“The junk in those vials is something new. Radical. I got a lecture on it, but I didn’t understand one word in ten. I was military before I started doing this, then did PMC stuff for Romania and Germany. I’m half and half, so I’ve done stuff with corporations in both countries. Ask me about a gun or an RPG or something practical and I can give you details all the way down to the metallurgy, but this is chemistry. It’s some kind of weird chemistry. Not my area. The regular salesperson for this is missing, maybe dead. His boat sank somewhere off the Bulgarian coast. The boss thinks it was sabotage, but that’s a guess. All they ever found was some debris.”

I said nothing and kept my face blank.

“R-33 is supposed to be some kind of super juice,” he said. “You ever watch those movies about Captain America? About how he got so big and strong? What did they call it? A super-soldier formula? Well, that’s what this is supposed to be. Something to give PMCs a real upgrade. Not like they become Superman or anything. Just a boost to strength and stamina, maybe amp up their speed and reflexes so that one man can do the work of four. Cuts down on the number of contractors someone needs to hire for a gig. And they’ll work until they drop. That’s what the code letter is for. R for Relentless.”

“Relentless,” I mused.

“Right, but it has a double meaning. And I’m afraid if I tell you, you’ll hurt me.”

I smiled. “If you tell me the truth, then no, I won’t.”

He thought about it. “Okay, okay … The earlier versions of Relentless were just that. But this new generation, number thirty-three … it has Rage in it.”

I stared at him.

“Yes,” he said. “Not enough to go completely insane, not like in Oslo and Korea. Just a touch. It makes them want to kill, but they can still tell friend from foe. The designer originally called it Berserker, after those crazy Vikings. But because it’s married to the Rage compound, they … well, you understand.”

“Who developed it?”

“Dr. Dejan Brozović,” he said. “He created Relentless for Kuga but got clumsy and was arrested. They needed him to finish the development of R-33. The stuff in that case is a test version, but it’s probably not very good. I knew that, but these idiots didn’t. We were going to let them test it, and if it did work, then we wouldn’t need Brozović. We were stuck because he was in a German black site prison until the other night. But I guess you know that.”