‘Is there a mole in the Bastion?’ Zidarov mused.

Brecht laughed, chinking his glass against the side of Zidarov’s mug, and taking a swig. ‘There are a hundred moles in the Bastion. There are moles on the moles. Where are you going to start? It wasn’t exactly a secret.’

‘I tried to vox Borodina again. Still busy.’

‘She’s on assignment. What’s she going to tell you, anyway?’ He shrugged. ‘Draj knew. Vongella knew. The sector sanctioners had been tipped off. If you’re going to get paranoid, you could find plenty of names, and it still wouldn’t help you.’ He scratched his bulbous nose, running a fingernail along where the veins had broken. ‘It happens.’

Zidarov took a swig, and winced at the taste. He didn’t even know exactly what Brecht had ordered. ‘Castellan’s hopping. She thought it was a mistake anyway. I’ve got three vox-messages from her that I can’t reply to yet.’

‘Yeah. The Vidora won’t be happy either.’

‘No doubt.’

Brecht looked up at him. ‘Look. I don’t know how it all looked to you, but, well. Was it a bit… hasty?’

Zidarov sighed. ‘Not you, too. Listen, this is all shit. Adeard Terashova isn’t missing. I know that, you know that. Hells, even Lija knows it, and she’s not even in this racket. If he was, then the Combine would have kept it quiet and bought some expensive assets to track him down and we’d never know about it. They probably didn’t even know where the Bastion was until they got a menial to show them. It’s all shit, and this was me trying to make something out of nothing.’

Brecht raised his hands. ‘Fine. I’m not saying I’m not sympathetic.’

Zidarov drained his mug. ‘I remember when I started out,’ he said. ‘I was on a squad with Berjer in the sanctioners – ­remember him? I thought he was a proper bastard back then, but now I’ve met more of them I think he was actually all right. We had a call-up, and I didn’t know what the assignment code meant, and he told me it was cell-drainers. And I told him I didn’t know what that meant either, and he thought that was hilarious. And then he sat me down and said, you know rejuve serum? The stuff the gilded stick in their veins to make them look like they’re twenty-five even when their kidneys are packing up and their grandchildren are starting their own families? I said yes. He said, well, where do you think it comes from? And like a groxprod I told him there were labs where they made it.’

Brecht silently ordered another. The fug in the bar got a little lighter as the morning waxed in the streets outside, but the windows were still opaque with condensation and grime.