jessica was under a little pressure. she was worried, and nervous, and jittery. she had catalogued the collection, arranged with the british museum to host the exhibition, organized the restoration of the prime exhibit, assisted in hanging and exhibiting the collection, and put together the list of invitees to the fabulous launch. it was just as well she didn't have a boyfriend, she would tell her friends. there'd be no time for one even if she had one. still, it _would_ be nice, she thought, when she got a moment: someone to go to galleries with on the weekends. someone to . . .

no. she did not go to that place in her head. she could no more pin it down than she could put her finger on a bead of mercury, and she refocused on the exhibition. even now, at the last minute, there were so many things that could go wrong. many a horse had fallen at the final hurdle. many an overconfident general had seen certain victory turn to defeat in the closing minutes of a battle. jessica was simply going to ensure that nothing went wrong. she was wearing a green silk dress, an off-the-shoulder general marshalling her troops and stoically pretending that mr. stockton was not half an hour late.

her troops consisted of a head waiter, a dozen serving staff, three women from the caterers, a string quartet, and her assistant, a young man named clarence.

she inspected the drinks table. "we're fine for champagne? yes?" the head waiter pointed to the crate of champagne beneath the table. "and sparkling mineral water?" another nod. another crate. jessica pursed her lips. "what about _plain_ mineral water? bubbles aren't everybody's cup of tea, you know." they had plenty of plain mineral water. good.

the string quartet was warming up. they were not quite loud enough to drown the noise coming from the hallway outside. it was the noise of a small but affluent crowd: the grumbling of ladies in mink coats, and men, who, were it not for the no smoking signs on the walls--and perhaps the advice of their doctors--would be smoking cigars; the grumbling of journalists and celebrities who could smell the canapes, vol-au-vents, sundry nibbles, and free champagne.

clarence was talking to someone on his portable phone, a slimline piece of fold-out engineering that made the _star trek_ communicators look bulky and old-fashioned. he turned it off, pushed down the antenna, put it into the armani pocket of his armani suit, where it did not even make a bulge. he smiled, reassuringly. "jessica, mister stockton's driver's phoned from the car. they're still running a couple of minutes late. nothing to worry about."

"nothing to worry about," echoed jessica. doomed. _doomed._ the whole thing was going to be a disaster. _her_ disaster. she picked up a glass of champagne from the table, emptied it, and handed the empty glass to the wine waiter.

clarence tipped his head on one side, listening to the grumbling reverberation from the hallway outside. the crowd wanted _in._ he looked at his watch, then looked at jessica questioningly, a captain querying his general. _into the valley of death, then,_ boss? "mister stockton is on his way, clarence," jessica said, calmly. "he has requested a private viewing before the event begins."

"shall i go out and see how they're doing?"

"no," she said, decisively. then, just as decisively, "yes." food and drink dealt with, jessica turned to the string quartet and asked them, for the third time that evening, exactly what they planned to play.

clarence opened the double doors to check on the crowd. it was worse than he had thought: there had to be more than a hundred people in the hall. and they weren't just people. they were people. some of them were even personalities.

"excuse me," said the chairman of the arts council. "the invitations said eight o'clock sharp. it's twenty past eight already."

"we'll just be a few more minutes," reassured clarence, smoothly. "security arrangements."

a woman in a hat bore down on him. her voice was stentorian, bullying, and decidedly parliamentary. "young man," she announced. "do you know who i am?"

"not really, no," lied clarence, who knew exactly who all of them were. "hold on--i'll see if anyone in here does." he shut the door behind him. "jessica? they're going to riot."

"don't exaggerate, clarence." she was moving around the room like a green silk whirlwind, positioning her serving staff, with their trays of canapes or drinks, in strategic corners of the hall; checking the public-address system, the podium, the curtain, and the pull-rope. "i can see the headlines now," said clarence, unfolding an imaginary newspaper. " _'geritol billionaires crush marketing babe in museum canape dash horror.'_ "

somebody began knocking at the door. the volume in the hallway began to increase. somebody was saying, very loudly, "excuse me. um. excuse me." someone else was informing the crowd that it was a disgrace, quite simply a disgrace, no other word for it. "executive decision," said clarence, suddenly. "i'm letting them in."

