"You were worried enough, I remember," Greg said. "You and your People's Constables. Never had much joy catching us, though, did you?"

Armstrong pursed his lips. "Quite. Well, now you have the facts, make the connection."

Greg read the anger in his face, sharp-focused determination, riding him hard. Armstrong was vengeance seeking, said his native intuition, a strong clear message. "My God," he said wonderingly. "Philip Evans blew up Downing Street."

Gabriel threw Greg a quick startled glance, then twisted sharply to look up at Armstrong.

"Very good, Mr. Mandel," said Leopold Armstrong. "The electron-compression warhead was brought into the country by one of his Prowlers, smuggled into Downing Street by his security division's hardliners. Kendric here tells me Evans laughed when the warhead exploded, thinks of himself as a more successful version of Guy Fawkes, no doubt, très romantique. He obliterated me once, Mr. Mandel; just believing I was dead was enough for the country to march in rebellion against the PSP. But now, now that bastard has exploited his money to do it to me again, to do it to all of us. Immortality, Mr. Mandel. He has bought himself immortality, with his imperialist power, his obscene personal wealth. Another twenty years I'm good for, and a lot can be done in that time. But what is a pitiful twenty years to Evans now? He has eternity. He will see me dead again, for real this time. And do you know what the real ball-kicker of it is? He won't even care; my actual death will be of supreme indifference to him. Because to him, secure in his present incarnation, we are all less than nothing. That, Mr. Mandel, cannot be allowed to pass unchallenged. That is why I risked blowing my cover, all my preparations. Because I am not going to allow him to escape death. Death is universal, making us all equal in the end."

"How about you, di Girolamo?" Greg asked. "You believe all this crap? You've got enough obscene personal wealth to translocate your memories like Philip Evans. You going to die when you don't have to?"

Armstrong put on a pained expression. "Please, Mr. Mandel. Kendric and I are not going to be driven apart by your desperation. Our mutual interests are too strong."

"I can't figure you," Greg said to Kendric. "You knew about the giga-conductor, yet you let Julia buy your family house out of the Event Horizon backing consortium. Why? You've kissed goodbye to a fortune."

"A deal," Kendric said thinly. "In return for informing the President of Philip Evans's NN core I will be given Event Horizon on a plate; not some derisory percentage, all of it."