Martin Nguyen’s father had been one of the principal torturers for the Diem regime, and his son had inherited the plated face and sinkhole eyes that terrified the living shit out of you even before they cranked up the generator.

‘Basically, we’re solid,’ said Martin. ‘Newman is an independent contractor, totally ring-fenced off from Rapture Works. If he’s been kidnapped, that’s the family’s problem. The son is on his way to Calabria now. Pete knew what he was getting himself into. He’s from there, for Christ’s sake.’

Food came. Jake speared a chunk of sushi and dipped it in the fiery corn porridge puree.

‘Pete Newman?’

Martin nodded.

‘Usual Ellis Island illiteracy, I guess. Pop was probably named Novemano or some damn thing.’

He chomped moodily on his chitterling tamale.

‘I hate Italians.’

‘Foreigners suck,’ Jake remarked.

Martin looked at him sharply. Although he’d lived in the States most of his life, he still felt pretty foreign a lot of the time. Since getting hired by Jake as project manager for the Rapture Works venture, he’d learned how to decode and even speak the idiolect of the city’s software community, where geeks married nerds and the incidence of autism was the highest in the country. Jake wasn’t exactly autistic — mild Asperger’s, maybe — although it had occurred to Martin that he might well fail the CAPTCHA test designed to distinguish between human and artificial intelligence, maybe in both categories. Too dumb to be human, too fucked up to be a machine. But the hard fact was that someone who walked and talked and looked and spoke like Jake was worth more money, right now, up front in cash, than anyone else in the restaurant would earn in his entire lifetime. Including Martin.

‘I mean, to do business with,’ he said. ‘It’s all “Sure, yeah, no problem, you got it” and then no delivery. And they don’t even apologise, just act like you’re a sucker for ever believing they meant what they said in the first place. You need me to go there, Jake. Aeroscan have concluded their installation and set-up and will be ready to roll at eleven this evening our time. The civil authorities have granted them unlimited clearance below a hundred metres.’