“She’s got to have a message drop somewhere in Hektor. There’s a chance that she’s already contacted Cain, so tomorrow I want you to find some way to get word to Santiago. Warn him to be on the alert, just in case Cain or this gambler actually manage to hook up with the Swagman.”

“Tomorrow?”

Sokol nodded. “This afternoon you’re going to hunt up Leander Smythe and see to it that he never again spreads any malicious gossip about me. We don’t want to kill a member of the press, but I want you to give him a lesson he remembers. And don’t say who sent you. He’ll figure it out.”

“That takes care of this afternoon and tomorrow morning,” said the blond man. “What about tonight?”

“Tonight? Go home and go to sleep.”

“What about Virtue MacKenzie?”

“She doesn’t have the tape, so she’s no immediate threat. I don’t want any harm to come to her while she’s on Pegasus.”

“And once she leaves?”

Sokol smiled. “That’s another matter, isn’t it?”

8.

His name is Father William,

His aim is hard to ken:

His game is saving sinners;

His fame is killing men.

Whenever people would sit around talking with Black Orpheus, sooner or later the question would come up: Who did he think was the most memorable character he had met during his wanderings? He’d lean back, sipping his wine and staring off into the distance, enjoying the moment and the memories, and then, just when his listeners began to think that they weren’t going to get an answer, he’d smile and say that he’d seen a lot of men and women on the Inner Frontier—killers like the Songbird and One-Time Charlie, tragic figures like Schussler the Cyborg, entrepreneurs like Descartes White (whom he had renamed Carte Blanche, a sobriquet with which he was inordinately pleased), good women like Silent Annie and Blessed Sarah, bad women like Flat-Nosed Sal and Sister Sleaze, even virtual supermen like ManMountain Bates—but not a one of them held a candle to Father William.

It had been love at first sight. Not a physical or personal love, but the kind of love a landscape artist feels toward a beautiful sunset. Black Orpheus painted his word pictures on a very broad canvas, and even so, Father William was almost too big to fit.