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‘You don’t have to,’ she said flatly.

Baskerville looked at her.

‘I’m sure the President would he happy to conduct unilateral negotiations.’

He and Dee glanced at each other. ‘We need full access to the ULTRA computer,’ Dee told her. 'It’s unique. It is the only computer with the processing power we need.’

‘America has powerful computers, Ms Gordon.’

‘It has to be the ULTRA. And it’s secure in an underground bunker below the headquarters of the European Secret Service in Brussels.’

‘Hell, whose corporations do you think sold them the computer in the first place?’ Anji said, almost swaggering as she said it. ‘Do you think we did that without leaving a few back doors? We can get you the ULTRA. We’re the richest nation on Earth, Baskerville, you can name your price and we’ll match it.’

Baskerville rubbed his chin, lost in thought.

The lift doors slid smoothly open. They were on the roof. A small helicopter sat there, the East European guy in the pilot’s seat, the case he’d been carrying stowed behind him. The rotors were already running.

Dee indicated the helicopter. ‘We’ll negotiate on the yacht.’

* * *

Penny Lik was dozing in the main stateroom of the royal airliner. This morning, on the way over to America, she’d been more self‐conscious – she told him it was hard to imagine the King and Queen had done what they were planning on doing in this very bed.

Cosgrove told her if she was having problems imagining it, he had covert surveillance videodiscs of them, and she’d laughed and relaxed, so he didn’t tell her he wasn’t joking. On the way back, she’d simply tried to make him forget about letting the young man escape, and for an hour or so, she’d succeeded. Now they were halfway to Athens, and Cosgrove had preparations to make, so he left Professor Lik to her rest.

They were alone on the plane, except for the three pilots, who were safely locked away in the cockpit.

The hypersonic plane was a variation on the fastest commercial airliner, the Airbus IX. In actuality, there was very little difference between this royal transport and the one in regular service. There were a couple more first‐class cabins, the carpets were deeper, the dinner service was fine bone china, the European Airways planes didn’t have Da Vinci sketches on the walls. But apart from a few well‐furnished rooms, it was almost frugal. Professor Lik’s reaction on looking around had been the same as everyone else’s – faint disappointment.

The President Minister’s plane was quite another matter, but needs must.

He booted up his laptop, and checked the latest reports.

It was eleven o’clock in Athens. There was little doubt Baskerville’s prophecies were coming to pass: Cosgrove had made a nice profit betting on the Europe‐Brazil match, getting the score, those that scored and the time they scored exactly right simply by following Baskerville’s prediction. The actress Bermuda Atkins had died too, suddenly, of some previously unsuspected virus. The Third Prophecy was the tidal wave in Athens – entirely impossible, according to his scientific team. But it was going to happen, and Cosgrove was already utterly convinced that Baskerville had a time machine.

He contacted Station G in Athens, told them to evacuate, with the minimum fuss, and to get their helicopters into the air. There was a military airfield twenty miles inland from Athens – that ought to be a safe base of operations. He found the intercom, and told the pilots to head there.

One of the reports waiting for him on the computer registered the CIA’s confusion about why, when it looked for all the world as though the EZ and US were heading towards a shooting war, the royal jet had visited California for less than two hours. The lack of US data security (or their commitment to freedom of information), meant that the details of the flight were already on the datanet, fuelling a dozen conspiracy theories.

None of them mentioned the EZ government attempting to acquire a time machine.