Nadia guided the vehicle down an incline below the ruined bridge, our passage raising a high plume of water as the SUV made its way across the shallow water. Then she steered up the other bank and back onto the road on the far side of the motorway bridge.

Up ahead, Casey gunned his engine, and his SUV shot forward, bouncing as it climbed onto a road. He put his arm out the window and gave us the finger. Beside me, I saw Nadia’s mouth tighten, while Oskar giggled from the rear.

‘Fucking asshole,’ muttered Nadia.

Up ahead, the other SUV had almost vanished from sight. They were headed east, us to the west.

‘This is the first I heard of any of this,’ I said.

‘Greenbrooke tried to force a crackdown. Bramnik got Wallace released in short order following his arrest, but by the time we got him back, it was clear that the Patriots had banged him up pretty good. Wallace claimed he’d been tortured.’

I stared at her, aghast. ‘Tortured him? For what, stealing a couple of bottles of booze?’

‘Not quite.’ Nadia shook her head. ‘Some alternates we visit are more technologically developed than the ones most of us come from. That means there’s all kinds of advanced technology just lying around, asking to be taken. That’s what the Patriots accused him of trying to smuggle back to the island. To be honest, they’re not entirely wrong in wanting to stamp on it. Sometimes you can’t be sure what’s safe to bring back, and what isn’t. Depending on where you’re going or where you’ve been, sometimes there’s a strict quarantine procedure, and that covers more than just technology.’ She glanced at me as she drove. ‘As you know.’

‘And he does this kind of thing a lot?’

‘The man has sticky fingers,’ Nadia replied. ‘I don’t know if it’s kleptomania or the expression of some childhood trauma, but try not to leave anything lying around where he can grab it.’

‘So whatever they did to him, it was bad enough to turn him into an alcoholic?’

She shrugged. ‘He was on that road anyway. I think they just hurried him along a little bit.’ She pulled up at an intersection. I saw a row of shops with apartments above, their windows smashed and open to the elements. The wind sighed around us.

Nadia handed me the map. ‘Here. You’re the navigator.’

‘Sure.’ I tried not to show how nervous I really was.

We drove on through deserted streets and across cracked and overgrown tarmac for another twenty minutes, while I told Nadia where to take each turn as we followed the strange, zigzagging routes through the city.