"Very good, Mr. Howard." The speaker is male, standing somewhere behind me. He's on the embankment, of course. Even the B-Team learn eventually. (Maybe I should have tried to shoot them the other night. And maybe I should cultivate my inner psychopath some more. Oh well.) "Do what I say and I won't shoot you. If you understand, nod."

I nod like a Churchill dog, thinking furiously. His accent is odd. Welsh? I can't place it.

"When I stop speaking I want you to slowly remove your pistol and place it on the ground in front of you. Then I want you to turn around. Do you understand?"

"But I'm not—"

"Did I ask you to speak?" His voice is icy. I shut up fast.

"If you understand, nod," he repeats. I nod. It's not my job to disillusion him about my imaginary invisible handgun. Like I said: the B-Team are more dangerous than the A-Team, just like sweating dynamite is more dangerous than Semtex. "Do it," he says. "Do it very slowly or I'll shoot you."

I very slowly lift the right side of my jacket, and mime unhooking a non-existent pistol from a non-existent belt clip. Then I lean over sideways until I nearly topple, and lower my hand towards the roots of a tree. Finally I straighten up—still moving slowly—and turn round, raising my hands.

My first reaction is, A man without a face is pointing a shotgun at me. Then I realize that he's glammed up, his head masked by a shimmer of random snapshots of other people, like something out of a Philip K. Dick novel. Other than that, he's wearing jeans and a gray hoodie—just like a million other men in and around this great capital city; the only deviant part of the ensemble is the tactical shotgun.

"Take two steps downhill, until you're on the path," he tells me. "Then kneel with your hands on top of your head."

My heart, barely under control a minute ago, is pounding, but I do what he tells me to do. Arguing with a shotgun isn't clever. I manage to kneel with my hands on my head—which is harder than you might think, when the ground's uneven, you're amped up on adrenaline, and you're over thirty—and wait.

"Don't move," he says. The sun beats down on us as we wait in a frozen diorama for almost a minute. Then I hear footsteps, and a jingling sound, from behind. "Don't move," repeats Mr. Faceless, as someone takes hold of my left wrist and clips one ring of a pair of handcuffs around it. "Got him, boss," says another male voice.

Shit, I think, tensing and ready to make a move if the opportunity presents—but they're not total idiots and they've already got my other wrist.

"Now lie down," says Mr. Faceless.