“Well?” she said to the empty elevator car. As if in response, the doors closed, and with a quiet whir she began her ascent.
A minute later, the elevator opened silently, revealing a wide room floored in marble. Enda approached the raised desk where a trendy, androgynous personal assistant sat, busily at work. They looked up at the sound of Enda’s running shoes squeaking against the tiles, and considered her with dark eyes almost black beneath thick eyebrows. Their hair was buzzcut, nose pierced with a fine ring of white gold, white shirt buttoned to the throat with a squared collar ornately embroidered in white thread. Enda couldn’t make out the design, could just see that something was marked there.
“Enda Hyldahl.”
The assistant nodded toward a set of doors on the right. “Mr. Yeun is expecting you.” If they were surprised at Mohamed’s absence, they didn’t betray it.
Enda proceeded through the doors, the twin slabs of darkly stained hardwood swinging open before she had a chance to touch the handles. Light spilled through the opening, glare temporarily blinding Enda. A dark island rose from the sea of glare to become a man sitting straight-backed at a wide wooden desk. He stood and crossed the length of the office, his leather shoes clacking sharply. He was Korean, late thirties, clean-shaven, hair neatly cut but rumpled by frequent use of a VR eyemask. He wore a suit, expensive but not flashy, and a fine white shirt, open at the collar. He reached his hand out to Enda and bowed slightly. She shook it.
“Annyeong haseyo,” he said.
“You’re American.”
He bowed again, lips pressed in a neat grin. “You have a good ear, Ms. Hyldahl. Due to my heritage the board entrusted me with the affairs of the city. In truth I had never stepped foot inside Korea before the promotion.”
“Who better to subjugate the culture,” Enda said.
“If you really disapproved, we would be speaking Korean.” He turned aside and motioned toward his desk. “Please, take a seat.”
He crossed the overly large office and stood behind his desk. Enda followed, but when she reached the chair opposite, she leaned against its back and stared past Yeun. Her face hovered over the sprawling city in the glass of the window. The light-filled office faced the sea, offering a view over countless office and apartment blocks to the shorefront, where the sprawl of warehouses dropped off at the edge of the man-made landmass. Beyond that, bruise-colored water stretched as far as she could see, waves choppy beneath a heavy bank of clouds. More rain coming.
Yeun looked from Enda to the seat, and tipped his head to one side. “Are you sure you don’t wish to sit?”
“I don’t plan to be here long.”
Yeun clasped his hands neatly across his front. “I humbly apologize for the manner in which I approached you,” he said, smile still tugging at the corners of his mouth. Despite his formal words and steady tone, he wasn’t sorry. He was a shark in a suit. “In the past, Kim Yong-seok has spoken highly of your expertise and discretion.”
“I assume Kim told you how to contact me. An email address, a phone number. End-to-end encryption. If you valued my discretion you wouldn’t have compromised it.”
“I apologize, but in this matter, time is of the essence. It is for this reason that I approached you on the street.”
“Like I told your lackey, I’m not taking new clients,” Enda said. “He’ll be fine, by the way.”
“Mohamed is a most loyal employee. I assure you, he has been through worse for the company. I take it you’re sensitive about your old life?”
“There is no old life; I buried it.”
“I’ll admit I had to dig deeply to find it, but nothing ever stays truly buried.”
“Tell that to the last person I killed.” Enda said the words cold, her blue eyes set on David’s.
Yeun didn’t blink. Enda was nearly impressed.
“Some data was stolen from the home of one of Zero’s cofounders,” David said.
“You mean Zero Lee,” Enda guessed. There were two founders, and only Lee was renowned for his coding ability.
David nodded. “It’s a piece of software that never should have left our secure labs, but as one of the founders, Mr. Lee had certain privileges.”
“Had?”
Yeun frowned, so slightly that anyone else might have missed it. “We received word overnight. Mr. Lee has passed. I must ask you to keep this to yourself until we’ve had a chance to make an official statement and reassure our stakeholders.”
“Glad I don’t have shares,” Enda said, deadpan.
Yeun ignored the comment. “I—we—need someone to retrieve the data before it can be sold to one of our competitors.”
“Why not wait for the police to finish their investigation?”
“They earn too little to be trustworthy. If they managed to retrieve the data, we have no guarantee they wouldn’t sell it to the competition.”
“Who has it?”
“Police are blaming yesterday’s shooting on an anarchist fringe group with ties to a spiritual teacher. After analyzing the evidence, Mohamed believes they were involved in the robbery.”
“More than a smug face, is he?”
“He might not have your experience, but Mohamed has proven himself a capable investigator.”
“Media called the shooting a terrorist incident.”
“If everything is political then all violence is terrorism,” Yeun said, smile tugging at his lips again.
Enda rolled her eyes.
“I need you to retrieve the data, by any means necessary,” Yeun said. “For this you will be paid one million euro, plus expenses.”
Enda nodded. She crossed her arms over her chest and dragged out the silence until the massive office filled with tension. Finally, she said, “I won’t do it.”
David’s facade cracked, and his brow furrowed in confusion. “You won’t?”
Enda smiled. “I’ve heard your pitch, and my answer is no.”
“I thought Mohamed made my position clear.”
“If you’re trying to blackmail me, you should just say so.”
David’s mouth opened and closed, and he blinked rapidly. Enda smiled.
David sighed. “I didn’t want to do this.” He flicked a hand through
