Kane returned to the books, his heart beating with a forcefulness he hadn’t felt for a while. Do you feel mission-sharp . . . The guard approached. Kane moved instinctively to cover the history of Ascension, then stopped himself.

“Looks like no one’s had that for a while,” the guard said, nodding at the book.

“I’m doing some interesting research.”

“What’s that then?”

“It’s about an island in the South Atlantic: Ascension. Belongs to us.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Might be some travelling involved.”

“Tropical island, eh? Want to swap jobs?”

“I’ll send you a postcard.”

“Jammy sod.”

The guard walked on. Kane clicked into secure browsing, searched for any more news on the missing girl, but there was nothing. Then he searched for academic research networks: colonialism, sixteenth century, South Atlantic, watching his fingers type but thinking through an operations checklist: transport, equipment, cash, ID.

He brought up a photograph of the girl again, then a map of the island’s thirty-five square miles.

4

Twenty-four hours after his visit to GCHQ, Kane was in a briefing room in an anonymous MI6-owned office above an insurance company in Holborn. By Thursday morning, he was walking through Johannesburg’s OR Tambo International Airport, watching the crowds thin out as he approached the gate for his flight to Saint Helena, the second leg of his three-flight journey to Ascension.

In his bag were the books and research materials he had managed to acquire in the limited time available: two histories of Ascension Island; one on the Royal Marines; Charles Driver’s Chronicle of the British Empire; and the translation of a diary left by a Dutch sailor abandoned on Ascension in the 1700s. He had a passport, driving license, and bank cards in the name of Dr. Edward Pearce, a postgraduate researcher in early modern history at Pembroke College. Two cardboard wallet files contained the notes for Pearce’s work in progress: “Islands in the Imperial Imagination.”

There’d been no sign of the missing girl. It was ten days since Bannatyne had hanged himself and Petra Wade disappeared from the world. In the absence of useful leads, Kane had read everything he could find regarding the island, as if this itself might prepare him. But it only enhanced his sense of unease. Ascension was the tip of an undersea volcano. One percent of it was above water. Head down another few miles and you got to the rift that stretched from Iceland to the Antarctic, where continental plates pulled away from each other and the earth’s boiling core welled up. One myth said that Ascension was still warm when the first humans stepped on it. That was a few millennia out, but it said something about the lack of invitation that the rock extended.