The inspector nodded tersely. With the look of a Sunday cricketer who’d fielded a ball only to find out it had rolled through dog excrement on its way to his hands.

‘Quite possibly the most appropriate choice that’s come out of the random name generator in the last five years. Good guess. William Nichol’s gone sick as of two minutes ago. A pretty serious case of food poisoning. Get yourself over to St John’s Wood and his constable will pick you up from the tube station.’

Putting his firearm and belt kit into a daysack, Mickey left LX. Taking a face mask at the door. Headed for Lambeth North tube station. Got on a Bakerloo train and headed north. Changed lines to the Jubilee at Baker Street. Rode north one more stop and came back above ground. Looked for, and found, what he expected to see. An illegally parked Mercedes people mover, waiting for him to emerge. What he wasn’t expecting was the person driving it.

‘Skipper! Fancy seeing you here!’

Mickey shook the extended hand as he climbed into the vehicle. Shaking his head in amusement.

‘Wade Harris. There was me thinking I wouldn’t be seeing you again for a while, and inside a week here you are playing taxi driver.’

‘I know! I’m not sure which of us is the luckier!’

Mickey turned to look at the younger man as he pulled away from the kerb, heading for Winfield House. The US Ambassador’s London residence. Home to the leader of the western world during his state visit.

‘It’s you, Wade. And speaking of lucky, how’s it going with the girl you met just before that nastiness in Belize? Still going strong?’ He leaned forward and made a show of inspecting his former partner’s eyes. ‘Pale skin. Sunken eyes. Bags the size of holdalls too. Looks like you’re still burning the candle at both ends.’

Wade grinned. Clearly unable to contain his happiness any longer.

‘It’s amazing, Mickey! It’s like we’ve been together for months!’

Mickey, shaking his head, pronounced sentence. ‘That’s you done then. Set the date yet?’ And then did a double take at the lack of any denial. ‘Whoa! Wade, mate, obviously you’ve been smitten, but surely not that hard?’

‘’Fraid so. She’s the same. Worse, even.’

‘And she knows what you do for a living? That you’ll be going missing for days on end to fulfil your 007 fantasies?’

Their airwaves beat Wade to the counter punch.

‘All Rampage callsigns, Rampage Bronze Commander. Moving in five minutes, positions please.’

Wade turned into the Outer Circle. Showing his ID to the AFOs standing guard on the crescent. Who examined it with microscopic care. Despite having seen him drive out fifteen minutes earlier.

‘Christ on a bike, but you can tell when there’s a president in town, can’t you?’