‘Presumably,’ said Narendra. ‘Although I would rather it was not the case. Please,’ he gestured to the display, ‘there’s more.’

Saul turned back to the TriView and reeled in shock. The view had shifted back to the figures in pressure suits, except that this time some of them had cracked their helmets open, and were engaged in lifting a naked Mitchell Stone on to a makeshift stretcher. His skin was tinged blue and, as Saul watched, an oxygen mask was placed over his mouth. After that, he was carried down a long corridor with a high, vaulted ceiling, the walls decorated with carefully carved glyphs and shapes so utterly inhuman that they verged on the obscene. Another sudden jump-cut, and Saul watched as Mitchell was lifted out of some kind of cabinet in a sterile-looking room filled with pipes and monitors.

‘I can’t make sense of any of this,’ said Saul. ‘What is it supposed to be?’

Narendra regarded him with sad eyes. ‘You cannot explain it?’

‘It can’t be real.’ But how, then, to explain that image of Farad Maalouf peering out of his helmet, surrounded by that impossible landscape?

‘That is Eren’s assumption,’ said Narendra. ‘He thinks Farad somehow invented all of this. But this does not explain why someone in the ASI wanted him dead, nor, presumably, why they wanted Jeff Cairns dead as well.’

Saul shook his head and turned back to the TriView, thinking he couldn’t possibly experience any greater shocks than he had already received. But what came next was like the final coup de grâce in a particularly one-sided boxing match.

He again found himself looking at what he had at first assumed to be a bridge, but which now appeared to be a parapet connecting the monumental structure he had seen earlier to other, identical edifices. Something about them made him think of a cemetery – or, perhaps, a mausoleum. The video had been filmed from the point of view of someone pushing a heavy steel box, mounted on balloon-type wheels, with serial numbers stamped along its side.

Saul recognized it immediately as the hijacked shipment Hanover’s squad had been sent to track down.

The suited figure trundling the box came to a halt, whereupon a second figure, which had been walking just ahead, stopped and turned to look back. Saul recognized Jeff’s face looking out through the visor, an expression of worried concern on his face as he spoke. This time, however, there was no sound, suggesting he must be communicating over a private link.

‘I have studied these video fragments very carefully,’ explained Narendra. ‘Particularly the ones that were most recently uploaded into the database. There are ways to determine if those images are real or not – certain signs of artifice that cannot be avoided. Yet I have found no such evidence.’

‘You can’t be serious,’ Saul replied stubbornly. ‘You’re trying to tell me this is all real?’