THE JANSON DIRECTIVE - Robert LudlumTHE JANSON DIRECTIVE
Robert Ludlum
[17 dec 2002—scanned for #bookz]
[21 dec 2002—proofed by Somebody]
PROLOGUE
8°37'N, 88°22'E N. Indian Ocean, 250 miles east of Sri Lanka Northwestern Anura
The night was oppressive, the air at body temperature and almost motionless. 
Earlier in the evening there had been light, cooling rains, but now everything 
seemed to radiate heat, even the silvery half-moon, its countenance brushed with 
the occasional wisps of cloud. The jungle itself seemed to exhale the hot, moist 
breath of a predator lying in wait.
Shyam shifted restlessly in his canvas chair. It was, he knew, a fairly ordinary 
night on the island of Anura for this time of year: early in the monsoon season, 
the air was always heavy with a sense of foreboding. Yet only the ever attentive 
mosquitoes disturbed the quiet. At half past one in the morning, Shyam reckoned 
he had been on checkpoint duty for four and a half hours. In that time, 
precisely seven motorists had come their way. The checkpoint consisted of two 
parallel lines of barbed-wire frames—"knife rests"—set up eighty feet apart on 
the road, to either side of the search and administration area. Shyam and Arjun 
were the two sentries on forward duty, and they sat in front of the wooden 
roadside booth. A pair of backups was supposedly on duty on the other side of 
the hill, but the hours of silence from them suggested that they were dozing, 
along with the men in the makeshift barracks a few hundred feet down the road. 
For all the dire warnings of their superiors, these had been days and nights of 
unrelieved boredom. The northwestern province of Kenna was sparsely populated in 
the best of times, and these were not the best of times.
Now, drifting in with the breeze, as faint as a distant insect drone, came the 
sound of a gunned motor.
Shyam slowly got to his feet. The sound was growing closer.
"Arjun," he called out in a singsong tone. "Arjun. Car coming."
Arjun lolled his head in a circle, working out a crick in his neck. "At this 
hour?" He rubbed his eyes. The humidity made the sweat lie heavily on his skin, 
like mineral oil.
In the dark of the semi-forested terrain, Shyam could finally see the 
headlights. Over a rewed-up motor, loud whoops of delight could be heard.
"Dirty farm kids," Arjun grumbled.
Shyam, for his part, was grateful for anything that interrupted the tedium. He 
had spent the past seven days on the night shift at the Kandar vehicle 
checkpoint, and it felt like a hardship post. Naturally, their stone-faced 
superior had been at pains to emphasize how important, how crucial, how vital in 
every way, the assignment was. The Kandar checkpoint was just up the road from 
the Stone Palace, where the government was holding some sort of hush-hush 
gathering. So security was tight, and this was the only real road that connected 
the palace to the rebel-held region just to the north. The guerrillas of the 
Kagama Liberation Front knew about the checkpoints, however, and kept away. As 
did most everyone else: between the rebels and the anti-rebel campaigns, more 
than half the villagers to the north had fled the province. And the farmers who 
stayed in Kenna had little money, which meant that the guards could not expect 
much by way of "tips." Nothing ever happened, and his wallet stayed thin. Was it 
something he had done in a previous life?
The truck came into view; two shirtless young men were in the cab. The roof was 
down. One of boys was now standing up, pouring a sudsy can of beer over his 
chest and cheering. The truck—probably loaded with some poor farmer's kurakkan, 
or root crops—was rounding the bend at upward of eighty miles per hour, as fast 
as the groaning engine would go. American rock music, from one of the island's 
powerful AM stations, blared.
The yelps and howls of merriment echoed through the night. They sounded like a 
pack of drunken hyenas, Shyam thought miserably. Penniless joyriders: they were 
young, wasted, didn't give a damn about anything. In the morning they would, 
though. The last time this happened, several days earlier, the truck's owner got 
a visit later that morning from the youths' shamefaced parents. The truck was 
returned, along with many, many bushels of kurakkan to make amends for whatever 
damage had been done. As for the kids, well, they couldn't sit without wincing, 
not even on a cushioned car seat.
Now Shyam stepped into the road with his rifle. The truck kept barreling 
forward, and he stepped back. No use being stupid about it. Those kids were 
blind drunk. A beer can was lobbed into the air, hitting the ground with a 
thunk. From the sound, it was a full one.
The truck veered around the first knife rest, and then the second knife rest, 
and kept going.
"Let Shiva tear them limb from limb," Arjun said. He scrubbed at his bushy black 
hair with his stubby fingertips. "No need to radio the backstop. You can hear 
these kids for miles."
"What are we supposed to do?" Shyam said. They were not traffic cops, and the 
rules did not permit them to open fire on just any vehicle that failed to stop.
"Peasant boys. Bunch of peasant boys."
"Hey," Shyam said. "I'm a peasant boy myself." He touched the patch sewn on his 
khaki shirt: ARA, it read. Army of the Republic of Anura. "This isn't tattooed 
on my skin, all right? When my two years are up, I'm going back to the farm."
"That's what you say now. I got an uncle who has a college degree; he's been a 
civil servant for ten years. Makes half what we do."
"And you're worth every ruvee," Shyam said with heavy sarcasm.
"All I'm saying is, you got to seize what chances life gives you." Arjun flicked 
a thumb at the can on the road. "Sounds like that one's still got beer in it. 
Now, that's what I'm talking about. Pukka refreshment, my friend."
"Arjun," Shyam protested. "We're supposed to be on duty together, you know this? 
The two of us, yes?"
"Don't worry, my friend." Arjun grinned. "I'll share."


When the truck was half a mile past the roadblock, the driver eased up on the 
accelerator, and the young man riding shotgun sat down, wiping himself off with 
a towel before putting on a black T-shirt and strapping himself in. The beer was 
foul, noisome, and sticky in the heavy air. Both guerrillas looked grave.
An older man was seated on the flat bench behind them. Sweat made his black 
curls cling to his forehead, and his mustache gleam in the moonlight. The KLF 
officer had been prone and invisible when the truck crashed the checkpoint. Now 
he flicked the communicate button on his walkie-talkie, an old model but a 
sturdy one, and grunted some instructions.
With a metallic groan, the rear door of the trailer was cracked open so that the 
armed men inside could get some air.
The coastal hill had many names and many meanings. The Hindus knew it as 
Sivanolipatha Malai, Shiva's footprint, to acknowledge its true origins. The 
Buddhists knew it as Sri Pada, Buddha's footprint, for they believed that it was 
made by Buddha's left foot when he journeyed to the island. The Muslims knew it 
as Adam Malai, or Adam's Hill: tenth-century Arab traders held that Adam, after 
he was expelled from Paradise, stopped here and remained standing on one foot 
until God recognized his penitence. The colonial overlords—first the Portuguese 
and then the Dutch—viewed it with an eye to practical rather than spiritual 
considerations: the coastal promontory was the ideal place for a fortress, where 
mounted artillery could be directed toward the threat posed by hostile warships. 
It was in the seventeenth century that a fortress was first erected on the hill; 
as the structure was rebuilt over the following centuries, little attention was 
ever paid to the small houses of worship nearby. Now they would serve as way 
stations for the Prophet's army during the final assault.
Ordinarily, its leader, the man they called the Caliph, would never be exposed 
to the confusion and unpredictability of an armed engagement. But this was no 
ordinary night. History was being written this night. How could the Caliph not 
be present? Besides, he knew that his decision to join his men on the terrain of 
battle had increased their morale immeasurably. He was surrounded by 
stouthearted Kagama who wanted him to be a witness to their heroism or, if it 
should turn out to be the case, their martyrdom. They looked at the planes of 
his face, his fine ebony features, and his strong, sculpted jaw, and they saw 
not merely a man anointed by the Prophet to lead them to freedom but a man who 
would inscribe their deeds in the book of life, for all posterity.
And so the Caliph kept vigil with his special detail, on a carefully chosen 
mountainous perch. The ground was hard and wet beneath his thin-soled boots, but 
the Stone Palace—or, more precisely, its main entrance—glowed before him. The 
east wall was a vast expanse of limestone, its weathered stones and wide, 
freshly painted gate bathed in lights that were sunk into the ground every few 
feet. It shimmered. It beckoned.
"You or your followers may die tonight," the Caliph had told the members of his 
command hours before. "If so, your martyrdom will be remembered—always! Your 
children and your parents will be sanctified by their connection to you. Shrines 
will be built to your memory! Pilgrims will travel to the site of your birth! 
You will be remembered and venerated, always, as among the fathers of our 
nation."
They were individuals of faith, fervor, and courage, whom the West was pleased 
to scorn as terrorists. Terrorists! For the West, the ultimate source of terror 
in the world, this term was a cynical convenience. The Caliph despised the 
Anuran tyrants, but he hated with a pure hate the Westerners who made their rule 
possible. The Anurans at least understood that there was a price to be paid for 
their usurpation of power; the rebels had repeatedly brought that lesson home, 
written it with blood. But the Westerners were accustomed to acting with 
impunity. Perhaps that would change.
Now the Caliph looked at the hillside around him and felt hope—not merely for 
himself and his followers but for the island itself. Anura. Once it had taken 
back its own destiny, what would it not be capable of? The very rocks and trees 
and vine-draped hillocks seemed to urge him on.
Mother Anura would vindicate her protectors.
Centuries ago, visitors had to resort to the cadence of poetry in order to evoke 
the beauty of its flora and fauna. Soon colonialism, fueled by envy and avarice, 
would impose its grim logic: what was ravishing would be ravished, the 
captivating made captive. Anura became a prize for which the great maritime 
empires of the West would contend. Battlements rose above the spice-tree groves; 
cannonballs nestled on the beaches among the conch shells. The West brought 
bloodshed to the island and it took root there, spreading across the landscape 
like a toxic weed, nourished on injustice.
What did they do to you, Mother Anura?
Over tea and canapes, Western diplomats drew lines that would bring tumult to 
the lives of millions, treating the atlas of the world like a child's 
Etch-A-Sketch.
Independence, they had called it! It was one of the great lies of the twentieth 
century. The regime itself amounted to an act of violence against the Kagama 
people, for which the only remedy was more violence. Every time a suicide bomber 
took out a Hindu government minister, the Western media pontificated about 
"senseless killings," but the Caliph and his soldiers knew that nothing made 
more sense. The most widely publicized wave of bombings—taking out ostensibly 
civilian targets in the capital city, Caligo—had been masterminded by the Caliph 
himself. The vans were rendered invisible, for all intents, by the forged decals 
of a ubiquitous international courier and freight service. Such a simple 
deception! Packed with diesel-soaked nitrate fertilizer, the vans delivered only 
a cargo of death. In the past decade, this wave of bombings was what aroused the 
greatest condemnation around the world—which was an odd hypocrisy, for it merely 
brought the war home to the warmongers.
Now the chief radio operator whispered in the Caliph's ear. The Kaffra base had 
been destroyed, its communications infrastructure dismantled. Even if they 
managed to get the word out, the guards at the Stone Palace had no hope for 
backup. Thirty seconds later, the radio operator had yet another message to 
convey: confirmation that a second army base had been reclaimed by the people. A 
second thoroughfare was now theirs. The Caliph felt his spine begin to tingle. 
Within hours, the entire province of Kenna would be wrested from a despotic 
death grip. The shift of power would begin. National liberation would glimmer 
over the horizon with the sun.
Nothing, however, was more important than taking the Steenpaleis, the Stone 
Palace. Nothing. The Go-Between had been emphatic about it, and so far the 
Go-Between had been right about everything, starting with the value of his own 
contributions. He had been as good as his word—no, better. He had been generous 
to the point of profligacy with his armaments and, equally important, his 
intelligence. He had not disappointed the Caliph, and the Caliph would not 
disappoint him. The Caliph's opponents had their resources, their backers and 
benefactors; why should he not have his?


"It's still cold!" Arjun cried out with delight as he picked up the beer can. 
The outside of the can was actually frosty. Arjun pressed it to the side of his 
face, moaning with pleasure. His fingers melted oval impressions in the icy 
coating, which glinted cheerily in the checkpoint's yellow mercury light.
"And it's really full?" Shyam said doubtfully.
"Unopened," Arjun said. "Heavy with the health drink!" And it was heavy, 
unexpectedly so. "We'll pour off a swig for the ancestors. A few long swallows 
for me, and whatever drops are left for you, since I know you don't like the 
stuff." Arjun's thick fingers scrabbled for the pull tab, then gave it a firm 
yank.
The muffled pop of the detonator, like the sound of a party favor that spews 
confetti, came milliseconds before the actual explosion. It was almost enough 
time for Arjun to register the thought that he had been the victim of a small 
prank and for Shyam to register the thought that his suspicions—although they 
had remained at the not-quite-conscious level of vague disquiet—had been 
justified. When the twelve ounces of plas-tique exploded, both men's trains of 
thought came to an end.
The blast was a shattering moment of light and sound that instantly expanded 
into an immense, fiery oval of destruction. The shock waves destroyed the two 
knife rests and the wooden roadside booth, as well as the barracks and those who 
slept there. The pair of guards who were supposed to have been on duty as 
backstop at the other end of the roadblock died before they awoke. The intense, 
momentary heat caused an area of the red laterite soil to crust into an 
obsidian-like glass. And then, as quickly as it arrived, the explosion—the 
deafening noise, the blinding light—vanished, like a man's fist when he opens 
his hand. The force of destruction was fleeting, the destruction itself 
permanent.
Fifteen minutes later, when a convoy of canvas-topped personnel carriers made 
its way through what remained of the checkpoint, no subterfuge would be 
necessary.


There was an irony, the Caliph realized, in the fact that only his adversaries 
would fully understand the ingenuity of the predawn onslaught. On the ground, 
the fog of war would obscure what would be obvious from far away: the pattern of 
precisely coordinated attacks. The Caliph knew that within a day or so, analysts 
at the American spy agencies would be peering at satellite imagery that would 
make the pattern of activity as clear as a textbook diagram. The Caliph's 
victory would become the stuff of legend; his debt to the Go-Between—not least 
at the insistence of the Go-Between himself—would remain a matter between him 
and Allah.
A pair of binoculars was brought to the Caliph, who surveyed the honor guards 
arrayed before the main gate.
They were human ornaments, an accordion of paper dolls. Another instance of the 
government's elitist stupidity. The compound's nighttime illumination rendered 
them sitting ducks while simultaneously impeding their ability to see anything 
in the surrounding darkness.
The honor guards represented the ARAs elite—typically, those with relatives in 
high places, mannerly careerists with excellent hygiene and a knack for 
maintaining the crease in their neatly pressed uniforms. The créme de la créme 
brulée, the Caliph reflected to himself with a mixture of irony and contempt. 
They were showmen, not warriors. Through the binoculars, he gazed at the seven 
men, each holding a rifle braced upright on his shoulder, where it would look 
impressive and be perfectly useless. Not even showmen. Playthings.
The chief radio operator nodded at the Caliph: the section commander was in 
position, ensuring that the barracked soldiers would be undeployable. A member 
of the Caliph's retinue presented him with a rifle: it was a purely ceremonial 
act that he had devised, but ceremony was the handmaiden of power. Accordingly, 
the Caliph would fire the first shot, using the very same rifle that a great 
independence fighter had used, fifty years ago, to assassinate the Dutch 
governor general. The rifle, a bolt-action Mauser M24, had been perfectly 
reconditioned and carefully zeroed. Unwrapped from the silk that had enfolded 
it, it gleamed like the sword of Saladin.
The Caliph found the number one guard in the weapon's scope and exhaled halfway 
so that the crosshairs settled on the center of the man's beribboned chest. He 
squeezed the trigger and intently watched the man's expressions—successively 
startled, anguished, dazed. On the man's upper right torso, a small oval of red 
bloomed, like a boutonniere.
Now the other members of the Caliph's detail followed suit, loosing a brief 
fusillade of well-aimed bullets. Marionettes released from their strings, the 
seven officers collapsed, tumbled, sprawled.
Despite himself, the Caliph laughed. These deaths had no dignity; they were as 
absurd as the tyranny they served. A tyranny that would now find itself on the 
defensive.
By sunrise, any free-floating representatives of the Anuran government that 
remained in the province would be well advised to shred their uniforms or else 
face dismemberment by hostile mobs.
Kenna would no longer be part of the illegitimate Republic of Anura. Kenna would 
belong to him.
It had begun.
The Caliph felt a surge of righteousness, and the clear piercing truth filled 
him like a light. The only solution to violence was more violence.
Many would die in the next several minutes, and they would be the fortunate 
ones. But there was one person in the Stone Palace who would not be killed—not 
yet. He was a special man, a man who had come to the island in an attempt to 
broker a peace. He was a powerful man, revered by millions, but an agent of 
neocolonialism nevertheless. So he had to be treated with care. This one—the 
great man, the "peacemaker," the man of all peoples, as the Western media 
insisted—would not be a casualty of a military skirmish. He would not be shot.
For him, the proper niceties would be observed.
And then he would be beheaded as the criminal he was.
The revolution would be nourished on his blood!
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
The worldwide headquarters of the Harnett Corporation occupied the top two 
floors of a sleek black-glass tower on Dearborn Street, in Chicago's Loop. 
Harnett was an international construction firm, but not the kind that put up 
skyscrapers in American metropolises. Most of its projects were outside the 
United States; along with larger corporations such as Bechtel, Vivendi, and Suez 
Lyonnaise des Eaux, it contracted for projects like dams, wastewater treatment 
plants, and gas turbine power stations—unglamorous but necessary infrastructure. 
Such projects posed civil-engineering challenges rather than aesthetic ones, but 
they also required an ability to work the ever shifting zone between public and 
private sectors. Third World countries, pressured by the World Bank and the 
International Monetary Fund to sell off publicly owned assets, routinely sought 
bidders for telephone systems, water and power utilities, railways, and mines. 
As ownership changed hands, new construction work was required, and narrowly 
focused firms like the Harnett Corporation had come into their own.
"To see Ross Harnett," the man told the receptionist. "The name's Paul Janson."
The receptionist, a young man with freckles and red hair, nodded, and notified 
the chairman's office. He glanced at the visitor without interest. Another 
middle-aged white guy with a yellow tie. What was there to see?
For Janson, it was a point of pride that he seldom got a second look. Though he 
was athletic and solidly built, his appearance was unremarkable, utterly 
nondescript. With his creased forehead and short-cropped steel-gray hair, he 
looked his five decades. Whether on Wall Street or the Bourse, he knew how to 
make himself all but invisible. Even his expensively tailored suit, of gray 
nailhead worsted, was perfect camouflage, as appropriate to the corporate jungle 
as the green and black face paint he once wore in Vietnam was to the real 
jungle. One would have to be a trained observer to detect that it was the man's 
shoulders, not the customary shoulder pads, that filled out the suit. And one 
would have to have spent some time with him to notice the way his slate eyes 
took everything in, or his quietly ironic air.
"It's going to be just a couple of minutes," the receptionist told him blandly, 
and Janson drifted off to look at the gallery of photographs in the reception 
area. They showed that the Harnett Corporation was currently working on water 
and wastewater networks in Bolivia, dams in Venezuela, bridges in Saskatchewan, 
power stations in Egypt. These were the images of a prosperous construction 
company. And it was indeed prospering—or had been until recently.
The company's vice president of operations, Steven Burt, believed it ought to be 
doing much better. There were aspects of the recent downturn that aroused his 
suspicions, and he had prevailed upon Paul Janson to meet with Ross Harnett, the 
firm's chairman and CEO. Janson had reservations about taking on another client: 
though he had been a corporate-security consultant for only the past five years, 
he had immediately established a reputation for being unusually effective and 
discreet, which meant that the demand for his services exceeded both his time 
and his interest. He would not have considered this job if Steven Burt had not 
been a friend from way back. Like him, Burt had had another life, one that he'd 
left far behind once he entered the civilian world. Janson was reluctant to 
disappoint him. He would, at least, take the meeting.
Harnett's executive assistant, a cordial thirtyish woman, strode through the 
reception area and escorted him to Harnett's office. The space was modern and 
spare, with floor-to-ceiling windows facing south and east. Filtered through the 
building's polarized glass skin, the afternoon sunlight was reduced to a cool 
glow. Harnett was sitting behind his desk, talking on the telephone, and the 
woman paused in the doorway with a questioning look. Harnett gestured for Janson 
to have a seat, with a hand movement that looked almost summoning. "Then we're 
just going to have to renegotiate all the contracts with Ingersoll-Rand," 
Harnett was saying. He was wearing a pale blue monogrammed shirt with a white 
collar; the sleeves were rolled up around thick forearms. "If they're not going 
to match the price points they promised, our position has to be that we're free 
to go elsewhere for the parts. Screw 'em. Contract's void."
Janson sat down on the black leather chair opposite, which was a couple of 
inches lower than Harnett's chair—a crude bit of stagecraft that, to Janson, 
signaled insecurity rather than authority. Janson glanced at his watch openly, 
swallowed a gorge of annoyance, and looked around. Twenty-seven stories up, 
Harnett's corner office had a sweeping view of Lake Michigan and downtown 
Chicago. A high chair, a high floor: Harnett wanted there to be no mistaking 
that he had scaled the heights.
Harnett himself was a fireplug of a man, short and powerfully built, who spoke 
with a gravelly voice. Janson had heard that Harnett prided himself on making 
regular tours of the company's active projects, during which he would talk with 
the foremen as if he had been one himself. Certainly he had the swagger of 
somebody who had started out working on construction sites and rose to the 
corner office by the sweat of his brow. But that was not exactly how it 
happened. Janson knew that Harnett held an MBA from the Kellogg School of 
Management at Northwestern and that his expertise lay in financial engineering 
rather than in construction engineering. He had put together the Harnett 
Corporation by acquiring its subsidiaries at a time when they were strapped for 
cash and seriously underpriced. Because construction was a deeply cyclical 
business, Harnett had recognized, well-timed equity swaps made it possible to 
build a cash-rich corporation at bargain-basement prices.
Finally, Harnett hung up the phone and silently regarded Janson for a few 
moments. "Stevie tells me you've got a real high-class reputation," he said in a 
bored tone. "Maybe I know some of your other clients. Who have you worked with?"
Janson gave him a quizzical look. Was he being interviewed? "Most of the clients 
that I accept," he said, pausing after the word, "come recommended to me by 
other clients." It seemed crass to spell it out: Janson was not the one to 
supply references or recommendations; it was the prospective clients who had to 
come recommended. "My clients can, in some circumstances, discuss my work with 
others. My own policy has always been across-the-board nondisclosure."
"You're like a wooden Indian, aren't you?" Harnett sounded annoyed.
"I'm sorry?"
"I'm sorry, too, because I have a pretty good notion that we're just wasting 
each other's time. You're a busy guy, I'm a busy guy, we don't either of us have 
time to sit here jerking each other off. I know Stevie's got it in his head that 
we're a leaky boat and taking on water. That's not how it is. Fact is, it's the 
nature of the business that it has a lot of ups and downs. Stevie's still too 
green to understand. I built this company, I know what happens in every office 
and every construction yard in twenty-four countries. To me, it's a real 
question whether we need a security consultant in the first place. And the one 
thing I have heard about you is that your services don't come cheap. I'm a great 
believer in corporate frugality. Zero-based budgeting is gospel as far as I'm 
concerned. Try to follow me here—every penny we spend has to justify itself. If 
it doesn't add value, it's not happening. That's one corporate secret I don't 
mind letting you in on." Harnett leaned back, like a pasha waiting for a servant 
to pour him tea. "But feel free to change my mind, OK? I've said my piece. Now 
I'm happy to listen."
Janson smiled wanly. He would have to apologize to Steven Burt—Janson doubted 
whether anyone well disposed toward him had called him "Stevie" in his life—but 
clearly wires had got crossed here. Janson accepted few of the offers he 
received, and he certainly did not need this one. He would extricate himself as 
swiftly as he could. "I really don't know what to say, Mr. Harnett. It sounds 
from your end like you've got everything under control."
Harnett nodded without smiling, acknowledging an observation of the 
self-evident. "I run a tight ship, Mr. Janson," he said with smug condescension. 
"Our worldwide operations are damn well protected, always have been, and we've 
never had a problem. Never had a leak, a defection, not' even any serious theft. 
And I think I'm in the best position to know whereof I speak—can we agree on 
that?"
"A CEO who doesn't know what's going on in his own company isn't really running 
the show, is he?" Janson replied equably.
"Exactly," Harnett said. "Exactly." His gaze settled on the intercom of his 
telephone console. "Look, you come highly recommended—I mean, Stevie couldn't 
have spoken of you more highly, and I'm sure you're quite good at what you do. 
Appreciate that you came by to see us, and as I say, I'm only sorry we wasted 
your time … "
Janson noted his use of the inclusive "we" and its evident subtext: sorry that a 
member of our senior management inconvenienced us both. No doubt Steven Burt 
would be subjected to some withering corporate scorn later on. Janson decided to 
allow himself a few parting words after all, if only for his friend's sake.
"Not a bit," he said, rising to his feet and shaking Harnett's hand across the 
desk. "Just glad to know everything's shipshape." He cocked his head and added, 
almost incidentally: "Oh, listen, as to that 'sealed bid' you just submitted for 
the Uruguay project?"
"What do you know about it?" Harnett's eyes were suddenly watchful; a nerve had 
been struck.
"Ninety-three million five hundred and forty thousand, was it?"
Harnett reddened. "Hold it. I approved that bid only yesterday morning. How the 
hell did you—"
"If I were you, I'd be worrying about the fact that your French competitor, Suez 
Lyonnaise, knows the figures, too. I think you'll discover that their bid will 
be precisely two percent lower."
"What?" Harnett erupted with volcanic fury. "Did Steve Burt tell you this?"
"Steven Burt gave me no information whatsoever. Anyway, he's in operations, not 
accounting or business affairs—does he even know the specifics of the bid?"
Harnett blinked twice. "No," he said after a pause. "There's no way he could 
know. Goddammit, there's no way anyone could know. It was sent by encrypted 
e-mail from our bean counters to the Uruguayan ministry."
"And yet people do know these things. Because this won't be the first time 
you've been narrowly outbid this year, will it? In fact, you've been burned 
almost a dozen times in the past nine months. Eleven of your fifteen bids were 
rejected. Like you were saying, it's a business with a lot of ups and downs."
Harnett's cheeks were aflame, but Janson proceeded to chat in a collegial tone. 
"Now, in the case of Vancouver, there were other considerations. Heck, they had 
reports from the municipal engineers that they found plasticizers in the 
concrete used for the pilings. Made it easy to cast, but weakened its structural 
integrity. Not your fault, of course—your specs were perfectly clear there. How 
were you to know that the subcontractor bribed your site inspector to falsify 
his report? An underling takes a measly five-thousand-dollar bribe, and now 
you're out in the cold on a hundred-million-dollar project. Pretty funny, huh? 
On the other hand, you've had worse luck with some of your own under-the-table 
payments. I mean, if you're wondering what went wrong with the La Paz deal … "
"Yes?" Harnett prompted urgently. He stood up with unnatural rigidity, as if 
frozen.
"Let's just say Raffy rides again. Your manager believed Rafael Nunez when he 
told him that he'd make sure the bribe reached the minister of the interior. Of 
course, it never did. You chose the wrong intermediary, simple as that. Raffy 
Nunez took a lot of companies for a ride in the nineties. Most of your 
competitors are wise to him now. They were laughing their asses off when they 
saw your guy dining at the La Paz Cabana, tossing down tequilas with Raffy, 
because they knew exactly what was going to happen. But what the hey—at least 
you tried, right? So what if your operating margin is down thirty percent this 
year. It's only money, right? Isn't that what your shareholders are always 
saying?"
As Janson spoke, he noticed that Harnett's face had gone from flushed to deathly 
pale. "Oh, that's right—they haven't been saying that, have they?" Janson 
continued. "In fact, a bunch of major stockholders are looking for another 
company—Vivendi, Kendrick, maybe Bechtel—to orchestrate a hostile takeover. So 
look on the bright side. If they have their way, none of this will be your 
problem anymore." He pretended to ignore Harnett's sharp intake of breath. "But 
I'm sure I'm only telling you what you already know."
Harnett looked dazed, panicked; through the vast expanse of polarized glass, 
muted rays of sun picked out the beads of cold sweat on his forehead. "Fuck a 
duck," he murmured. Now he was looking at Janson the way a drowning man looks at 
a life raft. "Name your price," he said.
"Come again?"
"Name your goddamn price," Harnett said. "I need you." He grinned, aiming to 
disguise his desperation with a show of joviality. "Steve Burt told me you were 
the best, and you sure as shit are, that's obvious. You know I was just yanking 
your chain before. Now, listen, big guy, you are not leaving this room before 
you and I come to an agreement. We clear about this?" Perspiration had begun to 
darken his shirt in the areas beneath his arms and around his collar. "Because 
we are going to do a deal here."
"I don't think so," Janson said genially. "It's just that I've decided against 
taking the job. That's one luxury I have as a consultant working alone: I get to 
decide which clients I take. But really—best of luck with everything. Nothing 
like a good proxy fight to get the blood racing, right?"
Harnett let out a burst of fake-sounding laughter and clapped his hands 
together. "I like your style," he said. "Good negotiating tactics. OK, OK, you 
win. Tell me what you want."
Janson shook his head, smiling, as if Harnett had said something funny, and made 
his way to the door. Just before he left the office, he stopped and turned. "One 
tip, though—gratis," he said. "Your wife knows." It would have been indelicate 
to say the name of Harnett's Venezuelan mistress, so Janson simply added, 
obliquely but unmistakably: "About Caracas, I mean." Janson gave him a 
meaningful look: no judgment implied; he was, speaking as one professional to 
another, merely identifying a potential point of vulnerability.
Small red spots appeared on Harnett's cheeks, and he seemed stricken with 
nausea: it was the look of a man contemplating a ruinously expensive divorce on 
top of a proxy fight he was likely to lose. "I'm willing to talk stock options," 
he called after Janson.
But the consultant was already making his way down the hall toward the elevator 
bank. He had not minded seeing the blowhard squirm; by the time he reached the 
lobby, though, he was filled with a sense of sourness, of time wasted, of a 
larger futility.
A voice from so long ago—another life—echoed faintly in his head. And this is 
what gives meaning to your life? Phan Nguyen asked that, in a thousand different 
ways. It was his favorite question. Janson could see, even now, the small, 
intelligent eyes; the broad, weathered face; the slender, childlike arms. 
Everything about America seemed to engage his interrogator's curiosity, with 
equal parts fascination and revulsion. And this is what gives meaning to your 
life? Janson shook his head: Doom on you, Nguyen.
As Janson stepped into his limousine, which had been idling on Dearborn just 
outside the building's lobby, he decided to go straight to O'Hare; there was an 
earlier flight to Los Angeles he could catch. If only Nguyen's questions could 
be as easily left behind.


Two uniformed women were standing behind a counter as he entered the Platinum 
Club lounge of Pacifica Airlines. The uniforms and the counter were both the 
same blue-gray hue. The women's jackets featured the sort of epaulets to which 
the major airlines were so devoted. In another place and time, Janson reflected, 
they would have rewarded extensive battlefield experience.
One of the women had been speaking to a jowly, heavyset man who wore an open 
blue blazer and a beeper clipped to his belt. A glint of badge metal from his 
inside coat pocket told Janson that he was an FAA inspector, no doubt taking his 
break where there was human scenery to be enjoyed. They broke off when Janson 
stepped forward.
"Your boarding card, please," the woman said, turning to him. She had a powdery 
tan that ended somewhere below her chin, and the kind of brassy hair that came 
from an applicator tip.
Janson flashed his ticket and the plastic card with which Pacifica rewarded its 
extremely frequent fliers.
"Welcome to the Pacifica Platinum Club, Mr. Janson," the woman twinkled.
"We'll let you know when your plane is about to board," the other 
attendant—chestnut bangs, eye shadow that matched the blue piping on her 
jacket—told him in a low, confiding voice. She gestured toward the entrance to 
the lounge area as if it were the pearly gates. "Meantime, enjoy our hospitality 
facilities and relax." An encouraging nod and a broad smile; Saint Peter's could 
not have held more promise.
Carved out between the structural girders and beams of an overloaded airport, 
venues like Pacifica's Platinum Club were where the modern airline tried to 
cater to the carriage trade. Small bowls were filled not with the salted peanuts 
purveyed to les miserables in coach but with the somewhat more expensive tree 
nuts: cashews, almonds, walnuts, pecans. At a granite-topped beverage station, 
there were crystal jugs sticky with peach nectar and fresh-squeezed orange 
juice. The carpeting was microfiber swank, the airline's signature blue-gray 
adorned with trellises of white and navy. On round tables interspersed among 
large armchairs were neatly folded copies of the International Herald Tribune, 
USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times. A Bloomberg 
terminal flickered with meaningless numbers and images, shadow puppets of the 
global economy. Through louvered blinds, the tarmac was only just visible.
Janson flipped through the papers with little interest. When he turned to the 
Journal's "Market Watch," he found his eyes sliding down column inches of 
familiarly bellicose metaphors: bloodshed on Wall Street as a wave of profit 
takers launched an onslaught against the Dow. A sports column in USA Today was 
taken up with the collapse of the Raiders' offense in the face of the rampaging 
blitzes of the Vikings' linemen. Meanwhile, invisible speakers piped in a song 
by the pop diva du jour, from the soundtrack of a blockbuster movie about a 
legendary Second World War battle. An expense of blood and sweat had been 
honored by an expense of studio money and computer-graphics technology.
Janson settled heavily into one of the cloth-upholstered armchairs, his eyes 
drifting toward the dataport stations where brand managers and account 
executives plugged in their laptops and collected e-mail from clients, 
employers, prospects, underlings, and lovers, in an endless search for action 
items. Peeking from attache cases were the spines of books purporting to offer 
marketing advice from the likes of Sun Tzu, the art of war repurposed for the 
packaged-goods industry. A sleek, self-satisfied, unthreatened folk, Janson 
mused of the managers and professionals who surrounded him. How these people 
loved peace, yet how they loved the imagery of war! For them, military regalia 
could safely be romanticized, the way animals of prey became adornments after 
the taxidermist's art.
There were moments when Janson almost felt that he, too, had been stuffed and 
mounted. Nearly every raptor was now on the endangered-species list, not least 
the bald eagle, and Janson recognized that he himself had once been a raptor—a 
force of aggression against forces of aggression. Janson had known ex-warriors 
who had become addicted to a diet of adrenaline and danger, and who, when their 
services were no longer required, had effectively turned themselves into toy 
soldiers. They spent their time stalking opponents in the Sierre Madre with 
paintball guns or, worse, pimping themselves out to unsavory firms with unsavory 
needs, usually in parts of the world where baksheesh was the law of the land. 
Janson's contempt for these people was profound. And yet he sometimes asked 
himself whether the highly specialized assistance he offered American businesses 
was not merely a respectable version of the same thing.
He was lonely, that was the truth of it, and his loneliness was never more acute 
than in the odd interstices of his overscheduled life—the time spent after 
checking in and before takeoff, the time spent waiting in over-designed venues 
meant, simply, for waiting. At the end of his next flight, nobody was 
anticipating his arrival except another visored limo driver who would have 
misspelled his name on a white cardboard sign, and then another corporate 
client, an anxious division head of a Los Angeles-based light industrial firm. 
It was a tour of duty that took Janson from one corner office to another. There 
was no wife and no children, though once there had been a wife and at least 
hopes for a child, for Helene had been pregnant when she died. "To make God 
laugh, tell him your plans," she used to quote her grandfather as saying, and 
the maxim had been borne out, horribly.
Janson eyed the amber bottles behind the bar, their crowded labels an alibi for 
the forgetfulness they held inside. He kept himself in fighting trim, trained 
obsessively, but even when he was in active deployment he was never above a slug 
or two. Where was the harm?
"Paging Richard Alexander," a nasal voice called through the public announcement 
system. "Passenger Richard Alexander. Please report to any Pacifica counter."
It was the background noise of any airport, but it jolted Janson out of his 
reverie. Richard Alexander was an operational alias he had often used in bygone 
days. Reflexively, he craned his head around him. A minor coincidence, he 
thought, and then he realized that, simultaneously, his cell phone was purring, 
deep in his breast pocket. He inserted the earphone of the Nokia tri-band and 
pressed snd. "Yes?"
"Mr. Janson? Or should I say, Mr. Alexander?" A woman's voice, sounding 
strained, desperate.
"Who is this?" Janson spoke quietly. Stress numbed him, at least at first—made 
him calmer, not more agitated.
"Please, Mr. Janson. It's urgent that we meet at once." The vowels and 
consonants had the precision that was peculiar to those who were both 
foreign-born and well educated. And the ambient noise in the background was even 
more suggestive.
"Say more."
There was a pause. "When we meet."
Janson pressed end, terminating the call. He felt a prickling on the back of his 
neck. The coincidence of the page and the call, the specification that a meeting 
take place immediately: the putative supplicant was obviously in close 
proximity. The call's background acoustics had merely cinched his suspicions. 
Now his eyes darted from person to person, even as he tried to figure out who 
would seek him out this way.
Was it a trap, set by an old, unforgiving adversary? There were many who would 
feel avenged by his death; for a few, possibly, the thirst for vengeance would 
not be entirely unjustified. And yet the prospect seemed unlikely. He was not in 
the field; he was not spiriting a less-than-willing VKR "defector" from the 
Dardanelles through Athens to a waiting frigate, bypassing every legal channel 
of border control. He was in O'Hare Airport, for God's sake. Which may have been 
why this rendezvous was chosen. People tended to feel safe at an airport, moated 
by metal detectors and uniformed security guards. It would be a cunning act to 
take advantage of that illusion of security. And, in an airport that handled 
nearly two hundred thousand travelers each day, security was indeed an illusion.
Possibilities were considered and swiftly discarded. By the thick plate glass 
overlooking the tarmac, sitting in slats of sunlight, a blond woman was 
apparently studying a spreadsheet on her laptop; her cell phone was at her side, 
Janson verified, and unconnected to any earpiece. Another woman, closer to the 
entrance, was engaged in spirited conversation with a man whose wedding ring was 
visible only as a band of pale skin on an otherwise bronzed hand. Janson's eyes 
kept roaming until, seconds later, he saw her, the one who had just called.
Sitting with deceptive placidity in a dim corner of the lounge was an elegant, 
middle-aged woman holding a cell phone to her ear. Her hair was white, worn up, 
and she was attired in a navy Chanel suit with discreet mother-of-pearl buttons. 
Yes, she was the one: he was certain of it. What he could not be certain of were 
her intentions. Was she an assassin, or part of a kidnapping team? These were 
among a hundred possibilities that, however remote, he had to rule out. Standard 
tactical protocol, ingrained from years in the field, demanded it.
Janson sprang to his feet. He had to change his location: that rule was basic. 
It's urgent that we meet at once, the caller had said; if so, they would meet on 
his terms. Now he started to make his way out of the VIP lounge, grabbing a 
paper cup from a water cooler he passed. He approached the greeting counter with 
the paper cup held in front of him, as if it were full. Then he yawned, 
squeezing his eyes shut, and walked straight into the heavyset FAA inspector, 
who staggered back a few feet.
"I am so sorry," Janson blurted, looking mortified. "Oh, Christ, I didn't spill 
anything on you, did I?" Janson's hands moved rapidly over the man's blazer. 
"Did I get you wet? God, I'm really, really sorry."
"No harm done," he replied with a trace of impatience. "Just, you know, watch 
where you're going, OK? There's lots of people in this airport."
"It's one thing not to know what time zone you're in, but—Jesus, I just don't 
know what's wrong with me," Janson said, the very picture of a flustered and 
jet-lagged passenger. "I'm a wreck."
As Janson made his way out of the VIP lounge and down the pedestrian corridor 
that led toward Concourse B, his cell phone buzzed again, as he knew it would.
"I don't think you quite understand the urgency," the caller began.
"That's correct," Janson snapped. "I don't. Why don't you let me know what this 
is about?" In an angled stretch of the pedestrian corridor, he saw a recessed 
area, about three feet deep, and then the expected steel door to a room that was 
off-limits to travelers. unauthorized personnel keep out was emblazoned on a 
plaque above it.
"I can't," the caller said after a beat. "Not over the phone, I'm afraid. But 
I'm in the airport and could meet you—"
"In that case, call me back in one minute," Janson interjected, ending the 
conversation. Now he hit the door's horizontal push bar with the heel of his 
hand and made his way inside. It turned out to be a narrow room that was lined 
with electrical panels; LCD displays measured outputs from the airport's heat 
and refrigeration plant, which was just to the east of the terminal. A rack of 
pegs held caps and windbreakers for outdoor work.
Three airline employees in navy-blue twill uniforms were seated around a small 
steel-and-Formica table, drinking coffee. He had obviously interrupted their 
conversation.
"What do you think you're doing?" one of them yelled at Janson as the door 
banged closed behind him. "You can't be here."
"This ain't the fucking John," another one said under his breath.
Janson smiled without warmth. "You're going to hate me, boys. But guess what?" 
He pulled out an FAA badge, the item he had lifted from the heavyset man in the 
lounge. "Another drug-abatement initiative. Random testing for a drug-free 
air-transport workforce—to quote the administrator's latest memorandum on the 
subject. Time to fill those cups. Sorry for the inconvenience, but that's why 
you make the big bucks, right?"
"This is bullshit!" the third man yowled in disgust. He was nearly bald, save 
for a graying fringe around the back, and he kept a short pencil behind an ear.
"Haul ass, guys," Janson barked. "We're following a whole new procedure this 
time. My team's assembled over at gate two in Concourse A. Don't make them wait. 
When they get impatient, sometimes they make mistakes with the samples, if you 
get my drift."
"This is bullshit," the bald man repeated.
"Want me to file a report saying that an Air Transport Association member 
protested and/or sought to evade the drug audit? Your test comes in positive, 
better start combing the want ads." Janson folded his arms on his chest. "Get 
the hell out of here, now."
"I'm going," the bald man grumbled, sounding less sure of himself. "I'm there." 
With expressions of exasperation and disgruntlement, all three men hastened out 
of the room, leaving clipboards and coffee cups behind. It would take them a 
good ten minutes before they reached Concourse A, Janson knew. He glanced at his 
watch and counted the few remaining seconds until his cell phone buzzed; the 
caller had waited one minute exactly.
"There's a food court near the ticketing pavilion," Janson said. "I'll meet you 
there. The table on the far left, all the way to the back. See you in a few." He 
removed his jacket, put on a dark blue windbreaker and cap, and waited in the 
recessed area. Thirty seconds later, he saw the white-haired woman walking past.
"Hey, honey!" he called out as, in one continuous movement, he reached an arm 
around her waist, clamped a hand over her mouth, and hustled her into the 
now-abandoned service room. There was, Janson had verified, nobody around to see 
the three-second maneuver; if there had been, his actions, coupled with his 
words, would have been taken for a romantic embrace.
The woman was startled, and rigid with fear, but she did not even try to scream, 
displaying a measure of professional composure that Janson found not the least 
reassuring. Once the door had closed behind them, Janson brusquely gestured her 
to take a seat at the Formica table. "Take a load off," he said.
The woman, looking incongruously elegant in the utilitarian space, sat down on 
one of the metal folding chairs. Janson remained standing.
"You're not exactly the way I'd pictured you," she said. "You don't look like a 
… " Conscious of his frankly hostile stare, she decided against finishing the 
sentence. "Mr. Janson, we really don't have time for this."
"I don't look like a what?" he said, biting off the words. "I don't know who the 
hell you think you are, but I'm not even going to list the infractions of 
protocol here. I'm not going to ask how you got my cell phone number or how you 
learned whatever you think you've learned. But by the time we're finished here, 
I'd better know everything I want to know." Even if she were a private citizen 
legitimately seeking his services, the public nature of the contact was 
completely inappropriate. And the use of a field legend of his, albeit a 
long-disused one, was a cardinal violation.
"You've made your point, Mr. Janson," she said. "My approach was, let's agree, 
ill advised. You'll have to forgive me—"
"I will? That's a presumption." He inhaled, detected a faint fragrance about 
her: Penhaligon's Jubilee. Their eyes met, and Janson's anger diminished 
somewhat when he saw her expression, mouth drawn with anxiety, gray-green eyes 
filled with grim determination.
"As I say, we have very little time."
"I have all the time in the world."
"Peter Novak doesn't."
Peter Novak.
The name delivered a jolt, as it was meant to. A legendary Hungarian financier 
and philanthropist, Novak had received a Nobel Peace Prize the previous year for 
his role in conflict resolution around the world. Novak was the founder and 
director of the Liberty Foundation, which was devoted to "directed 
democracy"—Novak's great passion—and had offices in regional capitals through 
Eastern Europe and other parts of the less developed world. But then Janson had 
reasons of his own to remember Peter Novak. And those reasons constituted a debt 
to the man so immense that Janson had occasionally experienced his gratitude as 
a burden.
"Who are you?" Janson demanded.
The woman's gray-green eyes bore into him. "My name is Marta Lang, and I work 
for Peter Novak. I could show you a business card, if you thought that would be 
helpful."
Janson shook his head slowly. Her business card would provide a meaningless 
title, identifying her as some sort of high-ranking employee of the Liberty 
Foundation. I work for Peter Novak, she had said, and simply from the way she 
spoke the words, Janson recognized her type. She was the factotum, the point 
person, the lieutenant; every great man had one. People like her preferred the 
shadows yet wielded great, if derivative, power. From her name and the barest 
trace of an accent, it was evident she was Hungarian, like her employer.
"What are you trying to tell me?" Janson said. His eyes narrowed.
"Only that he needs help. As you once did. In Baaqlina." Marta Lang pronounced 
the name of that dusty town as if it were a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter. 
For Janson, it was.
"I haven't forgotten," he said quietly.
"Then all you have to know right now is that Peter Novak requires your 
assistance."
She had spoken few words, but they were the right ones. Janson held her gaze for 
a long moment.
"Where to?"
"You can throw out your boarding card. Our jet is on the runway, cleared for 
immediate departure." She stood, her desperation somehow giving her strength and 
a sense of command. "We must go now. At the risk of repeating myself, there's no 
time."
"Let me risk repeating myself: Where to?"
"That, Mr. Janson, will be our question to you."
CHAPTER TWO
As Janson followed her up the grip-textured aluminum steps to Gulfstream V, his 
eye was caught by a legend that was painted on its side, the white cursive 
letters in shimmering contrast to the jet's indigo paint: Sok kicsi sokra megy. 
Hungarian, and meaningless to him. 
The runway was a wall of noise, the scream of air intakes layered the bass-heavy 
roar of the exhausts. Once the cabin door was closed however, silence reigned 
supreme, as if they had stepped into a soundproof booth. 
The jet was handsomely appointed without seeming lavish, the call of a man for 
whom price was no object, but luxury no concern. The interior was maroon; the 
leather-upholstered seats were large, club-style, one on either side of the 
aisle; some faced each other, with a low table between them. Four grim-faced men 
and women, evidently members of Marta Lang's staff, were already seated farther 
back in the plane. Marta gestured for him to take the seat opposite her, in the 
front of the cabin, and then picked up an internal phone and murmured a few 
words. Only very faintly could fanson detect the whine of the engine revving up 
as the plane began to taxi. The sound insulation was extraordinary. A carpeted 
bulkhead separated them from the cockpit.
"That inscription on the fuselage, what does it mean?" 
"It means 'Many small things can add up to a big one.' A Hungarian folk saying 
and a favorite motto of Peter Novak's. I'm sure you can appreciate why."
"You can't say he's forgotten where he came from." 
"For better or worse, Hungary made him who he is. And Peter is not one to forget 
his debts." A meaningful look.
"Nor am I."
"I'm aware of that," she said. "It's why we know we can rely on you."
"If he has an assignment for me, I'd like to hear about it sooner than later. 
And from him rather than someone else."
"You will have to make do with me. I'm deputy director of the Foundation and 
have been with him for many years."
"I don't question your absolute loyalty to your employer," Janson said coolly. 
"Novak's people are … renowned for it." Several rows back, her staffers seemed 
to be huddled over maps and diagrams. What was going on? He felt a growing sense 
of unease.
"I understand what you are saying, and also what you are too polite to say. 
People like me are often seen as starry-eyed true believers, I realize. Please 
accept that we have no illusions, none of us. Peter Novak is only a mortal. He 
puts his pants on one leg at a time, as you Americans like to say. We know that 
better than anyone. This isn't a religion. But it is a calling. Imagine if the 
richest person you knew was at once the smartest person you knew and the kindest 
person you knew. If you want to know why he commands loyalty, it's because he 
cares—and cares with an intensity that really is almost superhuman. In plain 
English, he gives a damn. He wants to leave the world a better place than he 
found it, and you can call that vanity if you like, but if so, it's the kind of 
vanity we need more of. And the kind of vision."
"'A visionary' is what the Nobel committee called him."
"A word I use under protest. It's a debased coin. Every article of Fortune 
proclaims some cable titan or soft-drink CEO a 'visionary.' But the Liberty 
Foundation was Novak's vision, and his alone. He believed in directed democracy 
when the idea seemed a pipe dream. He believed that civil society could be 
rebuilt in the parts of the world where totalitarianism and strife had 
eviscerated it. Fifteen years ago, people laughed when he spoke of his dream. 
Who is laughing now? Nobody would help him—not the United States, not the 
U.N.—but it didn't matter. He changed the world."
"No argument," Janson said soberly.
"Your State Department analysts had endless reports about 'ancient ethnic 
enmities,' about conflicts and border disputes that could never be settled, and 
about how nobody should try. But he tried. And time and again, he succeeded. 
He's brought peace to regions that had never experienced a moment of it for as 
long as anyone could remember." Marta Lang choked up, and she stopped speaking.
She was obviously unaccustomed to such displays of emotion, and Janson did her 
the favor of talking while she regained her composure. "I'd be the last person 
to disagree with anything you've said. Your employer is a man who seeks peace 
for the sake of peace, democracy for the sake of democracy. That's all true. 
It's also true that his personal fortune rivals the GDP of many of the countries 
he has dealings with."
Lang nodded. "Orwell said that saints should be judged guilty until proven 
innocent. Novak's proved who he really is, again and again. A man for all 
seasons, and a man for all peoples. It has become difficult to imagine the world 
without him." Now she looked at him, and her eyes were red-rimmed.
"Talk to me," Janson said. "Why am I here? Where's Peter Novak?"
Marta Lang took a deep breath, as if what she had to say was going to be 
physically painful. "He's a captive of the Kagama rebels. We need you to set him 
free. An 'exfiltration' is what I gather you people call it. Otherwise, he will 
die where he is, in Anura."
Anura. A captive of the Kagama Liberation Front. One more reason—the main 
reason, no doubt—that they wanted him for the job. Anura. A place he thought 
about nearly every day and had for the past five years. His own private hell.
"I'm starting to understand," Janson said, his mouth dry.
"A few days ago, Peter Novak arrived on the island, trying to broker a peace 
between the rebels and the government. There had been many hopeful signs. The 
KLF said they regarded Peter Novak as an honest broker, and a meeting place in 
the Kenna province was agreed upon. A rebel delegation agreed to many things 
they had flatly rejected in the past. And a lasting accord in Anura—an end to 
the terror—would be a very great thing. I think you understand that as well as 
anyone."
Janson said nothing, but his heart began to pound.


