"I've got some other stuff I need to find out about. Jason, please do this now. We need to find him." Billy disconnected.

How do you walk away from a scene like that? All Billy had been able to do, in the cold quiet overlooked by big dead buildings, when Dane had been taken, was follow Wati's voice. The rebel spirit had led him from his pocket and from what few figurines it could find in that awful empty sector.

Billy said, "The Londonmancers."

"Keep it down, mate," Wati had told him from some la-la Billy did not even see. "No one's going to help us." That inner core, Fitch and Saira and their little crew, the stunned man Billy had shot and unintentionally press-ganged, could not come to his aid. Billy had no safe houses, no hides.

"Oh bloody hell," said Wati.

As if it weren't in trouble enough, the UMA had to act as babysitter for this suddenly bereft little messiah. But Billy had not obeyed his injunction to raise the metal lid out of the street, with intricate finagling and a strength he had not had a few weeks before, to slip into the undercity. Instead, Billy had paused, clenched without clenching, and felt time hesitate and come back, moving like a shaken blanket. He had told Wati to come with him him, rather, and gone and stolen a phone. He had taken the innermost doll of a Russian doll set from some shop, held it, not his foolish Kirk, though he had kept that, up to his eyes, and said to Wati, "Here's what we need to do."

"OF ALL THE LITTLE TOERAGS WE EVER HAVE TO DEAL WITH," BARON said, "the bastarding Chaos Nazis are the ones I hate most." said, "the bastarding Chaos Nazis are the ones I hate most."

He stood between Collingswood and Vardy. He was scratching his face furiously, anxiously. They crowded around each other to look through the reinforced glass into a hospital room, where a bandaged man was shackled by tubes, and by shackles, to a bed. A machine tracked his heartbeat.

"You actually said 'toerags,'" Collingswood said. "Are you auditioning for something?"

"Alright," he said vaguely. He sniffed. "Arseholes."

"Fuck's sake, boss," Collingswood said. "Up your game. Shitfoxes."

"Bastards."

"Spitfish, boss. Fucklizards. Little cuntwasps. Munching wanktoasters." Baron stared at her. "Oh yeah," Collingswood said. "That's right. I got game. Say my name."

"Tell me," Vardy interrupted. "What precisely do we have from them? There were several of them, correct?"

"Yeah," said Baron. "Five in various degrees of injuredness. And the dead."

"I want to know exactly what they saw. I want to know exactly what's happening."

"You got ideas, Vardy?" Collingswood said.

"Oh, yes. Ideas I have. Too bloody many. But I'm trying to put all this together." Vardy stared at the man in the bed. "This is the Tattoo. We heard he was employing headsmen. I wasn't expecting it to be this lot."

"Yeah, bit of a breach of protocol, isn't it?" Baron said. "CNs are a bit out of polite company."

"Has he worked with them before?" Collingswood said.

"Not that I know of," Vardy said.

"Has Grisamentum?"

"What?" He looked at her. "Why would you say that?"

"Just I was looking at all them files on your desk, of Tat's associates. And you've got Grizzo's as well. I was wondering what's that about?"

"Ah," he said. "Well, true. Those two ... They move in lockstep. Always did, while Grisamentum was around. Which as we now bloody know-are we agreed?-it appears he still is. Associates of one could well be associates of the other."

"Why?" said Collingswood. "That don't make no sense. They hated each other."

"You know how this bloody works," Vardy said. "Friends close, enemies closer? Bought off, turncoat, whatever?"

She wagged her head. "If you say so, blood. I don't know," she said. "Griz's bunch lurved lurved him, didn't they. His crew were all mad loyal." him, didn't they. His crew were all mad loyal."

"No one's so loyal they can't be bought," said Vardy.

"I forgot what a mad bunch he was cavorting with in the end," Collingswood said. "Griz. I was looking at them files." Vardy raised an eyebrow at her. "Doctors, doctor-deaths ... Pyros, too, right?"

"Yes. He did."

"And you reckon some of them are working with the Tattoo now, right?" Vardy hesitated and laughed. That was not like him.

"No," he said. "It turns out not. But no reason not to check."

"So you're still chasing them up?"

"Yes I bloody am. I'm chasing all of them, every lead, until I know for an absolute bloody certainty that they're not involved in the squid thing, either with Grisamentum, or with the Tattoo. Or as independents. You do your job, I'll do mine."

"I thought your job's to channel the spirit of nutty god-bothering and write up holy books."

"Alright, you two," Baron said. "Settle down."

"Why the bollock can't we find the squid, boss? Who's got it? This is getting stupid."

"Collingswood, if I knew that I'd be commissioner of the Met. Let's at least try to map who's who in this mayhem. So we've got the Chaos Nazis, our wanktoasters-thank you, Constable-among recent employees of the Tattoo. Along with everyone else in the city."

"Not everyone," Collingswood said. "There's gunfarmers about, but they're on some other dime. No one knows who, and no one's feeling very safe about that."

"Well that's got to be our squidnapper, surely," said Vardy. "So who's paying them?"

"Can't track it. They've gone into hush mode."

"So get it out of them," Baron said.

