The skyscrapers, on the other hand, were not. As cities went, Kansas City did not boast a large skyline, yet perched on a high rise above the river, the buildings still dominated the landscape for miles around. They were a mix of modern glass and steel with a leavening of concrete structures that Miguel thought may have been built in the 1930s. They looked like the sort of thing you saw in old black-and-white movies. The tallest of them, a more recent glass and steel monstrosity, still featured a large gash in the side near the top third of the structure where a plane had buried itself on Wave Day.

The only one he could readily identify by name was the Federal Court House, a barrel-like design with a large bank of windows that faced north, towards the direction from which they had travelled. Many of the endless interviews with the federales had taken place deep within the heavy stone walls of that building. At first, Miguel had viewed it as a symbol of stability, of order and hope. Now as he looked on the sand-coloured structure, the court house seemed to be the very embodiment of crushing futility.

He did not have long to gaze at the skyline. The bus turned off towards the River Market, passing the former warehouses, now loft apartment buildings, in one of which Sofia was probably nursing a cold rage at this very moment. The vehicle came to a stop a block or two short of the mid-week market and unloaded its passengers.

As he walked beside Maive Aronson, deep crevices of worry creased his already rumpled features. He found himself thinking often of Maive lately, and finding succour in those thoughts. Uncomfortable with where that might lead, he shook his head, forcing himself back onto practical matters.

‘Have you spoken recently to the investigators?’ he asked her.

‘Which ones, Miguel? There’ve been so many of them since we got here. They all ask the same questions, over and over again. I wonder some days why they can’t just compare notes.’

He had no answer for that, because he’d been thinking the very same thing almost from the moment they had presented themselves and their story to the first federal authorities they came across. The venue had been a humble sentry hut guarding the entrance to a militia training ground, formerly an airfield, near the ghost town of Grandview, south of KC. Miguel soon lost track of the number of people he had talked to since then about the attack on his family, the actions of the road agents he had witnessed in Texas, and the trials they had borne to escape the clutches of Governor Blackstone. That was how he described it: ‘the clutches of Blackstone’.