CLUB ZERO and Mo. Who sent Uncle Fester? I see three alternatives: Panin and his friends, the cultists she was sent to shut down, or some third party. Taking it from the top: Panin is a professional, and can be expected to usually play by the rules. Sending a zombie to doorstep an officer in a foreign nation's service at home just isn't done; it's not businesslike, and besides, once you start sending assassins to bump off the oppo, you've got no guarantee that their assassins aren't going to outperform yours. The reason great powers don't usually engage in wars of assassination is that it levels the playing field. On the other hand, cultists like the perps behind CLUB ZERO are far more likely to do that sort of thing. Assassination and terrorism are Siamese twins: tools for outsiders and pressure groups. So my money is on Uncle Fester being an emissary from the cultists the AIVD called Mo in to neutralize . . . unless there's a third faction in play, a prospect I find far too scary to contemplate.

The cycle path narrows, and descends deeper into its cutting. The lights are more widely spaced here, and a number of them are out. Hearing a rustling scampering sound behind me, I glance round as something flickers in the bushes between lights—dog-like, with a great bush of a tail. An urban fox? Maybe: I didn't see the ears or muzzle, though. Urban foxes aren't a problem (unless you're a cat), but feral dogs might be another matter. I keep walking in the twilight. London is warm and humid in summer, but down here it's almost clammy-cold, and there's a faint whiff of something like a sewer, sweet and slightly rotten. I break into a slow jog, aiming to outrun the stench.

I have a growing, edgy feeling that I've missed something critically important. I've been plowing along, in harness and under stress, assuming that the crises I'm trying to deal with are all independent. But what if they aren't? I ask myself. What if Angleton's disappearance is connected to Panin's search for the Teapot, what if the Fuller Memorandum holds an explanation, what if the cultists know that we stand closer to the threshold of the End Times than we realize and are trying to topple the balance, or perhaps to steal—