There was a sense in which all things to do with Zula and the Russians were a red herring. MI6 couldn’t care less about them. They just wanted Jones, and any intelligence that they might be able to glean as a by-product of hunting for him. They’d had a quite satisfactory arrangement going in Xiamen, which had been destroyed by the Russians’ intervention. Everything to do with T’Rain and REAMDE was a distraction; for Olivia to hang out in a biker bar with the founder and chairman of Corporation 9592 was acceptable as an off-hours diversion but should under no circumstances be confused with actual productive work. Thus the official line. But having just finished a very long and expensive wild-goose chase to Zamboanga, an officially sanctioned mission that had put Seamus’s men to a lot of effort and danger and apparently led to several deaths, Olivia was now inclined to view the party line with a great deal of skepticism. She had a vague sense that drinking with Richard Forthrast might in the long run be more productive than flying to Manila had been. But she couldn’t explain how, yet, and so she didn’t think she’d be filing an expense report. Which turned out to be a nonissue in any case, since Richard picked up the check before giving her a lift back to her hotel.