jessica shouted, "no! if you--"

but it was too late. the doors were open, and the horde was pushing its way into the hall. the expression on jessica's face morphed from one of horror to one of charmed delight. she shimmered toward the door. "baroness," she said, with a happy smile. "i can't tell you how delighted we are that you were able to come to our little exhibition this evening. mister stockton's been unavoidably delayed, but he'll be here momentarily. please, have some canapes . . . " over the baroness's mink-draped shoulder, clarence winked at her, cheerfully. jessica ran through all the bad words she knew in her head. as soon as the baroness had headed for the vol-au-vents, jessica walked over to clarence and, in a whisper, and still smiling, called him several of them.

richard froze. a security guard was coming straight toward them, the beam of his flashlight flashing from side to side. richard looked around for somewhere to hide.

too late. another guard was walking their way, past the huge statues of dead greek gods, flashlight beam swinging. "all right?" called the first guard. the other guard kept coming, and stopped just beside richard and door.

"i suppose," she said. "i've already had to stop a couple of idiots in suits from carving their initials on the rosetta stone. i hate these functions."

the first guard shone his flashlight straight into richard's eyes, then let the beam slide off, skittering over shadows. "i keep telling you," he said, with the satisfied relish of any true prophet, "it's _the masque of the red death_ all over again. a decadent elite party, while civilization crumbles about their ears." he picked his nose, wiped it on the leather sole of his well-polished black boot.

the second guard sighed. "thank you, gerald. right, back on patrol."

the guards walked out of the hall together. "last one of these events we found someone had puked in a sarcophagus," said one of the guards, and then the door closed behind them.

"if you're part of london below," said door to richard, in a conversational voice, as they walked, side by side, into the next hall, "they normally don't even notice you exist unless you stop and talk to them. and even then, they forget you pretty quickly."

"but _i_ saw you," said richard. it had been bothering him for a while.

"i know," said door. "isn't that odd?"

"everything's odd," said richard, with feeling. the string music was getting louder. the surges of anxiety were somehow worse up here in london above, where he was forced to reconcile these two universes. at least below, he could just proceed dreamlike, putting one foot in front of the other like a sleepwalker.

"the angelus is through there," announced door, interrupting his reverie, pointing to the direction from which the music was coming.

"how do you know?"

"i know," she said, with utter certainty. "come on." they stepped out of the darkness into a lighted corridor. there was a huge sign hanging across the corridor. it said:

angels over england

an exhibition at the british museum

_sponsored by stocktons plc_

they crossed the corridor and walked through an open door, into a large room in which a party was going on.

there was a string quartet playing, and a number of serving staff were providing a roomful of well-dressed people with food and drink. there was a small stage in one corner of the room, with a podium on it, beside a high curtain.

the room was completely filled with angels.

there were statues of angels on tiny plinths. there were paintings of angels on the walls. there were angel frescoes. there were huge angels and tiny angels, stiff angels and amiable angels, angels with wings and haloes and angels with neither, warlike angels and peaceable angels. there were modern angels and classical angels. hundreds upon hundreds of angels of every size and shape. western angels, middle eastern angels, eastern angels. michelangelo angels. joel peter witkin angels, picasso angels, war-hoi angels. mr. stockton's angel collection was "indiscriminate to the point of trashiness, but certainly impressive in its eclecticism" _(time out)._

"would you think," richard asked, "that i was being picky if i pointed out that trying to find something with an angel on it in here is going to be like trying to find a needle in an oh my god it's jessica." richard felt the blood drain from his face. until now he had thought that that was simply a figure of speech. he hadn't thought it actually happened in real life.

"someone you knew?" asked door. richard nodded. "she was my. well. we were going to be married. we've been together for a couple of years. she was with me when i found you. she was the one on the. she left that message. on the answering machine." he pointed across the room: jessica was making animated conversation with sir andrew lloyd webber, bob geldof, and a bespectacled gentleman who looked suspiciously like a saatchi. every few minutes she checked her watch and glanced toward the door.

"her?" said door, recognizing the woman. then, obviously feeling that she should say something nice about someone richard had cared for, she said, "well, she's very . . . " and she paused, and thought, and then said, " . . . clean."

richard stared across the room. "will she . . . is she going to be upset that we're here?"

