Capitolo 1: Cold FrontCapitolo 1: Fronte freddo

The Atlantic Ocean didn't simply hit the granite rocks under Victoria Road. It pounded away at them, turning each collision into a fine mist of salt that blew back into the storm. Lyle van der Schyff stood at the guesthouse salon's double-glazed, floor-to-ceiling windows, his right hand pressed against the cold pane. The black, three-hundred-foot drop of the cliff away from the building revealed a churning mass of gray, foam and windblown spray and shifting whiteout beyond the guesthouse. The building had been hewn thirty feet back into the very heart of Clifton Fourth, and it shuddered visibly each time a six-meter breaker struck the concrete sea wall below. The vibration was felt in the ribs before it was heard. At 01:10 AM, the lights in the house flickered three times, then died altogether. The gentle reassuring hum of the climate control system died with it. In its place, the untamed northwester roared through the fynbos on either side of the road above, making the sudden absence of sound inside the house seem almost... unnatural, even though the storm was louder now than ever before. Lyle remained as he was, gazing into the night. Rolling blackouts weren't uncommon in South Africa, and most people had long since gotten used to the occasional power failure. They kept charged mobile phones on the kitchen counter, candles in the back of the kitchen drawer, and tried not to think about what it all meant if the power failed at the most inconvenient time. A major grid failure during Level 8 winter gale alert along the Atlantic Seaboard, however, was a development that signified a serious problem. Something big had to have blown somewhere in the Maitland industrial corridor. He glanced down at his wrist. The luminous markings on his mechanical Seiko diver's watch provided just enough illumination to discern the time, which was not a good thing at all. Lyle turned his back on the windows. His boots made no sound on the polished concrete floor, but the guesthouse itself seemed less still somehow, without the lights and the climate control. At forty-two, his body retained the stiff military posture and the alert muscle tension of a man who'd served twelve years with the Special Investigating Unit, the elite forensic auditing division that served as the government's scalpel in the rotting flesh of high-level municipal corruption. It had been hard work, but he'd left the Pretoria summonses and the endless hopeless dockets of stolen assets and illicit tender agreements far behind when he bought this little three-room refuge perched atop the concrete strip that was Victoria Road. He'd told himself he just wanted peace and quiet, but the truth was he needed a life with no surprises, a safe routine of tides and cleaning schedules and online booking confirmations that never failed to arrive. It was ridiculous, really, but it had been enough. Instead, the storm had made Victoria Road an abandoned ribbon of concrete, cut off from Camps Bay by fresh mudslides and swallowed whole by darkness from the Twelve Apostles all the way down to Sea Point. The rain had washed away most of the usual infrastructure, as far as the eye could see. It was always the eye that mattered, in the end. Lye crossed the width of the kitchenette into the pantry, and crouched, running his fingers along the wooden slats until he found the catch on the third timber shelf. With a sigh, he withdrew the gun safe from behind the wall, and extracted the heavy steel box from its hiding place. He palmed the Vektor Z73 9mm pistol he'd acquired on the licensed premises, checked the loaded magazine, and pulled the slide back, releasing it until the chamber clicked loudly with a dry round inside. The noise was too loud. He slipped the gun into the leather holster built into his waistband and zipped up his oilskin jacket. It smelled vaguely of rain and salt. He stood and listened, for a long moment. Was he imagining things, or simply falling back into old habits after two wasted years? He turned back toward the dark salon, and the backup battery pack for the network router gave a shuddering gasp. Lyle waited. Then the guesthouse was as isolated as it was ever going to get.