“Because they’re scared and they’re stupid,” he said. “Grogan figured if they could keep it under wraps, they’d have two years to unearth a cure before they got found out.”

“They’re mad!”

“That’s what I told them. Jesus Christ, the world’s been searching for a cure for AIDS for nearly two decades, and they think they’re going to find a cure for RXV in two years?” He snorted his derision. “But Pang Xiaosheng went along with it, basically ’cos he’d got no fucking choice. Soon as the Chinese government finds out what he’s done he’s a dead man. And Chao . . . well, Chao was dying already, and he was going to tell the world. So Grogan brought in this pro from Hong Kong. Some Triad hit-man who was going to be invisible in China, they thought. He took care of Chao and reckoned he’d destroyed the evidence by setting him on fire. And then you came along and started cutting him up and asking for blood tests. It was all getting out of hand . . .”

Through all her emotions—of self-pity, of horror and shock—her brain was sending tiny alarm signals to her conscious mind. She forced herself to stop and think and focus. She stared at him, and he became discomfited. “What are you fucking staring at?” he demanded accusingly.

“Those gates into the park shouldn’t have been open, should they? This time of night, they should have been all locked up.” Her mind was racing now. She looked around. Great red doors with gold studs closed off all the gates on to the marble terrace, except for the one through which they had come from the corridor. She stabbed a finger towards it. “That should have been locked, too, shouldn’t it?” Maybe she didn’t have five years to live. Maybe she didn’t even have five minutes. She wheeled round on him. “You never wanted me to go to the American Embassy with you, did you?” How could she have been so stupid? “You bastard, you set me up! That’s why you’ve been telling me all this, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter that I know. Because you’re going to kill me.”

He took a step towards her. “They made me do it,” he said, his jowls trembling, his eyes black and scary now. “They said just to get you here. It was me or you. And, hey, you’re going to die anyway.”

“We’re all going to die some time,” she said bitterly.

He took another step towards her.

She stepped back. “Don’t you come fucking near me,” she hissed at him.

“Hey, I’m not going to do it.” He seemed shocked that she should think him capable of such a thing. “I never hurt anyone in my life.”

“Of course not. You only infected half the world’s population with a lethal virus.”