“There’s a Soyuz trapped on a ledge at around this depth. One time I saw parts of the Japanese H-II rocket. We know of more than eighty Russian cargo vehicles scattered over one particular area. Then, past three thousand feet down, you’re in the dark zone. Pitch black, close to freezing—a few invertebrates: starfish, eels. Then the trenches and the abyss, twenty thousand feet and beyond, into the unknown.”

“What were they looking for?”

“There was stuff going down there that wasn’t what it was meant to be. That’s pretty much as close as I got to understanding the situation. Things that looked wrong, or suspicious.”

“Have you been down there?”

“Sure. The shallower regions.”

“You dive?

“Right.”

“Down to satellites?”

“Most of my diving was in wrecks. But once or twice I took a look at the debris down there; not satellites—part of the Mir space station. It had got encrusted, but a door was intact and you could see the airlock.”

In the depth of his cold eyes was a gleam.

“Must be quite something,” Taylor said.

Lau nodded, but her curiosity had made him uneasy. He sat forward, both hands pointed toward her as if to channel his message.

“The first thing you said when I agreed to work with you was that I’d be protected. From the very start, Andrew promised me protection, precisely for a situation like this.”

“Andrew.”

“The guy who met with me.”

At the end of September 2016, a man walked up to Jerry Lau in the hotel he was staying at in Kuala Lumpur and suggested they have a drink together. This was “Andrew,” the MI6 officer who would be Lau’s handler for the next eighteen months. He said he knew Lau needed help and could provide it, extricate him from the situation in which he’d found himself with the Chinese, if he was willing to work for the British government.

Lau was keen. He didn’t hear anything more for six weeks, thought they’d changed their mind. Taylor knew what would have really been going on: intensified analysis to ensure he wasn’t a double agent; heavy surveillance to determine whether anyone else knew they’d made an approach. Assessment of his value; assessment of the risk. Then a plan would be painstakingly constructed regarding the best way to run him.

In November, Andrew appeared again, same place. He drove Lau to an office behind the Pudu night market, with a secure room at the back. The conversation was very much a rehash of what they’d already been through, but it concluded with arrangements including payment and secure means of communication.