doings and a-goings-on. And given your involvement, I sent an extraordinary update as soon as I had enough detail.'
Caitlin sat up in the passenger seat.
'So did Wales have a reading on it?'
Dalby frowned. 'I'm afraid that with this business in New York all of your government's intelligence resources have been retasked onto the pirate issue. Indeed, most of ours, too. A good deal of Echelon's continental and African assets are now actively attempting to interdict the pirate traffic at the source. So although Mister Larrison was concerned and sent his best wishes, he was happy to leave the running on Mister Baumer to me and thee. Like you, he saw this as a personal vendetta and best dealt with… personally.'
Caitlin was a little pissed off that Dalby hadn't told her about the contact with Wales, but he had been so good about everything else that she let it slide. After all, her old controller had effectively shined them on, and he would have been hell busy with New York.
Instead, she concentrated on the view outside. As bleak as that was, there were a few pleasant interludes. They stopped behind two buses outside a small park just after Wharf Lane. She could see a few families over the brick wall, laboring away at their vegetable plots while smaller children played in the trees. They had probably come down from the council flats behind the converted garden and seemed to be enjoying themselves tending the rows of carrots, peas, and potatoes. An older man, half stooped and white-haired, a geezer in the local parlance, shared a thermos of something hot with a large black man, a West Indian, she guessed, who wore the bright red patch of a London council auxiliary sewn on his sweater. He leaned on an ax handle while enjoying his 'cuppa.' He would be there to discourage any raids on the site by gangs of chavs or munters who, in Caitlin's opinion, could do with a bit of fucking Enclosures themselves.
By the time they had driven down as far as the All Saints station on the East India Dock Road, the residents of the flats that lined both sides of the street were beginning to shuffle out into the gray, wet morning to join lengthening queues for buses and trains. Dalby's zippy German car attracted many envious looks as he subtly increased his speed through the area, and more than a few of the waiting commuters resentfully gave him the finger.
They drove for another twenty minutes, passing thousands of people trudging to line up for public transport into the city, if they were lucky. Many would have to make multiple transfers, and as much as everybody had once bitched about being caught in peak-hour traffic, it seemed much worse when there was no traffic at all save for the fleets of buses. It had never been an issue for Caitlin, of course, but she had read that it wasn't unusual for people to spend up to four or five hours a day in transit, and she often wondered why they didn't just move closer to wherever they needed to be.
They passed another park given over to agriculture, except this one was much larger than the little plot closer to the city. It looked big enough to have hosted a whole complex of sports fields at one time, and she could tell at a glance that the two tractors plowing the rich black soil were preparing it for a single seed planting. It must have been a ministry operation, as modest little council plots did not run to the sort of gas allowance one needed for tractor farming, although the small crowd she saw huddled at the rear of the field undoubtedly meant the actual planting would be done by hand.
'Must make you a bit homesick for your own place, then, eh?' said Dalby.
She sighed and shook her head, imagining how cold and miserable those people were going to be. They were probably on a work-for-the-dole scheme.
'I forget sometimes how good we have it down there, Dalby,' she said. 'I mean, we have refugees and everything, and so you're always reminded of how fucked things are for some folks. But even for them, it's gotta be better than trying to scratch together a living up here.'
'Well, I imagine that's why there is such a long waiting list to get onto farm stay programs like yours and Mister Melton's. I cannot think I would remain long in London were it not for work.'
He swung off the A13 at River Road, just before the Lyon Business Park, where there wasn't a lot of business being done. Indeed, half the premises seemed to be shuttered up, but Creekmouth wasn't completely derelict. Trucks rumbled to and from the nearby gravel pits, and the sewage plant across Barking Creek was churning away as always. The Thames Cafe and Daddies Snack Bar were open, serving chip butties and sweet tea to a few hundred workers who had precious jobs in nearby metalworks and manufacturing plants. There was a surprisingly healthy marine engineering trade, an industrial cleaning plant, a wire factory, a joinery, and a food wholesaler. One of the largest, most modern facilities belonged to DHL, the courier company, a German engineering firm had just taken over six large factory buildings on Long Reach Road, and there was talk of them opening an engine plant for the new BMW compact under an EU redevelopment program. As far as Caitlin could tell, however, nothing had changed at the abandoned site beyond the erection of a high razor-wire fence.
Dalby drove past all this activity, carefully avoiding the jouncing trucks that rumbled along the crumbling, potholed road, spewing black diesel fumes and not much caring whether they sideswiped him. They carried on past the Crooked Billet pub, an honest drinking hole that smelled of stale food, refried grease, and cigarette smoke. Caitlin had lunched in there once and been taken by the stained-glass windows and an unusually large collection of Pat Benatar tracks on the jukebox but not so much by the grim Dickensian atmosphere and the openly lecherous stares of some of the factory workers nursing their pints and roll-yer-owns.
A minute on from the pub Dalby took a sharp turn just before the old power station and motored down a long driveway past a row of very obviously empty sheds and a large, quiet fenced-off area in which shipping containers were stacked three and four on top of each other. The Thames, gray and wind-flecked, flowed past a hundred meters away, where two men were unloading heavy boxes from a small boat tied up at the end of an old pier. They waved to Dalby as he pulled up and climbed out of the Merc, then went back to their work. The assassin and her handler took their luggage from the backseat and walked through a muddy parking lot in which sat more rusting shipping containers, piles of car tires, at least a dozen rotting wooden boats, and a few mounds of gravel covered in once-green tarpaulins that had been bleached nearly white by exposure to the elements. After a short passage through this junkyard, turning left and right as they threaded through the piles of rubbish, they came to an eight- foot-high electrified fence topped by more razor wire. A blockhouse where a young, well-built man in civilian clothes sat drinking from a paper cup guarded the entrance.
He greeted Dalby by name but insisted on seeing their papers anyway.
The hair on Caitlin's neck stood up as she sensed herself in someone's sights, but she didn't react to the uncomfortable feeling. She knew that snipers covered everyone who came to the Cage through the front door. As long as you had business there, you were fine. It was only those who came through the delivery entrance who had reason to be worried.
The guard thanked them for their time and apologized for the inconvenience of the painstaking accreditation check. The gate slid open smoothly, and they stepped through into Echelon's London op center.
26
Texas Administrative Division 'These are definitely no banditos,' Miguel said quietly. 'They are road agents.'
He passed the night vision goggles to Aronson. They were an excellent tool, he thought, well worth stopping in the next large town they might pass to salvage a pair for himself from a hunting supply store or army surplus outlet. He could easily make out a wealth of detail around the Hy Top Club, a slumping structure of old wooden slats with a broken-back roofline and a half-collapsed awning dropping down over a front veranda.
Aronson also spoke quietly, although without whispering. 'Is there a difference?'
Miguel took back the goggles and resumed his surveillance of the old nightclub, or dive bar, or whatever it had been. The small town may have been a mausoleum haunted by the seven thousand souls of those who had Disappeared there, but one would not have known that if all one could see of Crockett, Texas, was the Hy Top Club of South Cottonwood Street. The agents who had attacked the Mormon party, stolen the better part of their longhorn herd, and ridden off with half a dozen of the women were doing their best to push back the darkness. The club roared with life-rude, vicious, drunken, and barbarous, but life nonetheless. The uproar had made it all too easy for Miguel and the Mormons to locate their quarry after cautiously approaching the ghost town from the southwest.
