All in all, a fairly typical encounter with the Notional Man. The Droods have received several requests to terminate his existence with more than usual extreme prejudice on the grounds that he’s just too damned worrying, and we’re seriously considering it, if only for the challenge. The trouble with the Notional Man is that he’s pure and potent, as much a concept as anything else, and totally beyond any human capacity to understand or manipulate. And who wants a god you can’t understand or appease and who doesn’t give a damn whether you worship him or not?

I checked the paper tissue. There was no blood on it. Neither, when I checked, was there any blood on my cheeks, around my eyes, or drying inside my nostrils. Typical.

I strolled on through the crowd. Exchanged words, shook hands, kissed cheeks. I like being Shaman Bond. All right, he’s not really real, as such, but I feel so much more comfortable being him than I do being Eddie Drood. Shaman can be strong or silly, wise or foolish, just as he chooses, and it doesn’t matter a damn whether he screws up. He doesn’t have the fate of humanity resting on his shoulders.

He has friends. A Drood only has family and enemies.

Shaman Bond is more than just the mask I hide behind in public. He’s the man I might have been, if my life had been my own.

The CIA had their own stall, as always, and very big and bright and colourful it looked, complete with flat-screen images, all the latest gadgets and gizmos, an American flag standing tall and proud, and a real eagle squatting on a perch, glaring suspiciously at passersby. The CIA would recruit anyone who showed an interest and did a thriving trade in souvenirs and memorabilia, and there was never any shortage of cash in hand for information and gossip . . . but really they were just there to establish their presence. To remind us they were always watching. I recognised another familiar face behind the table and wandered over.

Nickie Carter is old-school CIA, fourth or maybe even fifth generation in the spy game. A pleasant-looking brunette in her early twenties, Nickie wore a smart powder blue business suit and a professional smile and looked more like the successful product of some famous business school. She also knew fifty-seven ways to kill you with a single finger and some quite disgusting things she could do with her mouth. We once spent a lost weekend in Helsinki together, on the trail of someone who turned out not to exist, as such. The job’s like that, sometimes.

She knows me only as Shaman Bond. Which is just as well, or she’d probably feel obliged to try to kill me.

Nickie smiled sweetly at me. “Shaman, honey; looking good! Sorry about that enforced rendition attempt last year; some damned fool higher up the food chain got it into his head that you were a player in the Manifest Destiny group. I tried to tell them, but no one ever listens to a mere field agent anymore. It’s all computers these days, all trends and predictions. Damn bean counters . . .” She looked at me thoughtfully. “How did you manage to avoid us, Shaman?”

“Nice to see you again, Nickie,” I said solemnly. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?”

Nickie smiled fondly at the elderly gentleman sitting beside her, staring off into the distance. “Of course. This is a colleague of mine, Shaman. May I present to you one of the living legends of the CIA, Stephen Victor, on his farewell tour of Europe.”

I knew the name. A definite major player back in the seventies, with a quite extraordinary way with the ladies. A one-man honey trap, by all accounts; women from all sides of the Cold War couldn’t wait to jump in bed with him and tell him every secret they knew. He couldn’t be that far into his sixties, but he looked twenty years older. He had a great noble head, just a bit gaunt, with a mane of silver gray hair, but though his mouth was firm enough, his eyes were vague and faraway. He had that slightly rumpled look of a man who’d been dressed by someone else. He smiled easily in my direction when Nickie cued him with my name, and he shook my hand with a firm, manly grip, but there was no one home behind his eyes. Just a shell of the man he’d once been, trotted out for public consumption. He let go of my hand and went back to staring at nothing again.

“He’s here to visit some old haunts, meet a few old friends and enemies,” said Nickie. “In the hope he can squeeze some last few secrets out before he’s retired. Poor old thing. Can’t even put him out to stud. Don’t worry, Shaman. We can say what we like. He’s deaf as a post.”

“I suppose it comes to all of us, in the end,” I said.

“Not if I can help it,” Nickie said firmly. “The moment I start forgetting how many beans make four, I firmly intend to take up bungee jumping over live volcanoes; go out with a little style, while I’m still me. Look at the state of him . . . doesn’t know whether it’s Tuesday or Belgium. I’m his nurse as much as his bodyguard. The last time he was in London, our ambassador introduced him to the Queen. And he propositioned her.”

“Really?” I said. “What did Her Majesty say?”

“No one knows,” Nickie said darkly. “But Prince Philip had a hell of a lot to say afterwards . . .”

I grinned, excused myself, and wandered off again. Stephen Victor, the great seducer of his generation, reduced to a bag of bones in a crumpled suit. Was that all I had to look forward to? Was that my future, if I lived that long? A relic of the past, all my triumphs and achievements faded into some vague respectful legend . . . Just another prematurely aged agent, lost in memories of the past? No. The odds were I’d die young and die bloody, like most field agents.

I looked thoughtfully around me. The CIA wasn’t the only foreign intelligence agency showing its flag in the Hiring Hall today. All the major countries and powers were represented, with agents buying and selling information and influence and probably discussing a little discreet murder and sabotage on the side. Unusual to see so many out at once . . . not that anyone would say anything. The Hiring Hall doesn’t care who or what you were, as long as you pay the rent on your stall on time.

On the whole, the big boys don’t bother much with Shaman Bond. He’s too small-time to interest them. Occasionally someone will decide they want to know what he knows and turn the dogs loose on me . . . but somehow Shaman always seems to know about these things in advance and sidesteps their traps and blandishments with equal ease. Sometimes the big boys like to order him about, just to remind everyone who’s in charge, and I usually go along. It’s amazing what you can learn just by keeping your eyes and ears open. When you’re nothing but small-fry, hired help, the important people will often speak quite openly in front of you, as though you’re not even there.

I spent the best part of two hours cruising through the Hiring Hall and walking up and down in it, talking with everyone and politely avoiding murmured offers of employment in secret jobs and dubious schemes . . . and at the end of it all I was no wiser. It wasn’t as though I had much to go on; all the family precogs had was a threat to the Tower of London and a general sense of danger and urgency. I’ve always felt that most precogs would benefit greatly from a good slap around the head.

I mentioned the Tower of London to all the better-connected rogues and scumbags in the Hiring Hall, but all I got in return was vague words and vaguer promises to let me know if they heard anything. Something was in the air, some big job; but no one knew anything for sure. No one had a name or a even a direction to point in.

I had been hinting, as broadly as possible, that I was in the market for a bit of action, no risk too great . . . I’d even let it be known I was quite definitely up for a bash at any symbols of authority; but while there was no shortage of offers, none of them sounded right. I owe some people, I would say. People not known for their patience or understanding. And familiar faces would nod and smile, and say they quite understood, and suggest all kind of interesting opportunities (some of which I made a mental note to deal with later), but none of them what I was there for.