Izzy glared one final time at Bridge in silence, then turned away with her children in tow. “Don’t worry, Steph, we’re going home now. Karen, can you do the honours?”
“Yeah, that’s sobered me right up, that has. Taxi!” Karen raised a hand, and within seconds a cab pulled to the side of the road. They always asked Karen to hail taxis, as she seemed to have a preternatural ability to summon them out of thin air. After the cab stopped, Karen helped Izzy and the children inside, then held the door open for Julia, who climbed in after them. “Night,” she said, as the taxi pulled away, then turned to Bridge and shook her head like a disappointed schoolteacher. “She’s just stressed, you know? One kid’s hard enough, but can you imagine two?”
“Karen, you know even less about kids than I do. Besides, she’s not stressed about them. I’m just an idiot.”
The older woman put her arm around Bridge’s shoulder and rubbed it affectionately. “One day, I swear. One day, we’ll manage a night out without you two going at it.” Karen hailed another cab and held the door open for her.
Bridge shook her head. “I’ll walk.”
“To Finchley? Are you mad?”
“It’s only about five miles. I’ve done it before.”
Karen sighed. “I’ll bet you bloody have, as well. Just be careful, OK? We do all love you, you know.” She gave Bridge a final hug and climbed into the cab.
Funny way of showing it sometimes, she thought as she walked north. Then again, sibling arguments like that probably didn’t make it easy. And the night hadn’t been a complete loss. She’d got to see her niece and nephew, who always made her smile, and it had all helped her make a decision about Zurich. She’d tell Giles in the morning.
11
“Giles, you can’t send him in alone. He’s just a doorkicker.”
“He’s not applying to work there, Bridge. All he has to do is get inside and plug in a USB stick.”
“And get out again.”
“Sure, if you like.”
“But Adrian doesn’t know a rack server from a stereo, let alone anything about POSIX threads. What if they question him? They’re not going to let him just walk in there.”
“He may not be an honours girl like you, but give the man some credit. We’re briefing him on what to look for, which internal server to infect, everything you laid out in the advisory. And our local source has given us detailed location plans, including a secret infil method. Radović shouldn’t need to talk to anyone on the way in or out.”
“Assuming nothing’s changed since we smuggled our source out of there.”
“Then he’ll have to improvise. Anyway, he’s going in with Serbian cover, and we’re false-flagging the whole op in case he gets blown. This is not Adrian’s first rodeo, as our American friends would say.”
“Send me in with him.”
“There’s no need, and besides, you’re not yet OIT.”
“So promote me. My scores from the Loch are good, and I know you’ve discussed it with Hard Man. He told me.”
“Yes, because you’ve made it perfectly clear you want in the field.”
“And this is an ideal job to start me on. Adrian can do what he does best, hitting the enemy and kicking doors. I’ll just be there to make sure he kicks the right ones.”
“Have you ever been to Syria?”
“You know damn well I haven’t. But you said yourself, infil should be clandestine, no need for contact.”
“Quoting a man’s own words back at him is no way to endear oneself.”
“We get one shot at this facility, one shot at these servers. As soon as Moscow realises we’ve targeted them, they’ll pull out. Our only chance is to infect them before that happens.”
“You’ll need to be placed on the firearms list. And Hard Man will have to formally sign off on you. Don’t make me regret this, Bridge.”
“Je ne regrette rien, Giles. You should know that.”
12
Thirty minutes into her workout, the kick bag almost smacked her in the face when she suddenly realised she’d forgotten to chat to Tenebrae_Z last night.
Fortunately, Bridge’s instincts kicked in and she reacted in time. She swung back on her root leg, pivoted to deliver a roundhouse that sunk into the bag’s padding, and followed up with two jabs and a body blow. Then she caught and steadied the bag with her hands, before wiping her face with a sweat towel.
How could she forget? Because of Izzy, and their stupid bloody argument. Bridge had spent the long walk home obsessing about her sister, her life, her job, and generally feeling sorry for herself. When she reached her flat it was gone one in the morning. She’d thrown her clothes on the floor, climbed into bed, and pulled the covers over her head without even bothering to set Radio 3 going on iPlayer. She did that most nights to help her sleep, but last night she hadn’t needed it — the last thing she remembered was closing her eyes, swearing quietly at her sister, and clenching her jaw to stop herself crying.
Now she’d have to wait till this evening to find out what happened with Ten at his mysterious meeting, and how on earth he’d cracked the ASCII puzzle. They’d speculated on lots of things together, and one of Bridge’s discoveries had been a strange pattern in the few postings she’d seen — the last characters in every image were always an asterisk followed by a sequence of numbers with the letters A and D inserted towards the end, like “*0 6 188 D16A”. No matter the image, there were the numbers, always different but always with that A/D. Bridge and Ten had scratched their heads over it, trying to figure if it was some kind of artist signature,
