"Conscripts, I'll wager," Dalby said. "Probably first few weeks in by the look of them."

She nodded without comprehension. They did look young, but apart from that, why they'd be draftees rather than volunteers was beyond her. She assumed Dalby had an eye for such things, however, having been there himself.

"And this'll be the slave driver in chief." He grinned, as another young man, tall and seeming to revel in the unpleasant conditions, peeled away from the head of the column and stepped into the roadway in front of them, holding up his hand. The other men kept trudging forward.

"Pass me the clipboard, would you, Ms. Monroe?" Dolby asked as they pulled up alongside the officer. "In my experience, there's no situation a fellow cannot handle with a clipboard and a sense of entitlement."

The lieutenant in dripping wet battle dress twirled one finger to signal to Dalby that he should roll down his window. A pair of Warrior infantry fighting vehicles passed by, drowning out the officer briefly.

"Good morning, Lieutenant. Not a bad day for it, eh?" Dalby chirped as he passed over the clipboard without being asked.

The lieutenant wiped a stream of rainwater from the brim of his helmet, only to see it reappear moments later. He leaned forward, dangerously close to dripping into Dalby's vehicle. "An excellent day for it, sir, and what would you be doing driving around my firing range?"

"Well, if you'll read the top sheet, you'll see it's not all yours, Lieutenant… Hunter. We do have to share, you know."

The officer, who spoke with the polished accent of the English upper class, turned down the corners of his mouth as he inspected the travel pass and Home Office authorization.

"I see," he said somewhat despondently, almost as if he'd been looking forward to roaring through somebody other than his own men. "So it's the village you're off to, Mister Dalby and… Miss…"

"Monroe," said Caitlin, sitting forward slightly. "Caitlin Monroe."

"A consultant to the Home Office," Dalby offered.

The lieutenant frowned. If he cared about her American accent, he gave no indication. "She's not listed on the authorization. You'll have to wait here while I check with my superiors."

"She wouldn't be," Dalby said, letting some of the pleasant tone drop out of his voice. "If you took the trouble to read the note, you'd see that I'm authorized to transport whomever I damn well please wherever it takes my fucking fancy, Lieutenant. If I feel like driving this vehicle right up your ass and parallel parking it in the voluminous spaces there within, then that's exactly what I shall do. And I believe your superiors would concur with that assessment. Luckily for you, however, I'm not so inclined. I just want to carry on to Imber."

Lieutenant Hunter, who looked like he was chewing on a particularly sour dog turd by that point, sniffed in distaste. A drop of rain hung on the tip of his patrician nose. He wiped the brim of his helmet again, spattering a bit of misery onto Dalby's coat.

"Imber. I see. Well, no need for attitude, sir. This is a dangerous part of the country, you know."

"Everywhere is a dangerous part of the country nowadays, laddie. So if you don't mind, I'll have those papers back and be on my way."

The rain was thickening, and the soldier contrived to get quite a bit of water into the warm, dry interior of the little Mercedes as he tossed the clipboard back into Dalby's lap.

"Drive carefully, sir." The lieutenant smiled. "Accidents do happen."

Dalby snorted and shook his head as he raised the automatic window and placed the travel papers on the floor behind Caitlin's seat.

"There's a big puddle up ahead," she said. "If you time it right, you could give him a hell of a dunking."

Dalby smiled.

"Childish but as satisfying as that would be, Ms. Monroe, I shall resist. I do have to pass through here quite a lot, and although Imber is our patch of the manor, it doesn't do to get the tin hats offside. A simple life, Caitlin. I crave a simple life. Do you mind me calling you Caitlin, by the way? That was rather presumptuous, wasn't it?"

"No, you're fine," she said, trying to inject some warmth into her voice. It was difficult with the chill she felt settling around her soul. A killer's cold detachment. "And thank you for looking after Bret and Monique, by the way. I was a bit out of it back at the hospital. I didn't really think to say thank you for all you've done. I'm sure it must have been a hassle organizing everything on such short notice. And I know that resources are always an issue these days."

"Think nothing of it," he said as he drove carefully past the army officer. "Things are always tight; you're correct. Those poor bloody squaddies of his, the conscripts at least, they wouldn't be earning enough for a decent punt on ciggies and pints at the mess. No wonder they look so bloody sorry for themselves. Bloody Russians pay their troopers better than that. But there's money for some things, and our little operation remains flush."

Caitlin wondered why he never mentioned Echelon by name. It wasn't as if the network of agencies, all of them based exclusively within the English-speaking world, was a state secret. Even Monique, the French girl after whom her daughter was named, had known something of it, gleaned from the pages of the French press before the Disappearance and the intifada. Perhaps Dalby was just an Old World kind of guy.

"Not too far now," he announced a few minutes later as they drove past a plain white two-story building. It had no windows or doors, just empty spaces letting in the weather. She assumed it must be the first of Imber's ghost buildings. The village had been taken by the army way back in 1943 to be used as a training facility for the invasion of mainland Europe, and although the inhabitants of that time had been promised they could return to their homes, the army had kept the place for itself.

"So this place has been off limits for what, sixty-three years now?" she asked.

Dalby made a gentle left-hand turn toward a thin stand of elm trees sheltering two more boxy-looking buildings like the one they'd just passed. Without windows or any of the usual signs of habitation, the empty shells looked entirely forlorn, although Caitlin assumed the army must have spent some time maintaining them. Structurally they appeared very sound, which should not have been the case after more than half a century of exposure to the elements.

"Back in the old days," Dalby said, "before the Wave, the army opened the village up to sightseers quite a bit. After things changed, though, the Imber Range went dark again. Army still uses the village hulks for specialist training, but we have our own reception facility here, in the old pub, and first dibs on the rest of the place. It's well away from prying eyes and secure naturally, being stuck in the middle of sixteen thousand hectares of live firing range space."

The rain had eased to a light drizzle as they swept into the main street of the village. Leaf litter and food wrappers blown by the morning's wind plastered the lower floors of the first structure past which they drove, a long rectangular building with a steeply pitched green roof. It was a featureless, rather ugly structure, not at all what Caitlin would have expected of a well-preserved English village. She caught a glimpse of a church steeple off to the southwest, tucked in behind a thick screen of oak and chestnut trees. The tall gray spire appeared to be leaning slightly off center, and she wondered if the army had maintained it to the same standard as the rest of the village.

"That's Saint Giles through there," said Dalby, who seemed to enjoy taking the role of tour guide. "A rather lovely old place it is, with some very fine wall paintings. From Shakespeare's day, you know. About four or five hundred years old that makes it. Heritage listed."