Their home, furnished by the embassy, was in Cinnamon Gardens, in the capital 
city of Caligo, and the area was still interspersed with the trees that once 
forested the land. In the morning breeze, leaves rustled and birds cawed. What 
roused him from his light sleep, though, was a soft coughing noise from the 
bathroom, then the running of the faucet. Helene came back from the bathroom, 
brushing her teeth vigorously. "Maybe you should stay home from work today," 
he'd said drowsily. Helene shook her head. "It's called morning sickness for a 
reason, my darling," she told him with a smile. "It vanishes like the morning 
dew." She started dressing for work at the embassy. When she smiled, she smiled 
with her whole face: with her mouth, her cheeks, her eyes—especially her eyes … 
The images flooded his mind—Helene laying out her clothes for a day at the 
office, proofreading State Department reports.
A blue linen skirt. A white silk blouse. Helens opening the bedroom windows 
wide, inviting in the tropical morning air, scented with cinnamon and mango and 
frangipani. The radiance of her face, retrousse nose and limpid blue eyes. When 
the nights at Caligo were hot, Helene was cool against his body. How callused 
and rough his battered hide always felt next to the velvet of her skin. "Take 
the day off, my dearest," he'd told her, and she'd said, "Better not, my 
darling. Either they'll miss me or they won't miss me at all, and either way 
that's not good." She kissed him on the forehead as she left. If only she had 
stayed with him. If only.
Public acts, private lives—the bloodiest of crossroads.
Anura, an island in the Indian Ocean the size of West Virginia, had a population 
of twelve million, and was blessed with rare natural beauty and a rich cultural 
legacy. Janson had been posted there for eighteen months, charged with directing 
an intelligence-gathering task force to make an independent assessment of the 
island's volatile political situation and to help trace whatever outside forces 
were'helping to foment unrest. For during the past decade and a half, Paradise 
had been disrupted by one of the deadliest terror organizations in the world, 
the Kagama Liberation Front. Thousands of young men, in thrall to the man they 
called the Caliph, wore leather pendants with a cyanide capsule at the end; it 
symbolized their readiness to give their lives for the cause. The Caliph had a 
particular fondness for suicide bombings. At a political rally for Anura's prime 
minister several years ago, one suicide bomber, a young girl whose sari bloused 
over an enormous quantity of explosives packed with ball bearings, left her mark 
on the island's history. The prime minister was killed along with more than a 
hundred bystanders. And then there were the truck bombings in downtown Caligo. 
One destroyed the Anura International Trade Center. Another, packed into an 
express courier and freight service truck, had delivered death to a dozen staff 
members in the U.S. embassy in Anura.
Among those dozen was Helene. One more victim of the mindless violence. Or was 
it two: what of the child they were to have had together?
Almost paralyzed with grief, Janson had demanded access to the NSA intercepts, 
including those of the sat-phone transmissions among the guerrilla leaders. The 
transcripts, hurriedly translated into English, gave little sense of vocal 
intonations and context; rapid dialogue was reduced to black type on white 
paper. But there was no mistaking the exultant tones. The embassy bombing was 
one of the Caliph's proudest moments.
Helene, you were my sun.


In the jet, Marta placed a hand on Janson's wrist. "I'm sorry, Mr. Janson. I 
appreciate the anguish this must bring back."
"Of course you do," Janson said in a level tone. "It's part of why you chose 
me."
Marta did not avert her gaze. "Peter Novak is about to die. The conference in 
the province of Kenna was nothing less than a trap."
"It was insanity to begin with," Janson snapped.
"Was it? Naturally, the rest of the world has given up, save for those who are 
furtively promoting the violence. But nothing offends Peter more than 
defeatism."
Janson flushed angrily. "The KLF has called for the destruction of the Republic 
of Anura. The KLF says it believes in the inherent nobility of revolutionary 
violence. How do you negotiate with such fanatics?"
"The details are banal. They always are. Ultimately, the plan was to move Anura 
toward a federated government that would grant more autonomy to the provinces. 
Redress Kagama grievances through a meaningful version of self-rule while 
offering Anurans genuine civil protections. It was in the interests of both 
parties. It represented sanity. And sometimes sanity prevails: Peter has proved 
that again and again."
"I don't know what to credit you people with—heroism or arrogance."
"Are the two so easily distinguished?"
Janson was silent for a moment. "Just give the bastards what they want," he said 
at last, his voice muffled.
"They don't want anything," Lang said softly. "We've invited them to name their 
price, as long as Peter is released alive. They've refused even to consider it. 
I don't need to tell you how rare that is. These are fanatics. The answer we 
keep getting is the same: Peter Novak has been sentenced to death for crimes 
against the colonized, and the execution decree is 'irrevocable.' Are you 
familiar with the traditional Sunni holy day of Id ul-Kebir?"
"It commemorates the sacrifice of Abraham."
Lang nodded. "The ram in the thistles. The Caliph says that this year it will be 
celebrated by the sacrifice of Peter Novak. He will be beheaded on Id ul-Kebir. 
That's this Friday."
"Why? For God's sakes, why?"
"Because," Lang said. "Because he's a sinister agent of neocolonialism—that's 
what the KLF says. Because doing so will put the KLF on the map, gain them 
greater notoriety than they've achieved in fifteen years of bombings. Because 
the man they call the Caliph was toilet-trained too soon—who the hell knows why? 
The question implies a level of rationality that these terrorists do not 
possess."
"Dear Christ," Janson said. "But if he's trying to aggrandize himself this way, 
whatever the logic, why hasn't he publicized it yet? Why hasn't the media got 
hold of it?"
"He's canny. By waiting until the deed is done to publicize it, he staves off 
any international pressure to intervene. Meanwhile, he knows we don't dare 
publicize it, because it would foreclose even the possibility of a negotiated 
solution, however remote."
"Why would a major government need any pressure to intervene? The fact is, I 
still don't understand why you're talking to me. You said it yourself, he's a 
man of all peoples. Accept that America's the last superpower—why not turn to 
Washington to help?"
"It's the first thing we did. They provided information. And they were profusely 
apologetic when they explained that they could offer no official assistance 
whatsoever."
"That's baffling. Novak's death could be profoundly destabilizing for dozens of 
regions, and one thing Washington does like is stability."
"It also likes to keep American nationals alive. The State Department believes 
that any U.S.-identified intervention right now would endanger the lives of 
dozens of American citizens who are now in rebel-occupied territory."
Janson was silent. He knew how such calculations were arrived at; he had been 
part of the process often enough.
"As they explained, there are also other … complications." Marta spoke the word 
with obvious distaste. "America's Saudi allies, for example, have been quiet 
supporters of the KLF over the years. They're not particularly enthusiastic 
about their approach, but if they don't support oppressed Muslims in that Muslim 
lake called the Indian Ocean, they lose face with the rest of the Islamic world. 
And then there's the matter of Donna Hedderman."
Janson nodded. "A Columbia grad student in anthropology. Doing fieldwork in 
northeast Anura. Which was both foolish and brave. Captured by the Kagama 
rebels, who accused her of being a CIA agent. Which was both foolish and evil."
"She's been held by them for two months, incommunicado. Lip service aside, the 
United States hasn't done a damn thing. Didn't want to 'complicate an already 
complicated situation.' "
"I'm getting the picture. If the United States refuses to intervene on behalf of 
an American national—"
"—how will it look if it turns around and sends a rescue team for the Hungarian 
billionaire? Yes. They didn't put it so bluntly, but that's the point they made. 
The phrase 'politically untenable' got a real workout."
"And then you made all the obvious counterarguments … "
"And some not-so-obvious ones. We pulled out all the stops. At the risk of 
sounding arrogant, I have to say that we usually get our way. Not this time. 
Then the other shoe dropped."
"Let me guess. You had what they call the 'terribly quiet chat,' " Janson said. 
"And my name came up."
"Repeatedly. Several highly placed officials in State and Central Intelligence 
all strongly recommended you. You're not part of the government anymore. You're 
a free agent with international connections to others in your line of work, or 
what used to be your line of work. According to your former colleagues at 
Consular Operations, Paul Janson is 'the best there is at what he does.' I 
believe those were the exact words."
"The present tense is misleading. They told you I retired. I wonder whether they 
told you why."
"The point is, you're a free agent now," she said. "You parted ways with 
Consular Operations five years ago."
Janson tilted his head. "With the awkwardness of saying good-bye to somebody on 
the street and then discovering you're walking in the same direction."


Disengaging from Consular Operations had involved more than a dozen exit 
interviews, some decorous, some frankly uncomfortable, and some outright stormy. 
The one he remembered best was with Undersecretary Derek Collins. On paper, he 
was the director of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research; 
in reality, he was the director of its covert branch, Consular Operations. Even 
now, he could see Collins wearily removing his black-framed glasses and 
massaging the bridge of his nose. "I think I pity you, Janson," Collins had 
said. "Never thought I'd hear myself say it. You were 'the machine,' Janson. You 
were the guy with a slab of granite where your heart's supposed to be. Now you 
say you're repulsed by the thing you're best at. What goddamn sense does that 
make? You're like a master pastry chef announcing he's lost his sweet tooth. 
You're a pianist who's decided he can't stand the sound of music. Janson, 
violence is something you're very, very, very good at. Now you're telling me 
you've lost the stomach for it."
"I don't expect you to understand, Collins," he had replied. "Let's just say 
I've had a change of heart."
"You don't have a heart, Janson." The undersecretary's eyes were like ice. "It's 
why you do what you do. Goddammit, it's why you are who you are."
"Maybe. And maybe I'm not who you think I am."
A short, bark-like laugh. "I can't climb a hawser, Janson. I can't pilot a 
blessed PBR, and looking through an infrared scope makes me seasick. But I know 
people, Janson. That's what I do. You tell me you're sickened by the killing. 
I'm going to tell you what you'll discover one day for yourself: that's the only 
way you'll ever feel alive."
Janson shook his head. The implication made him shudder and reminded him why he 
had to leave, why he should have done so long before. "What kind of man—" he 
started, and then halted, overcome with revulsion. He took a deep breath. "What 
kind of man has to kill to feel alive?"
Collins's gaze seemed to burrow through his flesh. "I guess I'd ask you the same 
thing, Janson."


Now, in Novak's private jet, Janson pressed the point. "How much do you know 
about me?"
"Yes, Mr. Janson, as you supposed, your former employers explained that you had 
unfinished business with the Kagama."
"Was that the phrase they used? 'Unfinished business'?"
She nodded.
Shreds of clothing, bone fragments, a few severed limbs that had been thrown 
clear. They were what remained of his beloved. The rest: "collectivized," in the 
grim words of a U.S. forensic technician. A communion of death and destruction, 
the blood and body parts of the victims impalpable and indistinguishable. And 
for what?
And for what?
"So be it," Janson said after a pause. "These aren't men with poetry in their 
souls."
"And, yes, they also understood that your name wasn't exactly unknown to us."
"Because of Baaqlina."
"Come." Marta Lang stood up. "I'm going to introduce you to my team. Four men 
and women who are here to help you any way they can. Any information you need, 
they'll have, or know how to find out. We have dossiers filled with 
signals-intelligence intercepts, and all the relevant information we could 
gather in what little time we had. Maps, charts, architectural reconstructions. 
It's all at your disposal."
"Just one thing," Janson said. "I know the reasons you're turning to me for 
help, and I can't refuse you. But have you considered that those same reasons 
may be why I'm exactly the wrong person for the job?"
Marta Lang gave him a steely look but did not reply.


The Caliph, attired in brilliantly white robes, walked across the Great Hall, a 
large atrium on the second floor of the eastern wing of the Stone Palace. All 
signs of the bloodbath had been rinsed away, or almost all. The intricate 
geometric pattern on the encaustic tiled floor was disfigured by only a faint 
rust tinge on the grout where blood had been allowed to rest too long.
Now he took a seat at the head of a thirty-foot-long table, where tea harvested 
from the province of Kenna had been poured for him. Standing to either side of 
him were the members of his personal security detail, stalwart and simple men 
with vigilant eyes who had been with him for years. The Kagama delegates—the 
seven men who had participated in the negotiations convened by Peter Novak—had 
already been summoned and would arrive momentarily. All of them had performed 
their duties well. They had signaled an exhaustion with the struggle, a 
recognition of "new realities," and lulled the meddlesome mogul and the 
government representatives with talk of "concessions" and "compromise."
Everything had been executed according to plan by the seven plausible Kagama 
elders, all of whom had the movement credentials to be accepted as spokesmen for 
the Caliph. Which was why one final act of service would be required of them.
"Sahib, the delegates are here," said a young courier, keeping his eyes 
bashfully on the ground as he approached.
"Then you will wish to remain and observe, to tell others what transpired in 
this beautiful room," the Caliph replied. It was a command, and would be honored 
as such.
The wide mahogany doors slid open at the other end of the Great Hall, and the 
seven men filed in. They were flushed with excitement, buoyant with the 
expectation of the Caliph's gratitude.
"I behold the men who negotiated so expertly with the representatives of the 
Republic of Anura," the Caliph said, in a loud, clear voice. He rose. "Revered 
officers of the Kagama Liberation Front."
The seven men bowed their heads humbly. "It was no more than our duty," said the 
eldest, whose hair was graying but whose eyes shined hard and bright. 
Anticipation made his smile quiver. "It is you who are the architect of our 
destinies. What we did was only in the majestic fulfillment of your—"
"Silence!" The Caliph cut him off. "Revered members of the Kagama Liberation 
Front who have betrayed the trust we placed in them." He glanced at the members 
of his retinue. "Watch these traitors simper and smirk before me, before all of 
us, for they have no shame. They would sell our destiny for a mess of pottage! 
They were never authorized to do what they tried to do. They are lackeys for the 
republican oppressors, apostates from a cause that is holy in the eyes of Allah. 
Every moment they breathe on this earth is an insult to the Prophet, salla Allah 
u alihi wa sallam."
With the crook of a forefinger, he signaled the members of his guard to proceed 
as they had been instructed.
The delegates' startled rejoinders and protests were cut short by a burst of 
tightly clustered gunfire. Their movements were jerky, spasmodic. On white 
tunics, blossoms of vibrant red appeared. As the low-signature shots echoed 
through the hall, with the rat-tat-tat of celebratory firecrackers, a few of the 
delegates loosed shrieks of terror before they expired and pitched forward, 
stacked on themselves like so much kindling wood.
The Caliph was disappointed; they sounded like frightened girls. These were good 
men: why could they not die with dignity? The Caliph tapped one of his retainers 
on the shoulder. "Mustafa," he said, "please see that the mess is cleaned up 
promptly." They had found out what happened to the grout when blood stayed on it 
too long, had they not? The Caliph and his deputies were masters of the palace 
now; they had to see to its upkeep.
"Just as you say," the young man replied, bowing deeply and fingering his 
leather pendant. "Without fail."
The Caliph then turned to the eldest member of his retinue, a man ho could 
always be counted on to keep him informed about matters lose at hand. "How fares 
our ram in the thickets?"
"Sahib?"
"How is the prisoner adjusting to his new accommodations?"
"Not well."
"Keep him alive!" the Caliph said severely. "Secure and alive." He set down his 
teacup. "If he dies prematurely, we won't be able to behead him come Friday. I 
should be very displeased."
"We will take care of him. The ceremony will proceed as you have planned it. In 
every detail."
Small things mattered, including the death of small men like the delegates. Did 
those men understand the service they had just performed in dying? Did they 
appreciate the love that had propelled the hail of bullets? The Caliph was truly 
grateful to them and to their sacrifice. And that sacrifice could be postponed 
no longer, for a KLF communiqué had already been sent denouncing the 
negotiations as an anti-Kagama plot and those who participated in them as 
traitors. The delegates had to be shot simply to make the communiqué credible. 
This was not something he could explain to them beforehand, but he hoped some of 
them surmised it in the instant before they perished.
It was all of a piece. The execution of Peter Novak, the repudiation of the 
negotiators, would be guaranteed to strengthen Kagama resolve for complete and 
unconditional victory. And to give pause to any other outside interlopers—agents 
of neocolonialism, in whatever humanitarian garb—who might try to appeal to 
"moderates," to "pragmatists," and so undermine the zeal of the righteous. Such 
half measures, such temporizing compromises, were an insult to the Prophet 
himself! And an insult to the many thousands of Kagama who had already died in 
the conflict. No differences would be split—only the heads of traitors.
And the world would learn that the Kagama Liberation Front would have to be 
taken seriously, its demands honored, its words feared.
Bloodshed. The immolation of a living legend. How else would a deaf world learn 
to listen?
He knew the message would be relayed to those it needed to reach among the 
Kagama. The international media was always another matter. For the bored 
spectators of the West, entertainment was the ultimate value. Well, the struggle 
for national liberation was not conducted for their entertainment. The Caliph 
knew how Westerners thought, for he had spent time among them. Most of his 
followers were poorly educated men who had traded plowshares for swords; they 
had never been on a plane and knew little of the world except what they heard on 
the heavily censored Kagama-language radio stations.
The Caliph respected their purity, but his range of experience was far greater, 
and necessarily so: the master's tools would be needed to dismantle the master's 
house. After attending college at the University of Hyderabad, he had spent two 
years obtaining a graduate degree in engineering from the University of 
Maryland, in College Park; he had been, he liked to say, to the heart of 
darkness. His time in the States taught the Caliph—Ahmad Tabari, as he was then 
called—how Westerners viewed the rest of the world. It introduced him to men and 
women who grew up in households of power and privilege, where the main struggle 
was over the remote control, and the greatest danger they faced was boredom. For 
them, places such as Anura or Sri Lanka or Lebanon or Kashmir or Myanmar had 
been flattened into metaphor, mere emblems of the pointless barbarity of 
non-Western peoples. In each case, the West enjoyed the great gift of 
obliviousness: obliviousness to its complicity, obliviousness to the fact that 
its barbarity dwarfed any other.
Westerners! He knew they remained an abstraction, ghostly and even demonic, to 
many of his followers. But they were no abstraction for the Caliph; he could see 
them and feel them, for he had. He knew what they smelled like. There was, for 
instance, the bored wife of an associate dean he had met during his school days. 
At a get-together the administration held for foreign students, she drew out of 
him his tales of hardship, and as he talked he had noticed how her eyes widened 
and her cheeks flushed. She was in her late thirties, blond and bored; her 
comfortable existence was a cage to her. What started as a conversation next to 
a punch bowl was followed, at her insistence, by coffee the very next day, and 
then by much more. She had been excited by his stories of persecution, by the 
cigarette burns on his torso; no doubt she was also excited simply by what she 
perceived as his exoticism, though she owned up only to an attraction to his 
"intensity." When he mentioned that electrodes had once been attached to his 
genitals, she looked both horrified and fascinated. Were there any lasting 
effects? she had asked solemnly. He had laughed at her ill-disguised interest 
and said he would happily let her decide for herself. Her husband, with his 
fecal breath and comical, pigeon-toed walk, would not be home for hours.
That afternoon, Ahmad performed a salat, the ritual prayer, with her juices 
still on his fingers. A pillowcase served as his prayer mat.
The weeks that followed were a crash course in Western mores that proved as 
valuable as anything else he learned at Maryland. He took, or was taken by, more 
lovers, though none knew of the others. They spoke dismissively of their 
pampered lives, but none of them would ever dream of actually leaving the gilded 
cage. With half an eye on the bluish glow of the TV screen, the spoiled white 
bitches would watch the events of the day as they waved their hands to hasten 
the drying of their nail polish. Nothing ever happened that American television 
could not reduce to a fifteen-second world-news update: slivers of mayhem 
between segments on new diet fads and pets in peril and warnings about expensive 
toys for toddlers that could be hazardous if swallowed. How rich in material 
things the West was, how poor in spiritual! Was America a beacon unto the 
nations? If so, it was a beacon leading other vessels into the shoals!
When the twenty-four-year-old graduate student returned to his native land, it 
was with a sense of even greater urgency. Injustice prolonged was injustice 
magnified. And—he could not say it enough—the only solution to violence was more 
violence.


Janson spent the next hour going through the dossiers and listening to brief 
presentations by Marta Lang's four associates. Much of the material was 
familiar; some of the analyses even reflected his own reports from Caligo, 
submitted more than five years ago. Two nights earlier, the rebels had taken 
over army bases, surged through checkpoints, and effectively seized control of 
the province of Kenna. Obviously, it had all been carefully planned in advance, 
down to the insistence on holding the summit in the province. In its latest 
communication to its followers, the KLF had officially repudiated the Kagama 
delegation at the summit, calling them traitors acting without authorization. It 
was a lie, of course, one of many.
There were a few new details. Ahmad Tabari, the man they called the Caliph, had 
gained in popular support during the past few years. Some of his food programs, 
it emerged, had won him sympathizers even among Hindu peasants. They had 
nicknamed him the Exterminator—not because of his propensity to murder civilians 
but because of a pest-eradication campaign he had launched. In the areas 
controlled by the KLF, aggressive measures were invariably taken against the 
bandicoot rat, an indigenous species of vermin destructive to poultry and grain. 
In fact, Tabari's campaign was motivated by an ancient superstition. In Tabari's 
clan—the extended family to which his father belonged—the bandicoot rat 
represented death. It did not matter how many Koran verses Ahmad Tabari had 
committed to memory: that primal taboo was marked indelibly on his psyche.
But the physical realm, not the psychological one, was what commanded Janson's 
full attention. For the next two hours, Janson scrutinized detailed 
topographical maps, grainy satellite imagery of the multiphase rebel incursion, 
and old blueprints of what had once been a colonial governor general's compound 
and, before that, a fortress—the building on Adam's Hill known by the Dutch as 
the Steenpaleis, the Stone Palace.
Again and again he stared at the elevation mappings of Adam's Hill and of the 
Stone Palace, moving back and forth between overhead views and structural 
blueprints. One conclusion was inescapable. If the U.S. government had declined 
to send in the SEALs, political considerations were only part of the story. The 
other part was that any exfiltration operation had an extremely remote 
probability of success.
Lang's associates knew it. He could see it in their faces: they were asking him 
to conduct a mission that was essentially doomed from the start. But perhaps 
nobody was willing to tell Marta Lang. Or she had been told and refused to 
accede. It was clear that she regarded Peter Novak as somebody worth dying for. 
She would give her life for him; and people like her were always willing to give 
the lives of others as well. Yet could he say that she was wrong? American lives 
had frequently been lost in pursuit of derisory gains—putting up a bridge over 
the Dak Nghe, for the tenth time, that would be destroyed, for the tenth time, 
before morning came. Peter Novak was a great man. Many owed their lives to him. 
And, though he tried to put it out of his mind, Janson knew he was among them.
If people were unwilling to put themselves at risk to save such an apostle of 
enlightenment, what did it say about the ideals of peace and democracy to which 
Novak had devoted his own life? Extremists scoffed at Westerners and their 
lightly held beliefs, yet was extremism in pursuit of moderation not itself a 
moral contradiction? Wasn't Janson's recognition of that fact what had driven 
him to retire?
Abruptly, Janson sat up straight. There was a way—perhaps.
"We'll need aircraft, boats, and most of all, the right operatives," he told 
Lang. His voice had subtly shifted, from the mode of gathering information to 
that of issuing orders. He stood and paced silently. The make-or-break factor 
was going to be the men, not the machinery.
Marta Lang looked at the others expectantly; for the moment, anyway, the look of 
grim resignation had lifted.
"I'm talking about a crack team of specialists," he said. "Best of breed in 
every case. There's no time for training exercises—it's going to have to be 
people who have worked together before, people I've worked with and can trust." 
He pictured a succession effaces, flashing in his mind like so many file photos, 
and mentally culled the list according to essential criteria until four 
remained. Each was someone he had worked with in his past career. Each was 
someone he felt he could trust with his life; indeed, each was someone who owed 
him his life, and who, temperamentally, would respect a debt of honor. And none 
of them, as it happened, were American nationals. The State Department could 
breathe easy. He gave Lang the list. Four men from four different countries.
Suddenly Janson slapped the bolted table. "Christ!" he half shouted. "What was I 
thinking? You're going to have to scratch the last name, Sean Hennessy."
"He's dead?"
"Not dead. Behind bars. Her Majesty's Prison Service. HMP Wormwood Scrubs. Got 
embroiled on a weapons charge a few months ago. Suspected of being IRA."
"Was he?"
"As it happens, no. Hadn't been since he was sixteen, but the military police 
kept his name in its Provo files all the same. In point of fact, he was doing a 
job for Sandline Ltd.—keeping the Democratic Republic of Congo safe for coltan 
extraction."
"Is he the best person for the job you want him to do?"
"I'd be lying if I told you otherwise."
Lang punched a series of numbers on what looked like a flat telephone console, 
and brought the handset to her ear.
"This is Marta Lang," she said, speaking with clipped precision. "Marta Lang. 
Please verify."
Sixty long seconds elapsed. Finally she spoke again. "Sir Richard, please." The 
number dialed was obviously not one that was in general circulation; it was 
unnecessary to specify to whomever had answered that it was an emergency, for 
that assumption would be automatic. Verification no doubt involved both voice 
print analysis and a telephony trace to the ANSI signature unique to every North 
American telephone line, including those that used a sat-com uplink.
"Sir Richard," she said, her voice defrosting slightly. "I have the name of an 
HMP-prisoner by the name of Sean, S-E-A-N, Hennessy, double n, double s. 
Probably an SIB apprehension, approximately three months ago. Status: arraigned, 
not convicted, awaiting trial." Her eyes sought out his for confirmation, and 
Janson nodded.
"We'll need to have him released at once and on a plane bound for … " She 
paused, reconsidering. "There's an LF jet docked at Gatwick. Get him on board 
immediately. Call me back within forty-five minutes with an estimated arrival 
time."
Janson shook his head, marveling. "Sir Richard" had to be Richard Whitehead, the 
director of Britain's Special Investigations Branch. But what most impressed him 
was her coolly instructive tone. Whitehead was to call back to let her know not 
whether the request could be accommodated but when the request would be 
accommodated. As Novak's seniormost deputy, she was obviously well known to 
political elites around the world. He had been preoccupied with the advantages 
enjoyed by his Anuran adversaries, but Novak's people were hardly without 
resources themselves.
Janson also admired Lang's instinctive respect for operational security. No 
final destination was divulged; the Liberty Foundation jet at Gatwick would just 
need to provide a proximate flight plan. Only once it had crossed into 
international airspace would its pilot need to know the rendezvous point Janson 
had determined, in the Nicobar archipelago.
Now Janson started to go over a list of military equipment with one of Lang's 
associates, a man named Gerald Hochschild, who served as a de facto logistics 
officer. To each request, Hochschild responded not with a yes or no, but with a 
time interval: twelve hours, four hours, twenty hours. The amount of time that 
would be necessary to locate and ship the equipment to the Nicobar rendezvous.
It was almost too easy, Janson mused. Then he realized why. While human rights 
organizations held conferences to discuss the problem of the small-arms trade in 
Sierre Leone or the traffic in military helicopters in Kazakhstan, Novak's 
foundation had a more direct method for taking the noxious hardware off the 
market: it simply acquired the stuff. As Hochschild confirmed, as long as the 
model was discontinued and therefore irreplaceable, the Liberty Foundation would 
buy it, warehouse it, and eventually recycle it as scrap or, in the case of 
military transport, have it retooled for civilian purposes.
Thirty minutes later, a green light on the telephone blinked. Marta Lang picked 
up the handset. "So he's en route? Condition?" There was a pause, and then she 
said, "We'll assume a departure time in less than sixty minutes, in that case." 
Her voice softened. "You've been a dear. We couldn't appreciate it more. Really. 
And you be sure to send my love to Gillian, will you? We all missed you in Davos 
this year. You can be certain that Peter gave the PM an earful about that! Yes. 
Yes. We'll catch up properly—soon."
A woman of parts, Janson thought admiringly.
"There's a reasonable chance that your Mr. Hennessy will beat you to the 
rendezvous," Marta told him immediately after she hung up.
"My hat's off," Janson said simply.
Through the windows, the sun was a golden orb, cushioned by white, 
fluffy-looking clouds. Though they were flying toward the setting sun, the 
passage of time was keeping pace. When Lang's eyes lowered to her watch, he knew 
she was looking at more than simply the time of day. She was looking at the 
number of hours Peter Novak had left. She met his gaze and paused for a moment 
before speaking. "Whatever happens," she said, "I want to thank you for what 
you've given us."
"I've given you nothing," Janson protested.
"You've given us something of quite substantial value," she said. "You've given 
us hope."
Janson started to say something about the realities, the long odds, the abundant 
downside scenarios, but he stopped himself. There was a higher pragmatism to be 
respected. At this stage of a mission, false hope was better than none at all.
CHAPTER THREE
The memories were thirty years old, but they could have been yesterday's. They 
unspooled in his dreams at night—always the night before an operation, fueled by 
repressed anxiety—and though they started and ended at different points, it was 
as though they were from the same continuous loop of tape.
In the jungle was a base. In the base was an office. In the office was a desk. 
On the desk was a sheet of paper.
It was, in fact, the list for that date's Harassment & Interdiction fire.
Possible VC rocket attack, launch site grid coordinates AT384341, between 0200 
and 0300 this morning.
A VC political cadre meeting, Loc Ninh village, BT415341, at 2200 this evening.
VC infiltration attempt, below Go Noi River, AT404052, between 2300 and 0100.
That pile of well-thumbed slips on Lieutenant Commander Alan Demarest's desk was 
filled with similar reports. They were supplied by informants to ARVN officials, 
who then passed them along to the Military Assistance Command-Vietnam, MACV. 
Both the informants and the reports were assigned a letter and a number 
assessing their reliability. Nearly all the reports were classified as F/6: 
reliability of agent indeterminate, reliability of report indeterminate.
Indeterminate was a euphemism. Reports came from double agents, from VC 
sympathizers, from paid informants, and sometimes just from villagers who had 
scores to settle and had figured out an easy way to get someone else to destroy 
a rival's paddy dike.
"These are supposed to be the basis for our Harassment and Interdiction fire," 
Demarest had said to Janson and Maguire. "But they're bullshit. Some four-eyed 
Charlie in Hanoi wrote these for our sake, and piped them through the pencil 
dicks at MACV. These, gentlemen, are a waste of artillery. Know how I know?" He 
held up a filmy slip, fluttered it in the air like a flag. "There's no blood on 
this paper." A twelfth-century choral work played through the tiny speakers of 
an eight-track tape system, one of Demarest's small enthusiasms.
"You get me a goddamn VC courier," Demarest went on, scowling. "No, you get me 
an even dozen. If they've got paper on them, bring it back—certified with VC 
blood. Prove to me that military intelligence is not a contradiction in terms."
That evening, six of them had rolled over the gunwales of the fiberglass-hulled 
STAB, the SEAL tactical assault boat, and into the bath-warm shallow water of 
Ham Luong. They paddled through an eighth of a mile of riverine silt and landed 
on the pear-shaped island. "Come back with prisoners, or don't come back," their 
CO had told them. With luck, they would do so: the island, Noc Lo, was known to 
be controlled by Viet Cong. But luck had lately been in scarce supply.
The six men wore black pajamas, like their foe. No dog tags, no signs of rank or 
unit, of the fact that they were a SEAL team, of the even more pertinent fact 
that they were Demarest's Devils. They had spent two hours making their way 
through the island's dense vegetation, alert to any sign of the enemy—sounds, 
footprints, even the smell of the nuoc cham sauce their enemy doused over their 
food.
They were divided into three pairs, two of them in front, traveling ten yards 
apart; two of them serving as rear guard, in charge of the forty-pound M60, 
ready to provide cover.
Janson was on point, paired with Hardaway, a tall, thickly built man with dark 
brown skin and wide-spaced eyes. He kept his head close-shorn with electric 
clippers. Hardaway's tour of duty was up in sixty days, and he was getting antsy 
about returning stateside. A month ago, he had torn out a skin-mag centerfold 
and divided it into numbered squares. Each day, he filled in one of the squares. 
When they were all filled in, he would take his centerfold girl back home and 
trade her in for a real one. That was Hardaway's idea, anyway.
Now, three hundred yards inland, Hardaway picked up a contraption made out of 
tire rubber and canvas, and showed it to Janson with a questioning look. They 
were mud shoes. The light-bodied VC used them to glide tracklessly through 
swampy terrain. Recently discarded?
Janson called for thirty seconds of silent vigilance. The team froze in place, 
alert to any noise that was out of the ordinary. Noc Lo was in the middle of a 
free-fire zone, where firing was permitted at any time without restriction, and 
there was no escape from the muffled sounds of distant batteries, mortars 
booming at half-second intervals. Away from the vegetation, one could see the 
white pulsations on the fringe of the horizon. But after thirty seconds, it 
seemed evident that there was no activity in the immediate vicinity.
"You know what the mortar fire makes me think of sometimes?" Hard-away asked. 
"The choir clapping in my church. Like it's religious, some kind of way."
"Extreme unction, Maguire would tell you," Janson replied softly. He had always 
been fond of Hardaway, but this evening his friend seemed unusually distracted.
"Hey, they don't call it the Holiness Church for no reason. You come to 
Jacksonville, I'll take you one Sunday." Hardaway bobbed and clapped to a rhythm 
in his head. " 'Sanctify my lord, sanctify my lord.' "
"Hardaway," Janson warned, putting a hand on his gear belt.
The crack of a rifle told them that the enemy had learned of their presence. 
They would have to dive to the ground, to take immediate evasive action.
For Hardaway, however, it was too late. A small geyser of blood erupted from his 
neck. He staggered forward several yards, like a sprinter who had crossed the 
finish line. Then he collapsed to the ground.
As Maguire's machine gun began to fire bullets over their heads, Janson 
scrambled over to Hardaway. He had been struck in the lower outside part of his 
neck, near his right shoulder; Janson cradled his head, applying pressure with 
both hands to the pulsing wound on the front of his neck, desperately trying to 
staunch the flow.
"Sanctify my lord," Hardaway said weakly.
The pressure was not working. Janson felt his shirt becoming warm and wet, and 
he realized what was wrong. There was an exit wound, at the back of Hardaway's 
neck, perilously near his spine, from which bright arterial blood was gouting.
In a sudden display of strength, he wrenched Janson's hands from his neck. 
"Leave me, Janson." He was trying to shout, but it came out as a low rasp. 
"Leave me!" He crawled away a few feet, then used his arms to raise himself, his 
head swiveling around the tree line as he tried to make out the shapes of his 
assailants.
Immediately, a blast hit his midriff, slamming him to the ground. His abdomen 
had been torn apart, Janson saw. Recovery was out of the question. One man down. 
How many more?
Janson rolled behind a thornbush.
It was a goddamn ambush!
The VC had been lying in wait for them.
Dialing his scope furiously, zooming through the marsh grasses and palms, Janson 
saw three VCs running down a jungle path directly toward him.
A direct assault? No, he decided: it was more likely that the raking overhead 
fire from the M60 had caused them to change their position. A few seconds later, 
he heard the sharp thwack of bullets hitting the ground near him.
Dammit! There was no way the fire could be this heavy and well targeted unless 
Charlie had received advance word of the infiltration. But how?
He shifted his rifle scope rapidly to different directions and focal points. 
There: a hooch on stilts. And just behind it, a VC aiming a Chicom AK-47 in his 
direction. A small, skilled man who must have been responsible for the last 
blast that had hit Hardaway.
In the moonlight, he saw the man's eyes, and just underneath, the bore hole of 
the AK-47. Each, he knew, had spotted the other, and what AK-47 fire lacked in 
precision it made up for in volume. Now he saw the VC brace the butt on his 
shoulder and prepare to squeeze off a fusillade just as Janson located the man's 
torso in his crosshairs. Within seconds, one of them would be dead.
Janson's universe constricted to the three elements: finger, trigger, 
crosshairs. At that instant, they were all he knew, all he needed to know.
A double tap—two carefully aimed shots—and the little man with the submachine 
gun pitched forward.
Yet how many more were out there?
"Get us the fuck out of here!" Janson radioed back to base. "We need backup now! 
Send a Mike boat. Send whatever the hell you've got. Just do it now!"
"Just one moment," the radio operator said. Then Janson heard the voice of his 
commanding officer coming on the line: "You holding up OK, son?" Demarest asked.
"Sir, they were expecting us!" Janson said.
After a pause, Demarest's voice crackled on the radio headphones. "Of course 
they were."
"But how, sir?"
"Just consider it a test, son. A test that will show which of my men have what 
it takes." Janson thought he heard choral music in the background. "You're not 
going to complain to me about the VCs, are you? They're just a bunch of 
overgrown kids in pajamas."
Despite the oppressive tropical heat, Janson felt a chill. "How did they know, 
sir?"
"If you wanted to find out how good you were at shooting paper targets, you 
could have stayed at camp in Little Creek, Virginia."
"But Hardaway—"
Demarest cut him off. "He was weak. He failed the test."


He was weak: Alan Demarest's voice. But Janson would not be. Now he opened his 
eyes with a shudder as the plane touched down on the macadamized landing strip.
Katchall had for years been declared a restricted, no-entry location by India's 
navy, part of a security zone that included most of the Nicobar Islands. Once it 
was rezoned, it became nothing less than a trading post. Mangoes, papaya, 
durian, PRO 101s, and C-130s all made their way to and from the sun-scorched 
oval of land. It was, Janson knew, one of the few places where nobody would 
blink at the sudden arrival of military transport vehicles and munitions.
Nor was it a place where the niceties of sovereign border control were observed. 
A jeep took him directly from the plane to the compound along the western shore. 
His team would already be assembling in the olive drab Quonset hut, a structure 
of ribbed aluminum over a frame of arched steel ribs. The floor and foundation 
were concrete, the interior pressed wood. A small prefab warehouse adjoined it. 
The Liberty Foundation had a low-profile regional office in Rangoon, and so was 
able to move advance men in place to ensure that the rendezvous sites were in 
order.
Little had changed since Janson had last used it as a base of operations. The 
Quonset hut he would borrow was one of many on the island, originally erected by 
the Indian military and now abandoned or commandeered for commercial interests.
Theo Katsaris had already arrived when Janson pulled up, and the two men 
embraced warmly. Katsaris, a Greek national, had been a protégé of Janson's and 
was probably the most skilled operative he had ever worked with. The only thing 
that disturbed Janson about him, in fact, was his tolerance—indeed, appetite—for 
risk. Janson had known plenty of daredevils from his SEAL days and knew the 
profile: they typically came from depressed Rust Belt towns, where their friends 
and parents had led deadend lives. They were up for anything that saved them 
from punching the clock at the rivet factory—including another tour of duty in 
VCcontrolled territories. But Katsaris had everything to live for, including a 
stunningly beautiful wife. Impossible to dislike, he had a charmed life, and yet 
set little store by it. His very presence would raise morale; people enjoyed 
being around him: he had the sunny aura of a man to whom nothing bad would ever 
happen.
Manuel Honwana had been in the nearby hangar but made his way back when he 
learned of Janson's arrival. He was a former colonel in the Mozambican air 
force, Russian-trained and unequaled at ground-hugging flight over hilly 
tropical terrain. Cheerfully apolitical, he had extensive experience with 
combating dug-in, entrenched guerrillas. And it was very much a point in his 
favor that he had flown numerous sorties in the fixed-wing rattletraps that were 
all his poor country could get its hands on. Most American flyboys were 
PlayStation graduates, used to being surrounded by millions of dollars in 
digital avionics. Instinct tended to atrophy as a result: they were mere 
custodians of the machine, less pilots than information-system technicians. But 
this job would require a pilot. Honwana could reassemble a MiG engine with a 
Swiss Army knife and his bare hands, because he'd had to. If he had instruments, 
so much the better; if he did not, he was unfazed. And if an emergency 
nonstandard landing was required, Honwana would be right at home: on the 
missions he'd both flown and directed, a proper airstrip was the exception, not 
the rule.
Finally, there was Finn Andressen, a Norwegian and a former officer in his 
country's armed forces, who had degrees in geology and had a well-honed instinct 
for terrain assessment. He had designed security arrangements for mining 
companies around the world. He arrived within the hour, followed in short order 
by Sean Hennessy, the remarkably versatile and unflappable Irish airman. The 
team members greeted one another with hearty shoulder clasps or quiet 
handshakes, depending on their temperament.
Janson led them through the plan of attack, starting with the broad outlines and 
descending to details and alternative options. As the men absorbed the mission 
protocol, the sun grew red, large, and low in the horizon, as if it were getting 
heavier and its weight were forcing it down toward the sea. To the men, it was a 
giant hourglass, reminding them how little time remained.
Now they split up into pairs and set about fine-tuning the plan, bringing 
schematics in line with reality. Leaning over a folding wooden bench, Honwana 
and Andressen reviewed maps of wind-current and oceancurrent patterns. Janson 
and Katsaris studied a plasticine mock-up of the Steenpaleis, the Stone Palace.
Sean Hennessy, meanwhile, was doing chin-ups from an exposed I beam as he 
listened to the others; it had been one of his few distractions in HMP Wormwood 
Scrubs. Janson glanced at him; would he be all right? He had no reason to think 
otherwise. If the Irishman's complexion was paler than usual, his physique was 
burlier. Janson had run him through a rough-and-ready field physical and was 
satisfied that his reflexes were as quick as ever.
"You do realize," Andressen said to Janson, turning away from his charts, "that 
there will be at least a hundred people based in the Stone Palace alone. Are you 
sure we have enough manpower?"
"More than enough," Janson said. "If five hundred Gurkhas were called for, I'd 
have requested them. I've asked for what I need. If I could do it with fewer, I 
would. The fewer men, the fewer the complications."
Janson now turned from the plasticine model to the highly detailed blueprints. 
Those blueprints, he knew, represented an enormous effort. They had been 
prepared in the past forty hours by a task force of architects and engineers 
assembled by the Liberty Foundation. The experts had been provided with 
extensive verbal descriptions from visitors, a profusion of historical 
photographs, and even present-day overhead satellite imagery. Colonial archives 
in the Netherlands had been consulted as well. Despite the rapidity with which 
the work was done, Novak's people told him they believed it was "quite accurate" 
in most of the particulars. They also warned that some of the particulars, the 
ones pertaining to seldom-used areas of the structure, were "less certain" and 
that some of the materials analysis was conjectural and "uncertain."
Less certain. Uncertain. Words Janson was hearing too often for his taste.
Yet what was the alternative? Maps and models were all they had. The Dutch 
governor general's compound was adapted from a preexisting fortress, laid out on 
a promontory three hundred feet above the ocean. Walls of limestone, five feet 
thick, were designed to withstand cannonballs from Portuguese men-of-war of 
centuries past. The sea-facing walls were topped with battlements from which 
hostile schooners and corvettes would be fired upon.
Everyone Janson had assembled in that Quonset hut knew precisely what was at 
stake. They also knew the obstacles they faced in trying to derail what the 
Caliph had set in motion. Nothing would be gained by compounding Novak's death 
with their own.
It was time for a final briefing. Janson stood; his nervous energy made it 
difficult for him to sit. "OK, Andressen," he said. "Let's talk terrain."
The red-bearded Norseman turned the large, calendared sheets of the elevation 
maps, pointing out features with a long forefinger. His finger moved along the 
massif, almost ten thousand feet at the Pikuru Takala peak, and then onward to 
the plateaus of shale and gneiss. He pointed out the monsoon winds from the 
southwest. Tapping a magnification of Adam's Hill, Andressen said, "These are 
recently reclaimed areas. We're not talking about sophisticated monitoring. A 
lot of what we're up against is the protection offered by the natural terrain."
"Recommended flight path?"
"Over the Nikala jungle, if the Storm Petrel's up for it."
The Storm Petrel was Honwana's well-deserved nickname, honoring his ability to 
pilot a plane so that it nearly skimmed the ground, the way a storm petrel flies 
above the sea.
"The Petrel's up for it," Honwana said, his lips parting to reveal ivory teeth 
in what was not quite a smile.
"Mind you," Andressen went on, "as long as we can hold off until around four 
hundred hours, we'll be almost guaranteed a heavy cloud cover. That's obviously 
advisable for the purposes of stealth."
"You're talking about a high-altitude jump through heavy cloud cover?" Hennessy 
asked. "Jumping blind?"
"A leap of faith," said the Norseman. "Like religion. Like embracing God."
"Begorrah, I thought this was a commando operation, not a kamikaze one," 
Hennessy put in. "Tell me, Paul, what bloody fool is going to be making this 
jump?" The Irishman looked at his fellow crew members with genuine concern.
Janson looked at Katsaris. "You," he told the Greek. "And me."
Katsaris stared at him silently for a few moments. "I can live with that."
"From your lips to God's ear," Hennessy said.
CHAPTER FOUR
Packing one's own chute: it was practically a ritual, a military superstition. 
By the time one got out of jump camp, the habit was as ingrained as brushing 
one's teeth or washing one's hands.
Janson and Katsaris had repaired to the adjoining warehouse to do the job. They 
started by draping the canopy and rigging over the large, flat concrete 
flooring. Both sprayed silicone over the rip-cord cable, the closing pin, and 
the closing loop. The next steps were rote. The black canopy was made of 
zero-porosity nylon, and Janson rolled his body over the loose drapes, pressing 
as much air out of it as he could. He straightened the stabilizer lines and 
toggles, and folded the flattened canopy to ensure an in-sequence opening, 
taking care that the rigging was on the outside of the folds. Finally, he 
bunched it into the black mesh pack, squeezing the remaining air through the 
edge stitching before slipping a clasp through the grommet.
Katsaris, with his nimble fingers, was finished in half the time.
He turned to Janson. "Let's you and I do a quick weapons inspection," he said. 
"Pay a visit to the junk shop."
The premise of a team was that anybody would accept personal risk to reduce a 
risk borne by another. An ethos of equality was crucial; any sense of favoritism 
was destructive to it. When they met as a group, Janson therefore dealt with the 
men in a tone that was at once brusque and friendly. But even within elites, 
there were elites—and even within the innermost circles of excellence, there is 
the chosen one, the golden boy.
Janson had once been that person, almost three decades earlier. Just a few weeks 
after he'd arrived at the SEAL training camp at Little Creek, Alan Demarest had 
picked him out from the enlisted trainees, had him transferred to ever more 
elite combat teams, ever more grueling regimens of combat drills. The training 
groups got smaller and smaller—more and more of his peers dropped out, defeated 
by the punishing schedule of exercises—until, by the end, Demarest isolated him 
for intensive sessions of one-on-one training.
Your fingers are weapons! Never encumber them. Half a warrior's intelligence is 
found in his hands.
Don't squeeze the vein, squeeze the nerve! Memorize the nerve points until you 
can find them with your fingers, not your eyes. Don't look—feel!
I spotted your helmet above that ridgeline. You're fucking dead!
Can't see a way out? Take the time to see things differently. See the two white 
swans instead of the one black one. See the slice of pie instead of the pie with 
the slice missing. Flip the Necker cube outward instead of inward. Master the 
gestalt, baby. It will make you free. Firepower by itself won't do it. You've 
got to think your way out of this one.
Yes! Turn your hunter into your prey! You've got it!
And thus did one legendary warrior create another. When Janson had first met 
Theo Katsaris, years back, he knew—he simply knew, the way Demarest must have 
known about him.
Yet even if Katsaris had not been so extraordinarily gifted, operational 
equality could not supplant the bonds of loyalty forged over time, and Janson's 
friendship with him went far beyond the context of the commando mission. It was 
a thing compounded of shared memories and mutual indebtedness. They would talk 
to each other with urgency and candor, but they would do so away from the 
others.
The two made their way to the far end of the warehouse, where 
Foundation-supplied weaponry had been stowed earlier that day. Katsaris quickly 
disassembled and reassembled selected handguns and long-barreled weapons, making 
sure that the parts were oiled, but not too heavily—combusted lubricant could 
create plumes of smoke, visual or olfactory giveaways. Imperfectly plumbed 
barrels could overheat too quickly. Hinges should be tight, but not too tight. 
Magazines should slide readily into place, but with just enough resistance to 
ensure they would be held securely. Collapsible stocks, like those of the MP5Ks, 
should collapse with ease.
"You know why I'm doing this," Janson said.
"Two reasons," Katsaris said. "Arguably the two reasons you shouldn't be doing 
this." Katsaris's hands moved as he spoke, the clicking and snapping of gunmetal 
providing a rhythmic counterpoint to his conversation.
"And in my position?"
"I'd do exactly the same," Katsaris said. He raised the disassembled chamber 
pocket of a carbine to his nose, scenting evidence of excessive lubrication. 
"The military wing of the Harakat al-Muqaama al-Islamiya never had a good 
reputation for returning stolen property." Stolen property. Hostages especially 
those suspected of being assets of American intelligence. Seven years ago, in 
Baaqlina, Lebanon, Janson had been captured by the extremist group; his captors 
initially thought they had taken an American businessman, accepting his legend 
at face value, but the flurry of high-level reactions fueled other suspicions. 
Negotiations quickly went off the rails, foundering on power struggles within 
the faction. Only the timely intervention of a third party—the Liberty 
Foundation, as it later emerged—caused them to alter their plans. After twelve 
days of captivity, Janson walked free. "For all we know, Novak wasn't even 
involved, didn't have any knowledge of the situation," Katsaris went on. "But 
it's his foundation. Ergo, you owe the man your life. So this lady comes up to 
you and says, Baaqlina has come due. You've got to say yes."
"I always feel like an open book around you," Janson said, his smile crinkling 
the lines around his eyes.
"Yeah, written with one time pad encryption. Tell me something. How often do you 
think about Helene?" The warrior's brown eyes were surprisingly gentle.
"Every day."
"She was magical, wasn't she? She always seemed so free."
"A free spirit," Janson said. "My opposite in every way."
Katsaris slid a nylon-mesh brush through the bore hole of another automatic 
weapon, checking for any cracks, carbon deposits, or other irregularities, and 
then he looked straight into Janson's eyes. "You once told me something, Paul. 
Years ago. Now I'm going to tell it to you." He reached over, placed a hand on 
Janson's shoulder. "There is no revenge. Not on this earth. That's storybook 
stuff. In our world, there are strikes and reprisals and more reprisals. But 
that neat, slate-cleaning fantasy of revenge—it doesn't exist."
"I know."
"Helene's dead, Paul."
"Oh. That must be why she hasn't been answering my phone calls." His deadpan was 
masking a world of pain, and not very well.
Katsaris's gaze did not waver, but he squeezed Janson's shoulder harder. "There 
is nothing—nothing—that can ever bring her back. Do what you want to the Kagama 
fanatics, but know this."
"It was five years ago," Janson said quietly.
"Does it feel like five years ago?"
The words came out in a whisper. "Like yesterday." It was not how an officer 
spoke to those he commanded. It was how a man spoke to the person with whom he 
was closest in the world, a person to whom he could never lie. He exhaled 
heavily. "You're afraid I'm going to go berserk and visit the wrath of God upon 
the terrorists who killed my wife."
"No," Katsaris said. "I'm afraid that on some gut level, you think that the way 
to wipe the slate clean, the way to honor Helene, is to get yourself killed by 
them, too."
Janson shook his head violently, though he wondered whether there could be any 
truth to what Katsaris said. "Nobody's going to die tonight," he said. It was a 
ritual of self-assurance, they both knew, rather than a statement of 
probabilities.
"What's ironic is that Helene always had real sympathy for the Kagama," Janson 
said after a while. "Not the terrorists, not the KLF, of course, but the 
ordinary Kagama caught in the middle of it all. Had she lived, she probably 
would have been right by Novak's side, trying to work out a peace agreement. The 
Caliph is an archmanipulator, but he exists because there are genuine grievances 
for him to manipulate."
"If we're here to do social engineering, we've been given the wrong equipment." 
Theo ran a thumbnail against a combat knife, testing its keenness. "Besides, 
Peter Novak tried that, and look where it got him. This is a strict in-out. 
Insertion and extraction."
Janson nodded. "If everything goes right, we'll be spending a total of a hundred 
minutes on Anura. Then again, if you've got to deal with these people, maybe 
it'll help if you know where they're coming from."
"If we've reached that stage," Katsaris replied grimly, "everything will have 
gone wrong that can go wrong."


