Caitlin shook her head as she watched a group of children playing tag in front of the Federal Center. She was pretty sure she recognised Sergeant Milosz down there, in uniform, watching over them while enjoying a cigarette. Occasionally he would dart into the pack of children, grabbing one who was proving difficult for the others to catch, and holding the struggling, laughing child upside down by the ankles.

‘So what do we have on them?’ she asked.

The time delay caused Wales’s earlier reply to run over the question.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Natural selection at work.’

There was a moment of confusion while he disentangled her question from his reply, before he continued. ‘Here’s the thing, Caitlin. The sat phone was picked up by DSD on a programmed sweep by Darwin Station.’

‘Defence Signals Directorate? He’s down under?’

‘In Darwin. The Deadwood of the new millennium. Been there just over two days. Allowing for flight duration, must’ve lit out from KC directly. I asked our local franchise to follow up on it. The connections are starting to go fractal but I think they’re worth following. The Aussies are happy enough to look into it. They don’t want a freelance hitter on their turf, especially not in Darwin with all the Chinese and Indian players they have going through there. There’s even a trade mission from the Federation in town this week. Probably nothing to do with our hitter, but you can imagine how Echelon station in Sydney was all over it once we told them. Put one of their best guys on it. He’s already got some good intel.’

‘Anything for me?’ asked Caitlin, who hadn’t expected any joy from Special Agent Colvin, and now found herself more confused by the meaning of Pieraro’s killing. If indeed it had any meaning.

‘Doesn’t look like it,’ Wales told her. ‘Random cross over.’

She concentrated hard, trying to recall the case notes she’d studied in Kansas City. It wasn’t easy. There had been so much data to take in. She thought she remembered that the Pieraros had spent time in the refugee camps in Australia, before being accepted into a homesteading program in the Federal Mandate. But whether that was significant, she couldn’t say.

There was nothing for it but to press on with those things she could control.

‘Okay, thanks for that, Wales,’ she said. ‘If anything else turns up, especially from Darwin, I’d like to know. And if someone could pass Colonel Murdoch’s thanks on to Colvin, that’d be good. He put himself out for us. I have no idea what it all means, but Darwin’s a hell of a long way from Fort Hood. Even further from Kansas City. And I’m going to need your help here in the next couple of hours.’