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"I meant whether you want one," he replied. "We do have a few bottles for guests somewhere. Wine, gin, whiskey, you name it, we have it."

"Oh, all right. Thanks for the offer." I glance around the room, aware everyone else’s attention is on me to a greater or lesser extent. "But I don’t want it. You see, I don’t drink either."

"Why not?" Tiny looks a bit surprised. "Don’t tell me you’re a teetotaller."

"No," I tell him, and raise my voice slightly to make sure I’m clearly heard. "It’s not that I’m not a teetotaller." I wait, pausing a moment for effect.

"I’m Undead too," I say.

"Let me explain clearly," my controller, whom I know only by the code name of Teri, had told me. She’d stood at the window of her office, back turned to the view, and stared me up and down with her markswoman’s eyes. "These are criminals here we’re dealing with. I know you’re Undead too, but you are nothing like them. You have to keep that in mind at all times."

"I know," I’d said. "I’m perfectly aware of that."

"Uh-huh." She’d shaken her head emphatically. "You don’t understand, not really. These people – if we’re to call them that – are the scum of the earth. But they can be very persuasive, very convincing. It’s easy to be taken in. And because you’re Undead, you’d feel a natural kinship with them anyway, so it’s doubly dangerous for you."

"But you need someone Undead to infiltrate them," I’d said sourly. "So anyone you send would be in the same boat."

"That doesn’t mean you can afford to relax a moment. Look, Bill..." Teri had switched to what I call her ‘reasonable’ persona, smiling reassuringly and leaning earnestly forward. She doesn’t do it very well, because her eyes remain the same, those sniper’s eyes. "You need to keep in mind what you’re dealing with here. They seem pretty much jokes, don’t they? A few Undead with attitudes, motorcycles, and stickers on their backs? But they could overturn our entire economic and social system. They’re that big a threat."

"How?" I’d asked reasonably enough. "What do you think they’re planning, an armed insurrection against the government or something?"

"I wish they would," Teri had said almost wistfully. "Then we could take care of them." I’d seen the gleam in her eyes, as if she was taking aim through a rifle’s telescopic sights, and I’d known what she’d meant by that. "But it’s nothing so easily countered." She’d sat down opposite me and rubbed her face, and for the first time I realised how tired she looked. "They’re pushing Juice," she’d said.

"Juice?" To say I was surprised would have been the understatement of the year. "How can they push Juice? How can anyone even get their hands on it?"

"Nevertheless," she’d replied, "that’s what they’re doing, and they’re distributing it on a large scale amongst the Undead. You don’t need me to tell you what that means, do you?"

"No." I had shaken my head in bewilderment. "Are you sure the Undead biker gangs are behind this?"

"Quite sure. They don’t deal out of the clubhouses, of course. They’re far too smart for that. But they are distributing it. We need to know where they’re getting hold of it first, and then we’re going to strike hard as we can."

"I thought there was only one source." We’d both looked instinctively at the company’s red-white-green logo, easily visible on the building across the way from her office. That wasn’t significant – you can’t go two kilometres without seeing the logo five times. "Government-protected monopoly, isn’t it?"

"They claim there’s none missing from their stocks." Teri had shuffled a couple of files on her desk, her long slim fingers riffling the pages. "That’s what they say."

"But you don’t believe them."

"The stuff has to be coming from somewhere, hasn’t it?"

"Maybe it’s being smuggled in from abroad? The Chinese and Russians make it on a large scale."

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