"I won't mind taking this baby out for a spin," Honwana said admiringly. He, 
Janson, and Hennessy were standing in the gloomy hangar, their eyes still 
adjusting from the bright sun outside to the shadows within.
The BA609 was a sea-landing-equipped tiltrotor aircraft; like the discontinued 
Ospreys, it had propellers that enabled vertical takeoffs and landings but that, 
when tilted to the horizontal position, would enable the craft to function like 
a fixed-wing airplane. Bell/Agusta had crafted the fuselage of this particular 
specimen not from steel but from a tough molded resin. The result was an 
exceptionally lightweight craft that could travel much farther on a liter of 
fuel than any conventional design—up to four times as far. Its versatility would 
be important to the success of the mission.
Now Honwana ran his fingertips over the nonreflective surface. "A thing of 
beauty."
"A thing of invisibility, if the gods are with us," said Janson.
"I'll pray to the ancestors," Honwana said, with no little mirth. A 
Moscow-educated die-hard atheist, he was sympathetic to neither indigenous nor 
missionary-spread forms of religiosity.
"There's a full tank. Assuming you haven't put on weight since we worked 
together last, that should just get us there and back."
"You're cutting things close. The tolerances, I mean." The Mozambican's eyes 
were serious.
"No choice. Not my timetable, not my locale. You might say the KLF is calling 
the shots here. I'm just trying to improvise as best I can. This isn't a 
well-scoured contingency plan we're looking at. More like, 'Hey, kids, let's put 
on a show.' "
"Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland in a barn," Hennessy put in heavily. "With a 
whole load of high explosives."


The north coastline of Anura nipped in like a deeply grooved valentine's heart. 
The eastern lobe was mostly jungle, sparsely inhabited. Honwana flew the 
tiltrotorcraft low to the ground through the Nikala jungle. Once over the sea, 
the plane angled upward, banking nearly forty degrees.
Despite the plane's curious trajectory, Honwana's piloting was extraordinarily 
smooth, anticipating and compensating for wind currents and updrafts. The 
now-horizontal nacelles emitted a steady noise, something between a hum and a 
roar.
Andressen and Hennessy were up front with Honwana, part of the crew, providing 
essential navigational support; separated by a bulkhead, the two paratroopers 
were left alone on uncushioned benches in the rear of the aircraft, to confer 
with each other and go through their last-minute preparations.
Half an hour into the flight, Katsaris consulted his shockproof Breitling and 
swallowed a 100mg tablet of Provigil. It would adjust his circadian rhythms, 
ensuring late-night alertness, without the excessive stimulation and exaggerated 
confidence that amphetamines could induce. They were still two hours away from 
the drop zone. The Provigil would be in maximal effect during the operation. 
Then he took another small pill, a procholinergic that would inhibit 
perspiration.
He gestured toward a pair of thick black aluminum tubes that Janson was holding 
up to his ear.
"Those things are really going to make it?" he asked.
"Oh yes," Janson said. "As long as the gas mixture doesn't leak. The little 
darlings are going to be full of pep. Just like you."
Katsaris held up a foil strip of Provigil tablets. "Want one?"
Janson shook his head. Katsaris knew what he was doing, but Janson knew that 
drugs could have unpredictable side effects in different people, and he declined 
to take substances he had no experience with. "So tell me, Theo," he said, 
putting away the tubes and shuffling the blueprints, "how's the missus?" Now 
that they were not around the others, he once more called his friend by his 
first name.
"The missus? She know you call her that?"
"Hey, I knew her before you did. The beautiful Marina."
Katsaris laughed. "You have no idea how beautiful she is. You think you do, but 
you don't. Because right now she's positively radiant." He pronounced the last 
word with special emphasis.
"Wait a minute," Janson said. "You don't mean she's … "
"Early days, still. First trimester. Touch of morning sickness. Otherwise, she's 
doing great."
Janson flashed on Helene, and he felt as if a giant hand were squeezing his 
heart in a crushing grip.
"And we are a handsome couple, aren't we?" Katsaris said it with mock swagger, 
but it was the indisputable truth. Theo and Marina Katsaris were among God's 
favored, perfect specimens of Mediterranean strength and symmetry. Janson 
remembered a week he'd spent with them in Mykonos—remembered the particular 
afternoon when they encountered an imperious Paris-based director of a fashion 
shoot in pursuit of the ever potent combination of skimpy swimsuits, abundant 
white sand, and azure sea. The Frenchwoman was convinced that Theo and Marina 
were models, and demanded the name of their agency. All she saw were their 
perfect white teeth, flawless olive complexion, glossy black hair—and the 
possibility that these attributes were not enlisted for some commercial 
enterprise struck her as a wasteful indifference toward a valuable natural 
resource.
"Then you're going to be a father," Janson said. The rush of warmth he had felt 
on hearing the news quickly cooled.
"You don't sound overjoyed," Katsaris said.
Janson said nothing for a few moments. "You should have told me."
"Why?" he returned lightly. "Marina's the one who's pregnant."
"You know why."
"We were going to tell you soon. In fact, we were hoping you'd agree to be the 
godfather."
Janson's tone was almost truculent. "You should have told me before."
Theo shrugged. "You don't think a dad should take risks. And I think you worry 
too much, Paul. You haven't gotten me killed yet. Look, I understand the risks."
"I don't understand the risks, dammit. That's the point. They're poorly 
controlled."
"You don't want to orphan my kid. Well, guess what—neither do I. I'm going to be 
a father, and that makes me very, very happy. But it isn't going to change the 
way I lead my life. That's not who 1 am. Marina knows that. You know it, 
too—that's why you picked me in the first place."
"I don't know that I would have picked you had I realized—"
"I'm not talking about now. I'm talking about then. I'm talking about 
Epidaurus."


It was only eight years ago when a twenty-man contingent from the Greek army was 
detailed to a Cons Op-run interception exercise. The objective was to train the 
Greeks to detect and deter a growing small-arms trade that made use of Greek 
freighters. A ship a few miles off the coast of Epidaurus was chosen at random 
for the exercise. As luck would have it, however, the ship happened to be loaded 
with contraband. Even worse, a Turkish drug merchant was on board, accompanied 
by his heavily armed private guard. Things went wrong, terribly wrong, in a 
cataract of misfortune and misunderstanding. Inexperienced men on both sides 
panicked: the supervisors from Consular Operations could observe—by means of a 
digital telescope and the remote listening devices on the frogmen's suits—but, 
agonizingly, they were too far away to intervene without jeopardizing the 
trainees' safety.
From a small frigate anchored half a nautical mile away, Janson had been 
horrified by the disastrous unfolding of events; in particular, he recalled the 
twenty tension-filled seconds in which matters could have gone either way. There 
had been two bands of armed men, evenly matched. Each individual maximized his 
own chance of survival by opening fire first. But once the automatic weapons 
were engaged, the surviving members of the adversary would have no choice but to 
return fire. It was the sort of suicidal "fair fight" that could easily have 
resulted in 100 percent fatalities for both sides. At the same time, there was 
no chance that the Turk's guards would stand down—it would be seen as a 
treasonous abdication, ultimately repaid by their own compatriots with a swift 
death.
"Don't shoot!" a young Greek shouted. He lay down his weapon, yet the gesture 
conveyed not fear but disgust. Janson heard his voice tinnily but clearly 
through the transmitter unit. "Cretins! Dolts! Ingrates! We work for you."
The jeers of the Turks were boisterous, but the claim was sufficiently bizarre 
that they demanded further explanation.
An explanation arrived, mixing fact and fiction, brilliantly improvised and 
fluently delivered. The young Greek invoked the name of a powerful Turkish drug 
magnate, Orham Murat, to whose cartel the merchant on board belonged. He 
explained that their commanding officers had assigned him and the other soldiers 
to search suspect freighters but that Murat had paid them generously to ensure 
that his own vessels were protected from seizure. "A generous, generous man," 
the young officer had said, in a tone of solemnity and greed. "My children have 
him to thank for their three meals a day. With what the government gives us? 
Bah!" The other Greeks were silent at first, their reticence interpreted as 
simple fear and awkwardness. Then they began to nod, as they understood that 
their colleague was telling this tale for their own sakes. They lowered their 
weapons and kept their gaze downcast, unchallenging.
"If you are lying … " the seniormost member of the Turkish guard began in a 
growl.
"All we ask is that you not radio about this—our superiors monitor all maritime 
communications, and they have your codes."
"Lies!" barked a gray-haired Turk. It was the merchant himself who had finally 
appeared on deck.
"It is the truth! The American government has helped our commanders with this. 
If you radio about us, you might as well shoot us now, because the army will 
have us executed when we return. In fact, I would beg you to shoot us now. Then 
the Greek army will think we died as heroes and provide pensions to our 
families. As to whether Orham Murat will be as generous to your widows and 
children when he learns that you destroyed an operation he spent so much time 
and money on—this you will have to decide for yourselves."
A long, uncomfortable silence ensued. Finally, the merchant broke in: your 
claims are preposterous! If they had access to our communications—'
"If? If? Do you think it is an accident that we were ordered to board your 
freighter?" The Greek snorted contemptuously. "I ask you one question. Do you 
really believe in coincidence?"
With that, the salvation of his unit was secured. No smuggler—none who survived 
long, anyway—ever believed in coincidence.
The young Greek led the other frogmen back into the water and to the 
American-run frigate. Loss of life: zero. Seven hours later, a flotilla of 
maritime security vessels converged on the Minas: artillery engaged and aimed. 
In the face of an overwhelming display of force, the drug merchant and his guard 
surrendered.
Afterward, Janson introduced himself personally to the young Greek who had the 
spur-of-the-moment ingenuity to seize upon and invert the one implausible 
truth—the truth that the drug merchant's freighter had been boarded by 
accident—and so render his tale plausible indeed. The young man, Theo Katsaris, 
turned out to be more than just levelheaded, clever, and bold; he was also 
endowed with remarkable physical agility and had earned top-percentile scores in 
field-skill tests. As Janson learned more about him, he saw how anomalous he 
was. Unlike most of his fellow servicemen, he came from a comfortably 
middle-class background; his father was a mid-level diplomat, once posted to 
Washington, and Katsaris had attended St. Alban's for a couple of years in his 
early teens. Janson would have been tempted to dismiss him as merely an 
adrenaline addict—and that was part of the story, without a doubt—but Katsaris's 
sense of passion, his desire to make a difference in the world, was genuine.
A few days later, Janson had drinks with a Greek general he knew who was himself 
a product of the U.S. Army War College, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Janson 
explained that he had come across a youngster in the Greek army who had 
potential that could not be fully exploited by the routine of the Greek 
military. What he proposed was to take him under his wing and supervise his 
training personally. At the time, the leadership of Consular Operations was 
particularly attuned to "strategic partnerships"—joint operations with NATO 
allies. Under such auspices, Consular Operations would gain an asset in the 
short term; in the longer term, Greece would ultimately benefit by having 
somebody who could pass along skills and techniques in counterterrorism to his 
fellow citizens. The deal was done by the third cocktail.


Now, in the rear of the tiltrotorcraft, Janson gave Katsaris a steely look. 
"Marina know what you're doing?"
"Didn't tell her details, and she didn't press." Katsaris laughed. "Come on, 
Marina has more balls than the Greek army's Eighth Division. You know that."
"I do know that."
"So let me make the decisions. Besides, if this operation is too risky for me, 
how can you in good conscience ask another person to take my place?"
Janson just shook his head.
"You need me," Katsaris said.
"I could have gotten somebody else."
"Not somebody as good."
"I won't deny that." Neither man was smiling anymore.
"And we both know what this operation means to you. I mean, it isn't just work 
for hire."
"I won't deny that, either. Arguably, it means a lot for the world."
"I'm talking about Paul Janson, not the planet Earth. People before 
abstractions, right? That was something else we always agreed on." His brown 
eyes were unwavering. "I'm not going to let you down," he said quietly.
Janson found himself oddly touched by the gesture. "Tell me something I don't 
know," he said.


