He was just over six feet, very lean, with tanned skin and the kind of mop of bleached blond hair that had gone out of fashion in the days when people realized that sunlight gave you cancer. It was the clothes that had everyone really staring, though. Legs the length a fashion model would have killed for were encased in perfectly creased gray flannel pants, ending at real leather shoes that must have cost more than anyone in the bar earned in a month. The silk shirt was perfect, and the tweed jacket combined eccentricity with elegance. The silk cravat, with its gold pin, topped the whole thing off. Everyone gawked and wondered where this creature could possibly have come from.

"Good evening," the man said in an impossibly perfect English accent. "Such a charming place. Barman, I'd be most grateful for a cold beer, and can you tell me where I might find Mr. Shamandar?"

No one spoke for a few seconds. Then Tom looked at Serrin and laughed.

"Hell, I'd better go and get him before someone else does," the troll chuckled. "It's a miracle he made it this far alive. We'd better make sure he gets out that way too." He went over to the newcomer and put an arm around his shoulder, pointing to Serrin's table.

"Over there, chummer," he said. "Man, you are one crazy fragger coming in here like that. They must be lining up to mug you on the way out."

"Really?" the man said, seeming wholly unconcerned. "It wouldn't have been very wise of them, old boy. I possess a truly awesome reaction speed with a Predator."

"Are you for real?" came an ork's snarl from somewhere behind them.

"No, dear fellow, of course I'm not for real. I'm an Englishman from Manhattan. What could be more preposterous than that?"

Ignoring the continuing stares, he shook the hand of Serrin as the elf stood up. Then he sat down while smoothing his pants to preserve the creases. That done, he placed his hands palms-down on the table with the air of someone for whom everything in life is a business meeting.

"I'm on a retainer. You forgot to call, so I tracked you down. That way, you don't lose my exceedingly expensive time. So, let's see amp; you need help with a problem. Someone trying to kidnap you. Give me the details and we'll sort it out tonight."

"How the hell did you find me here?" Serrin asked, amazed.

The man gave him a boyish grin. "You don't want to know. Let's just say it's my way of showing that someone's on board who knows what he's doing."

"This is a thoroughly charming place, of course, but might I suggest something a little more private?" Michael proposed. "How about supper in my suite at the Madison?"

Serrin looked at Tom and nodded. "That might be best. Tom, will you come with us? Please?"

The troll drank up his second glass of mineral water and shrugged. "Ain't got no pressing business tonight. I'm kinda hungry after a day's work, too."

"That's going to cost you," Serrin grinned to the Englishman.

"Not me, term," he smiled back. "Our mutual friend Lord Llanfrechfa is picking up the tab. He told me he'd just made a killing in some talismonger trading on the Pacific Rim, so he's feeling well-disposed to magicians in difficult circumstances. My cab is still waiting. Shall we go?"

With a final thank you to the bemused barman, the Englishman turned and led them out into the last of Seattle's daylight.

Over dinner, Serrin gave Michael the full story. The Englishman didn't eat much, but he was clearly amused, even pleased, as Tom polished off enough for all three of them. Serrin watched the man's eyes, which were never still, their gaze constantly shifting from one point to another. Michael looked like the kind of person who wouldn't understand the meaning of the word relaxation if he looked it up in a dictionary.

"Not a lot to go on," he volunteered as Tom plunged into a heaping plate of meringues. "But there are some obvious things I can check right now. First, we can see if the Damascus League is displeased with you for your public-spiritedness in saving the mayor. For starters, I think I'll try German military intelligence, if that isn't an oxymoron. The Israelis tend to be rather difficult to crack, so I'll move on to them only if I have to."

Serrin looked at Michael with newfound respect. From what he'd always heard deckers say, Israeli security was an invitation to brain-fried suicide. No decker in his right mind would want to try to penetrate their matrix.

'Then we'll put through some calls to Bonn to see if we can learn something about how that message got to you at the airport. Let us hope the mysterious Frieda can provide some startling revelation. Frankly, I'd be very surprised if we came up with anything there. Next, I'll check on the incoming flights to JFK just before you left there."

"Why?" Serrin asked as Tom stuffed the penultimate meringue pastry into his mouth and chewed it noisily.

"Because of the scarred man. I'd say it's more likely that he had just arrived himself than that he'd followed you there. Checking incoming flights might narrow the range of possibilities. Even allowing for connecting foreign flights expanding the field of possible foreign embarkations, looking at the incoming flight schedules may tell us something. At the very least, we could provisionally eliminate some possibilities."

"Um, what exactly is it that you do?" Serrin asked him. The way Michael was virtually taking over the whole operation was almost alarming. He was going to have to learn more about this Englishman before he would feel comfortable with that.

"My dear boy, I'm a facthound. I am paid disgustingly large sums of money by various persons and organizations to discover things that their own personnel haven't been able to."

"Sounds dangerous," Serrin said dubiously.

"Not at all. I'm too valuable for my employers to consider killing me. Of course, they do know that from time to time I might crack something they wouldn't want known, and pass it on to other employers, but I don't

have anything to worry about for at least a couple of years yet."

"Why's that?" Serrin was starting to feel like his mission in life was to pump out ever more questions.

"Because that's when I'll probably be over the hill and less valuable than I am now," the man said serenely. "Then I'll probably retire to some ghastly little country estate in Scotland, grow conifers, marry someone called Morag, and produce two-point-seven horribly over-intelligent children. Possibly." He sat back and rubbed at his lips with his index finger, half-concealing a sardonic smile.

"Anyway, that's not important now. Let's get back to the matter at hand. We know as far as anyone can know that someone wishes to abduct you. It does not seem likely that this is for ransom, right?"

"I don't have that much money. I don't have relatives with any money, either," the mage replied.

"So there's some other reason. If we want to take this message seriously, then that reason applies to other people also. The message referred to 'others in the same situation.' The question has to be, what does your mysterious informant mean by that? I would be inclined to take the most obvious thing about you: the fact that you're a magician. Of course, it could be because you're an elf, but then that's less statistically discriminating. We'll keep that as a back-up option. But it might be both: that you are an elven mage. Which greatly narrows the field. So, I'll have to get to work looking at cases of elven mages kidnapped in, say, the last year. Then work further backward if I get too few positive cases."

"Surely that will take you an age," Serrin wondered.

"Oh, hours" Michael replied, quite seriously. "I'll have to get back to Manhattan to do it. I have a remote here, and I can fire up the smart frames for the obvious stuff, but I need my Fairlights for this. As I'm sure you'll appreciate, I don't move them around."