“Richard! I asked Anita to assign you. Take a seat.”

Richard shook hands with Germain Stoltz and did what he suggested – sat down. Round the table he recognised Dmitri Vassilov, whom he had met on the Moscovsky Zakrit Bank project in Moscow, and Maria Woo. The guy with the short hair and missing dog tooth was new to him, as was the lady with the very dark make-up and hair tied up in a tight bun. They turned out to be Michael Turner and Kinga Harmati.

There was silence, during which the people round the table nodded at Richard and then resumed their task of doing nothing in particular.

“We’re just waiting for Frank,” Germain explained.

At that moment the door opened and Frank stepped into the room. “Speak of the devil! Sit down Frank, we’re just about to begin.”

Frank sat down, acknowledging the glances of the others. Germain continued: “I just thought this was an opportune moment to gather a few of you guys together and give you a brief overview. I know some of you are already on the project” – he looked towards Frank and Dmitri – “but I just want to give you an idea of the big picture here. Things are going OK so far. We produced a scoping document and the bank have agreed to sign that off. That should happen…” he prompted Maria to finish his sentence.

“This Tootheday,” said Maria, having difficulty pronouncing the word “Tuesday”. She had been in London for at least ten years, but her accent was still quite strong.

“Yes, Tuesday. So that’s pretty good going. Thanks to everyone involved there.” Everyone round the table looked pleased. Even those, like Richard, who had had nothing to do with it. “The bank have been very reasonable too, which helps.” He paused and decided to draw inspiration from the ceiling, leaning his head back and clasping his hands together on top of the desk.

“The thing is the bank is still in quite a bad muddle. They haven’t fully recovered since the crash. You probably know from the news that they had to split off their Indian operation and they had to sell off 300 branches here in the UK. They’re desperate to get their IT systems consolidated around our software so they can get back into India and the rest of Asia. Everyone is very aware that that’s where the growth will be…”

Richard found himself drifting off into his own thoughts. RCB was almost the perfect target. It was too good to be true. He couldn’t shake off the idea he was being set up. How had Klaus Weber come by that old photo? Why had he turned up at the very moment when he had been awakened by Mitchell? It was suspicious. It was frightening.

“Richard, you’ll be answering to Alexei Petrov.”

Richard was startled out of his reverie. Answering for what? What had he done wrong!

“A-Alexei?” he stuttered.

“Alexei Petrov. Do you know him?” The Project Director had broken off his conversation with the ceiling and was looking directly and expectantly at Richard.

Richard racked his brains for an answer. No, he didn’t know him. The answer was “No.” All he had to do was say “No”.

“No.” Just to be sure he was telling the truth he added, “I don’t remember working with him, at any rate.”

“OK, well Dmitri can take you to meet him straight after this meeting. Dmitri will be working closely with you and you will both be under the guidance of Alexei as Chief Technical Architect for the project.”

Many of the technical people working for VirtuBank in Europe were from the ex-Soviet Union. During Soviet times, quite a few of them had been top mathematicians or physicists working on the space program, missile defence or something similar.

The Project Director resumed his explanation of the situation at RCB, warning some of the bank staff were now in a tricky position, having lost former colleagues they might have relied on for help, as well as IT systems that had still not been properly replaced. He advised them to play this to their advantage and to push things through as quickly as possible, rather than allow it to become a hindrance.

Of course! thought Richard. If everyone’s in such a rush, that gives me an even better opportunity to push my false software through. As soon as the software is installed it will be easy to persuade the bank staff to do only the most rudimentary user acceptance testing. Thanks to the Project Director, everyone round the table basked in a warm glow, feeling confident they would achieve their objectives on time. Especially Richard, whose personal objective would trump everyone else’s.

A man may not know his own mind, Richard thought, twirling the black and gold card from APHRODITE’S SECRET (Exclusive Gentleman’s Sauna) round and round in his fingers. He hadn’t planned on seeing Melanie, but he felt the events of the afternoon were worth celebrating in some way. What better way than this? Besides, it would be a perfect way to find out a bit more about Mitchell.

Finding out if the whole Mitchell thing hung together – that was the reason why he was now paying the taxi driver for the journey to the club. That was the real reason. Mitchell or Weber? Which one was for real? Mitchell was convincing. Weber had not given the proper identification code. He had mentioned “Zima” out of context. He had mentioned it as though it was an introduction, not as an operation, and he had not offered any instructions for the operation. Weber was probably some sort of imposter. If Melanie had more information, he would be able to confirm it. What he would be able to do about it was another matter.