Donohue sat down again. ‘I’ve just spent a considerable amount of time and energy trying to find ways to extricate you before the Taiwanese decided you were trying to overthrow their government, and locked you up for the next hundred years. Care to tell me your side of things?’

Saul lifted the coffee to his lips and took a tentative sip. It tasted better than he’d expected.

‘Hanover’s your man,’ he said. ‘He was on to you from the start. Have you got him back yet?’

Donohue shook his head. ‘No, we haven’t, but that little excursion is costing us dearly. There are videos and photos of dead ASI troopers all over the nets.’

‘I found him destroying hard copies – evidence of some kind, I’m guessing. He didn’t even try to hide what he was up to, because he knew he was going to get caught, and made plans to save himself. He did, however, tell me he wanted me to deliver a message.’

‘Go on.’

‘He said that if you don’t guarantee his family safe passage to the colonies, he’ll tell the Sphere everything he knows.’ Saul shrugged. ‘I can’t make any sense of what he told me, but I assume you can.’

‘That’s all he said?’

‘He mentioned some other stuff that didn’t make any more sense to me either. Tau Ceti, and something called a Pacific growth?’ Saul shook his head in puzzlement. ‘I had no idea what he was talking about.’

‘You didn’t ask him to explain?’

Saul gulped more coffee, and winced as it burned its way down his throat. ‘He had a gun to my head, after nearly burning me to death. It didn’t feel like a priority under the circumstances.’

‘I’ll need a full and detailed report.’

Saul shruggeo;There’s not much more to tell, except that Hanover sacrificed his entire squad rather than give himself up to me. Whoever was using that compound must have cleared out just before we arrived, so they’d obviously received plenty of advance warning. It doesn’t take a major leap of intuition to guess that Hanover’s the one who tipped them off.’

He watched Donohue withdraw a narrow, rectangular slip of paper from inside his jacket, then lay it on the table between them. Donohue drew the tip of one finger across it, and, in response, the logo of a major airline appeared on the sheet of paper, as if by magic, along with lines of text rendered in a fine-serif font.

He scooted the live-sheet towards Saul, who stopped it with his fingertips.

‘Diplomatic clearance and your ticket home,’ explained Donohue. ‘All appearances to the contrary, you’ve done good, Saul.’

‘That’s funny, because I could have sworn it was a total fuck-up.’