Thank you so much for the reviews! Here is the next bit, another 7,000-word opus with another retrospective, this time from Theo's PoV, taking the plot to an interesting juncture I've been looking forward to for quite a while – not without a measure of evil glee ;)

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"What?"

The big eyes Theo is making at her are doing nothing to stop her snickering.

"You know, Bruce was spot-on. You do look like Lawrence of Arabia."

"I'll keep the sunglasses on. That way I'll look like a complete dick, but it should tide me over until I get the contacts."

The moment they step outside Suvarnabhumi airport to get a cab, the sweltering humid heat reminds them that they are in the northern-hemisphere summer. The driver speaks fairly fluent English, ruling out private conversation between the two of them, so while Theo does his best to sound arrogant when responding to the guy's chatter, she sits silent for most of the trip, hoping for a glimpse of Bangkok and its many temples on the way to the hotel – but the approach to the city from the airport is manifestly lacking in landmarks. Maybe they can take a walk around, she wonders; then again, seeing the maze of highways crisscrossing the urban sprawl, she soon reckons that it is unlikely.

Between the distance and the sluggish traffic, it is almost nine by the time they finally check in, and ten by the time they finish dinner and call the butler to take away the cart. Had it been a normal trip, the three of them would be hanging out together and would have most likely gone out for dinner, but things being as they are, Bruce joining them is out of the question, and her niqab disguise confines the two of them to room service. At least the suite makes staying in a nice alternative. Its enormous, glass-walled lounge opens onto an equally huge terrace with a panoramic view of the Chao Phraya river lined by rows of shimmering sleek towers on each bank, with the occasional floodlit temple sitting beside them like a dainty ornament. The Royal Oriental suite is fit for royalty, indeed; she can understand why Bruce was whining about not getting to stay here. He is, in his own words, slumming it in an Executive Suite at the Shangri-La, about five minutes' walk from the Oriental and a mere 300 yards down the river; but while they undoubtedly have the edge on space and opulence, he likely has the better view – same as theirs but from ten floors higher up.

A stroll on the terrace gives her another idea for an outing.

"Can we take a boat trip? Looks like they're still running."

Theo does not sound particularly eager. "We could, but we've already got the best river view from up here. Right now, with the boat's lights as bright as that, you won't see much from inside it. It's a nice trip to take around sunset, we can do it tomorrow before you have to go to the meeting. Plus if we get out now we'll be back at midnight, and our best shot at seeing the city tomorrow is to get out before eight, before the heat and the traffic get too bad and while the sights are open. If I remember right, most of them are only open from 8 AM till about 3 PM."

She is not sure she'll manage to get up early, with four long-haul flights in the space of a week making a mess of her sleeping patterns, but she cannot argue with common sense.

"OK… I'll go read some weapons specs and hope it puts me to sleep."

xxx

Bedtime reading consisting of semiautomatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers leads to pretty vivid nightmares involving Bane's gang, she discovers, but she does wake up at a reasonably early 7 AM; however, when she gets out of the bedroom and into the lounge a quarter of an hour later, Theo is not only already there but finishing his part of the breakfast.

"Morning. Been up long?"

"Not too long. Woke up at six thirty."

"You must be immune to jetlag."

"It's not that. I've got two rascals under ten at home, I think my brain has an unconditional reflex to wake up at six thirty AM regardless of time zone."

She laughs. "Are they more trouble than Bruce?"

Theo tries to hide the grin. "About the same. My worst nightmare and my best hope rolled into one is if they pick him as a role model."

"I know what you mean." She never meant to pick Bruce as a role model either, and look at her.

"So… are you ready to see the sights?" he asks when Selina is done with breakfast.

"Definitely."

"Then put on the tent and let's get out of here."

xxx

Taking advantage of the cooler morning air, they take a short walk in the old neighbourhood next to the hotel, with its pretty, brightly-painted two-storeyed wooden houses, then get a cab and start the tour proper with the royal palace grounds three miles to the northeast, strolling around the sumptuous, glittering Wat Phra Kaeo temple and parts of the palace complex that are open to the public.

