The Persona Protocol - By Andy McDermott Page 0,53

out, and get in his face about it. Really gloat, maybe even drop a hint that he was cheating.’

‘Which he will be, of course,’ said Holly Jo. ‘Every edge we can give Adam, he’ll have.’

‘Even Zykov won’t be dumb enough to do anything in the casino itself – there are cameras covering every square inch, and probably a couple hundred security guards. If he gets arrested, he won’t be able to complete the deal with al-Rais. But if we can get him outside the casino . . .’

‘That gives us freer rein to operate,’ finished Morgan, nodding. ‘What are you thinking?’

Tony took over the explanation once more. ‘The Imperial is brand new; it only opened this year. It’s in a part of Macau called Cotai, which is reclaimed land between two of the other islands. The whole area is still being developed – right now, some parts of it are actually empty. Our thinking is that if we can get Zykov riled enough to follow Adam out of the casino to somewhere with nobody around, we can catch him there.’

‘How?’ asked Morgan.

‘We can’t just mug him, like we did with Syed,’ said Baxter. ‘We have to deal with his bodyguards at the same time. We’ve got to take them all out simultaneously.’

Bianca was shocked. ‘Wait, you mean – kill them?’

‘That’d be kind of a giveaway to Zykov that something untoward was going on,’ Kiddrick sniped. ‘Of course not.’

‘He means knock them out,’ Tony assured her. ‘There are various fast-acting drugs we can use. It means setting things up very carefully – we can’t just shoot tranquilliser darts at them. But if we play things right, Zykov will have to follow Adam from the casino in a cab. And we can make sure he gets into one of ours. Billy,’ he glanced at the team’s technician, a skinny, taciturn young man who was typing on a laptop with intense concentration, ‘has worked out a way to rig the cab so that all the passengers will be unconscious just a couple of seconds after the collision. He’s sending the details on to our people in Macau. They should have started fitting it by the time we land.’

‘So, a staged car crash?’ Morgan asked.

‘Yeah. There are risks, but we’ve done it before. Like in Rio.’

Adam spoke for the first time. ‘How did it go?’

‘Fine,’ said Tony. ‘The target suffered some minor scrapes, but he bought the story that he’d been knocked out. It gave us enough time to get his persona.’

Bianca suddenly realised the comment’s implication: the Persona Project had been carrying out missions before Adam joined it. So he wasn’t its first agent?

‘If you’re sure you can make it work, then yes, do it,’ said Morgan. ‘So how are you going to make sure Zykov gets mad enough to follow Adam? Can you actually beat him?’

‘We think so,’ said Tony. ‘The persona Adam will be using is a top-flight card player. He knows every trick in the book – and some that aren’t.’

‘He’s a cheat?’

‘He spent three months in a Nevada prison for it.’

Kyle was unimpressed. ‘So maybe he’s not that good.’

‘He was sold out by his accomplice – nobody caught him during the game itself,’ Tony reassured him.

‘And we can help Adam out as well,’ said Levon. ‘I’ve got a program that counts cards. It won’t be perfect, ’cause the casino switches decks every few games, but it’ll still give him an edge. If we rig him with a camera so we can see the other cards in play, the computer can calculate what the other players might have in their hands. Then Holly Jo tells Adam that through the earwig.’

‘It’s still not a guarantee that you’ll win, though,’ Bianca pointed out. ‘I read Zykov’s file – as well as being just a really unpleasant guy, I’d say that he has intermittent explosive disorder. It means he sometimes has a disproportionately angry response if he’s provoked,’ she added by way of explanation. ‘It’s often linked with other disorders like pathological gambling, and he fits the bill for that as well. But it doesn’t mean that he’s going to explode with rage whenever he gets a bad hand, or start sweating uncontrollably if he’s bluffing. His responses might be very subtle. I mean, he usually wins, so he’s probably got a very good poker face.’

‘He’ll have everybody at STS watching that face,’ countered Kiddrick. ‘The slightest tell, and we’ll see it.’

Tony looked doubtful. ‘Maybe not. The Imperial’s VIP rooms have metal detectors