He led Chevie through the lobby area, which was decked out like a three-star English hotel, complete with fire dogs and a ship in a bottle, down into a basement with a reinforced steel door. Once they got past that door, things got real FBI real quick. Chevie spotted over a dozen cameras in the concrete walls, there were motion-sensor bugs all over the corridor, and every type of information cable known to man was threaded through a grey conduit.

‘Nice conduit,’ said Chevie drily. ‘Goes with your... everything.’

Orange coughed. ‘Agent Witmeyer did mention that I am your superior?’

‘Negative on that,’ lied Chevie. ‘He said we were partners.’

‘I doubt that very much,’ said Orange. ‘In fact, I am only referring to you as Agent as a courtesy. From what I hear, you’re being stashed in London after the ill-conceived high-school initiative went south.’

They passed a holding cell and a well-stocked infirmary, then the corridor widened into a circular chamber, which housed a ten-foot-tall pyramid-shaped metal pod, covered in refrigeration tubes and complicated groups of blinking lights.

‘This is WARP central,’ said Orange, patting the casing fondly.

‘It looks like a sci-fi Christmas tree,’ said Chevie, doing her best not to be impressed.

Orange checked a number of readouts; it really looked like he knew what he was doing.

‘I was expecting this attitude,’ he said, without facing Chevie. ‘I read your file. Most informative. Graduated top of your special group. Record test scores in spite of your age. Problem with authority figures, blah blah blah, so much so movie stereotype.’ Orange turned finally to Chevie. ‘We both know why you’re here, Agent Savano. Your group was an embarrassment to the Bureau and a potential legal minefield, because of your age. You messed up for the cameras in Los Angeles, so they sent you overseas on a quiet posting, but, in spite of what you may think, what we do here is important, Agent. There shall be no cutting of slack because of your youth.’

Chevie glared. ‘Don’t worry, Agent. I don’t expect slack and I don’t cut any.’

Orange thrust a hand inside the pod, checking the temperature. ‘I’m glad to hear it. It is more than likely that your un-slackened talents will never be called upon. On most days a man probably won’t come out of the WARP pod, so you don’t have to do anything except study for your diploma. But on the off-chance that this very special man does emerge from that hatch when I am out, you need to keep him alive. Just keep him alive and call me. That’s it.’

‘Is the man in there now?’

‘No, Agent. The pod is empty at the moment, and has been for thirty years.’

‘So it’s a magic pod?’

Orange smiled in a way that told Chevie that he knew quite a lot that she didn’t. ‘Not magic, exactly. Magical, maybe.’