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7

Singha Pitiya, Sri Lanka, 10 December

And of course he had lied. He had always intended to lie.

War was now beside his pool, an enormous rip in the earth the shape of a Mickey Mouse head filled with crystal clear water. It was one of War's little jokes – he liked jokes, the more puerile the better.

It was hot, very hot. An hour earlier, the mercury had hit 40 degrees and it was humid. War looked like a beached walrus on the lounger; his gut, a dead-ringer for Brunelleschi's Dome, had been smothered in suntan oil. By his side on a low table stood his favourite drink, a mint julep made from 60-year-old Kentucky bourbon.

War was the richest of the Four Horsemen. He controlled vast swaths of the global media network and had invested heavily in arms, drugs, pornography and high-tech innovation. He knew the other Horsemen loathed him and he loathed them back, in spades. But he had to admit that together they made a killer team. In the relatively short time they had known each other, the four men had earned in the region of 10 billion dollars and that had required very little effort on their part. It was merely a question of playing the right sector of the market here, manipulating a corrupt African government there. They had each embraced each other's strengths and although they all hated one another, the numbers spoke for themselves.

Because of this, none of the Horsemen wanted to destroy the four-way relationship. They understood instinctively that their rapid success was down to the symbiosis between them. For together they controlled all the key areas of human society – finance, politics, the media, communications and energy. It was this, combined with their phenomenal wealth, that made them unassailable, a law unto themselves. Or so they had begun to believe.

War had rested his iPad on the slope of his hairy, oiled belly. The screen lit up as a call came in. War could see a figure seated at a table. He was wearing a hat, sunglasses and a scarf covering the lower half of his face.

‘Good morning,' War said and then giggled. ‘My, my, we are a proper terrorist, aren't we?'

The man said nothing.

‘Sorry, yes, of course you are.' War let out an irritating little burst of laughter. ‘And it is quite proper you should disguise yourself . . . Hah!' He convulsed again.

‘You wished me to call at this time,' the man said. War could just see a few wisps of curly hair protruding from beneath his woollen hat.

‘Yes, indeed I did.' War finally controlled himself. ‘I assume everything is ready.'

‘It is,' the man said. ‘I informed your colleague of this the day before yesterday. I've been working under the assumption that this was discussed at your meeting in New York.'

War looked genuinely surprised the man knew of such details. He smiled, lifted his cocktail glass and drained it. Clicking his fingers, two young men – super-fit, sporting sixpacks and tight speedos – ran forwards. One took the empty glass, the other placed a fresh cocktail on the table. As one of the young servants bent down with the drink, War made an obscene groaning sound in the back of his throat.

‘Apologies,' he said to the man on the phone. ‘So many distractions.' Then War seemed to gather his thoughts. ‘I wanted you to call because I have a little extra work for you.'

‘Please elaborate.'

‘Well,' War responded, ‘my three friends and I are of one mind. We're closer than brothers, you understand. But we each cherish efficiency and I have concluded that your brief mission could be, well, let us say . . . extended.'

‘Extended?'

‘Yes, you see, while you're there I want you to eliminate E-Force.'

8

Rome, one year ago

War's Italian home,
Il Circo
, stood above Rome amid three acres of cypress and olive trees with a panoramic vista of the Eternal City below. It was a house once owned by a minor member of the Borgia family and War liked to think of himself as continuing what he considered to be their estimable tradition.

Il Circo
was one of his follies. He had several dotted around the globe – each themed, each possessing their own charm. His Roman abode was particularly important to him because it was also the home of his half-niece and half-nephew, the twins Lucrezia and Cesare.

War had given them these names when he had become their guardian. It pleased him – made him giggle. And although he was proud of the fact he possessed no feelings of love or affection for anyone, the twins came closest to people he cared about. This was partly because, although they were only distant relatives, they shared a personality that was not so different from his own. And once given the names of two of the most notorious corrupt individuals in history – Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia, children of one of the worst-ever popes, Alexander VI – the youngsters relished the idea of living up to these eponymous villains.

He had become their guardian 12 years ago. Just after their tenth birthday, their parents had died in an avalanche on a skiing holiday. War had met them before then, of course, and had been struck by their personalities, even when they were very young. After he had been their guardian for a year, Lucrezia had offered herself to him. He had quickly learned what stimulated the children and, to his delight, it was things abhorrent to most ‘normal' people but close to his own heart. They liked to kill. They liked to make people suffer. They were utterly devoid of any form of accepted morality.

War exploited these facts, knowing the children would be useful to him one day. He had them trained by the best. They quickly learned how to defend themselves, how to kill in a dozen different, highly imaginative ways and to lust the same things he lusted after – money and power.

War was in his private office at the top of the vast house when the news reached him. It came in the form of an encrypted phone call from one of the other Four Horsemen, Pestilence.

