“I’m sorry about Custine,” she said. “I’m sorry he got involved in all of this and I hope you can find a way to help him. But it isn’t my problem. Your entire little world isn’t my problem.”
“You know what really hurts? The way you almost sound as if you mean that.”
“I do mean it,” she said fiercely. “Now go away.”
“Those policemen aren’t going to let you ride this train anywhere.”
She heard the whistle and snort of a departing train. But it wasn’t the one she was sitting in. “I’ll deal with them.”
“Like you dealt with me this afternoon? You weren’t going to use that gun, Verity. I could see it in your eyes.”
“Then you’re an exceptionally poor judge of character. I would have used it, if necessary.”
“But you wouldn’t have enjoyed it.”
There was a hard knock on the glass. A voice with a Parisian accent said sharply, “Open the window.”
She slid the blind up and pulled on the leather strap that lowered the glass. “Do you want to see my ticket?”
“Just your identification,” said one of the officers standing outside.
“Here.” Auger slid the papers through the gap in the window. “Is something the matter? I wasn’t expecting to have my papers examined until later.”
“Is there anyone else in that compartment with you?”
“I think I’d have noticed.”
“I heard you talking.”
With a casualness that surprised her, Auger said, “I was reciting a list of the things I have to do in Berlin.”
The man made an equivocal noise. “You’re on the train alone, before anyone else. Why were you in such a hurry to get aboard?”
“Because I’m tired and I don’t want to have to squabble with anyone else over who has the ticket for this 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 passed, 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 gratitude, 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 assume 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 passed 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 passed through endless dark fields, as lifeless and unwelcoming as the space between stars. Occasionally Auger glimpsed a fox, frozen in midstep, or the swooping passage 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.”