The club is old fashioned, with high ceilings, heavy Persian carpets, faux-oil lamps and lashings of dark panelling. Red approves. A silent waiter brings the right kind of brandy in a carafe and places it and two glasses on a little table beside him. This room is notionally the library, where members can relax after dinner with reading or conversation. In fact the conversations held here are almost entirely illicit, with money or favours changing hands in returning for information. It is known by regulars as the mole room.
Red never used to see this kind of place, not on a government wage. But now he works for the other side. He shifts in his beautifully textured leather chair and admires the architecture. If you leave morality out of it, which he does, then this is the life.
"Cheers."
Red touches his glass to that of the silver haired man sitting in the next chair. Both men sip, and savour.
Seeing them from the outside, the forces of good are weak and ignorant. Red marvels at how his erstwhile government can have eyes and ears in every city on the globe, and yet miss so much. The homeworld has made great inroads into this undeveloped market, and those who can pay are tasting the sweetness which comes from possession of a totally new power: the golden charms produced by Berlin.
Red keeps his own use of the charms to a minimum. He has the gift, sure - and it tickles Berlin to oblige him to use it, crippled as he is now - but the charms drains him these days, like the first days of influenza, like flying the wrong way around the world. Few of Earth have any way to withstand regular use. And Berlin, still sitting smug on Red's stolen talent, cannot be touched. Berlin doesn't flaunt his stolen power though. He stays in the homeworld and lets his minions orchestrate what will clearly be another very hostile takeover.
Red wants no part of that circus.
No: far better to remain a dealer, a trader of favours. The top players here are becoming so powerful that they dare not quarrel. When offense is taken, they employ Red to extract restitution. He rarely resorts to outright charm when he does. Mostly old fashioned violence and blackmail do the trick. But when it is called for, Red can take a tiny golden charm, fresh out of Berlin's new factory in Macau, from inside his coat lining and hold it up to the enemy's eyes and tell them to forget.
It is his best chance for survival, that his enemies not know him again. But while he can charm his victims to forget him, he cannot magick his employers. And so there has developed an increasing list of people who know his name, and his face. They use him but expect his betrayal every moment.
They are right to expect. Every villain who has ever employed him as their convenience, their arms length, their dirty worker in this world of unnatural power, is now on Red's blacklist. And Berlin, their master, is number one.
The FBI is utterly ignorant of the forces now wielded for profit and power in the criminal world. Berlin runs a tight operation: punishment for loose talk is swift and final. Customers are selected and pre-approved like couples anxious to get their first mortgage. Possession of a key brings entry to an exclusive club, from which conventional political leaders are almost completely excluded.
Almost, but not quite.
"Keep me sweet and you'll be the first presidential candidate to use one," Red tells Alan, a rare customer on the inside of government - American government, a detail which gives Red a little thrill as he thinks of his former colleagues sweating over the giant rise in crime and the mysterious way in which the wrongdoers get away with it.
"I don't want to be President," Alan says. He swirls the cognac around his brandy bubble and chuckles at Red in the leather chair the other side of the club's extravagant fireplace. "Let other people have that hassle. Get me into that factory, Raymond. I want to control production."
"That's Berlin's thing," Red says. But Alan, with his twinkling eyes and grandfatherly manner, will not take no for an answer. "Don't worry so much, Raymond. I can protect you from the fallout of betraying Berlin a second time."
Red's heart goes cold despite the flames three feet from his Oxfords. Alan knows. Somehow, he knows what Red did. He knows the kid is not dead. His mind begins to race with tasks: locate Elizabeth, secure her, plan how to reveal to her the secrets which have been kept so long.
"I have every confidence in you," says Alan, smiling. "You have too much to lose to let me down," and suddenly Red is in deeper than ever.
And meanwhile, as Red demonstrates for Berlin how completely he has abandoned his lawman's badge, Elizabeth has switched sides, changed names and become a cop herself.
