Terzibashjian said something in Greek or Turkish and rushed the thing, his arms spread like a man attempting to dive through a window. He went through it. Into the muzzle-flash of a pistol from the dark beyond the circle of light. Fragments of rock whizzed [ 18 ] past Case's head; the Finn jerked him down into a crouch.

The light from the rooftop vanished, leaving him with mismatched afterimages of muzzle-flash, monster, and white beam. His ears rang.

Then the light returned, bobbing now, searching the shadows. Terzibashjian was leaning against a steel door, his face very white in the glare. He held his left wrist and watched blood drip from a wound in his left hand. The blond man, whole again, unbloodied, lay at his feet.

Molly stepped out of the shadows, all in black, with her fletcher in her hand.

`Use the radio,' the Armenian said, through gritted teeth. `Call in Mahmut. We must get him out of here. This is not a good place.'

`Little prick nearly made it,' the Finn said, his knees cracking loudly as he stood up, brushing ineffectually at the legs of his trousers. `You were watching the horror-show, right? Not the hamburger that got tossed out of sight. Real cute. Well, help 'em get his ass outa here. I gotta scan all that gear before he wakes up, make sure Armitage is getting his money's worth.'

Molly bent and picked something up. A pistol. `A Nambu,' she said. `Nice gun.'

Terzibashjian made a whining sound. Case saw that most of his middle finger was missing.

With the city drenched in predawn blue, she told the Mercedes to take them to Topkapi. The Finn and an enormous Turk named Mahmut had taken Riviera, still unconscious, from the alley. Minutes later, a dusty Citroen had arrived for the Armenian, who seemed on the verge of fainting.

`You're an asshole,' Molly told the man, opening the ear door for him. `You shoulda hung back. I had him in my sights as soon as he stepped out.' Terzibashjian glared at her. `So we're through with you anyway.' She shoved him in and slammed the door. `Run into you again and I'll kill you,' she said to the white face behind the tinted window. The Citroen ground away down the alley and swung clumsily into the street.

Now the Mercedes whispered through Istanbul as the city woke. They passed the Beyoglu tunelterminal and sped past mazes of deserted back streets, run-down apartment houses that reminded Case vaguely of Paris.

`What is this thing?' he asked Molly, as the Mercedes parked itself on the fringes of the gardens that surround the Seraglio. He stared dully at the baroque conglomeration of styles that was Topkapi.

`It was sort of a private whorehouse for the King,' she said, getting out stretching. `Kept a lotta women there. Now it's a museum. Kinda like Finn's shop, all this stuff just jumbled in there, big diamonds, swords, the left hand of John the Baptist...'

`Like in a support vat?'

`Nah. Dead. Got it inside this brass hand thing, little hatch on the side so the Christians could kiss it for luck. Got it off the Christians about a million years ago, and they never dust the goddam thing, 'cause it's an infidel relic.'

Black iron deer rusted in the gardens of the Seraglio. Case walked beside her, watching the toes of her boots crunch unkept grass made stiff by an early frost. They walked beside a path of cold octagonal flagstones. Winter was waiting, somewhere in the Balkans.

`That Terzi, he's grade-A scum,' she said. `He's the secret police. Torturer. Real easy to buy out, too, with the kind of money Armitage was offering.' In the wet trees around them, birds began to sing.

`I did that job for you,' Case said, `the one in London I got something, but I don't know what it means.' He told her the Corto story.

`Well, I knew there wasn't anybody name of Armitage in that Screaming Fist. Looked it up.' She stroked the rusted flank of an iron doe. `You figure the little computer pulled him out of it? In that French hospital?'

`I figure Wintermute,' Case said.

She nodded.

`Thing is,' he said, `do you think he knows he was Corto, before? I mean, he wasn't anybody in particular, by the time he hit the ward, so maybe Wintermute just...'

`Yeah. Built him up from go. Yeah...' She turned and they walked on. `It figures. You know, the guy doesn't have any life going, in private. Not as far as I can tell. You see a guy like that, you figure there's something he does when he's alone. But not Armitage. Sits and stares at the wall, man. Then something clicks and he goes into high gear and wheels for Wintermute.'

`So why's he got that stash in London? Nostalgia?'

`Maybe he doesn't know about it,' she said. `Maybe it's just in his name, right?'

`I don't get it,' Case said.

`Just thinking out loud... How smart's an AI, Case?'

`Depends. Some aren't much smarter than dogs. Pets. Cost a fortune anyway. The real smart ones are as smart as the Turing heat is willing to let 'em get.'

`Look, you're a cowboy. How come you aren't just flat out fascinated with those things?'

`Well,' he said, `for starts, they're rare. Most of them are military, the bright ones, and we can't crack the ice. That's where ice all comes from, you know? And then there's the Turing cops, and that's bad heat.' He looked at her. `I dunno, it just isn't part of the trip.'

`Jockeys all the same,' she said. `No imagination.'

They came to a broad rectangular pond where carp nuzzled the stems of some white aquatic flower. She kicked a loose pebble in and watched the ripples spread.

`That's Wintermute,' she said. `This deal's real big, looks to me. We're out where the little waves are too broad, we can't see the rock that hit the center. We know something's there, but not why. I wanna know why. I want you to go and talk to Wintermute.'

`I couldn't get near it,' he said. `You're dreaming.'

`Try.'

`Can't be done.'

`Ask the Flatline.'

`What do we want out of that Riviera?' he asked, hoping to change the subject.

She spat into the pond. `God knows. I'd as soon kill him as look at him. I saw his profile. He's a kind of compulsive Judas. Can't get off sexually unless he knows he's betraying the object of desire. That's what the file says. And they have to love him first. Maybe he loves them, too. That's why it was easy for Terzi to set him up for us, because he's been here three years, shopping politicals to the secret police. Probably Terzi let him watch, when the cattle prods came out. He's done eighteen in three years. All women age twenty to twenty-five. It kept Terzi in dissidents.' She thrust her hands into her jacket pockets. `Because if he found one he really wanted, he'd make sure she turned political. He's got a personality like a Modern's suit. The profile said it was a very rare type, estimated one in a couple of million. Which anyway says something good about human nature, I guess.' She stared at the white flowers and the sluggish fish, her face sour. `I think I'm going to have to buy myself some special insurance on that Peter.' Then she turned and smiled, and it was very cold.

`What's that mean?'

`Never mind. Let's go back to Beyoglu and find something like breakfast. I gotta busy night again, tonight. Gotta collect his stuff from that apartment in Fener, gotta go back to the bazaar and buy him some drugs...'

`Buy him some drugs? How's he rate?'

She laughed. `He's not dying on the wire, sweetheart. And it looks like he can't work without that special taste. I like you better now, anyway, you aren't so goddam skinny.' She smiled. `So I'll go to Ali the dealer and stock up. You betcha.'

Armitage was waiting in their room at the Hilton.

`Time to pack,' he said, and Case tried to find the man called Corto behind the pale blue eyes and the tanned mask. He thought of Wage, back in Chiba. Operators above a certain level tended to submerge their personalities, he knew. But Wage had had vices, lovers. Even, it had been rumored, children. The blankness he found in Armitage was something else.