“Have you ever done anything, even once, with no thought of a return?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“How old were you? Six?”

“Younger. And I immediately decided that there was no percentage in it.”

“Who did your bounty hunter have to kill for you before you teamed up with him?”

“Actually, he had to postpone killing someone,” said Virtue. “But we’re straying from the subject. I need a name.”

He nervously lit another cigarette before his first had gone out. “You must understand: I can’t be connected with it.”

“You won’t be,” she assured him, leaning forward intently. “The name.”

“This is it?” he said. “You’ll never bring up that damned story again?”

“I promise.”

He sighed. “Dimitri Sokol.”

“How big is he?”

“Very. He’s a multimillionaire, he’s a director of half a dozen corporations, he’s held a couple of political offices, and word is that he’s about to buy himself an ambassadorship to Lodin Eleven.”

“Better and better,” she said with a predatory grin. “What have you got on him?”

“Officially, nothing.”

“Come on, Leander. Just blurt it all out and then forget you told me. Women?”

Smythe shook his head. “Not a chance.”

“Men? Little boys? Drugs?”

“Just money. He bankrolled a smuggling operation out in the Binder system, though I think it would take you a couple of lifetimes to pierce through his corporate veil. I’ve got a feeling that he was peripherally involved in a couple of murders six years ago—very peripherally—and I know he’s given and taken bribes. Anyway, somewhere along the way he decided that he wanted to be respectable, and he’s been cleaning up his image for the past three years.”

“And now he wants an ambassadorship?”

“So I’m told.”

“Okay, Leander—start giving me names and dates, and then I think we can go our separate ways.”

“I don’t know any names and dates for sure. It’s all gossip and conjecture.”

“I know. Now let’s have them.”

“Damn! I wish I could give you a suicide pill or something, just in case this doesn’t work.”

“I wouldn’t take it.”

“I know,” he muttered.

Their lunch arrived, and while they ate—she enthusiastically, he totally without interest—Smythe laid out such details of Sokol’s dealings as he had been able to piece together. Virtue took no notes, but he knew that she’d be able to recite the list verbatim a month later.

“I’ll try to set up an appointment with Sokol for tomorrow afternoon,” Virtue announced when they were finished with dessert and sipping their after-dinner drinks.

“What makes you think he’ll see you?” asked Smythe.

“Turn down an interview with a journalist from Deluros with an ambassadorship in the offing?” she replied with a chuckle. “Not a chance.”

“Since when are you from Deluros?”

“Since tomorrow morning.”

“He’ll check you out before he sees you.”