One picture was especially interesting, if only for its scenery: Wellesley and Borowitz standing in the courtyard of an old mansion or chateau, a place of debased heritage and mixed architectural antecedents. It had twin minarets jutting upwards like rotting phallus mushrooms from steeply-gabled end walls; their flaking spiral decorations and sagging parapets added to a general sense of decay and dereliction. But in fact the chateau had been anything but derelict.

Wellesley had never been inside the place, hadn't even known what it housed, not then. But he knew well enough now. It was the Chateau Bronnitsy, Soviet mindspy HQ, an infamous place - until Harry Keogh had blown it to hell. It was a pity he hadn't done it just a couple of years earlier, that's all...

The next morning, Darcy Clarke was late for work. A bad traffic accident on the North Circular, traffic-light failure in the centre of town, and finally some dumb bastard's rust-bucket parked in Darcy's space. He'd been about to let the air out of the offender's tyres when he turned up, said, 'Fuck you!' to Clarke's raving and drove off.

Still fuming, Clarke used the elevator discreetly placed at the rear of an otherwise perfectly normal-looking upmarket hotel to climb up to the top floor, which in its soundproof, burglar-proof, mundane-, mechanical-, and metaphysics-proofed entirety housed E-Branch, also known as INTESP. As he let himself in and shrugged out of his coat, last night's Duty Officer was just leaving for home.

Abel Angstrom gave Clarke the once-over and said, 'Morning, Darcy. All hot and bothered, are you? You will be!'

Clarke grimaced and hung up his coat. 'Nothing can go wrong that hasn't already,' he grunted. 'What's up?'

'The Boss,' Angstrom told him. That's what's up. He's been up since 6:30, locked in his office with the Keogh file. Drinking coffee by the gallon! He's watching the clock, too - been gripping each and every guy who's come in after 8:00 a.m. He wants you, so if I were you I'd wear my flak-jacket!'

Clarke groaned, said, 'Thanks for the warning,' went to the gents and tidied himself up a little.

Straightening his tie in a mirror, suddenly everything boiled over. To himself he rasped: 'What the bloody hell - ? Why do I bother? Dog's-bloody-body Clarke! And Himself wants to see me, does he? Shit and damnation - it's like being in the bloody Army!' He deliberately unstraightened his tie, mussed his hair, looked at himself again.

There, that was better. And come to think of it, what did he have to fear anyway? Answer, nothing; for Clarke had a psi-talent no one had positively tagged yet; it kept him out of trouble, protecting him as a mother protects her child. He wasn't quite a deflector: fire a gun at him and your bullets wouldn't swerve, you'd simply miss him. Or the firing-pin would come down on duds. Or he'd somehow stumble at just the right moment. He was the opposite of accident-prone. He could walk through a minefield and come out unscathed... and yet he still switched off the current to change a light-bulb! Except this morning he wasn't in the mood for switching off anything. Let it all hang out, he thought, heading for the Sanctum Sanctorum.

When he knocked on the door a surly voice said: 'Who?'

Arrogant bastard! he thought. 'Darcy Clarke.'

'Come in, Clarke,' and as he passed inside: 'Where the hell have you been? I mean, do you work here or not?' And before he could answer: 'Sit down...'

But Clarke remained standing. He didn't need this. He'd had it, taken all he could take of his new boss in the six months the man had been the head of E-Branch. Hell, there were other jobs; he didn't have to work for this overbearing bastard. And where was the continuity? Sir Keenan Gormley had been a gentleman; Alec Kyle a friend; under Clarke himself the Branch had been efficient and friendly - to its friends, anyway. But this bloke was... hell, a boor! Gauche! A primitive! Certainly as far as internal relationships - man management - were concerned. As for talents: so what was the guy? A scryer, telepath, deflector, locator? No, his talent was simply that his mind was impenetrable: telepaths couldn't touch him. Some would say that made him the ideal man for the job. Maybe it did. But it would be nice if he was human, too. After serving under such men as Gormley and Kyle, working for someone like Norman Harold Wellesley was –

Wellesley was seated at his desk. Without looking up he sighed, took a deep breath, and said: 'I said -'

'That's right, I heard you,' Clarke cut him short. 'Good morning to you, too.'

Now Wellesley looked up, and Clarke saw that he was his usual, florid self. He also saw the file on Harry Keogh spread every which way across the surface of Wellesley's desk. And for the first time he wondered what was going on.

Wellesley saw Clarke's attitude at once, knew it wouldn't be wise to try riding roughshod over him this morning. Also, he knew there was a power-struggle coming up, that it had been in the wind ever since he took over here. But that was something he didn't need, not right now, anyway.

'All right, Darcy,' he said, tempering his tone a little, 'so we've both been having a bad time. You're the second in command, I know that, and you believe you're due some respect. Fine, but when things go wrong - and while we're all running round being nice and respectful - I'm the one who carries the can. However you feel about it, I still have to run this place. And with this kind of job... who needs an excuse to be ill-mannered? That's my story. So how come you got out of the wrong side of bed this morning?'

Clarice thought: What? When did he last call me Darcy? Is he actually trying to be reasonable, for Christ's sake?

He allowed himself to be mollified, partly, and sat down. 'The traffic was hell and some clown stole my parking space,' he finally answered. 'That's just for starters. I'm also expecting a call from Rhodes - from Trevor Jordan and Ken Layard - on that drugs job; Customs and Excise, and New Scotland Yard, will want to know how things are progressing. Add to that about a dozen unanswered requests from our Minister Responsible for esper support on unsolved major crimes, routine office admin, the Russian Embassy job I'm supposed to be supervising, and -'

'Well, you can skip the embassy job for one,' Wellesley was quick to break in. 'It's routine, unimportant. A few extra Ivans in the country? A Russian delegation? So what? Christ, we've more on our plate than mundane snooping! But even without all that... yes, I can see you're up to your neck.'

'Damn right,' said Clarke. 'And sinking fast! So you see I wouldn't think you rude - in fact I'd probably thank you - if you simply told me to piss off and get on with my job. Except I don't suppose you'd have called me in here if there wasn't something on your mind.'

'Well, no one could ever accuse you of not getting straight to the point, could they?' said Wellesley. And for once his round eyes were unblinking and less than hostile where they searched the other out. What he saw was this:

For all his weird talent, Clarke wasn't much to look at. No one would suppose that he'd ever been the boss of anything, let alone head of the most secret branch of the British Secret Services. He was Mr Nondescript, the world's most average man. Well, maybe not that indistinct, but getting on that way, certainly. Middle-height, mousey-haired, with something of a slight stoop and a small paunch - and middle-aged to boot - Clarke was just about middle of the range in every way. He had hazel eyes in a face not much given to laughter, an intense mouth and generally downcast air. And the rest of him, including his wardrobe was... medium.

But he had run E-Branch; he'd been around through some pretty hairy stuff; he'd known Harry Keogh.