'Really?' Knight said. 'Not even about foreign currency transactions made on behalf of your high-net-worth clients?'

The hedge fund manager said nothing, but Knight swore that some of the colour had seeped from his florid cheeks.

Pope said, 'According to these documents, you and Denton Marshall were pocketing fractions of the value of every British pound or US dollar or other currency that passed across your trading desks. It may not sound like much, but when you're talking hundreds of millions of pounds a year the fractions add up.'

Guilder set his tumbler of scotch on the bar, doing his best to appear composed. But Knight could have sworn that he saw a slight tremor in the man's hand as it returned to rest on Guilder's thigh. 'Is that all the killer of my best friend claims?'

'No,' Knight replied. 'He says that the money was moved to offshore accounts and funnelled ultimately to members of the Olympic Site Selection Committee before their decision in 2007. He says that your partner bribed London's way into the Games.'

The weight of the allegation seemed to throw Guilder. He looked both befuddled and wary, as if he'd suddenly realised he was far too drunk to be having this conversation.

'No,' he said. 'No, that's not ... Please, Joe, make them go.'

Mascolo looked torn but said, 'Leave him be until tomorrow. I'm sure that if we call Jack he's going to tell you the same thing.'

Before Knight could reply there was a noise like a fine crystal wine glass breaking. The first bullet pierced a window on the west side of the bar. It just missed Guilder and shattered the huge mirror behind the bar.

Knight and Mascolo both realised what had happened. 'Get down!' Knight yelled, going for his gun, and scanning the windows for any sign of the shooter.

Too late. A second round was fired through the window. The slug hit Guilder just below his sternum with a sound like a pillow being plumped.

Bright red blood bloomed on the hedge fund manager's starched white shirt and he collapsed forward, upsetting a champagne bucket as he fell and crashed to the pale marble floor.

Chapter 25

IN THE STUNNED silence that now briefly seized the fabled Lobby Bar, the shooter, an agile figure in black motorcycle leathers and visor helmet, spun away and jumped off the window ledge to flee. silence that now briefly seized the fabled Lobby Bar, the shooter, an agile figure in black motorcycle leathers and visor helmet, spun away and jumped off the window ledge to flee.

'Someone call an ambulance,' Pope yelled. 'He's been shot!'

The bar erupted into pandemonium as Joe Mascolo vaulted over his prone client and bulled forward, ignoring the patrons screaming and diving for cover.

Knight was two feet behind the Private New York operator when Mascolo jumped over a glass cocktail table and up onto the back of a plush grey sofa set against the bar's west wall. As Knight tried to climb up beside Mascolo, he saw to his surprise that the American was armed.

Gun laws in the UK were very strict. Knight had had to jump through two years of hoops in order to get his licence to carry a firearm.

Before he could think any more about it, Mascolo shot through the window. The gun sounded like a cannon in that marble and glass room. Real hysteria swept the bar now. Knight spotted the shooter in the middle of the cul-de-sac on Harding Street, face obscured but plainly a woman. At the sound of Mascolo's shot she twisted, dropped and aimed in one motion, an ultra-professional.

She fired before Knight could and before Mascolo could get off another round. The bullet caught the Private New York agent through the throat, killing him instantly. Mascolo dropped back off the sofa and fell violently through the glass cocktail table.

The shooter was aiming at Knight now. He ducked, raised his pistol above the sill and pulled the trigger. He was about to rise when two more rounds shattered the window above him.

Glass rained down on Knight. He thought of his children and hesitated a moment before returning fire. Then he heard tyres squealing.

Knight rose up to see the shooter on a jet-black motorcycle, its rear tyre smoking and laying rubber in a power drift that shot her around the corner onto the Strand, heading west and disappearing before Knight could shoot.

He cursed, turned and looked in shock at Mascolo, for whom there was no hope. But he heard Pope cry: 'Guilder's alive, Knight! Where's that ambulance?'

Knight jumped off the couch and ran back through the shouting and the gathering crowd towards the crumpled form of Richard Guilder. Pope was kneeling at his side amid a puddle of champagne and a mass of blood, ice and glass.

The financier was breathing in gasps and holding tight to his upper stomach while the blood on his shirt turned darker and spread.

For a moment, Knight had an unnerving moment of deja vu, seeing blood spreading on a bed sheet. Then he shook off the vision and got down next to Pope.

