The resources dedicated to the manhunt would frighten any sane prey. Agents were assigned to every sighting of the old man and his accomplice; every sighting was fully investigated. They'd already tracked most of the Aethelred coins back to 'Buy your Gold' stores or small antique shops and in each place they'd tried to establish where the old man had gone to and where he had come from. No stone was left unturned but there were stones by the lorry load. CCTV images, witness statements and intuition added to the mix. Gradually Robinson reconstructed the route Tung and Madrick had followed to the Ritz. He also pieced together everything the pair had done during their stay there... booze and beef mainly.

A couple of lucky breaks helped complete the trail back to the beach houses on the coast. Each hut was given the once-over treatment revealing yet more evidence; random magic debris and more Aethelreds.

They thought they'd hit gold when they found an old man hiding in one of the huts. It only took a short interrogation, and four broken fingers, to figure out that the man was just a vagrant taking shelter. He'd nothing to do with the thieves.

That's when the trail went completely dead. Robinson concluded it must have been where the time-travellers had landed. That made sense. Occultus Populous archives showed the huts were relatively near the point where the thieves had disappeared nearly a thousand years earlier.

Every shred of information was gathered and collated. It added up to the mountain of evidence but so what? It was all very well to know where these people had been; what really mattered was where they'd gone. That's why he'd allocated even more agents (and agencies) to follow their route from the Ritz.

He had names, gleaned from the hotel register... Tung and Madrick Tide; father and son apparently. Were these people really related? Were these their real names? As soon as he heard the names he'd suspected they were false.

"Tung Tide. Say it out loud."

"Right, 'tongue tied', that's got to be a joke."

Tung could have told him about the origin of his name. It was a joke but it was also, sadly for him, his real name.

Regardless of whether the names were real or fake, at least he now had labels for his prey. He was sure they were false identities but he ran them through every database he could access nonetheless. There were no matching entries. Nothing. Nada. Nilch. No surprise there.

His agents interviewed all the staff at the Ritz. Like everything else it was time consuming but it helped build a picture of two men who were clearly out of place in this hotel, never mind this century. Only one worthwhile lead emerged from these enquiries. It related to a night when the thieves had partied with another man and woman. The group had retired to their suite and the unknown couple had stayed overnight. Not momentous in itself but the man had returned on a number of occasions and he'd been with them when they checked out of the hotel. Was this man in league with them? This guy was clearly from the twenty-first century; young, modern with a trendy beard and moustache. That meant there'd be records. This guy would have an electronic trail... everyone had an electronic trail. This was the breakthrough he'd been waiting for.

He stared at the pictures of Tung, Madrick and the modern man; images gleaned from the wealth of CCTV coverage from the hotel and various camera systems in the area. Leading experts had sifted and analysed the footage and he held the results of their work in his hands. Top quality photographs of the bad guys, along with accurate heights and weights. Better still, some of the CCTV images showed the modern man using a mobile phone. They'd cross referenced the exact time and location against databases from all the mobile phone companies. Laborious but it had given them a shortlist of potential names which they could filter using the other intelligence which was accumulating. His teams continued gathering information and his analysts kept analysing it. Their perseverance eventually identified Michael Phillips as the third man.

"Got you," said Robinson when he was given the news.

He immediately dispatched a team to the man's last known address where they found a whole series of clues and leads amongst the debris of the recently abandoned apartment. Small teams were allocated to follow up each new lead.

In addition to feet on the street, they continued to use facial recognition technology, mobile phone records, credit card transaction analysis, CCTV fractional identification and a host of other hi-tech techniques to help them close in on their targets. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

A couple of discarded printouts of seaside hotels and ferry timetables found in the flat signalled Dover as their destination. Some credit card payments seemed to confirm it... the idiot was still using his credit card.

Half his agents were sent to Dover and another team was dispatched to France in case they'd jumped onto a ferry. There was plenty to check out, there were plenty of clues.

He sat in his office and stared at the photograph of Michael Phillips. What are you up to? Why are you so hard to find, yet you've left so many clues? Something was wrong. Could they be on an elaborate wild goose chase? But what else could he do? The leads were there and had to be followed, particularly those which related to Michael Phillips.

Once Phillips had been identified it didn't take long to find out every detail about him.

"He what?" He slammed his fists hard on his desk and glared at the agent who'd brought him the news.

"He worked in our computer department; a security specialist no less," repeated the agent.

"Bugger, how the hell did we allow that to happen?"

He didn't believe in coincidences. The scroll thieves and the bank theft were linked; he couldn't explain it yet but they were definitely linked. Phillips had perpetrated the fraud and he was in cahoots with the travellers. This guy was no mug; the bank's experts still hadn't worked out how to stop the money leak or how to repair the damage. Here was a dangerous opponent who shouldn't be underestimated, and he had magic on his side.

While a large contingent of the field agents followed through on the Dover and France angles, other smaller teams continued to gather evidence at the Ritz and at Michael's apartment. Collectively they were amassing huge quantities of material which all needed to be analysed. The sheer volume of intelligence was causing information overload. They were in danger of losing a vital piece of knowledge because it was buried in a mountain of dross. Even though this was a risk, they continued to gather CCTV footage and scour each of the hot areas for witnesses or evidence of strange occurrences.

A further, highly technical, group had been assembled and deployed to tackle the IIBE theft problem. This group included computer specialists, IIBE security personnel and, secretly, Occultus Populous software engineers. They were supplemented by teams, from other Council member organisations, who were working backwards from where the money had ended up. Check out the receiving accounts. See how they're all connected. The perpetrator must be linked in some way to these accounts, otherwise what was the point?

Finally, a crack team from Noviru was in place. After all, their software was meant to offer total protection so they were under immense pressure to find an answer.

The IIBE financial systems had now been shut down for nearly four hours and the world was taking notice. Statements and press releases had been issued about computer malfunctions but they would only hold up for a short period and then the panic would start with a potentially crippling effect on the world financial markets.

In total, there were over three thousand people dedicated to fixing the problem and finding Michael, Tung and Madrick. In fact, there were a lot more eyes hunting for them if you counted the outside agencies. The police, MI5 and border control, to name but a few, had their photographs so they were on the lookout too.

***

Buckingham surveyed the mountain of information which had been gathered. They'd made fantastic progress in a very short time. Crucially, they'd identified the three men; the two travellers from the past and their collaborator, Michael Phillips.

The IIBE system leak had been plugged. Well done, Noviru. Their team had spotted where Michael had disabled parts of their software. Once everything had been reinstated, the intelligent software cleansed the system. IIBE was up and running again but the fraud had allowed nearly three hundred billion pounds to flow out to accounts all over the globe. They'd already recovered about fifty billion but Buckingham knew the on-going recovery process would require an enormous amount of time and effort, and he accepted they'd never claw back all their funds.

The bank's reputation had suffered untold damage and this would get even worse once the story of the fraud got out, as it inevitably would. He'd deal with that particular difficulty when it arose. No point in fretting about it now.

They'd minimised the problem at IIBE but it had been a serious distraction. They needed to find the three men quickly but the trail seemed to have gone cold. They had mountains of information although no rock-solid leads. Time to allocate even more resources to the hunt, he had to find these men and the Scroll. And he needed to know why the time-travellers were working with Phillips to defraud IIBE.