To Selina, who has spent a huge chunk of her life scoping, stealing and fencing jewellery, these elaborate gilded structures encrusted with jewel-hued glass and covered in intricate enamel and bright tile patterns look like the inside of an enormous jewel box. The jewellery parallels bring up a few memories of her old heists, with which she regales her pretend husband and impromptu guide to his considerable amusement. Theo has been to Bangkok twice, once as a student and once more with the family two years ago on the way to Phuket; so while his recollection of Thai history and of the significance of the architecture and statues is relatively vague, his alternating stories of not-entirely-sober escapades and the kids' antics more than make up for it in entertainment value. The only hassle is having to talk in a half-whisper all the time; speaking audible English dressed as an Arab couple could raise eyebrows unnecessarily. Afterwards they walk over to the equally impressive Wat Pho with its massive reclining Buddha a few hundred yards away, and from there go to see a couple more nearby temples, somewhat less ornate but still impressive, before dropping by at the hotel for lunch at the suite.

In the early afternoon they head further north, to the green, sparsely-built-up and prosperous Dusit neighbourhood, the location of the other royal palace, Chitrlada – this one the real residence rather than the ceremonial one. The palace and its gardens are closed to visitors, but Dusit Park across the road from these is public and boasts the exquisite Vimanmek Mansion, a former royal summer residence built of golden teakwood using wooden pegs instead of nails. Upon leaving the mansion they take the long walking route through the park in the direction of Jim Thompson's house, their next and final destination before the sunset river cruise on the way back to the Oriental. From what she saw online over lunch, the sprawling, antique-filled residence, which once belonged to an American silk merchant and onetime CIA agent who went missing under mysterious circumstances, was apparently built by putting together six authentic houses from Bangkok and its environs and creating a landscaped garden around them.

Dusit park is nearly empty in the mid-afternoon, and for once they can talk in English without risking suspicion or resorting to cryptic whispers.

"Thanks for taking me around. It's been a great day so far."

"Don't mention it, it's a pleasure. When I took the job at Wainwright ten years ago and until eighteen months ago when Bruce showed up in person, I'd have never guessed that dealing with the company owner – or his wife – would be so much fun."

She remembers the condensed account Bruce gave her of their acquaintance, back at their first-ever dinner in Lugano, and his slightly less laconic remarks the day after, on their way to Wainwright headquarters. "Is it true that you guys had never met in person before last year?"

"Hundred percent true. What happened was, I'd just got divorced from my French first wife and was thinking about moving back to Switzerland, which in practice most likely meant leaving the Interpol. I had some second thoughts, but by then I'd grown sick of working for arrogant bureaucratic bastards and wanted a job with more independence. I thought about starting my own company, but my best chance of doing that would be to stay in Lyon and set up a consultancy living off Interpol contracts, and I wasn't crazy about that idea. I talked to a couple of executive headhunters, and a month or so later I got a phone call where they told me about this opportunity in Lugano and asked if I wanted to talk to the owner. Of course I said yes, and then Bruce called me the next day."

"And he offered you the job right after that call?"

"Right during that call. I couldn't believe my luck. Mind you, I wasn't all that impressed by him,he did a good job of sounding like a rich brat."

She smirks under her veil. "Another arrogant bastard?"

"Sort of. But the questions he asked were very astute, and when he told me he'd be a hands-off owner and so long as the company stayed profitable I had free rein over its operations, I was sold."

"And then you never talked for eight and a half years."

"Sounds crazy, doesn't it? Well, we did talk about once a year. Then about three or four years ago he decided to build the house in Carona and asked if he could register it in my name. I said OK, I even went up there a couple of times to see it being built, was really impressed by the design but thought he was building it as a luxury rental, except that it stayed empty after that. Other than that, I sent him the annual reports every spring, I suppose he flipped through them, then called me and asked me a question or two just to show that he hadn't forgotten about the company, and that was it. It suited me just fine."

"I guess you weren't all that happy when he showed up then," she offers.