As the zero hour grew near, an unspoken sense of anxiety mounted. They had taken 
what precautions they could. The aircraft was fully blacked out, with no lights 
and nothing that might reflect light from another source. Sitting on canvas 
slings near the plane's greasy ramp, Katsaris and Janson followed the same rule; 
they wore nothing reflective. As they approached the drop zone, they put on full 
black-nylon combat garb, including face paint. To have done so too far in 
advance would have been to risk overheating. Their equipment-laden vests looked 
lumpy beneath the flight suit, but there was no alternative.
Now came the first great improbability. He and Katsaris had three thousand jumps 
between them. But what would be required tonight was beyond anything they had 
experienced.
Janson had been pleased with himself when he first had the insight that the 
compound's sole point of vulnerability was directly overhead—that the one 
possibility of an undetected arrival would be from the night sky to the center 
of the courtyard. Whether there was a serious chance of accomplishing this, on 
the other hand, remained purely conjectural.
To arrive undetected, they would have to fall to the ground, silently, through 
the starless, moonless night that the monsoon season would provide. The 
satellite weather maps confirmed that at four o'clock in the morning, and 
extending through the next hour, the cloud cover would be total.
But they were men, not action figures. To succeed, they would have to land with 
extraordinary precision. To make things worse, the same weather system that 
provided cloud cover also provided unpredictable winds—another enemy of 
precision. Under ordinary circumstances, any one of these complications would 
have led Janson to abort a jump.
It was, in too many ways, a shot in the dark. It was also the only chance Peter 
Novak had.
Honwana opened the hatch at the altitude they had agreed upon: twenty thousand 
feet. At that altitude, the air would be frigid, perhaps thirty below zero. But 
exposure to those temperatures would be relatively brief. Goggles, gloves, and 
the tight-fitting swimming-cap-like helmets they wore would help, as would their 
nylon flight suits.
It was another reason they wanted to release off the water, more than a lateral 
mile from the Stone Palace. As they descended, they would want to be able to 
discard items like the rip-cord handle and their gloves, and to do so with the 
assurance that these items would not come raining down over their target like so 
many warning leaflets.
The high-altitude release would also give them more time to maneuver themselves 
into position—or to get themselves hopelessly out of position. Without physical 
rehearsal, it was impossible to know whether this was the right decision. But a 
decision had to be made, and Janson made it.
"OK," Janson said, standing before the open hatch. "Just remember. This isn't 
exactly going to be a hop-and-pop. Time to play follow-the-leader."
"No fair," Katsaris said. "You always get to go first."
"Age before beauty," Janson grunted as he made his way down the four-foot 
aluminum ramp.
Then he leaped out into the inky skies.
CHAPTER FIVE
Blasted by the aircraft's powerful slipstream, whipsawed by icy crosscurrents, 
Janson struggled to keep his limbs properly aligned. Free fall, it was called, 
and yet it did not feel like falling. Surrendering to gravity, he felt perfectly 
still—felt himself to be immobile in the face of powerful, loudly whistling 
winds. Moreover, free fall, in this case, would have to be anything but free. 
Four miles below him was a heaving ocean. If he were to achieve the necessary 
trajectory, almost every second of his fall would have to be carefully 
controlled. If the next two minutes did not go as planned, the mission would be 
over before it had begun.
Yet the turbulence made control difficult.
Almost immediately, he found himself buffeted by the wind, and then he began to 
spin, slowly at first and then faster. Dammit! He was overcome by paralyzing 
vertigo and a growing sense of disorientation. A deadly combination at this 
altitude.
Facedown, he arched hard, spreading out his arms and legs. His body stopped 
spinning, and the vertigo abated. But how much time had elapsed?
In ordinary free fall, terminal velocity was reached at about 110 miles per 
hour. Now that he had stabilized, he needed to slow the descent as much as 
possible. He moved into spider position, keeping his limbs spread out and 
rounding his spine into a C. All the while, the freezing winds, seemingly 
angered by his efforts to harness them, whipped at his rig, equipment, and 
clothing and burrowed behind his goggles and flight cap. His gloved fingers felt 
as if they had been injected with Novocain. Slowly, he moved his right wrist 
toward his face, and he peered through his goggles at the large, luminous 
displays of the altimeter and the GPS unit.
It was high-school math. He had to make it to the drop zone within the forty 
seconds that remained. An inertial fiber gyroscope would tell him if he was 
moving in the right direction; it would be less help in figuring out how to 
correct his course.
He craned his head to see where Katsaris was.
There was no sign of him. That was not a surprise. What was the visibility, 
anyway? Was Katsaris five hundred feet away from him? Fifty? A hundred? A 
thousand?
It was not an idle question: two men hurtling blindly through a dark cloud could 
collide, fatally. The odds were against such a collision. But then the whole 
operation itself was in defiance of any rational calculation of the odds.
If, at the end of the jump, they were off the destination point by a mere twenty 
feet, the result could be disastrous. And the same cloud cover that conferred 
invisibility also made a precision landing immeasurably more difficult. 
Normally, a paratrooper would land on a well-marked DZ—tracer flares were 
standard practice—using his vision as he tried to direct himself with the rig 
toggles. To an experienced sky diver, this became a matter of instinct. But 
those instincts would be little help in this case. By the time they were close 
enough to the ground to see much of anything, it could very well be too late. 
Instead of instinct, they would be forced to rely upon global positioning system 
devices strapped to their cuffs and, in effect, play an electronic game of Marco 
Polo.
Thirty-five seconds. The window was closing: he had to get into delta position 
as soon as possible.
Janson swept his arms back and steered himself with his shoulders and hands. No 
good: a walloping, gale-level crosscurrent struck Janson and pulled him into an 
overly steep flight path. He immediately realized what had gone wrong. He was 
consuming altitude swiftly. Too swiftly.
Could anything be done about it?
His only chance was to increase his drag. Yet he had to progress toward the 
compound as fast as possible if he had any chance of reaching it. To do both 
would be impossible.
Had he destroyed the mission only seconds into it?
It could not be.
But it could.
Lashed by icy winds, Janson found the quiet commands of expertise competing with 
a din of internal recrimination. You knew this wouldn't work; it couldn't work. 
Too many unknowns, too many uncontrollable variables. Why did you accept the 
mission in the first place? Pride? Pride in your professionalism? Pride was the 
enemy of professionalism: Alan Demarest had always said so, and here he spoke 
the truth. Pride gets you killed. There never was a reasonable chance of 
success. No sane person or responsible military branch would accept it. That's 
why they turned to you.
A quieter voice penetrated the din. Max track.
He had to move into track position. It was his own voice he heard, from decades 
back, when he was training new recruits to a special SEAL team. Maximum track.
Could he do it? He had not attempted the maneuver in many years. And he had 
certainly never tracked on a GPS-directed jump. Tracking meant turning one's 
body into an airfoil, with the humped profile of an airplane's wing, so that one 
actually acquired some lift. For several seconds, Janson accelerated, with his 
head down and his limbs spread out slightly. He bent his arms and waist 
slightly, and rolled his shoulders forward, as if preparing to kowtow; he cupped 
his hands. Finally, he pulled his head back as he put his legs together, 
pointing his toes like a ballet dancer.
Nothing happened. He was not tracking.
It took ten seconds of acceleration before he experienced a sense of lift and 
noticed that his dive was beginning to flatten. In a max track, a human being 
should be able to reach an angle of descent that was close to forty-five degrees 
from vertical.
In theory.
In max track, it should be possible to move as rapidly horizontally as one was 
moving vertically—so that every yard downward took one almost a yard forward, 
closer to the drop zone.
In theory.
In reality, he was an equipment-laden commando who, beneath his flight suit, had 
forty pounds of gear hooked to his combat vest. In reality, he was a 
forty-nine-year-old man whose joints were stiffening in the subzero air that 
blasted its way through his flight suit. A max track required him to maintain 
perfect form, and it was not clear how long his skeletal muscles would permit 
him to do so.
In reality, every glimpse he took at his altimeter and GPS unit violated that 
perfect form he was depending on. And yet without them he was truly flying 
blind.
He cleared his mind, swept from it all anxieties; for the time being, he would 
have to be a machine, an automaton, devoted to nothing other than the execution 
of a flight trajectory.
He stole another glance at his wrist-worn instruments.
He was heading off course, he saw from the blinking of the GPS device. How far 
off course? Four degrees, maybe five. He angled both hands in parallel, at 
forty-five degrees, slightly deforming the cushion of air that surrounded him, 
and was rewarded with a slow turn.
The GPS device stopped blinking, and he felt suffused with a heedless, 
unthinking sense of hope.
He was tracking, soaring through the inky skies, an air cushion conserving his 
altitude as he tracked toward his destination. He was black, the sky was black, 
he was at one with the currents. The wind was in his face, but it was also 
keeping him aloft, like the hand of an angel. He was alive.
A vibration at his wrist. The altimeter alarm.
A warning that he was reaching the vertical point of no return—the height below 
which the only sure thing was death on impact. The manuals put it in less 
dramatic words: they referred to the "minimum altitude for parachute 
deployment." A high-altitude, low-opening jump established only the rough 
parameters: if the opening was too low, the ground would hit him like a 
tractor-trailer in the passing lane of the autobahn.
And yet he was farther away from the DZ than he'd planned to be at this point. 
He had imagined that he would be in the immediate vicinity of the compound when 
he opened the chute. For one thing, the difficulties in maneuvering amid 
shifting currents were immensely greater with an open canopy. For another, 
slowly drifting downward over the Stone Palace brought with it a greater danger 
of detection. A man plummeting at 160 miles per hour was harder to see than a 
man slowly drifting beneath a large rectangular parachute.
There were risks either way. He had to make a decision. Now.
He craned his head around, trying to see something, anything, in the thick 
blackness. What he felt was, in free flight, an entirely unaccustomed sensation: 
claustrophobia.
And that decided him: there would be fog. He and his black canopy would not 
stand out against the starless night. He arched himself into a vertical 
position, reached for the rip-cord handle, and tugged. There was a brief flutter 
as the tightly packed chute spread itself in the air and the lines stretched out 
fully. He felt the familiar jolt, the sense of being gripped at his shoulders 
and seat. And the noise of the wind ceased, as if a mute button had been 
pressed.
He tossed the rip-cord handle away and peered up to make sure the black nylon 
canopy was properly flared. He himself had a difficult time making out its 
outlines in the night sky, just fifteen feet above him. On another occasion, 
that might have been unsettling; tonight it was reassuring.
Abruptly, he felt himself pushed sideways by another gusting crosscurrent, and 
there was something almost corporeal about the sensation, as though he were 
being tackled. He would have to control the rig carefully; if he oversteered, it 
would be nearly impossible to return to the DZ. He was also acutely conscious of 
the trade-off between steering and speed: the canopy was at its top forward 
speed when the steering lines were up all the way and undeployed.
Now his GPS indicator showed that he had drifted significantly off course.
Oh Christ, no!
Even as he floundered in the turbulent air, he as well as Katsaris knew that 
what lay ahead would be even more difficult: they would have to make a silent, 
unobserved landing in an enclosed courtyard. An error made by either of them 
would imperil them both. And even if they executed their task flawlessly, any 
one of a thousand unpredictable complications could be lethal. If a soldier 
happened to be in the vicinity of the central courtyard—and no law ordained 
otherwise—they would be dead. The mission would be aborted. And, in all 
likelihood, the object of the mission would be summarily killed. That much was 
standard operating procedure for their terrorist friends. One responded to an 
in-progress rescue mission by destroying the object of rescue—posthaste.
Now he pulled his right steering line down far and fast. He would need to make a 
fast turn, before another gust sent him beyond the point of recovery. The effect 
of the pull was almost instantaneous: he found himself swinging out from under 
the canopy, arcing wildly. And the large, round altimeter told him what he could 
feel: that his speed of descent had just increased considerably.
Not good. He was closer to the ground than he should be. Still, he had to assume 
that he had returned to the proper angle of flight, and he raised the steering 
lines again, allowing the canopy to yawn out to its full 250 square feet and 
maximize its vertical drag. He was adept at maneuvering around wind cones, but 
the very unpredictability of the air currents made ordinary calculations 
irrelevant. All he knew was that he was off the wind line; crabbing across it 
was the only way to return to it. As he had done hundreds of times before, he 
fidgeted with the toggles to establish the direction of the prevalent winds; 
finally, he found that he was able to make gentle S-turns astride the wind line, 
holding and running every time he drifted off it. The process required complete 
concentration, especially because the sea was sending up thermals at random, or 
so it seemed. The Anuran sky was like a horse that did not want to be broken.
His pulse quickened. Like the mast of a ghost ship, battlements and embrasures 
were becoming visible through the fog, the ancient white limestone reflecting 
the faintest light seeping through the cloud cover. The vista came as something 
of a shock; it was the first thing he had seen since the jump. Quickly, he cast 
off his gloves and flight cap. Now he mentally rehearsed the landing maneuver. 
Crosswind leg. Downwind leg. Base leg. Final approach.
To minimize landing velocity, it was crucial to approach the destination from 
upwind. The crosswind jaunt took him a thousand feet to the right. Then he 
drifted downwind for another five hundred feet, deliberately overshooting the 
target. He would be traveling 250 feet into the wind for the final approach. It 
was an elaborate but necessary maneuver. He could slow his forward movement by 
pulling in the corners of the canopy with both toggles, but the effect would be 
to increase his rate of descent to an unacceptable speed. He would therefore 
have to rely upon the wind itself to reduce his horizontal velocity.
He prayed that no sudden turn would be necessary to position himself over the 
central region of the courtyard, for a fast turn, too, would dangerously hasten 
his descent. The last fifteen seconds had to be perfect. There was no margin for 
error; the compound's high walls' made a low, shallow approach impossible.
He was suddenly aware how hot and moist the air was—it was as if he had moved 
from a meat locker into a steam bath. Water was actually condensing on his 
chilly extremities. His fingers were wet as he reached for the toggles, and he 
felt a pang of adrenaline; he could not afford for them to slip.
With the toggles fully up and the canopy therefore fully extended, he glided 
toward the center of the courtyard, which was visible to him only as a play of 
black hues. As soon as his hands were free, he deactivated his wrist 
instruments, lest their glow give his presence away.
His heart started to beat hard: he was almost there—if he could only manage, 
with his wet, slick fingers, the final landing fall.
Choosing the right second was crucial. Now? His boots were fifteen feet above 
the ground; he could tell because the ground and the canopy seemed just about 
the same distance from him. No. Even within the walls of the compound, the gusts 
were too unpredictable. He would wait until he was half that distance from the 
ground.
Now.
He brought both toggles down to shoulder level, and then, in one fluid motion, 
he turned down his wrists and pulled the toggles down between his thighs, 
bringing his forward motion to a complete stop. As he sank down the remaining 
few feet, he tensed his leg muscles and rotated his body in the direction of the 
fall, bending his knees slightly. Two seconds before he hit the ground, he had 
to decide whether to make a soft-roll landing—knees and feet together—or try for 
an upright landing, which meant keeping them apart. In for a penny, in for a 
pound: he'd go for a standing touchdown.
Keeping his leg muscles flexed, he sank to the ground on the soles of his boots. 
The soft rubber was designed for silence, and it performed as it was meant to. 
Soundlessly, he bounced on the balls of his feet, preparing to fall. But he did 
not.
He was standing. On the ground of the courtyard.
He had made it.
He looked around him, and, in the starless night, he could just make out the 
contours of a vast deserted courtyard, three times as long as it was wide. A 
large white structure—the old fountain, as the blueprints had specified—loomed 
several yards away. He was almost exactly in the center of an area that was 
approximately the size of half a football field and that was eerily quiet. There 
was, he confirmed, no sign of movement—no sign that his arrival had been 
observed.
Now he unhooked his rig, removed his flight suit, and quickly gathered the 
canopy from the cobblestoned courtyard. It would have to be hidden before 
further action could be taken. Even a starless night was not wholly devoid of 
illumination. The black nylon, visually protective against the night sky, 
contrasted with the light gray cobblestone. It couldn't be allowed to lie on the 
ground.
But where was Katsaris?
Janson looked around. Had Katsaris overshot the courtyard? Landed on the beach, 
far below? Or on the hard-packed gravel road that led to the compound? Either 
mistake could be lethal—to him and to the others involved in the mission.
Dammit! Once again, a small fist of fury and fear gathered strength within him. 
It was the hubris of the planner that he—he, of all people—had succumbed to: the 
desk jockey's error of thinking that what worked on paper would mesh with 
tactical reality. The tolerances were too small. Every member of the team knew 
it; the men were simply too much in awe of his record to drive the point home. 
The jump required something close to perfection, and perfection wasn't possible 
in this fallen world.
Janson felt a surge of frustration: who knew that better than he did? It was 
sheer luck that he himself had made it this far.
His thoughts were interrupted by a faint rustle—the sound of the cells of a 
nylon canopy gently collapsing overhead. Janson looked up into the black sky. It 
was Katsaris, floating down slowly, as he flared his chute and landed with a 
gentle, noiseless roll. He scrambled to his feet and came toward Janson.
Now there were two of them.
Two of them. Two highly experienced, highly skilled operatives.
And now they were in place—in the middle of the Stone Palace courtyard. The last 
place, he had to believe, where anyone would expect visitors.
There were two of them—against an entire battalion of armed guerrillas.
Still, it was a start.
CHAPTER SIX
Now Janson activated the communication system and tsked into the filament 
microphone near his mouth, a click and sibilant. Military protocol.
Katsaris followed his lead: he silently removed his flight suit, then gathered 
the canopy into a tight bundle.
The two of them packed the nylon fabric of canopy and suit into the dank basin 
of the grand stone fountain that stood in the center of the courtyard. Once an 
impressive feat of sculpture—its marble was finely incised—it now gathered 
rainwater and algae. A light-absorbing scum adhered to the sides of the wide, 
circular pool like a black liner. It would do. Black on black: the protective 
coloration of the night.
Janson's hands groped over his vest and fatigues, his fingers identifying the 
key items of equipment. Katsaris, standing nearby, was doing the same; each 
visually inspected the other's camouflage and gear, standard procedure for such 
operations. They had each traveled a long distance in turbulent conditions. A 
lot could happen in that time. Punched by the slipstream, whipped by crosswinds, 
a paratrooper could arrive without his full complement of equipment, however 
securely it had been attached to his combat vest and fatigues. Janson had 
learned that from his SEAL days; Katsaris had learned it from him.
Janson surveyed his partner. The whites of his eyes were the only beacons from 
his painted face. Then he saw a patch of pale over his right shoulder. 
Katsaris's shirt had been torn during his landing roll, revealing light skin. 
Janson signaled him to stand still while he pulled out a few inches of black 
electricial tape from a spool in his fatigues. He taped the seams together, and 
the light patch disappeared. Tailoring in the drop zone, Janson thought to 
himself.
And yet such details could make all the difference. Their black garb would help 
them disappear into the shadows of a deeply shadowed courtyard. By the same 
token, even a few inches of silvery flesh could spell betrayal in the carelessly 
roving beam of a guard's flashlight.
As he had emphasized on Katchall, the rebels would not have hightech perimeter 
defenses, but they would have defenses of a sort that technology had not yet 
equaled: the five senses of vigilant human beings. An ability to detect 
anomalies in the visual, aural, and olfactory fields that surpassed the 
capabilities of any computer.
The descent had largely been through subzero winds. But on the ground, even at 
four o'clock in the morning, it was eighty-five degrees and humid. Janson could 
feel himself starting to sweat—real sweat, not condensation from the 
atmosphere—and he knew that in time his body's own smell could betray him. His 
dermal proteins, those of a meat-eating Westerner, would be alien to the 
Anurans, who subsisted largely on vegetables and fish curries. He'd have to 
trust that the salt breezes would whisk away any olfactory signals of his 
presence.
Janson unhooked his night-vision glasses from his combat vest and raised them to 
his eyes; the large courtyard was suddenly bathed in a soft green glow. He made 
sure that the black rubber ocular cups were pressed firmly against his face 
before he dialed up the image luminosity: any light spilling from the NV scope 
could alert a watchful sentry. He had once seen a member of a commando team 
killed by a patrol who had caught the telltale glint of green and fired almost 
blindly. Indeed, he had once seen a man perish because of an illuminated watch 
dial.
Now he and Katsaris stood back-to-back, each conducting an NV sweep of the 
opposite quadrants.
On the north side of the courtyard were three orange phosphorescent blobs, two 
leaning toward each other—a sudden white flare emerging between their spectral 
forms. Janson depowered the scope before lowering it to view the scene with his 
naked eyes. Even from twenty yards away, he could clearly see the flickering 
flame. A match had been struck—an old-fashioned fireplace match, it appeared—and 
two of the guards were lighting their cigarettes with it.
Amateurs, Janson thought. A guard on duty should never provide incidental 
illumination and should never encumber his most important weapon, his hands.
But then who were these people? There was a vast gap between the Caliph with his 
top strategists, trained by terror cells in the Middle East, and their 
followers, typically recruited from villages filled with illiterate peasants.
There would be highly trained sentinels and soldiers in place. But their 
attention would be directed toward the outside world. They would be at the 
battlements and in the watchtowers. The ones stationed along the inner courtyard 
would be charged with the relatively trivial chores of internal discipline, 
making sure that no ganja-fueled carousing disturbed the sleep of the Caliph or 
the members of his command.
Though they stood only a few feet away from each other, Katsaris whispered into 
his filament microphone, his voice amplified in Janson's ear-niece: "One sentry. 
Southeast corner. Seated." A beat. "Probably half asleep."
Janson replied in a subwhisper, "Three sentries. The north veranda. Very much 
awake."
In a hostage exfiltration, as neither had to be reminded, one went where the 
guards were. Unless an ambush had been laid: the visible guards in one place, 
the valuables in another, and a further set of guards in wait. Yet there was no 
room for doubt in this case. The blueprints made it clear that the dungeon was 
located beneath the northern face of the courtyard.
Janson moved slowly to his left, along the wall, and then beneath the overhang 
of the western veranda, walking half-crouched beneath the parapet. They could 
not be overreliant on the darkness: a rod in the human retina could be activated 
by a single photon. Even in the blackest night, there were shadows. Janson and 
Katsaris would stay in those shadows as long as possible: they would move along 
the sides of the courtyard, avoiding the center.
Now, for a few moments, Janson kept perfectly still, not even breathing: just 
listening. There was the distant, soft roar of the sea, washing at the base of 
the promontory. A few bird noises—a cormorant, perhaps—and, from the forests to 
the south, the scraping and buzzing of tropical insects. This was the aural 
baseline of the night, and they would do well to be aware of it. It was 
impossible to move with absolute silence: fabric slid against fabric, nylon 
fibers stretched and contracted around a person's moving limbs. Soles, even 
those of thick, soft rubber, registered their impact on the ground; the hard 
shells of a dead beetle or cicada would crunch with a footfall. The night's 
acoustic tapestry would conceal some noises but not others.
He listened for sounds of Katsaris's movement, straining harder than any sentry 
would, and heard nothing. Would he be as successful in maintaining silence?
Ten feet, then twenty feet, along the wall. There was a scraping sound, then the 
burst of a tiny combustion: the third guard was lighting up.
Janson was near enough to watch the motion: a thick, self-lighting match struck 
against brick, its candlelike flame held under what looked like a thin 
cigarillo. After twenty seconds, the tobacco smell wafted toward him—it was 
indeed a cigarillo—and Janson relaxed a little. The flare of the match would 
constrict the sentries' irises, temporarily reducing their visual acuity. The 
tobacco smoke would render their noses all but useless. And the activity of 
smoking would compromise their ability to respond, in an encounter where a split 
second was the difference between life and death.
He was now fifteen feet away from the northern veranda. He took in the 
rusticated limestone and wrought-iron grille. The terra-cotta mission roof tiles 
were a late addition and sat oddly on a structure that had been built and 
rebuilt over centuries. Four stories; the grand rooms on the second floor, where 
the leaded glass, hood moldings, and arched transoms suggested the 
transformation of a Portuguese fortress into what a Dutch overlord pretentiously 
dubbed his "palace." Most of the windows were dark; dim hallway lights seeped 
through some of them. And where was the Caliph, the architect of death, sleeping 
tonight? Janson had a pretty good guess.
It would be so easy. A fragmentation grenade, lobbed through the leaded glass. A 
stinger missile, blasting into the bedroom. And Ahmad Tabari would be dead. No 
more would remain of his corporeal existence than remained of Helene's. He 
batted the thought away. It was a fantasy merely, and one he could not afford to 
indulge. It was inconsistent with the mission objective. Peter Novak was a great 
man. Not only did Janson owe him his life, but the world might owe him its 
future survival. The moral and strategic calculus was incontrovertible: the 
preservation of a great man had to take precedence over the destruction of an 
evil one.
Janson lowered his gaze from the governor's suite to the northern veranda.
Fifteen feet away from the nearest sentry, he could see the men's faces. Broad, 
peasant faces, unwary and unsophisticated. Younger than he had expected. But 
then, the forty-nine-year-old operative reflected, these men would not have 
looked young to him for most of his career as a field agent. They were older 
than he was when he was running raids behind the Green Line near Cambodia. Older 
than he was when he killed for the first time, and when he first escaped being 
killed.
Their hands were visibly chafed, but no doubt from farmwork rather than martial 
arts. Amateurs, yes, he mused again; but it was not a wholly reassuring thought. 
The KLF was too well organized to have entrusted so valuable a treasure to the 
protection of such men as these. They were a first line of defense only. A first 
line of defense where, logically, no defense at all would have been called for.
And where was Katsaris?
Janson peered across the courtyard, across sixty feet of darkness, and could 
make out nothing. Katsaris was invisible. Or gone.
He made a quiet tsk into the filament mike, trying to modify the sound to echo 
the insect and avian noises of the night.
He heard an answering tsk in his earpiece. Katsaris was there, in place, ready.
The accuracy of his first determination would be crucial: Was it safe to take 
out these men? Were the men themselves decoys—birds on a wire?
Was there a wire?
Janson raised himself from his crouch, peered into the windows behind the iron 
grille. Perspiration lay on him like a film of mud; the humidity of the air 
prevented evaporation. Now he envied Katsaris the procholinergic. The 
perspiration wasn't cooling him; it just adhered to his skin, an unwanted layer 
of clothing.
At the same time, it concerned him that he was even conscious of such 
incidentals. He had to focus: Was there a wire?
He looked through the NV scope, angling it toward the iron grille behind the 
smoking peasants. Nothing.
No, something. An orange spot, too small to correspond to a body. In all 
likelihood, it was a hand belonging to a body concealed behind a stone wall.
The men on the veranda, it was a reasonable surmise, were unaware that they had 
backup; it would have diminished their already doubtful efficacy. But they did.
Did the backup have backup? Had a sequential operation been designed?
Improbable. Not impossible.
From a long thigh pocket, Janson withdrew a blackened aluminum tube, thirteen 
inches in length, four inches in diameter. Inside, it was lined with a snug 
steel mesh, which prevented the living creature within from making noise. An 
atmosphere of 90 percent pure oxygen prevented asphyxiation during the operation 
schedule.
The time had come for noise, for distraction.
He unscrewed one sealed end, the Teflon-coated grooves moving soundlessly over 
each other.
By its long, naked tail, he removed the rodent and flung it toward the veranda 
in a high parabola. It landed as if, in its nocturnal travels, it had lost its 
purchase and dropped off the roof.
Its glossy black pelt was now standing on end, and the creature made its 
telltale piglike grunts. The sentries had a visitor, and within four seconds 
they knew it. The short head, wide muzzle, scaly, hairless tail. One foot long, 
two and a half pounds. A bandicoot rat. Bandicota bengalensis was its formal 
name. Quite literally, Ahmad Tabari's bete noire.
In their Dravidian tongue, the Kagama guards broke out into short, hushed, 
frantic exchanges.
"Ayaiyo, ange paaru, adhu yenna theridhaa?"
"Aiyo, perichaali!"
"Adha yepadiyaavadhu ozrikkanum."
"Andha vittaa, naama sethom."
"Anga podhu paaru."
The animal scurried toward an entryway, following its instincts, while the 
guards, following theirs, tried to stop it. The temptation was to fire a weapon 
at the giant rodent, but that would awaken everyone in the compound and make 
them look foolish. Worse, it could draw attention to a failure, and a crucial 
one. If the Beloved One, asleep in the governor's suite, were to come across 
this harbinger of death in his living quarters, there was no telling how he 
would react. He might, in a black terror, enact its prophecy himself by ordering 
the death of the sentries who had permitted its entry. They knew what had 
happened last time.
The consternation had, as Janson had hoped, brought out the others—the second 
team. How many? Three—no, four.
The members of the second team were armed with American Ml6s, probably 
Vietnam-era. They were standard infantry issue during Vietnam, and the NVA 
collected them by the thousands after the South fell. From there, the Ml6 
entered the international market and became the standard semi-automatic of 
less-than-well-funded guerrilla movements everywhere—the kind that bought on the 
installment plan, that scrimped and saved and never splurged on nonessentials. 
Christmas Club warriors. The Ml6 would fire short, buzz-saw bursts, seldom 
jammed, and, with a minimum of maintenance, was reasonably rust-resistant, even 
in humid climes. Janson respected the weapon; he respected all weapons. But he 
also knew that they would not be fired unnecessarily. Soldiers in proximity to a 
resting leadership did not make loud noises at four in the morning without good 
cause.
Janson withdrew a second bandicoot rat, an even larger one, and, as it writhed 
and squirmed in his gloved hands, pressed into its belly a tiny hypodermic 
filled with d-amphetamine. It would produce hyperactivity, thus making the rat 
even bolder and faster than the other one and, in the eyes of the sentries, even 
more of a menace.
A low, underhand toss. Its small, sharp claws grabbing at thin air, the rat 
landed on the head of one of the peasant sentries—who let out a brief but 
piercing scream.
It was more attention than Janson had been aiming for.
Had he overshot the mark? If the scream drew soldiers who were not assigned to 
the north wing, the exercise would prove self-defeating. So far there was no 
sign of that, although the guards who were already present were plainly 
agitated. Moving his head to the edge of the berm line, he watched the quiet 
confusion and dismay that had swept through the northern veranda. His 
destination was the space beneath that veranda, and there was no covered route 
to it, for the stone walkways that projected from the long east and west walls 
of the compound stopped fifteen feet before they reached the wall opposite.
That the guards were sitting in the light, whereas he and Katsaris would be in 
the dark, offered some protection, but not enough: the human visual field was 
sensitive to motion, and some of the interior light spilled onto the cobbled 
ground in front of the northern veranda. The mission required absolute stealth: 
however well trained and equipped, two men could not hold off the hundred or so 
guerrillas who were housed in the Stone Palace barracks. Detection was death. It 
was that simple.
Thirty feet away and six feet up, an older man, his leathery brown skin deeply 
creased, appeared on the veranda, enjoining silence. Silence: so as not to wake 
the sleeping commanders, who had taken residence in the palace as its proper and 
rightful inhabitants. As Janson focused on the older man, however, his unease 
grew. The man spoke of silence, but his face told Janson that it was not his 
sole, or even primary, concern. Only a larger sense of suspicion could explain 
the squinted, searching eyes; the fact that his focus moved quickly from the 
panicked sentries to the shadowy courtyard beyond him, and then to the 
iron-grilled windows above him. His darting gaze showed that he understood the 
peculiarities of nighttime vision: the way peripheral vision became more acute 
than direct vision, the way a direct stare transfigured shapes according to the 
imagination. At night, observant eyes never stopped moving; the brain could 
assemble an image from the flickering outlines they collected.
As Janson regarded the man's creased face, he made some other quick inferences. 
This was an intelligent, wary man, disinclined to take the incident at face 
value. From the way the other men deferred to him, his position of seniority was 
obvious. Another sign of it was the very weapon cradled in a sling around his 
shoulders: a Russian KLIN. A commonplace weapon, but a smaller and slightly more 
expensive make than the Ml6s. The KLIN was more reliable for tight-cluster 
shooting, as opposed to the raking fire to be expected from the relatively 
untrained.
The others would take their lead from him.
Janson watched him for a few more moments, saw him talking quietly in Kagama, 
gesturing toward the darkened courtyard, excoriating a sentry who had been 
smoking. This man was not an amateur.
Detection was death. Had they been detected?
He had to make the contrary assumption. The contrary assumption: What would 
Lieutenant Commander Alan Demarest have made of such reasoning, of the hopeful 
stipulation that the world would conform to one's operational imperatives, 
rather than confound them? But Demarest was dead—had died before a firing 
squad—and, if there was any justice in the universe, was rotting in hell. At 
four o'clock on a sweltering Anuran morning, in the courtyard of the Stone 
Palace, surrounded by heavily armed terrorists, there was no advantage in 
calculating the operation's chances of success. Its tenets were, had to be, 
nearly theological. Credo quia absurdum. I believe because it is absurd.
And the older man with the creased face: What did he believe? He was the one to 
take out first. But had enough time passed? By now, word of the small commotion 
would have been spread among those on duty. It was crucial that an explanation 
for it—the appearance of the accursed bandicoot—had spread as well. Because 
there would be other noises. That was inevitable. Noises that had an explanation 
were innocuous. Noises that lacked an explanation would prompt further 
investigation, and could be deadly.
Janson withdrew the Blo-Jector, a twenty-inch pipe of anodized aluminum, from a 
dangle pouch on his black fatigues. Pockets and pouches had presented an 
operational challenge. They could not afford the ripping sound of Velcro, the 
clicking noise of a metal snap, so he had replaced such fasteners with a 
soundless contrivance. A pair of magnetic strips, sealed within soft woolen 
cladding, did the job: the magnets would keep the flaps shut tightly, yet would 
release and engage soundlessly.
Janson whispered his plan into his lip mike. He would take the tall and the 
guard to his right; Katsaris should aim for the others. Janson raised the rubber 
mouthpiece of the blowpipe to his lips, sighting over the end of the tube. The 
dart was of covert-ops design, a fine, 33-gauge needle and bolus housed within 
an acrylic-and-Mylar replica of a wasp. The artificial insect would withstand no 
more than a casual inspection, but if things went right, a casual inspection was 
all it would receive. He puffed hard into the mouthpiece, then quickly inserted 
another dart, and discharged it. He returned to his crouching position.
The tall man grabbed at his neck, pulled out the dart, and peered at it in the 
dim light. Had he removed it before it had injected its bolus? The object had 
visual and tactile resemblances to a large stinging insect: the stiff 
exoskeleton, the striped body. But its weight would be wrong, particularly if it 
still contained the incapacitant fluid, one milliliter of carfentanil citrate. 
The man with the creased face stared at it furiously, and then he looked 
directly at Janson. Focusing intently, he had evidently made out his form in the 
shadowed corner.
The soldier's hand reached for a revolver, bolstered on his side—and then he 
toppled forward off the veranda. Janson could hear the thud of his body hitting 
the cobblestones six feet below him. Two other sentries slid to the ground, 
losing consciousness.
A jabbering exchange broke out between two of the younger guards, to his far 
left. They knew something was wrong. Hadn't Katsaris hit them yet?
The use of the incapacitant was not simply an attempt to be humane. Few human 
beings had experience with a carfentanil dart; there was a ten-second window 
when they would assume they had been stung by an insect. By contrast, there was 
nothing mysterious about gunfire: if a silenced shot didn't cause instant 
unconsciousness—if it failed to penetrate the midbrain region—the victim would 
pierce the night with his yells, sounding the alarm for everyone to hear. In 
stealthy, close-up encounters, gar-roting would do, choking off air as it did 
blood, but that was not an option here. If the blow darts were a risky approach, 
tactical optimization was not about choosing the best possible approach; it was 
about choosing the best one available.
Janson aimed his blowpipe toward the jabbering two guards and was preparing to 
send off another dart when the two woozily collapsed; Katsaris had hit them 
after all.
Silence returned, softened only by the cawing of magpies and gulls, the buzzing 
and scraping of cicadas and beetles. It sounded right. It sounded as if the 
problem had been dealt with, and the men had returned to watchful waiting.
Yet the safety they had just gained for themselves could vanish at any moment. 
The information they had distilled from intercepts and sat imagery suggested 
that the next shift would not arrive for another hour—but there was no guarantee 
that the schedule had not changed. Every minute was now of immense value.
Janson and Katsaris made a dash for the darkness beneath the northern veranda, 
sliding between the stout piers that supported it at three-foot intervals. 
According to the blueprints, the circular stone lid was at the midpoint of the 
northern wall, just abutting the limestone of the main structure. Blindly, 
Janson felt along the ground, his hands moving along the rubblework foundations 
where ground and building met. Suddenly, he felt something poking at his hand, 
then sliding over it, like a taut rubber hose. He jerked back. He had disturbed 
a snake. Most varieties on the island were harmless, but the poisonous 
ones—including the saw-scaled viper and the Anuran krait—happened to be quite 
common. He pulled a combat knife from his fatigues and whipped it in the 
direction where the snake had been probing him. The knife encountered midair 
resistance—it had hit something—and he brought it down silently to the stone 
wall. Something sinewy and dense gave way before the razor-sharp blade.
"I found it," Theo whispered, from a few feet away.
Janson turned on a small infrared flashlight and strapped on his night-vision 
scope, adjusting it from starlight mode to IR mode.
Theo was crouching before a large stone disk. The grotto under their feet had 
been used for any number of purposes over the years. The storage of prisoners 
was a principal one. At other points in time, it had been used for the storage 
of inanimate objects, ranging from foodstuffs to ammunition, and beneath the 
heavy circular masonry was a vertical passageway that was made to serve as a 
chute. The lid had been designed to be removed easily, but the passage of years 
had a way of complicating matters. That it could be removed at all would be 
sufficient.
The lid was fashioned with handholds on either side. Theo pulled on one, using 
his powerful legs as he tried to lift the flat round stone. Nothing. The only 
sound was his stifled grunt.
Now Janson joined him, crouching on the opposite side, placing both his hands on 
the slot that had been designed for that purpose. Bracing himself with his legs, 
he flexed his arms as hard as he could. He could hear Theo letting his breath 
out slowly as he strained himself to the utmost.
Nothing.
"Twist it," Janson whispered.
"It's not a jar of olives," Theo said, but he repositioned himself accordingly. 
He braced himself with his legs against the perpendicular wall and, locking his 
hands around the slotted flange, pushed at the lid. On the other side, Janson 
pulled it in the same clockwise direction.
And there was movement at last: the abrasive grinding of stone on stone, faint 
but unmistakable. Janson realized what they had encountered. The circular bed 
where the lid had been seated was made of some sort of fired clay, and over the 
years, as the limestone had eroded in the tropical moisture, the amalgamated 
debris from each substance had formed a natural mortar. The lid had, in effect, 
been cemented in place. Now that the bonds had been broken, the task would be 
manageable.
He and Theo crouched over the lid again, as before, and lifted in one 
coordinated movement. The lid was eight inches thick and immensely heavy, meant 
to be moved by four strong men, not two. But it could be done. Using all their 
strength, they eased it up and placed it gently on the ground to one side.
Janson peered down into the hole they had uncovered. Just under the lid there 
was a grate. And through it, he heard a welter of voices drifting up from the 
subterranean space.
Indistinct, yes, but untroubled as well. Most of what a voice conveyed—anger, 
fear, merriment, scorn, anxiety—was through tone. Words as such were so much 
garlanding, designed to mislead as often as not. Much interrogation training had 
to do with learning to hear through words to the characteristics of sheer 
vocality. The sounds that drifted up were not those of any prisoner—Janson knew 
that much. And if you were stationed in the dungeon area and were not a 
prisoner, you were guarding the prisoner. These were the guards. These were 
their immediate enemy.
Lying flat on the ground, Janson placed his head directly above the grate. The 
subterranean air was cool on his face, and he became conscious of the smell of 
cigarettes. At first the sounds were like a babbling brook, but now he could 
separate them into the voices of several different men. How many? He was not 
sure yet. Nor could one assume that the number of speakers was the number of 
men.
The chute, they knew, descended through several feet of stone, angled at 
forty-five degrees for most of the way, then bending and funneling down more 
shallowly. Though a dim light filtered upward through the grate, nothing could 
be seen directly.
Katsaris handed Janson the fiber-optic camera kit, which looked like a makeup 
compact with a long cord attached. Janson, crouching with his back against the 
rough-carved limestone, threaded the cord down through the grate, inch by inch, 
taking care not to overshoot the mark. It was the thickness of an ordinary phone 
wire and had a tip hardly bigger than a match head. Within the cable ran a 
double-layered glass strand that would transmit images to a three-by-five-inch 
screen at the other end. Janson kept an eye on the small active-matrix display 
as he slowly fed the cord down the grate. If anyone down there noticed it and 
recognized what it was, the mission was over. The screen was suffused with gray 
hues, which grew lighter and lighter. Abruptly, it filled with a bird's-eye view 
of a dimly illuminated room. Janson pulled the cord up an inch. The view was now 
partly occluded, but most of the previous vista was still in the screen. The tip 
was probably a millimeter from the end of the chute, unlikely to be detected. 
After five seconds, the device's automatic focusing program brought the visual 
field into maximal sharpness and brightness.
"How many?" Katsaris asked.
"It's not good," Janson said.
"How many?"
Janson fingered a button that rotated the camera tip before he replied. 
"Seventeen guards. Armed to the teeth. But who's counting?"
"Shit," Katsaris replied.
"I'll second that," Janson grunted.
"If only there was a sight line, we could just hose the bastards."
"But there isn't."
"How about we drop a frag grenade down right now?"
"All you need is a single survivor, and the prisoner's dead," Janson said. 
"We've been over all this. Better get your ass over to Ingress A." Ingress A, as 
it was designated on the blueprints, was a long-disused entrance that would lead 
to the rear of the dungeon. It was a key part of the plan: while the prisoner 
was hustled into the bowels of the ancient compound, a silent white-phosphorous 
grenade would be dropped through the chute, incapacitating his guards.
"Roger that," Katsaris said. "If it's where it's supposed to be, I should be 
back in three minutes. I just hope you can get some sort of fix on them in the 
meantime."
"Hurry back," Janson said distractedly. He fine-tuned the image manually, 
rotating the camera tip occasionally for a new angle.
Through a blue haze of cigarette smoke, he saw that the men were sitting around 
two tables, playing cards. It was what soldiers did, God knew. Strong, armed 
men, with the power to make life-or-death decisions, would arm themselves 
against their most pressing enemy, time, with flimsy, laminated pieces of 
cardstock. He himself had played more card games while outfitted in combat 
fatigues than he cared to remember.
Janson studied the casual movements, the pickups and discards. He knew this 
game. He had played it for hours in the Mauritian jungle once. It was called 
proter, and was essentially the Indian Ocean's answer to rummy.
And because Janson knew the game, his gaze was drawn by a young man—eighteen, 
nineteen?—who sat at the larger table and drew glances from the others, half 
wary, half admiring.
The young man looked around, his acne-dotted cheeks gathering into a smile, 
revealing even white teeth and a sly look of victory.
Janson knew this game. Not just proter. He knew the game that the young man was 
playing: take maximum risk for maximum reward. That, after all, was the game 
they were both playing.
A bandolier of what looked like 7mm rounds was draped over the young man's 
shoulder; a Ruger Mini-14 was cradled in a sling around his chest. A heavier 
automatic weapon—Janson could not see enough to verify its make—was propped 
against his chair and was no doubt the reason for the bandolier. It was a 
complement of arms suggesting that the young man had some sort of position of 
leadership, in military as well as recreational matters.
Now the young man rubbed his knuckles against the blue rag tied around his crown 
and scooped up the entire pile.
Janson could hear a few shouts: card-game incredulity.
This was a bizarrely self-destructive move at this point of the game—unless, 
that is, a player was certain he could get rid of the cards at once. Such 
certainty required extraordinary powers of observation and retention.
The game came to a halt. Even the soldiers at the smaller second table crowded 
around to watch. Each had a rifle, Janson saw as the men stood, and at least one 
side arm. The equipment looked worn but well maintained.
The young man flipped down cards, one after another, in a string of flawless 
sequences. It was like the moment in a pool match when a master pockets ball 
after ball, appearing to play a private game. And when the young man had 
finished, he had no cards left. He tossed back his head and grinned. A 
thirteen-card set: evidently his comrades had never seen such a thing, because 
they burst into applause—anger at having been defeated giving way to admiration 
at the deftness with which the defeat had been managed.
A simple game. A Kagama guerrilla leader who was also a champion proter player. 
Would he be as agile with the machine gun by his chair?
Through the fiber-optic spyglass, Janson took in the intent look on the young 
man's face as another round of cards was dealt. He could tell who would win if 
the set was ever finished.
He could also tell that these were not simple farmers, but seasoned veterans. It 
was evident even from the way their weaponry hung on their combat garb. They 
knew what they were doing. If they found themselves under siege and had only 
seconds to regroup, any one of them would take out the prisoner. From intercepts 
he had seen, it was likely to be their standing instructions.
He zoomed in on the acned young man, then swiveled again. Here were seventeen 
seasoned warriors, at least one of whom had almost supernal powers of 
observation and retention.
"We're fucked": Katsaris on the lip mike, expressionless and to the point.
"I'll be right over," Janson said, retracting the camera by a few inches into 
the recesses of the chute. His gut clenched into a small, hard ball.
Janson stood up as far as the space allowed, his joints aching from the extended 
crouch. The truth was, he was too old for this sort of expedition, too old by at 
least a decade. Why had he chosen to play this role, the most dangerous and 
demanding of them? He'd told himself that he was the only one who would be 
willing to do it, to face the odds; or rather, if he was not willing to, nobody 
else would or should. He had told himself, as well, that his experience made him 
the best one for the job. He had told himself that having devised the plan, he 
would be the one best prepared to alter it if necessary. But was vanity 
involved, too? Did he want to prove to himself that he could still do it? Or was 
he so desperate to expunge a debt of honor to Peter Novak that he had made a 
decision that might ultimately endanger Novak's own life, as well as his own? 
Doubts came to his mind like a shower of needles, and he forced himself to 
remain calm. Clear like water, cool like ice. It was a mantra he had often 
repeated to himself during the long days and nights of terror and agony he'd 
known as a POW in Vietnam.
Katsaris was standing precisely where the blueprints had suggested they would 
find the second entrance—the entrance that made the entire operation possible.
"The thing is where it's supposed to be," Katsaris said. "You can see the 
outline of the trapdoor."
"That's good news. I like good news."
"It's been sealed off with cinder block."
"That's bad news. I hate bad news."
"Masonry's in sound shape. Probably not more than thirty years old. There might 
have been a problem with flooding at some point, and this was the fix. Who 
knows? All I know is that Ingress A no longer exists."
Janson's gut furled even tighter. Clear like water, cool like ice.
"Not a problem," Janson said. "There's a workaround."
But it was a problem, and he had no workaround. All he knew was that a 
commanding officer must never let his men sense panic.
They had entered into the situation with sketchy knowledge. There was the 
information, confirmed by intercepts, that Peter Novak was being held in the 
colonial dungeon. There was the inference, supplied by common sense, that he 
would be heavily guarded. There was the necessary recourse to an aerial 
insertion. But then? Janson had never entertained the idea of a merely frontal 
approach to the dungeon—running a gauntlet that would equally jeopardize the 
rescuer and the one to be rescued. What made the plan workable was the prospect 
of simultaneity: removing the hostage even as the guards were being 
incapacitated. There was no longer any viable rear entrance. Hence no viable 
plan.
"Come with me," Janson said. "I'll show you."
His mind raced as he and Katsaris returned to the cargo chute. There was 
something. The realization went from inchoate to merely murky, but something was 
better than nothing, hope better than no hope.
Manipulating the fiber-optic cuff, he shifted the field of vision away from the 
seated soldier and toward the worn staircase that rose up at the end of the 
room. "Stairway," he said. "Landing. Ductwork. Ledge." Projecting out from the 
midlevel landing was a shelf of poured concrete. "A relatively recent 
addition—the last few decades, I'd guess, done when the plumbing got 
modernized."
"Can't get there without being spotted."
"Not necessarily. The period of exposure—going from the landing to the concrete 
shelf—would be relatively brief, the room is filled with the haze of cigarette 
smoke, and they're all playing a pretty damn engrossing round of proter. You 
still get the principle of simultaneity. It's just that we're going to have to 
resort to the main entrance as well as the chute."
"This was your backup plan?" Katsaris shot back. "You're doing more improvising 
than the Miles Davis Quintet. Jesus, Paul, is this an operation or a jam 
session?"
"Theo?" It was a request for understanding.
"And what guarantee is there that there won't be a guard hived off, stationed in 
the dungeon with the prison?"
"Any close contact with Peter Novak is dangerous. The KLF knows that—they'll 
guard him, but they'll keep him isolated from any of the Kagama rebels."
"What are they afraid of—that he'll stab a guard with a cuff link?"
"His words are what they're afraid of, Theo. In a poor country, the words of a 
plutocrat are dangerous things—implements of escape more formidable than any 
hacksaw. That's why the guards are going to be grouped together, and at some 
distance from the prisoner. Let the prisoner have the opportunity to strike up a 
relationship with a single guard, and who knows what manipulations might occur? 
Remember, Theo, the per capita income in Anura is less than seven hundred 
dollars a year. Imagine a Kagama guard being drawn into conversation with a man 
worth tens of billions. You do the math. Everybody knows that Novak is a man of 
his word. Suppose you're a Kagama rebel, and he's telling you that he could make 
you and your family rich beyond the dreams of avarice. You're going to start to 
think about it—it's human nature. Ideological fervor might immunize some men 
against that temptation, the way it has with the Caliph. But nobody in command 
is going to count on it. BSTS—better safe than sorry. So you guard him, but you 
isolate him, too. It's the only safe way."
Unexpectedly, Katsaris smiled. "OK, boss, just give me my marching orders," he 
said. Both of them had moved to a place beyond fear; an odd Masada-like serenity 
had settled in, at least for the moment.
Removing the grate required them both, and the effort needed was doubled by the 
imperative that it be removed noiselessly. By the time Janson left Katsaris 
there, his joints and muscles were protesting furiously. He was creaky. That was 
the truth of it. The Beretta, in its thigh holster, seemed to dig into his 
flesh. Perspiration beaded up on his water-resistant face paint; rivulets fell 
into his eyes and burned. His muscular recovery, Janson was learning the hard 
way, was not what it once was: his muscles remained knotted longer—they ached 
when the last thing he needed to deal with was bodily pain. Years ago, in the 
midst of combat, he would feel as if he himself were a weapon, an operational 
automaton. Now he felt all too human. Sweat was beginning to cause the nylon 
combat suit to bind around his knees, crotch, underarms, elbows.
A humbling thought crossed his mind: Maybe he could have stayed by the chute, 
and let Katsaris do this part. Now he clambered up the rubblework supporting 
wall toward the narrow rectangular gap that would lead to the inside edge of the 
veranda. The rectangular space, one of several along the roofline, served to 
prevent water from pooling on the first floor during the heavy downpours of 
monsoon season. As he wriggled through the eighteen-inch-wide drainage port, he 
found that he was having difficulty breathing: Exertion? Fear? Katsaris had told 
him he'd come up with a good plan. He was, they both knew, lying. This wasn't a 
good plan. It was merely the only one they had.
His muscles still spasming, Janson made his way down a service corridor 
adjoining the stateroom of the north wing. He flashed on the blueprints: down 
the corridor to the left, twenty feet. The door would be at the end of the 
hallway. Discreet. Wood-clad stone. The unremarkable-looking door that led to an 
unspeakable pit. Two chairs to either side were empty. The men, having been 
summoned by the commotion, would be still unconscious at the foot of the 
veranda. The same was true of the backup pair of guards, who would have had a 
clear view of the hallway. Seven down. Seventeen to go.
Janson's pulse quickened as he stood before the door. The lock was many decades 
old, and more of a formality than anything. If an intruder had got this far, a 
lock on a door was unlikely to stop him. It was, as a quick inspection 
confirmed, a wafer tumbler lock, probably of mid-century design. Such locks, 
Janson knew, used flat rectangles of metal, not pins, and the springs were 
placed inside the cylinder itself rather than in the lock shell. He produced a 
small tension wrench; in shape it resembled a dental pick, but was little larger 
than a matchstick. He placed the bent end of the wrench in the keyway, pushing 
on its far end, so as to maximize both the torque and his tactile sensitivity. 
Each would be important. One by one, he pulled each tumbler away from the shear 
line. After ten seconds, the tumblers had been picked. The lock was not yet 
ready to open, however. Now he inserted a second tool, a pick of carbide steel, 
thin yet inflexible, and began applying clockwise torque.
Holding his breath, he kept both instruments in the keyway as he heard the 
tongue withdraw and used the tension to pull the door toward him, just a few 
inches. The door swung easily on well-oiled hinges. Those hinges had to be well 
oiled: as it opened, he saw that the door was fully eighteen inches thick. The 
governor general may have placed a dungeon beneath his feet, but he wished to be 
spared even the faintest echoes of whatever cries might come from it.
Janson opened the door a few more inches, standing now a foot away from the 
entrance, in case someone was lying in wait.
Slowly, carefully, he verified that at least the immediate passageway was clear. 
Now he walked through the door, to a stone landing worn smooth with time, and, 
using his electrical tape, he secured the brass tongue to the door so that it 
would not relock.
And he began to make his way down the stairs. At least they were stone, not 
creaking wood. A few more steps down the landing led to a second impediment, a 
hinged grate of steel bars.
The portcullis-like grate succumbed to his slim tools without difficulty; unlike 
the stone door above, however, it was far from soundless.
It opened with a distinct scraping noise, of metal against stone—one that the 
assembled guards could not have failed to hear.
Astonishingly, they did not react. Why? Another decoy? Birds on a wire—this time 
a flock of them?
A flurry of thoughts ran though Janson's mind. Then he caught the word Theyilai!
Even with his guidebook Anuran, he knew that word: tea. The guards were 
expecting somebody—somebody coming with a samovar of tea for them. That was why 
they did not start at the noise. On the other hand, if that tea did not arrive 
soon, they would grow suspicious.
Now he could see directly some of what he had glimpsed through the fiber-cam. A 
single, naked incandescent bulb provided lighting. He heard the gentle burble of 
conversation resuming, the card game still at full steam. The smoke that had 
wafted up through the stairwell suggested at least a dozen cigarettes lighted 
simultaneously.
Seventeen guards for one man. No wonder they had little worries about the 
security of their hostage.
Janson thought about the young KLF proter champ, with his high-stakes play, the 
play that meant either disaster or triumph. Nothing in between.
Everything now was a question of timing. Janson knew that Katsaris was awaiting 
his command, a silent thermite grenade in his hand. Ordinary combat procedure 
would have called for a "flash and banger," but an audible explosion might alert 
others. If the soldiers stationed in the barracks were mobilized, the odds of a 
successful exfiltration would shift from slim to none.
Katsaris and Janson each had a modified MP5K, a 4.4-pound submachine gun made by 
Heckler & Koch, with a short barrel, a sling-attachment buttcap, and a sound 
suppressor. The magazines held thirty hollow-point rounds, for close-quarter, 
interior use. The 9mm Hydra-Shok bullets were less likely to ricochet; they were 
also more likely to destroy any flesh they encountered—to tear rather than 
simply penetrate human viscera. Janson's SEAL comrades had cruelly nicknamed 
this weapon, which had a firing rate of nine hundred rounds per minute, the 
"room broom." What could not be silenced was the clamor of its victims. But the 
massive hallway door would provide substantial acoustic isolation, and several 
feet of stone separated the grotto from the floor above it.
Janson took six steps down, then swung himself onto the four-foot-deep concrete 
ledge. It was, as expected, draped with PVC pipes and insulated electrical 
wires, but he landed without a sound. So far, so good. The soldiers were 
studying their cards; no one was scanning the ceiling.
Now he flattened himself against the wall and inched along the ledge carefully; 
the farther he was from the stairway, the less expected his firing position 
would be—and the sooner he would be able to reach Peter Novak in his cell. At 
the same time, Janson's sight-line position was far from ideal; soldiers at one 
end of the larger table would still be able to see him if they looked up and 
into the shadowed ledge. Yet, as he reminded himself, there was no reason for 
them to do so.
"Veda theyilai?" The proter champion, thumbing his cards at the end of the 
table, spoke the words in a tone of slight annoyance, and as he did, he rolled 
his eyes. Had anything registered?
After a beat, he lifted his eyes again, peering into the gloom of the overhead 
shelf. His hands moved toward his cradled Ruger Mini-14.
Janson had not been wrong about the young man's powers of observation. His scalp 
was crawling. He had been made.
"Now!" Janson whispered into his lip mike and slid to a prone position on the 
farthest recess of the concrete ledge as he put on his polarized goggles. He 
flipped his weapon's safety down, setting it to full fire.
The young man stood up suddenly, shouting something in Kagama. He fired his gun 
toward the area where he had seen Janson, and the bullet took a bite out of the 
concrete just an inch from his head. A second bullet tore into nearby ductwork.
Suddenly, the dimly lit room filled with a flare of eye-searing brightness and 
heat. The slow-burning thermite grenade had arrived: a small, indoor sun, 
blinding even those who tried to look away. Its brightness was a multiple of 
that emitted by a welder's torch, and the fact that the guards' eyes had 
adjusted to low-light conditions made the blindness all the more complete. 
Scattered gunfire was directed toward Janson, but the angle made it a hard shot, 
and the bullets were poorly aimed.
Through his nearly black goggles, Janson saw the soldiers in disarray and 
confusion, some shielding their eyes with forearms and hands, others firing 
blindly toward the ceiling.
Still, even a blind shot could be fatal. With the entire room whited out by the 
preternaturally bright flare, he returned fire, directing the automatic 
fusillades in tight, carefully aimed clusters. He depleted one thirty-round 
magazine and snapped in another. Shouts filled the room.
Now Katsaris appeared, bounding down the stairway with polarized goggles and a 
softly buzzing MP5K, directing bullets at the guerrillas from yet another angle.
In seconds it was over. Few of them, Janson reflected, even had the opportunity 
to look their opponents in the eye. They had been slaughtered, impersonally, by 
a smoothly operating magazine-fed weapon that discharged bullets at a rate of 
fifteen per second. Because of the low-signature sound suppression, the MP5 
bursts were not merely lethal but eerily quiet. It took Janson a moment before 
he realized what the sound reminded him of: the fluttering of a deck of cards 
being shuffled. Killing should not sound like that, Janson thought to himself. 
It was too trivial a soundtrack for so grave an action.
An odd silence now reigned. As gloom and shadows returned, Janson and Katsaris 
removed their goggles. The naked, forty-watt overhead bulb, Janson noticed, was 
still intact. The guards were not so lucky. Bodies were splayed on the floor, as 
if pinned there by the hollow-point bullets. They had functioned as they were 
designed to, discharging their entire force to the bodies they hit, coming to a 
stop several inches into those bodies, destroying all the vital organs they 
encountered. As Janson came closer, he saw that some of the men were taken down 
even before they'd had the opportunity to flip the safeties of their Ml6 
carbines.
Were there any signs of movement? It took him a few moments before he saw it. 
Sliding along the ground was the young man who had played the amazing 
thirteen-card set—the man who had lifted his eyes to the concrete ledge. His 
midriff was red and slick, but his arms were outstretched, reaching for the 
revolver of the lifeless soldier next to him.
Janson let off one more burst from his HK. Another shuffle of life's deck, and 
the young man became still.
The grotto was an abattoir, filled with the rich, sickening stench of blood and 
the contents of ripped-open alimentary canals. Janson knew the stench all too 
well: it was the stench of life once life was taken away.
Oh Christ. Oh God. It was nothing short of carnage, outright butchery. Was this 
what he did? Was this who he was? The words of an old fitness report returned to 
mock him: Was he indeed "in his element"? Once more, he flashed back to one of 
his exit interviews.
"You don't have a heart, Janson. It's why you do what you do. Goddammit, it's 
why you are who you are."
"Maybe. And maybe I'm not who you think I am."
"You tell me you're sickened by the killing. I'm going to tell you what you'll 
discover one day for yourself: it's the only way you'll ever feel alive."
"What kind of man has to kill to feel alive?"
What kind of man was he?
Now he felt something hot and acidic splash in the back of his throat. Had he 
lost it? Had he changed in ways that made him unfit for the task he had 
accepted? Perhaps it was simply that he had been out of it for too long, and the 
necessary calluses had softened.
He wanted to throw up. He also knew he would not. Not in front of Theo, his 
beloved protégé. Not in the middle of a mission. Not now. His body would be 
permitted no such indulgences.
A coolly remonstrating voice in his head took over: Their victims were, after 
all, soldiers. They knew their lives were expendable. They belonged to a 
terrorist movement that had taken a man of international renown and sworn 
solemnly to execute him. In guarding a civilian unjustly held captive, they had 
placed themselves in the line of fire. For Ahmad Tabari, el Caliph, they had 
pledged to give their lives—all of them had. Janson had merely taken them up on 
the offer.
"Let's go," Janson called to Katsaris. He could rehearse the excuses in his 
head, could recognize that they were not without some validity, and yet none of 
it made the slaughter before him any more tolerable.
His own sense of repugnance was the only thing that gave solace. To contemplate 
such violence with equanimity was the province of the terrorist, the extremist, 
the fanatic—a breed he had spent a lifetime fighting, a breed he feared he was, 
in his own way, becoming. Whatever his actions, the fact that he could not 
contemplate them without horror indicated that he was not yet a monster.
Now he moved swiftly down from the concrete ledge and joined Katsaris at the 
iron-plated gate to the governor general's dungeon. He noticed that the soles of 
Katsaris's boots were, like his, slick with blood, and quickly looked away.
"I'll do the honors," Katsaris said. He was holding a big, antique-looking hoop 
of keys, taken from one of the slain guards.
Three keys. Three dead bolts. The door swung open, and the two stepped into a 
narrow, dark space. The air felt dank, stagnant, suffused with the smells of 
human sickness and sweat that had passed beyond rancid, to something else. Away 
from the overhead bulb in the area where the guards had waited, the space was 
dim, and it was difficult to make anything out.
Katsaris toggled his flashlight from infrared to optical light. Its powerful 
beam cut through the murk.
In silence, they listened.
The sound of breathing was audible somewhere in the gloom.
A narrow passageway broadened out, and they saw how the two-hundred-year-old 
dungeon was constructed. It consisted of a row of impossibly thick iron bars set 
only four feet away from the stone walls. Every eight feet, a partition of stone 
and mortar segmented the long row of cells. There were no windows up to the 
ground, no sources of illumination; a few kerosene lanterns had been set in the 
stone bulkheads; they had provided what illumination there was the last time 
that the dungeon had been in service.
Janson shuddered, contemplating the horrors of a previous age. What sort of 
offenses landed people in the governor general's dungeon? Not ordinary 
aggressions of one native against another: the traditional village leaders were 
encouraged to deal with them as they always had, subject to the occasional 
urging to be "civilized" in their punishment. No, the ones who ended up in the 
colonial overlord's dungeons, lanson knew, were the resisters—those who opposed 
the rule of foreigners, who believed that the natives might be able to run their 
own affairs, free from the lash of Holland's rump empire.
And now a new set of rebels had seized the dungeon and, like so many rebels, 
sought not to dismantle it but only to use it for their own ends.
It was a truth both bitter and undeniable: those who stormed the Bastille 
inevitably found a way to put it to use again.
The area behind the grate was shrouded in darkness. Katsaris swept his 
flashlight along the corner of the cages until they saw him.
A man.
A man who did not look glad to see them. He had flattened himself against the 
wall cell, trembling with fright. As the beam of light illuminated him, he 
dropped to the ground, crouching in the corner, a terrified animal hoping to 
make himself disappear.
"Peter Novak?" Janson asked softly.
The man buried his face in his arms, like the child who believes that when he 
cannot see, he cannot be seen.
Suddenly, Janson understood: What did he look like, with his black face paint 
and combat garb, his boots tracking blood? Like a savior—or an assailant?
Katsaris's flashlight settled on the cowering man, and Janson could make out the 
incongruously elegant broadcloth shirt, stiff not with a French launderer's 
starch but with grime and dried blood.
Janson took a deep breath and now spoke words he had once merely fantasized he 
would be able to say.
"Mr. Novak, my name is Paul Janson. You saved my life once. I'm here to return 
the favor."
CHAPTER SEVEN
For a few long seconds, the man remained motionless. Then he raised his face 
and, still crouched, looked straight into the light; Katsaris quickly redirected 
the beam, so as not to dazzle him.
It was Janson who was dazzled.
A few feet away from him was the countenance that had adorned countless 
magazines and newspapers. A countenance that was as beloved as the pope's—in 
this secular age, perhaps even more so. The thick shock of hair, flopping over 
his forehead, still more black than gray. The high, nearly Asiatic cheekbones. 
Peter Novak. Winner of last year's Nobel Peace Prize. A humanitarian like none 
the world had ever known.
The very familiarity of his visage made Novak's condition all the more shocking. 
The hollows beneath his eyes were dark, almost purple; a once-resolute gaze was 
now filled with terror. As the man shakily brought himself to his feet, Janson 
could see the small tremors that convulsed his body. Novak's hands shook; even 
his dark eyebrows quivered.
Janson was familiar with this look: it was the look of a man who had given up 
hope. He was familiar with this look because it had once been his. Baaqlina. A 
dusty town in Lebanon. And captors whom hatred had transformed into something 
not quite human. He could never forget the anthracite hardness of their eyes, 
their hearts. Baaqlina. It was destined to be his place of death: he had never 
been so convinced of anything. In the end, of course, he walked away a free man 
after the Liberty Foundation intervened. Did money change hands? He never knew. 
Even after his liberation, though, he spent a long time wondering whether that 
destiny was truly averted or merely deferred. They were deeply irrational, these 
thoughts and sensations, and Janson had never confided them to anyone. But 
perhaps the day would come when he would confide them to Peter Novak. Novak 
would understand that others had been through what he had been through, and 
perhaps he would find comfort in that. He owed Novak that much. No, he owed 
Novak everything. And so did thousands, perhaps millions, of others.
Peter Novak had traveled around the world to resolve bloody conflict. Now 
somebody had brought bloody conflict to him. Somebody who would pay.
Janson felt a welling up of warmth toward Peter Novak, and equally an intense 
wrath toward those who had sought to bring him low. Janson lived so much of his 
life in flight from such feelings; his reputation was as a coolly controlled, 
even-keeled, emotionally disengaged man—"the Machine," as he'd been nicknamed. 
His temperament made some people uncomfortable; in others, it inspired an 
abiding confidence and trust. But Janson knew he was no rock: he was merely 
skilled at internalizing. He seldom showed fear, because he feared too much. He 
banked his emotions because they burned too hotly. All the more so after the 
bombing in Caligo, after the loss of the only thing that had made sense of his 
life. It was hard to love when you saw how easily love could be taken away. It 
was hard to trust when you'd learned how easily trust could be broken. Once, 
decades earlier, there was a man he had admired more than any other; and that 
man had betrayed him. Not just him—the man had betrayed humanity.
Helene had once told him that he was a searcher. The search is over, he'd told 
her. I've found you, and he tenderly kissed her forehead, her eyes, her nose, 
her lips, her neck. But she had meant something else: she had meant that he was 
in search of meaning, of something or somebody larger than himself. Somebody, he 
now supposed, like Peter Novak.
Peter Novak: a wreck of a man, by the evidence of his eyes. A wreck of a man who 
was also a saint of a man. He could have been a brilliant economist, and some of 
his theoretical papers had become widely cited. He could have been the Midas of 
the twenty-first century, a pampered playboy, a reincarnation of the Shah Jahan, 
the Mughal emperor who built the Taj Mahal. But his sole interest was in leaving 
the world a better place than he had found it. And certainly a better place than 
had found him, born as he was on the killing fields of the Second World War.
"We've come for you," Janson told him.
Taking a tentative step away from the stone wall, Peter Novak pitched his 
shoulders back as if bellowing his lungs. Even to speak seemed to require 
enormous effort.
"You've come for me," Novak echoed, and the words were thick and croaky, perhaps 
the first he had spoken for several days.
What had they done to him? Had his body been broken, or his spirit? The body, 
Janson knew from experience, would heal more quickly. Novak's breathing 
indicated that the man had pneumonia, a fluid congestion of the lungs that would 
have come from breathing the dungeon's dank, stagnant, spore-filled air. At the 
same time, the words he spoke next seemed largely incoherent.
"You work for him," Novak said. "Of course you do. He says there can only be 
one! He knows that when I am out of the way, he will be unstoppable." The words 
were intoned with an urgency that substituted for sense.
"We work for you," Janson said. "We've come to get you."
In the great man's darting eyes was a look of bewilderment "You can't stop him!"
"Who are you talking about?"
"Peter Novak!"
"You're Peter Novak."
"Yes! Of course!" He clasped his arms around his chest and held himself 
straight, like a diplomat at an official convocation.
Was his mind gone?
"We've come for you," Janson repeated as Katsaris matched a key from the ring to 
the grate to Peter Novak's cell. The grate swung open. Novak did not move at 
first. Janson inspected his pupils for signs that he had been drugged, and 
concluded that the only drug to which he had been subjected was the trauma of 
captivity. The man had been kept in darkness for three days, no doubt given 
water and food, but deprived of hope.
Janson recognized the syndrome, recognized the elements of post-traumatic 
psychosis. In a dusty town in Lebanon, he had not entirely escaped it himself. 
People expected hostages to sink to their knees in gratitude, or join their 
rescuers, arm in arm, as they did in the movies. The reality was seldom like 
that.
Katsaris gave Janson a frantic look, tapping on his Breitling. Every additional 
minute exposed them to additional risk.
"Can you walk?" Janson asked, his tone sharper than he had intended.
There was a beat before Novak responded. "Yes," he said. "I think so."
"We have to leave now."
"No," said Peter Novak.
"Please. We can't afford to wait." In all likelihood, Novak was suffering the 
normal confusion and disorientation of the newly released captive. But could 
there be something more? Had the Stockholm syndrome set in? Had Novak been 
betrayed by the famously expansive compass of his moral sympathies?
"No—there's someone else!" he whispered.
"What are you talking about?" Katsaris interrupted.
"Somebody else here." He coughed. "Another prisoner."
"Who?" Katsaris prodded.
"An American," he said. He gestured to the cell at the end of the passageway. "I 
won't leave without her."
"That's impossible!" Katsaris interjected.
"If you leave her behind, they'll kill her. They'll kill her at once!" The 
humanitarian's eyes were imploring, and then commanding. He cleared his throat, 
moistened his cracked lips, and took another breath. "I cannot have that on my 
conscience." His English was manicured, precise, with just a faint Hungarian 
inflection. Another labored breath. "It need not be on yours."
Bit by bit, Janson realized, the prisoner was regaining his composure, becoming 
himself again. His piercing dark eyes reminded Janson that Novak was no ordinary 
man. He was a natural aristocrat, accustomed to ordering the world to his 
liking. He had a gift for it, a gift he had used for ends of extraordinary 
benevolence.
Janson studied Novak's unwavering gaze. "And if we can't ..."
"Then you'll have to leave me behind." The words were halting, but unequivocal.
Janson stared at him in disbelief.
A twitch played out on Novak's face, and then he spoke again. "I doubt your 
rescue plans provide for an unwilling hostage."
It was clear that his mind was still blazingly fast. He had played the tactical 
card immediately, impressing on Janson that no further discussion would be 
possible.
Janson and Katsaris exchanged glances. "Theo," Janson said quietly. "Get her."
Katsaris nodded reluctantly. Then they both froze.
The noise.
A scrape of steel against stone.
A familiar noise: that of the steel grate they had opened to go down there.
Janson remembered the soldier's hopeful cry: Theyilai.
The expected visitor, bringing the soldiers their tea.
Janson and Theo strode from the dungeon to the blood-drenched adjoining chamber, 
where they could hear the jangling of someone's key chain, and then watched as a 
tray—laden with a teapot of hammered metal and several stacks of little clay 
cups—came into view.
He saw the hands supporting the tray—remarkably small hands. And then the man, 
who was no man at all.
It was a boy. If Janson had had to guess, he would have said that the boy was 
eight years old. Large eyes, mocha skin, short black hair. He was shirtless and 
wore blue madras shorts. His sneakers looked too large for his slender calves 
and gave him a puppyish look. The boy's eyes were trained on the next step: he 
had been entrusted with an important responsibility, and he was going to be as 
careful as possible about his footing. Nothing would be dropped. Nothing would 
be spilled.
He was two-thirds of the way down the stairs when he pulled up short. Probably 
the smell had alerted him that something was out of the ordinary—either that or 
the silence.
The boy now turned and regarded the carnage—the guards sprawled in pooled, 
congealing blood—and Janson could hear him gasp. Involuntarily, the little boy 
dropped the tray. His precious tray. The tray that the guards were to have 
received with such gratitude and merriment. As it rolled like a hoop, down the 
stairs, the cups smashed on the steps below him, and the teapot splashed its 
steaming contents at the boy's feet. Janson watched it all happen in slow 
motion.
Everything would be dropped. Everything would be spilled. Including blood.
Janson knew precisely what he must do. Left to his own devices, the boy would 
flee and alert the others. What had to be done was regrettable but inarguable. 
There was no other choice. In one fluid movement, he leveled the silenced HK at 
the boy.
A boy who returned his gaze with large, frightened eyes.
A slack-jawed eight-year-old. An innocent, given no choice as to his decisions 
in life.
Not a combatant. Not a conspirator. Not a rebel. Not involved.
A boy. Armed with—what?—a hot jug of mint tea?
No matter. The field manuals had a name for persons like him: engaged 
noncombatants. Janson knew what he had to do.
But his hand did not. It refused to follow his command. His finger would not 
squeeze the trigger.
Janson stood stock-still, frozen as he had never been in his life, even as 
turbulence overtook his mind. His disgust for the casualties of "standard 
tactical protocol" became absolute, and now paralyzing.
The boy turned from him and scampered up the stairwell, taking the steps two at 
a time—back up the stairs, back to safety.
Yet his safety was their doom! Recriminations flooded Janson like lava: his two 
seconds of sentimentality had fatally compromised the mission.
The boy would sound the alarm. By allowing him to live, Janson had signed a 
death warrant for Peter Novak. For Theo Katsaris. For himself. And quite 
possibly for the other participants in the mission.
He had made an insupportable, inexcusable, indefensible mistake. He was now, in 
effect, a murderer, and of far more than one child. His stricken eyes ran from 
Novak to Katsaris. A man he admired more than any he'd known; another he loved 
like a son. The mission was over. Sabotaged by an errant force he could never 
have anticipated: himself.
Now he saw Katsaris streak by, saw Katsaris's footprints in the blood; the man 
had taken the shortest route to the stairwell, vaulting over corpses and chairs. 
The boy had to have been within an arm's length of the door to the hallway when 
Katsaris squeezed off a silenced shot to the heart. Even after the muzzle 
flashed, Katsaris remained in full precision-firing position: a steadying hand 
to his firing hand, the stance of somebody who could not afford to miss. The 
stance of a soldier firing at a person who could not return fire, but whose 
continued survival was itself a dire menace.
Janson's vision blurred briefly, then focused again, and when it did he saw the 
child's lifeless body tumble down the stone stairs, almost somersaulting.
And then it lay on the bottom step, like a rag doll carelessly tossed aside.
When Janson moved a few feet closer, he saw that the boy's head lay upon the 
metal tray he once carried so proudly. A saliva bubble had formed at his soft, 
childish lips.
Janson's heart pounded slowly, powerfully. He was sickened, at himself and what 
he had nearly allowed to happen, and at the same time sickened by what needed to 
have happened. By the waste of it all, the prodigality with the one thing that 
mattered on this earth, human life. The Derek Collinses of the world would never 
understand. He remembered why he retired. Decisions like this, he recognized, 
had to be made. He had no longer wanted to be the one to make them.
Katsaris looked at him with wildly questioning eyes: Why had he frozen? What had 
come over him?
He felt strangely moved that Katsaris's expression was one of bewilderment 
rather than reproach. Katsaris should have been furious at him, as Janson was 
furious at himself. Only the soldier's love for his mentor could have modulated 
outrage into mere astonishment and incredulity.
"We've got to get out of here," Janson said.
Katsaris gestured toward the stairs, the egress stipulated in the revised plan.
But Janson had devised those plans, and knew when they would have to be altered 
for the sake of the mission. "That's too dangerous now. We've got to find 
another way."
Would Katsaris trust his judgment any longer? A mission without a commanding 
officer was a sure route to disaster. He had to demonstrate his mastery of the 
situation.
"First things first. Let's get the American," he told him.
Two minutes later, Katsaris fiddled with the lock of another iron gate as Novak 
and Janson looked on. The gate opened with a groan.
The flashlight played off matted hair that had once been blond.
"Please don't hurt me," the woman whimpered, cowering in her cell. "Please don't 
hurt me!"
"We're just going to take you home," Theo said, angling the beam so that they 
could assess her physical condition.
It was Donna Hedderman, the anthropology student; Janson recognized her face. 
Once the KLF had captured the Steenpaleis, they had evidently moved the American 
woman to its dungeon as well. The two high-profile captives, they must have 
reasoned, would be easier to guard in one place.
Donna Hedderman was a big-boned woman, with a broad nose and round cheeks. She 
had once been heavyset, and even after seventy days of captivity, she was not 
lean. As was the way with terror groups of any sophistication, the KLF made sure 
that its prisoners were amply fed. The calculation was brutality itself. A 
prisoner weakened by starvation might succumb to disease and die. To die of 
disease was to escape the power of the KLF. A prisoner who died could not be 
executed.
Even so, Donna Hedderman had been through hell: it was apparent from her 
bleached, fish-belly flesh, her clumped and tangled hair, her staring eyes. 
Janson had seen photos of her in the newspaper articles about her kidnapping. In 
the pictures, from happier days, she was round, beaming, almost cherubic. 
"High-spirited" was a recurrent adjective. But the long weeks of captivity had 
taken all that away. A KLF communiqué had dementedly called her an American 
intelligence agent; if anything, she had left-wing sympathies that would have 
ruled out such employment. She had been singularly sympathetic to the plight of 
the Kagama, but then the KLF scorned sympathy as a nonrevolutionary sentiment. 
Sympathy was an impediment to fear, and fear was what the Caliph sought above 
all else.
A long pause. "Who do you work for?" she asked in a quavering voice.
"We work for Mr. Novak," Janson said. A sidelong glance.
After a beat, Novak nodded. "Yes," he said. "They are our friends."
Donna Hedderman got to her feet and made her way toward the open gate. Edema had 
swollen her ankles, making her stride unsteady.
Now Janson conferred quietly with Katsaris. "There is another way, and right now 
it looks like the better bet. But we'll need to pool resources. We each have an 
ounce of Semtex in our kit. We'll need them both." A small wad of Semtex, along 
with a detonation device, was included in their gear, standard spec-ops 
equipment for missions into uncertain environments.
Katsaris looked at him closely, then nodded. Janson's tone of voice, the 
specificity of his instructions, were, for whatever reason, reassuring. Janson 
had not lost it. Or if he had, it was only a momentary lapse. Janson was still 
Janson.
"Kerosene lanterns." Janson gestured toward them. "Before the place was 
electrified, it would have been the primary source of illumination. The governor 
general's compound would have had a kerosene tank in the basement, something 
that would be filled from outside. He'd want to have a plentiful supply of the 
stuff."
"They might have ripped it out," Katsaris noted. "Filled it with cement."
"Possibly. More likely it was left to rust, quietly. The subfoundation level is 
vast. It isn't as if they would have needed the space."
"Vast is right. How are we going to find it?"
"The blueprint has a tank positioned approximately two hundred meters in from 
the northwest retaining wall. I hadn't realized what it was for, but it's 
obvious now."
"That's some distance," Katsaris said. "Is the woman going to be up to it?"
Donna Hedderman gripped the iron bars to help herself stay erect; clearly, the 
period of relative immobility had weakened her muscles, and her still 
considerable girth gave them a great deal to support.
Novak looked at her and turned away, embarrassed. Janson understood the kind of 
relationship that developed between two deeply frightened prisoners who might 
not be able to see each other but could communicate, whispering through pipes, 
tapping code on metal bars, passing notes scrawled with grime on scraps of cloth 
or paper.
"You run ahead, Theo. Let me know when you've located it, and I'll bring the 
others."
Three minutes elapsed before he heard Katsaris's triumphant words in his 
earpiece: "Found it!"
Janson looked at his watch: further delay was dangerous. When might the next 
contingent of guards arrive to relieve the ones who had been on duty? When would 
they next hear the scrape of the steel grate on the stone landing?
Now he led Peter Novak and Donna Hedderman along the dank subterranean corridor 
that led to the old kerosene tank. Hedderman held on to Janson's arm as she 
walked, and even then her gait was slow and painful. These were not the cards he 
would have chosen, but they were the cards he had been dealt.
The tank, obviously long neglected, had an iron door with lead flanges to 
maintain a tight seal.
"There's no time," Janson said. "Let's kick the damn thing in. The hinges are 
already rusting off. They just need help." He made a running start toward the 
door, throwing up a foot as he reached iron door. If the door did not give way, 
the result would be a bone-jarring experience. But it did, collapsing in a cloud 
of dust and oxidized metal.
Janson coughed. "Get out your Semtex," he said.
Now Janson strode through what had once been a storage tank for kerosene. The 
copper-lined chamber was still suffused with an oily smell. The fill hole was 
almost hidden by the hardened tarlike residue that covered the walls—impurities 
of the kerosene, which remained after many decades of disuse.
He hammered the butt of his HK against the outside wall, heard the hollow ring 
of the copper flashing. This was the area. Probably a four-foot elevation above 
the ground, unless it had been reduced by the passage of time.
Katsaris packed the ivory-colored putty, about the size of a wad of bubble gum, 
around the rusting iron bunghole and pressed into it twin silvery wires, 
filament-thin. The other end of the wires attached to a small, round lithium 
battery, similar in appearance to those used in many watches and hearing aids. 
The battery hung low, and Katsaris decided to press it into the Semtex, simply 
to stabilize it.
As he worked, Janson primed his own wad of Semtex, then took a few moments to 
determine the optimal position of the second blast. The positioning of plastique 
was crucial to the desired outcome, and they could not afford to fail. So far, 
they had been protected by the isolation of the dungeon—the layers of stone 
protecting it from the rest of the north wing.
Mayhem had occurred, but no sound would have been audible to those who were not 
its victims. There was no way to make a soundless exit, however. Indeed, the 
aftershock from the blast would travel almost instantaneously throughout the 
Stone Palace, rousing everyone in the immense compound. There would be no 
confusion among the rebels about where the blast had originated, no confusion 
about where to dispatch soldiers. The escape route had to be hitchless, or their 
efforts would all be for nothing.
Now Janson pressed his ounce of Semtex to the corner of the far wall where it 
met the curving top of the copper-lined tank, three feet above Katsaris's ounce.
It fell off, and Janson grabbed it before it hit the ground. The ivory putty 
would not adhere to the greasy surface.
What now? He took out his combat knife and used it to scrape the gummy residue 
from the corner of the tank. The blade was soon ruined, but his penlight 
revealed an area of gleaming, gouged metal.
He pressed the unsoiled side of the Semtex wad to the spot. It hung there, but 
uncertainly, as though it might drop at any moment.
"Fall back!" Janson called.
Theo and Janson exited the tank, Janson taking one last look to make sure the 
Semtex was still in position. Once the two rejoined the hostages, around a bend 
in the corridor, they depressed in unison the radio frequency controllers that 
activated the batteries.
The explosion was deafening, the reverberation a rumble-roar, like a vast 
collection of forty-thousand-watt speakers blasting bass-range feedback. The 
shock waves traveled through their flesh, causing their very eyes to vibrate. 
White smoke billowed inward, bringing with it the familiar nitrous scent of 
plastique—and something else, too: the salty tang of the sea breeze. They had a 
route to the compound's exterior.
If they lived to use it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
How long would it take before the KLF forces were fully mobilized? A hundred and 
twenty seconds? Less? How many guards were on duty? How many guards were 
stationed along the battlements?
They would find out soon enough.
A portion of the heavy stone wall had crumbled under the blast, and thick, 
jagged metal plates were strewn everywhere. But Theo's penlight confirmed what 
the moist sea breeze had promised. The opening was wide enough to enable them to 
clamber out to the exterior of the compound, if they used a push-pull maneuver. 
Katsaris went first. Janson would go last. Between them, they would help the 
weakened captives make their way over the rubble and onto the surrounding 
grounds.
Eighty seconds later, the four of them were on the outside.- The sea breeze was 
stronger, and the night sky was brighter than it had been; the cloud cover was 
beginning to break up. Stars were visible, and so was a patch of moon.
It was not a good time for the nocturnal glow. They were outside the dungeon. 
But they were not free.
Not yet.
Janson stood against the limestone wall with the others, determining their 
precise position. The breeze cleared Janson's nostrils, cleared them of the 
bloody, clinging stench of his victims, as well as of the fainter animal stench 
of the unwashed captives.
The area immediately beneath the limestone wall of the compound was safer, in 
certain respects, than the area farther out. The seaside battlements, he saw, 
were filled with armed men, some manning heavy artillery. That was why the 
battlements were constructed—to fire upon the corvettes and schooners of rival 
colonial empires. The farther out they were, the more exposed they would be.
"Can you run?" Janson asked Novak.
"A short distance?"
"Only a short distance," he said reassuringly.
"I'll do my damnedest," the billionaire replied, jut-jawed and determined. He 
was in his sixties, had been held in captivity under doubtful conditions, but 
his sheer force of will would see him through.
Janson felt reassured by his steely resolve. Donna Hedderman he was less certain 
of. She seemed the kind who might collapse into hysterics at any moment. And she 
was too heavy to sling over a shoulder.
He put a hand on her arm. "Hey," he said. "Nobody's asking you to do anything 
that's beyond you. Do you understand?"
She whimpered, her eyes beseeching. A commando in black face paint was not a 
comforting sight to her.
"I want you to focus, OK?" He pointed to the rocky outcropping, fifty yards 
away, where the promontory dropped off in a sheer cliff. A low split-rail fence, 
painted white and peeling, surrounded the cliff, a visual demarcation rather 
than a physical impediment. "That's where we're going."
For her sake, he did not spell out in further detail what the plan called for. 
He did not tell her that they would be going over the cliff, dropping down on 
ropes to a boat waiting on the frothing waters eighty meters below.
Katsaris and Novak now sprinted toward the rocky outcropping at the promontory's 
rocky overhang; Janson, slowed by the wheezing American, followed.
In the gray scale of nighttime vision, it looked like the very edge of the 
world. A crag of pale rock, and then nothingness, complete and absolute.
And that nothingness was their destination; indeed, their only salvation.
If they reached it in time.
"Find anchor!" Janson called to Katsaris.
The cliff was largely gneiss, a tough, metamorphic rock, weathered into 
irregular crags. There were a couple of plausible rock horns near the overhang. 
Using one of them would be safer and faster than pounding bolts or pitons into 
crevices. With sure, deft hands, Katsaris wrapped two loops of rope around the 
more prominent of the solid rock horns, making a double-strand loop beneath it, 
secured with an overhand knot. If one strand were cut—by friction against a 
sharp crag, or a stray bullet—the other would hold. Janson had packed dry-coated 
9.4mm Beal rope, with some elasticity to control the deceleration rate in a 
fall. It was compact, but strong enough for the job.
As Katsaris secured the anchor, Janson swiftly trussed Novak in a sewn nylon 
climbing harness, making sure the leg loops and waist belt were securely 
buckled. This would not be a controlled rappel: the work would be done by the 
equipment, not the man. And the equipment could not be elaborate: they had to 
rely upon devices that could be easily carried. A figure-eight descender would 
serve as the rappel brake. It was a simple piece of polished steel, smaller than 
his hand, with two rings on either end of a center stem. One ring was big, the 
other small. No moving parts. It could be rigged rapidly and easily.
Katsaris passed a bight of the rappel rope through the big ring and looped it 
around the stem. He clipped the small ring onto Peter Novak's harness with a 
locking carobiner. It was a rudimentary device, but it would provide enough 
friction to safely control the rate of descent.
From a corner tower above the battlements, a guard aimed a long burst of gunfire 
in their direction.
They had been spotted.
"Christ, Janson, there's no time!" Katsaris shouted.
But he could buy time—perhaps a minute, perhaps less.
Janson unhooked a stun grenade from his combat vest and threw it toward the 
watchtower. It arced through the air and into the guard's cabin.
At the same time, Janson tossed the rope coil over the cliff. The sooner Novak 
followed, the safer he'd be: a single-pitch rappel was his only chance.
Unfortunately, the Kagama in the watchtower was swift and skilled: he grabbed 
the grenade and hurled it away from him, with seconds to spare. The grenade blew 
in midair, the flash outlining the four people at the edge of the cliff for 
attack like a floodlight from a guard tower.
"Now what?" asked Novak. "I'm no rock climber."
"Jump," Katsaris urged. "Now!"
"You're mad!" Novak cried out, aghast and terrified by the black nothingness 
that seemed to stretch out below.
Katsaris abruptly lifted the great man and, taking care not to lose his own 
footing, pitched him off the side of the cliff.
It was graceless. It was also the only way. The humanitarian was in no state to 
absorb and follow even the most elementary coaching: a regulated plumb drop was 
his only chance. And the overhang meant that the rock face would be a safe 
distance away from him.
Janson heard the controlled slither of the 9.4mm rope as it fed through the 
figure-eight brake, confirming that the cord would bear him down to the 
water-plashed rocks below at a regulated speed of descent. The plunging cliff 
was now Novak's greatest protection, shielding him from the riflemen on the 
battlements. Bullets could only shoot past him; they could not reach him. Novak 
had to do nothing. Gravity would do its part.
The B team, waiting in the boat at the base of the cliff, would do the rest.
The overhang of the cliff had protected the compound from amphibious attack over 
the centuries, even as the rocks and shoals kept warships from approaching too 
closely. The location of the fortress had been well chosen. And yet these 
features could provide the invaders with safety, too.
Peter Novak was almost home.
For the rest of them, it would not be so simple.
Janson and Katsaris could rappel down the cliff easily enough. But what of Donna 
Hedderman? There was no spare climbing harness and braking system for her use. A 
long look passed between Janson and Katsaris: wordlessly, a plan was agreed 
upon, tacitly devised in desperation.
Even as he made a double cord loop around another rock horn, Theo's expression 
was clear enough. Damn the American! But leaving her behind was out of the 
question.
A burst of gunfire kicked up a painful spray of rock.
There was no time.
More and more of the sentinels would direct their raking fire toward the 
promontory. No doubt the darkness and fog made sighting difficult, for the 
bursts were aimed with only approximate accuracy, and at forty yards, that was 
not sufficient for a reliable kill. The rebels were compensating with sheer 
quantity, however. More fire rained down on them. How much longer before a 
bullet struck home?
"Rig yourself," Janson ordered Katsaris. Meanwhile, Janson belayed the woman 
with what was to have been his own harness, the nylon webbing stretching tautly 
around her thighs and considerable waist. Hastily, he rigged the figure eight. A 
less-than-gentle push, and she was on her way down.
That left Janson with neither a harness nor a rappelling device. Facing the 
anchor Katsaris had rigged, he straddled the rope, looping it around his left 
buttock and across his hip, up across his chest and around his head to his right 
shoulder, and then over and down his back to his left hand. The rope was now 
configured in an S around his upper body. He would guide with his right hand, 
regulate speed with his left. Clasping the rope palm up, he could move it off 
his back to increase speed, and winch it around his hip to slow down. His nylon 
clothing would provide some protection from rope burns. Still, he was under no 
illusions. He had body-rappelled once before, in a training exercise; it would 
be extremely painful.
"Does that really work?" Katsaris asked skeptically.
"Sure it does," Janson said. "I've done it before." And he had hoped he would 
never have to do it again.
Several buzz-saw-like bursts of gunfire pelted the cliff like a hailstorm of 
lead. The rock at their feet exploded, only inches away; fragments stung 
Janson's face. There was no time.
"I'm stuck!" Donna Hedderman's wailing voice, perhaps thirty feet down the 
cliff.
"We'll be right there," Janson called to her, as he and Katsaris eased off the 
overhang. Bending at the waist, the two men kept their legs perpendicular to the 
sheer surface, "walking down" where it was possible. For Janson, the descent was 
excruciating; the nylon shell was strong but supplied no cushioning as the cord 
bit into his flesh. The only way to lessen the pressure was to increase the 
demands on his already aching muscles.
"Help me!" The woman's quavering voice echoed against the sheer rock.
A third of the way down, they found her and saw what had happened. Her long, 
matted hair had become entangled in the figure-eight rappel device. It was a 
hazard they should have anticipated. Katsaris took out a knife and, propelling 
himself sideways with his feet, approached her. She let out an earsplitting 
scream. With one slice, her entangled hair was free. But there was more of it, 
and it could happen again. Katsaris released his brake hand and activated his 
autoblock, a piece of webbing that now wrapped around his rope and arrested 
further descent.
"Hold still," he said. Inching farther toward her, he grabbed handfuls of her 
hair and sliced them off, ignoring her loud squawks of protest. As coiffure it 
was inelegant; as a safety precaution it was a thing of beauty.
Janson worked hard to keep up with the others, gritting his teeth as the 
stresses moved along the cord. At one moment, it tightened around his chest like 
a python, constricting his breath; at the next, it was digging into his gluteus 
muscles. Body-rappelling was natural, he supposed, in the way that natural 
childbirth was. The agony was what made it real. His hands were overstrained; 
yet if he let go of the rope, there would be nothing between him and the rocks 
below.
He had to hold on just a little longer. He had to keep reminding himself that at 
the base of the cliff, the other team members would be waiting for them, in the 
ultralightweight rigid inflatable boat that had been stowed on the BA609. They 
would be rested and ready. Janson and the others would be safe in their hands. 
If only they could reach them.
Clear like water, cool like ice.
Seconds ticked by like hours. He could hear the sounds of the aquatic team as 
they untrussed Peter Novak and bundled him into the boat.
This race would go to the swift. If there was any doubt where they had gone, the 
cable anchors would tell the sentries everything they needed to know. And if 
those anchors were sliced in the next few minutes, three people would plunge to 
their death. The darkness and fog were their only allies, time their greatest 
enemy.
The only hope of survival lay in speed—to get off the ropes and into the boat as 
fast as possible.
How much time had passed? Forty seconds? Fifty? Sixty?
Just when his muscles had reached the point of total depletion, Janson felt 
hands reaching up to grab him, and finally he let go of a lifeline that had 
turned into an instrument of torture. As he took his seat in the flat-bottomed 
watercraft, he looked around him. There were six of them. Novak. Hedderman. 
Katsaris. Andressen. Honwana. Hennessy would be piloting the BA609, taking 
second shift.
The motor whined as the rigid inflatable boat—a Sea Force 490—shot off from the 
rocks, hugging the shore for half a mile as it moved south, and then out into 
the mist-shrouded waters. The poor visibility would make it difficult to sight 
the RIB, and they had chosen a course that would take them out of the way of the 
rebels' fixed artillery. "All accounted for," Andressen said into his 
communicator, alerting Hennessy in the BA609. "Plus one guest."
A few bullets pocked the waters some distance from them. They were bullets fired 
out of desperation, fired for show. But such stray projectiles could sometimes 
achieve the same result as ones that were carefully guided.
Only when they were half a mile out could they no longer hear the sounds of the 
rebel forces; KLF gunfire no doubt continued, not least out of sheer 
frustration, but the reports were lost amid the sound of the restless ocean.
The Sea Force heaved in rhythm with the waves; its powerful motor strained as it 
competed with the monsoon-roiled waters. As the Anuran coast disappeared in the 
mists, Janson had a fleeting sense of how insignificant their vessel was, a tiny 
thing of rubber and metal propelling itself though the vast, empty seas. And yet 
for those who cared about the future of humanity on this planet, its cargo was 
significant indeed.
Peter Novak faced the direction in which they were traveling. From the set of 
his jaw, Janson could see that he was continuing to regain a sense of his 
identity, a sense of his selfhood. Yet his expression was blank; his mind was 
elsewhere. The spray and spume of the ocean was glittering in his hair and on 
his face; his broadcloth shirt was spattered with brine. From time to time, he 
would run a hand through his bristle-thick hair.
Hedderman's face was buried in her hands. She had curled up into a ball. It 
would take her a long time to heal, Janson knew. The two had fallen into the 
KLF's clutches in radically different circumstances and were a study in 
contrast.
Janson's men, too, were silent, lost in thought, or rehearsing the remaining 
operational steps.
Would the rebels follow in a speedboat? It was a possibility, though not a 
probability. If one was not skilled at rappelling, Adam's Hill was a formidable 
obstacle.
The six people in the RIB could hear the whomp-whomp of the rotors before they 
could see the craft. Another quarter mile of open sea separated them from it. 
Andressen checked his watch and turned up the throttle. They were in operational 
overtime: the exfiltration had taken longer than anticipated. The small boat 
rose and fell with the waves like driftwood while its powerful outboard motor 
kept them moving in a more or less straight line. Now the aircraft came into 
view. It was resting on a flotational helipad, an expanse of self-inflating 
black rubber. The downwash from the rotors caused the sea to bowl around it. 
Hennessy, who would be piloting the return flight as Honwana rested, was merely 
readying the hydraulics.
Now the craft's matte resin body was outlined in the first glimmers of the new 
day, a pink tendril over the horizon. A few minutes later, the tendril had 
become something indistinct but intense, like an arc light glimpsed through 
closed fingers. Dawn was breaking, into what was now an almost clear sky. A dark 
violet, shading swiftly into an intense cerulean. Dawn on the Indian Ocean. The 
first dawn that Peter Novak had seen for some days.
Hennessy opened his window and called out to Janson. "And who's the woman, now?" 
he asked, his voice tense.
"Ever hear of Donna Hedderman?"
"Mary, mother of God, Janson. This extraction was for one. This craft can't seat 
another person. Dammit, we're already at the limit of our fuel capacity. We 
can't take another hundred pounds of cargo without running out of fuel before we 
reach the landing zone. That's how fine the tolerances are."
"I understand."
"You should. It was your plan, bejaysus. So give me an alternative LZ."
Janson shook his head. "There's no place nearer that's safe, or it wouldn't be 
an alternative."
"And what does your plan call for now?" the Irishman demanded.
"I'll stay behind," Janson said. "There's enough fuel in the RIB to get me to 
Sri Lanka." Hennessy looked incredulous, and Janson added, "Using reduced speed, 
and taking advantage of the currents. Trust me, I know what I'm doing."
"Sri Lanka's not safe. You said so yourself, be the holy."
"Not safe for Novak is what I said. I'll make do. I've prepared contingency 
plans, in case something like this came up." He was only half bluffing. The plan 
he had specified would work, but it was not an eventuality he had foreseen.
Now Donna Hedderman, gasping and sputtering, was brought on board the aircraft. 
Her face was flushed, her clothes drenched from the spray of the ocean.
"Mr. Janson?" The Hungarian's voice was reedy and clear, even through the 
pulsing rumble of the nacelles. "You're a very brave man. You humble me, and I'm 
not easily humbled." He clasped Janson's upper arm. "I won't forget this."
Janson bowed his head, then looked straight into Peter Novak's brown eyes. 
"Please do. In fact, I'm going to have to ask you to do so, for reasons of my 
security, and that of my team." It was the professional response. And Janson was 
a professional.
A long pause. "You're a good man," the humanitarian said. Katsaris helped Peter 
Novak up the ramp and into the aircraft and then walked back down it.
The Greek's face was stern as he faced Janson. "I stay. You go."
"No, my friend," Janson said.
"Please," Katsaris said. "You're needed there. Mission control, yes? In case 
things go wrong."
"Nothing can go wrong at this point," Janson said. "Novak's in capable hands."
"Alone on the open sea in an inflatable boat—that's no joke," Katsaris said 
stonily.
"You're saying I'm too old for a little sailing?"
Katsaris shook his head, unsmiling. "Please, Paul. I should be the one." His 
black hair gleamed in the dawn light.
"Goddammit, no!" Janson said, in a burst of anger. "My call, my screw-up, my 
foul. No member of my team takes a risk that should be mine. This conversation 
is over." It was a point of pride—of what passed for manhood or honor in the 
shadowy world of secret ops. Katsaris swallowed hard, and did as he was 
instructed. But he could not erase the worry from his face.
Janson downshifted the RIB's motor: fuel efficiency would be increased at a more 
moderate speed. Next he verified his direction with the compass on his watch 
face.
It would take him three or four hours to reach the coastal plains of 
southeastern Sri Lanka. There, he had a contact who could put him on a fast 
lorry to Colombo International Airport, assuming that the place wasn't in the 
hands of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam again. It wasn't the ideal; only, 
once again, the best of the available alternatives.
He watched the small turquoise-bodied aircraft rise into the air, describing 
something like a ziggurat pattern as it started its ascent to an altitude suited 
to extended flight, taking advantage of the prevailing winds for the long trip 
to Katchall.
The early-morning sky was now a beautiful azure, almost matching the resin skin 
of the rotorcraft, and Janson was filled with a sense of growing calm and relief 
as the craft glided through the sky.
He allowed himself a brief moment of pride. It had been a triumph against nearly 
impossible odds. Peter Novak was free. The murderous fanatics would be bereft of 
their glorious captive and would have gained nothing but humiliation. Janson 
leaned back in the boat and watched as the aircraft rose a little higher, its 
three-axis movement making it look almost like a thing of nature, a darting 
insect.
In the small boat, the approach toward the coastal plains of Sri Lanka would 
call for some care on his part; there were sometimes unexpected sandbars that 
made things treacherous. But from Colombo, there was a direct flight to Bombay, 
and from there the return stateside would be straightforward. He had committed 
Marta Lang's private telephone number to memory, and so had Katsaris; it would 
reach her wherever she was. Though the RIB lacked the requisite 
telecommunications, he knew that Katsaris would assume command. In a few 
minutes, Katsaris would notify Novak's deputy that the mission had been 
accomplished. It was a call that Janson had hoped to be able to make, but 
Katsaris had every bit as much a right to it: he had been extraordinary, and 
absolutely integral to the long-odds triumph.
If Janson knew the Liberty Foundation, they would probably have assembled an 
aerial flotilla by the time the BA609 had returned to Katchall. Janson continued 
to watch as the aircraft climbed, soaring and magnificent.
And then—no! it couldn't be, it had to be a trick of the light!—he saw the 
flash, the dazzling, fiery blast and plume of a midair explosion. A pulse of 
white bleached the early-morning sky, followed immediately by a vast secondary 
flare, the yellow-white of combusted fuel. Small pieces of fuselage began to 
drift toward the sea.
No! Oh, Christ, no!
For several long seconds, Janson felt perfectly numb. He closed his eyes and 
reopened them: Had he imagined it?
A detached propeller twirled lazily before it crashed into the sea.
Oh, dear God.
It was a catastrophe such as none he had ever witnessed. At once, his heart felt 
squeezed, hard, harder. Theo. Theo Katsaris, the closest thing he had to a son. 
A man who loved him, and whom he loved. "Let me stay behind," Theo had begged 
him, and—out of vanity, out of pride—Janson had refused him.
Dead. Incinerated before his eyes.
In a kaleidoscope, he saw the faces of the others. Taciturn, even-tempered 
Manuel Honwana. Andressen: loyal, methodical, reliable, soft-spoken—easily 
underestimated precisely because he was so devoid of self-regard. Sean Hennessy, 
whom he had spirited out of an English prison cell, only to serve with a death 
sentence. Donna Hedderman, too—the luckless American do-gooder.
Gone. Dead because of him.
And Peter Novak. The greatest humanitarian of a new century. A giant among men. 
The peacemaker. A man who had once saved Janson's life. And the object of the 
entire mission.
Dead.
Cremated, three thousand feet above the Indian Ocean.
An incredible triumph had turned, now that day broke, into a nightmare.
It was no accident, no engine malfunction. The double explosion—the blast that 
preceded, by a few crucial seconds, the burst of combusted fuel—was telltale. 
What had occurred was the result of craft and design. Such craft and design that 
four of the best men he knew had been murdered, along with one of the best men 
anybody had ever known.
What the hell had happened? Who could have planned such a thing? When had the 
plans been laid?
And why? For God's sakes, why?
Janson sagged to the floor of the RIB, paralyzed by grief, futility, rage; for a 
moment, in the open sea, he felt as if he were in a crypt, with a heavy weight 
on his chest. Breathing was impossible. The very blood that sluiced through his 
veins seemed to congeal. The heaving sea beckoned, with its antidote of 
everlasting oblivion. He was harrowed, tormented, and deeply afraid, and he knew 
just how to put a stop to it.
But that was not an option.
He would have given his life for any of theirs. He knew that now.
But that was not an option.
Only he survived.
And in some calculating part of his mind, a clockwork mechanism spooled with a 
hard, icy rage. He had taken arms against a compound of fanatics, only to 
succumb to something far more diabolical. Outrage infused his soul with a near 
cryogenic frost. Emotions like despondency and grief had to give way before a 
larger emotion, an absolute and unyielding thirst for justice, and it was that 
emotion that commanded him not to succumb to the other emotions. He was the one 
left alive—left to find out what had just happened.
And why.
PART TWO
CHAPTER NINE
Washington, D.C.
"The prime directive here is secrecy," the man from the Defense Intelligence 
Agency said to the others in the room. With his thick, dark eyebrows, broad 
shoulders, and brawny forearms, he had the look of someone who worked with his 
hands; in fact, Douglas Albright was an intensely cerebral man, given to 
brooding and deliberation. He held a Ph.D. in comparative politics and another 
graduate degree in the foundations of game theory. "Secrecy is priority number 
one, two, and three. There should be no confusion about that."
Such confusion was unlikely, for the imperative even accounted for the unlikely 
venue for the hastily convened meeting. The Meridian International Center was 
located on Crescent Place, just off Sixteenth Street on Meridian Hill. A blandly 
handsome building in the neoclassical style that was the architectural lingua 
franca of official Washington, it was anything but eye-catching. Its charms were 
discreet and had much to do with its curious status as a building that was not 
owned by the federal government—the center billed itself a nonprofit educational 
and cultural institution—but was almost entirely devoted to very private 
government functions. The center had an elegant front entrance of carved oak; of 
greater importance was the side entrance, accessible from a private driveway, 
which enabled dignitaries to arrive and depart without attracting notice. Though 
it was just a mile from the White House, the center had significant advantages 
for certain meetings, especially interdepartmental conclaves that had no formal 
justification. Meetings here did not involve the paper trail that was 
necessitated by the security procedures at the White House, the Old Executive 
Office Building, the Pentagon, or any of the intelligence agencies. They could 
take place without leaving behind any telltale logs or records. They could take 
place without ever, officially, having taken place at all.
The five gray-faced men who sat around the small conference table were all in 
similar lines of work, and yet, given the structure of governmental agencies, 
they would never have had cause to meet in the ordinary course of things. 
Needless to say, the program that had brought them all together in the first 
place was far from ordinary, and the circumstances they now faced were quite 
possibly cataclysmic.
Unlike their titular superiors, they were not political appointees; they were 
lifers, tending to programs that extended far beyond the duration of any 
particular administration. They liaised with, and reported to, the men and women 
who shuttled in and out in four-year cycles, but the horizons of their 
responsibilities, as they conceived them, extended much further.
Sitting opposite the DIA man, the deputy director of the National Security 
Agency had a high scrubbed forehead and small, pinched features. He prided 
himself on maintaining an outward air of serenity, no matter what the 
circumstances. That air of serenity was now close to fraying, and with it his 
pride. "Secrecy, yes—the nature of the directive is clear," he said quietly. 
"The nature of our subject is not."
"Paul Elie Janson," said the State Department undersecretary, who was, on paper, 
the director of that department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. He had 
not spoken for some time. A smooth-faced, athletic man with tousled, 
straw-colored hair, he was lent gravitas by heavy black-framed glasses. The 
undersecretary was a survivor, the other men knew. And because he was a 
survivor, they took careful note of the way he positioned himself on the issues. 
"Janson was one of ours, as you know. The documents you've got on him are 
lightly redacted. Apologies for that—that's the way they come out of the files, 
and we didn't have much prep time. Anyway, I think they give you the general 
idea."
"One of your goddamn killing machines, Derek, that's what he is," said Albright, 
glowering at the undersecretary. Despite Albright's high administrative rank, he 
had spent a career in analysis, not operations, and he remained an analyst to 
the core of his being. The ingrained mistrust that men of his ilk had toward 
their counterparts in operations was too often justified. "You create these 
soulless pieces of machinery, loose them on the world, and then leave someone 
else to clean up the mess. 1 just don't understand what kind of game he's 
playing."
The man from State flushed angrily. "Have you considered the possibility that 
someone is running a game on him?" A hard stare: "Jumping to conclusions could 
be dangerous. I'm not willing to stipulate that Janson is a renegade."
"The point is, we can't be certain," the NSA man, Sanford Hildreth, said after a 
while. He turned to the man seated next to him, a computer scientist who, as a 
young man, had earned a reputation as a wunderkind, when he almost 
single-handedly redesigned the primary intelligence database for the CIA. "Is 
there some data set we're overlooking, Kaz?"
Kazuo Onishi shook his head. Educated at Cal Tech, he had grown up in Southern 
California and retained a slight Valley accent that made him seem looser than he 
was. "I can tell you we've had anomalous activities, potential breaches of 
security firewalls. What I can't do is identify the perpetrator. Not yet, 
anyway."
"Say you're correct, Derek," Hildreth went on. "Then my heart goes out to him. 
But absolutely nothing can compromise the program. Doug's right—that's the prime 
directive. Absolute and unyielding. Or we might as well kiss Pax Americana 
good-bye. It almost doesn't matter what he thought he was doing. All we can say 
is that this fellow Janson doesn't know what in the world he's blundered into." 
He raised his coffee cup to his mouth and took a sip, hoping nobody noticed the 
tremor of his hand as he returned it to the saucer. "And he's never going to 
know." The words were more declaration than observation.
"That much I'll accept," the man from State said. "Has Charlotte been briefed?" 
Charlotte Ainsley was the president's National Security Advisor and the 
principal White House liaison.
"Later today," said the NSA man. "But do you see any supportable alternatives?"
"Just at the moment? He's blundered into quicksand. We couldn't help him if we 
wanted to."
"It'll go easier if he doesn't struggle," the DIA analyst said.
"No argument here," said Derek Collins. "But he will, if I know my man. 
Mightily."
"Then extreme measures are going to have to be taken," the analyst said. "If the 
program gets burned, if even one percent of it gets exposed, it doesn't just 
destroy us, it destroys everything anybody here cares about. Everything. The 
past twenty years of history gets rolled back, and that's a pie-in-the-sky, 
win-the-lottery, best-case scenario. The likelier outcome looks a hell of a lot 
more like another world war. Only this time, we lose."
"Poor bastard," said the deputy director of the NSA, paging through the Janson 
files. "He's in way over his head."
The undersecretary of state suppressed a shudder. "The hell of it is," he 
replied grimly, "so are we."


