The Persona Protocol - By Andy McDermott Page 0,94

Energy Agency.’ The plan was for Adam to use Browning’s persona to make a professional assessment of the RTG’s condition, when located. If it were safe to transport, it would be loaded aboard the jet – along with al-Rais, if he was captured – and taken to the US; if not, it would be left in situ and the Russian authorities alerted so they could send one of their own nuclear recovery teams to secure it. ‘Hopefully he knows his stuff.’

‘If he doesn’t, I might wind up glowing in the dark.’

Despite his joke, the thought gave Bianca a chill. She had on occasion worked with radioactive substances as a chemist, and always treated them with the utmost caution, finding the idea that something could kill a person without even touching them deeply unsettling. That anyone could even consider deliberately exposing others to something so toxic was more disturbing still. ‘Dr Browning is about as far from a secret agent as I can imagine,’ she said, changing the subject. ‘What’s it like when the persona you’re using is so different from you?’

‘It can be . . . tricky,’ he admitted. ‘There have been times when I’ve done something that’s so far from how the person would actually behave that it’s almost like a voice screaming in my head for me to stop.’

‘Like when you answer the test question about the person’s most guilty secret?’

‘Yeah. Only much stronger. Macau was an extreme example, actually – Peter Vanwall had a serious fear of heights.’

‘Has anything like that ever happened to you before?’

‘Not to that degree, no. Kiddrick thinks it might have been caused by stress. I was already under pressure to get to you before Zykov did anything, and then suddenly coming up on that huge drop was a shock – which triggered Vanwall’s vertigo. That started a kind of feedback loop; his fear stressed me out more, which allowed it to get even stronger, and so on. So when I was out on that roof . . . it was real hard not to be scared. But I managed it.’

‘How?’

He looked at her as if the answer were obvious. ‘Because I had no choice.’

‘Has there ever been a time when . . . when that voice in your head got too loud? When it stopped you from doing something? Or made you do something else?’

‘No. Not yet, and I hope it never does. But then,’ he went on, looking over his shoulder at the seats behind, ‘there are always other voices yammering at me to get on with the mission, so it shouldn’t be a problem.’

Holly Jo looked up from her laptop. ‘I heeeeard that,’ she said, singsong.

‘What’re you doing there, anyway?’ Kyle asked her.

‘I sent Levon my solution to his puzzle,’ she told him. ‘I figured out how to get the diamond out of the vault. Just waiting for him to reply.’

‘Hey! Watch out, that might be fraternisation!’

Tony came back up the cabin. ‘I see that’s going to be our running joke for the next few days. What did you come up with, Holly Jo?’

She gave him a smug smile. ‘It’s obvious, really. It takes an hour to break into the vault, but the guards check it every half-hour, yes? So you need to come at it from a different angle – literally. Get on to the roof, start cutting through it, time it so you stop cutting just before the guards start their rounds, then start again right after they finish.’ Kyle began to chuckle. ‘What?’

‘I think he’s planned for that,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘’Cause my idea was to go into the vault through the floor. Didn’t work. It’s a big-ass vault, so it needs heavy-duty supports – six feet of concrete, reinforced with steel bars. Can’t break through it inside the twenty-four-hour limit without making enough noise to warn the guards. So I’m kinda sure he’ll have thought of putting a camera on the roof.’

‘We’ll see.’

‘Yeah, we will.’

‘Does Levon just make up reasons why a plan wouldn’t work?’ asked Bianca. ‘That sounds like something he pulled out of the air.’

‘No, no – the dude’s tough, but fair,’ said Kyle. ‘He tells us the basics of each scenario, but keeps a file on the server with a list of everything he doesn’t tell us. So if a plan doesn’t work, he pulls out the bit that explains why. And ’cause it’s time-stamped, we know he didn’t just make it up.’

‘But isn’t he some sort of super-hacker? How do you know he hasn’t