‘It's over,' Pestilence said.

‘You're shitting me.'

‘No, I'm not, War. It's over.'

War glanced at a TV in the corner of the office. It showed huge, blurry outlines of E-Force's Big Mac perched outside the California Conference Center in Downtown Los Angeles, emergency crews helping the last of the survivors of a terror attack into waiting ambulances.

A news reporter was standing at a safe distance from the enormous gutted building. ‘Latest reports indicate,' she began, ‘that this has been a terrorist attack and that all of those responsible have perished in the CCC . . .'

War closed his eyes. When he opened them again the scene on the TV had changed. It showed the faces of the E-Force members who had been caught on camera during the rescue. Their first rescue as a team.

Without another word, War hung up the phone.

Out in the hall, the stone floor rang to the sound of his heels. He could hear animalistic noises coming from along a corridor. On any other day he would have chuckled at the sound. But right now, he was in such a foam he could focus on nothing but his own anger and frustration. He threw himself onto a leather chaise longue and rang for a servant.

Two minutes later, War had just dismissed one of the 10 boys who served the household when he saw Lucrezia emerge from the passageway at the far end of the hall. She was wearing a diaphanous robe that had been ripped apart, exposing her small breasts. There was blood on the fabric. Her makeup had smeared and she had a hungry look in her eyes.

‘Uncle,' she exclaimed and ran over.

She stank of sex and War inhaled the odours deeply. ‘My beauty,' he said. ‘You could make a eunuch come to life.'

Lucrezia giggled and turned as her brother strode in, naked.

‘You look sad, Uncle,' Cesare said as he leaned down to kiss the old man's cheek.

‘It's nothing.'

‘Come now, we've just seen the news on TV.'

‘I'm not “sad”, Cesare,' War snapped. ‘I'm fucking furious.' His voice rose 20 decibels on the final word and he wobbled to his feet a little unsteadily, catching the back of the chaise longue as he rose.

The two siblings stepped back watching their uncle warily, like tigers ready to pounce if threatened further.

Then Lucrezia stepped forwards and stroked a finger down her uncle's enormous arm, from shoulder to elbow. ‘Remember . . . revenge is a dish best served cold.'

War looked at the young woman's face, his own expression unreadable. Then suddenly he giggled. It was a sound the twins were familiar with. War leaned forwards and pressed his lips against his niece's before slipping his tongue between her teeth. She returned the urgency of his kiss.

‘And I shall exact a revenge that will be served up very nicely,' he said, pulling away. ‘Would you help me?' War glared at the young woman with the full force of his crushing personality before turning to his nephew. ‘Cesare?'

‘We would consider it an honour, uncle,' the young man replied flashing his sister a proud look. ‘Do you agree, sister?'

Lucrezia grinned at the two men. ‘When do we start?'

9

Souk District, Dubai, present day, 11 December

Abu Al-Rashid considered his eleventh birthday the best . . . ever. This was not because of the party his parents had organised, which had actually been really dull – the living-room filled with old uncles and smelly aunts. It was because his favourite uncle, Jahib, had given him an ancient, barely functioning laptop.

Abu was a natural with computers. He had learned to program machines when he was six and would have had a computer of his own long ago but for two things. First, his parents were struggling to put food on the table and second, his father, Heydar, hated the very notion of his only son messing around with what he called ‘machines of the devil'.

Abu had begun to despair but on the afternoon of his birthday, his uncle Jahib had turned up with a strange parcel and when Abu's father was not paying attention, Jahib had taken the boy to one side.

‘I have a special gift for you,' the man had said. ‘I've been watching you, Abu. You are a very clever boy. You love computers, don't you?'

The boy nodded.

‘Your father is a fine man, a good brother to me. But he is wrong about the modern world. We should embrace technology, not reject it.' He handed Abu the parcel. ‘Open it.'

Abu tore the paper away with impatient fingers and gasped when he saw what was inside. ‘Uncle!'

Jahib beamed and put a finger to his lips. ‘Ssh . . .' he said. ‘It is old and may not work for long, but I know that you will make something of it. But . . .' And he drew close to his nephew. ‘Abu, take care. Don't let your father see it. Keep it our little secret, yes?'

Abu looked doubtful. He loved his parents and for all the man's failings, admired his father. He did not want to lie.

Seeing the boy's face, Jahib added, ‘There are times when we have to be economical with the truth, Abu. For the good of all. This is one of those times. What your father does not know will not hurt him.'

After that there was no stopping the youngster. Two hours after the uncles and aunts had departed, he had the laptop working better than it had done for at least three years and he had got the thing online by hacking into a neighbour's broadband connection. He knew this was not the most moral thing to do but he also believed there was no harm in it. He was friendly with the family next door and had long been envious of the fact that they not only had a computer but that they used about 10 per cent of their broadband capacity. It wouldn't cost them a dirham.

