Two cars weren’t moving, though. They were parked opposite, one behind the other, fat wheels up on the concrete curb. One was new—clean, black paintwork, black tinted glass, a beast of a car, tall and proud and sturdy. The other was a dented wreck with mismatched wings and a plastic bag taped over the rear-offside window.

Sitting nonchalantly around the first car were three Japanese men, wraparound info shades on their expressionless faces. Their suits were identical down to the creases in their trousers and the bulges in their jackets. He even recognized one of them: shaven-headed Hijo.

Lolling on the bonnet of the other car was Chain, who was glaring at the world in general and the men in front of him in particular.

Hijo spotted Petrovitch first. He stood erect, adjusted his black leather gloves, and nodded to his men. Chain saw the change in attitude of his quarry and glanced over to the doors. He slid off his car and shuffled his feet.

Petrovitch looked from one car to the other like he was sizing up two different but equally unappealing destinies. One of Hijo’s men even gave a little bow.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” said Petrovitch under his breath, “but I’m not stupid.”

He turned away, feeling four sets of eyes burning into his back until he disappeared into the crowd. He let himself be carried for a while, crossing two intersections, taking the opportunity before the lights cycled green to look around him and see if he was being followed.

That idea was ludicrous—or had been when he’d woken up that morning. Now, it had to be part of his mental map, along with needing a new heart and accidentally abandoning a perfectly decent piece of hardware in a church.

He crossed one more road, and the buildings changed. The tall two-centuries-old town houses stopped and the massive domik sprawl of Regent’s Park started: a vast heap of rusting shipping containers, stepped like blood-smeared Aztec pyramids until the peaks were high in the heavens. It made his own Clapham A look tiny, and legends had grown around the most inaccessible habs, deep inside the pile: Container Zero, the last Armageddonist, the Zoo.

He hadn’t realized he was so close, didn’t want to be so close. No one should think he had a connection with it. He took a step back so that he was in the lee of an anonymous gray box, a piece of left-over street furniture from an earlier age. He looked up to the topmost container, adorned with a fluttering green banner and a small windmill that spun to a blur in the wind.

Petrovitch pushed his glasses up his nose, and walked off, heading west down Marylebone.