He drove alongside a ridge of striped cones his map named the Sisters, their bases lapped by undulating, silky silver ash dunes. Half a mile farther north he passed a sign for Broken Tooth Crater Firing Range, pointing down a narrow dirt track toward a volcanic cone with one side collapsed. Then more urgent notices appeared: DANGER—EXPOSED HIGH VOLTAGE, RADIO FREQUENCY LINES . So he was on the right track.

Kane kept to the road and arrived at the BBC Atlantic Relay Station. It felt bizarre and strangely comforting seeing the old-fashioned BBC logo by the side of the road. The air filled with metal now, slender white poles that reached half a kilometer high with wires strung between them like an intricate net. The road divided, with one fork leading toward the power station and the other into the radio facilities. Kane continued through the BBC’s cluster of flat white buildings until he saw the sea and, just before it, Rory Bannatyne’s shack.

Rory had chosen a curious place to call home. In 1920 some men had tried to establish a mining operation on Ascension. What they were mining wasn’t the rock but seabird guano, rich with phosphate. When the enterprise failed the works were abandoned, only to be repurposed in 1942 by US soldiers in need of accommodation. This was where Rory had moved: a rundown hut born of Edwardian industry and GI ingenuity. He had moved a week after arriving, claiming his original Georgetown billet was insecure. Here was security, discretion, and, as it turned out, a lot of beauty. Clear blue water, an empty beach protected from sight. Solitude. Privacy. Somewhere to hide.

The shack itself was barely bigger than a caravan, with a few steps up to a wooden door. The bay over which it looked carried a deep sense of seclusion. There were no BBC staff physically based here anymore. Engineers visited occasionally to check the transmitters, but they were based at Two Boats. Most of the work was done remotely. An emergency phone stood beside the beach, alongside a life buoy. Kane checked the phone and it appeared to be in working order. Near the phone, the sand contained a cluster of white balls that he thought at first belonged to a beach game but, closer up, revealed themselves as broken turtle eggs, with the shriveled remains of the unborn turtles still inside. Three white oil storage tanks interrupted the view along the coast.

He walked back up the beach to Rory’s home. At various points, holes had been dug, precise and deep, and after a moment Kane realized what they were.

They’d dug around the hut as well. Down to the depth necessary to bury someone. Kane made his own brief search for burial spots, but the choice was hard rock or thin sand. It wasn’t terrain for burial.