"i doubt it," said door. "frankly, unless you do something stupid, like talk to her, she probably won't even notice you." and then, with more enthusiasm, she said, "food!" she descended on the canapes like a small, smut-nosed girl in a too-large leather jacket who had not eaten properly for sometime. enormous quantities of food were immediately crammed into her mouth, masticated and swallowed, while, at the same time, the more substantial sandwiches were wrapped in paper napkins and placed into her pockets. then, with a paper plate heaped high with chicken legs, melon slices, mushroom vol-au-vents, caviar puffs, and small venison sausages, she began to circle the room, staring intently at each and every angelic artefact.

richard trailed along behind her, with a brie and fennel sandwich and a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice.

jessica was deeply puzzled. she had noticed richard, and having noticed him, she had noticed door. there was something familiar about them both: it was like a tickle at the back of her throat, impossible to get rid of, utterly irritating.

it reminded jessica of something her mother had once told her about, of how jessica's mother had, one evening, encountered a woman she had known all her life--had been to school with, had served on the parish council with--and how her mother, encountering the woman at a party, had suddenly realized that she was unable to recall the woman's name, although she knew the woman had a husband in publishing named eric and a golden retriever named major. it had left jessica's mother quite disgruntled.

it was driving jessica to distraction. "who are those people?" she asked clarence.

"them? well, _he's_ the new editor of _vogue,_ she's the arts correspondent of the _new york times._ the one between them is kate moss, i think . . . "

"no, not them," said jessica. "_them._ there."

clarence looked in the place that she was pointing. hm? oh. _them._ he couldn't understand how he had failed to see them before. old age, he thought; he would soon be twenty-three. "journalists?" he said, without much conviction. "they do look rather trendoid. grunge chic? please. i know i invited _the face_ . . . "

"i _know_ him," said jessica, frustrated. then mr. stockton's chauffeur phoned from holborn to say that he was almost at the british museum, and richard slid out of her head, like mercury trickling through her fingers.

"see anything?" asked richard. door shook her head and swallowed a mouthful of hastily chewed chicken leg. "it's like playing 'spot the pigeon' in trafalgar square," she said. "there's nothing that _feels_ like the angelus. the paper said i'd know it if i saw it." and she wandered off, inspecting angels, pushing her way past a captain of industry, the deputy leader of the opposition, and the highest-paid call girl in the south of england. richard turned away and found himself face-to-face with jessica. her hair was piled on her head, and it framed her face perfectly in corkscrews of chestnut curls. she was very beautiful. she was smiling at him; it was the smile that did it. "hello jessica," he said. "how are you?"

"hello. you won't believe this," she said, "but my assistant failed to make a note of your newspaper, mister uh."

"paper?" said richard.

"did i say newspaper?" said jessica, with a tinkling, sweet, and self-deprecating laugh. "magazine . . . television station. you _are_ with the media?"

"you're looking very fine, jessica," said richard.

"you have the advantage of me," she said, smiling roguishly.

"you're jessica bartram. you're a marketing executive at stocktons. you're twenty-six. your birthday is april the twenty-third, and in the throes of extreme passion you have a tendency to hum the monkees song 'i'm a believer' . . . "

jessica was no longer smiling. "is this some kind of joke?" she asked, coldly.

"oh, and we've been engaged for the last eighteen months," said richard.

jessica smiled nervously. perhaps this really was some kind of joke: one of those jokes that everyone else seemed to get and she never did. "i rather think i'd know if i'd been engaged to someone for eighteen months, mister um," said jessica.

"mayhew," said richard helpfully. "richard mayhew. you dumped me, and i don't exist anymore."

jessica waved, urgently, at no one in particular all the way across the room. "be right there," she called, desperately, and she began to back away.

_"i'm a believer,"_ sang richard, cheerfully, _"i couldn't leave her if i tried . . . "_

jessica snatched a glass of champagne from a passing tray, downed it in a gulp. at the far end of the room she could see mr. stockton's chauffeur, and where mr. stockton's chauffeur was . . .

she headed toward the doors. "so who was he?" asked clarence, edging alongside her.

"who?"

"your mystery man."

"i don't know" she admitted. then she said, "look, maybe you ought to call security."