Athens


The Greeks had a word for it: nefos. Smog—Western civilization's gift to its 
cradle. Trapped by the circle of mountains, set low by atmospheric inversion, it 
acidified the air, speeding decay of the antiquities and irritating the eyes and 
lungs of the city's four million inhabitants. On bad days, it lay on Athens like 
a noxious pall. This was a bad day.
Janson had taken a direct flight from Bombay to Athens, arriving at the East 
Terminal of the Ellinikon International Airport. He felt a deadness within; he 
was a besuited zombie going about his business. You were the guy with a slab of 
granite where your heart's supposed to be. If only it were so.
He had called Marta Lang repeatedly, to no avail. It was maddening. The number 
she had given him would reach her wherever she was, she had told him: it would 
go directly to her desk, on her private line, and if she did not pick up after 
three rings, it would bounce to her cell number. It was a number only three 
people had, she had stressed. And yet all it ever yielded was the electronic 
purr of an unanswered line. He had dialed various regional headquarters of the 
Liberty Foundation, in New York, Amsterdam, Bucharest. Ms. Lang is unavailable, 
subalterns with talcum-smooth voices informed him. Janson was insistent. It was 
an emergency. He was returning her call. He was a personal friend. It was a 
matter of the utmost importance. It concerned Peter Novak himself. He had tried 
every approach, every tactic of importuning, and made no headway.
A message will be conveyed, he was told each time, in an artfully passive 
construction that never varied. But they could not convey the real message, the 
words of a dreadful and destructive truth. For what could Janson tell them? That 
Peter Novak was dead? Those he spoke to at the Foundation gave no indication 
that they were aware of it, and Janson knew better than to provide the 
information.
Walking through the East Terminal, he heard, funneled through the airport sound 
system, the ubiquitous America pop diva with her ubiquitous hit song from the 
ubiquitous American blockbuster. That was what it was to be an international 
traveler these days: it was to be cushioned in sameness, enveloped in a cultural 
caul.
A message will be conveyed.
It was infuriating! Where was she? Had she been killed, too? Or—the possibility 
slashed at him like a straight razor across the eyes—was she herself part of a 
dire, unfathomable plot? Had Novak been killed by a member or members of his own 
organization? He could not automatically dismiss the hypothesis, even though it 
carried a horrific implication: that he himself had been a pawn in the 
conspiracy. That rather than having saved the man who once saved him, he had 
served as the very instrument of his destruction. Yet that was insanity! It made 
no sense—none of it did. Why kill a man with a death sentence?
Janson settled into the airport taxi that would bear him to the Mets 
neighborhood of Athens, to the southwest of the Olympic Stadium. The task before 
him would be a difficult one. He had to tell Marina Katsaris what had happened, 
had to tell her face-to-face, and the prospect lay on him like a boulder on his 
chest.
The airport was six miles from his destination in downtown Athens; seated 
uncomfortably in a backseat without room for his long legs, Janson wearily 
glanced around him. The highway that led from the suburb of Glyfada, where 
Ellinikon was situated, to the hilly sprawl that was Athens was like a conveyor 
belt of cars, their pooled exhaust replenishing the low-hanging fug of sulfur 
dioxide.
He noticed the small "2" in a little window on the meter, and his eyes met those 
of the driver, a squat man whose chin was darkly shadowed with an incipient 
beard, the kind that could never quite be shaved away.
"Is there somebody in the trunk?" Janson asked.
"Somebody in the trunk?" the driver repeated, mirthful. He was proud of his 
English. "Ha! Not when I last checked, mister! How come you ask?"
"Because I don't see anybody else in the backseat. So I was trying to figure out 
why you have the meter set for a double fare."
"My mistake," the driver said after a beat, his beaming countenance 
disappearing. Sullenly, he adjusted the meter, which meant not only shifting to 
a lower rate but wiping out the drachmas he had already accumulated.
Janson shrugged. It was an old trick of Athenian cabdrivers. Its only 
significance, in this case, was that the driver must have gauged him to be 
exhausted and inattentive even to have tried out the petty scam.
Athenian traffic meant that the last mile of the trip took longer than the 
previous five. The streets of the Mets area were built on a steep hillside, and 
the houses, which dated before the war—and before the city's population had 
mushroomed—harked to an earlier and pleasanter era. They were mostly the color 
of sand, with tiled roofs and red-shuttered windows.
Courtyards with potted plants and spiral outdoor staircases sheltered behind 
them. Katsaris's house was on a narrow street off Voulgareos, just half a dozen 
blocks from the Olympic Stadium.
Janson sent the driver on his way with 2,500 drachmas, rang the doorbell, and 
waited, half hoping there would be no answer.
The door opened after only a few moments, and there stood Marina, just as he had 
remembered her—if anything, she was even more beautiful. Janson took in her high 
cheekbones, honeyed complexion, steady brown eyes, her straight and silky black 
hair. The swelling of her belly was barely detectable, another voluptuous curve 
that was merely hinted at beneath her loose, raw-silk frock.
"Paul!" she exclaimed, delighted. The delight evaporated as she read his 
expression; the color drained from her face. "No," she said in a low voice.
Janson did not reply, but his haggard countenance held nothing back.
"No," she breathed.
She began to tremble visibly, her face contorted by grief, then rage. He 
followed her inside, where she turned and struck him on the face. She did so 
again, lashing out in broad, flailing strokes, as if to beat back a truth that 
would destroy her world.
The blows hurt, though not as much as the anger and despair that were behind 
them. Finally, Janson grabbed her wrists. "Marina," he said, his own voice thick 
with grief. "Please, Marina."
She stared at him as if by force of will she could make him vanish, and with him 
the devastating news he had brought.
"Marina, I don't have words to say how sorry I am." Clichés came out at such 
moments, no less true for being so. He squeezed his eyes shut, trawling for 
words of consolation. "Theo was a hero until the end." The words sounded wooden 
even as he spoke them, for the sorrow Marina and he shared was indeed beyond 
words. "There was nobody like him. And the things I saw him do—"
"Mpa! Thee mou." She violently disengaged herself from him, ran to the balcony 
that overlooked the small courtyard. "Don't you get it? I don't care about those 
things anymore. I don't care about those field-agent heroics, those games of 
cowboys and Indians. They mean nothing to me!"
"They didn't always."
"No," she said. "Because once I played the game also … "
"My God, what you did in the Bosporus—it was extraordinary." The operation had 
taken place six years ago, shortly before Marina resigned from her country's 
intelligence services. A cache of armaments en route to the 17 Noemvri group, 
the November 17 terrorist group, had been seized, those who purveyed it 
apprehended. "I know intelligence professionals who still marvel at it."
"And only afterward do you get to ask yourself: Did it make any difference, any 
of it?"
"It saved lives!"
"Did it? One shipment of small arms seized. To be replaced by another, routed 
elsewhere. I suppose it keeps the prices high, the dealers well paid."
"Theo didn't see it that way." Janson spoke softly.
"Theo never got around to seeing it that way, no. And now he never will." Her 
voice started to quaver.
"You blame me."
"I blame myself."
"No, Marina."
"I let him go, didn't I? If I insisted, he would have stayed. Do you doubt it? 
But I didn't insist. Because even if he stayed home this time, there'd be 
another call, and another, and another. And not to go, not ever to go—that, too, 
would have killed him. Theo was great at what he did. I know that, Paul. It's 
what made him proudest of himself. How could I take that from him?"
"We make our choices."
"And how could I teach him that he might be great at other things, too? That he 
was a good person. That he was going to be a great father."
"He was a great friend."
"To you, he was," Marina said. "Were you to him?"
"I don't know."
"He loved you, Paul. That's why he went."
"I understand that," Janson said tonelessly. "I do."
"You meant the world to him."
Janson was silent for a moment. "I am so sorry, Marina."
"You brought us together. And now you've broken us apart, the only way we could 
ever be broken part." Marina's dark eyes looked at him beseechingly, and a dam 
within her suddenly broke. Her sobs were animal-like, wild and unrestrained; 
over the next few minutes, they wracked her like convulsions. There she sat upon 
a black lacquered chair, surrounded by the small appurtenances of domesticity 
she and Theo had acquired together: the flat-weave carpet, the blond, newly 
refinished wooden floor, the small, pleasant house where she and her husband had 
made a life—had prepared, together, to welcome another life. In different ways, 
Janson mused, a war-torn island in the Indian Ocean had deprived both him and 
Theo of fatherhood.
"I didn't want him to go," she said. "I never wanted him to go." Her face was 
red now, and when she opened her mouth a filament of saliva stretched between 
her swollen lips. Her anger had provided Marina her only mooring, and when it 
collapsed, so did she.
"I know, Marina," Janson said, his own eyes moist. Seeing her begin to slump, he 
wrapped his arms around her, holding her to him in a tight embrace. "Marina." He 
spoke her name like a whispered supplication. The view out of the room's picture 
window was incongruously sunny, and the honking of frustrated motorists was 
almost a balm, the bleating white noise of the urban late afternoon. A sea of 
commuters rushing home to their families: men, women, sons, daughters—the 
geometry of domestic life.
When she looked at him next, it was through a lens of tears. "Did he save 
somebody? Did he rescue someone? Tell me his death wasn't in vain. Tell me he 
saved a life. Tell me, Paul!"
Janson sat motionless on a wicker-back chair.
"Tell me what happened," Marina said, as if the specifics of the event would 
provide her a purchase on sanity.
A minute elapsed before he could collect himself and speak, but then he told her 
what had happened. It was why he had come, after all. He was the only one who 
knew just how Theo had died. Marina wanted to know, needed to know, and he would 
tell her. Yet even as he spoke, he became intensely aware of how little the 
explanation in fact explained. There was so much more that he didn't know. So 
many questions to which he had no answers. All he knew was that he would find 
those answers, or die trying.


