“Just because our primary duty is to defend the Realm, it doesn’t mean we want to see the rest of the world go to hell,” Smith told her a little petulantly. “If we could stop hyperflu everywhere, we would. We didn’t start this war, and we’re not interested in saving just our own people—but charity begins at home.”

“It’s not me you have to convince,” Lisa told him soothingly. “You don’t even have to convince Herr Geyer if you don’t want to. But he isn’t dangerous just because he doesn’t see things the way you do. Nor are the great majority of the Millenarians, or groups like the Real Women. They’re no more likely to spawn mad bombers and random shooters than the rest of the population—maybe less, to the extent that their ideologies provide some sort of safety valve. I’ve caught a lot of murderers in my time, and although the ones I’ve encountered are a skewed sample, because all the people with real motives can usually be identified and arrested without requiring my kind of voodoo, they’re mostly loners unable to conceive of any escape from their own tortured predicaments. Conspiracies like the one that formed to snatch Morgan Miller are rare exceptions—and I can’t believe they’re enemies of the state, no matter what kind of rhetoric they employ. If Stella Filisetti knew Morgan as well as I do, she’d never have set this snowball rolling.”

“But you’d have to think that, wouldn’t you?” Smith observed, employing all the delicacy and sensitivity he’d displayed when he had blithely suggested to Herr Geyer that the Institute of Algeny was a neoNazi organization. “If only to save your own self-respect.”

“Yes,” she admitted, to herself as well as to him. “Maybe I would, even if I were wrong. But I’m not wrong. I do know Morgan Miller better than anyone else does, and I know that if he had what Stella Filisetti thinks he has, he wouldn’t have buried it and he wouldn’t be trying to dispose of it under the table to Ahausuerus or the Algenists.”

“I can’t assume that,” Smith told her flatly, “and as a member of the police force, neither can you.”

“I know,” Lisa conceded reluctantly.

The helicopter was settling gently into the space reserved for it in the university’s parking area. It was only a few hundred meters from there to the Renaissance Hotel, where Smith’s car was waiting. It wouldn’t matter much whether it was still harboring a bug or two, Lisa thought; there weren’t any more questions that Peter Grimmett Smith could profitably ask, and even he was tired of asking unprofitable ones. The conversation lapsed as the copter settled onto the tarmac and the three of them made their way to the other vehicle.

The silence allowed Lisa the luxury of a brief period of mental relaxation before Ginny pulled into the Renaissance parking lot. It required only a single unobtrusive sideways glance to reassure Lisa that Mike Grundy had done as he was asked and had brought her own car to the hotel. She collected her room key from reception and without any comment, accepted the bulky package that was handed over at the same time. She went up to her room, where she stayed close to the door as she took out the keys to her car, listening closely all the while for sounds of movement in the corridor.

As soon as she was reasonably sure she would be unobserved, she slipped out again and headed for the service stairs. She didn’t need to go through reception to get back to the parking lot, and there didn’t seem to be anyone watching as she slipped into her car and started the motor. No one followed as she drove away into the night. Dawn had still not fully come, but it could not now be far off.

EIGHTEEN

Although she had no watch to keep time with, Lisa’s impression was that it took less than ten minutes to get back to Number 39—but she might have been wrong, given that her onboard computer didn’t register a single offense or an instance of contributory negligence. She parked the car in the school playground, where her intruders had left their vehicle before making their own surreptitious approach to the building, and she let herself in with a minimum of noise. She tiptoed up to the second floor, then knocked softly on the Charlestons’ door.

Unfortunately, soft knocking didn’t do the trick. She had to knock harder, then harder still. In the end, though, she heard footsteps within the apartment and repositioned herself so that she could be seen through the glass peephole.

John Charleston must have recognized her immediately, but when he opened the door, it was only by a crack.

“Lisa?” he said anxiously. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said as reassuringly as she could. “I need to use your phone.”

“Why? What’s wrong with yours?”

“It’s a crime scene upstairs,” she told him. “It hasn’t been cleared for entry yet, and I don’t have my mobile. It won’t take long.”

He was still suspicious—for which she couldn’t blame him, given that her real reason for not wanting to use her own phone was that she feared that the call might be overhead—but he unchained the door so she could slip through.

He was wearing a dressing gown that was so dead as to be slightly malodorous, but she didn’t make any comment. He indicated the phone and then stood still, making no move toward the bedroom from which he had presumably emerged. Martha called from within to ask what was happening.

“It’s nothing,” he replied. “Go back to sleep.”

Lisa tapped out the number of Mike Grundy’s mobile. As soon as he replied, she said, “It’s Lisa, Mike. Are you free to talk?”

“Sure,” he said uneasily.

“Meet me where we had the run-in with the red Nissan yesterday,” she said. “Your car’s computer logged it, in case you don’t remember. Soon as possible, okay?”

“What—” he began.

“Okay”Lisa repeated insistently.

He got the message. “Okay,” he said, and immediately rang off.

She wasn’t off the hook yet. John Charleston had heard every word. Before he could open his mouth to ask her what it was all about, though, she lifted a finger to her lips. “Police business,” she said in a stage whisper. “If anyone asks, I was never here.”

“Oh,” he said unenthusiastically. “Yeah, I guess.” He might have said more, but his gaze suddenly moved upward as he fixed his stare on the ceiling.

Because Lisa lived in the topmost apartment, she had never quite realized how loud a creaking floorboard might sound beneath the lath-and-plaster ceiling below it, at least in the dead of night. She felt a sudden chill of fear, not so much because she thought she was in physical danger, but because she foresaw that her plan might have to be recalculated yet again. If the radfems had come back for her, that might be convenient, in a way, but if she were to convince them that she meant business, she really ought to be the one to make the approach. As Leland had shrewdly observed, anything said by a captive under duress was likely to be bullshit, and likely to be construed as bullshit even if it were the sober truth. Allowing herself to be taken prisoner might provide an easy route to the heart of the matter, but it would seriously hurt her chance of taking control once she got there.

“Shit,” she murmured

“I thought—” Charleston began.

Lisa hadn’t any time to waste. “Have you got a gun?” she asked sharply.

“A gun?” he spluttered. “That would be—”

“Just give me the gun, John,” she said, dismissing any objections with a casual gesture of her wounded hand. “I need it.”

He had to go into the bedroom to remove it from its hiding place. Citizen mice always kept their illicit guns in the bedroom, because the fear that moved them to arm themselves was that of waking up in the dead of night—as Lisa had done little more than twenty-four hours before—to find intruders in their home.