"okay. why?"

"just . . . just get me security," and then mr. arnold stockton entered the hall, and everything else went out of her head.

expansive, he was, and expensive, a hogarth cartoon of a man, enormous of girth, many-chinned and broad-stomached. he was over sixty; his hair was gray and silver, and it was cut too long in the back, because it made people uncomfortable that his hair was too long, and mr. stockton liked making people uncomfortable. compared to arnold stockton, rupert murdoch was a shady little pipsqueak, and the late robert maxwell was a beached whale. arnold stockton was a pit bull, which was how caricaturists often chose to draw him. stocktons owned a little bit of everything: satellites, newspapers, record companies, amusement parks, books, magazines, comics, television stations, film companies.

"i'll make the speech now," said mr. stockton, to jessica, by way of introduction. "then i'll bugger off. come back some other time, when there aren't all these stuffed shirts about."

"right," said jessica. "yes. the speech now. of course."

and she led him up onto the little stage, up to the podium. she tinked her fingernail against a glass, for silence. nobody heard her, so she said, "excuse me," into the microphone. this time the conversation quieted. "ladies and gentlemen. honored guests. i'd like to welcome all of you to the british museum," she said, "to the stockton-sponsored exhibition 'angels over england,' and to the man behind it all, our chief executive and chairman of the board, mister arnold stockton." the guests applauded, none of them in any doubt as to who had assembled the collection of angels, or, for that matter, paid for their champagne.

mr. stockton cleared his throat. "okay," he said. "this won't take long. when i was a small boy, i used to come to the british museum on saturdays, because it was free, and we didn't have much money. but i'd come up the big steps to the museum, and i'd come down to this room round the back and look up at this angel. it was like it knew what i was thinking."

just at that moment, clarence came back in, a couple of security guards beside him. he pointed to richard, who had stopped to listen to mr. stockton's speech. door was still examining exhibits. "no, _him_," clarence kept saying to the guards, in an undertone. "no, look, there. yes? _him_."

"anyway. like anything that's not cared for," continued mr. stockton, "it decayed, fell apart under the stresses and strains of modern times. went rotten. went bad. well, it's taken a shitload of money," he paused, to let it sink in--if he, arnold stockton, thought it was a shitload, then a shitload it certainly was--"and a dozen craftsmen have spent a great deal of time restoring it and fixing it up. after this the exhibition'll be going to america, and then around the world, so it maybe can inspire some other little penniless brat to start his own communications empire."

he looked around. turning to jessica, he muttered, "what do i do now?" she pointed to the pull-rope, at the side of the curtain. mr. stockton pulled the rope. the curtain billowed and opened, revealing an old door behind it.

again, there was a small flurry of activity in clarence's corner of the room. "no. _him_," said clarence. "for heaven's sake. are you blind?"

it looked like it had once been the door to a cathedral. it was the height of two men, and wide enough for a pony to walk through. carved into the wood of the door, and painted with red and white and gold leaf, was an extraordinary angel. it stared out at the world with blank medieval eyes. there was an impressed gasp from the guests, then they began to applaud.

_"the angelus."_ door tugged at richard's sleeve. "that's it! richard, come on." she ran for the stage.

"excuse me, sir," said a guard to richard. "might we see your invitation?" said another, taking richard firmly but discreetly by the arm. "and do you have any identification?"

"no," said richard.

door was up on the stage. richard tried to yank free and follow her, hoping that the guards would forget about him. they didn't: now that he had been brought to their attention they were going to proceed to treat him as they might any other shabby, unwashed, somewhat unshaven gate-crasher. the guard who was holding richard increased his grip on his arm, muttering, "none of that."

door paused on the stage, wondering how to make the guards let richard go. then she did the only thing she could think of. she went over to the microphone, went up on tiptoes, and she screamed, as loudly as she possibly could, into the public-address system. she had a remarkable scream: it could, with no artificial assistance, go through your head like a new power drill with a bone-saw attachment. and amplified . . . it was simply unearthly.

a waitress dropped her tray of drinks. heads turned. hands covered ears. all conversation stopped. people stared at the stage in puzzlement and horror. and richard made a break for it. "sorry," he said to the stunned guard, as he yanked his arm out of the man's grip, and fled. "wrong london." he reached the stage, grabbed door's outstretched left hand. her right hand touched the angelus, the enormous cathedral door. touched it, and _opened_ it.

