The suave features of the Welshman smiled back at Serrin from the screen. "Good morning, Serrin," his friend breezed in his BBC English accent. "I hear you've been to Germany. What's up?"

"I'm back in Seattle now, or I wouldn't have gotten your message. But they told me you were away for a couple of days."

"Got back a day early. Business concluded earlier than expected," Geraint said simply. "A doddle, old boy. Now, what's the problem?"

The elf paused for a second, not sure where to begin.

"Look, do you want me to call you back with a sampling monitor? To check whether your number is compromised, as I think you might say. We prefer bugged over here."

"I don't think so," Serrin replied uncertainly. He hadn't even contemplated the possibility until Geraint mentioned it, but the thought was evoking all the paranoia of the previous days.

"Come now, aren't you a hero in your native land these days? Read it all in Newsday. Hope there was a decent payoff in it," the Welshman joked.

"No, it's more serious than that," the elf said, then quickly ran down a summary for Geraint.

The Welshman listened carefully, waiting until he was sure Serrin was finished. "How can I help?" he asked finally.

"I don't know," Serrin's usual early-morning mental constipation was refusing to budge. "When I was in Frankfurt, I thought of hopping over to London, until I found out you weren't there."

"Only the delicious Elizabeth," Geraint said mischievously. "Don't worry. She's at Harrods buying some ghastly floral material or other. It won't last, it never does. It's doomed, thank God.

"Look if you need some help tracing the source of your problems, I've got a friend over there could help. His name's Michael Sutherland. Brilliant decker. He could find out the exact value of Fort Knox in less than five minutes." Serrin gave the Welshman a look of disbelief.

"Well, all right," Geraint conceded, "I exaggerate; maybe it would take him seven. We knew each other at Cambridge. I heard our friend Francesca is away in Saudi, so he's the best option. I can call him and make sure he charges you only the minimum. Hell, I can do better than that; I owe you."

Serrin couldn't quite figure that one out. He hadn't seen Geraint face to face since their extraordinary experiences in London the previous year. They'd unmasked a Jack the Ripper clone and got themselves deep into an unholy mess. Everything had worked out all right in the end, but Serrin had noticed something strange about Geraint afterward, an evasiveness, even a faint air of guilt. Serrin trusted Geraint with his life, so it didn't worry him. He guessed that anything strange in his friend's behavior must have to do with the infinitely subtle and treacherous web of British politics. Indeed, Serrin was just as happy not knowing about it if Geraint didn't want to tell him.

"I'll give you a number," the nobleman said, reciting off a telecom code that indicated a classy Manhattan address. "Wait a few hours, though. I'll call him first and remind him of a few favors he owes me. How about getting yourself some muscle? I can't really help you in that department, not Stateside. Or do you want me to send Rani over maybe?"

Serrin smiled. The Punjabi ork was someone you could count on if things came down to the wire. But it hadn't got that bad yet.

"First let me check out some more faces and names here," the elf said. "But thanks. I really appreciate this."

"It's the least I can do. Look, if you get into really deep drek there's always my castle in Wales, right? I'll make sure the staff is on permanent alert for you until I tell them otherwise. Hire a fraggin' private jet and I'll pick up the tab," the Welshman said. The curse words sounded almost comical in his accent.

"I hope it doesn't come to that. But thanks again. And I'll give this guy Sutherland a call after I've done a little checking around locally," the elf said. The smiling face of his friend evaporated as the connection was broken.

Serrin tapped in a local number, and the sleepy face of an ork swam into focus on the screen.

"Hey, Gulrank, I need some protection," the elf said simply. Subtlety would be lost on the samurai.

"Can't help you," the ork said in a tired voice. "Got a month's fee up front from an Intelligencer guy doing research on some lowlife stories. Sorry, chummer." He was about to hit the Disconnect when Serrin spoke urgently to catch his attention.

"Gulrank, I've tried John and he's out of town. Torend too. He moved to Japan. I'm running out of names, chummer, and I need this."

The ork paused for thought. It took some time.

"You could try Tom," he said slowly.

"Spirits! You mean Tom's still around?" The possibility hadn't even occurred to Serrin. The troll had been so hell-bent on self-destruction that Serrin had almost given up on him after the last of his endless binges. It had been so long since anyone had seen or heard of him downtown, that Serrin had simply assumed his friend was dead. In that instant, he realized that he'd deliberately avoided trying to find out about Tom because the thought of his death had been just too painful.

"He's changed," the ork said. "I don't know if he'd do muscle work anymore. Walks the way of Bear these days. Dried out, the works. Still down in Redmond, but I hear he's doing the green number and saving people from the

machine. Hell, you ain't seen him since way back, right? You don't know this stuff." "I had no idea," the elf said, astonished. "He talks 'bout you sometimes," the ork said slowly. "I guess you kept him going long enough for him to save himself. Or so he says. You could do a lot worse, chum-mer. You got a friend there, which means you don't have as many worries as you think."

With that the screen went blank. Serrin immediately called down to the desk and ordered a cab for Redmond for nine sharp. That gave him time for breakfast, the first cigarette of the day, and enough spare minutes to figure out what the hell he was going to say to Tom after all these years.

Feeling that the luck was still with her, Kristen retreated into the darkness on her side of the street, her mind racing as she watched the two unmoving figures across the way. The men had their hats pulled down over their faces, but the shadows hid them even better. It was obvious they were up to no good, but Kristen thought maybe she might profit from whatever it was. Didn't her luck always come in runs?

Minutes passed, with almost no passersby braving the rain to change the scene, and she began to wonder what the frag she was doing. Her head spun with the effects of the soft drug and she had to make a special effort from time to time to keep her vision focused.

"How much, honey?" a well-oiled voice leered from over her shoulder. "You do special services?"

She turned to the man, his acne-ridden whi'e face garish in the shop lights to his left, the edges of his repulsive grimace hidden in the shadow that also hid the hand seeking to curl itself around her rump.

"Frag off or I'll suck you in and blow you out in bubbles, you brainwipe," she spat out, sending him scuttling off in the direction of one of Carrag's pornotoriums. On her way down to Indra's, Kristen must have wandered closer than she'd intended to the edge of Cape Town's red light district. But now Indra's could wait. Something was about to go down right here. Every one of her instincts was screaming at her. The air was almost unbearably still, ear-splittingly quiet. And even on such a rainy night there should have been more people on the streets. It was almost as if some trid director had given orders to clear the streets.

Then it happened. As two men came striding down Chepstow, one slightly ahead of the other, the rear man suddenly fell soundlessly, only a muted airy hiss from somewhere above and behind him giving away the location of the assassin. The other two men, the one's she'd been watching, moved in perfect synchrony, one slamming a fist hard into the leading man's guts as the second brought a balled fist up under his jaw. Doubled up and then sent flying backward, the man didn't stand a chance. With precision timing a limo purred up Ocean View, the door opening as the two men dumped the body into the back and then piled in after it. They knew what they were doing; the limo fired up again immediately, then moved smoothly up the street and turned onto High, headed no doubt for the Strand.