Les Rues-Basses, Geneva

Terra, Prefecture X

17 December 3134

Burton Horn had a pretty good list of places not to go. Morten’s Geneva home, his three favorite restaurants, a nightclub where he was often spotted, homes of his closest political supporters. There was no chance he’d be showing his face at any of those spots right now. Horn could go and strong-arm some of Morten’s friends, but, as enjoyable as that might be, it wouldn’t get him anything. If Morten was as clever as he was supposed to be, he wouldn’t have let anyone close to him know where he was staying.

But even if Morten was going to different places, he was still the same person. Heather GioAvanti had passed contact information from Senator Derius along to Jonah, and Jonah gave it to Horn. Some of it told him nothing—the telephone number was a disposable one, now disconnected, and though the electronic contacts traced back to Geneva, they were easily accessible from anywhere in the world. The physical address was only a post-office box, but that at least was a strong indication that Morten was, in fact, in Geneva. It also helped Horn figure out where in the city he might be.

Horn knew that, if Morten was in the city, he was still going to clubs, still looking to end most nights with a pretty girl on his arm, and still trying to live comfortably, though anonymously. He might give up some places, but Horn couldn’t believe Morten would give up his lifestyle.

Only a few neighborhoods in the city would give Morten the kind of life Horn knew he craved. High-rent districts contained too many eyes that might recognize him, sleepy middle-class areas would not give him enough ways to spend the considerable sums he’d earned recently, and Horn was sure Morten wouldn’t be caught dead living in a slum (neighborhoods that, according to the proponents of The Republic’s Golden Age, didn’t exist).

That pointed Horn to the recovering neighborhoods in the city, places starting to stand up again after years of being trodden under the city’s collective feet. In a decade or so, these areas would become high-rent districts, full of designer boutiques and restaurants so exclusive their name doesn’t appear on their exterior. At the moment, though, they were a mix of artists, recent college graduates, and long-time residents perplexed by the sudden popularity of their neighborhoods. They exploded with new restaurants and trendy nightclubs, and the residential turnover was so rapid that most people in these places didn’t recognize each other. This kind of community would be a perfect place for Morten to hide.

One of these areas, Les Rues-Basses, happened to be within walking distance of the post office Morten was using. Les Rues-Basses seemed to cycle from high-rent to poverty every quarter century or so, always traveling the path to one type of community or the other, never stabilizing at either end of the spectrum.

The docksides, at least in the current incarnation of Les Rues-Basses, were the most deserted part of the neighborhood. But that was soon to change. Abandoned warehouses lined the wharfs, but most of them bore “Coming Soon!” signs that advertised soon-to-be-constructed residences that cost as much as Horn would make in a decade.

Sandwiched between these warehouses was a grimy brick building, a holdout from the old community, with a “Furnished Room for Rent” sign in the front window. Thanks to his ability to pay in cash (working with a Paladin’s expense account had definite benefits), Horn had been allowed to take immediate occupancy of the room the previous day.

His new apartment needed to be both a base of operations and, hopefully, an interrogation chamber. To that end, it needed some work. The layout was simple—long, narrow main room with a small kitchen branching off its end and a bathroom tucked in a corner. Brown stains had already started to peek through a recently applied single coat of off-white paint, and the stiff carpet crunched lightly as Horn walked on it. The supplied furnishings were a threadbare couch, a table that rocked on its legs, and four plastic chairs. A bed folded down from one of the walls.

The first task was changing the lock. Horn knew at least three different ways to mess with a keycard lock, and he was supposed to be on the legitimate side of the law. Sometimes old technology was the best; Horn installed a metal cruciform lock that required a key to operate from either side of the door. Locks like that were very hard to find, but part of Horn’s job was knowing where he could pick up such items.

The windows were next, one off the main room and one off the kitchen. Each window frame received six nails to make sure it would stay shut. Horn then installed a metal grate across each window just in case Morten felt like trying to jump through.

He disabled every electrical outlet except one in the main room. That meant the refrigerator no longer worked, but Horn wasn’t planning on cooking.

The final necessary adjustment to the apartment was insulation. He set a white noise generator in the center of the main room, then toyed with the settings until the field covered the whole room. Anyone trying to eavesdrop by listening through the walls or doors wouldn’t hear more than a murmur of white noise. It wasn’t foolproof—the right microphone could pierce the field like a needle through fabric—but precious few people in Geneva, let alone Les Rues-Basses, had such equipment. And Horn intended to make sure he didn’t get the attention of those who had such resources.

He had to bring up the final alteration from his hover vehicle. Thankfully, the building had a freight elevator, because Horn didn’t relish lugging the solid metal chair up the narrow stairway. Throwing a sheet over it to keep the built-in restraints from drawing attention, Horn hustled it up to his door before anyone became interested in what he was doing. Once he had it inside, Horn bolted the chair to the floor, then made sure the restraints were in working order.

The room was ready. Now all Horn needed was a roommate.

He visited half a dozen nightclubs and a dozen restaurants. At each place he had a different story and a different appearance. He had heard of people going to elaborate lengths to disguise themselves, wearing wigs and fake mustaches and rubber scars. Horn, though, always preferred to travel light, and his changes were simpler. His hair color didn’t change, but sometimes it was slicked back, sometimes tousled. At one restaurant he stiffened his posture to his full two-point-one meters, at another he slumped until he appeared to be no more than one-point-seven meters. At one location he was energetic, flailing his hands as he spoke, at another he was solemn and grave. In the end, none of the eighteen people he spoke to would have given the same description of him.

None of them had ever heard the name Henrik Morten. But at least two of them had seen the face. One was a restaurant that Morten had come to once, about three days ago, and not returned since. The other was a nightclub Morten had been to each of the past two nights.

He wouldn’t be there tonight, Horn knew. Morten was too smart to let himself fall into a pattern of visiting the same place too often. It was possible that Morten would never come back to that club at all. But it gave Horn enough to put a wedge in. Now all he had to do was shove.

It’s impossible to spend much time in a nightclub without gaining a radarlike sense for whom to avoid. Those who can’t develop that sense find themselves running through a series of bad encounters, which quickly disenchants them for the clubbing scene.

At Frou-Frou that night, everyone’s radar was telling them to avoid the man hunched over the end of the bar. He was drinking rapidly, not once leaving his stool to dance. His shoulders were hunched, burying his face in his suit jacket. His right foot twitched with nervous irritability. You could tell at first glance that he was a drunk waiting for an excuse to get into a fight.