"Showed up was a gradual process," Theo counters. "First thing I heard was this Markus Hamele guy coming to Lugano and asking me for a sheet of company stationery."

Selina cannot help a chuckle. "You know what that was for?"

"No idea."

"It was to send me the pearls, you know, the pearls. Bruce told me he'd asked Markus to do it when he was still in hospital and Markus came back with a compliments card. You know the story of how it took me three months to open the box to see it because I thought he was dead."

"I know the part about the pearls, but it's funny how I never put two and two together between that and the card. I must say, that's one hell of a story. They should've had an epilogue scene in Dark Hero where they show you guys…"

"Except that he's really dead at the end in that one," she teases.

"I keep saying it would be a much better film if they showed Batman surviving, no matter what Bruce himself thinks. Anyway, so Markus told me that Mr Wainwright had just been in a bad car accident in the States and was in intensive care in Geneva with uncertain prospects of survival. I sent him a message wishing him a quick recovery, you know the deal, if there's anything you need, just ask and so on, though to be honest, and feel free to call me a selfish prick, at that point I was more worried about someone else taking over ownership of the company than about Brandon– Bruce that is. He replied to thank me a couple of days later but disappeared again after that, and then he called me in early March saying that he was moving to Carona and asking to meet."

"Oops."

"Exactly. Another arrogant bastard and all that. Except that the guy I saw was a very contrite, not-really-bastard, in a wheelchair, very humbly asking me for something to do at the company."

"Did he make puppy eyes?"

"He didn't need to, he looked miserable enough and really beat-up. I couldn't say no. On the other hand I didn't know if he was any good either, so I figured a bit of a discouragement tactic wouldn't hurt."

"I can imagine how well that went down."

"Well, he didn't call me on my bullshit back then. He sure would have now, or even a year ago, but back then, he just wriggled his eyebrows when I talked crap about how boring and how challenging running a technology company was, and said that he'd still love to get a job, or something to keep him busy, anyway. I have to say, I respected the fact that he'd bothered to ask; most owners would just say I'm doing this and screw you. So I said he could pick his own job. He said he'd think about it and let me know in a few days' time. My hope at that point was that he'd have enough brains to pick a post where he'd do the least damage. In the worst case, I figured, if he was just a waste of executive office space, he'd invent himself a long important-sounding title like senior vice president for strategic initiative development and sit in a corner office twaddling his thumbs all day, still no harm done. I didn't expect him to ask to be my de facto deputy, when he is Chairman of the company. That was probably the first time I thought it might turn out better than expected. But I wasn't giving up without a final fight, of sorts."

"What did you do?"

"I made him take an exam."

"Wow. That takes balls."

"I didn't call it an exam, of course. I just gave him eight years' worth of Wainwright annual reports, same ones as I'd sent him, and a bunch of technical memos I'd received from the division managers in the last couple of years up to that point, and said I'd really appreciate his ideas for the company's strategy when ready. I was hoping he'd get bored and quietly drop the whole thing."

She laughs. "Yeah, right."

"Now I know better, but back then it really blew my mind when he sent me this twenty-page memo the next evening, with a detailed production process analysis and the implications of market trends and four future scenarios with a different strategic focus and projected margin calculations in each one. And it was all spot-on. I mean I'd been running this company for eight-plus years and here was this guy who'd maybe asked me two questions a year, who I now saw knew as much about this industry, and almost as much about the company, as I did. He confessed last summer that he'd cheated, he'd asked Lucius for market data and some of the cost estimates, but then as I told him, having good sources is an asset in itself."

"So, no twaddling thumbs in a corner office."

"Well, I did get him the office. What I asked myself after that was why he wouldn't fire me and just run it himself, not that I was complaining. I thought maybe he still had too many health problems. But then the very next day, after I said I'd like to come over to Carona to save him a trip down to Lugano and talk to him about that memo, he showed up in the afternoon, driving the Lamborghini, and walked into my office. OK, he had a cane, but I still had to scrape my jaw off the floor."

"Show-off. From what little I saw of him in Gotham, he was always like that when he had an audience."

