“Let me see.” He called up the logs on his desk screen and perused the listings without bothering to show them to Horn. “Yes,” he said at last. “There was one.”

“When did it come in?”

“I’m afraid that I’ve already exceeded my warrant,” the bureaucrat said. He stood and offered his hand. “May I show you out?”

“I know the way,” Horn said, standing also.

As he stood, he glanced casually at the desk screen. One line was highlighted in yellow. Thirty-second call, abandoned before connection. Pay phone. Number identified as a restaurant and bar. Time, twenty-two minutes before three in the afternoon. That would be about right for someone who’d just gotten in at the DropPort and was looking for lunch.

The address of the bar, unfortunately, wasn’t on the screen. Nor was the text of the call.

Back on the street, Horn checked in with his answering service. No messages. Belgorod was a DropPort, which meant that there were probably half a thousand licensed bars in the city. He’d need a way to narrow them down. With no guarantee that he’d come any closer to Lieutenant Owain Jones if he did.

While Horn was turning the problem over in his mind, a car pulled up to the sidewalk next to him. The car’s back door opened and a man inside said, “Get in.”

Horn took an automatic step away. “Thanks, I don’t need a ride.”

“I said, get in.” The speaker had a needle-gun.

Screw that, Horn said to himself. Aloud, he said, “Sorry, tovarich, I don’t have the time.”

He spun, kicking the door closed fast enough to break a wrist on anyone who might have been holding it open, and sprinted into the open door of the nearest shop.

The store sold hats. Horn tried one on, examining himself in the mirror and watching the front door at the same time. Sooner or later, someone would get tired of waiting and come in after him.

A salesman approached. “May I help you, sir?”

Horn removed the hat he’d been trying on and looked at it. “Yes. Do you have this style in dark brown?”

“A moment.” The salesman vanished.

Horn took the opportunity to check his answering service again. This time the service operator said, “Yes, there’s been a call. The man wouldn’t identify himself, said you’d know. He left a number.”

Horn copied it.

“Thanks.”

“Here’s a brown hat, sir,” the salesman said. “We have several in various shades of brown, and a similar style in charcoal gray. Would you care to see it?”

“Charcoal gray? Yes, please.”

As soon as the salesman had gone away again, Horn called the number he’d gotten from his answering service. Honest Igor from the pawnshop answered.

“Thought it might be you,” Igor said. “Found you a driver who picked up a fare at the DropPort. He remembers the guy.”

“Can you put me in touch with him?”

“I know how.”

“Great. Have him and his cab meet me in front of”—Horn checked the name on the shop’s hatboxes—“the Abelard Hat Shop as soon as he can get here.”

“That’ll cost you.”

“I’ll pay it.”

“You’re the boss.”

The line clicked off as the salesman returned with yet more hatboxes. Horn tried on the charcoal-gray hat and several others, still watching the mirror.

“I’ll take the dark brown one,” he said, when he had drawn out the process for as long as he could. He was about to add—since a good hat was a worthwhile investment no matter who was paying for it—“And the one in charcoal gray as well,” when three men walked in through the front door of the shop.

“Call the police. Right now,” Horn said to the clerk.

“Your hat?”

“It’ll have to wait,” Horn said.

The leader of the group of men had his hand in his pocket, and there was a suspicious lump in the cloth. That meant he was either an amateur or an incompetent—he couldn’t aim that way, and his hand and arm were tied up and useless.

Horn grabbed the man by his coat sleeve and pulled him forward and down. The man staggered a bit. Horn pushed him into the path of the two men who were trailing after him, then tossed a hat rack through the shop window and followed it out onto the sidewalk just as a cab pulled up in front. Horn opened the cab door and slid in.

“Where to?” asked the cabdriver.

“Honest Igor’s.”

“You’re the guy who called?”

“Yeah. And now I’m in a hurry.”

The cab driver put the vehicle into gear and took off, just as the trio from inside the store plunged out to the sidewalk. “So what’s up?” the driver asked, once they had left the hat shop several blocks behind them.

Horn passed him a sizable roll of money. “Did you pick up a fare at the DropPort a few days ago, around the fourteenth?”

“I pick up guys at the DropPort every day,” the cab driver said. “What was so special about this one?”

“He was from Northwind.”

The cab driver thought for a moment. “Yeah,” he said finally. “I had me one of those. He wanted a ride downtown, but halfway there, he wanted to stop. He handed me a wad of cash, just like you did—big bills, twenties and fifties, a whole lot more than the fare. Like the money didn’t matter to him.”

“That’s good,” said Horn. “Take me to where you dropped him off. And if you can make sure no one is following us on the way, that’s even better.”

The cabdriver looked at him curiously in the rearview mirror. “You’re one of the guy’s friends?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not to me it doesn’t.”

“Then don’t worry about it.” Horn settled back against the upholstery of the car seat and waited, watching the buildings zip past on either side.

“Here you are,” the driver said at last. “This is the spot where he bailed.”

“Did he say where he was going from here?”

“No.”

Horn passed over another large wad of cash. “Thanks. And if you can forget that you saw either him or me, your life will probably be smoother all the way around.”

“You got it, boss.” The driver grinned. “So tell me now—are you on his side?”

“I think maybe I am.”

“Good. He seemed like a decent enough guy. See ya.”

“I don’t think so,” Horn said, but he said it after the cabdriver had departed.

Horn looked up and down the street. The neighborhood was an older one, full of small shops with apartments above them. Well, time to wear out more shoe leather. The call had come from a bar. He’d do an expanding square search around this spot, stopping at every establishment with a liquor license until he found the right one.

The fourth place he stopped was the Pescadore Rus, where Ivan Gorky was waiting tables and tending bar. Gorky remembered the man with the short hair and the Northwind accent, who’d come in on a slow afternoon and left without paying his bill.

“I’ll pay it for him,” Horn said. “He’s a friend.”

Gorky’s face brightened, and he reached for an object that he had tucked away by the cash register. “Then maybe you can give this back to him, as well.”

Sometime after that, Burton Horn sat in a branch of the Belgorod Public Library. He’d just viewed a data disc, and had seen things that no one should have seen:

A Paladin of the Sphere, departing through a checkpoint in a Blade BattleMech.

A log recording of that Paladin’s interaction with the outpost guards, with voice data.

Testimony from the guards themselves, confirming the evidence recorded in the log.

He’d have to be careful, Horn thought, on his way back to Jonah Levin. Because somebody very powerful was about to be made very, very unhappy.