Leoh stared at him. “In your own odd way, my boy, you’re quite something … I think.”
Their ground car glided from the parking building to the restaurant’s entrance ramp, at the radio call of the doorman. Within minutes. Hector and Leoh were cruising through the city in the deepening shadows of night.
“There’s only one man,” Leoh mused, “who’s faced Odal and lived through it.”
“Dulaq,” Hector said. “But … he might as well be dead, for all the information anybody can get from him.”
“He’s still completely withdrawn?”
Hector nodded. “The medicos think that … well, maybe with drugs and therapy and all that … maybe in a few months or so they might be able to bring him back.”
“Not soon enough. We’ve oniy got four days.”
“I know.”
Leoh was silent for several minutes. Then, “Who is Dulaq’s closest living relative? Does he have a wife?”
“Umm, I think his wife’s dead. Has a daughter, though. Pretty girl. I bumped into her in the hospital once or twice.. -.”
Leoh smiled in the darkness. Hector’s term, “bumped into,” was probably completely literal.
“There might be a way to make Dulaq tell us what happened during his duel,” Leoh said. “But it’s a very dangerous way. Perhaps a fatal way.”
Hector didn’t reply.
“Come on, my boy,” Leoh said. “Let’s find that daughter and talk to her ”
“Toni^it?”
“Now.”
She certainly is a pretty girt, Leoh thought as he explained very carefully to Geri Dulaq what he proposed to do. She sat quietly and politely in the spacious living room of the Dulaq residence. The glittering chandelier cast touches of fire on her chestnut hair. Her slim body was slightly rigid with tension, her hands were clasped tightly in her lap. Her face, which looked as though it could be very expressive, was completely serious now.