"He might have been showing off, but it was damn impressive. We talked about that memo for something like three hours and then went for beers and ended up talking until one AM when the last bar closed and kicked us out. Sylvie had been calling me to ask where I was and then had to come pick us up and drop him off in Carona. Bruce was insisting he could still drive the Sesto so Sylvie had to confiscate his keys."

Selina, having seen her husband drunk a grand total of two times in more than a year, has to laugh. "I wish I were there to see it."

"You can ask Sylvie, she'll tell you all about it."

"So that's why Bruce is afraid of her." She recalls the she'll kill me first from the day before.

"That must be it." Theo grins. "She did refer to him as my crazy kamikaze boss in his presence on that occasion."

This gets her giggling. "OK, first thing I'll do when we're back in Lugano is call her and ask her all the sordid details."

"Please do. She probably remembers it better than either of us. I vaguely remember us getting into a long discussion about cross-referencing databases, and then Bruce betting me a thousand francs that he could get his hands on a miniature tracker with a one-week battery life and a ten-mile radius, like the one in your necklace, but my best recollection from that evening is a very detailed discussion of the concept for a jet-powered motorbike."

Selina shakes her head ruefully. "Please, please don't remind him about it."

Theo mirrors her gesture. "He reminded me this spring. I tried to steer him in the direction of jetpacks, at least there's less chance of a collision and if things go wrong, he's good at BASE jumping. It's worked for now, but I can't rule out him bringing up the bike again."

Great; for now he's swapped something unquestionably lethal for something most probably lethal."Could you say there are technical issues with the jetpack design?"

"No use, he's seen the working prototype already and wants to test it in a couple of weeks."

"Hopeless." There is no way Bruce will ever stop playing with danger.

He sighs. "I tried, honestly. At least I promise it's less risky than the bike idea."

Selina nods. "I believe you. So that was that, then, between the memo and the bike."

"Yep. The next morning we both had a royal headache, but by that afternoon I'd already got the CFO to move from the other corner office in exchange for a Christmas bonus, and told Bruce he could drop by any day he wanted. He showed up the following morning, and pretty much every day after that except when he had to go to the hospital, and by the middle of April I couldn't believe he'd only been at the company for a month."

"And you never guessed who he was until I asked you to call Lucius."

Theo shakes his head again. "It was just too crazy to imagine. I knew Wayne Enterprises, sure, they're huge and one of the best in the business – in a few businesses, really, and I'd heard of Bruce Wayne, but never thought he could be this smart, decent guy. Above all, I never thought he'd have kept his identity secret and never told me who he was when he hired me. With anyone else in his place, it would've been the first thing they said. I could see he knew a lot of things about security and hacking and technology in general, not just the theory and production processes but the practical side, using the stuff, and he mentioned having contacts at Wayne who helped us get supplies from them, but I never made the connection, just kept wondering how the hell he could do all that."

"No regrets about what you've got yourself into?"

He laughs at this. "You've got to be kidding me. This is the most fun I've ever had, or could hope to have, in any job. Back at the Interpol I made it to department director and could have probably made vice president by the time I retired, but I never had full control over the way I ran my department, or had an understanding boss, the way I have at Wainwright. And my background wasn't the exciting kind, it was a mix of technical forensics and database management with a lot of systems integration later on. We did some neat stuff with data analysis that helped solve a few major cases, but it wasn't the high-adrenaline side of law enforcement they show on TV. You know, as a kid I was a huge Sherlock Holmes fan, I remember I always begged my parents to go to Reichenbach falls on school holidays, and my brother argued with me because he loved pirate stories and wanted to go sailing instead. So of course I wanted to be a detective when I grew up, that's why I got interested in forensics but then got sidetracked into the IT side, kind of. I never had a chance to be on the front line, also because neither my first wife nor Sylvie would've let me do that, so having someone like Bruce hanging around is my chance to get some thrills vicariously."

"Except that right now you've joined the craziness firsthand."

"Couldn't help it."

"It's contagious, you know."

