‘Once they activate their B code and start communicating with my A, our sleepers on their firmware will start to take over their servers. We’ll capture their source encryption, send it to good friends of ours in the United States and they will take it apart and reconstruct it, send us the new code, our firmware sleepers will infiltrate the new code on to the Russian servers, and we will control both sides of the communication. We’ll be A and B at the same time. They’ll be locked out of their own system.’

‘Then what?’

‘Then we take that dark bank out of suspended animation. Then we transfer the cash. Then we fucking disappear!’

Hamilton had that trick of using “we”, “us” and “our” to lure his prey into a brothers-in-arms illusion. Not this time, we shared our enemies but that’s where the alliance stopped.

‘We split 60:40, five mill, American,’ he said, ‘we move $2m to any bank account you want, anywhere in the world. You keep me free and alive, no McIntyre, no Yana, no fucking Yakov, you get me out of this shit hole and you’re $2m richer. McCooey has all the right contacts but the hoor would hand me over. You use his contacts, get me as far as Paris and I’ll be good.’

‘What about Artie?’ I said. ‘What about his friend Beikle you suckered in Rome?’

‘Beikle? He’s as guilty as sin! It was the Vatican tipped us off, for fuck’s sake! The new holy regime looked at the books and found that bastard was rinsing dirty money through the Vatican Bank for the Mafia Capitale. Been at it going way back!’

That probably wasn’t as unbelievable as it sounded.

‘Well? What about Artie?’ I repeated.

‘McCooey? He’s a priest! What the fuck’s he need money for?’ Hamilton twisted his face to mime disgust. ‘You can sub him out of your share if you like, brother, all he can expect from me is a boot in the hole or a nine mill behind his ear!’

‘That’s $5m taken care of,’ I said, ‘what about the other $25m?’

Hamilton snorted, made like he had an important sequence of code to inspect, tapped away at the keyboard, finished it off like a piano maestro in a hurry.

‘You’ve been listening too much to McCooey! Another $25m? Yeah, sure, it’s in there somewhere. Twenty five million virtual dollars, that’s true. But that’s gone, may as well be paper money thrown in an incinerator. That system is broken, completely and irrevocably. There’s just no way to convert that digital shit back into real cash anymore, forget it! The $5m I’m talking about was already converted and is sitting pretty and alone in a legit bank in Vienna, a stone’s throw from the Sigmund Freud Museum. We’ll take control of the dark bank and send instructions to the legit bank.’

Artie called me from the bathroom. His right leg was numb, maybe a trapped nerve. I helped him along the tiled corridor and into one of the two executive bedrooms.
‘What’s that lying bastard doing out there?’ he said.
‘He’s being a lying bastard,’ I said, ‘thinks he can palm me off with two mill, tells me there is only five million in total.’
‘What? What did you say?’
‘You know me, Artie. Sometimes I act stupid and let lying bastards think they’re so smart and superior that I’ll be no problem. You know that, right?’
‘I know, son,’ Artie chuckled, ‘I know well.’ He chuckled even though it ripped a pain across his ribs. ‘You’re not as stupid as you look. Sure I always knew that.’

I took the other bedroom, left the door wide open to keep Hamilton in my view, stowed the pistol in my waistband, and settled into the designer bed. A triple-bolt deadlock secured the apartment door, and the key was in my pocket. The balcony outside my room opened to a spiral fire escape. Not ideal, but if Yakov’s people got that far we would be fucked anyway. Or McIntyre’s people. Or Brigid’s. Or Yana’s...