“Pornos,” said Fiona. “Saad’ll like that.”

“Won’t he just,” said Benny.

Fiona, noticing Milgrim, turned. “Hullo.”

“May I borrow your phone? Have to call someone.”

She fished in her slouchy armored pants, came up with an iPhone, not the one Milgrim had used with the Festo ray, and passed it to him. “Hungry? We can have doner sent in.”

“Dinner?”

“Doner. Kebab.”

“Ready for a curry, myself,” said Benny, studying the lit tip of his cigarette intently, as though it might suddenly offer curry reviews.

“I’ll just make this call-” He froze.

“Yes?”

“Is this… a Blue Ant phone?”

“No,” said Fiona. “Brand-new. So’s Benny’s. We’ve all been freshly resupplied, and the old ones taken away.”

“Thanks,” said Milgrim, and went back into the Vegas cube. He found Winnie’s card, on which he’d added the dialing prefixes, and dialed.

She answered on the second ring. “Yes?”

“It’s me,” said Milgrim.

“Where are you?”

“Suth-uk. Over the river.”

“Doing?”

“We had a nap.”

“Did you have story time first?”

“No.”

“You think something’s happening? You tweeted.”

The verb sounded off, the more particularly because he knew it wasn’t part of a nursery theme. “Something is. I don’t know what. He’s hired someone called Wilson, and delegated.” He was glad he’d remembered the word.

“Threat management,” she said. “He’s outsourcing. Shows he’s taking it seriously. Have you met Wilson?”

“No.”

“What’s Wilson telling them to do?”

“They put a box on the back of Fiona’s bike. The kind they haul eyeballs in.”

There was a perfect digital silence, then: “Who’s Fiona?”

“She drives. For Bigend. Motorcycles.”

“Okay,” said Winnie. “We’ll just start again. Tasking.”

“Tasking?”

“I want you to meet Wilson. I want to know about Wilson. Most importantly, the name of the firm he’s working for.”

“Isn’t he working for Bigend?”

“He works for one of the security firms. Bigend is the client. Don’t ask him. Just find out. Sneaky-ass, though. You can do sneaky-ass. Instinct tells me. Whose phone are you using?”

“Fiona’s.”

“I just e-mailed the number to someone, and they’re telling me the GPS is very amusing. Unless you’ve taken up marathon randomized teleportation.”

“It’s new. She just got it from Bigend.”

“That might be Wilson, the threat management consultant. Earning his keep, if that’s the case. Okay. You’re tasked. Go for it. Call, tweet.” She was gone.

The room filled with that weird chicken-scratch sub-Hendrix chord. He rushed out the door, tripped on part of an engine, and nearly fell, but managed to thrust the phone into Fiona’s hand. As he did so, he wondered whether or not it might be Winnie.

“Hullo? Yes. It’s on. Very convincing. Having my dampers replaced next. They’re a bit rough. You would? Certainly. I’ll borrow a bike. Fast? My pleasure.” She smiled. “What he was wearing yesterday?” She looked at Milgrim. “I’ll tell him.” She put the phone in her pants pocket.

Milgrim raised his eyebrows.

“Wilson,” Fiona said. “You’re required soonest, over the river. Wants to meet you. And you’re to bring what you were wearing yesterday.”

“Why?”

“Thinks kit from Tanky amp; Tojo doesn’t suit you.”

Milgrim winced.

“Taking the piss,” she said, bumping his arm with her fist. “You’re very smart. I’m borrowing a fast bike for the job while Saad does my dampers. Benny’s.”

“Feck,” said Benny softly, a small sound but filled with resignation, as to immemorial hardship. “Don’t bugger it again, can you?”

65. LEOPARD SKIN IN MINIATURE

She stood on Cabinet’s steps, looking at unexpected lights, beyond trees, in the privacy of Portman Square, Robert hovering watchfully behind her, after the tall Slow Foods van pulled away, driven by a young blonde with a cap worryingly like Foley’s.

Sounds of tennis. There was a court in there. Someone had decided to play a night game. She thought the court would be too wet.

When she went back in, Inchmale and Heidi were in the lobby, Inchmale strapping himself into his Japanese Gore-Tex. “We’re going to the studio to listen to some mixes. Come with us.”

“Thanks, but I’m needed.”

“Either offer stands, Tucson or Hampstead. You could stay with Angelina.”

“I appreciate it, Reg. I do.”

“Quietly stubborn,” he said, then looked at Heidi. “Beats violently obstreperous.” Back to her. “Consistent, anyway. Keep in touch.”

“I will.” She headed for the elevator. For the ferret, in its vitrine. Silently offering prayer: that Garreth’s scheme, whatever it was, be as ferrety as it needed to be, or that whatever had happened to this particular ferret, to earn it its timeless somnambulistic residence here, not happen to Garreth, to Milgrim, or to anyone else she cared for.

Its teeth looked bigger, though she knew that couldn’t be possible. She pressed the button, heard distant clanks from above, sounds from the Tesla machinery.

She hadn’t been aware of caring for Milgrim, really, until it became apparent that Bigend would so easily feed him to Foley and company, if that meant getting Bobby Chombo back. And it wouldn’t be Chombo Bigend needed, she knew, but something Chombo knew, or knew how to do. That was what bothered her, that and the fact of Milgrim having been reborn, or perhaps born, on a whim of Bigend’s, simply to see whether or not it was possible. To do that, and then to trade the resulting person, possibly to trade his life, for something you wanted, no matter how badly, was wrong.

When the lift arrived, she hauled the gate aside, opened the door, stepped in. Ascended.

On her way through the corridors to Number Four, she noticed that one of the landscapes now contained two follies, identical, one further back, on a distant hillside. Surely it had always been there, the second folly, unnoticed. She’d give it no further thought, she decided firmly.

She knocked, in case Garreth and Pep were still deep into stays. “It’s me.”

“Come in,” he called.

He was propped up in the Piblokto Madness bed, the black bandage of the cold-pumping machine around his leg again, the black laptop open on his stomach, headset on.

“Busy?”

“No. Just got off a call with Big End.” He looked tired.

“How was that?”

“He’s had the call. Gracie. They wanted Milgrim tonight.”

“You aren’t ready, are you?”

“No, but I knew I wouldn’t be. I’d rehearsed it with him. Milgrim’s done a runner, he told them, but it’s fortunately now been sorted. Going to collect him. Careful not to say where, exactly, but still in the U.K. In case Gracie has a way of checking U.S. passport movement. I think it went well, but your Big End…” He shook his head.

“What?”

“There’s something he wants. Needs. But that’s not it, exactly… It feels to me like he’s been winning, forever, and now, suddenly, there’s a chance he might lose, really lose. If he can’t get Chombo back, in working condition. And that makes Big End really very dangerous.” He looked at her.

“What do you think he might do?”

“Anything. Literally. To get Chombo back. I’ve never done this before.”

“Done what?”

“Exploit on behalf of a client. Concerned I’ve drawn the client from hell.”

She sat on the edge of the bed, put her hand on the leg that was like they both had been, before Dubai.

“The old man says he’s got a very peculiar smell about him now, Big End. Says it’s different, recently, stronger. Can’t get a handle on it.”

“Reg says the same. He’s been hearing it from his wife, who’s in public relations here. Says it’s like dogs before an earthquake. They don’t know what it is, but it’s him, somehow. But I’m worried about you. You look exhausted.” He did, now. The lines deeper in his cheeks. “Those five neurosurgeons didn’t expect you to be doing this, did they?”