He considered taking one of the guns with him to Chelsea. Then he decided against it. It was impossible to conceal a howitzer like this, and a pat down would tip him before he had come within striking distance of The Cloisters and Maximilian Strange. He'd just have to be careful.

He flicked the cylinder back and replaced the gun.

The phone rang.

"What's up, Doc?"

"Why are you calling, Yank?"

"Oh, I got a couple of things up my sleeve. My arm, for one. No laugh? Oh, well. Then tell me this: How did things go with Miss Dyke?"

"I had a pleasant visit."

"And?"

"And I got a possible lead to The Cloisters."

"Oh? What was it?"

"I'll tell you about it if it works out."

"No, you'd better tell me about it now. The Vicar wants to know what you're up to at every moment. He wouldn't want to have to start back at square one if something were to happen to you. Or if you were to do something foolish."

"Like?"

"Like try to run off. Or sell out. Or something like that. Not that I really think you would. Having met the Vicar, I think you have a pretty good idea of what he would do to anyone who tried to do the dirty on him."

"Ship me off to the Feeding Station?" Jonathan brought that up on purpose.

After a swallow: "Something like that. So tell me. What is your lead to The Cloisters?"

"A woman named Grace. Amazing Grace. She runs a place called the Cellar d'Or. Mean anything to you?"

"Are you sure it's a woman?"

"What do you mean?"

"Amazing Grace is a hymn, after all. Get it?"

"Oh, for Christ's sake!"

"Sorry. No, I never heard of the woman. But I'll check through the Loo files for you. Anything else?"

"Yes. Do you have a tail on me?"

"Pardon?"

"A man's been following me all day. Out to Vanessa's and back. Is he one of yours?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Medium build, blue raincoat, one hundred and sixty pounds, glasses, left-handed, rubbers over his shoes. He's probably standing down in the street right now, wondering how to appear to be reading his newspaper in the dark. If he's not yours, he's MI-5's. Too fucking amateur to be anything else."

"How could he be MI-5? They're not in on this."

"They are now. I made a mistake."

"The Vicar's not going to like that."

"Hard shit. Can you get in contact with MI-5 and pull this guy off? There are probably three of them, the other two out on the flanks. That's normal shadow procedure for your people."

"It could be they're only trying to help."

"Help from MI-5 is like military advice from the Egyptian army. If you don't get rid of them, I'll do it myself, and that will hurt them. I don't want them blowing my scant cover. Remember, I'm the only man you've got in the game."

"Not quite. We've managed to situate Miss Coyne."

"Oh?"

Yank was instantly aware that he had breached security. "More about that later, when we get together with the Vicar for a final briefing. Meanwhile, good hunting tonight. See you in the funny papers."

Jonathan hung up and crossed to the window to look down on the man who had followed him from Vanessa's. Christ, he was getting sick of British espionage. Sick of this whole thing. He indulged his anger for a while, then brought it under control by taking shallow breaths. Calm. Calm. You make mistakes when you're angry. Calm.

As Jonathan stepped from the Underground train at Sloane Square, he was still being followed by the fool in the blue raincoat who had been with him since Vanessa's. Presumably, Yank had not been able to get through to MI-5 and give them the word to discontinue surveillance. Jonathan decided to let him hover out there on his flank. At least he could keep an eye on him until the time came to shake him off, should the shadowing seem to endanger his cover.

Halfway up the tiled exit tunnel he passed an American girl sitting on a parka. Flotsam of the flower tide. She abused a cheap guitar and whined a Guthrie lament, having chosen a spot where the echo would enrich her thin voice with bathroom resonances and allow her to slide off miscalculated notes under the cover of reverberation. She was barefoot, and there was a large rip in the stomach of her tugged and shapeless khaki sweater. The surface of the parka was salted with small coins to invite passersby to contribute to maintenance.

Jonathan dropped no coin, nor did the man following in the blue raincoat.

Once away from the square, he closed into himself as he walked along seeking the address Vanessa had given him. He had no desire to come into contact with the jostling crowds of street people. It had been fifteen years since last he had been in Chelsea. In those days, a few of the young people who chatted in pubs or made single cups of cappuccino last two hours eventually went home to paint or write. But not these youngsters. They neither produced nor supported. Chelsea had always been self-consciously artsy, but now it had become younger, less attractive, more American. Head shops crowded up against the Safeway, and jeans were to be had in a thousand varieties. Discotheques. Whiskey a go-gos. Boutiques with scented candles and merchandise of green stamp quality. Shops vied for obscure names. Tall girls with hunched shoulders clopped along the pavement, and peacock boys swaggered in flared suits of plum velvet, cuffs flapping with dysfunctional bells. Rancorous music bled from doorways. People in satchel-assed jeans stared sullenly at him, an obvious representative of "the establishment," that despised class that oppressed them and paid their doles.

He had hoped the young would spare Chelsea the humiliation they had inflicted on San Francisco, Greenwich Village, the Left Bank. And he was angry that they had not.

But after all, he mused, one had to be fair-minded. These youngsters had their virtues. They were doubtless more content than his generation, hooked as it was on the compulsion to achieve. And these young people were more at peace with life; more alert to ecological dangers; more disgusted by war; more socially conscious.

Useless snots.

He turned off into a side street, past a couple of antique shops, and continued along a row of private houses behind black iron fences. Each had a steep stone stairway leading down to a basement. And one of these descending caves was illuminated by a dim red light. This was the Cellar d'Or.

He sat watching the action from his nook at the back of one of the artificial plaster grottoes that constituted the Cellar d'Or's decor. The light was dim and the carpets jet black, and the uninitiated had to be careful of their footing. The fake stone grottoes were inset with chunks of fool's gold, and all the other surfaces, the tables, the bar, were clear plastic in which bits of sequins and gold metal were entrapped. The glow lighting came from within these plastic surfaces, illuminating faces from beneath. And the air between objects was black.

He sipped at his second, very wet Laphroaig served, as were all the drinks in the club, in a small gold metal chalice. The most insistent feature of the club's bizarre interior was a large photographic transparency that revolved in the center of the room. It was lit from within, and every eye was drawn frequently to the woman who smiled from the full-length photograph. She stood beside what appeared to be a very high marble fireplace, her steady, mildly mischievous gaze directed at the camera and, therefore, at each man in the room, no matter where he sat. She was nude, and her body was extraordinary. A mulatto with cafe au lait skin, her breasts were conical and impertinent, her waist slight, her hips wide, and perfectly molded legs drew the eye to small, well-formed feet, the toes of which were slightly splayed, like those of a yawning cat. The black triangle of her ecu appeared cotton soft, but it was something about the muscles and those splayed toes that held Jonathan's attention. Stomach, arm, leg, and hip, there was a look of lean, hard muscle under the powdery brown skin-steel cable under silk.