“He’s the doc.” The thin man nodded at the fat one. “So don’t get sick while you’re here. I’m an electrician. Frankie.”

“Good to meet you, Frankie. Valuable profession. Live in Georgetown?”

“Travellers Hill, by the RAF base.”

“You work on the base?”

“That’s right. Dull enough that I have to come hang out with this old fart.”

“He’s after his Viagra prescription,” Nulty said.

“Like there’s anything worth that.”

“Warn the donkeys.”

Kane grinned. Eighty percent of spying is pretending to be drunk with men you wouldn’t choose to drink with. This wasn’t new territory. Frankie was missing teeth and his nose had been broken and reset at one point, skin leathered by sunny postings. Kane had crossed paths with a lot of Frankies in Afghanistan and Iraq: tradesmen who’d got on the khaki circuit. Camp followers, who enjoyed the sense of being on the road, the stories they could tell when they got back home, the subsidized lifestyle.

“Seriously, though,” Kane said. “Where are the ladies? Where are these wives? Beautiful as you guys are.”

They hesitated, as if struck by shyness, but it wasn’t shyness. They were calculating something.

“Are you married?” Nulty asked.

“No. You? You guys single?”

The doctor said he was sadly divorced. The electrician grinned and said he was single on the island.

“What do you do for fun?” Kane asked.

“Oh, there’s options.”

“Really?”

“Steady yourself, my friend, the night is young.”

They asked Kane about the UK, about news there, then what he’d heard about the island before coming over. Talk turned to the loss of the airbridge with the UK, and Kane got a sense that they felt abandoned, that the island was floating away. “Cast adrift,” the doctor said. But he didn’t seem too sorry about it.

“They’ve done it elsewhere,” Frankie said. “Sterilized the place. Swept it clean when it suited them.”

Kane wondered where he meant exactly. Diego Garcia? That was a colonial possession the British had emptied for the sake of military installations and American radar. How much did the people of Ascension think about their Pacific sibling? Twinned with Diego Garcia wasn’t a heart-lifting proposition.

“We are the endangered species here, make no mistake,” Nulty said. “The island now has more antennae than people.”

It chimed with what Thomas had said. Was this neglect of the island’s population the vague background to a lower-level corruption? There was a sense that civilian time was almost done here, a fin de siècle guttering, a last hurrah. Kane finished his drink and insisted on buying another round, insisted on them all accompanying their pints with shots.

“You really have Viagra?” he said.

“Of course. It’s a bestseller.”

“Prozac?”

“Prozac, diazepam. Why? The place got to you already?” The doctor laughed and laid a fleshy hand on Kane’s arm. “My treasure chest is always open.”