“I want to go here,” Jones said. “Pull over.”

“All right, all right,” said the driver. “But you still have to pay the full fare to center city.”

“I’ll pay it,” Jones said. “Now pull over.”

Maybe this would throw off pursuit, he thought. Maybe no one was pursuing him. Maybe… maybe he was about to pay the price for carrying evidence that would damn a popular and powerful man.

The cab came to a stop. Lieutenant Jones stepped out, clutching the portfolio, and handed the cabbie a substantial amount of cash. He’d been issued travel funds before departing Northwind, but he hadn’t found an opportunity to break up the large bills into smaller ones before becoming aware of the pursuit. The cab driver started to put the money away, then looked at it again and glared at him angrily.

“Hey, I can’t use this!”

“You can change it at the nearest bank,” Jones said. “There’s a lot more in there than what I owe. Keep all of it.”

He backed off, turned, and ducked hastily into the restaurant on the corner. Only the pride of Northwind kept him from breaking into a run.

At this hour, the establishment was deserted except for a barman who was doubling as a waiter. The lunch hour was over, and the dinner hour had not yet started. The waiter bustled up as soon as Lieutenant Jones walked in.

“One, please,” Jones said. “And do you have a communications console?”

“Yes, sir. May I suggest the fillet of sturgeon?”

“Sure. Give me whatever is good. But right now I need to make a call.”

The waiter pointed. “Over there, beside the washroom.”

Lieutenant Jones walked back to the public communications console and punched in the code for the Northwind Interests Section in Belgorod. Whoever answered, however, was unimpressed with the call.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the disembodied voice said. “I cannot put you through directly to the chargé at this time. The current wait for a voice connection to a representative of the Northwind Interests Section is a minimum of twenty minutes. Alternatively, you may present yourself in person tomorrow morning at 0817.”

“Listen to me,” Jones said. “I have important papers here. Northwind has been attacked! There’s a chance that Terra will be next. I have evidence with me that needs to go to the Senate as soon as possible.”

“Press one to wait for a connection; press two if you prefer to conduct your business in person,” the voice said. Lieutenant Jones couldn’t tell whether it belonged to a live human or to a synthesized recording. He pressed one. The voice said, “You have chosen to wait for a connection. If you wish to conduct other business during the waiting period, and have a signal sent to your receiving unit when a representative of the Northwind Interests Section is able to speak with you, press three.”

They’ve all gone out to lunch, Jones thought. They’re sitting at a table somewhere eating caviar and drinking vodka while the world is falling apart. He pressed three.

“You have chosen to have a signal sent to your receiving unit. Please be aware that the Northwind Interests Section is not responsible for any calls missed due to the caller’s absence from the receiving unit. Good day.”

The connection broke.

“And a good day to you, too,” Jones said to the silent console.

He walked back to the table that the waiter had indicated for him, and took his seat as the greens and a drink were brought out. The grilled fillet of sturgeon had just been set before him when the door of the restaurant opened. The little bell attached to the door frame jingled cheerfully as two men entered. They wore long coats, and they scanned the nearly empty room with humorless eyes.

The man closest to the door pulled a slug-pistol from his coat pocket. The two men walked toward Lieutenant Jones, arriving one to either side of him before he could stand.

“Come with us,” said the man with the slug-pistol.

“Don’t make a scene,” the other one said. “We’re here to take you to the Northwind Interests Section.”

Lieutenant Jones looked around. The dining room was empty, and the waiter had vanished. He stood up, reaching for the leather portfolio.

“We’ll take that,” the man to his left said, and picked up the portfolio. The man with the slug-pistol remained alert, his hands otherwise free. “Can’t be too careful.”

“Of course not,” Jones said.

He walked a little ahead of the two men as the three of them left the room together. Behind them, the bell over the outside door jingled again as they left.

Ivan Gorky was the waiter and afternoon barman at the Pescadore Rus. It had been a slow afternoon with just one customer, a stranger who spoke only in English, and that with a strong off-Terran accent. Ivan had gone to the kitchen for sauce to go with the man’s grilled sturgeon and, upon his return, was surprised to see that his solitary customer had fled, leaving the bill unpaid.

Ivan frowned, puzzled—you never could tell about people, it was true, but nevertheless the man hadn’t seemed the type to defraud a restaurant. Upon closer inspection of the abandoned table, Ivan had another surprise. Customers who ran out on a bill seldom did so before finishing their meals, yet this fellow hadn’t so much as taken a bite of his main course. One corner of the fish had been cut away with the edge of a fork, but not eaten; it still lay untasted on the plate.

Another surprise came when he removed the white linen tablecloth and he found underneath it a data disc lying near the edge of the table, sparkling silver against the polished wood.

“That’s certainly odd,” he said to himself, and put the data disc away behind the bar. Maybe the man would come back later to look for it. If he did, he wasn’t getting it until he paid his bill.

Some ten minutes later, the communications console buzzed with the signal for an incoming call. Ivan shuffled over and picked up the handset.

“No,” he said in response to the voice on the other end. “No one here is waiting to speak with a person at the Northwind Interests Section. I’m sorry. Good-bye.”

16

Pension Flambard, 14 Rue Simon-Durand

Geneva, Terra

Prefecture X

March 3134; local winter

Jonah Levin ate his dinner in the small family-owned restaurant where he took most of his meals during his visits to Geneva, then returned to the pension and a night’s sleep untroubled by dreams. In the morning, after bathing and putting on the change of clothing he’d brought with him in the small bag, he settled down to a light breakfast of sweet rolls and coffee—brought to his room on a silver tray by Madame Flambard herself—and the early-edition tri-vid news.

Halfway through the economic report—heavy manufactured goods up, especially in the ’ Mech-production sectors, tourism down, interplanetary stock and bond markets uncertain—a knock sounded at the door of Jonah’s room. He switched off the tri-vid and got up to check the door. A quick glance through the security peephole showed him the GenDel messenger from Belgorod standing outside in the narrow hallway.

Jonah opened the door and gestured the man inside. “Come on in,” he said. “I’m glad to see that you didn’t have any trouble finding this place.”

The messenger looked, Jonah thought, a bit smug. “A street address in Geneva isn’t particularly challenging,” he said. “Not like a shack in the Amazon rain forest, or a DropShip somewhere in transit between Terra and the Rasal-hague Dominion.”

“I suppose you’ve done both of those,” Jonah said. “Do you have any news for me?”

“I have,” the messenger said. “Paladin Ezekiel Crow says, ‘Let’s get together, somewhere private. We have a lot to talk about.’ He also provides a private number to make contact.”