"Boss, what do you think I'm trying to do?"

"Splendid," said Baron. "It's like a Zen koan, isn't it? Is it better or worse if holy visionary shooters are fighting against against us us alongside alongside Chaos Nazis, or against Chaos Nazis, or against them them and we're in between? Answer that, my little bodhisattvas." and we're in between? Answer that, my little bodhisattvas."

"Can we please," said Vardy, "establish what's going on here with that chap? Did any of them tell us anything?"

"Certainly," said Baron. "He had to finesse how quick I got him to roll over, so under guise of glorying in the chaos he would bring by terrifying me with the truth, a-blah-dy blah-dy blah, this little bugger sang like the most beautiful nightingale."

"And?" said Vardy.

"And Dane Parnell is not having a good time of it. They snaffled our exile, sounds like. That much he saw"-he pointed through the window with his chin-"before passing out. Which leaves little lost Billy out on his tod in the city. Whatever will he do?"

"Yeah, but he ain't exactly helpless, though, is he?" Collingswood said. "I mean, just pointing out ..." She waved her hand at the savagely wounded man. "It ain't as if Billy's got nothing fighting his corner, is it?"

"Vardy," said Baron. "Care to give us your opinion?" He made a big show of opening his notebook, as if he didn't remember everything about the description he was about to give. "'It was a bottle, policeman, you law-worm, we brought chaos to each other, you scum, etc ...'" he read, deadpan. "I'm going to editorialise. I'll trim the epithets and skip to specifics. 'It was a bottle. A bottle that came at us. It bit with a skull. Its arms were bones. It was a real glass enemy.' I like that last line, I have to say." He put the notebook away. "So, Vardy," he said. "You must have thoughts."

Vardy had closed his eyes. He leaned against the wall and puffed out his cheeks. When at last he opened his eyes again he did not look at Baron or Collingswood: he stared intently through the window at the crippled Chaos Nazi.

"We know what that's about, right?" Baron said. "Let me rephrase. We've no idea what it's about about. No one does. But we've a reasonable notion of what it bloody is is that swooped in and swept young Harrow away." that swooped in and swept young Harrow away."

"Alright, I'm going back to the museum," Vardy said. "See if I can make a little more sense of this. Just once," once," he said with abrupt savagery, "in a he said with abrupt savagery, "in a goddamn goddamn while, it would really be a pleasure if the goddamn world worked the way it's supposed to. I am while, it would really be a pleasure if the goddamn world worked the way it's supposed to. I am tired tired of the universe being such a bloody aleatory frenzy all, the of the universe being such a bloody aleatory frenzy all, the bloody bloody, time."

He sighed and shook his head. Gave an abashed, tight brief smile at Collingswood's surprise.

"Well," he said. "Really. Come on. Why the bloody hell is an angel of memory protecting Billy?"

BUT NOT PROTECTING D DANE, WHICH FACT WAS WHAT HAD HIM NOW woozily half waking, strapped in a horribly cramping position that it took him a long time to identify as a crooked cruciform. He was attached like an offering to a rough man-sized swastika. He did not open his eyes. woozily half waking, strapped in a horribly cramping position that it took him a long time to identify as a crooked cruciform. He was attached like an offering to a rough man-sized swastika. He did not open his eyes.

He heard echoes; footsteps; from somewhere, deliberate, foolishly screaming laughter, that made him afraid anyway, despite its ostentation. The growl and barking of a huge dog. One by one he tensed the muscles of his arms and legs, to check that he was still whole.

Kraken give me strength, he prayed. Give me strength out of your deep darkness Give me strength out of your deep darkness. He knew, if he opened his eyes, what figures he would see. He knew his contempt, no matter how real and strong, would be equalled by his terror, and that he would have to overcome that, and he did not have the head or stomach to do so, just at that moment. So he kept his eyes closed.

Most wizards of Chaos would bore you arseless about how the Chaos they tapped was emancipation emancipation, that their nonlinear conjuring was the antithesis of the straight-lined bordering mindset that led, they insisted, to Birchenau, blah fucking blah. But it was always a sleight of politics to stress only that aspect of the far right. There was another, somewhat repressed but no less faithful and faithfully fascist tradition: the decadent baroque.

Among the fascist sects, the most flamboyant, eager as Strasserites to reclaim what they insisted was the true core of a deviated movement, were the Chaos Nazis. The creaking black leather of the SS, they insisted to the tiny few who would listen, and not run or kill them on sight, were a coward's pornography, a prissy corruption of tradition.

Look instead, they said, to the rage in the east. Look to the autonomous terror-cell-structure of Operation Werewolf. Look to the sybarite orgies in Berlin, that were not corruption but culmination. Look to the holiest date in their calendar: Kristallnacht, all those Chaos scintillas on stone. Nazism, they insisted, was excess, not prigrestraint, not that superego gusset bureaucrats had chosen.