He chuckles. "I'm in the process of finding out."

"Why did you get divorced?" The French ex-wife is news to her.

Theo frowns. "I guess we married too young, neither of us was ready to settle down. Plus she kept nagging me to ask for promotions so she'd have more money to spend and a bigger house and more Chanel bags, she was really high-maintenance. Loved fur coats and diamonds and so on."

"I used to love diamonds, too, though mostly as a source of income," she comments wryly.

"Are you telling me it's a curable addiction?"

"It was in my case. At least after I got a diamond I really liked, I haven't been tempted by the rest."

He smiles. "That one's a really impressive diamond. I remember when Bruce was about to get it, he showed me a video clip of the ring from the jewellers' site and asked what I thought of it."

"What did you say?"

"I said it was one hell of a ring but you'd need half a dozen safes to lock it in."

"So it was you who gave him the idea."

"Idea?"

"For the proposal. You remember what he did, don't you?"

"Of course." He chuckles again. "I guess I did give him the idea, but I meant it as a caution, not a suggestion."

"You know Bruce. You caution him about something, next thing you know, he's doing it."

Theo can't help laughing. "The best boss ever."

She shakes her head. "The most troublesome husband ever." She does not mean it, of course.

xxx

"It's on." She hands Theo her phone across the dinner table so he can read the text that Brian, the seller or at least the front man, just sent her from an anonymous local number, as promised in their meeting. It was very quick and furtive; unlike ice queen Jamie, this guy was jittery bordering on paranoid, and while he squeezed in a few questions to confirm her identity, he almost seemed too jumpy to pay attention to the answers. That, conversely, put Selina at her ease, and she spoke almost leisurely about her and her client's interest in acquiring the database to help grow her multimillion-dollar family business, while deliberately toying with her water glass to leave enough fake prints for him to get added confirmation if needed – and best of all, in the two seconds that he was not looking, she swapped their beer mats and later, when leaving, discreetly swept the one he had been tapping his fingers on under her switched-off phone and inside her handbag. Now whatever additional vetting he must have done looks to be completed, resulting in the message.

One Suntec 43rd fl Sat 8 am 500K surety

"What's Suntec?" she asks when Theo gives the phone back to her.

"It's a commercial development in Singapore. Big downtown shopping mall with four or five office towers next to it. One must be the number of the tower he's in."

At this rate they'll end up having meetings back in Gotham, or back in Europe, by this time next week. At least it should be a short flight, and she will see another city she has not yet been to. "We need to tell Bruce to get a ticket for tomorrow." She likes Bangkok enough to want to spend another day or two here, but again, recon for the venue takes priority.

"We also need to give him this guy's prints to send on to your CIA buddy." The three of them agreed the night before to get together after her meeting, and when Theo and she talked earlier over dinner, they agreed that it made sense to send Brian's fingerprints and a screenshot off her necklace camera to Kettering, one of the more reasonable and the most tech-savvy of the bunch they've met, to see if he could find a match for the man and help them track his whereabouts. Of course Brian could be using fake prints too, but even allowing for his jittery nerves, it is still a remote possibility. The plan is that Bruce will send a message from a number Kettering will recognise, and hide Theo's email address in an attachment asking to reply to it, so as to avoid an incoming reply on his own phone – after the Tessuti Varese incident where an incoming text almost got him killed, Theo and Selina both decided to insist on this as a precaution. "Let's see if he's figured out a meeting venue for us," Theo mutters as he types up the message.

The reply comes back five minutes later. She scans through it; the texts and emails she has been reading lately all look like treasure hunt cues. Black Ford Explorer green plates 5127 outside your hotel 10 pm sharp, SA dress, bring the 20s. "SA dress" must stand for Saudi Arabian; makes sense. She is less certain about the logic behind bringing the money, which "the twenties" presumably denotes, but then if Bruce has figured out a way to take that headache off their hands, especially now that they know they will only need half of it, so much the better.

