She chose the sofa. It creaked as she sat down, then again when she leaned forward to take the coffee from Giles, then again when she leaned back, and she decided in future to maybe stick to the Aeron in front of his desk. “You’ve done well out of this one,” she said, genuinely impressed at Giles’ ability to turn any victory, no matter how pyrrhic, into a promotion.
“I had some help,” he said, raising his coffee to her as he sat down. “And now I need it again.”
Bridge sipped her coffee, waiting. She had no idea what this was about, and knew better than to jabber to fill the silence.
Giles placed his coffee down and picked up a file on his desk. “First, congratulations, you’re now indefinite OIT. Everything finally ticked and approved.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Indefinite, not permanent?”
“Nobody’s permanent,” Giles shrugged. “You know how quickly things change.”
Bridge said nothing.
“I was in a meeting yesterday at Number Ten, whole lot of generals and the like. Terry Cavendish was there, too.” Bridge groaned at the mention of his name, but Giles held up a hand before she could speak. “And in his defence, he put his weight behind a suggestion from the MoD that I think you could help me with.”
Bridge remained sceptical. “If you try to put me on his staff, I’ll be out that door before you can open my resignation envelope.”
“Good heavens, no,” said Giles. “They’ve asked me to draft a proposal for a new task force. Cross-departmental, collaborative, relatively high-autonomy. One of the conclusions of the Exphoria business is that we’re all rather too compartmentalised. If us, Five, GCHQ, and the MoD had all spoken to one another and shared information more consistently, it might never have got out of hand. And you, I might add, wouldn’t have been placed in harm’s way.”
“I’m touched by your concern,” she said sarcastically, “but what do you need my help for? Do you want me to research potential operatives?”
Giles laughed softly. “Bridge, I want you to be one of the operatives. In fact, I rather think you should lead it. And yes, that will mean helping to figure out who else we should recruit.”
She fought not to show reaction in her expression, as a multitude of emotions collided inside her. Mostly there was surprise, but also pride, and even a certain amount of optimism. “Definitely worth giving it a try,” she said, deliberately understated. “Count me in.”
“Don’t get too excited,” said Giles, half-smiling. “It’s only draft stage, no guarantees. There’s a whole circus of flaming hoops to jump through for approval, not to mention trying to scrape together funding from somewhere. But what do you think?”
Bridge looked around at Giles’ palatial new office and thought the funding part wouldn’t be a problem.
After dinner, she logged into the chat server at Telehouse and purged the entire machine, running a seven-pass overwrite to ensure nothing could possibly be retrieved from the hard drive. When it finished two hours later she installed a basic NT profile, infected it with a weak trojan, then deleted the admin login and cleaned all trace of it from her own computer.
Bridge made a cup of tea, took the laptop to her bedroom, and unmuted the Tenebrae_Z memorial thread.
About the Author
ANTONY JOHNSTON is the creator of Atomic Blonde, the multimillion-dollar blockbuster starring Charlize Theron and James McAvoy, which was adapted from his graphic spy thriller The Coldest City. He is an award-winning, New York Times bestselling graphic novelist, author, screenwriter, and games writer, with more than fifty published titles. He lives in England.
THE EXPHORIA CODE
Pegasus Crime is an imprint of
Pegasus Books, Ltd.
148 West 37th Street, 13th Floor
New York, NY 10018
Copyright 2020 © by Antony Johnston
Lyrics from “Scars Flown Proud” by Faith and the Muse © Monica Richards/Elyrian Music
Lyrics from “Abandoned” by Straylight © Antony Johnston
All lyrics used with permission.
First Pegasus Books hardcover edition October 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review in a newspaper, magazine, or electronic publication; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without written permission from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-64313-527-4
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-64313-528-1
Author photo by Chad Michael Ward
Jacket design by Faceout Studio, Spencer Fuller
Jacket art by Shutterstock
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
www.pegasusbooks.com
