‘I don’t know. Perhaps we should just ask General Esterhazy. He seems to be involved after all, doesn’t he?’

‘But you don’t think Frank Stewart is?’

‘If he were, he wouldn’t have been asking you questions the way he did. He wasn’t questioning you to find out how much you knew. He was doing it because he doesn’t know much of anything himself.’

‘It’s a military thing then?’

‘Perhaps. Whatever it is, someone’s going to a lot of trouble over it, which would seem to indicate that it is fairly special and not very small in scale.’

‘Such as?’

‘I could only posit a few guesses.’

‘Posit away.’

Parfit sighed. ‘Anything between an assassination and a war.’ He paused. ‘They’re not mutually exclusive.’

‘A war?’

‘Why not? Look at the way things are going.’

‘Christ … a war.’ Dreyfuss felt weak again. ‘But wait, if it’s such a big thing, why did they keep me alive?’

‘Well, that’s easy enough. Five men had already died, and yet you had been pulled alive and in surprisingly good health from the wreckage. The TV cameras and newspapers caught all that. So your sudden death in hospital would have looked a mite suspicious.’

‘We were all supposed to die, though, weren’t we? All the crew?’

‘It looks that way. A kamikaze mission to launch a communications satellite. An unlikely scenario, you’ll admit.’

‘But it wasn’t just a comms satellite, was it?’

Parfit turned towards Dreyfuss and smiled, seeming pleased that he had worked this out. ‘The question is,’ he said, ‘what was it?’

‘I know one way we might find out.’

Parfit seemed interested now.

‘How?’

‘My controller on the ground, Cam Devereux. He might know.’

Parfit nodded. ‘It’s an idea. But even supposing he knows anything, why would he tell us?’

Dreyfuss seemed not to understand the question.

‘I mean,’ Parfit said, ‘why should he be friendly towards us? Can we assume he’s not in on it – whatever “it” is?’

‘Well,’ said Dreyfuss, ‘can you think of anyone else who might have the answers?’

Parfit considered this. ‘Off the top of my head, no.’

‘Besides which,’ Dreyfuss continued, ‘I got on well with Cam. He sent flowers to the hospital. We struck up what you might call a special relationship.’

Parfit raised an eyebrow. ‘Any particular reason why?’

‘We had something in common,’ said Dreyfuss. ‘As kids, we were both scared to death of roller coasters.’

Parfit stared at him. Dreyfuss smiled back.

‘Well,’ Parfit said, ‘I suppose we’ve nothing to lose by talking to Mr Devereux. Best wait until we’re safely back in the embassy compound, though. We’ll try and contact him from there. All we need to do now is find someone who would know what that readout meant. Ze/446 – you’ve really no idea?’

‘No, but if Cam Devereux can’t help, I might know someone who can.’