‘I think I can manage,’ Saul replied, ‘but we’ve yet to agree a price.’ He felt more than a little edgy. Though he’d undergone implant removals previously in places like this – having done most implantations himself – those had all been under local anaesthetic. He didn’t like the degree of trust involved in going under full anaesthetic and letting someone take a scalpel to his head. Yes, Hannah would be doing the procedure, but if Bronstein found the bag of gold attractive enough, Saul had no doubt that he might choose his moment to take her down. Disposing of two corpses would be no problem for him and, as they had witnessed on the way here, no one would be investigating their disappearance.

‘Two of those gold bars will cover it,’ Bronstein replied. ‘One more, maybe, if there’s any complications.’ He gazed at Saul steadily. ‘But that ain’t your main problem right now, is it?’

‘I don’t follow you,’ Saul said.

‘You armed?’ Bronstein asked.

‘Why do you want to know that?’

‘Because, if you are, you can take whatever weapon you’ve got through the shower with you.’

That would not be a problem for the automatic Saul was carrying, since it had been over a hundred years since damp could affect the firing of a modern weapon.

‘A lot of good that’ll . . .’ Saul paused and looked at Hannah. ‘You mean I’ll be conscious during the operation?’

She nodded. ‘You don’t ever attach up such hardware to an unconscious brain, or you get activation problems.’

‘I see.’ He took out the three bars of gold and set them down on Bronstein’s desk, then headed straight for the door. As Saul went through, Bronstein was already picking up one of the bars to feed through the narrow throat of the kind of scanner a jeweller would normally use. Doubtless many of the doctor’s clients now paid him with precious metals or with gems.

The short passageway beyond the door terminated at the shower booth, with a plastic box on a low shelf beside it for the client’s belongings, and coathangers arranged above. Saul stripped and placed all his clothing in the box, along with his boots and backpack, but he retained the automatic as he stepped into the shower to inspect its complex controls. He first dealt with his head, the dyed hair dropping as powder into the shower tray from the high-speed tungsten-carbide heads of the shaver pad. Next he spread depilating cream over his scalp from a spigot beside the shaver recess, and following the instructions on a screen just above the spigot, he waited until the timer hit zero before turning on the shower itself.