Nulty estimated that the death occurred sometime between seven p.m. and midnight the previous night. That evening most of the island had been at a talent contest at Two Boats. The last people who’d seen Rory alive were two guards at the British base on Traveller’s Hill. He’d been seen driving west at around four p.m., toward the interior. They knew Rory, and the car he used—a boxy blue Fiat 500—because he was a regular frequenter of their bar. They couldn’t gauge if he was agitated or otherwise, but he was driving at a relatively sedate speed, no more than thirty miles per hour, they estimated. The car was parked neatly by his accommodation when Rory was found.

The Ascension Island police found contact details for Rory Bannatyne’s UK employers, which put them through to the government department providing his cover. They, in turn, immediately contacted Kathryn Taylor, as protocol demanded.

In a hurried call with Bower, Taylor had debated sending out a specialist police team under their own direction, but it would have been conspicuous and risked blowing Ventriloquist entirely. Their priority became getting his body back. It was a circuitous route. An RAF flight took the corpse to the Falklands, a second onward to Cape Verde, where it was transferred to a C-17 refueling on its way from Belize to Brize Norton.

An initial autopsy in the UK recorded the cause of death as brain is­chemia due to asphyxiation, with reflex cardiac arrest, which fit death by hanging. A toxicology report registered 0.02 milligrams alcohol in his blood, which was equivalent to two or three drinks.

Kane felt an urge to visit the antenna he’d used. He’d seen a photograph of it in the file, but there were none in the immediate vicinity. He had to go back up to the relay station. The antenna farm began on the other side of the road. Pylons rose up to one hundred twenty-five meters into the air: high frequency towers, antennae in circular formations, then some solitary ones—ones that looked like giant fish-scale TV antennae, one like a crucifix, with the top angled downward so it seemed to be bowing its head. Most would be involved in receiving or transmitting BBC signals. The idea had been to extend the reach of the BBC World Service, beaming to Africa until nightfall there before switching to broadcast into South America as it woke up. Not all the tech here was strictly BBC, though. This was a GCHQ outpost too, and it was unnerving being alone with the structures, knowing the power they signified, the secrets they were drawing down from the equatorial sky. There was a constant electric hum that sometimes resembled strange music, as if the wind was playing through the metallic rigging.