I shook my head. ‘Schultner wasn’t available. I was told I’d be briefed on arrival.’

Casey stared at me for a moment, then looked over at the soldiers loitering nearby. ‘Hey,’ he yelled. ‘Was Arnold Wotzko expected to be here? Or Schultner, the other guy in charge of briefings?’

One of the soldiers dropped a cigarette stub and rubbed at it with his boot. ‘Nope,’ he said. ‘Just us.’

Oskar gave me an I-told-you-so look, while Nadia just shook her head. ‘Another fuck-up by our glorious leaders,’ she muttered.

‘So I was supposed to have been briefed by now?’

I saw Oskar reach inside his shirt and take a firm grip on one of the many fetishes he wore around his neck. ‘It’s a bad omen,’ he moaned. ‘We should head home before it’s—’

‘Shut up,’ snapped Casey, stabbing one gloved finger at Oskar. ‘I’m tired of your superstitious bullshit, Oskar. Nothing’s going to go wrong.’

‘For a change, I hope,’ Nadia said under her breath.

Casey shot her a deadly look.

‘Well, seriously,’ said Nadia, looking at everyone else, ‘am I the only one who double-checks every piece of equipment they give us?’

‘Should we be expecting problems?’ I asked, alarmed.

‘Not outside of the usual snafus, no,’ said Casey. ‘And you can blame the Authority for all the substandard gear. There’s only so much you can do with the tools you’re given.’

‘Those SUVs don’t look too shoddy to me,’ I said.

‘Exactly,’ said Casey. ‘That’s why we grabbed them when we found them. They’re infinitely more reliable than the jeeps. Now focus,’ he said, rapping his knuckles on the map once again. ‘And Jerry, if you’ve got questions, feel free to ask them. You’re assigned to Nadia’s team, so maybe she can fill you in on anything I miss out once we’re all under way.’

I looked at Nadia and she nodded. ‘Okay,’ I said to Casey. ‘So where are we, exactly?’

‘Just south of Sao Paolo, in this alternate’s Brazil.’ Casey nodded in the direction of the skyscrapers and the nearest Hive. ‘The bridge leading over the reservoir and into town is wrecked, but the water’s shallow enough to ford in the SUVs. Then we follow the road into the city centre.’ He moved his fingers across the map. ‘These red circles indicate the location of three properties belonging to a French research outfit called Retièn Biophysique. There’s a research lab, and also a separate government-financed facility they used for long-term cryogenic storage. Lastly there’s an office suite, making a total of three locations for them in this vicinity.’

I saw that the three circles were quite widely separated. Lines connected them to each other by what struck me as very indirect routes indeed.