Stone was sitting in coach, ten thousand metres over Central Asia. The seat-back TV was on in front of him, flickering away, but he was looking out of the window at the earth curving away beneath. Something was bothering him, like an itch at the back of his brain.
Stone hadn’t started NotFutile.com and his peace campaign immediately when he left the army. In fact he’d had “issues”. Some called it “post-traumatic stress”, but it wasn’t stress. It was more like “combat withdrawal”.
He’d found himself looking for fights. He’d once put on a dress suit and ordered a sweet sherry at one of the hardest bars in Portsmouth, just to see what would happen. Nearly had his ear torn off in the struggle that followed, but he’d finished on top. Just.
To credit the army, they gave help for this kind of thing. The “stress” counsellor talked to Stone about anger management, and asked him about something called rules for living. Did Stone feel the need to prove himself by violence, over and over? Did he feel constantly threatened? Stone had answered yes, to keep the counsellor happy, but the real answer was no — in both cases. Stone hadn’t felt threatened. He didn't feel a need to prove himself. The truth was, he enjoyed the violence. That was why he’d kept looking for trouble, looking for fights. It was also why he'd had to get out of the army. Over time he’d healed his mind, reduced his violent urges from an open wound to little more than an itch. But an itch that never went away. Right now that itch to harm someone was getting seriously irritating.
The Peace Campaigner thing was Stone’s way of cleansing his psyche of those feelings — but it only worked up to a point. It was displacement activity. Deep down he knew he was simply looking for danger and confrontation in different ways. Repressing the feelings, but not getting rid of them. Was he motivated by anger about Hooper’s killing? Yes. Did he have an urge to get Semyonov? Yes. A long, long way back, Hooper had been his friend, the kind of deep comrade-friend that only soldiers can know about. And Stone owed him. Stone owed very few people anything at all in life. He liked it that way. But Hooper — he owed Hooper. So going after Semyonov — and whoever else was behind that charnel house in Afghanistan — was a way of scratching the itch.
Stone was snapped back to the present by the image of Semyonov on the seatback TV. He put on the headphones:
‘In a surprising development to the Semyonov story, advisers to SearchIgnition Corporation confirmed that they have already sold one hundred percent of the shares belonging to SIC founder and majority shareholder, Steven Semyonov. Semyonov’s holding netted the search genius a total of $25.9 billion in cash.
‘Meanwhile, Semyonov is said to have travelled to Hong Kong, where he’s set to make yet another “major announcement” tomorrow evening.’
Semyonov had taken his money, and himself, out of the US with indecent haste. It looked as guilty as hell. It looked like Terashima was right. But how had she known?