Keiran arrives fifteen minutes early at their agreed destination, a Starbucks on the south side of the Thames, between Blackfriars Bridge and the ominous tower of the Tate Modern. He feels nervous. Not just because he is exhausted, has been at his computer nonstop since hearing the news of the bomb. Keiran doesn't want to let his cloak of invisibility slip like this. This is a public place, it should be easy to get away and lose himself if he needs to, but that doesn't make him feel safe. Not with what he now knows about Laurent. Danielle is in love with him, she might have told him. This isn't safe. But it's necessary. He knows her well enough to know this has to be done in person.

He orders a black coffee and sits with his back to the wall. He sees Danielle approach, on the pedestrian thoroughfare perpetually buzzing with hundreds of people that is the south bank of the Thames. She looks pale and weak. Her smile when she sees him does not reach her eyes, and when she enters, she pauses for a fraction of a second to look around the Starbucks. Her nervousness alleviates his; an equality of fear.

She orders a chai latte and sits across from him.

"Thanks for coming," he says.

She nods acknowledgment.

He reaches into his leather jacket, draws out a manila envelope, and gives it to her. "Have a look."

Danielle opens the envelope and spills its sheaf of A4 paper onto the wooden, coffee-stained table. The first page contains two black-and-white pictures of a young Laurent, height markers behind him. Mug shots. His hair is up in a black mohawk but he is recognizable, staring angrily into the camera, then looking to the side, his jaw clenched. The name on the small chalkboard he holds reads 'SYLVAIN BRISEBOIS'. She stares at it for a moment, then starts on the next three pages, his criminal record. She reads intently. Her hands begin to shake.

"He probably told you his real name was Patrice," Keiran says. Danielle doesn't react.

"After what he did he had to get two false names. One from stealing a dead child's birth certificate. Security in Quebec was nonexistent until 2001, anyone could walk into a church registry and steal an identity. Just like Day of the Jackal. The Foreign Legion demands a government ID when you join them, before they give you a new name, and he couldn't give them his real one. Not when he was wanted for rape and murder. From what I can gather he was associated with a biker gang in Montreal, the Rock Machine. But never actually a member. There's been a war on between them and the Hell's Angels for years now. Hundreds dead, bombs, shootings, bars burned, people disappeared. Sylvain disappeared too. Age twenty-two. Then Patrice appeared, for maybe a month. Then Laurent turned up at the Foreign Legion office."

"I knew all this already," Danielle says. He knows she is lying. "So he grew up fucked up. That was years ago. He's different now."

"If you say so."

"What do you care about what he used to be?"

Keiran says, "I don't know if you've been reading the news, but Kishkinda and Terre have been going through some interesting times lately."

"Very funny."

"We had quite an amazing run of bad luck as soon as Laurent appeared on the scene, didn't we? We get run out of India moments after he turns up, we smash and grab their Paris office and watch him torture a man for no gain, then a bomb goes off and kills Angus and Estelle. Look at the next report."

The next document is highly technical, carefully formatted, full of numbers and medical-sounding terminology. It is twenty-three pages long. Some of the jawbreaking words are grouped under headings with Indian-sounding names.

"It may not mean anything to you," Keiran says, "but –"

"No, it does," she says slowly. "It's like some of the documents they processed in the Bangalore office when I worked there. One of our clients was this big Hartford insurance company. It looks like an analysis of medical claim reports. Is that it? What does this have to do with anything?"

"Not quite. The people in this study were receiving medicine, not making claims. A drug study. A human trial."

"Where did you get this? Some pharmaceutical company?"

"Almost. Drugs tested on humans, yes. But not by a pharmaceutical company. No. By Laurent's outfit. By Justice International."

"Justice –" Danielle stares at Keiran for a long moment, eyes wide. Then she shakes her head. "That doesn't make any sense. Where did you get this?"

Keiran sips his coffee before answering. "I hacked in. And it wasn't fucking easy." It would have been impossible without Shazam. Justice International's network security is invulnerable but for the single instance of Shazam one of their employees uses to steal music from the Internet. "I couldn't figure out why they ran such a tight ship. Until I got inside and saw P2's name on the firewall. Justice International is performing drug trials on the people sickened by Kishkinda. Is that clear enough? They're not trying to help them. They're not trying to shut down Kishkinda. What they do is test experimental drugs. Which, judging from that report, are often counterproductive. Sometimes lethal."

"Why would they do that?" Danielle asks.

"Because they're being paid. Quite a lot. Six hundred thousand dollars materializes in their bank account on the first of every month. Not bad for a virtually unknown volunteer organization."

"Who would pay them? What for?"

