compartment."

The man reflected on this, before saying, "We're looking for a child. Have you seen any unsupervised children hanging around?"

Just then another voice distracted the man. It was Floyd, outside now. He spoke in soft, urgent French too fast for her to follow, what with all the background noise of the station, but she recognised "child" and a few other significant words. The other man responded with further questions, sceptical in tone at first, but with increasing urgency. He and Floyd exchanged a few more heated words and then she heard footsteps heading with some haste away from the carriage; a few seconds later, she heard the shrill, repeated warble of a police whistle.

Moments pa.s.sed, then Floyd knocked on the door to her compartment again. "Let me in. I just got those goons off your back."

"And you have my undying grat.i.tude, but you still have to get off this train."

"Why are you so interested in Berlin? Why are you so interested in the Kaspar contract?"

"The less you ask me, Floyd, the easier time of it we'll both have."

"The contract is for something unpleasant, isn't it? Something you want to stop happening."

"Why do you a.s.sume I'm not actually trying to help it happen?"

"Because you have a nice face. Because the moment you walked into my office, I decided I liked you."

"Well, like I said: you're not necessarily the best judge of character."

"I have a ticket for Berlin," he said. "I also know a good hotel on the Kurfurstendamm."

"Well, isn't that convenient?"

"You have nothing to lose by taking me along for the ride."

"And nothing to gain."

"Silver rain," Floyd said.

It was said in such an offhand way that at first she thought she had simply misheard him. That was the only logical explanation. He couldn't possibly have said what she thought he had...could he?

She dropped her voice even lower. "What?"

"I said 'silver rain.' I was wondering if it meant anything to you."

She flicked her eyes to the ceiling and opened the door to the corridor. Floyd was standing there, hat in his hand, looking at her with puppy-dog eyes.

"What you just said-" she began.

"It means something to you, doesn't it?" he persisted.

"Shut the door behind you."

A whistle sounded and a moment later the train lurched as it began to crawl out of the station.

Floyd took out the postcard he had kept back. He pa.s.sed it to Auger and let her examine it. She switched on the reading light and held it up for closer inspection. The train rattled and bounced, gathering speed as it negotiated the maze of interconnecting tracks beyond the ends of the platforms.

"It's significant, isn't it?" he prompted.

The postcard was a message from Susan White to Caliskan. Clearly, it had never been sent. Equally clearly, it had something to do with Silver Rain. But Silver Rain was a weapon from the past, a thing of wonder and terror, like a biblical plague. Silver Rain was the worst thing that could happen to a world. More than that: it was quite possibly the last thing that would ever happen to a world.

TWENTY-ONE.

The train slipped through monotonous moonlit lowlands, somewhere east of the German border. Every now and then, the lit oasis of a farmhouse or a cosy little hamlet slid by in the night, but for long stretches of time they pa.s.sed through endless dark fields, as lifeless and unwelcoming as the s.p.a.ce between stars. Occasionally Auger glimpsed a fox, frozen in midstep, or the swooping pa.s.sage of an owl skimming low across a field on some solitary vigil. The animals were drained of colour by the moonlight, pale as ghosts. These little pockets of life-welcome as they were-served only to emphasise the vast lifelessness of the territory itself. Yet the rhythmic sound of the train's wheels, the gentle rocking motion of the carriage, the distant, muted roar of the engine, the warmth of a good meal and a welcome drink inside her-all these things lulled Auger into a kind of ease, one that she knew was transient and not especially justifiable, but for which she was none the less grateful.

"So tell me," Floyd said, "how are we going to play the sleeping arrangements?"

"What would you suggest?"

"I can sleep on the seat I booked." Floyd's expenses hadn't stretched to a couchette ticket.

"You can use the lower bunk," she said magnanimously, dabbing a napkin at the corner of her mouth. "It

doesn't mean we're married. Or even particularly good friends."

"You sure know how to make a guy feel appreciated."

"I mean, Wendell, that this is purely business. Which doesn't mean that I'm not glad to have you in the vicinity, in case they show up again."

"The children?"

She nodded meekly. "I'm worried they'll have followed us."

"Not on this train," Floyd said. "They'd be too conspicuous, even more so than in the city."

"I hope you're right. Anyway, it isn't just the children."

They had just finished dining in the restaurant car in the company of a dozen other travellers, most of

them better dressed. Almost all of the other diners had now retired to the adjoining bar car or their

individual cabins, leaving Auger and Floyd nearly alone. A youngish German couple were arguing over

wedding plans in one corner, while a pair of plump Belgian businessmen swapped tales of financial

impropriety over fat cigars and cognac in another. Neither of these parties was the least bit interested in

a low, intimate conversation between a couple of English-speaking foreigners.

"What else, then?" Floyd asked.

"What you said...what you showed me on that postcard?"

"Yes."

"Well, it dashes any hopes I might have had that I was actually imagining all this."

"You weren't imagining those children."

"I know," Auger said. She sipped at the remains of her drink, knowing that she was a bit drunk and not caring. Right now, a little fogginess of mind was exactly what the doctor ordered. "But the reference on that postcard to Silver Rain-well, it means that things are about ten times as bad as I thought they were."

"Maybe it would help if you told me what this Silver Rain is all about," Floyd suggested.

"I can't tell you that."

"But it's bad, isn't it? When I dropped those two little words into your lap you looked as if someone had

walked over your grave."

"I was hoping that my reaction hadn't been so obvious."

"It was written in sky-high neon. Those two words were the last thing you wanted to hear."

"Or expected to hear," she said.

"Coming from my lips?"

"From anyone's lips. You shouldn't have held back that postcard, Wendell. It was thoroughly dishonest."

"And you pretending to be Susan White's sister-that's what you call setting an appropriate example, is

it?"

"That's different. It was a necessary deception."

"So was mine, Verity."

"Then I suppose we're even. Can we leave it at that?"

"Not until I know what those two little words mean."

"As I said, I can't tell you."

"If I had to put money on it," Floyd said, "I'd say it was the codename for a secret weapon. Question is:

who's on the trigger? The people behind you and White, or the people who killed White and Blanchard,

and sent those children to stalk you?"

"It isn't our weapon," she said fiercely. "Why do you think Susan White was murdered in the first place?"

"So it's their weapon, not yours?"

"That's enough, Wendell."

"I'll take that as a 'yes.'"

"Take it any way you like, it doesn't make any difference to me."

"Let me join the dots here," Floyd said. "Susan White stumbles on to a conspiracy. The Kaspar contract

in Berlin is part of it. So is Silver Rain, whatever that is. I guess all these things are connected somehow,

although right now I don't see how those metal spheres can be any part of a weapon."

"The spheres aren't the weapon," she said icily. "I don't know what they are, except that they must be involved in all this somehow. And if I knew that, I wouldn't be sitting on this train being pestered by you."

"But you do know what Silver Rain is, don't you?"