The Age of Zeus

DEAR MR CATSBEY BARTLET

It was the tone of it more than anything that temporarily arrested the billion-baud flow of Argus's thoughts — the certainty, the crude confidence, the cool sincerity. The sender of the email was either a fraudster with nerves of steel or someone with genuine insider intel.

Argus elected to take matters into his own hands, to a degree. Zeus was absent from Olympus at present. A face-to-face consultation would not be possible until his return, and the email merited, Argus felt, face-to-face. In the interim, he had authorisation to let the sender know that the Olympians themselves were taking an interest. It was standard procedure with potential informants. He despatched a peacock icon back along the filepath of the email. It pinged up in the sender's inbox.

Sitting at a terminal in an internet cafe in south-east London, Darren Pugh at first frowned. Then, as the full implications of the peacock icon dawned on him, his face broke into a broad, feral grin.