Bigend looked up at Garreth with a peculiar childlike openness. Hollis had only seen this expression a few times before, and dreaded it. “This is Garreth,” she said.

“Wilson,” said Garreth, which wasn’t true.

“I take it, Mr. Wilson, that you are Hollis’s friend? The one recently injured in an automobile accident?”

“Not so recent,” said Garreth.

“I see you’re joining us,” Bigend said. Then, to the Italian boy, who’d anxiously appeared: “Move the screen for Mr. Wilson. Arrange a chair for him.”

“Very kind,” said Garreth.

“Not at all.”

“Should you even be walking?” asked Hollis, starting to rise.

As the boy slid the screen aside, Garreth stepped past it, heavily, supporting himself on the quadrupedal cane. “I took the invalid chair, then the service elevator.” He put his free hand on her shoulder, squeezed. “No need to get up.”

When the boy had helped him into the high-backed armchair brought from an adjacent table, he smiled at Bigend.

“This is Hubertus Bigend,” said Hollis.

“A pleasure, Mr. Big End.” They shook hands across the table.

“Call me Hubertus. A cup for Mr. Wilson,” he said to the Italian boy.

“Garreth.”

“Were you injured here in London, Garreth?”

“Dubai.”

“I see.”

“You’ll pardon me,” said Garreth, “but I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation.”

Bigend’s eyebrows rose a fraction. “How much of it?”

“The bulk,” said Garreth. “Are you considering giving them this Milgrim, then?”

Bigend looked from Garreth to Hollis, then back. “I’ve no way of knowing how much else you may know of my affairs, but I’ve invested a great deal in Milgrim’s health and welfare. This comes at a very difficult time for me, as I’m unable to trust my own security staff. There’s an internal struggle in the firm, and I’m loath to go to any of the many corporate security firms here. The equivalent of hiring the lousy to rid you of lice, in my experience. Milgrim, through his unfortunate actions, has endangered a project of mine, one of the utmost importance to me.”

“You are,” said Hollis, “you are! You’re going to give them Milgrim!”

“I certainly am,” said Bigend, “unless someone has a better suggestion. And will have done, by this time tomorrow.”

“Stall,” said Garreth.

“Stall?”

“I can probably put something together, but I’ll need closer to forty-eight hours.”

“There may be risk for me, in doing that,” said Bigend.

“Not as much risk as there is in my calling the police,” said Hollis. “And the Times and the Guardian. There’s that man at the Guardian who particularly has it in for you, isn’t there?”

Bigend stared at her.

“Tell them you’ve lost him,” said Garreth, “but that you’ll get him back. I’ll help you with messaging.”

“What are you, Mr. Wilson?”

“A hungry man. With a gammy leg.”

“I recommend the full English.”

Milgrim, on his side in the sleeping bag, on the medicinal-looking white foam, was caught in some frustrating loop of semi-sleep, slow and circular, in which exhaustion swung him slowly out, toward where sleep should surely have been, then overshot the mark somehow, bumping him over into a state of random anxiety that couldn’t quite qualify as wakefulness, then back out again, convinced of sleep’s promise…

This was, his therapist had told him, on hearing it described, an aftereffect of stress-excessive fear, excessive excitement-and he was there. That it was the sort of thing that a normal person could escape with the application of a single tablet of Ativan added a certain irony. But Milgrim’s recovery, he’d been taught, was dependent on strict abstinence from the substance of choice. Which was not the substance of choice, his therapist maintained, but the substance of need. And Milgrim knew that he’d never been content with a single tablet of anything. It was the very first single tablet, he told himself, rehearsing these teachings like a rosary, as he swung back out toward the false promise of sleep, that he was required not to ingest. The others were no problem, because, if he successfully avoided the first, there were no others. Except for that first one, which, in potential at least, was always there. Bump. He hit the random anxiety, saw those few sparks thrown off Foley’s car’s fenders as Aldous drove it back, through that narrow space.

He tried to recall what he knew about cars, to explain those sparks. They were mostly plastic now, cars, with bits of metal inside. The surface of the body had been ground down, he supposed, to a little metal, producing sparks, and then perhaps the metal had been abraded away… I know that, stupid, his mind told him.

He thought he heard something. Then knew he did. His eyes sprang open in the small cave of the MontBell, the office faintly illuminated by the dance of abstract shapes on the screen of the Air.

“Shombo, always,” he heard Voytek say loudly, the accent unmistakable, growing closer, resentful, “is genius. Shombo is genius coder. Shombo, I will tell you: Shombo codes like old people fuck.”

“Milgrim,” Fiona called, “hullo, where are you?”

The current crisis, whatever underlay it, didn’t seem to have affected Bigend’s appetite. They were all having the full English. Bigend was working steadily through his, Garreth doing most of the talking.

“This is a prisoner exchange,” Garreth said. “One hostage for another. Your man assumes, correctly, that you’re unlikely to call the police.” Bigend looked pointedly at Hollis. “We can assume that he hasn’t much of a network here,” Garreth continued, “else he wouldn’t have sent an idiot after Milgrim. Neither, at this point, do you, given the situation in your firm, and we can assume that he knows that, via your mole.”

“Can one have been a mole on one’s own behalf?” asked Bigend. “I would assume that everyone is that, to whatever extent.”

Garreth ignored this. “Your mole will know that you aren’t much inclined to hire outside security, for the reasons you stated. Likewise your man will know this. Since your man would never have signed off on such a patently ridiculous abduction plan, we can assume that Foley was the planner. Therefore, your man was either not present during the attempt or somehow out of the loop. My guess is that he was already on his way here, likely out of a sense that Foley was cocking up. Foley possibly acted when he did in order to get at Milgrim before the boss arrived.”

Hollis had never heard Garreth unpack a specific situation this way, though something in his tone now reminded her of his explanations of asymmetric warfare, a topic in which he had a keen and abiding interest. She remembered him telling her how terrorism was almost exclusively about branding, but only slightly less so about the psychology of lotteries, and how this had made her think of Bigend.

“So,” Garreth said, “it’s likely we’re dealing with an improvisational plan on their part. Your man has opted for a prisoner exchange. Those of course are eminently gameable. Though your man knows that, certainly, and is familiar with all applicable tactics, including the one I imagine I’d be most likely to employ.”

“Which is?”

“Your man Milgrim. Is he obese? Extremely tall? Memorable-looking?”

“Forgettable,” said Bigend. “About ten stone.”

“Good.” Garreth was buttering a slice of toast. “There’s a surprising amount of mutual trust necessary in any prisoner exchange. Why it’s gameable.”

“You’re not giving them Milgrim,” Hollis said.

“I need to see more to hang success on, Mr. Wilson, if you’ll pardon my saying so,” said Bigend, forking beans onto a quarter-slice of toast.