"Looks like I need to get changed in a hurry," she grumbles, checking the time. Too bad; she was wearing the gold-coloured sari this time and really liked it – and would not mind seeing what effect it would have on Bruce considering his admiration of the blue one. Oh well, there will be time for it in Singapore.

xxx

At ten o'clock sharp, two minutes after they went downstairs to the lobby, the gleaming black SUV pulls up to the hotel entrance – and she has to bite her lip not to laugh as Bruce pulls off a creditable impersonation of a limo service driver, escorting them to the back seats with exaggerated courtesy and closing the doors for them before getting into the front seat. For once she is grateful for the disguise that hides her lingering grin.

They drive a few blocks north, through bustling Chinatown, and stop in an alley once they are certain that no one is following. She knows Bruce must have swept the car for bugs, and now, sitting in the dark behind tinted windows, they are finally assured of sufficient privacy. He turns in the seat to face the two of them, and Selina takes off the veil and hands him her phone with the message onscreen.

"Meeting's on for Saturday morning. The somewhat good news is, we only need half the money for the surety. The not so good news is, it's in Singapore."

Bruce does not seem concerned. "No worries." He smirks at Theo. "Didn't you tell Sylvie you were going to Singapore for a conference? Now we'll even be in the right country. And I've figured out the perfect way to take the money across the border." Seeing their curious faces, he explains. "You know how arms and drugs dealers use diamonds as the currency for large-volume deals, and other than Amsterdam or Luanda, we're in the best place to buy them. So I'll take care of that tomorrow before flying out to Singapore, and I can take them across the border myself in my jacket pocket with no one any the wiser. They'll be certified for weight and clarity and price, so you can just bring half of them to the meeting without bothering with cash, it will only boost your credentials."

"Sounds good." The pretend diplomatic status saved them from customs trouble so far, but it is still better to have a less bulky medium for valuables. "We also thought you could ask Kettering to help us get an ID on the seller." She gets out a USB stick holding high-resolution scans of her contact's fingerprints and the photo screenshot. "I've got the prints and mug shot here as .tiff files, maybe you can tweak them to make them look like holiday photos or something, and put Theo's address in a corner in one of the pics for him to reply to."

Apparently, Bruce does not need any convincing that the reply had better not come back to him. "Sure. The easiest way to mess up the images will be just to rename them as .jpegs – they're .tiffs, right? – and I can send him a text separately saying what they are. The message will be encrypted anyway, so this is just extra security."

"There's no such thing as extra security," Theo corrects him. "Now I know this is advanced paranoia, but say if this Brian found a way to hack Celine's phone – he has her number now – and saw you in it as a contact, he could hack your phone too and read your outbox."

"No he couldn't," Bruce counters smugly. "I only wrote to Selina once in Sydney using a local SIM, and we haven't exchanged a single text in Bangkok. Assuming she wiped the history," he goes on as she nods her reassurance, "we're off the hook."

Theo looks pleased but does not give up on the warning. "Just make sure you keep it this way."

Selina agrees with the text silence as a risk mitigation measure, but it is likely to make their lives difficult in Singapore. "Guys, I know it makes sense, but how are we going to coordinate the recon and any further plans from tomorrow onwards? We can buy a bunch of Singaporean SIMs and swap them after every message but it won't eliminate all the risk."

For someone who, by his own confession, has never manned the front line, Theo is quick to offer a tactical alternative. "We need a safehouse where we can talk. Suntec has a big crowded mall as part of the complex, maybe we can find a storage room we can rent there."

Bruce shakes his head. "Too risky. It's too close to this guy's office, if that's what it is on the 43rd floor, and they can easily spot us. The office lobby and the mall will both be full of CCTV cameras. If they hack into the CCTV system they'll have no trouble tracking Selina and the rest of us to its location. Whatever security and locks a storage room may have, they won't be good enough to withstand a professional burglar or a full-on attack for long, and we won't be allowed to change these, so as a safehouse, it won't really be that safe." Selina nods her agreement again. None of them know exactly who "they" are, or if anyone will indeed bother tracking them, but it is safest to assume the worst.

