Hammer, usually a cool type, wailed on a rising note, 'Michael, we've got to keep talking! Mr Barnard, wait, I'll come out with you.'

The lawyer inclined his head regretfully. 'Sure, but it's Mr Beard's signature that we want,' and he stepped out into the dusk, and Hammer hurried after him. The door swung shut, and Beard heard the voices of the two men retreating across the parking lot, with Toby's suddenly growing louder, beseeching, begging for time, then giving way to Barnard's insistent murmur.

He was slumped in the chair just as before, still wondering about a shower. The episode appeared like a playlet staged for his benefit. For the moment he was numb to its implications. He was aware that a great wall obstructed the progress of his life and he could not see past it. His thoughts were stilled. His only concern was that Melissa and Catriona would arrive in less than an hour and he should be dressed to greet them. After many empty minutes he went to the bathroom and got under the shower and stood there blankly, barely conscious, with hot water drumming on his skull. At a sound, he put his head out of the cubicle and listened. There was a loud knock on his door, then another. There was silence, then his palmtop began to ring from the bedside table as the knocks resumed and grew louder. Hammer called out his name many times. No doubt desperate to come in and persuade him to be Braby's minion.

Beard retreated under the shower, and when he was sure that his friend had gone away he stepped out and began to dry himself. Hot water on his skin had done the trick. He was refreshed and knew what must happen. It was all down to attitude. Tomorrow's opening must go ahead. The rewards might be snatched away, but the world would see what he had accomplished. He would go out in a blaze. Or better, persuade someone with money to back him through the courts in return for a part share. Their most important visitors were already in their hotels in El Paso, and some were coming through Silver City. The sun would rise, the panels would makes gases out of water, the gases would run the turbines, electricity would flow, the world would surely stand amazed. Nothing must interrupt the Beatles medley and the screaming low-level jets.

With a towel stretched round his waist, whistling 'Yellow Submarine', he came back into the bedroom, rummaged in his case and pulled out a shirt, which he shook free of the laundry-service cellophane and cardboard. The sound of plastic wrapping was a reminder of one more animating factor, his hunger. Having refused his brunch, and replaced it with his lunch, he was running a meal deficit which he was about to address. He found clean underwear and socks – strange to think back to the days when he could put his socks on while standing up – and unfolded his best non-crease suit. Of course, he was dressing for Melissa. At the thought of her, while dousing himself with cologne at the bathroom mirror, he went back into the bedroom to spend some minutes straightening out the bed. And at the thought of Darlene, and how and where everyone would sleep and what would get said, his mind reared up like a skittish horse and went off in another direction. Which was alcohol. The restaurant across the road did not serve it. From a compartment inside his suitcase he brought out a silver and calfskin hip flask filled with Dutch gin, Genever, easily good enough to be drunk at room temperature, and indistinguishable from water. He took a shot now and put the flask in his pocket. Then he paused before the door and drank a longer shot, and stepped outside.

Always a delicious moment to be savoured, and never to be had in the British Isles, when, showered and perfumed and wearing fresh clothes, one steps out from the air conditioning into the smooth, invincible warmth of a Southern evening. Even in the denatured neon glow of the Lordsburg mini-strip, the crickets or cicadas – he did not know the difference – went on singing. There was no money in stopping them. And no means of preventing or franchising the neatly etched half-moon that hung above the gas station.

Tonight, however, his pleasure was marred. Parked thirty feet away from his motel-room door was a black Lexus, and climbing into the driver's seat was Barnard. Standing on the passenger side, waiting to get in, with that same bag at his feet, was Tarpin. As he opened his door he noticed Beard and half smiled and made a knife of his forefinger and drew it across his throat. The engine started, the headlights came on, Tarpin got in with his luggage and the car reversed from its space and pulled out of the parking lot. Baffled, Beard watched them go, and remained on the spot after they had disappeared. Then he shrugged and went over to the office to tell the receptionist to let Melissa know where he could be found, then walked across the road to the Blooberry and arrived with his good mood partially restored. He was not going under.

He could make a case that there was no better or happier place to eat in the United States than the Blooberry Family Restaurant – speciality, a steak skillet breakfast. The unreflecting atheist was bound to find interest and instruction in the Mennonite tracts on a table by the entrance. 'A Happy Home', 'A Loving Marriage', and nearer his own field, 'Caring for the Earth'. By the checkout was a gift shop where in the course of eighteen months he had bought more than two dozen T-shirts for Catriona. The restaurant floor was large, the waitresses all seemed close versions, merry cousins, of Darlene. Off-duty cops ate here, and Border Patrolmen, truckers, hollow-eyed interstate travellers sitting alone, and families, of course, Hispanic, Asian, white, often in large spreads across three or four tables pushed together. But even when it was crowded, the Blooberry was dignified and subdued, as though it quietly craved a drink. The place was soothingly anonymous. Not once had he been recognised as a regular by the jolly staff. Interstate 10 was close by and turnover was high.

The food happened to suit him. As he waited to be seated he had no need to reflect on choices – he always ate the same meal here. There was no point in straying. He was led to a booth in the farthest corner. To help settle his impatience for the starter to arrive, he poured a stiff measure of gin into his empty water glass and drank it down like water, and poured another. Everything was terrible, but he was not feeling so bad. At least this Terry no longer existed. Or was that such a good thing? Melissa and Darlene, a serious mess. He could not face it, he could not bear to think about it. But it would be faced. And poor Toby. He knew he should phone him to explain why the demonstration must go ahead, but for the moment he could not be doing with another argument.

To keep his mind off his order – fifteen minutes had passed, and it usually took less than five – he looked through his emails, and here were a couple of items that made him exclaim with pleasure. The first was an informal approach from an old friend, an ex-physicist now working as a consultant in Paris. A consortium of power companies wanted Beard to bring his 'wide experience of green technologies to the task of steering public policy in the direction of carbon-free nuclear energy'. On offer was a salary well into six figures, along with an office in central London, a researcher and a car. Well, of course. The argument could be made. The CO2 levels went on rising and time was running out. There was really only one well-tested means of producing electricity on a scale to meet the needs of a growing world population, and do it soon, without adding to the problem. Many respected environmentalists had come round to this view, that nuclear was the only way out, the lesser of two evils. James Lovelock, Stewart Brand, Tim Flannery, Jared Diamond, Paul Ehrlich. Scientists and good men all. In the new scale of things, was the occasional accident, the local radiation leak, the worst outcome possible? Even without an accident, coal was daily creating a disaster, and the effects were global. Was not the 28-kilometre exclusion zone around Chernobyl now the biologically richest and most diverse region of Central Europe, with mutation rates in all species of flora and fauna barely above the norm, if at all? Besides, wasn't radiation just another name for sunlight?