Hotel Spyrios, located a few blocks from Syntagma Square, was built in the bland 
international-resort style; elevators were trimmed with resin-coated travertine, 
doors covered with a mahogany veneer, furnishings designed to sparkle in 
brochures but afford no unnecessary pleasures.
"Your room will be ready in five minutes," the man at the front desk told him 
carefully. "You have a seat in the lobby and we'll be right with you. Five 
minutes, no more."
The five minutes, being metered out in Athenian time, were more like ten, but 
eventually Janson was given his key card, and he made his way to his ninth-floor 
hotel room. The ritual was automatic: he inserted the narrow key card in the 
slot, waited for the green diode to blink, turned the latch knob, and pushed the 
heavy door inward.
He felt burdened, and not simply by his luggage. His shoulders and upper back 
ached. The meeting with Marina had been every bit as wrenching as he'd expected. 
They had bonded, in their sense of loss, but only momentarily: he was its 
proximate cause, there was no getting away from that, and grief, separated, was 
doubled in intensity. How could Marina ever understand how bereft he himself 
felt, how harrowed he was by his own sense of guilt?
He noticed a smell of stale sweat in the room, suggesting that one of the 
cleaners had only just left. And the curtains were drawn, at an hour when they 
would normally have been left open. In his distracted state, Janson did not make 
the inferences that he was trained to make. Grief had interposed itself between 
him and the world like a gauzy scrim.
Only when his eyes adjusted to the light did he see the man who was seated in an 
upholstered chair, his back to the curtains.
Janson started, reaching for a gun he didn't have.
"It's been a long time between drinks, Paul," the seated man said.
Janson recognized the man's silky, unctuous tones, the cultivated English with 
just a slight Greek accent. Nikos Andros.
He was flooded with memories, few of them fond.
"I'm hurt, you visiting Athens and not telling me," Andros continued, rising to 
his feet and taking a few steps toward him. "I thought we were friends. I 
thought I was somebody you'd look up for a drink, a glass of ouzo. Hoist one for 
old times' sake, my friend. No?"
The pebbled cheeks, the small darting eyes: Nikos Andros belonged to another era 
in Janson's life, to a temporal compartment he had sealed off when he left 
Consular Operations.
"I don't care how you got in here—my only question to you is how you prefer to 
leave," said Janson, who was past any displays of joviality. "Quickest would be 
off the balcony, nine stories down."
"Is that any way to talk to a friend?" Andros wore his dark hair severely short; 
his clothing was, as always, expensive, neatly pressed, fastidious: the black 
blazer was cashmere, the midnight blue shirt was silk, his shoes a soft, 
burnished calfskin. Janson glanced at the nail grown long on Andres's little 
finger, a foppish custom of certain Athenians, indicating a disdain for manual 
labor.
"A friend? We did business together, Nikos. But that's all in the past. I doubt 
you've got anything to sell I'd be in the market for."
"No time for 'show and sell'? You must be a man in a hurry. No matter. I'm in 
the charity business today. I'm not here to sell information. I'm here to give 
you information. Absolutely gratis."
In Greece, Nikos Andros was known as a conservator of the national treasures. A 
curator at the Piraeus Archaeological Museum and a crusader for preservation 
programs, he was frequently quoted on the subject of repatriation, regularly 
urging that the Elgin Marbles be returned to the country from which they were 
taken. He lived in a neoclassical villa in the leafy Athenian suburb of 
Kifissia, on the lower slopes of Mount Pen-deli, and cut a colorful figure in 
Athens's elite circles. His connoisseurship and erudition in classical 
archaeology made him a much-sought-after guest in the drawing rooms of the rich 
and powerful throughout Europe. Because he lived well, and occasionally made 
oblique reference to family money, he appealed to the Greek reverence for the 
anthropos kales anatrophes, the man of high breeding.
Janson knew that the soigné curator grew up the son of a shopkeeper in 
Thessaloniki. He also knew that Andros's hard-won social prominence was crucial 
to his sub rosa career as an information broker during the Cold War. It was a 
time when Athens sector was a center for networks run by the CIA and by the KGB 
alike, when human assets were often smuggled through the Bosporus Strait, when 
complex gambits involving the neighboring countries of Asia Minor were launched 
from the Aegean peninsula. Andros was perfectly detached from the larger play of 
superpowers; he was no more inclined to favor one side over another than a 
commodities broker was to favor one customer over another.
"If you have something to say," Janson said, "say it and get the hell out."
"You disappoint me," Andros said. "I've always thought of you as a man of 
sophistication, worldliness, breeding. I'd always respected you for it. 
Transactions with you were more enjoyable than with most."
For his part, Janson recalled his transactions with Andros as being particularly 
excruciating. Matters were simpler with those who understood the value of the 
commodity and were content with a straightforward value-for-value exchange. By 
contrast, Andros needed to be flattered and cajoled, not just paid. Janson 
remembered well his endless, wheedling requests for rare varieties of ouzo. Then 
there were his whores, the young women, and sometimes young men, who would 
accompany him at inappropriate junctures. As long as he himself was taken care 
of, he cared little whether he was jeopardizing the safety of others, as well as 
the integrity of the networks with which he made contact.
Nikos Andros had grown rich as a Cold War profiteer; it was as simple as that. 
Janson had contempt for such men, and though he could never afford to display 
this contempt when he might still require their goods and services, that time 
was long past.
"Who sent you?" Janson demanded.
"Oh dear," Andros said. "Now you're behaving like a koinos eglimatias, a common 
thug—a danger to yourself and others. You know, your acquaintances are divided 
between those who think you have changed since your days in Vietnam … and those 
who know you haven't."
Janson tensed visibly. "You have no idea what you're talking about." His face 
grew hot.
"Don't I? You've left quite a few enemies from those days, a number of whom went 
on to pursue similar careers to your own. There are some who find it difficult 
to forgive you. In my travels, I myself have met one or two who, after a bottle 
of ouzo or two, will admit that they consider you a monster. It's said that you 
gave evidence that got your commanding officer executed for war crimes—despite 
the fact that what you yourself did was as bad or worse. What a curious sense of 
justice you have, always pointed outward, like the guns of a fortress."
Janson stepped forward, placed a hand on Andres's chest, and slammed him hard 
against the wall. A clamoring filled his mind—then was silenced by sheer force 
of will. He had to focus. "What is it that you want to say to me, Andros?"
Something like hatred flashed in Andres's eyes, and Janson recognized, for the 
first time, that his contempt was not unreciprocated. "Your former employers 
wish to see you."
"Says who?"
"That's the message I was asked to deliver. They wanted me to tell you that they 
need to talk to you. They want you to come in."
Come in: a term of art, whose significance Andros appreciated as much as anyone. 
Come in—report to stateside headquarters, to submit to analysis, interrogation, 
or whatever form of debriefing was deemed appropriate. "You're talking nonsense. 
If Cons Op command wanted me to come in, they wouldn't give the message to a 
pampered sociopath like you. You're a person who might work for anyone. I'd love 
to know who your real employer is today, message boy."
" 'Message boy,' you say."
"That's all you ever were."
Andros smiled, and weblike creases formed around his eyes. "Do you remember the 
story behind the original Marathon? In the fifth century b.c., the Persians 
launched an invasion, landing at the coastal town of that name, Marathon. A 
message boy, Phidippides, was tasked with running to Athens to summon troops. 
The Athenian army, outnumbered four to one, launched a surprise offensive, and 
what looked like suicide turned out to be astonishing victory. Thousands of 
Persians lay dead. The rest fled to their ships, to try to attack Athens 
directly. A secret message had to be sent again to Athens, to tell them of the 
victory and of the impending assault. Once more, the message boy Phidippides was 
entrusted with the mission. Mind you, he'd been on the battlefield all morning 
himself, in heavy armor. No matter. He ran all the way, ran as fast as his feet 
could carry him, twenty-six miles, delivered the news, and then keeled over 
dead. Quite a tradition, that of the Greek message boy."
"Surprise attacks and secret messages—I can see why the tale appeals to you. But 
you're not answering my question, Andros. Why you?"
"Because, my friend, I happened to be in the neighborhood." Andros smiled again. 
"I like to imagine that's what the boy of ancient Greece panted before he 
collapsed. No, Janson, you've got it all wrong. In this case, the message 
belongs to the one who can locate its recipient. Thousands of carrier pigeons 
were sent out—this one happened to arrive. It seems that by the time your old 
colleagues got word you'd arrived in this country, they'd lost your scent. They 
needed me, with my network of connections. I know someone in just about every 
hotel, taverna, kapheneion, and ouzeri in this part of town. I put word out, I 
got word back. Do you think any American attaché could work as fast?" Andros 
revealed an even row of sharp-looking, almost feral teeth. "But then if I were 
you, I'd fret less about the singer and more about the song. You see, they're 
especially anxious about talking to you because they need you to explain certain 
matters."
"What matters?"
Andros sighed heavily, theatrically. "Questions have arisen concerning your 
recent activities that require an immediate explanation." He shrugged. "Look, I 
know nothing of these matters. I merely repeat lines I have been given, like an 
aging actor in one of our epitheorisi, our soap operas."
Janson laughed scornfully. "You're lying."
"You're rude."
"There's no way that my former employers would entrust you with such an 
assignment."
"Because I'm an outheteros? A nonpartisan? But, like you, I have changed. I am a 
new man."
"You, a new man?" Janson scoffed. "Hardly new. Hardly a man."
Andros stiffened. "Your former employers … are my present employers."
"Another lie."
"No lie. We Greeks are people of the agora, the marketplace. But you can have no 
market without competition. Free market, competition—eh? These things that get 
so much lip service from your politicos. The world has changed a great deal in 
the past decade. Once, the competition was lively. Now you have the agora to 
yourself. You own the market, and call it free." He tilted his head. "So what is 
one to do? My erstwhile Eastern clients open their wallets and only the odd moth 
nutters out. Their main intelligence concern is about whether there will be 
enough heating fuel in Moscow this winter. I am a luxury they can no longer 
afford."
"There are plenty of hard-liners at the KGB who would still value your 
services."
"What use is a hard-liner without hard currency? There comes a time when one 
must choose sides, yes? I believe you often said that to me. I chose the side 
with—what's the charming American expression you have?—the long green."
"That was always your side. Money was your only loyalty."
"It wounds me when you talk that way." He arched his eyebrows. "It makes me feel 
cheap."
"What game are you running, Andros? You trying to convince people that you're on 
the U.S. intelligence payroll now?"
The Greek's eyes flashed with anger and disbelief. "You think I would tell my 
friends that I was doing the work of this warm and fuzzy superpower? You imagine 
a Greek can boast of such a thing?"
"Why not? Make yourself seem important, like a real player ..."
"No, Paul. It would make me seem like an Americanofilos, a stooge of Uncle Sam."
"And what's so bad about that?"
Andros shook his head pityingly. "From others I might expect such self-delusion. 
Not from someone as worldly as you. The Greek people do not hate America for 
what it does. They hate it for what it is. Uncle Sam is loathed here. But 
perhaps I should not be surprised at your innocence. You Americans have never 
been able to wrap your minds around anti-Americanism. You so want to be loved 
that you cannot understand why there is so little love for you. Ask yourself why 
America is so hated. Or is that beyond you? A man wears big boots and wonders 
why the ants beneath his feet fear and hate him—he has no such feelings toward 
them!"
Janson was silent for a moment. If Andros had cemented a relationship with 
American intelligence, he was not doing so for the bragging rights: that much 
was true. But how much else was?
"Anyway," Andros went on, "I explained to your old colleagues that you and I had 
especially cordial relations. An abiding trust and affection established over 
long years."
That sounded like Andros all right: the glib, at-the-ready lies, the vacant 
assurances. Janson could well imagine it: if Andros had got wind that a contact 
was to be made, he might easily decide to angle for the job. Words coming from a 
trusted friend, Andros would have told the Cons Op liaison officer, are more 
likely to be received without suspicion.
Janson stared at the Greek interloper and felt a roiling sense of tension. They 
want you to come in.
But why? Those words were not used lightly among Janson's former employers. They 
were not words that one could ignore without consequences.
"There's something you're not saying," Janson prodded.
"I've told you what I was instructed to tell you," Andros replied.
"You've told me what you've told me. Now tell me what you haven't."
Andros shrugged. "I hear things."
"What things?"
He shook his head. "I don't work for you. No pay, no play."
"You son of a bitch," Janson exploded. "Tell me what you know or—"
"Or what? What are you going to do—shoot me? Leave your hotel room stained with 
the blood of an American asset in good standing? That'll clear the air, all 
right."
Janson looked at him for a few moments. "I'd never shoot you, Nikos. But an 
agent of your new employers just might. After they learn about your connection 
to Noemvri."
His reference to Greek's notorious November 17 group, the elusive terrorist cell 
long sought by American intelligence, provoked an immediate reaction.
"There's no such connection!" Andros snapped.
"Then tell them. They're sure to believe you."
"Really, you're being exasperating. That's a whole-cloth invention. It's no 
secret that I was opposed to the colonels, but connected to the terrorists? 
That's preposterous. A slander."
"Yes." Something like a smile played around Janson's lips.
"Well." Andros fidgeted uneasily. "They wouldn't believe you, anyway."
"Only it wouldn't come from me. Don't you think I can still game the system? 
I've spent years in counterintelligence—I know just how to plant information so 
that it can never be traced back to me and so that it gains credibility with 
each remove from its source."
"I believe you're talking out of your ass."
"A member of the Greek parliament unburdens himself to another, who, unbeknownst 
to him, is on the CIA payroll. Through cutaways and filters, the information 
ends up on a MemCon, a memorandum of conversation, filed with the local station 
chief. Who, by the way, hasn't forgotten that the November 17 terrorists 
assassinated one of his predecessors. Source rating: highly credible. Report 
rating: highly credible. A question mark goes by your name, in ink. Now your 
paymasters have quite an unpleasant dilemma. Even the possibility that a 17 
Noemvri associate was receiving U.S. funds would create a scandal within the 
intelligence community. It would be a career-ender for anyone involved. If 
you're the case officer, you could order an investigation. But is that an 
investigation you really want to risk? Because if the result is positive, the 
intelligence officers will have to cut their own throats. There'll be an 
internal paper trail showing that American tax dollars lined the pockets of an 
anti-American terrorist. So what's the alternative?" Janson maintained steady 
eye contact as he spoke. "What's the safe thing? An accident? Maybe one of those 
whores you bring home has a special toy, and that night you don't wake up. 
'Curator, conservator stricken by fatal heart attack'—that's the news item, and 
everyone's breathing a lot easier. Or maybe it'll look like you're the victim of 
a street crime, a mugging gone awry. Or rough trade that got rougher than you'd 
bargained for."
"Ridiculous!" Andros said, with little conviction.
"On the other hand, the decision might be made to remove you from the rolls, 
erase any record of payment, and leave you alone. In fact, that's entirely 
possible." A beat. "Is that a chance you're willing to bet on?"
Andros clenched and unclenched his jaw for a few moments; a vein visibly 
throbbed on his forehead. "The word is," he said, "they want to know why you 
have sixteen million dollars in your Cayman Islands account. The Bank of Mont 
Verde. Sixteen million dollars that was not there only a few days ago."
"More of your lies!" Janson roared.
"No!" Andros pleaded, and the fear in his eyes was real enough. "True or false, 
it's what they believe. And that is no lie."
Janson took a few deep breaths and looked at Andros hard. "Get out of here," he 
said. "I'm sick of the sight of you."
Without another word, Andros rushed out of Janson's hotel, seemingly stricken by 
what he'd been compelled to reveal. Perhaps, too, he recognized that Janson had 
ordered him away for his own protection, lest the operative's growing rage seek 
a physical outlet.
Alone in his room, Janson found his thoughts tumbling over themselves. It made 
no sense. Andros was a professional liar, but this message—the implication that 
he had some secret fortune stowed away—was a falsehood of another order. More 
disturbing still was the unmistakable reference to the Cayman Islands account; 
Janson did have such an account at the Bank of Mont Verde, but he had always 
kept its existence hidden. There was no official record of it—no accessible 
evidence of it anywhere. What could explain a reference to an account that only 
he should have known about?
Exactly what was Nikos Andros up to?
Janson turned on his tri-band wireless PDA and inserted the numbers that would 
give him an Internet connection to his bank in the Caymans. The signals would be 
two-way encoded, using a random string that would be generated by Janson's own 
electronic device and never used again. No message interception would be 
possible. The 1,024-bit encryption made the process slow, but within ten 
minutes, Janson had downloaded his latest account-activity records.
The account had, when he last checked it, contained $700,000.
Now it contained $16.7 million.
Yet how was that possible? The account was safeguarded against unauthorized 
deposits, just as it was against unauthorized withdrawals.
They want you to come in.
The words returned with a knife-sharp edge.
Over the next thirty minutes, Janson combed through a series of transfers that 
involved his own unique digital signature, a nonreplicable set of numbers 
entrusted only to him—a digital "private key" that even the bank had no access 
to. It was impossible. And yet the electronic record was irrefutable: Janson had 
himself authorized the receipt of sixteen million dollars. The money had arrived 
in two installments, of eight million each. Eight million had arrived four days 
ago. Eight million had arrived yesterday, at 7:21 p.m. EST.
Approximately a quarter of an hour after Peter Novak's death.
CHAPTER TEN
The air in the room seemed to grow heavy; the walls were closing in. Janson 
needed to regain his bearings, needed to get outside. The area surrounding 
Syntagma Square was a sprawl of kiosks and shops, growing posher in the vicinity 
of Syntagma Square proper. Even here, though, were the standard-bearers of 
globalization: a Wendy's, a McDonald's, an Arby's. Janson pushed on, making his 
way past the neoclassical facades of the nineteenth-century Ottoman buildings, 
now mostly given over to functions of state. He strode down Herod Atticus Street 
and then Vassilissis Sofias and paused before the Vouli, or what was now the 
Greek parliament, a vast, buff-colored structure, the windows relatively small, 
the portico long. Before it, évzone guards, with their bayoneted rifles and 
maroon-tasseled caps and kilts, preened. A series of bronze shields honored now 
forgotten victories.
He sought out the cooler, clearer air of the National Gardens, which the Vouli 
fronted. There, dingy white statues and small fishponds were tucked away among 
the bushes and trees. Bounding along the bowers and arbors were hundreds of 
feral cats, many with leathery, wrung-out nipples protruding from their 
underbellies. An odd thing: it was possible simply not to notice them. And yet, 
once you did, you saw them everywhere.
He nodded at a white-haired man on a park bench who seemed to be looking in his 
direction; the man averted his gaze just a little too quickly, it seemed, given 
the affability of most Greeks. No doubt it was Janson's nerves; he was jumping 
at shadows.
Now he circled back to the Omonia, a somewhat seedy neighborhood northwest of 
Syntagma, where he knew a man who maintained a very specialized business indeed. 
He walked swiftly down Stadiou, past shops and kapheneion. What first caught his 
attention was not a familiar face but simply a face that, once more, turned too 
quickly when he approached. Was Janson starting to imagine things? He replayed 
it in his mind. A casually dressed man apparently had been squinting at a street 
sign when Janson rounded the corner, then immediately turned his gaze to a shop. 
To Janson, it seemed that he did so a bit abruptly, like an observer knowing 
that it was bad form to be seen close-up by the subject of surveillance.
By now Janson had become hyperattentive to his environs. A block later, he 
noticed the woman across the street peering into the jewelry shop; but, again, 
something was off about it. The sun slanted fiercely at the plate glass, making 
it a better mirror than a window. If she were, in fact, trying to make out the 
necklaces and bracelets displayed in the window, she would have had to stand at 
the opposite angle, with her back to the sun, creating a shadow through which 
the window would be restored to transparency. Moments before, another shopper 
had held out a wide-brimmed hat to block the sun's slanting rays and see into 
the store. But what if your interest was only in what the glass was reflecting?
Janson's field instincts began signaling wildly. He was being watched: as he 
thought back on it, he should have picked up on the couple at the florist's 
counter opposite the hotel, ostentatiously looking at a large map that hid their 
faces. Incongruously large. Most tourists on foot contented themselves with the 
smaller pocket-sized versions.
What the hell was going on?
He strode into the Omonia meat market, which sprawled within a cavernous 
nineteenth-century building with a fretted-iron front. On beds of chopped ice, 
there were mountains of glistening organs: hearts, livers, stomachs. The intact 
carcasses of cows, pigs, and improbably large fowl were stationed upright, head 
to tail, creating a grotesque topiary of flesh.
Janson's eyes darted around him. To his left, several stalls over: a customer, 
poking at one of the pork bellies—the same man who had averted his gaze in the 
National Gardens. Giving no sign that he'd made the watcher, Janson strode 
swiftly to the other side of a veritable curtain of mutton, the meat hooks 
hanging from a long steel rod. From between two sheep carcasses, he saw the 
white-haired customer quickly lose interest in the pig. The man walked along the 
row of hanging sheep, straining for a view of the other side. Janson pulled back 
one of the larger specimens, grabbing its rear hooves, and then, as the 
white-haired man was walking past, swung the massive carcass toward him, sending 
him sprawling into a quivering bed of calves' tripe.
Vociferous exclamations in Greek erupted, and Janson swiftly dodged the 
commotion, striking out toward the other end of the meat market and onto the 
street again. Now he made his way to a nearby department store, Lambropouli 
Bros., at the corner of Eólou and Lykoúrgos Streets.
The three-story building was all glass and waffle-front concrete, stucco 
simulacrum. He paused in front of the department store, peering into the glass 
until he noticed a man in a loose yellow windbreaker hovering near a 
leather-goods store opposite. Then Janson walked into the department store, 
heading toward the men's clothing area in the rear of the ground floor. He 
looked appraisingly at suits, keeping an eye on the time and glancing at the 
small ceiling-mounted mirrors strategically placed to deter theft. Five minutes 
elapsed. Even if every entrance was guarded, no member of a surveillance team 
allows his subject to disappear for five minutes. The risk of an unforeseen 
occurrence is too great.
Sure enough, the man in the yellow windbreaker made his way into Lambropouli 
Bros., walking across the aisles until he spotted Janson. Then he stationed 
himself near the glass and chrome display for fragrances; the reflective 
surfaces would make it easy to spot Janson if he emerged from the back of the 
store.
Finally Janson took a suit and a shirt to the changing rooms in the far rear. 
And there he waited. The store was obviously short-staffed, and the salesman had 
more customers than he could deal with. He would not miss Janson.
But the watcher would. As the minutes ticked by, he would wonder, with growing 
concern, what could be taking Janson so long. He would wonder if Janson had 
escaped through an unanticipated service exit. He would have no choice but to 
enter the changing rooms himself and investigate.
Three minutes later, the man in the yellow windbreaker did precisely that. From 
the crack of the dressing-room door, Janson saw the man wander through the 
alcove with a pair of khaki trousers draped over an arm. The man must have 
waited until there was nobody visible in the narrow aisle of dressing rooms. Yet 
that was a circumstance that two could exploit. Just as he passed in front of 
the door, Janson swung it open with explosive force. Now he sprang out and 
dragged the stunned watcher back to the end of the alcove and through a door 
that led to an employees-only area.
He had to work fast, before someone who had heard the sound came over to 
investigate what was going on.
"One word and you die," Janson told the dazed man softly, holding a small knife 
to his right carotid artery.
Even in the gloom of the storage facility, Janson could see the man's earpiece, 
a connecting wire disappearing into his clothing. He tore open the man's shirt, 
removed the thin wire that ran to a ten-ounce Arrex radio communicator in his 
trouser pocket. Then he took a second look at what appeared to be a plastic 
bracelet on the man's wrist: it was, in fact, a positional transponder, 
signaling his location to whoever was directing the team.
This was not an elaborate system; the whole surveillance effort had been hasty 
and ad hoc, with instrumentation to match. Indeed, the same went for the human 
capital deployed. Though they were not untrained, they were either 
insufficiently experienced or out of practice, or both. This was reserve-caliber 
work. He took the measure of the man before him: the weathered face, the soft 
hands. He knew the type—a marine who'd been on desk duty too long, summoned with 
little notice, an auxiliary reassigned to meet an unexpected need.
"Why were you following me?" Janson asked.
"I don't know," the man said, wide-eyed. He looked to be in his early thirties.
"Why?"
"They said to. They didn't say why. The instructions were to watch, not 
interfere."
"Who's they?"
"Like you don't know."
"Security chief at the consulate," Janson said, sizing up his prisoner. "You're 
part of the marine detail."
The man nodded.
"How many of you?"
"Just me."
"Now you're pissing me off." With stiffened fingers, Janson jabbed at the man's 
hypoglossal nerve, just inside the lower edge of his jaw: he knew the pain would 
be breathtaking, and he simultaneously clamped a hand over the man's mouth. "How 
many?" he demanded. After a moment, he removed his hand, permitting the man to 
speak.
"Six," the watcher gasped, rigid with pain and fear.
Janson would have interrogated the man further if there were more time; but if 
his locator unit did not indicate motion, others would soon arrive to find out 
why. Besides, he suspected that the man had no more information to offer. The 
marine had been assigned to his division's counterterrorism section. He would 
have been suited up with little notice and less explanation. That was the usual 
way with consular emergencies.
What had Nikos Andros told them?
Tearing strips from the man's Oxford-cloth shirt, Janson bound his wrists and 
ankles, and fashioned a makeshift gag. He took the transponder bracelet with 
him.
He was familiar with the transponder protocol; they were used to supplement the 
Arrex communicators, which were notoriously unreliable, especially in urban 
terrain. What's more, spoken communication was not always feasible or 
appropriate. The transponders allowed the team leader to keep track of those in 
the shift: each appeared as a pulsing dot on an LCD screen. If one person hived 
off in pursuit of the subject, the others would be able to follow, with or 
without verbal instructions.
Now Janson put on the man's yellow windbreaker and gray cap and made his way out 
the department store's side entrance at a trot.
The watcher had been approximately his height and build; from a distance, Janson 
would be indistinguishable from him.
But he would have to keep his distance. Now he ran down Eólou to Praxitelous, 
and then Lekka, knowing that his movements would be showing up as a pulsing dot.
What had Andros told them?
And what could explain the money in the Cayman Islands account? Had someone set 
him up? It was a very expensive method, if so. Who could even put their hands on 
that kind of money? No government agency could. Yet it would not be out of reach 
for a senior officer of the Liberty Foundation. The ancient question presented 
itself: Cui bono? Who benefits?
Now that Novak was out of the way, who at the Liberty Foundation would gain? Was 
Novak killed because he was about to discover some sort of immense malfeasance 
within his own organization, some malfeasance that had previously eluded his and 
Marta Lang's notice?
A small, fleet feral cat bounded down the sidewalk: Janson was again nearing 
Athens's feline capital, the National Gardens. Now he raced to catch up with the 
cat.
A few bystanders looked at him oddly.
"Greta!" he cried, scooping up the gray cat and nuzzling it. "You've lost your 
collar!"
He snapped the plastic-housed positional transponder around the animal's neck. 
It was a snug but not uncomfortable fit. When he approached the gardens, he 
freed the furiously squirming animal, which bounded into the thickets, in search 
of field mice. Then Janson stepped into the brown wooden cabin where the park's 
rest rooms were housed, and shoved the cap and yellow windbreaker in a black 
steel waste canister.
Within minutes, he was on the no. 1 trolley, no surveillance in evidence. The 
team members would soon be converging on the feline-infested center of the 
gardens. If he knew the Athens sector, their real ingenuity would go into 
face-saving reports later.
Athens sector. He'd spent more time there in the late seventies than he cared to 
think about. Now he racked his mind to try to remember someone he might know who 
could explain what was going on—explain it from the inside. Plenty of people 
owed him favors; it was time to collect.
The face came to him a moment before the name: a middle-aged desk jockey from 
the CIA Athens station. He worked in a small office on the third floor of the 
U.S. embassy, which was on 91 Vassilissis Sofias Avenue, near the Byzantine 
Museum.
Nelson Agger was a familiar sort. A careerist with a nervous stomach and little 
by way of larger convictions. He'd graduated from Northwestern with a master's 
in comparative politics; though his grades and recommendations were good enough 
to get him into a handful of doctoral programs, they were not good enough to 
earn him the scholarship or tuition abatement he needed. The support would have 
to come from an outside source—a State Department-run foundation, in his case.
Once his paper credentials were secure, he became a desk analyst, displaying 
complete mastery of the unwritten rules of producing analytic reports. The 
reports—a number of which Janson had seen—were invariably unexceptionable, safe, 
and authoritative-sounding, their essential vacuity camouflaged by their 
sonorous cadence. They were festooned with such phrases as present trends are 
likely to continue and made cunning use of adverbs like increasingly. Trends 
were thus identified with no assessments hazarded as to outcome. King Fahd will 
find it increasingly difficult to maintain control, he had predicted each month 
of the Saudi leader. The fact that the potentate hung on to power year after 
year until incapacitated by a stroke—a nearly two-decade reign—was only a minor 
embarrassment; after all, he never said that King Fahd would lose control within 
any given time frame. Of Somalia, Agger once wrote, "The situation and 
circumstances have not yet unfolded to the point that the nature of the 
successor government or the policies that will eventually be implemented can be 
described with confidence." The analysis was indeed sound—pure sound, 
unencumbered by meaning.
Thin, balding, gangly, Nelson Agger was the kind of man whom field operatives 
were prone to underestimate; what he may have lacked in physical courage he made 
up for by his adroitness at office politics. Whatever else the bureaucrat might 
be, he was a survivor.
He was also an oddly likable soul. It was hard, in the abstract, to explain why 
Janson got along with him so well. Part of it surely had to do with the fact 
that Agger had no illusions about himself. He was a cynic, yes, but unlike the 
sententious opportunists who populated Foggy Bottom, he never made any bones 
about it, at least not when he was around Janson. The dangerous ones, in 
Janson's experience, were those with grand plans and cold eyes. Agger, though no 
tribute to his profession, probably did more good than harm.
But if Janson was honest with himself, he had to admit that another reason they 
got along was the simple fact that Agger liked and looked up to him. Desk 
jockeys, defensive about their role in the system, usually affected a measure of 
condescension toward the operatives. By contrast, Agger, who once laughingly 
referred to himself as "the gutless wonder," never bothered to hide his 
admiration.
Or, for that matter, his gratitude. In years past, Janson had occasionally seen 
to it that Agger was the first person to receive a particular piece of 
intelligence; in a few instances, Agger was able to tailor his analytic reports 
to make them seem prescient by the time the intelligence cables reached their 
channels. The baseline of mediocrity in intelligence analysis was such that an 
officer needed only a few such assists to acquire a reputation for excellence.
Nelson Agger was precisely the sort of person who could help him. Whatever 
Agger's shortcomings in the world of international intelligence, he had 
extremely sharp ears for intelligence internal to his division—who was in favor, 
who was not, who was thought to be losing his edge, who was believed to be on 
the rise. A tribute to his political skills was that he had become a 
clearinghouse for gossip without ever being known as a gossip himself. Nelson 
Agger could shed light on what was going on if anybody could. Nothing could take 
place in Athens sector without the knowledge of the small, tightly knit CIA 
station.
Now Janson sat in the back of a café on Vassilissis Sofias, just opposite the 
American embassy, sipping a mug of the strong, sweet coffee the Athenians 
favored, and phoned the station switchboard on his dual-mode Ericsson.
"Trade protocols," the voice answered.
"Agger, please."
A few seconds, during which three clicks could be heard; the call would be taped 
and logged.
"May I say who's calling?"
"Alexander," Janson said. "Richard Alexander."
A few more seconds. Then Agger's voice came on the line. "It's been a long time 
since I've heard that name," he said. His voice was neutral, unreadable. "I'm 
glad to hear it now."
"Fancy a glass of retsina?" Deliberately casual. "Can you get away now? There's 
the tavernos on Lakhitos … "
"I have a better idea," Agger said. "The café on Papadhima. Kaladza. You 
remember it. A little farther, but the food's excellent."
Janson felt a small stab of adrenaline: the counteroffer had come too quickly. 
And they both knew the food at Kaladza was terrible; it had been a subject of 
their conversation when they last spoke, four years ago. "The worst in town," 
Agger had said, taking a mouthful of doubtful calamari and looking green.
Agger was telling him that they would both have to take precautions.
"Sounds great," Janson said heartily, for the sake of anyone else who was or 
would be listening. "Got a cell phone?"
"In Athens, who doesn't?"
"Take it. If I get held up, I'll let you know."
"Good idea," Agger said. "Good idea."
From the café on Vassilissis Sofias, Janson observed Agger leaving from a side 
door and making his way down the street, toward the naval hospital and the 
street that would lead toward Kaladza.
Then he saw what he feared he might see. In Agger's wake, a woman and a man 
emerged from the bland, gray-brick office building adjoining the embassy and set 
off in his direction. He was being tailed.
And the desk man did not have the rudimentary field skills to know it.
Whoever had been listening in on their phone conversation had recognized the 
legend name and responded immediately. Janson's relationship with Agger had 
doubtless been taken account of, the possibility of his making contact with the 
analyst anticipated.
Now Agger joined a crowd of pedestrians heading toward the Parko Euftherias, and 
the man and woman merged into the sidewalk traffic.
Kaladza was too dangerous; the rendezvous would be on a terrain he chose. Janson 
slipped a wad of drachmas beneath his coffee mug and left for the Lykavittós. 
The Lykavittós was the tallest hill in Athens, and its forested crest swelled 
from the city like a green dome. The Lykavittós was as good a candidate for an 
off-the-books briefing as any. What made it attractive to visitors was that it 
afforded a breathtaking view of the city. What made it attractive to him was 
that the high ground would make it hard for a surveillance team to take up 
position undetected—especially if he staked it out first. At the moment, he was 
armed with only a small pair of binoculars. Was he being paranoid to worry that 
this would not suffice?
The funicular departed every twenty minutes from the top of Ploutárkhou Avenue, 
in the upscale Kolonaki district. Alert to any sign of professional interest, 
Janson rode the railway up the hill past the tiers of well-tended terracing; 
there was the gratifying sense of leaving the smog behind as they climbed up 
nearly a thousand feet. The summit was ringed with observation decks and cafes. 
At the very top was a small white chapel, Agios Georgios, St. George's, a 
nineteenth-century edifice.
Now Janson telephoned Agger on his cell phone. "Change of plans, old bean," he 
said.
"They say change is good," Agger said.
Janson paused. Should he tell him about the tail? The slight tremor in Agger's 
voice told him that it would be best not to. Agger would not know how to shake 
his followers, and an uninformed attempt would only make him an easier mark. 
Besides, being aware of them might overstrain the man's nerves—might spook him, 
send him scurrying back to the office. Better to give him an itinerary that gave 
him a shot at shaking his pursuers willy-nilly.
"Got a pen?" asked Janson.
"I am a pen," the analyst sighed.
"Listen carefully, my friend. I want you to take this series of street trams." 
Janson proceeded to detail a complex sequence of transfers.
"A pretty roundabout route," Agger said.
"Trust me on this," Janson said. What would hold back a professional watcher 
wasn't the physical task of keeping up with him; it was the diminishing odds of 
doing so without being noticed. In a situation like this, covert operatives 
would desist surveillance rather than risk exposure.
"Right," Agger said with the voice of someone who knew he was in over his head. 
"Of course."
"Now, when you finally get off the cable car to Lykavittós, you'll take the path 
toward the Theatre of Lykavittós. We'll meet in front of the fountain of 
Elijah."
"You'll have to give me, what, an hour?"
"See you then."
Janson tried to sound reassuring; Agger's voice was nervous, even more nervous 
than usual, and that was not good. It would make him cautious in a 
counterproductive fashion, too attentive to incidentals, too indiscriminate in 
his vigilance.
Janson wandered past a hillside café—a cheerful-looking spot with lime-colored 
plastic chairs, peach tablecloths, a slate terrace. Nearby was a sculpture 
garden planted with marble figures of modern vintage. Wandering through was a 
pair of teenagers wearing white muscle shirts that draped loosely around their 
unmuscular chests, whipped this way and that by the breeze. An addled-looking 
woman clutching a bag filled with stale pita fed already overfed pigeons.
Now Janson stationed himself within a dense copse of Aleppo pine and took an 
inventory of the others in the area. On sweltering days, many Athenians sought 
refuge here from the heat and the smarting nephos. He saw a Japanese couple, one 
holding a tiny videocamera in his hand, the size of an old Instamatic, a 
testament to the ingenuity of consumer electronics. The man was posing his wife 
against the dramatic backdrop—all Athens at her feet.
As five minutes stretched into ten and then fifteen, more people came and went 
in a seemingly random procession. Yet not everything was random. Thirty yards 
below to his left, a man in a caftanlike shirt was sketching the landscape on a 
large pad; his hand moved over it in large, looping gestures. Janson focused his 
binoculars, zooming in on his strong, powerful hands. One hand loosely gripped a 
stick of charcoal and was filling the pad with random squiggles. Whatever he was 
interested in, it wasn't the landscape in front of him. Janson zoomed in on his 
face and felt a pang. This man was not like the Americans he had encountered 
earlier. The powerful neck straining at his collar, the dead eyes—this man was a 
professional killer, a gun for hire. Janson's scalp began to crawl.
Diagonally opposite, another man was reading the newspaper. He was dressed like 
a businessman, bespectacled, in a light gray suit. Janson zoomed in: his lips 
were moving. Nor was he reading out loud, for when his eyes darted off, he 
continued speaking. He was communicating—the microphone could have been in his 
tie or lapel—to a confederate, somebody with an earpiece.
Anyone else?
The redheaded woman in the green cotton dress? But no, ten young children were 
following her. She was a schoolteacher, taking the children on a field trip. No 
operative would expose herself to the chaos and unpredictability of a group of 
young children.
A hundred feet above the fountain where Agger and he had arranged to meet at 
four o'clock, Janson continued to scan the scene. His eyes roved over the gravel 
paths and the wild, unkempt expanse of grass and scrub.
Conclusion: an inexpert American tag team had been replaced with local talent, 
people who knew the terrain and could react quickly.
But what were their orders?
He continued to scan the figures on the sloping hill, alert to further 
anomalies. The businessman was now apparently napping, his chin resting on his 
chest, suggesting a postprandial siesta. Only the occasional movement of his 
mouth—murmured communications, if only to keep boredom at bay—betrayed the 
illusion.
The two figures he'd identified, the businessman with his newspaper and the 
artist with his sketchbook, were clearly Greek nationals, not American; that 
much was plain from their physiognomy, attire, even posture. And language, too: 
Janson was a poor lip-reader, but he could tell it was Greek, not English, that 
the man spoke.
But for God's sake, why the dragnet? The simple existence of incriminating 
evidence did not explain the willingness to accept its import. Janson had been 
an agent of one of America's most secretive intelligence branches for 
twenty-five years: his profile was as thoroughly scrutinized as anyone's. If he 
were after a big score, he could have arranged one long ago in a hundred 
different ways. Yet now, so it seemed, the worst had been assumed of him, no 
alternative interpretation of the evidence entertained.
What had changed—something he'd done or was believed to have done? Was it 
something he knew? One of those things made him a threat to the planners in 
Washington, half a world away from this ancient hill in the center of Athens.
Who else was there? The sun's slanting rays made it hard to see, but Janson 
scrutinized every patch of ground that was visible to him, dividing it up like a 
quadrate grid, to the point that his eyes began to ache.
At four o'clock, a worried-looking Agger came into view; he was carrying his 
navy linen jacket flung over a shoulder, his blue striped shirt dappled with 
sweat, no doubt a vexing development for the fastidious analyst, who seldom 
ventured far from the air-conditioned ambit of office and residence.
Now, as Janson could see from his perch in the pines above, Agger sat down on 
the long marble bench by the fountain, breathing heavily, looking around for his 
old drinking companion.
Janson lowered himself to the ground
The man with the artist's pad: Muscle? Surveillance only? The fact that he was 
Greek concerned him. The observers on the street were, he had ascertained, 
Americans, part of the standard military intelligence detail attached to U.S. 
embassies. They weren't amateurs, but they displayed no high level of 
professional skill, either. They were, he had concluded, the best that could be 
summoned on extreme short notice. Athens sector hadn't had advance word that 
he'd be in town; after all, he had made the decision himself, at the spur of the 
moment, only twelve hours previously.
But these Greeks: Who were they? Not CIA employees. These were professionals, to 
whom a job had been outsourced. The kind of men you kept at arm's length—until 
you needed them. Often that meant a sanction, an act that no official members of 
a security detail could be entrusted with.
But Janson was getting ahead of himself, he knew: there was no cause for a 
sanction order. Not yet, anyway.
Janson crawled on his belly along the untamed arbor, staying close to a long 
retaining wall made of piled shale. The scrub of maquis impeded his progress. 
Blades of crabgrass tickled his nose; tall weeds sprouted in clumps every few 
feet, and Janson took care not to flag his presence by disturbing them. Two 
minutes later, he raised his head quickly above the berm line, verifying that he 
was within a few feet of the man with the sketchpad. That man was standing now, 
the stick of charcoal having been carelessly dropped to the ground like a 
cigarette butt.
The Greek's back was to him, and he could see how powerfully built the young 
"artist" was. The man's gaze was resolutely on Agger, on the marble bench before 
the fountain, and his muscles seemed strained for immediate response. Then 
Janson saw him reach for something under his caftanlike shirt.
Janson lifted a large piece of shale from the rock terrace, taking care to 
maintain absolute silence; any unexpected noise, such as the sound of two rocks 
rubbing against each other, would cause the Greek to whirl around instantly. 
Janson hoisted the rock above his head and flung it with all his strength, 
aiming for the back of his neck. The man had begun to turn when the shale struck 
him, and he staggered to the ground. Janson stepped over the low wall and seized 
the man by his hair, clamping his forearm against his mouth. He flipped him over 
the wall and onto his back.
He yanked a flat-sided gun—a powerful automatic pistol, a Walther P99—from the 
man's trouser band and saw that it had a perforated cylinder permanently 
attached. A silenced weapon: meant to be used, not displayed—a weapon for 
fulfilling threats, not simply making them. The man was a professional, with 
professional equipment. Janson ran his fingers along the man's embroidered 
collar, feeling for the microphone, and made sure that the contactor switch had 
not been activated. He flipped over the fabric, exposing a small blue-black 
plastic disk with a copper wire running out from it.
"Tell your friend it's an emergency!" he said, whispering in his ear. He knew 
that the task would not have been outsourced to people who did not speak English 
and might misunderstand orders. "Let him know that you have been betrayed! As 
you have been!"
"Den omilo tin Aggliki," the man said.
Janson pushed his knee against the man's throat until he gagged. "Don't speak 
English? Then I guess there's no reason for me not to kill you."
The man's eyes widened. "No! Please, I do what you say."
"And remember. Katalaveno ellinika." I understand Greek. A half-truth, anyway.
Pressing the hidden contactor toward the front of his collar, the Greek 
activated his microphone and began to speak, the urgency made more intense as 
Janson gouged his Walther into his temple.
Once the message was relayed, he slammed the Greek assassin to the shale wall. 
The man's cranium absorbed most of the impact; he would be unconscious for an 
hour, probably two.
Through his binoculars, Janson saw the businessman in the light gray suit stand 
abruptly and stride toward the arbor. Something about the way he carried the 
folded newspaper made it clear that it was serving to conceal something else. 
The bespectacled businessman looked warily around as he made his way into the 
arbor, his hand still enveloped by the folded copy of Eleftherotypia, the Athens 
daily.
Janson glanced at his wristwatch. Too much time was passing; Agger could easily 
be overtaken by anxiety and decide to return to the office. That was standard 
procedure anyway with a no-show: one was not to wait beyond a limited amount of 
time.
Quickly, Janson positioned himself at the end of the arborway. As the man 
emerged, Janson lunged, swinging the Walther P99 into his face, shattering teeth 
and bone. Blood spewed from his mouth and spattered on his white shirt and 
jacket; the paper dropped and the silenced weapon it concealed clattered to the 
stone underfoot. Swiftly Janson turned over the man's lapel, exposing a small 
blue-black disk, identical to the one worn by the other Greek.
Janson returned the Walther to his waistband and rubbed a small spot of blood 
from his hand. An inner bleakness was creeping upon him. In the past few days, 
he had fallen back into everything he had once prayed he'd left behind him—the 
violence, the gambits, the lethal subterfuge, a career's worth of ingrained 
habits. Still, this was no time to gaze into the abyss. He had to focus, to 
analyze, to act.
Were there others? None that he'd detected, but he could not be certain. The 
Japanese tourist? Possible. Unlikely.
He would have to take the risk.
Now Janson strode over to Agger, who was still on the marble bench, perspiring 
heavily.
"Paul," Agger said. "Thank God! I was starting to worry that something had 
happened to you."
"Traffic on the Vas Sofias. I forgot what a bitch it is this time of day." 
Janson decided it was important not to alarm him just yet. Agger's was a world 
of cables and keyboards; such a rendezvous was beyond his customary bailiwick, 
and, in fact, in violation of procedures. The approach even of a member or 
former member of the U.S. intelligence community, according to the rule book, 
required a memorandum of conversation to be filed promptly. Agger was already 
stretching the rules—and probably his nerves—simply in agreeing to the meeting.
"God, with all those crosstown transfers, I was thinking, What am I, a spy?" A 
wan smile. "Don't answer that. Look, I'm so glad you called, Paul. I'm been 
worried about you—really worried. You cannot believe the garbage they're talking 
about you."
"Take it slow, old friend," Janson said.
Agger seemed reassured by Janson's steadiness and composure. "But I know we can 
get the whole thing straightened out. Whatever it is, I know we can make it go 
away. Leave those Washington bureaucrats to me. Trust me, nobody knows a pencil 
pusher like another pencil pusher."
Janson laughed, mostly for Agger's sake. "I guess I first got wind something was 
up this morning. I walk down Stadiou, and it's like a class reunion of the 
embassy security detail. I didn't used to be so popular."
"It's crazy," Agger said. "But they're saying that you took a job, Paul. A job 
you shouldn't have taken."
"And?"
"Everybody wants to know who you did the job for. A lot of people want to know 
why you took it. Some people think there are sixteen million answers to that 
one."
"Christ almighty! How could anybody think that? I'm a known quantity."
Agger's gaze was searching. "You don't have to tell me that. Look, they're all 
wound up about it. But I know we can get this whole thing straightened out." 
Almost bashfully, he added, "So … it's true you took the job?"
"Yes, I took the job—for Peter Novak. His people contacted me. I owed him one, 
big-time. Anyway, I was a referral. From State."
"See, the thing is, State denies it."
"What?"
An apologetic shrug. "The State Department denies it. The Agency, too. It 
doesn't even know what went on in Anura, exactly. Reports are conflicting, 
sketchy at best. But the word is that you were paid to make sure Peter Novak 
never left the island."
"That's insane."
Another helpless shrug. "Interesting you should use that word. We've been told 
that you may have gone insane, though the actual words are a lot fancier. 
Dissociative disorder. Post-traumatic abreaction … "
"Do I seem crazy to you, Agger?"
"Of course not," Agger said quickly. "Of course not." An awkward pause followed. 
"But look, we all know what you've been through. All those months of VC torture. 
I mean, Jesus. Beaten, starved—that's got to mess with your head. Sooner or 
later, it's got to mess with you. Christ, the things they did to you … " In a 
quieter voice he added, "Not to mention the things that you did."
A chill ran down Janson's spine. "Nelson, what are you telling me?"
"Just that there are a lot of worried people, and they're way up the 
intelligence food chain."
Did they think he was insane? If so, they couldn't afford to let him wander 
free, not with everything the former Cons Op agent had in his head—the extensive 
knowledge of procedures, informants, networks that remained in operation. A 
security breach could destroy years of work and would simply not be 
countenanced. Janson knew the chain of official reasoning in a case like that.
Despite the bright hilltop sun, Janson suddenly felt cold.
Agger shifted uneasily. "I'm not an expert in that kind of thing. They said 
you'd seem to be plausible, cogent, in command. And no matter where your head's 
at, sixteen million is going to be pretty hard to resist. Maybe I'm just 
speaking for myself there."
"I have absolutely no explanation for the money," Janson said. "Maybe the 
Liberty Foundation has an eccentric way of rendering payment. Compensation was 
referred to. Not negotiated, not specified. Look, that wasn't a principal 
motivation on my part. It was a debt of honor. You know why."
"Paul, my friend, I want to get all this straightened out, and I'll do whatever 
I can—you know that. But you've got to help me out here, give me some facts. 
When did Novak's people make their first approach to you?"
"Monday. Forty-eight hours after Novak's abduction."
"And when was the first eight million deposited?"
"Where are you going with this?"
"It was deposited before you say these people approached you. Before they knew 
you'd say yes. Before they knew an extraction might be necessary. It doesn't 
make sense."
"Did anybody ask them about it?"
"Paul, they don't know who you are. They don't know about the abduction. They 
don't even know the boss is dead."
"How did they react when you told them?"
"We didn't."
"Why not?"
"Orders from the top. We're in the information-collecting business, not the 
information-dissemination business. Everyone's been given strict orders as to 
that. And speaking of collection, that's why people are so determined that you 
come in. It's the only way. If you don't, assumptions are going to be made. And 
acted upon. OK? Do I have to say more?"
"Jesus," Janson said.
"Paul, you need to trust me on this one. We can put all this shit behind you. 
But you've got to come in. You've got to."
Janson looked at the analyst oddly. He couldn't fail to notice the way he had 
grown less deferential and anxious in the course of the conversation. "I'll 
think about it."
"That means no," Agger said blandly. "And that's not good enough." He reached 
over to his lapel, and fingered the buttonhole, in an overly casual gesture.
Summoning others.
Janson reached over and turned up Agger's lapel. On the reverse side was the 
familiar blue-black disk. All at once, he felt numb.
The Greeks weren't tails. They were his backup. Forcible abduction was the next 
course of action.
"Now I've got a timing question for you," Janson said. "When did the order go 
out?"
"The retrieval directive? I don't recall."
"When?" Standing so as to hide his actions from any bystanders, he pulled out 
the Walther and aimed it at the analyst.
"Oh Jesus, oh Jesus!" Agger shouted. "Paul—what are you doing? I'm just here to 
help you. I only want to help."
"When?" Janson shoved the silenced Walther into Agger's bony chest.
The words came out in a rush. "Ten hours ago. The cable was time-stamped 10:23 
p.m. EST." Agger looked around him, unable to disguise his growing sense of 
consternation.
"And what were the orders if I refused to report in? Did termination orders go 
out?" He pressed the revolver harder against Agger's sternum.
"Stop!" Agger called out. "You're hurting me." He spoke loudly, as if panicked; 
but Agger, though scarcely a field agent, was no amateur, and however anxious, 
he was not given to hysterics. The shout was not meant for him; it was meant to 
notify others, others within earshot.
"Are you expecting company?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Agger lied in a level tone.
"Sorry. I should have mentioned earlier that your Greek friends were unavoidably 
detained."
"You goddamn bastard!" The words burst from him. Agger was white-faced—not with 
fear but with outrage.
"They'll send their regrets. As soon as they regain consciousness."
Agger's eyes narrowed. "Christ, it's true what they say. You're out of control!"
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The harborfront tavern was seedy and dark, the planks of the floor warped from 
years of spilled beverages, the simple wooden chairs and stools nicked and 
dented from careless use and the occasional brawl. Janson moved slowly toward 
the long zinc bar, allowing his vision to adjust to the dimness. A sailor sat to 
the far left, drinking alone, sullenly. He wasn't the only sailor in the place, 
but he would be the easiest to approach. And Janson could not wait any longer. 
He had to get out of Greece now.
A short while ago, he had again performed what had become a maddening ritual: he 
called Marta Lang's personal number. Nothing.
They don't even know the boss is dead, Agger had said.
Yet there was one person Janson could think of who would know what there was to 
be known and would speak to him freely. Of course, first precautions had to be 
taken—to protect both himself and the man he was going to visit.
Piraeus's Great Harbor was a vast, circular inlet, cupping the ocean, so it 
seemed to Janson, like an open manacle—or one that was closing. Necessity had 
drawn him here all the same. He had no intention of signaling his movements to 
anyone with a professional interest in them.
For the past couple of hours, he had considered and rejected a dozen other ways 
of leaving the country. Watchers would surely be swarming in and around the 
Athens airport by now; quite likely agents would soon be mobilized at the major 
airports at Thessaloniki and elsewhere. In any case, traveling on his own 
passport was out of the question: given the involvement of the embassy, the 
chances were too great that a U.S. advisory had been issued to international 
points of embarkation and arrival. But when he made his way to the one local he 
knew who specialized in forging official documents—a man who owned a stationery 
shop near Omonia—he found surveillance agents in position: a visit would have 
compromised either his contact or him. Hence his recourse to those whose 
livelihoods taught them the formalities of international transit—and when the 
formalities might be overlooked.
Janson wore a suit, which make him an incongruous sight in the Perigaili Bar, 
but his tie hung unknotted around his collar, and he looked adrift, almost 
despondent. He stepped forward with a weaving gait. Decide on a part and then 
dress for it. He was a prosperous businessman in dire straits. If the air of 
desperation didn't achieve the intended results, two minutes in the rest room 
and a square-shouldered shift in demeanor could erase that impression entirely.
He took the stool next to the sailor and gave him a sidewise glance. He was 
solidly built, with the kind of soft, fleshy build that spoke of a large 
appetite but often hid considerable muscular strength. Did he speak English?
"Goddamn Albanian whore," Janson muttered under his breath, just loud enough to 
be heard. Imprecations directed at ethnic minorities—especially Gypsies and 
Albanians—were, he knew, a reliable conversation-starter in Greece, where the 
ancient notion of purity of bloodlines still ruled.
The sailor turned to him and grunted. His bloodshot eyes were wary, however. 
What was a man dressed like him doing in a such a dive?
"She took everything," Janson went on. "She cleaned me out." He signaled for a 
drink.
"A shqiptar whore stole your cash?" The sailor's expression was devoid of 
sympathy, but amused. It was a start.
"Cash is about the only thing I've got left. You want to hear this?" He saw the 
insignia on the sailor's uniform: u.c.s. united container services. Janson 
called to the bartender. "Get my friend here a beer."
"Why not some Metaxa?" the sailor said, testing his luck.
"That's a plan—Metaxa!" he called out. "A double! For both of us." Something 
about the sailor suggested a man who knew the docks and waterfronts of the 
Aegean, and the unsavory enterprises that took root there.
Two glasses of Metaxa arrived, the colorless variety, flavored with anise. 
Janson asked for a glass of water on the side. With a disapproving scowl, the 
bartender slid an amber-colored glass toward him, with a few inches of lukewarm 
tap water. A bar didn't stay in business by filling its customers' bellies with 
water, unless you counted the water with which it topped off its bottles of 
liquor.
Janson began to tell his companion a tale of wandering into an ouzeri while 
waiting for the Minoan Lines ferry at the Zea Marina. "I'd just gotten out of a 
five-hour meeting, you see. We'd wrapped up a deal that had been dragging on for 
months—that's why they sent me here personally, you see. The local reps, you 
can't trust them. You never know who they're really working for."
"And what does your company do, if you don't mind my asking?"
Janson's eyes darted around, settling on the glazed ceramic ashtray. "Ceramics," 
he said. "High-fired nonconductive ceramic struts for electrical appliances." He 
laughed. "You're sorry you asked, huh? Well, it's a filthy job, but somebody's 
got to do it."
"And the whore—" prompted the sailor, gulping the brandy like water.
"So I'm totally stressed—you know 'stressed'?—and this girl, she's all over me, 
and I'm thinking, what the hell. You know, I'm talking about release, right? And 
she leads me to some shithole, a few doors down, I don't even know where, and … 
"
"And you wake up and she's robbed you blind."
"Exactly!" Janson signaled the bartender to bring another round of drinks. "I 
must have passed out or something, and she went through my pockets. Lucky for me 
she didn't find my cash belt. Guess that would have meant turning me over, and 
she was afraid I'd wake up. But she took my passport, my credit cards ..." 
Janson grabbed at his ring finger, holding it close to the sailor's face, 
drunkenly demonstrating the final indignity of having a wedding band removed. He 
breathed hard, a senior sales exec revisiting a nightmare.
"Why not tell the astynomia? The harbor police here in Piraeus know the whores."
Janson covered his face. "I can't. I can't risk it. I file a report, it could be 
my ass. Same reason I don't dare go to the embassy. My company is very 
conservative. I can't chance them finding out—we've got reps all over. I know I 
don't look it, but I've got a reputation to protect. And my wife—oh Jesus!" 
Suddenly his eyes brimmed with tears. "She can't know, ever!"
"So you're a big man," the sailor said, his gaze taking the stranger's measure.
"And a bigger idiot. What was I thinking?" He drained his glass of Metaxa, 
filling his cheeks with the sweetened liquor, then swiveled his stool around, 
agitated, and raised the amber water glass to his lips. Only a trained observer 
would have noticed that, though Janson's water glass had not been refilled, its 
level magically kept rising.
"The big head wasn't thinking," the seaman said sagely. "The little head was 
thinking."
"If I could just get to our regional headquarters in Izmir, I could take care of 
everything."
The seaman drew back with a jerk. "You are a Turk?"
"Turkish? God, no." Janson wrinkled his nose with disgust. "How could you think 
that? Are you?"
The seaman spat on the floor in response.
In Piraeus, at least, the old enmities still simmered. "Look, we're an 
international company. I'm a Canadian citizen, as it happens, but our clients 
are everywhere. I'm not going to the police, and I can't risk turning up at the 
embassy. The thing could destroy me—you Greeks, you're worldly, you understand 
about human nature, but the people I work with aren't like that. Thing is, if I 
could just get to Izmir, I could make this whole nightmare disappear. I'll do 
the breaststroke to get there if I have to." He slammed down the thick-bottomed 
glass on the banged-up zinc bar. Then he waved a fifty-thousand-drachma note at 
the bartender, signaling for another round.
The bartender looked at the note and shook his head. "Ehete mipos pio psila?" A 
smaller-denomination bill was required.
Janson peered at the note like a drunk with blurred vision. The note was the 
equivalent of over a hundred U.S. dollars. "Oh, sorry," he said, putting it away 
and handing the bartender four thousand-drachma notes.
As Janson intended, the error was not lost on his companion, whose interest in 
his plight suddenly became livelier.
"A long way to swim," the seaman said with a mirthless chuckle. "Perhaps there 
is another way."
Janson looked at him imploringly. "You think?"
"Special transport," the man said. "Not comfortable. Not cheap."
"You get me to Izmir, I'll pay you twenty-five hundred dollars—U.S., not 
Canadian."
The sailor looked at Janson appraisingly. "Others will have to cooperate."
"That's twenty-five hundred just for you, for arranging it. If there are other 
expenses, I'll cover them, too."
"You wait here," the sailor said, a flush of greed sobering him slightly. "I 
make a phone call."
Janson drummed his fingers on the bar as he waited; if his drunkenness was 
feigned, his display of agitation required little acting. After a few long 
minutes, the seaman returned.
"I speak to a captain I know. He says if you come aboard with drugs, he will 
throw you into the Aegean without a life jacket."
"Absolutely not!" Janson said, aghast. "No drugs!"
"So the Albanian whore took those, too?" the man returned wryly.
"What?" Janson's tone rose in indignation, a humorless businessman whose dignity 
had been insulted. "What are you saying?"
"I joke with you," the seaman said, mindful of his fee. "But I promised the 
captain I'd give you the warning." He paused. "It's a containerized cargo ship. 
U.C.S.-licensed, like mine. And it leaves at four in the morning. Gets in at 
berth number six port of Izmir, four hours later, OK? What happens at Izmir is 
on you—you don't tell anyone how you got there." He made a neck-slicing gesture. 
"Very important. Also very important: you pay him a thousand dollars at Pier 
Twenty-three. I'll be there to make introductions."
Janson nodded and started to peel off large-denomination drachmas, keeping his 
hands under the counter. "The other half when I meet you in the morning."
The seaman's eyes danced. "Fair enough. But later, if the captain asks what you 
paid me, leave a zero off. OK, my friend?"
"You're a goddamn lifesaver," Janson said.
The sailor wrapped his fingers around the roll of bills, appreciating their heft 
and thickness, and smiled. "Anything else I can do for you?"
Janson shook his head distractedly, gripping his ring finger. "I'll tell her I 
was mugged."
"You tell your wife an Albanian mugged you," the seaman counseled. "Who wouldn't 
believe that?"


