Poi Li gave him a quick appraisal. “You look worried, Mr. Hepburn,” her deceptively light voice challenged.

Bastard! “My expenses are all legitimate.” He made it light, office banter.

The second visitor stood up.

“This is Major David Johnston,” Dokal said. “From the Ministry of Defense. Nuclear division.”

The major was a heavy man in his early fifties, moving with some difficulty and wincing every time he bent his knees. Callum imagined him being injured during some kind of dark ops mission. A thin monk’s band of white hair circled his scalp, and he wore wire-rimmed screen glasses, which gave him the air of a classics professor. His presence worried Callum a great deal more than Poi Li ever could. “Really?”

“Pleased to meet you, Callum. Counselor Torres here has been singing your praises.”

Callum gave Dokal an ironic glance. “Nice to know.”

“We have a delicate problem,” the major said. “And by ‘we,’ I mean the British government. So we’re asking for your help and discretion.”

“Which Connexion guarantees,” Poi Li said. “Correct, Callum?”

He spread his arms wide, trying not to let the dismay show. “Sure. So what’s the problem?”

“The ’68 Global Disarmament Treaty,” Major Johnston said. “Terrific breakthrough event for global politics. Lots of voter happiness all ’round.”

“I’ve heard of it,” Callum said cautiously, not that he could remember details; politics and history weren’t exactly his strongest subjects.

“It was inevitable, given the development of atomic bonding generators. Every major city in the world has an air shield now. Missiles and drones can’t get through, and if you bond enough air together, it can withstand a nuclear blast. Whole national arsenals were rendered obsolete overnight—well, five years plus. That just leaves us with low-level threats now: terrorists building their own nukes, rogue nations, extreme political groups, etc., etc. Everyone realized the only way to prevent that menace being realized is to get rid of the world’s stockpile of weapons-grade fissionable material.”

“After the ’68 treaty, everybody abandoned their warheads and their material stockpile,” Dokal said. “It’s one of the reasons Haumea was so profitable for Connexion right from the start; everyone made a show of shoving their nasties through.”

Callum watched her closely. He really didn’t like where this was heading now. And the vivisectionist gaze that Poi Li was using to study him didn’t help.

“So we did,” said Major Johnston. “Everybody minimized. The UK was left with five functioning warheads for deterrence purposes alone, and no ability to build more. However, I’m afraid we had a…uh, inventory issue.”

“Oh, fuck,” Callum groaned.

“The trouble is, back in the twentieth century and a fair bit of the twenty-first, the government was somewhat paranoid. They didn’t declare the true amount of plutonium we had created.”

“Jesus fucking wept! Are you telling me there’s plutonium in that malfunctioning tank?”

“We were trying to dispose of it quietly,” Major Johnston said. “To avoid an incident with the Transnational Inspectorate.”