The casual tone in Sorenson’s voice told Petrovitch that it was probably time he stopped talking and started listening. The American had entered his very own Heart of Darkness, and he seemed content to stay there.

Petrovitch followed Sorenson to a pair of double doors set in a partition wall. Behind them was a long-disused cafeteria, complete with stains on the paintwork and rusting food warmers. And Sonja Oshicora was chained to one of those, her right wrist held high by the handcuff attached to one of the uprights.

She was dirty, bruised and seething with rage. She was bleeding from trying to force her restraints, and she tried again as she looked up and saw Sorenson. The metal cut into her already abraded skin. “Kisama!”

Sorenson was unmoved. “Brought someone to see you,” he said, and stepped aside.

Petrovitch was used to the sight of a hostage tied to some piece of furniture or other: in his day it had usually been a Soviet-era cast-iron radiator. But Boris—even Boris, with his drinking and whoring and love of dog fights—hadn’t smacked his captives around. Up to the point where they were either released or had their throats cut, they’d been treated quite civilly. It had been just business to him.

The state Sonja was in filled Petrovitch with the burning light of righteous anger. To stop his hands from shaking, he shoved his balled fists in his coat pockets.

Where he made a discovery. The Paradise militia had relieved him of his Norinco and both boxes of bullets. It clearly hadn’t occurred to them that a man carrying two different calibers of ammunition and just one nine millimeter pistol needed to be searched a little more carefully.

The Beretta had become lodged in the deep recesses of the inner lining. He could feel its shape through the cloth and, if he delved a little further, the hole through which it had slipped.

Sorenson mistook his distracted air for a brooding silence. “You see?” he said to Sonja. “He’s here, but can’t save you. I’m betting he doesn’t even want to. No matter what the New Machine Jihad says: you’re not going anywhere.”

Sonja continued to glare at Sorenson, and all but ignore Petrovitch. “When my father finds you, it will take you a year to die.”

Petrovitch remembered his minute-old vow to keep his own counsel just in time. It stopped him from blurting out the obvious: Sorenson didn’t know that Oshicora-san was dead, that Hijo was in charge and that the Jihad had taken over the tower just after he’d smuggled Sonja out of the building.

And Sonja, by not looking at Petrovitch, was clearly indicating that she needed him to play along, or being shackled to a catering appliance was going to be the least of her worries.