“If you say so, ma’am.” Captain Bishop was still frowning at the radio console as though Bannson were there in person. “Does that guy really think he can get the penthouse suite at the best hotel in town just by showing up and asking for it?”
“Yes, he does. And he’s right.” Tara didn’t think that this was the best time to mention that she could have done the same—only with her name, not money, to open the door. “It doesn’t matter. I want you to get busy with the communications listings, and track down the personal number of a man named Burton Horn. It may be unlisted. Lean on people and use my authority if you have to. I’ll back you.”
Captain Bishop nodded. “Burton Horn. What do I say once I’ve got him?”
“Tell him to find his employer as quickly as possible, and bring him to meet me in Geneva at the Hotel Duquesne.”
26
Rue Simon-Durand
Geneva, Terra
Prefecture X
April 3134; local spring
Roughly twenty-four hours after the Countess of Northwind had seen her sleep, or lack of it, so unexpectedly interrupted, in Geneva Paladin Jacob Levin was walking back to the Pension Flambard from the small neighborhood restaurant where he had eaten dinner. The evening was dark and still, and few people were about. The occasional vehicle passed by him on a hum of tires or a sigh of hoverjets, its shadow looming up and fading again in the circles of pale yellow light thrown onto the sidewalk by the street lamps.
It was a pleasant night. A light breeze, not yet fully springlike, but hinting nevertheless at the eventual possibility of spring, blew toward the lake. The taste of dinner’s roast lamb with rosemary still lingered on Jonah’s lips, as did the bouquet of the wine. The meal had been excellent, even for a man whose thoughts remained preoccupied as his had been by the developments of the past few days.
The data disc Burton Horn had recovered from the Pescadore Rus in Belgorod had not left Jonah’s possession since the former GenDel employee had delivered it to him. Jonah suspected—though he would not alarm Madame Flambard by saying so—that his rooms in the pension had been searched at least once, and he was unwilling to let such damning evidence fall into other hands.
Tomorrow, he thought, with the Countess of Northwind’s concurrence, he would present the data disc to the Exarch. A formal investigation would follow, and much adverse publicity. Damien Redburn would undoubtedly want to keep everything quiet until the investigation had officially settled the question of who, exactly, had sold out whom on Northwind, but Jonah didn’t think that he would succeed. News as shocking and frightening as this—that a Paladin, one of the seventeen most trusted men and women in the entire Republic of the Sphere, could have betrayed and abandoned the very people whom he had been sent to help, and slandered their leader to the Exarch afterward—would find its own way of getting out.
“Lift ’em up.”
The voice was that of a stranger. Jonah saw that a man with a slug-pistol had come out of the shadows ahead and was standing in front of him.
“What is—” he began.
“It’s a robbery, Gramps.”
Jonah raised his hands. In his peripheral vision, he saw another man approaching from his right. And there was a third coming up from behind, his presence made known by the scuffling of his footsteps.
“Over there.” The man with the slug-pistol gestured toward a nearby alley.
“It wasn’t in his room,” the man coming up from behind said. “So it’s got to be—”
The gunman said, “Shut up.” And the man behind fell silent.
Not ordinary robbers, then, Jonah thought, and resigned himself to putting up an active resistance. The small amount of money in his wallet was not worth disturbing the quiet of the evening with violence. The data disc currently residing in his inner jacket pocket was another matter altogether.
He turned toward the alley. At the moment when his side was toward the gunman, with his narrowest aspect exposed, he reached out with his left hand, grabbed the gunman’s arm by the sleeve, and pulled it straight out.
At the same time he pressed in toward the man, letting the side of his leg, with his weight behind it, push at the man’s knee and bend it backward. The knee joint resisted, then gave way under the pressure with an audible crack. The man grunted in pain and lost his grip on his weapon. Jonah took it.
He didn’t want to fire the slug-pistol. In the dark and confusion, he had no way of telling what kind it was, how well it had been maintained, or even if it was loaded. Instead, he threw it as hard as he could at the upper torso of the man on his right—who was now, after Levin’s rightward turn and this fellow’s collapse, the man in front of him.
The man sidestepped to dodge the impact. Jonah, seeing an attacker off balance, with his plans—whatever they had been—disrupted, took the opportunity to move forward.
He stepped in close, and struck the bottom of the man’s chin with the heel of his hand. The man collapsed.
Something moved in Jonah’s peripheral vision. It was the man who had come up behind him, now on Jonah’s right. He was lifting his arm, raising a firearm of his own before Jonah could move or react. A shot sounded.
Jonah braced himself for the burning pain. It never came. Instead, the gunman lowered his arm, sank to his knees, and fell to his face on the sidewalk.
“Good evening, Paladin,” Burton Horn said. The former GenDel messenger stepped out of the shadows and replaced his own handgun in his pocket. “The Countess of Northwind sends her greetings, and begs me to inform you that she wishes to discuss the matter of Ezekiel Crow with you, in private, as soon as possible.”
“I have her to thank for your timely arrival, then.” Jonah was not going to let Horn outdo him in the sangfroid department, even though the voice of reason—sounding, as it so often did, very much like the voice of Anna—would not be stopped from pointing out the foolishness of such a reaction. “Do you know who these men are?”
“I saw them in Belgorod not too long ago,” Horn said. “They were trying on hats. My contacts tell me that they work for Alexei Suvorov.” He glanced over at the trio of dead or unconscious men. “Some of his more expendable talent, at a guess. Not up to your weight, anyhow.”
“I don’t know. If you hadn’t stopped that last one, I’d be dead by now.”
“Maybe,” said Horn. “But you didn’t look like a guy who was getting ready to give up.”
“If you say so. But I’ve gotten shot before, and believe me, the experience doesn’t get any more enjoyable with repetition.” Jonah looked down at his attackers where they lay on the pavement. The one with the broken knee was starting to groan and twitch feebly. “Suvorov’s men, you said. Am I supposed to know that name?”
“I don’t think so,” Horn replied. “But I get the feeling that someone you do know, does know it. And right now, we should probably go someplace else before the police arrive and start to ask us a lot of awkward questions.”
27
Hotel Duquesne
Geneva, Terra
Prefecture X
April 3134; local spring
The last time that Tara Campbell had stayed in the Hotel Duquesne, she had been a five-year-old girl following in her Senator mother’s wake. She remembered the marble pillars in the main lobby as being much bigger, like stone trees holding up the sky, and the concierge as an enormous and godlike figure in gold braid and a majestic waxed mustache. The current concierge had to be the same man—you couldn’t possibly find two mustaches like that, even in Geneva. But he was shorter now than she was.