely gone!’

‘It’s not completely gone,’ Nina insisted. ‘Even if we lose the servers, and even if