Later, at the Izmir airport, Janson couldn't help but reflect on the curious 
pattern of such ruses. People gave you their trust when you proclaimed just how 
untrustworthy you were. Someone victimized by his own greed or lust was a 
readier object of sympathy than someone who came on his bad luck honestly. 
Standing shamefaced before a British tour guide, he trotted out a version of the 
story he'd told the seaman.
"You shouldn't have been cavorting with those dirty girls," the tour 
guide—pigeon-breasted, with shaggy, white-blond hair—was telling him. His grin 
was less sporting than sadistic. "Naughty, naughty, naughty." The man wore a 
plastic badge with his name on it. Above it, printed in garish colors, was the 
name and slogan of the cut-rate tour company that employed him: Holiday Express 
Ltd.—a package of fun!
"I was drunk off my arse!" Janson protested, slipping into a lower-middle-class 
Home Counties accent. "Bloody Turks. This girl promised me a 'private show'—for 
all I knew she was talking about belly dancing!"
"I'll just bet," the man replied with a leering smirk. "Such an innocent you 
are." After several days of having to jolly along his paid-up wards, he was 
relishing the opportunity to stick it to a customer.
"But to leave me here! It was a packaged holiday, all right—but that wasn't 
supposed to be part of the package! Strand me here like they couldn't give a 
toss?"
"Happens. Happens. One of the lads goes on a binge or gets lost. You can't 
expect the whole group to miss the flight home because of one person. That's not 
reasonable, now, is it?"
"Sodding hell, I've been a complete bleedin' idiot," Janson said, remorse 
creeping into his voice. "Lettin' the little head do the thinking, not the big 
one, if you see."
" 'Who among us?' like the Good Book says," the man replied, his tone softening. 
"Now tell me the name again?"
"Cavanaugh. Richard Cavanaugh." Lifting the name from a Holiday Express manifest 
had taken him a full twenty minutes at a cybercafe on Kibris Sehitleri Street.
"Right. Dicky Cavanaugh takes a dirty holiday to Turkey and learns a lesson in 
clean living." Needling the hapless customer—one whose misadventures left him in 
no position to file a complaint—seemed to amuse him no end.
Janson glowered.
The platinum-haired man called the Izmir affiliate of Thomas Cook Travel on his 
Vodaphone and explained the customer's predicament, leaving out the interesting 
parts. He repeated the name twice. He remained on the line for ten minutes, 
doing progressively less talking and more listening.
He shook his head, laughing, after he hung up. "Hah! They think you've arrived 
at Stansted two hours ago, with your group."
"Bloody hell?" Janson looked incredulous.
"Happens," the man said philosophically, savoring his own worldliness. "Happens. 
The manifest says a tour group of twenty is arriving, nobody wants to redo all 
the paperwork, so the computer thinks all twenty's accounted for. Couldn't 
happen on commercial service, but charter airlines are a bit dodgier. Oops—don't 
tell the boss I said that. 'Cut-rate prices for a top-rate experience,' is what 
we like to say. If the computer was right, you'd be larking about in your 
optician's shop at Uxbridge, instead of quaking in your boots in bloody Izmir 
and wondering if you're ever going to see home and hearth again." A sidewise 
glance. "Any good, was she?"
"What?"
"The bird. Was she any good?"
Janson was abashed. "That's the tragic part, see. I was too pissed to remember."
The man gave him a quick squeeze on the shoulder. "I think I can fix things for 
you this time," he said. "But mind you, we're not in the dirty-holiday business. 
Keep it in your trousers, mate. Like my girl says, careful you don't poke 
someone's eye out." He roared with laughter at his own coarse wit. "And you with 
a bloody spectacles shop!"
"We prefer to call it a 'vision center,' " Janson said frostily, settling into 
the role of the proud shopkeeper. "You sure I'm not going to have any problems 
getting off in Stansted?"
The tour director spoke in a low voice. "No, see, that's what I'm trying to tell 
you. Holiday Express is going to make sure there's no snags. You take my 
meaning? We're going to help you out."
Janson nodded gratefully, although he knew what was really motivating the sudden 
show of altruism—the dismay that the tour guide's call must have precipitated in 
the firm's offices. Janson's stratagem, as it was meant to, had put the company 
in a bind: officials of a packaged-holiday company had plainly misinformed 
British customs that one Richard Cavanaugh, of 43 Culvert Lane, Uxbridge, had 
arrived in the United Kingdom. The only way to avoid an audit of its activities 
and a review of its license was to make sure that Richard Cavanaugh did arrive 
in the United Kingdom, and without the sort of data trail that could lead to 
awkward questions about careless business practices. The temporary papers that 
the pigeon-breasted man was drawing up for him—Urgent Transport/Airline 
Personnel—were a crude recourse, normally reserved for transportation involving 
medical emergencies, but they would do the job. Holiday Express would tidy up an 
embarrassing little slipup, and "Dickie" Cavanaugh would be home by suppertime.
The tour guide chuckled as he gave Janson the sheath of yellow-orange pages. 
"Too bloody pissed to remember, what? Makes you want to break down and cry, 
don't it?"
A small chartered plane took them to Istanbul, where, after a two-hour layover, 
they changed to a bigger charter plane that would carry three separate Holiday 
Express tour groups to Stansted Airport, just north of London. At each junction, 
Cavanaugh waved the yellow stapled pages he'd been given in Izmir, and a 
representative of the packaged-holiday company personally escorted him on board. 
The word had plainly come down from the head office: take care of this berk, or 
there would be hell to pay.
It was a three-hour flight, and the Uxbridge optician, sullied by his offshore 
adventure, kept to himself, his look of hapless self-absorption repelling any 
attempts at conversation. The few who heard his story saw only a tight-assed 
shopkeeper vowing that his indiscretions would be left behind in the Orient.
Somewhere over Europe, eyes shuttered, Janson drowsed, and eventually let 
himself succumb to sleep, even though he knew well the old ghosts that would 
stir.


It was three decades ago, and it was now. It was in a jungle far away, and it 
was here. Janson had returned from the debacle of Noc Lo to Demarest's office in 
base camp, without even stopping to clean up. He had been told that the 
lieutenant commander wanted to see him immediately.
The stench and stains of battle still on his clothing, Janson stood before 
Demarest, who sat pensively at his desk. A medieval plainsong—an eerily simple 
and slow progression of notes—emerged from small speakers.
Finally, Demarest looked up at him. "Do you know what just happened out there?"
"Sir?"
"If it doesn't mean anything, it happened for no reason. That's not a universe 
you want to live in. You've got to make it mean something."
"As I told you before, it was like they knew we were coming, sir."
"Seems pretty clear, doesn't it?"
"You didn't—don't—seem surprised, sir."
"Surprised? No. That was my null hypothesis—the prediction that I was testing. 
But I had to know for sure. Noc Lo was, among other things, an experiment. If 
one were to file plans for an incursion with the local ARVN liaison to Military 
Assistance Command-Vietnam, what consequences could one expect? What are the 
information relays that lead back to the local insurgency? There's only one way 
to test these things. And now we've learned something. We have an enemy that is 
committed to our root-and-branch destruction—committed with all its heart and 
soul and mind. And on our side? A lot of transplanted bureaucrats who think 
they're working for the Tennessee Valley Authority or some damn thing. A few 
hours ago, son, you narrowly escaped with your life. Was Noc Lo a defeat, or a 
victory? It's not so easy to say, is it?"
"Sir, it did not taste like victory. Sir."
"Hardaway died, I said, because he was weak. You lived, as I knew you would, 
because you were strong. Strong like your dad—second wave of the landing on Red 
Beach, if I'm not mistaken. Strong like your uncle, in the forests and ravines 
of Sumava, picking off Wehrmacht officers with an old hunting rifle. There's 
nobody fiercer than those Eastern European partisans—I had an uncle like that 
myself. War shows us who we are, Paul. My hope is that today you learned 
something about yourself. Something I determined about you back in Little 
Creek."
Lieutenant Commander Alan Demarest reached for a dog-eared paperback he had on 
his desk. "You know your Emerson?" He began to read from it: " 'A great man is 
always willing to be little. Whilst he sits on the cushions of advantages he 
goes to sleep. When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn 
something; he has been put on his wits on his manhood; he has gained facts; 
learns his ignorance; is cured of the insanity of conceit.' I reckon Ralph Waldo 
was onto something."
"Be nice to think so, sir."
"The battlefield is also a proving ground. It's where you die or where you're 
born anew. And don't just dismiss that as a figure of speech. Ever talk to your 
mama about what it was like to give birth to you? Women know this blinding flash 
of what it all means—they know that their lives, the lives of their parents, 
their parents' parents, of all human life on this planet for tens of thousands 
of years, have culminated in this wet, squirming, screaming thing. Birth isn't 
pretty. A nine-month cycle from pleasure to pain. Man is born in a mess of 
bodily fluids, distended viscera, shit, piss, blood—and baby, it's you. A moment 
of incredible agony. Yes, giving birth is a bitch, all right, because that pain 
is what gives it meaning. And I look at you standing here with the stinking guts 
of another soldier on your tunic and I look into your eyes, and I see a man 
who's been reborn."
Janson stared, bewildered. Part of him was appalled; part of him was mesmerized.
Demarest stood up, and his own gaze did not shift. He reached over and put a 
hand on the younger man's shoulder. "What's this war about? Ivy Leaguers in the 
State Department have thick three-ring binders that pretend to give an answer. 
It's a whole lot of white noise, meaningless rationalizations. Every conflict is 
the same- It's about the testing fields of battle. In the past four hours, 
you've known more energy and exhaustion, more agony and ecstasy—more pure 
adrenaline—than most people will ever experience. You're more alive than the 
zombies in their station wagons who tell themselves how glad they are that 
they're not in harm's way like you. They're the lost souls. They spend their 
days price-comparing cuts of London broil and boxes of laundry detergent and 
wondering, should they try to fix the sink or wait around for the plumber? 
They're dead inside and they don't even know it." Demarest's eyes were bright. 
"What's the war about? It's about the simple fact that you killed those who 
sought to kill you. What just happened? A victory, a defeat? Wrong yardstick, 
son. Here's what happened. You almost died, and you learned what it was to 
live."
CHAPTER TWELVE
A heavy white lorry carrying a load of semi-finished lumber swung off the busy 
Mil highway and onto Queen's Road, Cambridge. There it pulled up beside several 
parked trucks bearing construction equipment for a major renovation project. 
That was the way with a large and aging university like Cambridge—something was 
always being rebuilt or renovated.
After the driver pulled in, the man he'd given a ride to thanked him warmly for 
the lift and stepped out onto the gravel. Instead of going to work, though, the 
man, who wore a taupe work suit, ducked inside one of the Polyjohns near the 
building site; the West Yorkshire company's motto, Leading Through Innovation, 
was molded on the blue plastic door. When he emerged, he was wearing a gray 
herringbone jacket of Harris tweed. It was a uniform of another sort, one that 
would render him inconspicuous as he strolled along the "Backs," the wide swath 
of green that ran along the oldest of the Cambridge colleges: King's, Clare, 
Trinity Hall, and, his destination, Trinity College. In all, just an hour had 
elapsed since Paul Janson arrived at the Stansted Airport, now a blurry memory 
of glass and quilted-steel ceilings.
Janson had spoken so many lies, in so many accents, over the past twenty-four 
hours that his head ached. But soon he would meet someone who could sweep all 
the mist and mystification away. Someone he could talk to in confidence, someone 
who was in a singular position to have insight into the tragedy. His lifeline 
would be at Trinity College: a brilliant don named Angus Fielding.
Janson had studied with him as a Marshall Fellow back in the early seventies, 
and the gentle scholar with the amused eyes had taken him on for a series of 
tutorials in economic history. Something about Fielding's sinuous mind had 
captivated Janson, and there was something about Janson, in turn, that the 
savant found genuinely engaging. All these years later, Janson hated to involve 
Fielding in his hazardous investigation, but there was no other choice. His old 
academic mentor, an expert in the global financial system, had been a member of 
a brain trust that Peter Novak had put together in order to help guide the 
Liberty Foundation. He was also, Janson had heard, now the master of Trinity 
College.
As Janson walked across Trinity Bridge and over the Backs, memories swept over 
him—memories of another time, a time of learning, and healing, and rest. 
Everything around him brought back images of that golden period in his life. The 
lawns, the Gothic buildings, even the punters who glided along the Cam under the 
stone arches of the bridges and the branch curtains of the weeping willows, 
propelling their small boats with long poles. As he approached Trinity, the wind 
chime of memory grew even louder. Here, facing the Backs, stood the dining hall, 
which was built in the early seventeenth century, and the magnificent Wren 
library, with its soaring vaults and arches. Trinity's physical presence at 
Cambridge was large and majestic but represented only a portion of its actual 
holdings; the college was, in fact, the second-largest landowner in Britain, 
after the queen. Janson walked past the library to the small gravel lot abutting 
the master's lodge.
He rang the bell, and a servant cracked open a window. "Here to see the master, 
love?"
"I am."
"Bit early, are you? Never mind, dear. Why don't you come round the front and 
I'll let you in?" Obviously, she had taken him for someone else, someone who had 
an appointment at that hour.
None of it was exactly high-security. The woman had not even asked his name. 
Cambridge had changed little since he had been a student there in the seventies.
Inside the master's lodge, the broad, red-carpeted stairs led past a portrait 
gallery of Trinity luminaries from centuries past: a bearded George Trevelyan, a 
clean-shaved William Whewell, an ermine-collared Christopher Wordsworth. At the 
top of the stairs, to the left, was a pink-carpeted drawing room with paneled 
walls that were painted white, so as not to compete with the portraits that 
adorned them. Past this room was a much larger one, with dark-wood floors 
covered with a number of large Orientals. Staring at Janson as he entered was a 
full-length portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, painted during her life, with 
meticulous attention to the details of her dress and flatteringly little to her 
ravaged face. Isaac Newton, on the adjoining wall, was brown-wigged and 
imperious. A smirking fourteen-year-old, one Lord Gloucester, stared brazenly at 
both from his oil pigments. All told, here was one of the most impressive 
collections of its kind outside of the National Portrait Gallery. It was a 
pageant of a very particular elite, both political and intellectual, that had 
shaped the country, had directed its history, could claim some responsibility 
for both its achievements and its failures. The glowing visages belonged largely 
to bygone centuries, and yet Peter Novak's own portrait would not have been out 
of place. Like all true leadership, his stemmed from a sense of his own 
obligations, a profound and profoundly moral sense of mission.
Janson found himself staring, rapt, at the faces of long-departed kings and 
counselors, and he started when he heard the sound of a man clearing his throat.
"My heavens, it is you!" Angus Fielding trumpeted, in his slightly reedy, 
slightly hooting voice. "Forgive me—I've been looking at you looking at the 
portraits and wondering whether it was possible. Something about the shoulders, 
the gait. Dear boy, it's been far too long. But, really, this is the most 
delightful surprise I could imagine. Gilly told me that my ten o'clock was here, 
so I was preparing to talk to one of our less promising graduate students about 
Adam Smith and Condorcet. To quote Lady Asquith, 'He has a brilliant mind, until 
he makes it up.' To think what you've saved me from."
Janson's old academic mentor was half-haloed in the cloud-filtered sunlight. His 
face was etched with age, his white hair thinner than Janson had remembered; yet 
he was still lean and rangy, and his pale blue eyes retained the brightness of 
someone who was in on a joke—some nameless cosmic joke—and might let you in on 
it, too. Now in his late sixties, Fielding was not a large man, but his 
intensity gave him the presence of someone who was.
"Come along, dear boy," Fielding said. He led Janson down a short hallway, past 
the doughty, middle-aged woman who worked as his secretary, and into his 
spacious office, where a large picture window gave a view of the Great 
Courtyard. Plain white shelves on the adjacent walls were filled with books and 
journals and offprints of his articles, the titles stultifying: "Is the Global 
Financial System Imperiled?: A Macroeconomic View," "Central Banks' Foreign 
Currency Liquidity Position—The Case for Transparency," "A New Approach Toward 
Measurement of Aggregate Market Risk," "Structural Aspects of Market Liquidity 
and Their Consequences for Financial Stability." A sun-yellowed copy of the Far 
Eastern Economic Review was visible on a corner table; beneath a photograph of 
Peter Novak was the headline: turning dollars into change.
"Forgive all the bumf," the don said, removing a stack of papers from one of the 
black Windsor chairs by his desk. "You know, in a way I'm glad you didn't let me 
know you were coming, because then I might have tried to put on the dog, as you 
Americans say, and we'd both have been disappointed. Everyone says I should fire 
the cook, but the poor dear has been here practically since the Restoration and 
I haven't got the heart, or perhaps the stomach. Her entremets are agreed to be 
especially toxic. She's an eminence grise, I try to say—eminence greasy, my 
colleagues riposte. The amenities, such as they are, have a curious combination 
of opulence and austerity, not to say shabbiness, that takes some getting used 
to. You'll remember it from your stay in these halls, I daresay, but the way you 
remember playing tag when you were a child, one of those things that were so 
appealing at the time but whose point now seems utterly elusive." He patted 
Janson on the arm. "And now, dear boy, you're It."
The verbal flows and eddies, the blinking, amused eyes—it was the same Angus 
Fielding, by turns wise and mischievous. The eyes saw more than they let on, and 
his donnish volubility could be an effective means of distraction or camouflage. 
A member of the economics faculty that produced such giants as Marshall, Keynes, 
Lord Kaldor, and Sen, Angus Fielding's reputation extended well beyond his work 
on the global financial system. He was also a member of the Tuesday Club, a 
group of intellectuals and analysts who had had, and maintained, connections 
with British intelligence. Fielding had served a stint as an adviser to MI6 
early in his career, helping to identify the economic vulnerabilities of the 
Eastern bloc.
"Angus," Janson began, his voice froggy and soft.
"A bottle of claret!" the college master cried. "A bit early, I know, but that 
we can supply. Look out the window and you see the Great Courtyard. But, as you 
may recall, there's a vast wine cellar beneath it. It runs straight across the 
courtyard, and underneath the garden owned by the college. A catacombs of 
claret. A fluid Fort Knox! There's a manciple with a great hoop of keys, and 
he's the only person who can let you into it, the jumped-up tosser. We've got a 
wine committee in charge of selections, but it's riven with factions, like the 
former Yugoslavia, only less peaceable." He called to his secretary: "I wonder 
if we might get a bottle of the Lynch Bages eighty-two, I seem to recall there 
was an unopened bottle left from last night."
"Angus," Janson began again. "I'm here to talk about Peter Novak."
Fielding was suddenly alert. "You bring news from him?"
"About him."
Fielding fell silent for a moment. "I'm suddenly feeling a draft," he said. "A 
rather chilling one." He tugged at an earlobe.
"I don't know what news has reached you," Janson said tentatively.
"I'm not quite twigging … "
"Angus," Janson said. "He's dead."
The master of Trinity blanched, and stared at Janson slackly for a few long 
moments. Then he took a seat on a harp-backed wooden chair in front of his desk, 
falling into it as if the air had left him.
"There have been false rumors of his demise in the past," the don said feebly.
Janson took the seat next to him. "I saw him die."
Angus Fielding slumped back in his chair, suddenly looking like an old man. 
"It's not possible," he murmured. "It can't be."
"I saw him die," Janson repeated.
He told Fielding what had happened in Anura, breathing hard when he reached the 
still-piercing horror of the midair explosions. Angus merely listened, 
expressionless, nodding gently, his eyes half shut, as if listening to a pupil 
during a tutorial.
Janson had once been one of those pupils. Not the typical apple-cheeked 
boarding-school kid, wearing a backpack filled with dog-eared books and leaking 
biros, pedaling a bicycle down King's Parade. When Janson arrived at Trinity, 
courtesy of a Marshall Fellowship, he was a physical wreck, sallow and skeletal, 
still trying to heal his emaciated body and devastated spirit from his 
eighteen-month ordeal as a POW, and all the brutalities that had preceded it. 
The year was 1974, and he was trying to pick up where he had left off, pursuing 
the study of economic history he had begun as an undergraduate at the University 
of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The SEAL commando was repairing to the groves of 
academe. He worried, at first, that he would not be able to make the adjustment. 
Yet hadn't his military training equipped him to adapt to his surroundings, 
whatever they were? History texts and economic formulas replaced code-books and 
graded-terrain maps, but he attacked them with the same dog-gedness, 
determination, and sense of urgency.
In Fielding's quarters at Neville Court, Janson would discuss his assigned 
topic, and the don would seem to nod off as he spoke. Yet when the time came, 
Fielding would open his eyes, blinking, and pinpoint the weakest turn of his 
argument. Once Janson gave a yeoman's account of the economic consequences of 
Bismarck's expansionism, and Fielding
seemed to rouse himself from his slumbers only after he'd finished. Then the 
questions rained like arrows. How did he distinguish between expansionism and 
regional consolidation? What about the delayed economic consequences of the 
annexation of the Schleswig and Holstein duchies several years prior? About 
those numbers he relied upon for the premise of his argument, the devaluation of 
the deutsche mark between 1873 and 1877—they wouldn't be from Hodgeman's study, 
would they, young man? Pity, that: old Hodgeman got the numbers all wrong—well, 
an Oxford man, what could you expect? Hate to order you off your own premises, 
dear boy. But before you build your edifice, be certain of the ground beneath.
Fielding's mind was razor-sharp; his manner urbane, unflappable, even giddy. He 
often cited Shakespeare's phrase about the "smiler with the knife," and though 
he was no hypocrite, it aptly characterized his scholarly style. Janson's 
assignment to Fielding, as the don cheerfully admitted only a few months after 
their tutorials began, was not entirely accidental. Fielding had friends in 
Washington who had been impressed with the young man's unusual profile and 
demonstrated capabilities; they had wanted him to keep an eye out for him. Even 
now, Janson was hard put to say whether Fielding had recruited him to Consular 
Operations or whether he had merely gestured vaguely in that direction and 
allowed Janson to make the decision that felt right to him. He remembered long 
conversations about the concept of the "just war," about the interplay of 
realism and idealism in state-sanctioned violence. In prompting Janson for his 
views on a wide range of subjects, had the don been merely exercising the young 
man's analytical skills? Or had the don been subtly redirecting those views, 
prodding a shattered young man to rededicate his life to the service of his 
country?
Now Fielding daubed his eyes with a handkerchief, but they still glittered 
moistly. "He was a great man, Paul. It's unfashionable to use those terms, 
perhaps, but I've never known anybody like him. My God, the vision, the 
brilliance, the compassion—there was something absolutely extraordinary about 
Peter Novak. I always felt I was blessed to know him. I felt our century—this 
new century—was blessed to contain him!" He pressed his hands to his face 
briefly. "I'm babbling, I'm becoming an old fool. Oh, Paul, I'm not one given to 
hero worship. Peter Novak, though—it was as if he belonged to a higher 
evolutionary plane than the rest of us. Where we humans have been busy tearing 
one another apart, he seemed to belong to some race that had learned, finally, 
to reconcile the
brain and the heart, keenness and kindness. He wasn't just a numbers whiz—he 
understood people, cared for people. I believe the same sixth sense that allowed 
him to see which way the currency markets would go—to anticipate the tides of 
human greed—is also what allowed him to see precisely what sort of social 
interventions would truly matter on this planet. But if you ask why he threw 
himself at these problems everyone else regarded as hopeless, you have to put 
reason to one side. Great minds are rare—great hearts rarer still. And this was 
ultimately a matter of the heart. Philanthropy in its root sense: a kind of 
love." Now Fielding blew his nose quietly and blinked hard, determined to keep 
his emotions at bay.
"I owed him everything," Janson said, remembering the dust of Baaqlina.
"As does the world," Fielding said. "That's why I said it cannot be. For my 
reference was not to fact but to consequence. He must not die. Too much depends 
upon him. Too many delicate efforts toward peace and stability, all sponsored by 
him, guided by him, inspired by him. If he perishes, many will perish with him, 
victims of senseless suffering and slaughter—Kurds, Hutus, Romani, the despised 
of the world. Christians in Sudan, Muslims in the Philippines, Amerindians in 
Honduras. Cas-amance separatists in Senegal … But why even begin a list of the 
damnes de la terre? Bad things will happen. Many, many bad things. They will 
have won."
Fielding looked smaller now, not merely older. The vital energy had drained from 
him.
"Perhaps the game can be played to a draw," Janson said quietly.
A despairing look came over the scholar. "You'll try to tell me that America, in 
its bumbling way, can pick up the slack. You may even think it is incumbent upon 
your country to do so. But then the one thing that you Americans have never 
quite grasped is how very deep anti-Americanism goes. In this post-Cold War era, 
many people around the world feel that they live under the American economic 
occupation. You speak of 'globalization' and they hear 'Americanization.' You 
Americans see televised images of anti-American demonstrations in Malaysia or 
Indonesia, about protesters in Melbourne or Seattle, hear about a handful of 
McDonald's being rubbished in France—and you think these are aberrant events. On 
the contrary. They are harbingers of a storm, the first few spittlelike drops 
you feel before a cloudburst."
Janson nodded. These were sentiments he had heard before, and recently. "Someone 
told me that these days, the hostility isn't really about what America does, but 
about what America is."
"And that is precisely why Peter Novak's role was invaluable, and 
irreplaceable." Heat entered the don's voice. "He wasn't American, or perceived 
to be a handmaiden of American interests. Everyone knew that he'd spurned 
America's advances, that he'd angered its foreign-affairs establishment by 
steering his own course. His only polestar was his own conscience. He was the 
man who could stand up and say that we had lost our bearings. He could say that 
markets without morality could not sustain themselves—he could say these things 
and be heard. The magic of the marketplace wasn't enough, he was saying: We need 
a moral sense of where we want to go, and the commitment to get there." 
Fielding's voice started to crack and he swallowed hard. "That is what I meant 
when I said that this man must not perish."
"Yet he has perished," Janson said.
Fielding rocked back and forth gently, as if he were at sea. For a while he said 
nothing at all. And then he opened his light blue eyes wide. "What's so very odd 
is that none of this has been reported anywhere—neither his abduction nor his 
murder. So very odd. You have told me the facts, but not the explanation." 
Fielding's gaze drifted toward the overcast skies that hovered over the 
courtyard's ageless splendor. The fen's low-hanging clouds over the rough-hewn 
Portland stone of the courtyard: a vista unchanged in centuries.
"I guess I was hoping you'd be able to help me there," Janson said. "The 
question is, who would want Peter Novak dead?"
The don slowly shook his head. "The question is, alas, who wouldn't?" Janson 
could tell his mental gears were meshing; his fish-pale eyes grew intent, his 
face taut. "I exaggerate, of course. Few mortals have so earned the love and 
gratitude of their fellows. And yet. And yet. La grande be-nevolenza attira la 
grande malevolenza, as Boccaccio has it: outsized benevolence always attracts 
outsized malevolence."
"Walk me through this, OK? Just now you spoke of 'they'—you said 'they' will 
have won. What did you mean?"
"Do you know much about Novak's origins?"
"Very little. A child of war-torn Hungary."
"His origins were at once extremely privileged and extremely not. He was one of 
the few survivors of a village that was liquidated in a battle between Hitler's 
soldiers and Stalin's. Novak's father was a fairly obscure Magyar nobleman who 
served in Miklos Kallay's government in the forties
before he defected, and it's said that he feared, obsessively, for the safety of 
his only child. He had made enemies who, he was convinced, would try to avenge 
themselves against his scion. The old nobleman may have been paranoid, but as 
the old saw has it, even paranoids have enemies."
"That's more than half a century ago. Who could possibly care, all these decades 
later, what his dad was up to in the forties?"
Fielding gave him a stern, college-master look. "You obviously haven't spent 
much time in Hungary," he said. "It's in Hungary, still, that you'll find his 
greatest admirers, and his most impassioned foes. Then, of course, there are the 
millions elsewhere who feel victimized by Peter Novak's successes as a 
financier. Many ordinary people in Southeast Asia blame him for triggering a run 
against their currency, their rage fomented by demagogues."
"But groundless, do you think?"
"Novak may be the greatest currency speculator in history, but no one has more 
eloquently denounced the practice. He's pushed for the very policies of currency 
unification that would make that sort of speculation impossible—you can't say 
he's been an advocate of his own interests. Quite the opposite. Of course, some 
would say that merry old England bore the brunt of his speculative savvy, at 
least at first. You remember what happened back in the eighties. There was that 
great currency crisis, with everyone wondering which European governments were 
going to lower their rates. Novak leveraged billions of his own money on his 
hunch that Britain was going to let sterling plunge. It did, and Novak's Electra 
Fund nearly tripled. An incredible coup! Our then prime minister pushed MI6 to 
poke around. In the end, the head of the investigation told the Daily Telegraph 
that, and I quote, 'the only law this fellow has broken is the law of averages.' 
Of course, when the Malaysian ringgit plunged and Novak landed himself another 
windfall, the politicians over there didn't take it very well. Lots of 
demagoguery there about the manipulations of the mysterious dark foreigner. So 
you ask who would like to see him dead, and I must tell you it's a long list of 
malefactors. There's China: the old men of that gerontocracy fear, above all 
else, the 'directed democracy' that Novak's organization has been dedicated to. 
They know he considers China the next frontier of democratization, and they are 
powerful enemies. In Eastern Europe, there's a whole cabal of moguls—former 
Communist officials who seized the plunder of 'privatized' industries. The 
anti-corruption campaigns spearheaded by the Liberty Foundation in their own 
backyards are their most direct threat, and they've sworn to take action.
As I say, one cannot perform good deeds without a few people feeling threatened 
by them—especially the ones who prosper from entrenched enmity and systematic 
corruption. You asked what I meant by 'they,' and that's as good a specification 
as any."
Janson could see Fielding struggle to sit up straighter, to rally, to keep a 
stiff upper lip. "You were part of his brain trust," said the operative. "How 
did that work?"
Fielding shrugged. "He'd solicit my opinions from time to time. Perhaps once a 
month, we'd talk on the phone. Perhaps once a year, we'd meet face-to-face. In 
truth, he could have taught me far more than I him. But he was a remarkable 
listener. There was never a shred of pretense, except, perhaps, the pretense of 
knowing less than he did. He was always concerned about unintended consequences 
of humanitarian intervention. He wanted to be sure that a humanitarian gift 
didn't ultimately lead to more suffering—that, say, helping refugees didn't prop 
up the regime that had produced those refugees. You can't always call it right, 
he knew. In fact, he always insisted that everything you know might be wrong. 
His one article of faith. Everything you know must be critically assessed at all 
times, and abandoned if necessary."
Long, indistinct shadows began to fall as the cloud-filtered late-morning sun 
hovered just over the college chapel. Janson had hoped to narrow the field of 
suspects; Fielding was showing how vast it really was.
"You say you met with him irregularly," Janson prompted.
"He wasn't a man of fixed habits. Not so much a recluse, I would have said, as a 
nomad. A man as peripatetic as Epicrates of Heraclea, that sage of classical 
antiquity."
"But the foundation's world headquarters is in Amsterdam."
"Prinsengracht eleven twenty-three. Where his staffers have a rueful saying: 
'What's the difference between God and Novak? God is everywhere. Novak is 
everywhere but Amsterdam.' " He repeated the well-worn jest without humor.
Janson furrowed his brow. "Novak had other counselors, of course. There were 
those savants whose names were never mentioned in the media. Maybe one of them 
might know something significant—without even realizing the significance. The 
Foundation itself has raised the drawbridge as far as I'm concerned—I can't 
reach anybody, speak to anybody in a position to know. It's one of the reasons 
I'm here. I need to reach those people who worked closely with Novak, or who 
used to. Maybe someone
who used to be in the inner circle and fell out of it. I can't rule it out that 
Novak was done in by a person or persons close to him."
Fielding raised an eyebrow. "You might direct that same curiosity toward those 
who are, or were, close to you."
"What are you suggesting?"
"You were asking me about Peter Novak's enemies, and I said they were widely 
dispersed. Let me, then, broach an awkward subject. Are you so confident about 
your own government?" Fielding's tone combined steel and silk.
"You're not saying what I think you're saying," Janson replied sharply. He knew 
that Fielding, as an habitue of the fabled Tuesday Club, spoke of such matters 
with genuine worldliness.
"I only pose the question," Fielding said gingerly. "Is it even possible that 
your own former colleagues in Consular Operations have had some involvement 
here?"
Janson winced: the don's speculations had struck a nerve; the question, though 
seemingly far-fetched, had haunted him since Athens. "But why? How?" he 
demanded.
Was it possible?
Fielding shifted uneasily in his harp-backed chair, running his fingertips along 
its alligatored black lacquer. "I don't state. I don't even suggest. I ask. Yet 
consider. Peter Novak had become more powerful than many sovereign nations. And 
so he may have, wittingly or unwittingly, sabotaged some pet operation, cocked 
up some plan, threatened some bureaucratic turf, enraged some powerful player … 
" Fielding waved a hand, gesturing vaguely at possibilities too hazy to pin 
down. "Might an American strategist have deemed him too powerful, too much of a 
threat, simply as an independent actor on the stage of world politics?"
Fielding's speculations were all too cogent for comfort. Marta Lang had met with 
high-powered people in the State Department and elsewhere. They had urged her to 
employ Janson; for all he knew, Lang's people had relied on them for some of the 
instrumentation and equipment. They would have sworn her to secrecy, of course, 
invoking the "political considerations" that Lang had alluded to with such 
sardonicism. There was no need for Janson to know the provenance of the 
hardware; no reason for Lang not to keep her word to the U.S. officials with 
whom she had dealings. Who were these officials? No names were used; all Janson 
was told was that they knew him, or of him. Consular Operations, presumably.
And then the inculpating transfers to his Cayman Islands account; Janson had 
believed that his former employers remained ignorant of it, but he also knew 
that the American government, when it wished to, could apply subtle pressure to 
offshore banking institutions when the activities of U.S. citizens were at 
issue. Who would have been better placed to interfere with his financial records 
than high-level members of the American intelligence services? Janson had not 
forgotten the rancor and ill will that surrounded his departure. His knowledge 
of still-extant networks and procedures meant that he was, in principle, a 
potential threat.
Was it possible?
How had the plot been hatched? Was it simply that a golden opportunity had 
presented itself to quick-thinking tacticians? Two birds with one stone: kill 
the meddlesome mogul, blame the noncompliant ex-agent? Yet why not leave the 
Kagama extremists to carry out their announced plan? That would have been the 
easy, the convenient thing to do: let murderous fanaticism run its course. 
Except … 
There was the muted sound of an old-fashioned brass bell: somebody was at the 
rear door, which led to a waiting area outside the master's office.
Fielding roused himself from his own rumination and stood up. "You'll excuse me 
for a minute—I'll be right back," he said. "The hapless graduate student makes 
an inopportune visit. But so it must be."
The flowchart branched out. In one branch, the United States does nothing, the 
world does nothing, and Novak is killed. The diplomats and officials that Marta 
Lang consulted emphasized the hazards of American involvement. Yet there were 
risks in inaction as well—the risks of political embarrassment. Despite the 
countercurrents Fielding identified, Peter Novak was a widely beloved man. If he 
were killed, ordinary people would wonder why the United States had refused to 
help a secular saint in his hour of need. The Liberty Foundation might denounce 
the United States—furiously and vociferously—for refusing to provide any 
assistance whatsoever. It would be easy to imagine the ensuing deluge of 
congressional hearings, TV reports, newspaper editorials. The old words would 
reverberate throughout the land: For evil to triumph, it is enough that good men 
do nothing. In the resulting uproar, careers could be ruined. What looked like 
the path of caution was in fact strewn with broken glass.
But what if there was another explanation?
The Liberty Foundation, typical of its go-it-alone ways, assembles its own 
international commando team in a reckless attempt to spirit away the captive. 
Who can they blame but themselves if things go badly? Mid-level employees at the 
State Department would "leak" the word to the beat reporters who had come to 
rely upon them as unnamed sources: Novak's people rejected our offers of help 
out of hand. It seems they were afraid it would compromise his aura of 
independence. The secretary of state is completely broken up about what 
happened, of course—we all are. But how can you provide assistance to people who 
absolutely refuse to accept it? Arrogance on their part? Well, some might say 
so. In fact, wasn't that the fatal flaw of the Liberty Foundation itself? The 
worldly, knowing reporters—for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the 
syndicated wire services—would file dispatches subtly infused with what they'd 
been told on deep background. Informed sources said that offers of assistance 
were snubbed … 
Janson's mind reeled. Was the scenario anything more than a fantasy, an 
invidious fiction? He did not know; he could not know—not yet. What he did know 
was that he could not exclude the possibility.
Fielding's minute stretched to three minutes, and when he reappeared, closing 
the door carefully behind him, there was something different about him.
"The aforementioned grad student," Fielding assured him, in a slightly piping 
voice. "Hopeless Hal, I think of him. Trying to unknot an argument in Condorcet. 
I can't get him to see that in Condorcet the knots themselves are what's 
interesting."
Janson's spine prickled. Something in the master's demeanor had altered—his tone 
was brittle, as it had never been, and wasn't there a slight tremor in his hands 
that had not been there before? Janson saw that something had upset his old 
teacher, and profoundly.
The don made his way to a rostrum where a fat volume of a dictionary reposed. 
Not just any dictionary, Janson knew—it was the first volume of a rare 1759 
edition of Samuel Johnson's dictionary, A-G stenciled in gold along its spine. 
Janson remembered it from the don's shelves back when his rooms were in 
Trinity's Neville Court.
"Just want to look up one thing," he said. But Janson heard the stress beneath 
the pleasantries. Not the stress of bereavement or loss, but of another emotion. 
Alarm. Suspicion.
There was something about his manner: the slight tremor, the brittle tone—and? 
Something else. What?
Angus Fielding was no longer making eye contact: that was it. Some people almost 
never did so, but Fielding was not one of them. When he
spoke to you, his eyes swept back to yours regularly, as if to guide the words 
home. Almost involuntarily, Janson felt one of his own hands reaching behind 
him.
He stared, mesmerized, as Fielding, with his back to him, opened the tome, 
and—it couldn't be.
The master of Trinity College spun around to face Janson, brandishing a small 
pistol in a shaking hand. Just behind Fielding, Janson saw the hollowed-out 
section carved into the dictionary's vellum pages, where the side arm had been 
secreted. The side arm that his old don was pointing at him.
"Why have you really come here?" Fielding asked.
At last his eyes met Janson's, and what Janson saw in them took his breath away: 
murderous rage.
"Novak was a good man," Fielding said in a tremulous voice. The scholar sounded 
far away. "Possibly a great one. I've just learned that you killed him."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The aging don lowered his gaze momentarily and gasped in spite of himself. For 
Janson, too, was holding a gun in his hand—the gun he had, in a fluid motion, 
grasped from his rear holster as his subconscious mind registered what his 
conscious mind had difficulty accepting.
Wordlessly, Janson thumbed the safety up of his snub-nosed weapon. For a few 
long seconds, the two men stood facing each other in silence.
Whoever Fielding's visitor had been, it was no graduate student in economic 
history. "Volume A to G," Janson said. "Appropriate enough. A for ammo, G for 
guns. Why don't you put that antique in your hand aside? It doesn't suit you."
The economist snorted. "So you can kill me, too?"
"Oh for Christ's sake, Angus!" Janson erupted. "Use that magnificent brain of 
yours. Can't you hear how crazy that sounds?"
"Bollocks. What I can see is that you were sent here to betray me—eliminate 
anyone who might know you too well, I've no doubt. 'A killing machine'—I'd heard 
that said of you, a Homeric epithet favored by some of your controllers. Oh yes, 
I kept in touch with my American counterparts. But I never credited the 
characterization until now. Your guile commands the admiration of this old 
Footlights trouper. You know, you really give excellent grief. Had me completely 
fooled. I'm not ashamed to say so."
"All I wanted to learn was—"
"The location of Peter's colleagues—in order to hunt them down, too!" the old 
professor said hotly. "The 'inner circle,' as you referred to it. And once you'd 
ferreted out this information, you could be sure that Peter's mission on this 
planet had been destroyed." He smiled, a chilly, terrible smile, showing his 
discolored, irregular teeth. "I suppose I should have appreciated your wit, 
asking whom I meant by 'they' and 'them.' But, of course, 'they' and 'them' are 
whom you work for."
"You just met with someone—tell me who?" Janson was flushed with fury and 
bewilderment. His eyes darted back to the college master's weapon, a .22 Webley 
pistol, the smallest and most easily concealed of those in use by British 
intelligence agents during the early sixties. "Who, goddammit?"
"Wouldn't you like to know. I suppose you want to add another name to your 
bloodstained punch list."
"Listen to yourself, Angus. This is madness! Why would I—"
"That's the nature of mop-up operations, isn't it? They're never quite finished. 
There's always another dangling thread to be tied up—or snipped off."
"Dammit, Angus. You know me."
"Do I?" The standoff continued as the tutor and his onetime pupil both kept 
their handguns leveled. "Did any of us really know you?" Despite the don's 
affected languor, there was no mistaking his fear and revulsion. This was no 
ploy: Angus Fielding was mortally certain that Janson had become a renegade, and 
a murderous one.
And there was nothing he could say to prove otherwise.
What were the facts, after all?
That he, alone, was witness to what had happened. That he, alone, was in charge 
of the operation that led to Novak's death. That millions of dollars had been 
transferred into his account, in a manner that seemed to have no honorable 
explanation. Powerful interests had clearly been seeking Novak's elimination; 
was it inconceivable—was it even unlikely—that they would seek to enlist someone 
like Janson, a disenchanted ex-field agent with undoubted skills?
Janson knew what an expert in psychological profiling would make of his dossier: 
the early history of betrayal and brutality that he had suffered. How deep did 
the trauma go, and could it be rekindled? His employers never referred to the 
possibility, but he could see it in their eyes; the personality inventory tests 
that he regularly underwent—the Myers-Briggs, the Thematic Apperception Test, 
the Aristos Personality Profile—were designed to ferret out any hairline 
fissures his psyche might have developed. Violence is something you're very, 
very, very good at: Collins's arctic assessment. It was what made him invaluable 
to his employers, but it was also why the top-level planners harbored a 
lingering wariness toward him. So long as he remained, like fix-mounted heavy 
artillery, directed toward the enemy, he could be a godsend; but if he were ever 
to turn against the men who had trained him, the planners who used him, he could 
prove a nemesis like no other.
A memory from a decade ago returned to him, one of a dozen almost 
indistinguishable ones. He's an attack dog who slipped his leash, Janson. He's 
got to be put down. A file was handed to him: names, patterns of movement, a 
list of strictures—to be memorized and placed in the burn bag. Too much was at 
stake for the formalities of a court-martial or "disciplinary proceedings": the 
agent had already cost the lives of several good men who had once been his 
colleagues and cohorts. Severance would be paid out in the form of a 
small-caliber bullet to the back of his head; the body would be found in the 
trunk of a car owned by a Russian crime lord who himself had just come to a 
grisly end. As far as the world was concerned—and it wasn't, really—the victim 
was just another American businessman in Moscow who thought he could pull a fast 
one on his mafiya partners, and had paid for his mistake.
An attack dog that slipped its leash must be destroyed: standard operating 
protocol at Consular Operations. Janson—having been tasked more than once with 
the job of executioner—knew this as well as anyone.
Now he chose his words carefully. "There is nothing I can say to dispel your 
suspicions, Angus. I don't know who contacted you just now, so I can't speak to 
your source's credibility. I find it striking that someone, or some group, 
managed to convey the message to you so swiftly. I find it striking that, with 
only a few words and reassurances, they persuaded you to direct a deadly weapon 
toward someone you have known for years, known as a protégé and friend."
"As someone said of Madame de Stael, you are implacably correct. More implacable 
than correct." Fielding smiled a sickly, Stilton smile. "Don't try to construct 
an argument. This isn't a tutorial."
Janson looked intently at the aging scholar's face; he saw a man who feared he 
was confronting a profoundly treacherous opponent. But he also saw a glimmering 
of doubt—saw a man who was not absolutely certain of his judgment. Everything 
you know must be continually reassessed, critically reviewed. Abandoned if 
necessary. Their two small-caliber handguns continued to face each other like 
mirror images.
"You used to say that academic battles are so fierce because so little is at 
stake." Janson felt, and sounded, oddly calm. "I guess things change. But as you 
know, Angus, there are people who have tried to kill me for a living. They've 
tried for good reasons, sometimes—or, anyway, understandable ones. Mostly 
they've done so for bad reasons. When you're in the field, you don't think very 
much about reasons. Afterward, though, you do. If you've hurt somebody, you hope 
to God you've done it for good cause. I don't know exactly what's going on, but 
I do know that somebody lied to you, Angus. And knowing that, I'm having a hard 
time staying mad at you. My God, Angus, look at yourself. You shouldn't be 
standing here with a gun in your hand. Neither should I. Somebody's caused us to 
forget who we are." He shook his head slowly, sadly. "You want to squeeze that 
trigger? Then you'd better be surer than sure that you're doing the right thing. 
Are you, Angus? I don't believe you are."
"You always did have a rash tendency to make assumptions."
"Come on, Angus," Janson went on. There was warmth in his voice, but not heat. 
"What did Oliver Cromwell say? T beseech you, from the bowels of Christ, to 
consider that you may be mistaken.' " He repeated the old saw wryly.
"Words 1 always found strangely ironic," Fielding said, "coming from a man who, 
to the detriment of his country, was essentially incapable of self-doubt."
Without breaking eye contact, Janson extended his gun hand, unfurled his fingers 
from the pistol grip, and held out his hand, palm up, the weapon lying on it not 
as a threat but as an offering. "If you're going to shoot me, use mine. That 
flintlock of yours is liable to backfire."
The tremor in Fielding's hand grew. The silence was nearly unbearable.
"Take it," Janson said in a tone of reprimand.
The master of Trinity was ashen, torn between the humanitarian he had come to 
revere and a former pupil to whom he had once been devoted. That much, at least, 
Janson could read from the old man's etched, stricken face.
"May God have mercy on your soul," Fielding said at last, lowering his side arm. 
The words were something between a benediction and a curse.