Abu was in his tiny room at the top of the ramshackle two-storey apartment above his father's carpet shop. It was a mild night coming into winter, which in Dubai meant the temperature would normally be in the high twenties during the day. But the nights could be cold, with a chill wind coming in from the desert.

The room was lit with a single low-wattage lamp on Abu's desk. He had his school books piled to one side; on the other stood a glass of water and the remnants of some date cake from his party. The laptop took pride of place on his desk. He stared at the screen in wonderment.

‘This is just sooo cool,' he thought to himself.

He ran his fingertips over the worn keys. One of them was missing – the ‘F'. But that was okay, he could make it work by touching the little pad that lay beneath where the key should have been. With a flick of the mouse, Abu had Google up on the screen.

The boy loved computers but not just for their own sake. He loved them for what they could do, for what he could do with them. For, one day – he had been telling himself for as long as he could remember – one day he would be a whizz of cyberspace just like his ultimate hero, Tom Erickson of E-Force.

In fact, Abu, empowered now beyond his wildest dreams, announced to the room, ‘One day I
will
be a member of E-Force.'

10

Sky Mall, Floor 198, Cloud Tower, Dubai, 12 December, 7.50 am

Jessica Frantelli never ceased to be amazed by the Cloud Tower. She had been in Dubai for three weeks now, the latest stop on her around-the-world trip and for two of those three weeks she had turned up each morning for work at the Tower.

This morning started out no differently. The bus taking her from the youth hostel in Al Manara followed the Sheikh Zayed freeway for 10 kilometres before turning southeast into Muscat Street and there, dead ahead, stood the tallest building in the world.

Jessica recalled the data on the tower she had read in the guidebook the day she arrived, information she had excitedly passed on in an email to her two older sisters back home in Montgomery, Alabama. The Cloud Tower had been completed only five weeks before her arrival in Dubai and was 188 metres taller than the famous Burj Tower finished in 2010. It was the first building in the world to top a height of 1 kilometre and it had 202 floors. The top eight floors (storeys 195–202) made up the Sky Mall, the world's highest galleria with hundreds of retail outlets. At a construction cost of over 4 billion euros, the Cloud Tower was almost never finished because the GFC had hit partway through its construction. An international consortium of investors had saved it.

But none of these stats altered the sheer wonder of seeing the Cloud Tower as it rose up from the desert city like a needle. Behind it stretched a backdrop of pure blue, cloudless sky. The metal struts running its entire height caught the brilliant sunlight of early morning, making the whole thing shimmer. It reminded Jessica of old films of the
Saturn V
rocket as it had stood on the launch pad at Cape Kennedy. The Cloud Tower, though, was 10 times bigger than the
Saturn V
.

Jessica loved Dubai, but she was looking forwards to beginning the next leg of her journey. For two weeks, she had been working on the nail counter in Saks Department Store on Floor 198 and it was beginning to get her down. She planned to be out of there within seven days with enough money saved to get her to Mumbai, the next stop on her itinerary. The pain of her former life still gnawed at her – the sense of failure she could not shake, the cloying feeling that she had let everyone down. But she shrugged off depressing memories, exited the bus and strode towards the tower.

The best part of the working day was the last stage of the journey when she stood at the foot of the colossal building and stared up, shading her eyes from the blazing sun with her hand. Once inside and in the high-speed elevator, the day went into sharp decline.

The other girls on the counter were okay, but the manageress, Aneesa – whose name Jessica had learned on her first day meant ‘friend' – was perhaps the worst-named woman in history. She had hated Jessica from the minute the young American had arrived for work. Initially, Jessica had tried to let the woman's animosity flow over her and put it down to the fact that Aneesa was having a bad week. But after a few days she realised the manageress was simply consumed with jealousy over the girl's freedom and youth.

Arriving at the side door to the department store on 197, Jessica wove her way through a labyrinth of corridors and then up the service elevator one more floor to the counter on 198. At 8.03 am, the store was still empty except for the staff arranging things for the early morning rush. Pulling on her frumpy apricot-coloured gown over her long skirt and sensible top, Jessica paced across the shop floor and arrived at her station just as Aneesa came out of the staff rest area to do her morning inspection.

The doors were opened at precisely 8.30 and the first cus- tomers began to arrive. Within 2 minutes, Jessica found herself arranging the fat fingers of a wealthy-looking Arab woman on the little glass-topped table between them. The woman was very overweight. Her chins wobbled above a collection of thick gold necklaces and her fingers were swamped with vulgar rings. Thanks to her heavy gold bangles, her wrists clattered and she stank of Chanel No.5, a perfume Jessica had always detested. The woman had not once made eye contact with her.

