'Oh yes!' she said helpfully. 'My Ralph flickered on and off like a faulty light bulb until his uneradication held!'

I thanked her and put the receiver down, then checked my finger for a wedding ring. It still wasn't there.

I glanced into the garden and saw Hamlet walking on the lawn, deep in thought — with Alan following him at a safe distance. As I watched, Hamlet turned to him and glared. The small dodo went all sheepish and laid his head on the ground in supplication. Clearly, Hamlet wasn't just a fictional Prince of Denmark, but also something of an alpha dodo.

I smiled to myself and wandered into the living room, where I found Friday building a castle out of bricks with Pickwick helping. Of course, 'helping' in this context means 'watching'. I glanced at the clock. Time for work. Just when I could do with some relaxing brick-building therapy. Mum agreed to look after Friday and I gave him a kiss goodbye.

'Be good.'

'Arse.'

'What did you say?'

'Pikestaff.'

'If those are rude Old English words, St Zvlkx is in a lot of trouble — and so are you, my little fellow. Mum, sure you're okay?'

'Of course. We'll take him to the zoo.'

'Good. No, wait — we?'

'Bismarck and I.'

'Mum!?'

'What? Can't a more or less widowed woman have a bit of male company from time to time?'

'Well,' I stammered, feeling unnaturally shocked for some reason, 'I suppose there's no reason why not.'

'Good. Be off with you. After we've gone to the zoo we might drop in at the tearooms. And then the theatre.'

She had started to go all dreamy so I left, shocked not only that mother might be even considering some sort of a fling with Bismarck, but that Joffy might have been right.

I avoided the news crews who were waiting for me at the SpecOps building and parked up at the rear. Major Drabb was waiting for me as I walked into the entrance lobby. He saluted smartly but I detected a slight reticence about him this morning. I handed him another scrap of paper.

'Good morning, Major. Today's assignment is the Museum of the American Novel in Salisbury.'

'Very . . . good, Agent Next.'

'Problems, Major?'

'Well,' he said, biting his lip nervously, 'yesterday you had me searching the library of a famous Belgian and today the Museum of the American Novel. Shouldn't we be searching more . . . well, Danish facilities?'

I pulled him aside and lowered my voice.

'That's precisely what they would be expecting us to do. These Danes are clever people. You wouldn't expect them to hide their books somewhere as obvious as the Wessex Danish Library, now, would you?'

He smiled and tapped his nose.

'Very astute, Agent Next.'

Drabb saluted again, clicked his heels and was gone. I smiled to myself and pressed the elevator call button. As long as Drabb didn't report to Flanker I could keep this going all week.

Bowden was not alone. He was talking to the last person I would expect to see in a LiteraTec office: Spike.

'Yo, Thursday,' he said.

'Yo, Spike.'

He wasn't smiling. I feared it might be something to do with Cindy, but I was wrong.

'Our friends in SO-6 tell us there's some seriously weird shit going down on the M4,' he announced, 'and when someone says "weird shit" they call—'

'—you.'

'Bingo. But the weird shit merchant can't do it on his own, so he calls—'

'—me.'

'Bingo.'

There was another officer with them. He wore a dark suit typical of the upper SpecOps divisions, and he looked at his watch in an unsubtle manner.

'Time is of the essence, Agent Stoker.'

'What's the job?' I asked.

'Yes,' returned Spike, whose somewhat laid-back attitude to life-and-death situations took a little getting used to, 'what is the job?'

The suited agent looked impassively at us both.

'Classified,' he announced, 'but I am authorised to tell you this:Unless we get |||||||| back in under |||||||| — ||||| hours then ||||||| will seize ultimate executive |||| and you can ||||| goodbye to any semblance of |||||||.'

'Sounds pretty ****ing serious,' said Spike, turning back to me. 'Are you in?'

'I'm in.'

We were driven without explanation to the roundabout at Junction 16 of the M4 motorway. SO-6 were National Security, which made for some interesting conflicts of interest. The department that protected Formby also protected Kaine. And for the most part the SO-6 agents looking after Formby worked against Kaine's SO-6 operatives, who were more than keen to see him gone. SpecOps factions always fought, but rarely from within the same department. Kaine had a lot to answer for.

In any case, I didn't like them and neither did Spike, and whatever it was they wanted it would have to be pretty weird. No one calls Spike until every avenue has been explored. He is the last line of defence before rationality starts to crumble.

We pulled on to the verge, where two large black Bentley limousines were waiting for us. Parked next to them were six standard police cars, the occupants looking bored and waiting for orders. Something pretty big was going down.

'Who's she?' demanded a tall agent with a humourless demeanour as soon as we stepped from the car.

'Thursday Next,' I replied, 'SO-27.'

'Literary Detectives?' he sneered.

'She's good enough for me,' said Spike. 'If I don't get my own people you can do your own weird shit.'

The SO-6 agent looked at the pair of us in turn.

'ID.'

I showed him my badge. He took it, looked at it for a moment, then passed it back.

'My name is Colonel Parks,' said the agent, 'I'm head of Presidential Security. This is Dowding, my second-in-command.'

Spike and I exchanged looks. The President. This really was serious.

Dowding, a laconic figure in a dark suit, nodded his greeting as Parks continued:

'Firstly I must point out to you both that this is a matter of great national importance and I am asking for your advice only because we are desperate. We find ourselves in a head-of-state deficit condition by virtue of a happenstance of a high other-worldliness possibility situation — and we hoped you might be able to reverse-engineer us out of it.'

'Cut the waffle,' said Spike, 'what's going on?'

Parks's shoulders slumped and he took off his dark glasses.

'We've lost the President.'

My heart missed a beat. This was bad news. Really bad news. The way I saw it, the President wasn't due to die until next Monday, after Kaine and Goliath had been neutered. Missing or dying early allowed Kaine to gain power and start the Third World War a week before he was meant to — and that was certainly not in the game plan.