'Somebody has to this time,' Maggie replied. 'Unless you're prepared to see innocent people die. Why don't we just tell Vince to contact the first policeman he sees, and to stay out of the security area?'

Vince's voice cut through the static so loudly that they all jumped. 'I'm not going to the station,' he announced.

'What do you mean?'

'I'm turning the cab around. The road here is all dug up. I don't know how long it's going to take to get to King's Cross. It's a main-line terminus, and at this time of the morning it'll be packed. I'll never be able to convince anyone in authority to clear the area in time. Besides, for all I know, they're waiting for me to be sighted entering the station. It could be their signal to attack. I've a better idea.'

'Thank God,' said Maggie. 'I thought you would reach the station, find the train pulling out and leap on a motorcycle to head it off at a level crossing.'

'You ought to read less and get out more,' said Purbrick. 'Vince, what's your idea?'

'You have to call the police from there and get them to evacuate the train and the station.'

'If you can't do it, what chance do we have? They'll think it's a crank call.'

'Surely not if you have Mr Bryant call, and make him quote the security number on the badge,' Vince explained, reading it back. Sebastian would live to regret the inclusion of the little enamel pin in his final package. It was the one tangible piece of evidence that could be used against him, and Vince had every intention of doing so.

'Where are you going now?' asked Masters.

'I don't want to tell you, in case they've got someone monitoring the line. I'll be fine, don't worry. It's just some unfinished business.'

There was a crackle of disconnection, and the line went dead.

SEBASTIAN LOOKED around the room, at the mangled leg of beef dripping bloody gravy on the sideboard, the congealed plates from last night's dinner, the ashtrays overflowing with joints and the discarded winebottles, and despaired of ever instilling his colleagues with the discipline of their forefathers, men who had at least been given the chance to run an empire, if not to build one.

Things were falling apart. Prisoners escaping. Stevens demanding money. St John Warner running amok with a crossbow, for God's sake. Worse, he knew that something had gone wrong with the game. The members of the League who were still awake and sober were downstairs watching breakfast TV and listening to the radio, waiting for first reports of the bomb, but he could hear no sound from them. They were staying away from him, shamefaced and embarrassed, weasels slinking from the fox.

Xavier Stevens had failed to return after their argument over the price of lives. The monitors showed no sign of Vincent Reynolds anywhere near the station. By now the meeting place of the European tribunal should have been damaged by a devastating explosion, the fabric of the building rent asunder, commuters sitting up in dazed and bloody confusion, TV stations preparing bulletins for traffic disruption caused by yet another city bomb as plucky Londoners took it on the nose again.

He checked his watch once more. 7:33 a.m. The WBI members had been asked to convene in front of their platform at 7:30 a.m., and the bomb's timer-mechanism had also been set at half-past the hour. It could only mean one thing. The police had somehow located the device, and had managed to either defuse or remove it. It was possible, he supposed, that the device itself was faulty, but unlikely considering the number of tests he had specified before taking delivery -

'Hello, Sebastian.'

A figure was standing in the doorway watching him. Vincent looked terrible. Soaked and grey and sick. There was blood dribbling from his right arm onto the carpet. He smelled of fish.

'Well well, I suppose you'd better come in. I'm glad you found your way to the inner sanctum,' said Sebastian casually. He turned from Vince to the lawns below the window, now revealing themselves beneath the thinning veils of night. 'I rather wondered if you might find me. The girl, I suppose.'

'That's right,' said Vince. 'You shouldn't have dismissed the girl. The upper echelon have always undervalued their women.'

'For God's sake don't start. Sit down before you fall down. We have something to discuss, you and I.' He looked around for the decanter and located it under his chair, almost empty. He noticed that his hands were shaking. 'You came very close to winning the challenge for a while.'

'What are you talking about?' said Vince. 'I beat you. I solved all of the tests you set for me. By now the bomb squad should have cordoned off your device and defused it. I hope you're going to show grace in defeat.'

'I can't acknowledge defeat, Vincent, you must see that. After all, you can't publish. We destroyed your disks, your notes, your manuscripts, your commissioning editor, your agent. And we can do it again whenever we like. You have no evidence beyond your own admittedly faulty memory. Who are they going to believe, the toff or the tout?' He permitted himself a victorious smile. 'You broke the rules I laid down. I warned you about tampering with the code of honour.'

'What honour? You call attacking people and trying to kill them honourable?'

'It depends on what you're protecting. I'd ask you to consider joining the League if you weren't so much against it. We're dying. Look around you. We don't have the common touch, you see, and so much of the world does now. We need fresh blood to help take us into the next milennium.' Sebastian stared at him as though examining a creature from another planet. 'All my hard work has been in vain. You still have no concept of the people who run the city.'

'Yes, I do,' replied Vince. 'They go around in trucks fixing the streetlights at two in the morning. They spend their evenings sitting on benches waiting to be chosen for clean-up teams. They earn a couple of quid for every thousand envelopes they fill with double-glazing offers.'

'I'm talking about the people with power.'

'We're all born with the same power, Sebastian. Some of us get tricked into never using it.'

'Vincent, Vincent. You've been so bright up until now, it's a pity you've failed to divine the other purpose to all of this.'

'That purpose being?'

'The battle for the leadership of the League of Prometheus, of course. Do sit down, you're making the place untidy. Perhaps I should get you a bandage for that.' He made no attempt to move. Vince warily seated himself near the window while Sebastian poured the last two glasses of brandy and slid one along the table that stood between them. 'Shortly before I met you, my ability to command the League was called into question by the other members. I felt I was qualified to lead them into the next century; they felt otherwise. As a consequence of their lack of faith, I agreed to devise some kind of independent examination. I offered to find a potential candidate for the job and undergo a test of wits. The candidate I chose was you.'

'That's not possible. I chose you.'

Sebastian chuckled. 'I'm afraid not. You contacted me, that's true, but I'd been searching for a suitable player for several months before you called. From the outset you seemed ideal. We had so very little in common. That's what made it so appealing.'

Vince looked in his eyes and saw that beneath the geniality was a hatred born from the fear of anything different, a hatred eternal, dead and pure. 'This country is at a crossroads, Vincent. When the Fabian Society starts suggesting that we disband the Royal Family and replace the national anthem with a song by Andrew Lloyd Webber, you know that something is rotten.' He looked about himself, depressed by what he saw. 'We let our future slip away. Now the nation belongs to people like you.' He gave a disappointed sniff and stuck his hands in his pockets. 'Look at you. Your knowledge is all second-hand, gleaned from TV and the movies. It's left to people like me to provide you with a few real experiences. You know nothing.'