The Persona Protocol - By Andy McDermott Page 0,81

and . . .’ He closed his eyes, then his forehead wrinkled in confusion. ‘I don’t remember.’

‘You should definitely see a doctor,’ she insisted. ‘I’ll get the concierge to call someone.’

One of the bodyguards moved as if to block her, but Zykov waved him back. ‘Yes, do that. I do not feel good.’

‘Okay.’ She paused at the bedroom door. ‘I’m sorry the evening had to end this way. It’s certainly been a very interesting night.’

He managed a faint smile. ‘Maybe I see you again sometime, yes?’

‘Maybe you will. Anything is possible.’ Suppressing the urge to break into a run, she left the suite. ‘Mr Zykov asks if you could call a doctor,’ she told the concierge. ‘He fell and banged his head.’

‘I will see to it right away,’ he replied, picking up a phone. ‘And madam?’

She paused at the lifts, worried. ‘Yes?’

‘Mr Zykov’s man has taken your bags downstairs.’

‘Thank you very much.’ The lift arrived. The doors closed, and she slumped against its wall. ‘Oh God!’

‘Bianca?’ Adam’s voice this time; Holly Jo had connected them. ‘Are you on the way down?’

‘Yes, I am. Finally! God, I need a drink.’

‘We’ll have something waiting for you on the plane,’ said Tony. ‘We’re on our way to pick you up at the casino entrance. See you in a minute.’

Adam was waiting for her when the doors opened. He smiled at her. ‘Ready?’

‘Absolutely, yes. Let’s get out of here.’ They headed side by side through the glittering lobby.

‘You know something?’ He was still smiling.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘For an amateur, you make a pretty good spy.’

She laughed. ‘High praise indeed, coming from the man who’s James Bond, Jason Bourne and Jack Bauer all rolled into one.’

‘Just doing my job.’ A man approached them: Lau. Without a word, Adam reached into his jacket and smoothly passed him the two casino plaques as he went by.

‘Wait, that . . .’ Bianca spluttered as Lau headed for the cashiers’ cage. ‘That was two million dollars!’

‘It’s US government money,’ said Tony, amused. ‘Sorry, but we don’t get to keep it.’

They reached the main doors, emerging into the night. ‘There,’ said Adam. The van had pulled up amongst the taxis. They slipped through the crowd and climbed inside.

Tony, Holly Jo and Kyle were waiting for them in the back, the latter holding the UAV in his lap. ‘So,’ said Tony, ‘I wouldn’t say things went smoothly, but we got what we were after.’ A cloud crossed his face. ‘Didn’t we?’

‘We did,’ said Adam. ‘I know what Operation Lamplighter is.’

21

Lamplighter

The beach was a grim slate-grey, not sand, but gravel and shards of flint. The murky sea beyond was equally uninviting. It was the perfect setting for the objects at the centre of the photograph: rusted cage-like steel frames containing squat cylinders painted a sickly institutional green, metal vanes protruding from them. Corrosion-scabbed warning signs were attached to the cages. Most were unreadable to the majority of the observers, written in the Cyrillic alphabet, but one symbol was instantly recognisable. A trefoil, black on yellow.

The international radiation warning.

‘This is Operation Lamplighter,’ said Morgan, addressing the Persona Project team members gathered in the Bullpen. ‘This is what Muqaddim al-Rais is willing to spend seven million dollars to obtain.’

‘It’s a Russian radioisotope thermoelectric generator,’ Tony explained. ‘Or Soviet, technically, since they date back to the Cold War. RTGs are basically nuclear batteries. NASA uses them in its deep-space probes and the Mars rover. The Soviets used them here on Earth. To power lighthouses.’

He clicked a remote, and the image on the video wall changed to a map of Russia. Along the long coastline of the vast country were marked hundreds of dots, each containing a miniature version of the radiation trefoil. ‘They built them on the Arctic shipping lanes when they were free of ice,’ Tony continued. ‘But because large parts of the country are so remote and inaccessible, operating conventional manned lighthouses would have been a logistical nightmare. So they came up with an alternative. Build unmanned lighthouses, plug in an RTG, and then just leave them. In theory, they should have run without trouble for decades.’

‘Except, as we all know, theory and practice are two different things when it comes to our former communist friends,’ said Morgan. ‘After the Soviet Union collapsed, there wasn’t the money, or even the inclination, to maintain them as they started to deteriorate. And then there was the human factor.’ He nodded to Tony.

Tony switched to a new image. This was another photograph: a makeshift camp in a