Kirchberg had done him a number of small favors in the past and Brian had done more than a few in return. The settled eastern coast of Equatoria was a United Nations protectorate, at least nominally, with a complicated set of laws established and constantly revised by international committees. The closest thing to a fully-established police force was Interpol, though blue-helmeted soldiers did most of the daily enforcement. The result was a bureaucracy that created more paperwork than justice and existed mainly to smooth over conflicts between hostile national interests. To get anything done, you had to know people. Kirchberg was one of the people Brian knew.

Kirchberg answered promptly and Brian listened to his inevitable complaints—the weather, the bullying oil cartels, his boneheaded underlings—before getting down to business. Finally, as Kirchberg wound down, he said, "I want to give you a name."

"Fine," he said. "Just what I need. More work. Whose name?"

"Tomas Ginn." He spelled it.

"And why are you interested in this person?"

"Departmental matter," Brian said.

"Some desperate American criminal? A better-baby salesman, a renegade organ-vendor?"

"Something like that."

"I'll run it when I can. You owe me a drink."

"Anytime," Brian said.

He didn't tell Sigmund and Weil about that, either.

* * * * *

It was the following morning that the photograph rolled out of his printer, along with an unsigned note from Kirchberg.

Brian looked at the photograph, then put it face down on his desk, then picked it up again.

He had seen worse things. What he thought about immediately and involuntarily was the body he had discovered beyond the outer limits of the church picnic a quarter of a century ago, the body which had lain among the exposed roots of two trees with its eyes gone milky white and its skin traversed by feckless ants. He felt the same involuntary lurch of his stomach.

The photograph was of an old man's body broken on a salt-encrusted rock. The marks on the body might have been massive bruises or simply the effects of decomposition. But there was no mistaking the bullet wound in the forehead.

Kirchberg's unsigned note said: Washed up near South. Point two days ago; no papers but identified as Tomas W. Ginn (U.S. Merchant Marine DNA database). One of yours?

Mr. Ginn had wandered outside the boundaries of the picnic, it seemed. And so, he thought with sickly dismay, had Lise.

* * * * *

In the afternoon he called Pieter Kirchberg again. This time Kirchberg was less chatty.

"I got what you sent me," Brian said.

"No need to thank me."

"One of ours, you said. What did you mean by that?"

"I'd just as soon not discuss it."

"An American, you mean?"

No answer. One of yours. So, yes, an American, or was Pieter suggesting that Tomas Ginn belonged to Genomic Security? Or that his death did? Maybe he meant one of your killings.

"Is there anything else?" Kirchberg asked. "Because I have a lot of work waiting for me…"