“I spent three days in a cell. I had no idea where I was. I was accused of being a spy. They said I was in their waters illegally, wanted to know what I was doing there, wanted to know about my work, my connections. On the third day they came to me with a deal, and it became clear what they were after. They wanted to see what my equipment could do. They wanted me to take them out, find a wreck they thought was down there, show them my technology and how it works.”

“Your technology?”

“Mapping shipwrecks at great depths with any kind of precision involves a lot of sensors—acoustic, hyperspectral, stereo. But done well it means you don’t need to carry out endless inspection dives. You fit a stereo camera on an ROV, and you can have high-res 3D models in front of you on dry land.”

“ROV?”

“Remotely operated underwater vehicle. An underwater robot. These things can collect and analyze the data on their own, which means they can decide whether to investigate further: what to document, what to map. I was the only one who’d combined the whole package on a single underwater vessel. It had taken years of development.

“The Chinese threatened my family. They were willing to arrest relatives of mine. My father’s business would have been destroyed. So, I agreed. And when I was taken out of the interrogation facility, I was on what I believe to have been an artificial island. There was something very odd about the shoreline, the way it met the sea. The island itself was perfectly flat. I saw buildings that might have been labs, some more like military HQs. And there, finally, was my boat and crew, who had been through a similar experience to me, and were waiting for instructions.”

“Do you know where this island was?”

“Not for sure, but I suspect Paracel.”

That sounded right. The Paracel Islands included some of China’s largest military outposts in the South China Sea. A lot of them were newly made—dredged-up miracles, studded with long-range sensor arrays, port facilities, runways, reinforced bunkers for fuel and weapons. Lau had got a glimpse of one of the most secret places on earth.

“And where did you go then?” Taylor asked.

“The next day we sailed past Guam into the Pacific. Heading into the cemetery. You really don’t know about it?”

“Tell us.”

He took a breath as if wondering where to start, joined his hands, pressed them against his lips, then, gazing straight at them, began again.

“Satellites die. Spacecraft die. Then you’ve got two choices: direct them farther away into outer space forever or let them return to earth.” He looked from one intelligence officer to the other to ensure they were following. “Only, you don’t want them falling on anyone, right? And maybe you don’t want anyone falling onto them.