alace Green was blocked, an armoured car emphasising a point she would have thought
established sufficiently well by police vans. Uniformed coppers -- the Special Patrol
Group, of recent ill reputation -- and camo-clad squaddies were kitted up for riot, as
natives kept out of homes and offices muttered themselves towards a resentful shade of
disgruntled. To Kate Reed, this patch of Kensington felt too much like Belfast for
comfort, though passing trade on Embassy Row -- veiled woman-shapes with Harrod's
bags, indignant diplomats of all nations, captains of endangered industries -- was of a
different quality from the bottle-throwers and -dodgers of the Garvachie Road.

TV crews penned beyond the perimeter had to make do with stories about the crowds
rather than the siege. Kate saw Anne Diamond, collar turned up and microphone thrust
out, sorting through anxious faces at the barrier, thirsty for someone with a husband or
girlfriend trapped inside the Embassy or, better yet, among the terrorists.

'Evenin' miss,' said an elderly bobby, the survivor of a notionally more genial past,
bewildered among the armoured thugs now sharing his uniform, 'it's been a funny old
week at Palace Green ...' Sensing the imminence of an anecdote with a moral, Kate
showed him her NUJ card and won open sesame. 'We've been waiting for you,' he said,
with fatherly concern, lifting a plank from the barrier. 'This is a rum old do and no
mistake.'

Anne Diamond and a dozen other broadcast and print hopefuls were furious that one of
the least significant of their number had a free ticket to the big carnival. It wasn't even as
if Kate were the only vampire hack on the street. She'd spotted Paxman, drifting
incorporeally in mist-form through the crowds. She was, however, the only journo Baron
Meinster would talk with.

For two years, she had been waiting for the Transylvanian to call in the favour he'd
granted by spiriting her out of Romania via his underground railway. She knew he'd
helped her to spite the Ceausescus, with whom he had a long-standing personal feud,
but his intervention still saved her life. This was not what she had expected, but the
development didn't surprise her either. Since Teheran, embassy sieges had become a
preferred means of the powerless lording it over the powerful. Not that the Baron,
soi-disant First Elder of the Transylvania Movement, would consider himself powerless.

A tall, moustached vampire in police uniform took charge of Kate with a firm grip on her
upper arm. Her real police sergeant kept his distance, and retreated without offering the
traditional cup of tea.

'Daniel Dravot,' she said, 'it has been a long time.'

'Yes, Miss Reed,' said the vampire, unsmiling.

'Still Sergeant Dravot, I see. Though not truly of the Metropolitan Police, I'll wager.'

'All in the Service of the Queen, Miss Reed.'

'Indeed.'

She was walked over to the command post, a large orange workman's hut erected over
a hole in the pavement. Dravot lifted a flap-door and ushered her inside.