'They said there's an ambulance on the way,' the reporter said, her voice strained. 'But I don't know what to do. No one here does.'

Knight tore off his jacket, pushed aside Guilder's hands and pressed the coat to his chest. Marshall's partner peered at Knight as if he might be the last person he ever saw alive, and struggled to talk.

'Take it easy, Mr Guilder,' Knight said. 'Help's on the way.'

'No,' Guilder grunted softly. 'Please, listen ...'

Knight leaned close to the financier's face and heard him whisper a secret hoarsely before paramedics burst into the Lobby Bar. But as Guilder finished his confession he just seemed to give out.

Blood trickled from his mouth, his eyes glazed, and he slumped like a puppet with its strings cut.

Chapter 26

A FEW MINUTES later, Knight stood on the pavement outside One Aldwych, oblivious to patrons hurrying past him to the restaurants and theatres. He was transfixed by the sight and sound of the wailing ambulance speeding Guilder and Mascolo to the nearest hospital. later, Knight stood on the pavement outside One Aldwych, oblivious to patrons hurrying past him to the restaurants and theatres. He was transfixed by the sight and sound of the wailing ambulance speeding Guilder and Mascolo to the nearest hospital.

He remembered standing on another pavement late at night almost three years before, watching a different ambulance race away from him, its siren's fading cry accompanying a feeling of misery that still had not lifted entirely for him.

'Knight?' Pope said. She'd come up behind him.

He blinked and noticed the double-decker buses braking and taxis honking and people hurrying home all around him. Suddenly he felt disjointed in much the same way that he had on that long-ago night when he'd watched the other ambulance speed away from him.

London goes on, he thought. London always went on even in the face of tragedy and death, whether the victim was a corrupt hedge fund manager or a bodyguard or a young- A pair of fingers appeared in front of his nose. They clicked and he looked round, startled. Karen Pope was looking at him in annoyance. 'Earth to Knight. Hello?'

'What is it?' he snapped.

'I asked you if you think Guilder will make it?'

Knight shook his head. 'No. I felt his spirit leave him.'

The reporter looked at him sceptically. 'What do you mean, you felt it?'

Knight sighed softly before replying: 'That's the second time in my life I've had someone die in my arms, Pope. I felt it the first time, too. That ambulance might as well slow down. Guilder is as dead as Mascolo is.'

Pope's shoulders sank a little and there was a brief awkward silence before she said, 'I'd better be going back to the office. I've got a nine o'clock deadline.'

'You should include in your story that Guilder confessed to the currency fraud just before he died,' Knight said.

'He did?' Pope said, digging in her pocket for her notebook. 'What'd he say, exactly?'

'He said that the scam was his, and that the money did not go to any member of the Olympic Site Selection committee. It went to his personal offshore accounts. Marshall was innocent. He died a victim of Guilder's scheming.'

Pope stopped writing, her scepticism back. 'I don't buy that,' she said. 'He's covering for Marshall.'

'They were his last words,' Knight shot back. 'I believe him.'

'You have a reason to, don't you? It clears your mother's late fiance.'

'It's what he said,' Knight insisted. 'You have to include that in the story.'

'I'll let the facts speak for themselves,' Pope said, 'including what you say Guilder told you.' She glanced at her watch. 'I've got to get going.'

'We're not going anywhere soon,' Knight said, feeling suddenly exhausted. 'Scotland Yard will want to talk with us, especially because there was gunfire. Meanwhile, I need to call Jack and fill him in, and then speak to my nanny.'

'Nanny?' Pope said, looking surprised. 'You have kids?'

'Twins. Boy and girl.'

Pope glanced at his left hand and said in a joking manner, 'No ring. What, are you divorced? Drove your wife nuts and she left you with the brats?'

Knight gazed at her coldly, marvelling at her insensitivity, before saying, 'I'm a widower, Pope. My wife died in childbirth. She bled to death in my arms two years, eleven months and two weeks ago. They took her away in an ambulance with the siren wailing just like that.'

Pope's jaw sagged and she looked horrified. 'Peter, I'm so sorry, I ...'

But Knight already had his back turned and was walking along the pavement towards Inspector Elaine Pottersfield, who'd only just arrived.

Chapter 27

DARKNESS FALLS ON London, and my old friend hatred stirs at the thought that my entire life has all been a prelude to this fated moment, exactly twenty-four hours before the opening ceremony of the most hypocritical event on Earth. London, and my old friend hatred stirs at the thought that my entire life has all been a prelude to this fated moment, exactly twenty-four hours before the opening ceremony of the most hypocritical event on Earth.

