said. “Otherwise you’ll just wear yourself out.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Nobody’s ever seen anything like it. Franklin Kwok wanted to be top dog at any marina he visited, anywhere. So he built himself forty-eight feet of the baddest long-range oceangoing speedboat in the world. Twin turbocharged diesels, eighteen hundred horsepower. Range is six hundred miles at cruising speed, which is fifty-five miles per hour. It’ll hit ninety wide open, but the ride gets a little rough over fifty or so.”
Arielle said, “Will I be able to use the laptop?”
“There’s a forward cabin. It’s small, but it’ll work. And the boat is stable. I suggest we cruise out to the entrance of the bay. That’ll give you a chance to look at those files. Then we’ll find a quiet place to anchor and we can talk it over.”
“Good,” she said. “Let’s go.”
They climbed in near the stern, then crossed a short deck to the cockpit. At the front of the cockpit, beneath the steeply raked windscreen, was a broad console with a set of control wheels. Two thickly padded chairs, each with a harness and lap belt, sat at the wheels. At the back of the cockpit were four more padded chairs, also with belts and harnesses.
Arielle and Stickney went through a hatch that opened onto the cabin. It was minimal: a small table, a small galley, an even smaller head. Upholstered benches, just wide enough for sleeping, ran along both sides.
Arielle and Stickney sat at the table, with the laptop open in front of them.
In the cockpit, Mendonza studied the console and found the switch that powered up the panel. A status screen appeared, and beside that a navigation screen. More switches powered up more screens. Radar. Forward-looking infrared. Favor cast off the lines from the bow and stern, and Mendonza punched a button that brought the diesels to life. Even at idle, they thrummed with an ominous power. Favor took the second seat up front as Mendonza backed the boat out of the slip and steered it slowly beside the high breakwater, then out the narrow opening and into the bay. Mendonza gently advanced the throttles. The engines answered at once, rising to an easy lope that was enough to lift the nose and send the boat surging over the water. Just like that, their connection with the land was severed. Favor looked back and watched the lights of the waterfront receding. They were leaving behind Manila and its complications, flying free, untouchable now.
Glass crunched beneath his feet as Ilya Andropov stepped through the empty doorframe at the Optimo headquarters. Behind him came Magdalena Villegas, carefully picking her way through the shards until she stood with Andropov in the office.
“They came in here for a reason,” Andropov said. ”Look around—look good. See if anything is missing. Tell me what’s out of place. Something isn’t the way it was when you left this evening.”
He watched her as she went around the room, checking desks and file cabinets.
After a couple of minutes, Markov came up the stairs. He was holding the device that had been built by Winston Stickney, the pipe and battery and timer.
He said, “This was in one of the vents. Looks like a smoke generator.” He handed it to Andropov.
“This is pro work,” Andropov said, examining it. “Not just the device. All of it.”
“Who are these people?” Markov said. ”And why do they have a hard-on against us?”
“I don’t know.” Andropov said. ”But we’ll get some answers when we see what Totoy has scooped up.”
“So you’ve heard from him?” Markov said.
“No. Haven’t you?”
“He doesn’t answer. I left a message.”
Andropov walked into Magda’s office and found her standing beside her desk. Except for the smashed door, nothing in the room seemed to have been disturbed.
“What did they take?” he said. “What was done here?”
“Nothing.”
“They came in here for a reason. Something happened. What was taken?”
“I keep nothing important here,” she said. “If it matters, it goes into the system. You know that.”
He needed a couple of seconds to realize what this must mean.
“Son of a bitch,” he said. He began to shout: “Markov, the network! They got the fucking network!”
He strode out in a hurry and almost ran into Markov, who was holding out a cell phone.
“It’s Totoy,” Markov said. ”You won’t like this.”
Manila Bay was almost thirty miles across, measured from the city’s waterfront to the entrance of the South China Sea. The speedboat could have covered the distance in well under twenty minutes, but the bay