He drove a two-block circuit around the rendezvous point, looking for any sign that his team had been compromised, that FBI or ERD were waiting for him inside the flat. He couldn’t call his team. By mutual agreement, none of them knew each other’s backup identities. All their primary identities had been burned by his presence at the cemetery.

The problem was one of linkability. His phone was linked to the site by its presence there when the deaths happened. His team’s previous identities were linked by the contact their phones had had with his in the past. All of those identities were connected. Break one, and you could break the others. So all those fictional names and bank accounts and ID cards had to go.

He parked the car two blocks away and ate in the restaurant across the street from the flat while he casually studied the area around him.

Was one of the other diners an FBI watcher? That electrician’s van – did it have a mobile listening post? That young couple walking down the street holding hands – were they enhanced ERD operatives waiting for someone to walk up to that door?

He stretched the lunch out, ordered a beer that his genetically upregulated alcohol dehydrogenase levels would chew up long before it could get him buzzed. The other diners paid and left. The electricians returned to their van and drove away. The young couple didn’t come back.

In the window of the flat, there was movement. A good sign. If there were an FBI or ERD ambush in there, they’d be utterly still, totally undetectable, waiting for their mark to make himself known.

He paid the bill and walked across the street to the flat.

No one fired on him as he approached. At the door he put his right hand around the pistol in his pocket and rapped out the knock with the knuckles of his left. Slow-fast-fast-fast-slow-slow.

The door swung open and his fingers tensed around the pistol and then there was Ava in front of him, as gorgeous and cool as ice as ever.

“Took you long enough,” she said, one eyebrow raised.

Breece grinned and swept her up in his embrace, twirled her around, sending her long dark hair flying. The ice melted and she laughed and kissed him.

They were all here. Hiroshi, the brilliant telecoms engineer turned hacker, his Japanese face careworn, his long black hair pulled back into a ponytail. The Japanese understood the future. They embraced it. This man more than most. Breece had no problem admitting that Hiroshi was his intellectual superior, might always be. He counted himself lucky for the man’s friendship over the years.

The Nigerian, tall, leanly muscular, quiet – but apt to sudden smiles and bursts of deep bellowing laughter. Their weapons specialist. A man of deep courage and conviction, who’d put his life on the line for the cause many a time.