Jonah Levin waited in a chair by the curtained window. The Paladin looked tired, like a man who’d had a late night and an early morning. Horn would have been more sympathetic if he hadn’t spent most of his own night in transit from Santa Fe.

Levin gestured at Horn to take a seat in the room’s other chair. “I’m sorry for giving you so little time, but I have to be somewhere else at ten. I gather your visit to Santa Fe proved fruitful.”

“Yes,” Horn said. “Among other things, I can confirm that our friend Henrik Morten is not a particularly nice person.”

“So I’ve gathered. Seems to have helped his career, actually. What’s he been up to in Santa Fe?”

“Hiring one of the local thugs to beat up and attempt to kill an inconvenient girlfriend.”

“‘Attempt’?” The Paladin looked curious. “I gather it didn’t work.”

“I dissuaded the gentleman in question.” Horn paused. “I’m sorry that he couldn’t remain available for a more thorough interrogation, but—”

“I understand.” Levin’s smile was a bit grim. “If I hire someone and tell them to use their own best judgment, I’m not going to argue when they do. I’m assuming that you managed to get Morten’s name from him beforehand?”

Horn shook his head. “Morten was too canny to give his name to the hired muscle—he was just ‘some guy in a bar.’ But I did get the name of the bar, and the bartender recognized Morten’s picture, sure enough.”

“You’re certain?”

“He wasn’t the establishment’s usual sort of customer. The bartender made a point of noticing.”

Levin nodded. “How did Ms. Ruiz take the series of events?”

“Everything came as quite a shock to her, of course.”

Another nod. “Of course.”

“On the other hand, the incident effectively removed any qualms she might have had about revealing everything she knew about Paladin Steiner-Davion’s final project. She didn’t know that it was her boyfriend who’d set up the attack, but she did figure out that it had happened to her because she knew something that she shouldn’t.”

“Now we come to the meat of it.” The Paladin leaned forward, intent. “What was it that Elena Ruiz saw and, presumably, passed along in innocence to Henrik Morten?”

“As she told the story to me,” Horn said, “Paladin Steiner-Davion had been working on his final project for several months. And the endeavor wasn’t just a casual hobby; it placed considerable demands upon both his time and his energy. She told me that she would find him asleep at his desk some mornings, with the display still open on his data terminal.”

“So of course she looked at it.”

Horn nodded. “She says it was correspondence mostly at first, and she didn’t notice anything odd about it except for the fact that he was obviously working hard on something and not discussing it with anyone.”

“She should have followed his example.”

“I considered pointing that out,” Horn said. “But since I was trying to convince her to talk to me at the time—”

“It would have been counterproductive. I understand. Go on.”

“As you may have guessed, one night in casual conversation she mentioned the Paladin’s late hours and his mysterious project to Henrik Morten, and Morten—instead of letting his girlfriend’s moment of indiscretion pass unremarked—encouraged her to snoop further and to pass the results along to him.” Horn paused and shook his head. “She’s adamant that she never actually touched anything, or pried into anything; she only relayed to Morten whatever happened to be left out for her or anyone else to see.”

“She apparently saw more than enough. Does she realize that?”

“I don’t think Henrik Morten was involved with Ms. Ruiz for the sake of her vast intellectual capacity, if that’s what you’re asking,” Horn said. “On the other hand, she does possess an excellent visual memory. When I asked, she was able to reproduce the last item she showed to Morten before the Paladin’s death.”

“You have it with you?”

“Yes.” Horn withdrew a folded piece of paper from the inside pocket of his jacket and handed it across to Jonah Levin. “Under the circumstances, I thought it would be unwise to entrust this to any other method of delivery.”

Levin unfolded the paper and glanced over it quickly. Horn knew what he was seeing: no page title or note of explanation, just three columns, two lists of names and a third of numbers—and those alone had been enough to seal a man’s fate.

Levin closed his eyes briefly after he scanned the list.

“Headache?” Horn asked.

“Sort of. Where’s Morten now?”

“Not in Santa Fe, I know that much. I’d guess he’s back here, since this is the place to be for any diplomat. But whether he’s here for sure, and where in the city he might be, I can’t say.”

“We have to find him,” Levin said firmly. Then he frowned, almost wincing again. “And I might need your help on another matter.”

“As long as you’re still paying, you can come up with all the matters you want. What’s this one?”

Levin looked at the paper again. “I need to talk to another Paladin.”

Counterinsurgency Task Force

Temporary Headquarters, Geneva

Terra, Prefecture X

17 December 3134

Heather GioAvanti refilled her coffee mug from the galley-sized urn that somebody on her ad hoc staff had set up in the task force’s basement headquarters and made a mental note to find out whose idea it had been so that she could officially commend their initiative. As soon as she had the coffee cream-and-sugared to her taste, she withdrew again to her private office to meet her ten o’clock appointment.

A message from Jonah Levin had come to her private number late last night—early this morning, really—asking for a meeting and an exchange of information. She’d thought at first about using her proper office, which was located on the same rarified level of the building as those of the other Paladins, but upon reflection had decided against it.

Up there, access was restricted, which meant that people’s comings and goings would be both noted and logged. These lower-level rooms, on the other hand, had a number of different ways leading in and out. If Jonah Levin wanted to arrive discreetly by the building’s service entrance instead of taking the elevator down from the main lobby, he could do it.

Levin arrived on the hour, without fanfare, looking like a man who hadn’t had much sleep in quite a while. Heather welcomed him into the windowless cubbyhole that served her for a private office. The room had two chairs and a door, which was more than the rest of her task force possessed; it wasn’t much, but it would do. A small video screen in a corner showed looped footage of the riot in Plateau de St. Georges, which Heather had been studying earlier.

“You look like hell, Jonah,” she said.

“It’s not that bad,” he said. “Nobody’s shooting at me, and I actually had time for breakfast.”

“The two signs of a good day,” she agreed. “I got your message—woke up from a sound sleep to get it, in fact—so here we are. You said something about an exchange?”

“Pooling our information, really.”

“You’ve got something to share?”

He nodded. “I do. You may have heard that I’ve been asked to look into Victor Steiner-Davion’s death.”

“I hadn’t heard anything official about that, no.”

“But unofficially?”

Heather smiled. “I’ve heard about it from at least a half-dozen sources. How’s the investigation going?”

“Classified,” Levin said sternly. Heather stiffened in reaction to his tone, but then relaxed as Jonah’s face lightened. “That always sounds better than saying ‘Slowly.’”

“I always tell people I’m just too busy to update them right now.”

“I’ll have to try that one next time. Anyway, it hasn’t all been fruitless. I came across some information you’ll find interesting.”