First Stop Bar, Geneva

Terra, Prefecture X

16 December 3134

Another late evening in a string of too many found Jonah Levin once more in workingman’s clothing at the First Stop Bar. He was drinking beer with a chaser again, amid a crowd hoping to drink enough to forget the past 365 days. It made him feel old, revisiting the bad habits of his youth, even for a good purpose. The things we do for The Republic, he thought; I ought to be at home on Kervil with Anna, not sitting here drinking by myself.

This evening, after a long day of interviews, Jonah had found a message from former-sergeant Turk waiting for him at the Pension Flambard asking for a meeting. From one meeting to another to another, Jonah thought to himself. I’m really a politician now. He yearned to have someone try to kill him, if only to break up the meetings.

After reading the note left for him at the front desk in Madame’s careful handwriting, he’d changed out of his regular clothing and into his workingman’s disguise, then slipped out through the back entrance of the pension.

This close to the election, there was no telling when a roving tri-vid reporter or some faction’s spies might decide to get ambitious and stake out the front door. He was certain that most of them already knew where he stayed when he was in Geneva; after all, he’d never made any attempt to conceal it. Fortunately, Madame Flambard’s discretion was phenomenal, and she was willing to go considerable lengths to protect the privacy of a long-time returning guest.

The First Stop Bar was as dim as before and, thankfully, filled with conversation on every topic except politics. People discussed music, vids, sports, their jobs—but not the election. Jonah let the cleansing flow of casual discussion soothe his jangling nerves. He sat at a table in the back, listening to the scraps of conversation drifting past him while carefully presenting a front of a misanthropic solitary drinker. And as such, he was left alone until late in the evening, when Turk finally showed up.

The former sergeant collected his own beer-and-chaser from the bar and joined Jonah at the table. “Good to see you made it here,” he said. “I couldn’t tell if the woman I left the message with was going to pass it along or not.”

“That’s Madame Flambard.” Jonah smiled. “She’s protective of her guests’ privacy. But extremely reliable.”

“Reliable’s good.”

“Yes. Your message made it sound like you had some information to pass along.”

“Maybe. I’m not sure.”

That was unusual, Jonah reflected. He didn’t recall Turk ever being unsure about anything, back on Kurragin. “‘If it’s worth noticing, it’s worth reporting,’” he said—he was quoting himself from that long-ago time, yet another sign that he was getting old. “Pass it on up and let somebody else sort it out.”

“This isn’t about what you asked me, about the government offices,” Turk said. “I haven’t heard anything from that team yet. This is something different—but if it’s what I think it is, then somebody needs to know about it in a hurry.”

“Don’t keep me in suspense, Sergeant. Spit it out.”

“Here goes, then.” Turk took a long pull at his beer, then settled back in his chair. “The first thing is that my people don’t just work at the government buildings. The Republic gave us our first big custodial contract, all right, and that arrangement is still our bread and butter, but the outfit’s picked up quite a few other clients since you helped me get started.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah. Anyhow, when I put the word out that a friend of mine from way back was looking for information about stuff going on where it shouldn’t be, I didn’t expect anything to happen quite this soon. I thought people would still be trying to make up their minds whether they’d seen something wrong or not.

“But this morning, I had the guy in charge of the St. Croix contract show up in my office with one of his people, a kid by the name of Bruno who does cleaning detail in one of the St. Croix warehouses in the outer ring of the city.”

“Reliable?”

“Not especially. Just not quite unreliable enough to entirely ignore. You know the type.”

“I’ve run into it once or twice,” Jonah admitted. “You don’t often get that sort volunteering information, though. What happened?”

“Well… Bruno ran across something that scared him enough to tell his boss about it, and his boss took one look and brought him over to talk to me.”

“What was it?”

“Bruno says—” the skepticism was evident in Turk’s voice “—that he was just shifting a crate so that he could run the floor cleaner over that area when it somehow broke open.”

Jonah couldn’t suppress a low chuckle. “We’ve heard that song before.”

“He swears the crate opened all by itself.”

“As crates will do,” agreed Jonah, still smiling. “Go on. I’m assuming that what he saw wasn’t—what is it that St. Croix sells?”

“Office supplies.”

“—that the crate wasn’t full of paper clips and manila mailing envelopes.”

“No,” said Turk. “It was full of guns.”

Jonah straightened abruptly. “That’s… not what I was expecting.”

“I don’t think it was what our friend Bruno was expecting, either.” Turk knocked back the chaser to his beer and continued. “So I told Bruno that I ought to fire him for what both of us knew he’d been up to when that crate came open, but that he’d done the right thing by coming to me about the rifles, so I was letting it go. This time. Then I gave him three weeks’ vacation with pay and told him the weather was lovely in the Azores at this time of year and he should go there and think about the value of being a good employee.”

“A good move,” said Jonah. “Safer for him, safer for us.”

“I thought that it might be.” Turk paused and looked curiously at Jonah. “You don’t think that all of this has something to do with Paladin Steiner-Davion’s murder, do you? If he’d found out—”

“I don’t think so,” Jonah said. “Victor was nobody’s fool. If he’d learned that someone was caching weapons in Geneva, he’d have come out and said so right away. He wouldn’t have put off the announcement for political effect.”

“I guess not. Sorry it wasn’t what you were looking for.”

“Just because I wasn’t looking for it,” Jonah said, “doesn’t mean that I’m not interested. Or that there aren’t other people in Geneva who need to know about it.”

Pension Flambard, Geneva

Terra, Prefecture X

16 December 3134

“I’m in town. We need to meet.”

Jonah’s sigh on the other end of the line was audible.

“Sorry,” Horn said. “Did I say something wrong?”

Jonah chuckled. “Just not used to so many meetings. But you’re right. Meet me here at nine a.m.”

Though Burton Horn had spoken with Jonah Levin at the pension only once before, the proprietress remembered him at once.

“Monsieur Horn.” He wouldn’t say that she smiled at him, but her greeting was possibly a shade warmer than the one that she might have given to a complete stranger—and most definitely warmer than the one she would have given to a tri-vid reporter or anyone else she suspected would disrupt her guests’ privacy.

“Madame,” Horn replied. “Paladin Levin said he would be expecting me.”

“Yes. He is waiting in the private parlor.”

The Pension Flambard’s private parlor was a smaller, less welcoming space than the front sitting room. Where the glowing faux-logs on the sitting room hearth gave off both real and psychological warmth, the private parlor had only an ordinary electric radiator set against the room’s blank inner wall. But it had a door stout enough to discourage casual eavesdroppers, curtains of opaque velvet instead of lace, and it could not be seen from the public rooms.