“Is the connection solid?”

“Yes.”

“Does this girl connect to space in any way?”

“Not as far as I’m aware.”

The German officer took a deep breath as he pondered this.

“I’ll look into it. I think we can help each other, Kat. I’d like to know what Quadrant are up to, what makes them so special. You’re in a good position to find out what’s going on.”

“What do I get?”

“Just possibly, you get your career.”

Taylor felt a new sharpness in the air.

“What do you mean?”

Fischer glanced down, picked some fluff from the floorboards and flicked it away.

“Tomorrow they’ll try to fire you,” he said, without meeting her eyes. “They plan to use Oman and what happened there, all that nonsense.”

Taylor stared at him until he was forced to look at her.

“What do you know about that?” she said.

“Grapevine stuff, Kat. I’m not a stalker.”

“Were you there for me tonight? Were you following me?”

He put his glass down, walked over to her. “I can help you win, Kathryn. I can help you defeat the people trying to destroy you. They’re up to something, and when we know what it is, we can judge to what extent they deserve their secrecy.”

“Is this some kind of trap, Markus?”

“If it is, it’s not necessarily the worst one to be in.” He watched her from up close. Taylor felt cornered, but in that situation you fight with what comes to hand, and what she had was an offer.

“Let’s say I get you information on Quadrant,” she said, carefully. “What then?”

“It depends what it is. We would manage an appropriate response. That might involve exposing criminal behavior or merely threatening exposure. That could be enough to stop them. Same principle they’ve used with you. If things became heated in any way, we would get you out of the country. For the time being, at least.”

Things felt suddenly very big and very real.

“Time isn’t going to change the fact that I’ve leaked national security secrets, Markus. That’s a fourteen-year prison sentence.”

“No one’s going to prosecute you. Not if you’re in the right. They wouldn’t take that risk.”

“Any idea what they might do to me then? Geneva hasn’t softened you that much, has it?”

“I understand the magnitude of what I’m asking you to do.”

“I wouldn’t take any money.”

“No, I assumed not.”

“This is about finding out what happened on Ascension.”

“For sure. I’ll start investigating from our end immediately. Perhaps we’re after the same thing.”

His eyes held an entirely different light now, as if every moment she had spent with him he had been acting and now he’d stopped.

“You really don’t know anything about Ascension?” Taylor said.