"And they know where I've been and who I've talked to. The implications of that are fairly obvious. I mean, I don't think anyone followed me here. But they might have. Or planted a locator in my car or something. I have no way of knowing."

All that was possible, Turk thought.

"Lise," he said gently, "it might be worse."

"Worse?"

"There's a friend of mine, a guy I've known a long time. His name is Tomas Ginn. He's a Fourth. That's not public information, but he's pretty upfront about it if he trusts a person. I thought you might like to talk to him. But I had to clear that with him first. I visited him this morning; he promised to think about it. But when I called him tonight I couldn't get hold of him, and when I went to his place he was gone.

Abducted. Apparently some people in a white van took him away."

She looked at him wide-eyed and said, "Oh, Christ." She shook her head. "He was what, arrested?"

"Not formally arrested, no. Only the Provisional Government has the power to make an arrest, and they don't do plainclothes warrantless raids—not to my knowledge."

"So he was kidnapped? That's a reportable crime."

"I'm sure it is, but the police are never going to hear about it. Tomas is vulnerable because of what he is.

A blood test would prove he's a Fourth, and that in itself is enough to get him shipped back to the States and put on permanent probation or worse. A neighbor told me about the men in the van, but she'd never say any of that to a government official. Where my friend lives, his neighbors are generally people with a lot of exposure on legal grounds—a lot of what people do for a living in Tomas's neighborhood is prohibited under the Accords, and most of them are squatting on land they don't have title to."

"You think Brian knows something about this?"

"Maybe. Or maybe not. It sounds like Brian's pretty far down the pecking order."

"The Genomic Security office at the consulate is kind of a joke compared to what they do back home.

They run facial-recognition software at the ports and occasionally serve a warrant on some fugitive dog-cloner or black-market gene-enhancer, but that's about it. At least until now." She paused. "What he told me was that it would be smart for me to go home. Back to the States."

"Maybe he's right."

"You think I should leave?"

"If you're concerned about your safety. And probably you ought to be."

She sat up straighter. "Obviously I'm concerned about my safety. But I'm concerned about other things, too. I'm here for a reason."

"Clearly these people don't fuck around, Lise. They followed you, and it would be wise to assume they're the people who kidnapped Tomas."

"And they're interested in the woman in the photograph, Sulean Moi."