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Donovan glared at her. ‘Why? I told you I would challenge Kohn.’

‘The attempt to incite a citizen’s arrest was, shall we say, excessive,’ Bleibtreu-Fèvre interposed. ‘However, we do at least now know for certain that Taine is with him. Even if we have temporarily frightened them off.’

‘That’s not the problem!’ Melody Lawson snapped. ‘If you’d given me a chance…there was another person with them.’ She reached for a patch of scene and stuck it where they could all see it: a young man walking backwards, open-mouthed, behind Janis Taine. ‘That isn’t one of Kohn’s gang. It’s Jordan Brown, who was involved in the Black Plan penetration incident this afternoon.’ She ran her hands distractedly through her shining hair and halo, leaving little flecks of gold figment on her fingers. ‘That suggests very sinister possibilities.’

Donovan felt some calm returning, a recognition that perhaps he’d lost it for a couple of seconds.

‘I…apologize for my haste,’ he said. ‘All the same, there seems no reason why Kohn shouldn’t show up to claim the ransom. I’ll have the hospital staked out by morning. In the meantime, why don’t you check your exile’s records?’

‘I certain shall,’ Mrs Lawson said grimly. ‘He was disaffected for some time. Goodness knows who he was in contact with.’

‘This man Kohn,’ said Bleibtreu-Fèvre. ‘Do you know anything about him?’

Donovan frowned. ‘He’s the leader of a small gang of security mercenaries…other than a nasty streak of pro-technology fanaticism, they’re nothing special. As it happens, the hired fighter who was on my team last night is a former member.’

‘What?’ Bleibtreu-Fèvre looked appalled. ‘I find that suspicious.’

Donovan could see the paranoia building as Lawson and Bleibtreu-Fèvre exchanged glances. He tried to head it off before he started down that path himself.

‘She broke with them and their outlook a long time ago. No, the only significance this has is that it creates a strong personal antagonism between her and Kohn. As I said, this could work in our favour.’

‘Could you raise some local forces to watch their house?’ Dr Van asked, suddenly leaning into the discussion. ‘Possibly intervene directly?’

‘Not a chance,’ Donovan said. ‘The whole area is covered by a network of defence agencies, crawling with ANR cadres and sympathizers, patrolled by space-movement militia. Most of the houses are built to withstand at least indirect blast damage. Kohn’s is probably capable of holding off a tank.’

‘…I see,’ said Van, reacting after seconds of satellite delay. ‘A liberated zone.’ For the first time, he smiled at them all.

‘Quite,’ said Bleibtreu-Fèvre. ‘I wonder if Kohn has any, as we say, form.’

‘Why not check your agency’s records?’ Mrs Lawson suggested.

Bleibtreu-Fèvre’s fetch seemed to diminish slightly. ‘I would have to give a full accounting of the circumstances,’ he said. ‘That might…raise unnecessary alarm.’

Might be embarrassing, Donovan thought, unsympathetically. As a field operative, Bleibtreu-Fèvre must have a great deal of autonomy, but the bureaucratic mechanisms of Stasis would still kick in at sensitive points. Personal records was probably one of them, surrounded by smoke and mirrors: safeguards – reassurances that a secret police force which went around stamping on dangerous scientists wasn’t any kind of threat to normal folks’ privacy and civil liberties, no sir.

‘I can help you there,’ he said. ‘Just let me know your passwords and procedures and I’ll do an end-run around them.’

‘Impossible!’

Donovan looked straight back at the Man In Black’s glowing, glowering eyes. Cheap trick, Hallowe’en lantern…

‘Not with your help, it isn’t,’ he said.

Bleibtreu-Fèvre considered it, his face frozen in a downloading trance. Donovan had counted past sixty when the fetch’s lips moved again.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘What is there to lose?’

Using the codes and pathways supplied by Bleibtreu-Fèvre, Donovan got into the US/UN system so easily that he marked time for a few seconds before launching the database call.