For the first 5 minutes of the manicure, Jessica tried in vain to make small talk. She'd been told this was expected of her and the girls had all been schooled in the right and wrong things to say. But the woman wasn't interested. Still not meeting Jessica's eyes, she merely grunted an occasional incoherent response.

A couple arrived at the shop counter. Dressed in matching beige and sensible footwear, the woman was organising her husband.

‘Frank, go get some souvenirs for the boys . . . Yes, at that shop we saw on the floor below this one.'

The husband, about 60, with thinning grey hair and a kindly face, nodded. ‘All right,' he said with a broad Australian accent. ‘I'll be back for you in half an hour, darl' . . .'

He turned to leave as his wife, a well-upholstered woman with flaming red hair and flamboyant scarlet lipstick, followed an assistant over to the counter next to Jessica's. The woman settled herself into her chair.

‘He's a sweetheart,' she said. ‘But off the golf course, he doesn't know what to do with himself.' The Australian woman let out a sigh and beamed at Jessica, then at Jessica's customer who seemed to not understand a word the tourist had said.

‘Heard your accent,' the Australian women went on. ‘American, right?'

‘Yes,' Jessica said quietly. She wasn't supposed to be talking to other customers while she worked.

‘Name's Carmen,' the woman said. ‘Brisbane, Australia. Can't get used to this dry desert heat . . .'

‘Ow!' the Arab woman exclaimed suddenly.

Jessica recoiled, pulling away the narrow metal probe she had been gently using on the sides of the woman's nails to clear away remnants of old varnish.

‘What are you doing? You stupid girl!'

‘I'm sorry . . .' Jessica began.

‘You stuck that thing in my finger!'

‘I don't think I did . . .' Jessica regretted arguing the moment the words left her mouth.

‘You what? You . . . Get me the manageress.'

‘What's happened?' Carmen asked, looking concerned.

‘This stupid . . .' the woman began.

Jessica stared at the Australian woman, her face turning red. ‘I don't think I . . .' Her voice was shaky.

Carmen turned to Jessica's customer and was about to say something when Aneesa arrived. The manageress stood close to the woman and spoke Arabic. The customer started to gesticulate, waving the hand Jessica had been manicuring in front of the young American's face. The finger in question was clearly undamaged.

‘This is most regrettable,' Aneesa said.

‘But I didn't –'

‘Stop saying you didn't do anything, you wretched –' the customer hissed as she lifted her bulk from her chair and leaned in towards Jessica, her hand raised ready to slap her.

‘Hey! You stop that, right now,' Carmen interjected and she put her own hand out to block the woman, exclaiming loudly as their fingers collided in mid-air.

At that moment, Frank appeared at his wife's side. ‘What the devil's happenin', Carmen, love?' he said, his face filled with concern. He turned from his wife to the Arab woman to Aneesa and then finally to Jessica, who was now on the verge of tears.

Carmen stood up and strode around to the next counter to stop a few inches from Aneesa's face. ‘This kid did nothing wrong,' she said, hands on hips. ‘I don't know what game she's playing.' She flicked an angry glance at Jessica's customer. ‘But she's making a bloody great fuss about nothin'.'

‘I beg your pardon?' the Arab woman protested.

‘Please,' Aneesa interrupted placing a gentle hand on the customer's shoulder. ‘This lady is one of my regulars. She wouldn't lie.'

‘But I didn't,' Jessica said unwisely.

Aneesa whirled on her. ‘Yes, you did! You must have done something. You're fired. Get out!'

Jessica burst into tears.

‘Oh there, dear,' Carmen exclaimed and came around the counter. The Australian woman glared at the other two. ‘Was that really necessary?' she said looking straight into Aneesa's eyes.

‘Madam, this girl –'

‘I have a name,' Jessica suddenly exploded, weeks of suppressed anger bursting to the surface.

Aneesa's face was a study in surprise as the American girl pulled off her repulsive apricot apron and flung it at the manageress.

Carmen took the girl's arm. ‘You come with us, dear,' she said and glanced over to see Frank's stunned expression. ‘Let's get you a nice drink. You look parched in this bloody heat.'

A few minutes later, Jessica was sitting next to Carmen and across from Frank at a café on the east side of Floor 198. She was beginning to take in what had happened.

‘Horrible woman,' Carmen was saying. Frank gave Jessica a sympathetic look.

The drinks arrived and Jessica turned to Carmen. ‘Thank you for sticking up for me back there but really, you needn't have . . .'

‘Nonsense, dear. Some people think they can exploit young girls like you. Well –'

They all heard the strange noise at the same moment. It seemed to be coming from outside the Tower. For a second, it sounded like the rumbling of a low-flying jet but then it sharpened in pitch.

The table started to vibrate. A cup smashed to the floor on the other side of the restaurant. Jessica turned from Carmen to Frank with sudden panic in her eyes.