“It’s not money,” he said. “I have learned my lesson about greed. I have more than I could ever spend. It is…” He paused. “Nikita and I have developed a philosophical difference of opinion. It’s fundamental—it means that we can no longer work together. We have been successful beyond our wildest dreams. The work that Daedalus has done will change the way we think about genetics forever. But as we became more successful, it became more obvious to me what our work would mean. I was naïve. I ignored the money they poured into the company. Millions and millions of dollars. I persuaded myself that it was for the good of science, that we would have an influence on how the research was put to use. But…” He paused again and cleared his throat. “But they wanted a return on their investment. They would not listen to me. As soon as we had viable test subjects, the company was pushed in a different direction. The Department of Defense became heavily involved. You have heard of DARPA? The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.”

“Yes,” Beatrix said.

“And Manage Risk? Do you know them?”

“The private military contractors?”

He nodded. “Daedalus was hidden within it. DARPA increased the funding, but the work was buried. They took sixty years of research and they weaponised it. They sent our children into the world to work for them and I decided that I had had enough.”

“Your children?”

“The viable test subjects—that is what they call them.”

“What does that mean? Testing for what?”

“I told you,” he said, as if explaining himself to a small child, “they are seeking metabolic dominance.”

Beatrix looked at him. It was difficult not to think that his story was ridiculous. She would have been unable to credit any of it save that, whatever else he said, Koralev’s work and his sudden abandonment of it had attracted the attention of the CIA and, in turn, Group Fifteen. Whatever it was that he had done, it had led him to this meeting with her. There was something there, no matter how outlandish his claims. They wouldn’t have been involved otherwise. And her assessment of his story was an irrelevance, anyway. She had orders to follow. That was all that mattered.

“So you just left?” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

“And no one is paying you to be here?”

“Have I been bought?” he asked. She nodded, and he shook his head. “No. I have been bought before. I want the opposite now. Freedom from that, from having my name associated with all of it. I wanted to leave while I still could. I chose here because they will not send me back. No extradition. And the CIA has no reach here.”

Beatrix almost corrected him in that, but checked herself.

The door rolled up. Milton was crouched down outside. “Beatrix,” he called out.