“I’ll take you to him,” I gasped, trying to give myself some breathing space. “It’s a little way out of town.”

The Goliath agent relaxed his grip and told me to get dressed. A few minutes later we were walking out of the hotel. My head was still sore and a dull pain thumped in my temples, but at least I was thinking more clearly. There was a small crowd ahead of me, and I was delighted to see it was the Mutlar family preparing to return to London. Daisy was arguing with her father and Mrs. Mutlar was shaking her head wearily.

“Gold digger!” I yelled.

Daisy and her father stopped arguing and looked at me as the Goliath men tried to steer me past.

“What did you say!?”

“You heard. I can’t think who the bigger tart is, your daughter or your wife.”

It had the desired effect. Mr. Mutlar turned an odd shade of crimson and threw a fist in my direction. I ducked and the blow struck one of the Goliath men fairly and squarely on the jaw. I bolted for the car park. A shot whistled over my shoulder; I jinked and stepped into the road as a big black military-style Ford motor car screeched to a halt.

“Get in!” shouted the driver. I didn’t need to be asked twice. I jumped in and the Ford sped off as two bullet holes appeared in the rear windshield. The car screeched around the corner and was soon out of range.

“Thanks,” I murmured. “Any later and I might have been worm food. Can you drop me at SpecOps HQ?”

The driver didn’t say anything; there was a glass partition between me and him and all of a sudden I had that out-of-the-frying-pan-and-into-the-fire feeling.

“You can drop me anywhere,” I said. He didn’t answer. I tried the door handles but they were locked. I thumped on the glass but he ignored me; we drove past the SpecOps building and headed off to the old town. He was driving fast too. Twice he went through a red light and once he cut up a bus; I was thrown against the door as he flew around a corner, just missing a brewer’s dray.

“Here, stop this car!” I shouted, banging again on the glass partition. The driver simply accelerated, clipping another car as he took a corner a little too fast.

I pulled hard at the door handles and was about to use my heels against the window when the car abruptly screeched to a halt; I slid off the seat and collapsed in a heap in the footwell. The driver got out, opened the door for me and said:

“There you go, missy, didn’t want you to be late. Colonel Phelps’s orders.”