Broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped, he moved with an athlete's quick, controlled gracefulness; reddish-brown hair fell to his shoulders, confined by the narrow diadem of royalty wrought in gold olive leaves. The face it framed would have been boyishly handsome yet, even in his thirties, if it had not been for the deep scar that cut a V across his cheek and vanished under the patch that hid his left eyesocket; the level green stare of the surviving eye glittered coldly. He wore loose trousers of black silk tucked into polished half-boots, and a gold-trimmed jacket of the same material cinched by a tooled-leather belt that bore revolver and chryselephantine dagger. A wolfshead signet ring of ruby and niello on the third finger of his right hand was the only other ornament.

"Or to put it in American, babe," he went on in a voice that still held a trace of Montana, "the Greek VIPs liked it better when I was the wizardly power in the background and not Supreme Bossman. Planting my own lowborn outlander ass on the throne of the Kings of Men has seriously torqued them out."

"Rational deduction from the information available," Helmut Mittler agreed, running a hand over his close-cropped gray-and-yellow hair. "The disaffected Achaean nobles haff little grasp of sophisticated conspiratorial politics, but they are not stupid men-not the surviving ones. They haff support among the more reactionary elements of the population… and they learn quickly."

He pronounced that und zey learn kvickly; the Mecklenberger accent was still fairly strong. His Achaean was better, but for small conferences like this Walker preferred English. There was something about the sonorous formalities of Mycenaean Greek that wasn't conducive to quick sharp thought, in his opinion.

"Evolution in action," Walker agreed, nodding to the ex-Stasi agent.

Who managed to get out before the Berlin Wall went down, with a fair amount of money and some extremely good fake ID, he reminded himself. It wouldn't do to underestimate his security chief. Aloud he went on: