On through the gate and out, then into the nearest tunnel. He parked in the underpass where previously he had made the second vehicle change, fifty kilometres from the burnt-out van he’d used in order to get Hannah out. Even though not precisely following the previous route, he was now using the same vehicles a second time, and this worried him. Before moving the crate over to the car, he ran his scanner over it, and found it loaded with trackers, so he just took off the lid and spilled it and its contents out the back of the van, knowing that the whole lot would be spread out among the indigents of the sprawl by the time the Inspectorate even started looking. However, the only trackers he found on the essential items were fixed on their containers and therefore easy to dispose of. Fortunately the items themselves were aseptically sealed, ready for surgical implantation.

By early morning he reached the bunker where Hannah, having only just roused from his bed, greeted him wearily.

‘You did it,’ she observed.

He dropped the briefcase on the worktop and pulled out the objects she had requested.

‘Is that all?’

‘Too many trackers on the other stuff,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to acquire it from elsewhere.’

She looked disappointed, but seemed to shrug it off and move on. ‘That means we’ll need equipment from a high-tech surgery.’ She scanned her surroundings and frowned. ‘Preferably the use of a high-tech surgical theatre.’

‘Mobile black hospital.’

She nodded in agreement, which surprised him. How could she have learned about such illegal concerns from her prison?

‘Problem,’ Janus abruptly warned him.

‘What sort of problem?’

Hannah looked at him oddly, but he pointed a finger at his bonefone, and she nodded in understanding. Janus did not reply; all he got was a fizzing noise from the fone.

Of course, it had all been too damned easy. He grabbed up a scanner from the work top and ran it over himself. Nothing, so what had he missed? They must have worked out what happened to Avram Coran and been tracking him by satellite the moment he departed the Cell Complex – he could see no other possibility. He abruptly stepped over to the two screens allowing him a view outside. The agricultural security net was offline and most of his own cams were now down, the screen becoming a patchwork of fizzing squares with only a few clear views. He realized the clear views came from cams with direct fibre-optic links, but they were enough. One big aero had landed in a nearby field and another was still descending. Inspectorate enforcers were pouring from the first and heading across directly to the old beet storage bay.

‘We’ve got trouble,’ he said, gazing at the screen disbelievingly, the evidence before his eyes not yet really impacting.

‘Oh, Christ.’ Hannah’s voice was full of weary pain.