"Any drug company who wants to avoid petty little ethical concerns about drug testing. They spend lorryloads of money every year on research that never goes anywhere because it fails human trials ten years down the road. If they test out their drugs on the quiet like this, as soon as they get out of the lab, before they've done any animal testing, if they secretly know in advance which drugs in their pipeline will be winners – that's worth billions to them. Billions every year. They're much bigger than Kishkinda or Terre. Kishkinda is a pimple on the face of a major pharmaceutical, that's how big they are. So they pay off Justice International with petty cash to find populations of sick people, cut off from civilization enough that the rest of the world will never know, and test a whole fucking cornucopia of new drugs on them. There's dozens of reports like that one. Most of them encrypted, I rescued that one from an automatic backup that didn't get cleaned up, but from the filenames, we're talking a lot of drugs here."

"This is crazy. Laurent works for them."

"That's my point."

"No," Danielle says. "No."

"Yes. He didn't join Angus and company to help. He joined to infiltrate and sabotage. To make sure they didn't find out the truth. And he used you to get in. First he led them to us in India, made sure they scared us out of the country, then he probably made sure we didn't find anything in Paris, and now every police force in the world is looking for you. From the moment he turned up, it's been nothing but disaster."

"I'm sorry. No. You don't know him like I do. That's not possible."

Keiran shakes his head. "Look at the last report."

** *

DEBRIEFING: 2 MAY

Met with Voice at tertiary time/location. He arrived late and was eager to leave. Had many aggressive questions about his remuneration and demanded that it be doubled and its schedule accelerated. Refused to speak to me at first until I agreed. Eventually accepted I had no authority to do so. I feel Voice has become erratic, untrustworthy, and excessively motivated by immediate gain. Furthermore, I believe Voice has become emotionally involved with his entry point to an extent that has clouded his judgment. While she remains ignorant of his real activities, at least to date, he actually threatened my own personal security (and that of the board) in the event that any action, physical or legal, were taken against DL. I strongly recommend against further utilization of Voice without some means of securing intensified loyalty.

That said, Voice has been as effective as ever. Has located home address of foundation member Philip Tasker, and photographed two other believed members who met with Tasker. DNA samples and fingerprints have been acquired and dispatched for analysis. Initial working hypothesis seems likely but not yet confirmed. Have received word from P2 that this new information should lead to sound evidence of foundation's true identity. Voice also suggested am extreme course of action which, though it would likely result in a near-term cessation of foundation activites, I vetoed. Viz. the 'accidental' detonation of a powerful explosive device. While of course you may overturn my veto I very strongly recommend against it.

** *

"A smoking gun," Keiran says.

Danielle's world is swimming around her. "A fake. It has to be fake."

It's a setup. It must be. Despite the logic, the supporting documentation, the way it all makes a sickening, dizzying sense, Keiran must be lying to her. Or fooled. Except Keiran doesn't get fooled, not by things like this.

"It seemed too convenient at first," Keiran admits, "but I think, from where I found it and how, that it's real. Some idiot took an encrypted message, copied its text into a Word document so it would look nicer for his boss, and foolishly trusted Word's password protection. Some idiot named Vijay. Probably the same bloke we met in Goa. Before Laurent got us out of that mess oh so conveniently. When P2 finds out he'll probably have Vijay's head. All the security in the world doesn't help when your people are careless and stupid. And people always are."

Danielle can hardly hear him. "It's not possible," she says, clutching at straws. "You didn't see what they did to him at the hut, where they locked me up. They beat the shit out of him."

"Convenient how it happened in front of the window. Convenient how there were lots of little cuts and bruises but nothing serious. Convenient how easily you got away after that. And it certainly happened to a man who we both know wouldn't let little things like pain and suffering stand between him and what he wants."

Danielle can't find any words.

"I'm sorry," Keiran says. "I would have been convinced too. I was convinced. I liked him. I respected him. Justice International does enough real antiglobalization work that Angus and the foundation fell for it too. And he's a fine actor. But I don't have to tell you that. I'm sorry."

"I want you to leave," Danielle says savagely. "Get out. Get the fuck out."

"You don't believe me yet? I can take you to a computer, show you the files."

"You could have faked them."

Keiran nods. "True. I could have forged all of this. Almost all. I don't know near enough about medicine to forge that drug trial document. But even supposing I could, why would I? If for some reason I wanted to make trouble I could just go to the police, tell them I thought he built that bomb. I don't need to go through this kind of charade. But more than that. It makes sense. You're smart. You know that. It makes too much sense not to be true."

"Get out."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry I had to be the one to tell you. If you need anything, anything at all, call me, anytime."

** *

On the way back to their flat, through London streets warped by tears, the way back to Laurent who is also Patrice and may also be Sylvain, her knight who may also be a traitor, Danielle tries to consider her options, to make sense of what she has just heard. It doesn't really matter whether she believes it or not. It will haunt her, gnaw at her gut, until she knows for sure. She has to know. And there is only one way.