They followed him to the building’s entrance, where his equally tall but less-charming colleague, whose name Hollis had never gotten, waited inside.

“I hope he doesn’t want a urine sample,” Milgrim seemed to say, inexplicably, though she opted to pretend she hadn’t heard him.

They were passed through the door, then, from one Jamaican to another, the door locked behind them, and led out into the center of the Cuisinart Building’s determined but rather miniature atrium. Hollis, having some vague idea of what City real estate was worth, supposed they must have agonized over this empty, purely American volume of space, every square centimeter of which, otherwise, might have been filled with usable, windowless office-hive. As it was, it rose a mere five floors, wrapped at each level with a walk-around interior balcony of the same metallic-looking plastic, or plastic-looking metal, that sheathed the exterior. Like a model, to only partial scale, of some hotel in the Atlanta core.

Bigend, in his trench coat, stood at its center, holding an iPhone with both hands, arms extended, squinting, thumbs moving slightly.

“I need to speak with Hollis and Milgrim,” Bigend said to Heidi, offering her the iPhone, “but you’ll enjoy this. The controls are highly intuitive. The video-feed, of course, is from its nose-camera. Start with the manta, then try the penguin.” He pointed, up. They all looked up. Near the atrium’s uniformly glowing, paneled ceiling hung a penguin and a manta ray. The penguin, silvery, looked only approximately like a penguin, but the manta, merely a black, devilishly dynamic-looking blot, seemed considerably more realistic. “Try them,” Bigend said. “Delightful, really. Relaxing. The only other people in the building, at the moment, are employees of mine.”

Heidi craned up at the balloons, if that was what they were, then looked at the iPhone, which she now held in much the way Bigend had been holding it. Her thumbs began to move. “Damn,” she said appreciatively.

“This way,” said Bigend. “I’ve leased two floors of offices here, but they’re very busy now. We can sit here…” He led them to an L-shaped bench of dull aluminum mesh, in the shadow of a hanging stairway, the sort of place that would have been a smoking-nest, when people smoked in office buildings. “You recall the Amsterdam dealer we bought your jacket from? His mysterious picker?”

“Vaguely.”

“We’ve gone back to that. Or, rather, a strategic business intelligence unit I’ve hired in the Hague has. An example of Sleight pushing me out of my comfort zone. I’ve never trusted private security firms, private investigators, private intelligence firms, at all. In this case, though, they have no idea who they’re working for.”

“And?” Hollis, seated now, Milgrim beside her, was watching Bigend closely.

“I’m sending you both to Chicago. We think the Hounds designer is there.”

“Why?”

“Our dealer has had subsequent dealings with the picker who brought him the jacket. Both picker and jacket came from Chicago.”

“Are you certain?”

He shrugged.

“Who is the designer?”

“I’m sending you to find that out,” said Bigend.

“Milgrim,” said Hollis, “has something he needs to tell you.” It was the only thing she could think of that might change the subject, give her time to think.

“Do you, Milgrim?” Bigend asked.

Milgrim made a brief, strange, high-pitched sound, like something burning out. Closed his eyes. Opened them. “The cop,” he said, “in Seven Dials. The one who took my picture. The one from Myrtle Beach.”

Bigend nodded.

“She’s an agent. From,” and he closed his eyes again, “the Defense Criminal Investigative Service.” Milgrim opened his eyes, tentatively discovering himself not dead.

“Who are, I confess,” said Bigend, after a pause, “entirely new to me. American, I take it?”

“It was the pants,” said Milgrim. “She was watching the pants. Then we showed up, and she thought we might be involved with Foley, and Gracie.”

“Which we are, of course, courtesy of Oliver.”

Hollis hadn’t heard Bigend use Sleight’s first name for a while.

“She wants me to tell you about Gracie,” said Milgrim.

“I’d like you to do that,” said Bigend, “but perhaps things would be simplified by my speaking with her myself. I’m not entirely unaccustomed to dealing with Americans.”

“She has to go back,” said Milgrim. “She isn’t going to learn what she needs to learn here. You aren’t what she thought you were. You’re just competition for Foley and Gracie. But she wants you to know about Gracie. That Gracie won’t like it that you’re competing.”

“He already didn’t,” said Bigend. “He turned Sleight, probably at that Marine Corps trade fair in Carolina. Unless Sleight volunteered, which I regard as a possibility. And did she give you a reason for her wanting me to know all this, your unnamed, perhaps nameless federal agent?”

“Winnie Tung Whitaker,” said Milgrim.

Bigend stared at him. “Hyphenated?”

“No,” said Milgrim.

“Did she? Suggest why she might want me to know about this person?”

“She said that you’re rich and have lawyers. That if she can roll you in front of him, she might as well. I don’t think she’s been getting any closer to popping him. Sounded frustrated.”

“One does,” agreed Bigend, leaning forward in his trench coat. “And when did you discuss all this with her?”

“She was at the hotel,” Milgrim said, “after I met with you. And I had dinner with her, tonight. Vietnamese.”

“And who is employing ‘Foley,’ then?”

“Michael Preston Gracie.” Hollis saw Milgrim check to see that he’d gotten the name right. “Major, retired, U.S. Army, Special Forces. He trains police for foreign countries, arranges for them to buy equipment from friends of his. Sometimes it isn’t equipment they should be able to buy. But he’s moving into contracting the way you want to. Designing things, manufacturing. She said it was the legitimization stage.”

“Ah,” said Bigend, with a nod. “He’s gotten big enough to acquire real lawyers.”

“That’s what she said.”

“That’s often problematic. A watershed. Not everyone makes it. By the time you’re big enough to have lawyers willing to sufficiently make the case for legitimization, you’re quite big, and highly illegitimate.”

“I knew a drug dealer who bought a Saab dealership,” offered Milgrim.

“Exactly,” said Bigend, with a look for Hollis.

“I think she wanted you to understand that Gracie’s dangerous,” Milgrim said, “and that he regards competitors as enemies.”

“ ‘Listen to your enemies,’ ” Bigend said, “ ‘for God is speaking.’ ”

“What does that mean?” Milgrim asked.

“A Yiddish proverb,” Bigend said. “It rewards contemplation.”

Something moved, three feet above Bigend’s head. The manta, a sinuous matte-black blot, as wide, from wingtip to wingtip, as a small boy’s outstretched arms.

“Fuck, this is cool,” called Heidi, from across the floor of the atrium, “I heard everything you said!”

“Be a dear,” Bigend called to her, not bothering to look up. “Swim it away. Try the penguin now.”

The thing’s wingtips silently flexed, catching the air, for all the world like a real ray, as it swam slowly up, wheeling gracefully, barely missing the hanging stairway. “Utterly addictive,” Bigend said to Hollis. “Your locative art will morph again, with cheap aerial video drones.”

“That doesn’t look cheap to me.”

“No,” said Bigend, “not at all, but cheaper platforms will be in the High Street by Christmas. But the Festos are genius. We opted for their sheer strangeness, the organic movement, modeled from nature. They aren’t very fast, but if people see them, their first thought is that they’re hallucinating.”

Milgrim nodded. “He’s coming,” he said. “Gracie.”

“To London?”

“She said he’ll be here soon.”

“He has Sleight,” Bigend said, “so he knows that having a look at his pants was simply basic strategic business intelligence. It isn’t as though we’ve done anything to harm him. Or ‘Foley’ either, for that matter.”