Franz had tracked him down to H deck, where the comms sergeant had said he was working on a “birthday party.” Gun in pocket, Franz walked down the stairwell to give himself time to think about how to do the job. It wasn’t as if hits were his specialty; on the contrary, you only did wetwork in Septagon if your cover evaporated and you needed to clear out fast. Sparrowfart surveillance was deliberately absent there, but as soon as the body count began rising it would come down like a suffocating cloud. Franz shuddered slightly, thinking about the risks Hoechst’s team had run, and checked the schematics in his inner eye one more time. Radial four, orange ring, second-class dining area — there were four entrances, two accessible from passenger country. Not good, he decided. Even with the ship under the thumb of the ReMastered, a chase and shoot-out could result in a real mess. It wasn’t a good idea to underestimate the clown. He was a slippery customer.

At D deck Franz hit the checkpoint. Strasser stared at him coldly as he came down the stairs. “What do you want?” he demanded.

“Check with control,” Franz grunted. “Are you free yet?”

“What for?”

“Got a job. Loose end to take care of. I need to cover three exits—”

“Wait.” Strasser raised his bulky phone. “Maria? Yeah, it’s me. Look, I’ve got U. Bergman here. He says he’s running an errand and he needs backup. Am I — oh. Yes, all right, I’ll do that.” He pocketed the phone and frowned. “What do you want me to do?”

Franz told him.

“Okay. I think that’ll work.” Strasser looked thoughtful. “We’re spread thin. Can we get this out of the way fast?”

’Yes, but I’ll need two more pairs of hands. Who do you suggest?”

“We can collect Colette and Byrne on the way down. I’ll send them round the back while I cover the red ring entrance. I’ll message you when we’re in position. Sure you want to do it this way?”

Franz took a deep breath. “I don’t want to alarm him. If we scare him, he’ll lash out, and there’s no way of knowing what he’s carrying. Remember, this guy has carried out more hits than we’ve had hot meals.”

“I doubt it. I’ll make sure we’re in position in not less than six minutes and not more than fifteen. If he leaves, you want us to abort to Plan B and take him in his berth. That right?”

“Right.” Franz headed for the stairwell. “Get Colette and Byrne in the loop, and I’ll brief them on the way there.”

Eight minutes later Franz was walking through the orange ring corridor, past smoothly curving walls and doors opening onto recreational facilities, public bathrooms, corridors leading to shared dormitories. Second class was sparsely furnished, thin carpet barely damping out the noise of footsteps, none of the hand-carved paneling and sculpture that featured in first and Sybarite.

“Coming up on the entrance now,” Franz murmured. “I’ll blip when I’m ready.” He rang off and held his phone loosely in his left hand. There was a racket coming from up ahead, round the curve, high-pitched voices shouting. What’s going on, some kind of riot? he wondered as he headed for the door.

Turning the corner he witnessed a scene he’d never imagined. It was a riot, but none of the rioters were much taller than waist height, and they all seemed to be enjoying themselves hugely: either that or they were souls in torment, judging by the shrieking and squalling. It vaguely resembled a creche from back home, but no conditioner would have tolerated this sort of indiscipline for an instant. About thirty small children were racing around the room, some of them naked, others wearing elaborate costumes. The lights were flashing through different color combinations, and the walls were flicking up one fantasy scene after another — flaming grottoes, desert sands, rain forests. A gaggle of silvery balloons buzzed overhead, ducking almost within fingertip reach, then dodging aside as fast as overloaded motors could shift them. The music was deafening, some kind of rhythmic pounding bass line with voices singing a nonsense refrain.

Franz ducked down and caught the nearest rioter by the hand. “What’s going on?” he demanded. The little girl stared at him wide-eyed, then pulled her hand away and ran off. “Shit,” he muttered. Then a little savage in a loincloth sported him and ambled over, shyly, one hand behind his back. “Hello.”

“Hello!” Whack. “Heeheehee—”

Franz managed to restrain himself from shooting the kid — it might alert the target. “Fuck!” His head hurt. What had the boy used? A club? He shook his head again.

“Hello. Who are you?”

“I’m—” He paused. The girl leaning over him looked taller — no, that wasn’t it. She looked older, in some indefinable way. She was no bigger than the other children, but there was something assured and poised about her despite the seven-year-old body, all elbows and knees. “I’m Franz. Who are you?”

“I’m Jennifer,” the girl said casually. “This is Bamabas’s birthday party, you know. You shouldn’t just come barging in here. People will talk. They’ll get the wrong idea.”

“Well.” Franz thought for a moment. “I came here to talk, so that’s not a problem. Is Sven the clown about?”

“Yes.” She smirked at him unhelpfully.

“Are you going to tell me where he is?”

“No.” He stood up, ready to loom over her, but she didn’t show any sign of intimidation. “I really don’t think you’ve got his best interests in mind.”

Best interests in mind? What the hell kind of infant is this? “Isn’t he going to be a better judge of that than you?”

To his surprise, she acted as if she was seriously considering the idea. “Possibly,” she admitted. “If you stay right there, I’ll ask him.” Pause. “Hey, Sven! What you say?”

“I say,” said a voice right behind Franz’s ear, “he’s right. Don’t move, what-what?” Franz froze, feeling a hard prod in the small of his back. “That’s right. Sound screen on. Jen, if you’d be so good as to keep the party running? I’m going to take a little walk with my friend here. Friend, when I stop talking you’re going to turn around slowly and start walking. Or I’ll have to shoot your balls off. I’m told it hurts.”

Franz turned round slowly. The clown barely came up to his chin. His face was a bizarre plastic mask: gigantic grinning lips, bulbous nose, green spikes of hair. He wore a pink tutu, elaborate mountaineering boots, and held something resembling a makeup compact in his right hand as if it was a gun.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Start walking.” The clown nodded toward the door.

“If I do that, you’ll die,” Franz said calmly.

“I will, will I? Then so shall you.” The face behind the plastic grin wasn’t smiling, and the makeup compact wasn’t wavering. It was probably some kind of low-caliber pistol. “Who sent you?”

“Your client.” Franz leaned back against the wall and laced his fingers together in front of him to stop his hands shaking.

“My client. Can you describe this mysterious client?”

“You were approached on Earth by a man who identified himself as Gordon Black. He contacted you in the usual way and offered you a fee of twenty thousand per target plus expenses and soft money, installments payable with each successive hit, zero for a miss. Black was about my height, dark hair, his cover was an export agent from—”

“Stop. All right. What do you want? Seeking me out like this, I assume the deal’s off, what-what?”

“That’s right.” Franz tried to make himself relax, pretend this was just another informer and cat’s-paw like the idiots he’d had to deal with on Magna. It wasn’t easy with a bunch of raucous children running around outside their cone of silence and a gun pointing at his guts. He knew Svengali’s record; U. Scott hadn’t stinted on the expenses when it came to covering his own trail of errors. “The business in Sarajevo with the trap suggests that the arrangement has no future. Someone’s identified the sequence.”