It heats in my gut as I turn to my sisters. We're in my office. It's the first chance the four of us have had to talk face to face in days, and I take the three of them in at a glance.

Blonde and cool Teagan is removing the scarf, hat and sunglasses she wore while driving the taxi earlier in the day. Marta, ebony-haired and calculating, sets her motorcycle helmet on the floor beside her pistol and unzips her leathers. Pretty Petra is the youngest, the most attractive, the best actor and therefore the most impulsive. She looks in the mirror on the closet door, checking the fit of a chic grey cocktail dress and the dramatic styling of her short ginger hair.

Seeing the sisters like this, they're each so familiar to me that it's hard to imagine a time when we weren't all together, establishing and projecting our own busy lives, while staying completely unaligned in public.

And why wouldn't they still be with me after seventeen years? In absentia In absentia in 1997, a tribunal in The Hague indicted them for executing more than sixty Bosnians. Ever since Ratko Mladic the general who oversaw the Serbian kill squads in Bosnia was arrested last year, the hunt for my Furies has intensified. in 1997, a tribunal in The Hague indicted them for executing more than sixty Bosnians. Ever since Ratko Mladic the general who oversaw the Serbian kill squads in Bosnia was arrested last year, the hunt for my Furies has intensified.

I know. I keep track of such things. My dreams depend on it.

In any case, the sisters have lived under the threat of discovery for so long that it pervades their DNA, but that constant cellular-level menace has made them all the more fanatically devoted to me, mentally, physically, spiritually and emotionally. Indeed, ever so gradually over the years, my dreams of vengeance have become theirs, along with a desire to see those dreams realised that burns almost as incandescently as my own.

Over the years, in addition to protecting them, I've educated them, paid for minor plastic surgery, and trained them to be expert marksmen, hand-to-hand fighters, con artists and thieves. These last two skills have paid me back tenfold on my investment, but that is another story altogether. Suffice it to say that, to the best of my knowledge, they are the best at shadow games, superior to anyone save me.

Now the jaded might be wondering whether I am similar to Charles Manson back in the 1970s, an insane prophet who rescued traumatised women and convinced them that they were apostles sent to Earth for homicidal missions designed to trigger Armageddon. But comparing me to Manson and the Furies to the Helter-Skelter girls is deeply misguided, like trying to compare a true story to a myth of heaven. We are more powerful, transcendent and deadly than Manson could ever have imagined in his wildest drug-induced nightmares.

Teagan pours a glass of vodka, gulps it down, and says, 'I could not have anticipated that man jumping in front of my cab.'

'Peter Knight he works for Private London,' I say, and then push across the coffee table a photograph that I found on the Internet. In it Knight stands, drink in hand, beside his mother at the launch of her most recent fashion line.

Teagan considers the photograph and then nods. 'That's him. I got a good look when his face smashed against my windscreen.'

Marta frowns, picks up the photograph, studies it, and then trains her dark agate eyes on me. 'He was with Guilder too, just now, in the bar, before I shot. I'm sure of it. He shot at me after I killed the one guarding Guilder too.'

I raise an eyebrow. Private? Knight? They've almost foiled my plans twice today. Is that fate, coincidence, or a warning?

'He's dangerous,' says Marta, always the most perceptive of the three, the one whose strategic thoughts are most likely to mirror my own.

'I agree,' I say, before glancing at the clock on the wall and looking at her ginger-haired sister, still primping in front of the mirror. 'It's time to leave for the reception, Petra. I'll see you there later. Remember the plan.'

'I'm not stupid, Cronus,' Petra says, glaring at me with eyes turned emerald green by contact lenses bought just for this occasion.

'Hardly,' I reply evenly. 'But you have a tendency to be impetuous, to ad lib, and your task tonight demands disciplined adherence to details.'

'I know what I have to do,' she says coldly, and leaves.

Marta's gaze has not left me. 'What about Knight?' she asks, proving once again that relentlessness is another of her more endearing qualities.

I reply, 'Your next tasks are not until tomorrow evening. In the meantime, I'd like you both to look into Mr Knight.'

'What are we looking for?' Teagan asks, setting her empty glass on the table.

'His weaknesses, sister. His vulnerabilities. Anything we can exploit.'

Chapter 28