‘Not exactly. They were lying in wait for us in the underground corridor leading to the bunker where the condenser containing the Super Sarin was supposedly stored. There was a struggle when they tried to arrest us. I didn’t actually realize the guard who was manhandling me was armed until his gun went off. In the mayhem after he was wounded, Alison and I tried to escape. But we were cornered and the only way out, according to the directions Noy had given us, was down a drainage chute that connected with a sea cave beneath the base. The tide was in, so the cave was flooded. We had to swim out. But something went wrong. When I reached the mouth of the cave, I realized Alison wasn’t with me. I went back, but I couldn’t find her. There was quite a long stretch where the water was up to the roof of the cave and it was so dark it would have been easy to swim into a flooded side-cave by mistake and drown before you’d found your way out. I think that’s what must have happened to her. I’ve always regretted giving up looking for her that night, though I’m not sure I could have done much more without drowning along with her. That wasn’t what I was thinking at the time, though. I was thinking about self-preservation. That’s the truth of it. And the shame I felt on account of that was one of the reasons I ran away. Not just from Nancekuke, but from my life to that point. Plus the fear of being charged with attempted murder of a guard and sent to prison, of course.’

‘So you became Peter Evans?’

‘Yes. After swimming ashore, I left Marty out for the count on Porthtowan beach and walked through the night to Newquay. I caught a train there and dodged the ticket inspectors all the way to London. I could have got off at Exeter. When I stayed on, the die was cast. In London, I took a job serving behind a bar and set about turning myself into Peter Evans. It was a lot easier to pull off than it would be today, of course, with so much of ourselves on the Web. One asset I had was my fluency in Japanese, though. That’s how, later that summer, I found myself working as Shitaro Masafumi’s translator. Which meant I came to know all about his and Nishizaki’s sokaiya dealings back in Japan. Masafumi was under a lot of pressure, desperately trying to shore up his finances and failing at every turn. He drank a lot and often passed out, leaving incriminating paperwork lying around for anyone who understood Japanese to read.’

‘Meaning you?’ Why Driscoll was being so frank with her Wada still had no idea, but she didn’t want to say anything to hold him back.