this time no one dropped any drinks. they were frozen, staring, utterly overwhelmed--and, momentarily, blinded. the angelus had opened, and light, from behind the door, had flooded the room with radiance. people covered their eyes then, hesitantly, opened them again, and simply stared. it was as if fireworks had been let off in the room. not indoor fireworks, strange crawling things that sputter and smell bad; nor even the kind of fireworks that you set off in your back yard; but the kind of industrial-strength fireworks that get fired up high enough to cause a potential menace to the airways: the kind of fireworks that end a day at disney world, or that give the fire marshals headaches at pink floyd concerts. it was a moment of pure magic.

the audience stared, entranced and amazed. the only noise to be heard was the gentle, gasping almost-groan of wonderment that people make when they watch fireworks: the sound of awe. then a grubby young man and a dirty-faced girl in a huge leather jacket walked into the light show and vanished. the door closed, behind them. the light show was over.

and everything was normal again. the guests, and guards, and serving staff, blinked, shook their respective heads, and, having dealt with something entirely outside of their experience, agreed, somehow, without a word, that it had simply never happened. the string quartet began to play once more.

mr. stockton walked off, nodding brusquely to various acquaintances as he did so. jessica walked over, to clarence. "what," she asked, quietly, "are those security guards doing in here?"

the guards in question were standing among the guests, looking around as if they were themselves unsure what they were doing there. clarence began to explain just what the guards were doing there; and then he realized he had absolutely no idea. "i'll deal with it," said clarence, efficiently.

jessica nodded. she looked out over her party and smiled benignly. it was all going rather well.

richard and door walked into the light. and then it was dark, and chill, and richard was blinking at the retinal afterimage of the light, which left him almost blinded: a ghostly series of orange-green splotches that slowly faded, as his eyes accustomed themselves to the darkness that surrounded them.

they were in a huge hall, carved from rock. iron pillars, black and rust-dusted, held up the roof, went off into the distant dark, perhaps for miles. from somewhere he could hear the gentle splash of water: a fountain, perhaps, or a spring. door was still holding his hand, tightly. in the distance, a tiny flame flickered and flared. and another, and then another: it was a host of candles, flickering into flame, richard realized. and walking toward them, through the candles, was a tall figure, dressed in a simple white robe.

the figure seemed to be moving slowly, but it must have been walking very fast, as it was only seconds before it was standing beside them. it had golden hair and a pale face. it was not much taller than richard, but it made him feel like a little child. it was not a man; it was not a woman. it was very beautiful. its voice was quiet. it said, "the lady door, yes?"

door said, "yes."

a gentle smile. it nodded its head to her, almost humbly. "it is an honor finally to meet you and your companion. i am the angel islington." its eyes were clear and wide. its robes were not white, as richard had initially thought: they seemed to have been woven from _light._

richard did not believe in angels, he never had. he was damned if he was going to start now. still, it was much easier not to believe in something when it was not actually looking directly at you and saying your name. "richard mayhew," it said. "you, too, are welcome here, in my halls." it turned away. "please," it said. "follow me."

richard and door followed the angel through the caverns. the candles extinguished themselves behind them.

the marquis de carabas strode through the empty hospital, broken glass and old syringes crunching beneath his square-toed black motorcycle boots. he stepped through a double door that led into a back staircase. he went down the stair's, to the cellars beneath the hospital.

he walked through the rooms beneath the building, stepping fastidiously around the heaps of moldering rubbish. he walked through the showers and the toilets, down an old iron staircase, through a wet, swampy place; and then pulled open a half-rotted wooden door, and went inside. he looked around the room in which he found himself; he inspected, with magnificent disdain, the half-eaten kitten and the heap of razor blades. then he cleared the debris off a chair, sat down, comfortably, luxuriantly, in the dankness of the cellar, and closed his eyes.

eventually the door to the cellar was opened and people came in.

the marquis de carabas opened his eyes and yawned. then he flashed mr. croup and mr. vandemar a huge smile. "hello boys," said de carabas. "i thought it high time i came down here to talk to you in person."