Their symbol was the eight-pointed Chaos star altered to make a Moorcock weep, its diagonal arms bent fylfot, a swastika that pointed in all directions. What is "Law," they said, what is Chaos's nemesis but the Torah? What is Law but Jewish Law, which is Jewishness itself, and so what is Chaos but the renunciation of that filthy Torah-Bolshevist code? What was best in humanity but the will will and and rage rage and indulgence, do what thou wilt the autopoiesis of the ubermensch? And so, endlessly, on. and indulgence, do what thou wilt the autopoiesis of the ubermensch? And so, endlessly, on.

They were provocateurs of course, and a ludicrously tiny group, but notorious even among the wicked for occasional acts of unbelievable, artistic cruelty, restoring the true spirit of their prophets. Sure the Final Solution was efficient, they insisted, but it was soulless. "The problem with Auschwitz," their intellectual wags of torture-killing insisted, "is that it was the wrong sort of 'camp'!" Their hoped-for Chaos Fuhrer, they thought, might achieve a sufficiently artistic genocide.

It was to these figures that Tattoo, Goss and Subby had gone for help, and they had let London know to whom they had gone. They had approached these outrageous, dangerous monster-clowns to hunt down Dane and Billy. And from them Billy had been saved, and Dane had not.

Chapter Forty-Nine

BILLY PUT ON HIS GLASSES. THEY WERE IMMACULATELY UNBROKEN, and still clean. He said, "Wati."

"I don't know where Dane is," Wati said immediately. "I keep looking, but we're going to have to hope Jason has more luck. They've got charms up or something."

Billy said, "I want to tell you something I dreamed." He spoke as if he were still dreaming. "I could tell it was important. I dreamed about the kraken. It was a robot. It was back, the whole thing in the tank. I was standing next to it. And something said to me, 'You're looking in the wrong direction.'"

There were seconds of silence. "Jason's going in, and while he is I want to find out why that angel's looking after me," Billy said. "It might know something about what's going on. It knew to come find me It knew to come find me. And it might have been looking after me me, but it let Dane get taken."

He told Wati what Fitch and Saira had done. He felt no hesitation, though he knew it was a deeply secret secret. He trusted Wati, insofar as he trusted any Londoners now. "Tell them they have to help us," he said.

Wati went leapfrogging, body to body, but had to return. "I can't get in there," he said. "It's the London Stone. It pushes out. Like swimming up a waterfall. But ..."

"Well you better find a way to tell them they have to help me, because otherwise I'm going to walk around the city screaming what they did. Tell them that."

"I can't get in, Billy."

"Screw their secrets."

"Billy listen listen. They've made contact. I got a message from that woman Saira. She's smart-she knows I was with you and Dane. She put a message through my office. Didn't give nothing away, just, 'We're trying to get in touch with our mutual friend. Perhaps we can arrange a meeting?' She's telling us they want to help. They're already against the Tattoo. That makes them nearer friends than enemies to us, right? I can't go in, but I'll try to send some of my people. Get them to ask Fitch where the Nazis are."

"Because if it's in London ..." Billy said. "He should know."

"That's the idea idea. That's the idea."

"How long?"

"Don't know."

"We move," Billy said. "We'll get him out. I'm looking in the wrong direction. I have to know who's fighting me and who's fighting with me. So Wati, how do I find out about angels?"

IN A CITY LIKE LONDON ...

Stop: that was an unhelpful way to think about it, because there was no city like London. That was the point.

London was a graveyard haunted by dead faiths. A city and a landscape. A market laid on feudalisms. Gathering and hunting, little pockets of alterity, too, but most of all in the level Billy had come to live in a tilework of fiefdoms, theocratic duchies, zones and spheres of influences, over each of which some local despot, some criminal pope, sat watch. It was all who-knew-whom, gave access to what, greased which palms on what route to where.

London had its go-betweens, guerrilla shadchans facilitating meetings for a cut. Wati could tell Billy where they were, and which had weak connections with the angels. Wati kept searching, and he had his own war to attend to, too. The moon made horns, the sky was gnarly. The cults were skittish.

So there was Billy, all alone, and he knew that he should have been terrified, but he was not. He was itching. He felt as if clocks hesitated with each of his steps. It was early when he started walking the list Wati gave him.

Billy knew how hunted he was. Now more than ever. He discovered that his legs had learned the step-spells that Dane had stepped for him, that he walked now with self-camouflaging rhythm. That he automatically went for half-shade, that he moved a little like some occult soldier. He held his phaser in his pocket, and he watched his surrounds avidly.

So, alone, Billy knocked on a door at the back of a sandwich shop in Dalston. A church and a carpet showroom in Clapham. A McDonald's in Kentish Town. "Wati said you could help me," he said again and again to the suspicious people who answered.

The safest approach was to never speak to anyone about anything. Communication could mean implication in some fight you might not even believe was taking place, taking a side, inadvertently signing on a dotted line. Nonetheless.

Fixers and goers-to had their scenes. Rooms and Internet shacks where men and women employed by their faiths to steal, torture, kill, hunt and fix could be among others who understood the pressures of the work and got the references of gossip.

"Dane couldn't have gone," Wati had warned Billy. "He'd be recognised. But people don't know you. They might know your name, if they keep their ears open. But not your face."

"Some do."

"Yeah."

"Some might be talking to Goss and Subby."

"Might."

"Where even are they?"