Waldo hung up without another word. He only had two minutes; there was no time for chitchat.

•••

The cab pulled up outside the Garden Hotel slightly more than three minutes later and disgorged a very unlikely couple onto Monmouth Street.

One seventeen-year-old FBI agent in Lycra, and an assassin’s apprentice from the nineteenth century, thought Chevie. We must be quite a sight. At least both of my eyes are open now.

Monmouth Street itself was quiet, in spite of its proximity to Covent Garden, with only a few tourists cutting through to Seven Dials or Leicester Square and the faint echo of carnival music. Most of the street was fenced off for street repairs, and the taxi driver was forced to reverse and go out the same way he had come in.

The Garden Hotel was one of those establishments that prided itself on the discretion it guaranteed its very select clientele. There was no sign, no doorman in a top hat, and only a tasteful awning to show taxi drivers where to stop. Chevie had stayed here once before, when Orange had commandeered her apartment during a routine pod service, and she had treated herself to a massage that had worked out muscle pains she’d suffered from overstrenuous workouts.

Chevie tucked her holstered Glock under her arm and hustled Riley into the lobby before he had time to throw up again. Special Agent Waldo Gunn was waiting for them by the reception desk.

“Two minutes?” he said testily. “That was closer to four.” Waldo was not anybody’s idea of an FBI operative, which was probably why he had survived so long in his semi-undercover capacity as liaison at the Garden. Waldo stood five feet four in Cuban heels and had a bushy gray beard that made him seem about a thousand years old, a look that had earned him the nickname Gimli in the Bureau. If Waldo was aware of this nickname, he was not sufficiently bothered by it to invest in a razor.

“Hey, Waldo,” said Chevie. “What’s up?”

Waldo scowled. “What’s up, Agent Savano? What’s up is that you should have requested an escort through the service entrance. We try to maintain a low profile here in order to avoid raising suspicion, and yet here you stand in tattered training gear with a chimney-cleaning midget in tow. Hardly low profile. That is what is up, Agent.”

At least he called me Agent, thought Chevie.

Waldo turned on his heel and strode through the small lobby furnished in late Victorian style, which was a huge relief to Riley, whose head was bursting with revelations.

“Should we follow the elf?” he asked Chevie.

Chevie smiled. “We should, or he gets really annoyed.”