"Then we do it at the hotel," Theo suggests. "We stay at the biggest hotel there is, on different floors so we can lose anyone following us in the elevator, and meet in our rooms. They aren't secure either, but it should be harder to spot us. With any luck, it won't have Onity locks." It takes her a second to remember the significance. Onity locks, the type most widely used at hotels, have an easily exploitable weakness: the bottom of the lock has a tiny port used to reset the code. By using a special gadget the size and shape of an office marker, sticking its tip into the port, any half-competent thief or spy can open any room at an Onity-equipped hotel. "If they do, at least we can get lockpicks to use instead of keys. If they have another kind of lock, we clone the key cards to each other's rooms."

"Your room," Bruce corrects him. "Selina and I shouldn't be seen walking into each other's rooms, but so long as we don't arrive at the same time, we can both go to yours."

She wonders how long this visitation ban will hold in practice.

"OK, my room," Theo agrees. "Which means I'll be getting the biggest one."

"Just don't get the Presidential suite, in the interests of staying under the radar," Selina teases him.

"Talking of radars and Onity locks and stuff," Theo begins, "I was thinking it makes sense for me to stop over in Kuala Lumpur to go to our plant and pick up a few gadgets we may need. Anything they don't have, I can call Marisa and ask to have courier-delivered from Lugano overnight, it's still early afternoon there. I can go with the Al-Juhani passport to take advantage of the diplomatic immunity to carry the stuff, and my wife – " he winks at Selina – "has permission to travel on her own anyway so she can fly direct to Singapore. We already know we want a card cloner, Onity lockpicks, I'm figuring I should make silicone pads with this Brian's fingerprints in case we need to break into his office or wherever he's staying at, maybe the micro-drones just in case. Anything else to add to the shopping list?"

They have the minicams and bugs and a laser cutter, and Selina has brought along her fingerprint kit, but other than that, they are pretty light on fancy technology at the moment. "We have a laser cutter I can use instead of a drill or thermal lance, but I could do with a borescope. And a SoftDrill package," she suggests, "in case I need to open a safe in a hurry and leave no traces." The SoftDrill is basically a piece of software to test safe combinations so as to save her time. She still prefers to do it by ear for dial lock safes, and keypad ones are easy prey so long as she can manage to install a camera in the vicinity, but in this kind of situation, time and advance preparation are usually in short supply.

"I'd say a mini-EMP device," Bruce adds, "compact and autonomously powered, with enough power to take out a surveillance camera and infrared sensors."

"We have the ones in Lugano that are used to test camera shielding, I can ask to have a portable one shipped here. You know the effect is also a function of how long the connecting cables are, and it won't be a sure bet against battery-powered backups in power down mode, but at the full power setting it should fuck up most standard office surveillance equipment and make it look like a voltage spike or lightning strike nearby."

"That's exactly what I'm talking about. I wish we had more time, I could have got Lucius to send me some. I used to have tons of them in Gotham in all shapes and sizes."

"Well, I guess your objectives back then were more about getting into places, and most of the stuff we make is about keeping people out of places," Theo teases him. "But our tester should do the job."

"OK, it's a deal," Bruce concludes. "I guess that's it for the toys."

While they have been talking, she has been checking flight times and hotel bookings, and now reports her conclusions. "If you go through Malaysia, you need to leave the hotel at about noon at the latest to stop at the plant and make it to Singapore before tomorrow night. I'll ask for late checkout and take the 4:25 pm, and the latest one you can take – " she looks at Bruce – "is the 7:40 pm arriving at five to eleven, or else you won't get there until 1 am."

"7:40 should be OK, it'll give me enough time to buy the stones."

"Great. So we each buy our own ticket and book a room. I've checked, the largest hotel is the Swissotel, we're lucky because it's pretty good and five minutes' walk from this Suntec place and has 1200 rooms and 70 floors. I'd say that's big enough for us to sneak around unnoticed."

