defMoma and momaDef didn’t eat, just watched in heavy silence as Kate and Mai sat at the table and calmly ate their supper, talking only to each other as if Axl and the PaxForce officers didn’t exist.

Fucking brilliant.

It was costing Kate though, that much was obvious from the way she chewed occasionally at the inside of her mouth. And the way her hand shook slightly as she raised the tea bowl to her lips.

Still, he couldn’t have done it better himself, Axl thought. Actually if he was being honest, he couldn’t have done it at all. Getting in someone’s face by not. getting in their face was a skill Axl lacked.

Violent and demented he could do easily enough. Where he originated from that was simple survival stuff, but Mai’s simmering contempt and Kate’s complete indifference were way more subtle…

Kate nodded to Mai, who downed her final cup of buttered tea.

‘Thank you,’ said Kate to Axl, as he stood to pull back her chair. ‘I enjoyed that.’

‘Yeah ...' Mai stuffed the second to last tsampa in her mouth, wiped up the remains of the preserve with the only one remaining and put it in her jacket pocket. On her way out of the dining room, she kicked the big wooden door shut with her heel.

‘Jesus,’ the lieutenant said in disgust. ‘How can you eat in the same room as that little tramp. She’s got the manners of a pig.’

‘Really?’ Axl shrugged and did his best to look puzzled. ‘You obviously move in better circles…’ He glanced to where the sergeant was sprawled in a chair, vast breasts flopped onto her jutting gut, black sweat patches Rorschach-blotting her singlet, the only item of clothing she wore on top. Now that Kate and Mai were gone, she was stuffing handfuls of dried apple porridge direct from a foil sachet to her mouth.

The lieutenant’s lips twisted, but she was already moving on to what was really bugging her. ‘Helping the enemy. Attacking members of PaxForce. You want to tell me…’

The rest of momaDef’s question was drowned out by the splash of Colonel Emilio vomiting onto marble tiles. Shock or the side effect of concussion, Axl didn’t care. The man should still have tried to make it to the window.

‘Tell me too,’ said the Colonel, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Or maybe we can skip straight to the bit where I kill you.’ He held a baby Uzi in one hand and was using his other to pull himself up, fingers gripping the edge of a Bon tapestry.

It was almost impressive. Most people would have stayed down after a blow to the head like that, bouffant head of greying hair or not. But Emilio was built like a bull, thick bones and thick hide and stupidly stubborn.

Axl had met the type too many times before to remember—and he hadn’t liked any of them any better then. So if Rinpoche was thinking of putting in an appearance, now would be a really good time.

Inside Axl’s brain blood flow increased to the amygdala, cortisol levels rocketed, adrenaline kicked in and stress jacked up the bmp to his backing track, step on step. It took less than a second.

But the darkening sky outside the window remained empty. Which wasn’t to say the silver monkey wasn’t keeping track, just that it was running to a different timescale. And besides, it was developing a thing for tight dramatic entrances. Which was fine, because that fitted well with Bon mythology. But then what did you expect from an ur-myth that said the high plateau of Tibet was really a naked goddess, arms and legs splayed wide, lying flat on her back?

Weird shit indeed.

‘Recognise me?’ Axl asked.

Stood upright, free hand carefully wiping the last specks of vomit from his neat salt and pepper moustache, Colonel Emilio looked carefully at the hard-eyed, gaunt man stood in front of him. He was dressed in the standard ‘fugee uniform of felt trousers, grey smock and old boots but there was something about the face, that chin… The right answer hovered briefly on the edge of his awareness and then it was gone.

‘Didn’t think so. Try five weeks back, La Medicina…’

Recognition hit and Colonel Emilio half raised his Uzi. ‘I should have killed you,’ the Colonel told Axl flatly.

‘Yeah,’ said a voice behind Axl. ‘Join the queue.’

defMoma and momaDef spun round first, and Rinpoche gave a little bow. Axl couldn’t be arsed, he already knew who it was and besides he was too busy watching, enjoying the shock in Colonel Emilio’s eyes.

Time stopped.

Or maybe it speeded up.

Whatever happened, the Colonel, Wireframes and the sergeant freeze-framed and the silver monkey kept talking as Axl walked over to the Colonel and lifted the excited Uzi gently from his fingers.

‘Tsongkhapa wants to talk to you.’

‘Tsongkhapa?’ Axl said, then realised Rinpoche was talking inside his head and the others couldn’t have heard it anyway. They were too busy hitting the high notes of a fugue.

‘Yeah,’ said the voice, ‘but first get rid of this lot.’

Get rid of them?

‘Get them out of this place, away from the Pope.’

Away from the… Axl stopped dead. He hoped he didn’t look as stupid as he felt. ‘There is no Pope,’ he said aloud. It was beginning to sound like a mantra and one too many other people seemed not to believe.

Rinpoche laughed. ‘Shit happens—and so does reincarnation. And guess what? Sometimes they’re the same.’ The silver monkey clicked its fingers and the fugue holding the others abruptly ended.

Like someone flipping out of a trance defMoma fumbled desperately for her gun and kept fumbling, fingers scrabbling at her belt until she remembered she was no longer wearing one. ‘What the fuck is that?’ She said crossly.

‘I’m a monkey,’ said Rinpoche, ‘made of fucking metal, with fucking wings. What the flying fuck do you think I am?’

‘I wasn’t briefed on this,’ said Colonel Emilio to no one in particular.

‘No,’ said Rinpoche, ‘I don’t imagine you were.’ It nodded at the lieutenant and then waved its paw towards Axl. ‘You know who this is?’

The woman shook her head.

‘Remember Axl Borja?’

She did. So did her sergeant, Rinpoche could tell from the way her huge shoulders tensed.

‘And you have both heard of Cardinal Santo Ducque?’ His voice was silkily sarcastic.

Something unspoken passed between the two women, brief as a blip of static. Anger, contempt, glee… Whichever it was, Axl didn’t like it, but the flicker of emotion wasn’t there long enough for him to identify it. All he saw was Colonel Emilio shake his head slightly at momaDef and defMoma.

‘Yes,' said the lieutenant carefully, ‘everyone knows the Cardinal.’

‘Well,’ Rinpoche’s smile was cold. ‘This man works for him. Something your Colonel already knows. And currently I work for Axl, sort of…’

With a sigh, Colonel Emilio dipped into a pouch on his belt and pulled out an olive grey Sony walkWear, military issue. In the time it took the machine to boot up, he’d unfolded a pair of floating-focus Raybans and clumsily velcroed a tiny keypad to the inside of one wrist.

Some sentient bloody spySat with delusions wasn’t what Colonel Emilio wanted. Not what he wanted at all. True, he’d heard rumours of another operative working the area, but Axl? And anyway, the idea was that the operative and PaxForce didn’t cross.

Sat on the window sill, Rinpoche grinned at the Colonel, thin lips pulled back to reveal extremely nasty-looking teeth. As if it too could see the frames and menus scrolling ghost-like and translucent beyond Colonel Emilio’s eyes.

And try as the Colonel might, the digital grab he’d taken of the silver monkey didn’t pull up any information on screen. Irritated, Colonel Emilio loaded another grab and reran the visual recognitions software. Absolute zilch. Between them, WorldBank, the IMF and PaxForce had the best military neural net in existence and so far as it was concerned the bloody monkey didn’t exist.