Page 266 of The Black Trilogy

“Nothing ever surprises you, Bob. Can I have the keys to my villa, please? Oh, and I need to borrow your phone.”

Silently, Bob reached into his pocket and held out his mobile, then he disappeared back inside, rolling his eyes.

CHAPTER 43

WHEN LUKE WENT into the control room the next morning, he found Mack already at her station. Judging by the dark smudges under her eyes, she’d had as little sleep as him. Her gaze dropped to his hands, or more specifically what he held in them.

“Coffee? You’re a lifesaver.”

“Two sugars, right?”

“Mmm. I should cut down. One day...”

He took his seat beside her. “Anything?”

“Not yet. I still can’t get into this server. Can we try again together?”

“Of course.”

Side-by-side, they tried everything they could think of to get through the encryption, but to no avail. The clock ticked around to eleven, and Mack needed to head off to another meeting with some shadowy government department she wouldn’t even tell him the name of.

“There’s something we’re not seeing,” she said before she left.

Didn’t Luke know it?

He had another go while she was gone, but got no further. They were sure the system held a backup of the email traffic between several army departments and the Syrian government, but their cyber security was proving to be far more sophisticated than that on the army base that Emmy had got into. Luke guessed they’d found out where a significant part of the military budget was being spent.

After almost two hours, he gave up, frustrated. Time to take a step back before he put his fist through the screen.

Lunch seemed a good idea, so he headed for the kitchen, only to bump into Ruth in the hallway.

“Oh, Luke, do you want something to eat?”

He took in her attire—coat, scarf, gloves. Welcome to springtime in England.

“Are you going out?”

“I can stay to make you lunch if you’re hungry.”

“No, no, it’s fine. I’ll do it.”

A moment’s hesitation, and she didn’t quite stop her eyebrows from shooting up. “You?”

“It’s no problem, honestly.”

“Well, if you’re sure.”

In the kitchen, Luke opened the fridge, only to find a bewildering array of ingredients but no actual food. He’d mastered re-heating, but cooking from scratch? Way out of his depth here. Could he call his PA and have her arrange something? Actually, hang on, they were in London. There had to be an easy way to get food delivered. An app or something.

He was scrolling through search results when Mack walked in, and as soon as he saw her sombre expression, all thoughts of eating fled his mind.

“What’s wrong? You look like someone just died. Is it Emmy?”

“None of the Brits know anything. It was another dead end. And when I spoke to Nate on the way back, he and Nick have switched everyone over from searching to mission planning.”

“Which means what?” Luke had no idea, but from the look on Mack’s face, it wasn’t good news.

“They’ve given up hope she got out of there. They’re preparing to send a team in to look for her, or more likely, her body. And it’s worse—Jed’s been analysing satellite feeds, and between those and intelligence on the ground, we think the security at the base has been increased significantly.”

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