"Sounds perfect," Bruce agrees. He takes the tablet from Selina to check. "I guess you're right, we have to pick rooms on different floors." He makes a face. "OK, Theo can book one of the Stamford Crest suites between the 64th and 66th floors, these look like their non-presidential fancy suites, you can get the Grand room on the 63rd, and I'll have to survive in an executive suite again. What are you laughing at?"

She is still laughing when she answers. "You've survived prison, caro. Twice. I don't think an executive suite at a five-star will be much worse than that."

xxx

They have a very leisurely morning sipping ice cold bubble tea on the terrace; she still has time to soak in the bath after Theo leaves and before ordering lunch, and checks out at 2 pm thinking it should give her enough time to get to the airport in time for the 4:25 pm flight. Which, as it turns out, is a big mistake.

There is a major accident on the Chonburi Highway less than a mile after they join it from the On Nuj Road, and the traffic is blocked up for at least half a mile – not even crawling, just occasionally inching along. They are stuck on a stretch without exits, and she sits in the back of the limo fretting and watching the time and wishing she'd asked for a helicopter transfer, or at least taken the train. She makes it to the airport at a quarter to four and has to listen to the apologetic commiserations of the service desk who tell her that the next Thai Airlines flight is not until three hours later. The budget airline flights in between only have economy class, and even though she can live with two hours in economy, she does not feel like it, especially when Thai helpfully changed her ticket instead of making her pay for a new one. An added incentive is the knowledge that Bruce should be on the same flight; they will have to pretend to be strangers, but they may still find a way to make it entertaining. If the business class is empty, perhaps they can find a reason to sit close by, and she can even take off the veil and ask him something so they can have fun with a fake-stranger chat.

She could, in principle, go to the business lounge in the meantime, but sitting there for two hours seems like a bore and Bruce will likely show up at the last moment, so she looks up the airport facilities directory and goes for a window-shopping spree. With three floors of shops, there is plenty to pique her interest, from exquisite Thai silks and gemstone jewellery – she is not tempted enough to buy but is sure curious to look – to the bookshop with its excellent selection of travel guides and gorgeous coffee-table photo books. By the time she takes her purchase of the day, a Thailand guidebook, to the register, she hears the boarding announcement for the flight.

Her seat is in the first row so she does not see him come in, but she hears him talking. She is about to stand up and take a look to see who he is talking to under the pretence of getting something out of her bag in the overhead bin when the next thing he says hits her like a bucket of ice water.

"It wouldn't be fair to have such a beautiful lady sit on her own and deprive me of your company. I'll be completely heartbroken. Let's see if I can use my charm to persuade them to give us seats together."

She is still trying to recover when she hears the answer delivered in a cooing voice in an unmistakable New England accent.

"I'm sure they won't be able to resist."

.

TBC

.

Jetpacks are seen as sci-fi lore, but it looks like there is a working prototype that actually works and was tested by a pilot. To add to its cachet, it won an award in the Popular Science Aerospace category in the annual Best of What's New list: [http www] popsci*com/bown/2013/product/martin-aircraft-compa ny-p12-jetpack

The Onity lock problem and the corresponding lockpick is real – see [http www] forbes*com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/10/02/hackers- crack-hotel-room-locks-with-a-tool-disguised-as-a- dry-erase-marker/ . The SoftDrill package was mentioned in the safecracking paper I read when writing Chinese Boxes, as were thermal lances and borescopes as tools of the safecracker's trade.

EMP, or electromagnetic pulse, devices generate voltage surges powerful enough to take out unshielded electronics. The apparent uses of EMP in Nolan's films are when Bruce shuts off paparazzi flashes and then the lights in Bane's sewer cave in TDKR, though as Theo says, the effect is greater when the target electronics are plugged in rather than standalone as a camera would be. Having read a couple of papers on EMP weapons for background research, I cannot rule out sticking some EMP-related geekery into one of the subsequent chapters, but the important thing is what they do, not how they do it.

Should you want to see pictures of jewel-box Bangkok, here is another picspam link: [http] 01cheers*livejournal*com/7614*html

Last but not least, here is the Royal Oriental suite: [http www] mandarinoriental*com/bangkok/accommodation/royal-o riental-suite/