“Mental cunt,” observed Benny, taking another case and walking away.

Voytek scooted across the carpeted cargo area on his B.U.M. EQUIPMENT signage and climbed out, taking the two remaining cases and walking away.

Milgrim got out, his knees stiff, and glanced around. There was nobody in sight. “Seems quieter,” he said.

“Tea time,” said Fiona. She looked at him. “That’s from the shop.”

“Yes,” said Milgrim.

“It’s not bad on you,” she said approvingly, if surprised. “You cut most of the douche baggage.”

“I do?”

“You wouldn’t wear one of those little leashes on your wallet,” she said. “And you wouldn’t wear one of his hats.”

“The douche baggage?”

“The fuckery,” said Fiona, closing the van’s rear door. “We need your stuff,” she said, walking around and opening the side door. She handed Milgrim his bag, and a Tanky amp; Tojo bag containing the clothes he’d been wearing before (minus the Sonny jacket) and the restuffed Mont-Bell sausage. She pulled out the retaped sleeping foam and a black garbage bag. “These are your things from the Holiday Inn.”

He followed her into the littered garage.

As they were nearing the entrance to Bigend’s Vegas cube, Benny emerged. Fiona handed him the keys to the van. “Carbs on the bike are sound,” she told him. “Thank Saad.”

“Ta,” said Benny, pocketing the keys without pausing.

Milgrim followed her in. Two of Voytek’s cases were on the table, open. The other two, still closed, were on the floor. He wore a pair of large black-and-silver headphones and was assembling something that looked to Milgrim like a black unstrung squash racket.

“Leave me,” said Voytek flatly, not bothering to make eye contact. “I sweep.”

“Let’s go,” Fiona said to Milgrim, putting down the foam and the black bag containing Milgrim’s things from the hotel. “He can do it faster alone.” Milgrim dropped the sausage beside the foam, but kept his bag. As he left the room, Milgrim saw Voytek step forward, toward one wall, raising the racket two-handed, with a sort of ecclesiastic deliberation.

“What’s he doing?” he asked Fiona, who was looking down at a motorcycle whose engine lay in pieces on the littered floor.

“Sweeping for bugs.”

“Has he found them before?”

“Not here. But this place is still a secret, as far as I know. They turn up at Blue Ant weekly. Bigend has a toffee box full of them. Keeps saying he’ll make me a necklace.”

“Who puts them there?”

“Strategic business intelligence types, I suppose. The kind of people he generally refuses to hire.”

“Are they able to learn things, doing that?”

“Once,” she said, and touched the broken edge of the bike’s cowling with a fingertip, in a way he envied, “he sent me across town with a Taser.”

“That shocks people?”

“Yes.”

“He sent you to shock someone?”

“There was a LAN cable bodged into it. I pretended to be there for a job interview. When I had the chance, I plugged it, unobserved, into the first available LAN socket. Any one would do. The Taser was in my purse. Gave it a click. Just the one.”

“What happened?”

“It punched out their entire system. All of it. Erased everything. Even the parts in other buildings. Then I wiped it for prints, binned it, and left.”

“That was because they’d taken something?”

She shrugged. “He called it a lobotomy.”

“Clean,” announced Voytek glumly, carrying out two of his cases. They weren’t heavy at all, Milgrim now knew, because he’d seen that they mainly contained black foam padding. Voytek set them down and returned for the other two.

“When is he coming?” asked Milgrim.

“Not expecting him,” she said. “He just wants you in a safe place.”

“He’s not coming?”

“We’re just killing time,” she said, and smiled. She wasn’t someone who smiled often, but when she did, he found, it seemed as though it meant something. “I’ll teach you how to work the balloons. I’m getting really good.”

After a mutual exchange of various telephone numbers, both written down and entered in phones, Bigend left.

Garreth had also insisted on establishing codes, by which either could indicate that he was speaking under duress, or that he believed the conversation was being somehow surveilled. Hollis, discovering that she was actually very hungry, took advantage of this to catch up on her breakfast. Garreth began to write in his notebook, in what was either shorthand or his impossible handwriting, she’d never been sure.

“Do you really think he’d honor that agreement, if you were able to do whatever it is you intend to do?” she asked as he capped his pen.

“Initially. I imagine he’d then manage to start to see that he’d really made a different agreement, and that any subsequent misunderstanding is ours alone. But then it would become a matter of reminding him, and at the same time reminding him exactly how his little difficulty had been tidied. Quite a lot of this, and why it needs to be very good indeed, is the need to impress Bigend with the idea that he wouldn’t want anything like it to ever happen to him. Without ever uttering anything like a threat, mind you, for which reason I would hope that you’d put your man at the Guardian back in the box. If he’s the one I think you mean, he makes me want to believe that global warming isn’t androgenic, just to spite him.”

“Where’s your eccentric mentor in this?”

“He’ll be in the background, if he’s to be involved at all, and I’m glad of it. He was happier during the previous administration in the United States. Easier to be around.”

“He was?”

“Less free-floating ambiguity then. I’ll need his permission to use the material we prepared for that other exploit. But Gracie seems a perfect match for his targeting mechanism, as he has a peculiar detestation for war profiteers. Who are certainly no less abundant now than they used to be, though generally a bit less flagrant. I’ll also need him to hook me up with Charlie. Sweet old boy in Birmingham. Gurkha.”

“Gurkha?”

“Perfect dear. Love him to bits.”

“Fuck me, it’s the prodigal skydiver.”

Hollis swung around at Heidi’s voice, and found her there, in the gap between the screens, Ajay peering around her shoulder.

“What’s this?” Heidi pushed at the mahogany frame of one of the screens, causing the whole thing to wobble alarmingly. “Planning on having it off right here?”

Garreth smiled. “Hello, Heidi.”

“Heard you were well and truly fucked,” said Heidi. She was wearing gray sweats, under her majorette jacket. “Look about the same, to me.”

“What did Milgrim do last night?” Hollis asked. “Bigend says he hurt someone.”

“Milgrim? Couldn’t hurt himself, if he had to. Fucker from that car was behind us. I’d known it for blocks.” She raised her hand and made a concise little dart-throwing gesture. “Rhenium. Screamed like a bitch.”

“A great honor,” said Ajay, from behind Heidi, his eyes wide with excitement. Heidi put her arm around him, shoved him forward.

“Ajay,” said Heidi. “Fastest sparring partner I’ve ever had. We went over to Hackney this morning and beat the living shit out of each other.”

“Hello, Ajay,” said Garreth, offering his hand.

“Can’t believe this, really,” said Ajay, pumping Garreth’s hand. “Blinding, to see you’re not as badly off as we’d heard. Download all your videos. Fantastic.” Hollis half expected him to ask for an autograph, his waterfall bobbing with excited delight.

“What flavor, the sparring?” asked Garreth.

“Bit of everything, really,” said Ajay, modestly.

“Really,” said Garreth. “We should talk. As it happens, I need someone fast, in just that way.”