They return to the airfield and fly by night to Alexandria, then get ferries to Cyprus and back to Tel Aviv, where Benny meets them and they brief him on the business with the tanks. There’s an odd rumour floating around, that the Cyberpapacy has been gathering plutonium, for unknown purposes (but probably not good ones).

After that it’s off to Schiphol, en route for England. First, though, David wants to talk with some Resistance members; in Brussels he’s able to make contact, and learn a bit more. As well as the plutonium business, several experimental theologians (physicists, in a better-regulated world) have dropped out of site recently, and the facilities at CERN seem to have been turned into a military encampment. This suggests something amiss, at least. Also, where the Belgium-Luxembourg border intersects with the Cyberpapacy reality storm front seems to be a good spot for getting into and out of the Cyberpapacy.

For now, though, the group heads back to Amsterdam and then to London. They collect their lignum-vitæ knives and crossbow bolts, order some silver bullets for Diamond, and store the Fire Opal in the Bank of England, where they find a note from Tolwyn asking to speak with them in Oxford at their convenience.

She is concerned about the situation in Belize: independent for nearly ten years, but still of interest to Britain (and there seems to be some accommodation between the two governments). There are wild rumours coming out of the place: that the government has been subverted, that there are out-realm invaders attacking, and so on. Nothing seems to have been proved, but she could use some investigators.

Back in London, David asks the French Resistance there to look further into the CERN matter. The British government will provide letters of introduction to the embassy in Belize.

The team returns to Amsterdam, then flies to Mexico City; they buy drinks for recent arrivals from Belize and try to find out what’s been going on. Local news talks about a recent wave of ritual killings in the capital Belmopan, and only there (starting before the business with the Forever City, which is something of a relief to the group), left with their hearts carefully removed: some witnesses claim to have seen the victims walking as zombies, but there’s no real evidence (and an authority claims that traditional voodoo zombies are always left intact anyway). This is being variously blamed on the Army, the Guatemalans, the Americans who have headed south to escape from the Living Land, and the phase of the moon. Certainly the government has clamped down, and several foreign journalists have been arrested for spreading sedition. Less plausibly, it’s claimed the government has been taken over by voodoo practitioners.

The team takes a local flight to Belize City and checks in with the consulate, then hires an old Land Rover to make the forty-mile (and two hour) trip to Belmopan, where there’s only a much smaller airstrip.