If this were Duncan talking, Heather would be bracing herself for another piece of useless information along the lines of “The White Heat Consortium has decided to have pasta for lunch,” but she knew Jonah Levin wouldn’t personally deliver inconsequential information.

“Whaddya got?” she asked.

“I have a contact who has a man inside a St. Croix warehouse, where he stumbled upon a hidden weapons cache.”

Heather sat bolt upright in her chair. “You’re joking. Where’s the cache, and what kind of weaponry are we looking at?”

“Pistols—lasers, flamers, you name it—shotguns, rifles, even an armored car. And ammunition, if my informant’s description is to be believed. Here’s the where.” Levin passed across a slip of paper with a street address written on it in neat, regular handwriting.

Heather took the paper and, after a glance at the address, rose from her chair. “Just a minute.”

She went over to the office door and opened it. “Koss!”

The junior of her two assigned Knights left her desk and came forward. “Yes, ma’am?”

She thrust the paper at her. “Check and see if this warehouse is on that list I had you draw up.”

Koss’ eyes went bright. “The where-would-I-hide-things list?”

“That one. If it’s on there, give yourself a pat on the back. If it isn’t, start tweaking your criteria until that address does show up, and get me a revised list ASAP. Santangelo!”

The senior Knight came forward and joined them. “Ma’am?”

“Get together a three-person crew and check out all of Koss’ addresses, starting with this one. Discreetly. We don’t know what’s up yet, and the last thing we want is to spook people into action before we’re ready.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Heather stepped back into her private office and closed the door, shutting out the noise of sudden intense activity beyond. She turned again to Jonah Levin.

“That should keep them busy for a while.” She sat back down. “I’m afraid I don’t have anything quite as high-grade as that to offer in exchange. Unless you’re interested in some dossiers on the Kittery Renaissance and assorted other fringe political groups?”

“They can’t hurt,” Levin said. “I don’t think that Victor’s death was faction-related—no group with any credibility has claimed credit, for one thing—but you never can tell. And the Kittery people certainly weren’t very fond of Victor.”

“I’ll send the files over. I’m sure you’ve been anxious to spend more time in front of your data screen anyway.”

Levin didn’t respond. He didn’t even seem to be looking at her, and his mouth was slightly agape.

“Jonah?”

He kept staring off to her right, looking like he’d just had a minor stroke.

“Jonah?” she said again. “What’s the matter?”

His hand fluttered upward until it pointed at the screen in the corner of her office.

“What is that?”

“My video screen. What’s the matter with you?”

“No, no,” Jonah said, leaning forward so far that he was no longer sitting. “What’s on?”

“Oh, that. Did you hear about the riot in Plateau de St. Georges the other day? A few places—banks and the like—got some pieces of the action on video. I’ve been watching it, seeing if I could pick out any possible Kittery Renaissance members.”

“Move it back. A minute ago, I saw something. Move it back.”

Heather stared at his face. Whatever he had seen, it was more compelling to him than the weapons cache.

She picked up a small controller, pressed a button, and the images on the screen flew backward. She watched the timer until she had reviewed nearly a minute of footage.

“There!” Jonah exclaimed. “What was that?”

“What?”

“No, dammit, he’s gone again. Go back, then play it slow.”

Heather obeyed. She watched the screen.

The camera was posted over the entrance to Bank du Nord, looking down broad steps to the street below. The woman Mandela had called Norah was little more than a tall blur in this shot, gesticulating wildly, pushing away someone who came too close. But she wasn’t what Jonah was watching.

The doors below the camera flew open and two guards ran out. Instead of running straight down the steps, they veered wide to the left, quickly moving out of the camera’s sight. They must have ran right at someone on the steps, because he had to jump quickly to the right, into the camera’s range, to avoid them. Just as quickly, he bounced back left, out of sight.

“That man!” Jonah said, now fully standing. “Get a freeze on that man!”

Heather fiddled with the buttons until the screen held a reasonably clear image. She zoomed in on his face as much as possible.

Duncan chose that moment to burst through her door with a fistful of notes.

“Not now!” Heather barked before Duncan could speak. He meekly backed out of the room.

She turned back to Jonah, who still stared at the screen. Air escaped his mouth like a leak from a tire. “That’s Henrik Morten.”

It was Heather’s turn to drop her jaw. “That’s Henrik Morten?”

Jonah finally pried his eyes off the screen. “You know who Henrik Morten is?”

“His name recently came up, yes. What do you know about him?”

Jonah shook his head and sat back in his chair.

“Looks like our meeting isn’t over yet,” he said.

Federal Penitentiary, Geneva

Terra, Prefecture X

17 December 3134

It’s time, Heather thought, to get our hands a little dirty.

The election was only days away, and Levin had already done a pretty thorough job of milking official sources for information on Henrik Morten. The problem was, in matters like these, officials usually were quite deliberate about keeping themselves in the dark. The more they didn’t know about specific activities, the more they could deny.

Heather needed to talk to someone who would have a better knowledge of the ins and outs of insurgence plots, and the role, if any, Henrik Morten played in any of them.

Santangelo had wanted to come along, insisting (with all due respect) that he was a more intimidating presence than she, and might be better able to loosen the tongue of Heather’s quarry. However, the interrogation rooms of the federal prison on Geneva were closely monitored, and even a Paladin had trouble getting around those restrictions. The interviewee, knowing he couldn’t be physically assaulted, would be all but immune to Santangelo’s brand of intimidation.

One of the reasons Heather had risen to the rank of Paladin, though, was that she knew more than one way to loosen a tongue.

After negotiating four separate security checkpoints, Heather found herself waiting in a room one and a half meters square, barely large enough for the chair in which she sat. In front of her was a wall of thick ferroglass, and on the other side of the glass was an empty chair. She couldn’t see the tiny, nearly invisible camera lenses scattered in the walls in both rooms, but she knew they were there.

The door to the other room opened, and Royle Cragin strolled in. From the neck up, it appeared that prison hadn’t made a dent in Cragin’s personal style. His hair was carefully parted and every strand was in its appropriate place, and he still wore his horn-rimmed glasses, an affectation for a man with vision better than 20/20. He looked more like a prosperous investment banker than a detainee in a maximum-security prison. He certainly didn’t look like the revolutionary his court papers said he was.

Of course, Cragin’s personal style never would have allowed him to wear a fluorescent yellow jumpsuit, or magnetically clasped shackles on his ankles and wrists. He seemed to be used to the shackles, and he accomplished the short shuffle to his chair with something approaching grace. He said down smoothly, and Heather knew that the jumpsuit concealed a physique as powerful as it had been the day of his capture—a day that had ended with the death of two Knights of the Sphere.