The van was an indulgence; also, an obligation; and finally, a precaution. He’d bought it as soon as he began to grasp the scope of the opportunity that brilliant fool Alex had presented him with, but before Mhari had told him about the Laundry. It wasn’t his true getaway option, but it was a good-enough decoy to convince the rest of the Scrum that he was planning to take them with him, and it also served a secondary function. His real getaway option lived in an anonymous wallet in a bottom drawer in his second guest bedroom at home: a genuine Canadian passport with genuine biometrics matching him, in a name nobody he worked or lived with knew about. Along with the matching birth certificate and the diamond Visa and Mastercard—both genuine—the wallet’s contents had cost him ten times as much as the van, and would carry one tenth as many passengers to safety. But the van would do in an emergency, if the bug-out wallet was compromised by an Interpol Red Alert: Oscar had not got where he was today by skimping on preparations.

The Scrum were also blissfully unaware of the special fixtures and fittings he’d installed in the Mystery Machine to support its secondary function. The illegal pistol hidden behind the plastic trim on the front passenger-side door. The false number plates and the phlebotomy kit and the body bag folded under the floor of the rear compartment. It behooved Oscar to keep an eye on the van, hence the expensive anti-theft tracking system.

Oscar had taken the lift down from the lobby to the underground car park, expecting to find nothing much. Most likely an inconsiderate ass who’d exceeded his recommended daily dose of intra-nasally delivered Vitamin C had backed his Chelsea Tractor into the front bumper before screeching off home. Nevertheless, he inspected the van from a distance, then close-up, before approaching: everything seemed to be in order. But as he walked around the driver’s side he noticed an anomaly. The door lock button was raised.

Frowning, he opened the door.

“Hi!” said the woman in the passenger seat. “You must be Oscar. Please don’t move.”

Oscar had blinked. One moment she wasn’t there; the next, he opened the door and she was beaming at him over the barrel of his own—

No, it wasn’t his pistol. His was an ancient, battered, and very illegal revolver: the best he’d been able to get, given his shortage of low-life acquaintances. This was an automatic, dull and black, with a suppressor protruding from the barrel, like something out of a James Bond movie. Her black opera gloves made it look like a bizarre extension of her arms.