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.'
'Does it get used?' she asked.
'Used to, once a year. But lightning struck the steeple. In the year of the Wave, in fact. It's been closed up ever since. Here we go, then.'
He swung the car hard left past a row of five stark and somber-looking whitewashed buildings, all of them exposed to the weather. The narrow gravel driveway opened up into a generous parking lot in which sat two civilian cars and an army Land Rover. A couple of soldiers, much older and more grizzled than the draftees they had passed earlier, walked from one building shell to another, cupping their hands around lit cigarettes as they went. Neither gave Dalby's car more than a glance, and he made nothing of their presence.
'We're over here in the old inn,' he said as the car crunched to a halt in front of a long, low-rise building that obviously predated the council flats they had seen.
'Looks old enough that Shakespeare might have stayed a night himself,' she said.
'Mmm. Would have had a thatched roof and all once upon a time. The walls are genuine wattle and daub. You can even see the handprints of the original builders here and there, and there's some quite charming touches inside, old reed lamps and suchlike, but I'm afraid the accommodations are quite basic otherwise. It's hardly boutique these days.'
She followed Dalby out of the car and in through the old wooden doors. A fat, cold drop of rainwater plopped right on the end of her nose. Inside, the outline of the old public bar was visible on the dark wooden floor as a lighter area. Very little else remained of the building's history. Most of the long rectangular space was taken up with cheap government desks, plastic chairs, and a few filing cabinets. Dalby nodded to a middle-aged black woman typing at a computer. She smiled back but didn't break rhythm at the keyboard.
'They downstairs, then, Jude?'
'Yes, Mister Dalby. In the old keg room.'
'Thanks, luv. Don't forget to take your lunch break today. Can't have you going all light-headed on us, can we?'
It must have been an old in-joke. Jude snickered and rolled her eyes but carried on.
'If you'll follow me, Caitlin, our Mister Richardson is down here.'
She expected to follow him into the rear of the inn, but Dalby picked his way between a couple of desks, bent over, and hauled up a trapdoor. From its position relative to the outline of the old bar, she assumed it must have been where the cellarmen passed up supplies.
'The keg room?' she asked.
'Aye,' Dalby confirmed as he swung around and went backward down a very steep wooden ladder. 'Watch how you go, Caitlin. It's not an easy climb for an old duffer like me or a woman in your condition.'
'My condition is fine,' she said as she swung over the hole in the floor and slid down the ten-foot drop with her boots on the outer rails of the ladder and her hands only lightly gripping the side. Her breasts did ache a bit as she landed, but she would never admit that to anyone.
'Indeed, my mistake, then,' Dalby said with one raised eyebrow. 'Through this way.'
Huge oaken barrels still lined two walls of the cellar, and dusty bottles, some hidden away behind spiderwebs, filled two wooden shelves along a third. A couple of men in casual clothes playing cards at a fold-up table greeted Dalby and waved him through to the end of the cellar space, where a wedge of yellow light spilled over the flagstones from a room obscured from view by an especially large wooden cask.
One of the two guards winked and blew a kiss at Caitlin as she walked past.
She stopped and smiled warmly, picked up his cards, and cocked an eye at his mate.
'He's holding both red queens, a nine of hearts, and fuck all,' she said.
The other man roared with laughter as she walked on.
Dalby stood waiting for her at the entrance to a small, damp room that ran off the end of the cellar. Illuminated by a naked lightbulb, it contained two silent hovering guards and one chair, on which sat Richardson, the man who'd tried to kill or take her family a few hours earlier. Richardson was shaking and attempting to blink away runnels of fear sweat before they stung his eyes. His dreadlocks were matted with mud and leaves, and the right leg of his jeans had been cut away. A dirty, bloodstained bandage encircled his upper thigh, and his left arm had been roughly splinted after she'd broken it at the elbow.
His eyes went wide when he recognized her, but it was Dalby he should have been watching. The quiet gray- suited man moved up beside the prisoner and swung a hard, vicious sword-hand strike into his nose. Richardson screamed as he went over backward, a few drops of crimson blood spraying the slimy whitewashed brickwork.
'Righty oh, then,' Dalby said softly, turning to one of the guards, who hadn't reacted in the slightest to the