Four men and one woman sat around the table at the Meridian Center. Their own 
secretaries had them down for various out-of-office engagements: they were 
having their hair cut, going to a child's piano recital, keeping a 
long-postponed dental appointment. A subsequent inspection of logs and calendars 
would reveal only the humdrum, commonplace tasks of personal and family 
maintenance to which even the highest-ranking officials of the executive branch 
and its allied bureaus must attend. The crisis was carved out of the invisible 
interstices of overscheduled lives. It had to be. The Mobius Program had changed 
the world; its discovery, by those of malign intention, could destroy the world.
"We can't assume the worst-case scenario," said the National Security Advisor, 
an immaculately attired, round-faced black woman with large, probing eyes. It 
was the first such meeting Charlotte Ainsley had attended since the crisis 
began, but the deputy director of the NSA, Sanford Hil-dreth, had kept her 
up-to-date.
"A week ago, I would have argued the same thing," Kazuo Onishi, the systems 
engineer, said. In the formal world of Washington bureaucracy, people like the 
chairman of the National Security Council were many tiers above the CIA computer 
whiz. But the absolutely covert nature of the Mobius Program, compounded by its 
current crisis, had created a small, artificial democracy, the democracy of the 
lifeboat. No one's opinion mattered more than anyone else's by virtue of rank; 
power lay in persuasion.
"Oh what a tangled web we weave … ," Sanford Hildreth, the NSA man, began.
"Spare us," said the DIA's deputy director, Douglas Albright, resting his 
hamlike forearms on the table. "What do we know? What have we heard?"
"He's disappeared," the NSA man said, massaging his high forehead with thumb and 
forefinger. "We had him, and then we didn't."
"That's not possible," the DIA man said, scowling.
"You don't know Janson," said Derek Collins, undersecretary of state and the 
director of Consular Operations.
"Thank God for small blessings, Derek," Albright returned. "He's a fucking 
golem—you know what that is? My grandmother used to talk about them. It's like a 
doll you make out of clay and evil spirits, and it turns into a monster. The 
shtetl version of the Frankenstein story."
"A golem," Collins echoed. "Interesting. We are dealing with a golem here, but 
we all know it isn't Janson."
Silence settled over the agitated spymasters.
"With respect," Sandy Hildreth said, "I think we need to return to basics. Is 
the program in jeopardy of exposure? Will Janson be the cause of that exposure?"
"And how did we allow ourselves to get into this situation?" Albright exhaled 
heavily.
"It's always the same story," the National Security Advisor said. "We thought we 
were getting laid, when we were really getting screwed." Her brown eyes roamed 
across the faces in the room. "Maybe we're missing something—let's review your 
man's records again," she said to the undersecretary. "Just the high points."
"Paul Elie Janson," Collins said, his eyes veiled behind his black plastic 
glasses. "Grew up in Norfolk, Connecticut, educated at the Kent School. His 
mother was born Anna Klima—an émigré from what was then Czechoslovakia. She'd 
been a literary translator in the old country, became too closely associated 
with dissident writers, paid a visit to a cousin in New Haven, and never 
returned. Wrote poems in Czech and English, published a couple of them in The 
New Yorker. Alec Janson was an insurance executive, a senior vice president at 
the Dalkey Group before he died. In 1969, hot-to-trot Paul leaves U-Michigan 
just before graduating and joins the navy. Turns out he's got this gift for 
tactics and combat, gets himself transferred to the SEALs, the youngest person 
ever to have received SEAL training. Assigned to a counterintelligence division. 
We're talking about a learning curve like a rocket."
"Wait a minute," the DIA man said. "A hothouse flower like that—what's he doing 
joining up with the Dirty Dozen? Profile mismatch."
"His whole life is a 'profile mismatch,' " Derek Collins replied, with a trace 
of asperity. "You really want to get the shrink reports? Maybe he's rebelling 
against his dad—the two weren't close. Maybe he'd heard too many stories about a 
Czech uncle who was a hero of the resistance, a partisan who picked off Nazis 
through the ravines and forests of Sumava. Dad wasn't exactly a wuss, either. 
During the Second World War, old Alec was in the marines himself, a Semper Fi 
leatherneck before he became a business executive. Let's just say Paul's got the 
bloodlines, preppy or no. Besides, you know what they say—the Battle of Waterloo 
was won on the playing fields of Eton. Or was that a 'profile mismatch,' too, 
Doug?"
The DIA analyst colored slightly. "I'm just trying to get a handle on somebody 
who seems to have walked out of a full-force, all-hands CIA stakeout like the 
Invisible Man."
"We had very little warning—the whole operation was spur-of-the-moment, our boys 
had minutes to prepare and mobilize," said Clayton Ackerley, the man from the 
CIA's Directorate of Operations. He had wispy red hair, watery blue eyes, and a 
fading tan. "Under the circumstances, I'm sure they did the best they could."
"There's always time for recriminations," said Charlotte Ainsley with a severe, 
over-the-glasses pedagogic look. "Just not now. Go ahead, Derek. I'm still not 
getting the picture."
"Served in SEAL Team Four, picked up a goddamn Navy Cross in his first tour of 
duty," said the undersecretary of state. His eyes fell on a yellowing slip from 
the file, and he passed it around.
Officer Fitness Report Remarks 20 November 1970
Lieutenant Junior Grade Janson's performance in Joint SEAL/Special Force 
Detachment A-8 has been outstanding. His able judgment, tactical knowledge, 
creativity, and imagination has allowed him to plan Swift Strike operations 
against enemy units, guerrilla personnel, and hostile installations that were 
accomplished with minimal losses. Lt. j.g. Janson has demonstrated extraordinary 
ability to adapt and to respond to rapidly changing circumstances, and is 
unaffected by the hardships of living under the toughest field conditions. As an 
officer, he demonstrates natural leadership skills: he does not merely demand 
respect, he commands it.
Lieutenant Harold Brady, Rating Officer
Lt. j.g. Janson demonstrates potential of the highest caliber: his field skills 
and ability to improvise in conditions of adversity are nothing short of 
stellar. I will personally be keeping a close watch to see whether his potential 
is fully realized.
Lieutenant Commander blbalblalbalblab Endorsing Officer
"There's dozens just like it. Guy serves one tour after another, continuous 
combat exposure, no breaks. Then a big gap. Hard to build your resume as a POW. 
Captured in the spring of 1971 by the Viet Cong. Held for eighteen months, in 
pretty abysmal conditions."
"Care to specify?" Charlotte Ainsley asked.
"Tortured, repeatedly. Starved. Part of the time, he was kept in a cage—not a 
cell, a cage, like a big birdcage, six feet high, maybe four feet around. When 
we found him, he weighed eighty-three pounds. He grew so skeletal that the 
manacles slid off his feet one day. Made about three escape attempts. The last 
one succeeded."
"Was treatment like that typical?"
"No," the undersecretary said. "But trying so relentlessly and resourcefully to 
escape wasn't typical, either. They knew he was part of a coun-terintelligence 
division, so they tried pumping him pretty hard. Got frustrated when it went 
nowhere. He was lucky he survived. Damn lucky."
"Not lucky he got captured," the National Security Advisor said.
"Well, that's where things get complicated, of course. Janson believed that he'd 
been set up. That the VC had been given information about him and he'd been 
deliberately led into an ambush."
"Set up? By whom?" Ainsley's voice was sharp.
"His commanding officer."
"Whose own opinion of his darling protégé seemed to have cooled a little." She 
flipped to the final sheet headed officer fitness report remarks and read out 
loud:
Although Lt. Janson's own standards of professionalism remain impressive, 
difficulties have begun to emerge in his concept of leadership: in both training 
exercises and duty, he has failed to demand from his subordinates a similar 
level of competence, while overlooking obvious shortcomings. He appears to be 
more concerned with the welfare of his subordinates than with their ability to 
help execute mission objectives. His loyalty to his men overrides his commitment 
to broader military goals, as specified and set out by his commanding officers.
"There's more going on there than meets the eye," said Collins. "The chill was 
inevitable."
"Why?"
"Because, it seems, he'd threatened to report him to the high command. Crimes of 
war."
"Forgive me, I should know this. But what was going on here? The warrior 
wunderkind had a psychotic break?"
"No. Janson's suspicions were correct. And once he'd returned stateside, and got 
out of medical, he made a stink about it—within channels, of course. He wanted 
to see his commanding officer court-martialed."
"And was he?"
The undersecretary turned and stared: "You mean you really don't know?"
"Let's cut the drumroll," the round-faced woman replied. "You got something to 
say, say it."
"You don't know who Janson's commanding officer was?"
She shook her head, her eyes intent, penetrating.
"A man named Alan Demarest," the undersecretary replied. "Or maybe I should say 
Lieutenant Commander Demarest."
" 'I see,' said the blind man." Her largely suppressed Southern accent broke 
through, as it did at times of great stress. "The source of the Nile."
"When next we see our man Janson, it's graduate studies at Cambridge University 
on a government fellowship. Winds up back on board, in Consular Operations." The 
undersecretary's voice became summary and brisk.
"Under you," Charlotte Ainsley said.
"Yes. In a manner of speaking." Coliins's tone said more than his words, but 
everyone understood his import: that Janson was not the most subordinate of 
subordinates.
"Rewind a sec," Ainsley said. "His time as a POW in Vietnam had to have been 
incredibly traumatic. Maybe he never really recovered from it."
"Physically, he got to be stronger than ever … "
"I'm not talking about physical prowess or mental acuity. But psychologically, 
that sort of experience leaves scars. Fault lines, cracks, weaknesses—like in a 
ceramic bowl. The flaw you don't see until something else happens, a second 
trauma. And then you split, or break, or snap. A good man becomes a bad one."
The undersecretary raised a skeptical eyebrow.
"And I'll accept that this is all on the level of conjecture," she continued 
smoothly. "But can we afford to make a mistake? Granted, there's a great deal we 
don't know. But I'm with Doug on this one. Comes down to this: Is he working for 
us or against us? Well, here's one thing we do know. He's not working for us."
"True," said Collins. "And yet—"
"There's always time for 'and yets,' " Ainsley said. "Just not now."
"This guy is a variable we can't control," said Albright. "In an already complex 
and confusing probability matrix. Outcome optimization means we've got to erase 
that variable."
"A 'variable' who happens to have given three decades of his life to his 
country," Collins shot back. "A funny thing about our business—the loftier the 
language, the lower the deed."
"Come off it, Derek. Nobody's hands are dirtier than yours. Except your boy 
Janson. One of your goddamn killing machines." The DIA man glared at the 
undersecretary. "Needs a taste of his own medicine. My English plain enough?"
The undersecretary adjusted his black plastic glasses and returned the analyst's 
unfriendly look. Still, it was clear enough which way the wind was blowing.
"He'll be hard to take out," the CIA operations man stressed, still smarting 
from the Athens debacle. "Nobody's better at hand-to-hand. Janson could inflict 
serious casualties."
"Everybody in the intelligence community has received rumors and reports about 
Anura, albeit unsubstantiated," said Collins. "That means your frontline agents 
as well as mine." He glanced at the CIA operations man and then at Albright. 
"Why don't you let your cowboys have another go?"
"Derek, you know the rules," Ainsley said. "Everybody cleans up his own litter 
box. I don't want another Athens. Nobody knows his methods like the cadre that 
trained him. Come on, your senior operations managers must already have filed a 
contingency plan."
"Well, sure," said Collins. "But they've got no clue what's really going on."
"You think we do?"
"I take your point." A decision had been made; deliberation was over. "Plans 
call for the dispatch of a special team of highly trained snipers. They can get 
the job done, and discreetly. Ratings are off the charts. Nobody would stand a 
chance against them." His gray eyes blinked behind his glasses as he remembered 
the team's unbroken series of successes. Quietly, he added, "No one ever has."
"Terminate orders in effect?"
"Current orders are locate, watch, and wait."
"Activate," she said. "This is a collective decision. Mr. Janson is beyond 
salvage. Green-light the sanction. Now."
"I'm not arguing, I just want to make sure people are aware of the risks," the 
undersecretary persisted.
"Don't tell us about risks," said the DIA analyst. "You created those goddamn 
risks."
"We're all under a great deal of stress," Hildreth interjected smoothly.
The analyst folded his arms on his chest and directed another baleful glare at 
Undersecretary Derek Collins. "You made him," Albright said. "For everyone's 
sake, you'd better break him."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The sidewalks of London's Jermyn Street were filled with people who had too 
little time, and with people who had too much. An assistant bank manager of 
NatWest was scurrying with as much speed as was consistent with dignity, late 
for a lunch date with the junior vice president of Fiduciary Trust 
International's Fixed Income Department. He knew he shouldn't have taken that 
last phone call; if he wasn't punctual, he could kiss that job good-bye … A 
beefy sales rep for Whitehall-Robins was keeping an assignation with a woman he 
had chatted up at Odette's Wine Bar the night before, braced for disappointment. 
Daylight usually added ten years to those slags who looked so sultry and 
appetizing in the smoky gloom of the downstairs banquettes—but a chap had to 
find out one way or another, right? Maybe a stop-off at the newsagent was in 
order: being on time might make him seem a tad eager … The neglected wife of a 
workaholic American businessman was clutching three shopping bags filled with 
expensive but dowdy clothes she knew she'd probably never wear back in the 
States: charging it all to his Platinum American Express somehow let her vent 
her resentment for his having dragged her along. Another seven hours to kill 
before she and her husband saw Mousetrap for the third time … The chief assessor 
of Inland Revenue's Westminster branch was jostling his way through the crowd 
with an eye on his watch: you never had as much authority with those berks at 
Lloyds when you showed up late; everybody said so.
Striding down Jermyn Street in a fast lope, Paul Janson was lost among the 
window-shoppers, bureaucrats, and businessmen who crowded the sidewalks. He was 
attired in a navy suit, a spread-collar shirt, and a polka-dotted tie, and his 
look was harried but not nervous. It was the look of someone who belonged; his 
face and his body alike telegraphed as much.
The jutting signs—the ovals and rectangles overhead—registered only vaguely. The 
older names of the older establishment—Floris, Hilditch & Key, Irwin—were 
interspersed with newer arrivals, like Ermenegildo Zegna. The traffic was half 
congealed, sludgy, with tall red buses and low
boxy cabs and commercial vehicles that amounted to wheeled signage. integron: 
your global solutions provider. vodafone: welcome to the world's largest mobile 
community. He turned left on St. James's Street, past Brooks's and White's, and 
then left again onto Pall Mall. He did not stop at his destination, however, but 
instead walked past it, his darting eyes alert to any signs of irregularity. 
Familiar sights: the Army and Navy Club, known affectionately as the Rag, the 
Reform Club, the Royal Automobile Club. In Waterloo Square, the same old bronzes 
stood. There was an equestrian statue of Edward VII, with a cluster of 
motorcycles parked at its pedestal, an inadvertent comment on changing modes of 
personal transport. There was a statue of John Lord Lawrence, a viceroy of India 
from Victorian times, standing proudly, as one who knew he was very well known 
indeed to the few who knew him. And, grandly seated, Sir John Fox Burgoyne, a 
field marshall who had been a hero of the Peninsular War and, later, of the 
Crimean War. "The war is popular beyond belief," Queen Victoria had said of the 
Crimean conflict, which would become a byword for pointless suffering. To be a 
hero of the Crimean—what was that? It was a conflict whose eruption represented 
diplomatic incompetence and whose prosecution represented military incompetence.
He allowed his gaze to drift to his destination, at the corner of Waterloo 
Place: the Athenaeum Club. With its large cream-colored blocks, tall columned 
portico, and Parthenon-inspired frieze, it was a paragon of the 
early-nineteenth-century neoclassical style. On the side a hooded security 
camera projected from a cornerstone. Above the front pillars stood the goddess 
Athena, painted in gold. The goddess of wisdom—the one thing that was in 
shortest supply. Janson made a second pass in the opposite direction, walking 
past a red Royal Mail truck, past the consulate for Papua New Guinea, past an 
office building. In the distance, a red-orange crane loomed over some unseen 
building site.
His mind kept returning to what had happened at Trinity College: he must have 
stumbled on a trip wire there. It was more likely that his old mentor had been 
under surveillance than that he had been followed, he decided. Even so, both the 
size of the net and the rapidity of the response were formidable. He could no 
longer take anything for granted.
Sight lines were everywhere. He had to be attuned to the kinds of anomalies that 
would ordinarily pass without notice. Trucks that were parked that should not 
have been parked; cars that drove too slowly, or too fast. The gaze from a 
passerby that lingered an instant too long—or was averted an instant too soon. 
Construction equipment where there was no construction. Nothing could pass 
without notice now.
Was he safe? Conclusive evidence was impossible. It was impossible even to say 
that the mail truck was simply what it appeared to be. But his instincts told 
him that he could enter the club unobserved. It was not a meeting place he 
himself would have selected. For his immediate purposes, though, it would be 
helpful to meet Grigori Berman on his own terms. Besides, the venue was, on 
reflection, a highly advantageous one. Public parks offered freedom of 
movement—it was what made them popular rendezvous points—but that freedom could 
also be exploited by observers. At an old-fashioned gentleman's club, it would 
be difficult to station an unfamiliar face. Janson would be there as the guest 
of a member. He doubted whether members of a surveillance team could gain 
similar access.
Inside the club, he identified himself and the member he was awaiting to a 
uniformed guard who sat at a booth by the front door. Then he proceeded to the 
polished marble floors of the foyer, which was four-posted with large, gilded 
Corinthian pillars. To his right was the smoking room, filled with small round 
tables and low-hanging chandeliers; to his left, the large dining room. Ahead, 
past a sea of red and gold carpeting, a broad marble staircase led up to the 
library, where coffee was taken and periodicals from all over the world lay 
stacked on a long table. He seated himself on a tufted leather bench by one of 
the pillars, beneath the portraits of Matthew Arnold and Sir Humphry Davy.
The Athenaeum Club. A gathering spot for members of the political and cultural 
elite.
And the unlikely rendezvous for a most unlikely man.
Gregori Berman was someone who, if he had developed a nodding acquaintance with 
morality, preferred to keep the relationship at arm's length. Trained as an 
accountant in the former Soviet Union, he had made his fortune working for the 
Russian mafiya, specializing in the complex architecture of money laundering. 
Over the years, he had set up a thicket of IBCs—international business 
corporations—through which the ill-gotten gains of his mafiya partners could be 
cycled, and thus hidden from the authorities. Several years earlier, Janson had 
deliberately let him slip through a dragnet that Consular Operations had run. 
Dozens of international criminals had been apprehended, but Janson—to the 
annoyance of some of his colleagues—let their financial whiz kid go free.
In fact, the decision represented reason, not whim. Berman's knowledge that the 
Cons Op officer had decided to let him escape meant that he'd be in Janson's 
debt: the Russian could be converted from adversary to asset. And having someone 
who understood the intricacies of international money laundering represented a 
very significant asset indeed. Moreover, Berman was clever in his manipulations: 
it would be difficult for the authorities to build a case against him. If he was 
likely to get off anyway, why not let him off with a debt on which Janson could 
collect?
There was something else, too. Janson had reviewed hundreds of pages of 
intercepts, had come to know the principals of the scheme. Many were 
cold-blooded, thuggish, menacing figures. Berman, for his part, deliberately 
insulated himself from the details; he was cheerfully amoral, but he wasn't 
unkind. He was perfectly happy to cheat people out of their funds but could be 
quite generous with his own. And somewhere along the line, Janson acquired a 
trace of sympathy for the high-living rogue.
"Paulie!" the bearlike man boomed, opening his arms wide. Janson stood and 
allowed himself to be enveloped in the Russian's embrace. Berman fit none of the 
stereotypes of a numbers man; he was all emotional effusion, mixing a passion 
for things with a passion for life.
"I hug you and I kiss you," Berman told Janson, pressing his lips to both his 
cheeks. Classic Berman: whatever the circumstances, he would display not the 
wariness of a man under pressure but the swagger of a larger-than-life bon 
vivant.
The fabric of Berman's pinstriped bespoke suit was a feltlike cashmere, and he 
smelled faintly of Geo. F. Trumpers extract of limes, the scent said to be 
favored by the Prince of Wales. In his caricatured way, Berman sought to be 
every inch the English gentleman, and there were many inches of him at that. His 
conversation was a cataract of Britishisms, malapropisms, and what Janson 
thought of as Bermanisms. As absurd as he was, though, Janson could not help 
feel a certain affection for him. There was even something winning about his 
contradictions, the way he managed to be at once devious and ingenuous—he always 
had an eye for the next scam, and he was always delighted to tell you about it.
"You're looking … sleek and well fed, Grigori," Janson said.
Gregori patted his generous midriff. "Inside I'm wasting away. Come, we'll eat. 
Chop-chop." He squired Janson to the dining room, with an arm around his 
shoulder.
Inside, waiters in morning suits beamed and bobbed their heads as the ebullient 
Russian appeared, ushering him immediately to a table. Though tipping was 
prohibited by club rules, their bright-eyed attentiveness revealed that Berman 
had found a way to manifest his generosity.
"Their cold poached salmon—the best in the world," Berman said, settling into 
his cushioned seat. Berman said that a lot of things were the best in the world; 
he invariably spoke in superlatives. "But have lobster à la nage. Never fails. 
Also recommend roast grouse. Maybe both. You're too thin. Like Violetta in third 
act La Traviata. Must build you up."
He summoned a wine steward with a glance.
"That Puligny-Montrachet we had yesterday? Could we have bottle of that, 
Freddy?" He turned to Janson. "It's the greatest. You'll see."
"I have to say I'm surprised to find you here, ensconced at the heart of the 
British establishment."
"A rogue like me, you mean—how could they ever let me in?" Berman roared with 
laughter, his belly quivering through bespoke broadcloth. In a lower voice, he 
said, "It's a great story, actually. You see, about two years ago, I found 
myself invited to house party at Lord Sherwyn's, and ended up playing billiards 
with very nice gentleman I met there … " Berman had made a habit of helping 
certain people out of trouble with timely loans, specializing in dissolute 
scions of venerable baronies. These were people who, Berman imagined, might have 
influence in the world. It was, in his book, sound investing.
"You'll have to tell me about it another time," Janson said blandly but 
pointedly. It was all he could do not to drum his fingers.
Berman was undeterred. "I suppose he had bit too much to drink, and he was 
winning big, big sums off me, and so I invited him to double up … "
Janson nodded. The scenario was predictable. A more-than-pleasantly-buzzed 
British gentleman, winning outrageous sums from a seemingly sloppy-drunk Russian 
with seemingly infinite reserves of cash. The sozzled Russian who, all evening, 
had shown no sign that he knew one end of a cue stick from the other. The last 
game, when the British gentleman's substantial winnings were just about to 
become a true fortune. The gentleman thinking, perhaps, of acquiring the 
apartment adjoining his in Kensington; or buying that place in the country he 
and his family had been renting for so long. Almost unable to believe his luck. 
You just never knew about these things, did you? An invitation, reluctantly 
accepted—the scion was disreputable, but with a family name that still opened 
doors—had led to a laughably easy stack of money.
And then that game, that last crucial game, when suddenly the Russian didn't 
seem drunk at all and grasped the cue stick with the serene mastery of a concert 
violinist holding his bow. And watching dreams of free money dissolve into a 
reality of ruin.
"But Paul, this bloke I played with—you'll never guess who he was. Guy 
Baskerton, QC." Baskerton was a prominent lawyer, a queen's counselor, who had 
chaired a commission on the arts set up by Whitehall. A rather self-important 
man, with a thin, David Niven mustache, and that distinctly knowing look common 
to the more oblivious men of his class, he would have been an irresistible 
target for Berman.
"I'm beginning to get the picture," Janson said, sounding more relaxed than he 
felt. He had to ask Berrnan for a big favor; it would not do to hector. It would 
not do to appear desperate, either, or Berman would press his advantage, 
converting debt to credit. "Let me guess. He's a member of the Athenaeum 
admissions committee."
"Even better. He's club president!" Berman pronounced club like "cloob."
"And so he finds himself into you for a hundred-thousand-pound debt of honor, 
which he can't possibly make good on," Janson said, trying to make Berman's long 
story shorter. "But that's OK, because you magnanimously insist on forgiving the 
debt. Now he's so grateful, he doesn't know what to do. Then the next day, you 
happen to be seated next to him at Sheekey … " As he spoke, Janson's eyes 
scanned the fellow guests and serving staff for any signs of potential menace.
"Grigori no go Sheekey. No eat fish. Only drink like fish! It was Ivy. Can you 
believe such coincidence!"
"Oh, I'll bet it was a coincidence. It's not like you bribed the maître d'at the 
Ivy to make sure you were at the next banquette. Any more than you'd pressured 
your titled friend to make sure that the QC came to his house party in the first 
place."
Berman raised his hands, touching his wrists together. "You got me, copper!" He 
grinned widely, because he liked his machinations to be appreciated, and Janson 
was someone capable of doing so.
"So, Grigori," Janson said, trying to match his levity, "I come to you with an 
interesting problem. One that will, I think, intrigue you."
The Russian looked at him, brightly expectant. "Grigori is all ears," he said, 
lifting a forkful of chicken and morels to his mouth.
Janson sketched out what had happened: the sixteen million dollars that had been 
deposited in a Cayman Islands account without the account holder's knowledge, 
yet validated by electronic signatures that should have been accessible to him 
alone. A clever strike. Yet could it also be a clue? Was there a chance that, in 
the cascade of transfer digits, someone had left digital fingerprints that might 
be uncovered?
As Janson spoke, Berman appeared to be wholly occupied by his food, and his 
occasional interjections were culinary in nature: the risotto was the world's 
greatest, and the treacle tart simply the best, you try it, you see. How unfair 
that people were so rude about English cooking!
Yet however desultory his conversation, Janson could see Berman's mind whirring.
Finally the moneyman put down his fork. "What Grigori know about money 
laundering?" he said with a look of affronted innocence. Then he grinned: "What 
Grigori not know about money laundering? Ha! What I know could fill British 
Library. You Americans think you know—nothing is what you know. Americans live 
in big house, but termites eat at foundations. As we say in Moscow: situation 
desperate, but not serious. You know how much dirty money moves in and out of 
America every year? Maybe three hundred billion. Bigger than GDP of most 
countries. Bank wire transactions, yes? And how you find this? Know how much 
moves in and out of American banks every day?"
"I expect you'll tell me."
"Two trillion dollars. Pretty soon you're talking real money!" Berman slapped 
the table in merriment. "All bank wire transaction. Where you hide grain of sand 
so nobody find? On beach. Ten years ago, you round up my old friends. 
Coldhearted nyekulturniy, every one, I shed no tear, but what did you really 
stop? Grigori Berman founded more companies than American entrepreneur Jim 
Clark!"
"Phony companies, Grigori. You invented companies that existed only on paper."
"Nowadays, these people move beyond that. Buy real companies. Insurance 
companies in Austria, banks in Russia, trucking companies in Chile. Cash goes 
in, cash comes out, who can say where and when? Who stops them? Your government? 
Your Treasury Department? Treasury Department has Financial Crimes Enforcement 
Network. In strip mall in Virginia suburb." Once again, Berman's bountiful 
stomach began to quiver. "They call it Toilet Seat Building. Who takes FinCEN 
seriously? You remember story of Sun Ming? Comes to America, says he's 
woodworker. Borrows hundred and sixty million dollars from Bank of China. Easy 
as sneezing! Print up handful of import contracts, agency approvals, bills of 
lading, export certificates, and presto-chango, import application authorized, 
so. Wire transfer authorized, so. Deposits his money in banks. Tells one banker, 
'I play Hong Kong stock market.' Tells another banker, 'I sell cigarette 
filter.' Tells third banker, 'Textiles!' Zip, zip, zip. From China to America to 
Australia. Blending is everything. You blend into the ordinary commercial flux, 
so. So, grain of sand on beach. Americans never catch him. FinCEN charged with 
watching money, but nobody give FinCEN any money! Treasury secretary doesn't 
want to destabilize banking system! In your country, four hundred thousand wire 
transfers every day, in and out. Digital message from one bank computer to 
another. Americans never catch Sun Ming. Australians catch him."
"A smaller beach?"
"Better computers. Look for pattern within pattern. See something funny. So bag 
is out of cat."
"Funny ha-ha, or funny peculiar?"
"There is difference?" Berman asked, his mouth closing around a spoon full of 
treacle tart. He gave a moan of gastronomic pleasure. "You know, last week I was 
in Canary Wharf Tower. Have you been? Fifty stories high. Tallest building in 
London. Practically bankrupted the Reichman brothers, but never mind, not 
Grigori's money. So I'm there, visiting Russian friend, Ludmilla, you'd like 
her, the pair of onion domes on this woman, they put Saint Basel's to shame. And 
we're forty-some floors up and I'm looking out window, bee-yoo-tiful view of 
this city, and suddenly guess what I see floating through air."
"A bank note?"
"Butterfly." Berman said it with grand finality. "Why butterfly? What butterfly 
doing forty stories high, middle of city? Most amazing thing, ever. No flowers 
forty stories high. Nothing for butterfly to do, up here in sky. All the same: 
butterfly." He raised a finger for emphasis.
"Thank you, Grigori. I knew I could count on you to make everything clear."
"Must always look for butterfly. In the middle of nothing, thing that does not 
belong. In cascade of digital transfer codes, you ask: is there butterfly? Yes. 
Always butterfly. Flap, flap, flap. So. You must know how to look."
"I see," Janson replied. "And will you help me look?"
Berman looked, downcast, at the ruins of his treacle tart and then brightened. 
"Join me for game snooker? I know place nearby."
"Nyet."
"Why not?"
"Because you cheat."
The Russian shrugged cheerily. "Makes for more interesting game, Grigori thinks. 
Snooker is game of skill. Cheating demands skill. Why is cheating cheating?" The 
logic was quintessential Berman. At Janson's withering gaze, the Russian held up 
his hands. "All right, all right. I bring you to my 'umble home, da? Have fancy 
IBM machine there. RS/6000 SP supercomputer. And we look for butterfly."
"We find butterfly," Janson said, gently but unmistakably applying pressure. 
Berman was living the high life in London, having amassed with his wits a 
fortune well beyond that of the criminal associates he began with. But none of 
this could have happened had Janson allowed him to be prosecuted all those years 
ago. He didn't have to tap the ledger; Berman knew precisely what the ledger 
contained. No one had a more finely calibrated sense of debt and credit than the 
ebullient ex-accountant.


Fort Meade, Maryland
Sanford Hildreth was running late, but when wasn't he? Danny Callahan had been 
his driver for the past three years, and the only thing that would have 
surprised him was if he had been on time.
Callahan was one of a small pool of men assigned to chauffeur the topmost 
intelligence officers of the United States. Each was subject to regular security 
checks, of the most stringent nature. Each was unmarried and childless, and had 
advanced training in combat as well as executive safety and diversionary 
tactics. The instructions were emphatic and explicit: Guard your passenger with 
your life. Their passengers were men who carried the nation's secrets in their 
heads, men upon whom profound matters of state depended.
The black stretch limousines in which these passengers were driven were armored; 
the side flanks reinforced with steel plates, the darkened glass capable of 
withstanding a .45-caliber bullet at point-blank range. The tires were designed 
to be reinflating and resealing, with a cellular design that prevented rapid 
leakage. But the capabilities of the driver, not the car, were paramount in 
ensuring the passenger's safety.
Callahan was one of three men who were usually assigned to the deputy director 
of the National Security Agency, but Sanford "Sandy" Hildreth made no secret of 
the fact that he preferred Danny Callahan.
Danny knew shortcuts; Danny knew when it was safe to push the speed limit a 
little; Danny could get him home from Fort Meade ten or fifteen minutes faster 
than the others. And the fact that he had won combat honors in the Gulf War was 
probably a recommendation to Hildreth as well. Hildreth had never seen fighting, 
but he liked men who had. They didn't talk much, he and Hildreth: usually the 
motorized partition—an opaque and soundproofed barrier—remained up. But once, a 
year ago, Hildreth was bored, or in search of distraction, and drew Danny out a 
little bit. Danny told him about playing football in high school, his team 
reaching the state championship in Indiana, and he could tell that Hildreth 
liked that, too. "A running back, huh? You still look like one," Hildreth had 
said. "Sometime you'll have to tell me what you do to stay in shape."
Hildreth was a small man, but he preferred being surrounded by large men. Maybe 
he enjoyed the feeling that he, the small man, commanded the large men; that 
they were his myrmidons. Or maybe they just made him comfortable.
Danny Callahan glanced at the clock on the dashboard. Hildreth had said he'd be 
ready to leave by six-thirty. It was quarter past seven. What else was new? 
Hildreth often ran forty-five minutes behind. An hour wasn't uncommon.
In his earpiece, Callahan heard the voice of the dispatcher. "Capricorn 
descending." Hildreth was on his way.
Callahan drove the car directly in front of the exit on the left side of the 
immense glass shoe box that was the National Security Agency. A rain began to 
fall, just a few small drops at first. Callahan waited until Hildreth came into 
view, then got out and stood beside the car.
"Danny." Hildreth nodded, the outdoor halogen lights reflecting off his high 
forehead. His small, pinched features gathered into a perfunctory smile.
"Dr. Hildreth," Callahan said. He once read an article in the Washington Post 
about Hildreth that mentioned he had a doctorate in international relations. 
Thereafter, he started calling him "doctor," and he somehow got the sense that 
Hildreth was pleased by the honorific. Now Callahan held the rear door open for 
him and then shut it with an efficient thunk.
Before long, the rain started to come down harder, in sheets that twisted with 
the wind and made the headlights of other cars look oddly distorted.
Mason Falls was thirty miles away, but Callahan could practically do the trip 
blindfolded: off Savage Road, down 295, a quick jaunt on 395, across the 
Potomac, and up Arlington Boulevard.
Fifteen minutes later, he saw the flashing red lights of a police squad car in 
his rearview mirror. For a moment, Callahan expected the cop to pass him, but it 
seemed that the cruiser was trying to pull him over.
It couldn't be. And yet—as best as he could see in the rainstorm—he was the only 
car around. What the hell?
Sure, he was ten miles over the speed limit, but you'd expect the traffic cops 
to notice the government license plates and fall back. Some newbie with an 
attitude? Callahan would take pleasure in putting him in his place. But Hildreth 
was unpredictable: he might get angry with him, blame him for speeding, even 
though Hildreth had always made it clear that he was grateful that Danny got him 
home so quickly—appreciated his "celerity." That was the word Hildreth once 
used; Callahan looked it up when he got home. Nobody liked to be stopped by the 
police, though. Maybe Hildreth would make sure the blame was clearly the 
driver's, and have a black mark put on his fitness report.
Callahan pulled over to the paved shoulder. The squad car pulled over 
immediately behind him.
As the policeman, a blue slicker obscuring his uniform, appeared by his door, 
Callahan powered down his window.
"You know how fast you were going?"
Callahan displayed two laminated plastic cards. "Check 'em out, Officer," he 
said. "You really don't want to be here."
"Oh, sorry, man. I had no idea." The officer sounded genuinely abashed, but it 
was funny—he couldn't have been a rookie. He seemed to be in his forties, with a 
boxer's squashed-looking nose and a thin scar that ran along his jaw.
"Take a careful look at the plates next time," Callahan said, his tone bored, 
officious. "You see the prefix SXT, it means it's high-security federal 
transport."
The officer tore up a slip of paper. "I'm scratching this from my records. You 
too, huh?"
"It's understood, Officer."
"No hard feelings?" the officer said, sounding slightly panicked. He extended a 
hand through the window. "I respect the work you guys do."
Callahan sighed, but reached out to shake the cop's hand—which, oddly, extended 
past his hand to his wrist. He felt a sudden prick. "Shit!"
"Sorry, man," the police officer said. "My goddamn signet ring." But he didn't 
move.
"What the fuck, man?" Callahan protested. All at once, he felt strangely weak.
The man in the blue slicker reached through the window and unlocked the door. 
Then he pulled on the knob.
Callahan was puzzled, even outraged. He wanted to say something … but nothing 
came out. He wanted to swat the man away … but when he tried to move his arm, 
nothing happened. And when the door opened, he found himself slumping out of it 
like a sack of gravel. He could not move.
"Easy, boy," the man in the slicker said, laughing genially. He caught Callahan 
before he hit the ground. Now he leaned into the car, lifting Callahan up and 
over to the passenger seat on the right.
Callahan stared impassively, slack-jawed, as the man settled beside him in the 
driver's seat.
The intercom light flashed blue, and a voice squawked through a small speaker: 
"Danny? What the hell's going on?" Hildreth, on the other side of the opaque 
"privacy window," was beginning to fret.
The man in the blue slicker pressed the driver-override buttons so that the rear 
doors were locked and could be reactivated only by him. Then he smoothly shifted 
into drive and made his way toward the Arlington Memorial Bridge.
"I'll bet you're wondering the same thing," the man said to Callahan 
companionably. "It's called Anectine. A neuromuscular blocker. They use it 
during surgery. Sometimes people on respirators get it, too, to make sure they 
don't thrash around. It's a strange sensation, isn't it? You're fully conscious, 
but you can't fucking move. Your diaphragm goes up and down, your heart pumps 
away, you can even blink. But your voluntary muscles are out of commission. Plus 
which, the way it's metabolized, it's damn hard to identify in forensics unless 
you already know what to look for."
The man pressed the window controls, lowering both rear windows partway. Another 
squawk came from the intercom, and the man switched the sound off.
"Your passenger can't figure out why we'd lower the windows when it's raining 
like a mother," the man said.
What the hell was going on?
Callahan focused all his mental energy on the task of lifting his index finger. 
He strained with all his might, as if he were bench-pressing three times his 
weight. The finger trembled ever so faintly, and that was all. He was helpless. 
Utterly helpless. He could see. He could hear. But he could not move.
They approached Memorial Bridge, which was almost empty of traffic, and the 
driver suddenly floored the accelerator. The powerful three-hundred-horsepower 
engine surged, and the car leaped forward, cutting a diagonal across two lanes 
of traffic on the bridge. The driver ignored the furious hammering against the 
opaque partition as the powerful armored vehicle crashed over the railing on the 
side of the bridge, sailing through the air and into the river.
The impact with the water was greater than Callahan had expected, and he found 
himself slammed forward against the straining belts. He felt something snap: 
probably one of his ribs had broken. But the armored car provided the driver's 
seat with four-point belts, the sort used by racing drivers, and Callahan knew 
that for the man in the blue slicker, the force of impact would be safely 
distributed. As the car sank rapidly into the turbid depths of the Potomac, 
Callahan could see him release his own belts and roll his window down. Then he 
released Callahan's belts, and dragged him over to the driver's seat.
Callahan felt like a rag doll. Limp and helpless. But he could see. He could 
think. He knew why the rear widows had been left just slightly open.
Now the cop who was no cop turned off the engine and wriggled through the open 
window, shooting toward the surface.
Neither he nor Hildreth would have any such options—Callahan because he was 
paralyzed, and Hildreth because he was locked in the passenger's compartment. 
The windows would be frozen in place: lowered just enough to speed the inflow of 
water. Hildreth's ultrasecure conveyance had turned into a crypt.
The car was settling to the riverbed with its front end raised, probably because 
water had already filled the rear compartment, and now the water was pouring 
through the window and a dozen unseen vents to fill Callahan's compartment. It 
was rising fast, to his chest, his neck, his chin. Higher.
He was breathing through his nose, now, but for how many seconds longer?
And then all his questions dissolved into another question: Who would want to do 
something like this?
The water seeped into his nose and into his mouth, and dribbled into his lungs, 
and blossoming within him was a powerful sensation, perhaps the most powerful 
sensation the human body can know, that of asphyxiation. He was drowning. He 
could not get air. He thought of his uncle Jimmy, dying of emphysema, sitting in 
a chair with oxygen flowing into his nostrils through those clear plastic nasal 
prongs, the tank of O2 accompanying him everywhere, the way his yellow Labrador 
once did. He fantasized kicking free with powerful thrusts, kicking himself to 
the river's surface. Then he tried to imagine himself breathing good clean air, 
imagined jogging around the cinder track at his high school in West Lafayette, 
Indiana, though when he did, he found he was only inhaling water faster. Air 
spilled from his nose and mouth in a pulsing current of bubbles.
And the agony of breathlessness only increased.
The pressure on his eardrums—he was deep, deep—became excruciating, adding a 
foundation to the horrible sense of suffocation. It meant something, though. It 
meant he was not yet dead. Death was not painful. What he was feeling was life's 
final blow, its farewell pangs, its desperate struggle not to leave.
He wanted to thrash, to flail, to lash out. In his mind, his hands began to 
churn the water: but only in his mind. His extremities twitched feebly, that was 
all.
He recalled what the man had said, and some things became all too obvious. Guard 
your passenger with your life: a nonissue now. When the car was dredged out, 
they would both be dead. Both drowned. One driver, stunned by the impact, 
drowned in his seat. One passenger the victim of security precautions. The only 
question would be why Callahan had driven over the bridge.
But it was wet, the pavement was slippery, and Callahan was given to pushing the 
speed limit, wasn't he?
Oh, they'd blame the peon, all right.
So this was how it was to end. He thought of everything that had gone wrong with 
life. He thought about the athletic scholarship to State he didn't get, because 
he was off his game the day the scout showed up to check out what West Lafayette 
High School had to offer. And then with his frickin' knee injury, the coach 
wouldn't give him any playing time in the regional and state championship games. 
He thought about the apartment he and Irene were going to buy, until it turned 
out they couldn't scrape together the money they needed for the down payment, 
and his dad refused to help, steamed that they'd been counting on his chipping 
in without having consulted him, so they lost the earnest money, too, a loss 
they could hardly afford. He remembered how Irene left him soon after, and he 
could hardly blame her, though he sure did his best to. He remembered the jobs 
he'd applied for, the string of searing rejections. Nopromotion material, that 
was what he'd been labeled, and try as he might, the label would never come off. 
Like the gummy backing of a bumper sticker you'd tried to scrub away, it was 
somehow just there. People took one look at him and they could see it.
Now Callahan lacked even the strength to sustain the fantasy of being elsewhere. 
He was … where he was.
He was cold, and wet, and breathless, and terrified, and consciousness itself 
was beginning to darken, to flicker, to narrow to a few essential thoughts.
He thought: Everybody has to die. But nobody should die like this.
He thought: It isn't going to last much longer, it can't last much longer, it 
can't.
And he thought: Why?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Berthwick House—what the Russian had described as his humble abode—was in fact a 
grand redbrick Georgian mansion abutting Regent's Park: a three-story pile with 
dormers in the slate roof and three chimneys. Security was both discreet and 
overt. It was surrounded by a ten-foot black wrought-iron fence, with rods that 
came to a sharp, spearlike end. A high-mounted videocamera in an enameled hood 
surveyed the driveway. There was a small gatehouse with a guard … who waved 
Berman's raspberry-colored Bentley through with a respectful nod.
The spacious reception hall was painted coral and was crowded with antique 
reproductions. There were side chairs, highboys, and chess tables in the manner 
of Sheridan and Chippendale: but they were glossy with thick shellac and given 
an odd orange cast by antiquing stain. A pair of large hunting scenes in gilt 
frames looked, at first glance, like distinguished eighteenth-century canvases: 
up close, they looked as if they came from a department store—copies done by a 
hurried art student.
"You like?" Berman was puffed up with pride as he gestured around the jumble of 
Anglophilic knockoffs.
"I'm speechless," Janson replied.
"Look like movie set, da?" Another expansive gesture.
"Da."
"Is from movie set," Berman said delightedly, clapping his hands. "Grigori 
arrive at Merchant Ivory production, last day shooting. Write check to unit 
production manager. Buy everything. Haul off to home. Now live in Merchant Ivory 
set. Everyone say, Merchant Ivory do English upper class best. Best is good 
enough for Grigori Berman." A contented chuckle.
"From Grigori Berman, I'd expect no less." The explanation made sense: 
everything was off, exaggerated, because it was designed only to film well with 
the proper lights, lenses, and filters.
"Have butler, too. Me, Grigori Berman, poor Muscovite, spend childhood in line 
at government department store GUM, have butler."
The man he referred to was standing quietly at the end of the foyer, dressed in 
a black four-button long coat and a stiff pique shirt. He was barrel-chested and 
strapping, with a full beard, and thinning, neatly combed-back hair. His pink 
cheeks lent an air of joviality at odds with his somber demeanor.
"This is Mr. Giles French," Berman said. "The 'gentleman's gentleman.' Mr. 
French take care of all your needs."
"That's really his name?"
"No, not real name. Real name Tony Thwaite. Who cares? I not like real name. 
Give him name from best American television program."
The bewhiskered manservant gave a solemn nod. "At your service," he said 
plummily.
"Mr. French," Berman said, "bring us tea. And … " He paused, either lost in 
thought or furiously trying to remember what might accompany tea. "Sevruga?" He 
sounded tentative, and the request prompted an almost imperceptibly subtle head 
shake from the butler. "No, wait," Berman corrected himself. Once more, he 
brightened: "Cucumber sandwiches."
"Very good, sir," said the butler.
"Better idea. Bring scones. Those special scones cook makes. With clotted cream 
and strawberry jam."
"Excellent, sir. Right away, sir."
Berman beamed, a child able to play with an action figure he'd been pining for. 
For him, Berthwick was a toy house, in which he'd created a bizarre parody of 
upscale English living, all in lavishly, lovably bad taste.
"Tell me, really, what you think?" Berman said, gesturing around him.
"It's unspeakable."
"Beyond words, you think?" Berman pinched his cheek. "You not just saying that? 
Sweet pea! For that I should introduce you to Ludmilla. She show you 
international travel without leaving bed."
Passing by a small room off the main hallway, Janson paused before a large, 
gleaming, powerful-looking machine with a built-in video monitor and keyboard 
and two black-grilled squares to either side. He nodded toward it respectfully. 
"That the RS/6000?"
"That? Is karaoke machine. Computer system in basement." Berman took him down a 
curved flight of stairs, to a carpeted room that contained several computer 
workstations; the heat they threw off made the window-less room uncomfortably 
warm. Two small electric fans stirred the air. The butler arrived with tea and 
scones, arrayed on Bristol delft plates. He laid them out on a small corner 
table, along with small ceramic pots filled with clotted cream and jam. Then he 
glided off.
After glancing longingly at the scones, Berman sat down at a keyboard and 
started to activate a series of firewall-penetration programs. He studied the 
results for a few minutes and then turned to Janson. "In cone of silence, tell 
Grigori what you get me into."
Janson was silent for a while, thinking long and hard before he disclosed the 
essential elements of his predicament. Garrulous creatures like Berman, he knew, 
could sometimes be the most discreet of all, depending on the structure of 
motivation. Grigori listened without comment or any evident reaction, and then, 
shrugging, typed the values of an algebraic matrix into the program he was 
running.
Another minute passed. He turned to Janson. "Grigori not encouraged. We let 
these programs run, then maybe get results in time."
"How much time?"
"Run machine twenty-four hours, coordinate with global parallel-processing 
network of other computers, then maybe … " Berman looked off. "Eight months? No, 
I think closer nine months. Like make baby."
"You're kidding."
"You want Grigori to do what others can't do? Must supply Grigori with numbers 
others don't have. You have public-key sequence to account, da? We use this, we 
have special advantage. Otherwise, back to making baby—nine months."
Reluctantly, Janson supplied him with the public-key sequence for his bank 
account—the codes that the bank transmitted upon receipt of information. The 
public-key sequence was known to both the bank and the account holder.
Within ten seconds after he typed in the public-key sequence, Berman's screen 
filled with jumbled digits, scrolling down his monitor like the closing credits 
of a film. "Numbers meaningless," he said. "Now we must do pattern recognition. 
Look for butterfly."
"Find butterfly," Janson stressed.
"Pah!" Berman said. "You, moy droog, are like baked Alaska: sweet and soft 
outside, hard and cold inside. Brrr! Brrr!" He clasped his arms around, 
pantomiming an arctic chill. But for the next five minutes, Berman studied 
sequences of confirmation codes with an intensity that shut out everything else.
At last, he read a series of digits out loud. "Butterfly here—5467-001-0087. 
That is butterfly."
"The numbers mean nothing to me."
"Same numbers mean everything to me," said Berman. "Numbers say beautiful blond 
women and filthy canals and brown café where you smoke hashish and then more 
women, from Eastern Europe, sitting in storefront window like mannequin wearing 
pasties."
Janson blinked. "Amsterdam. You're saying you're looking at a transfer code from 
Amsterdam."
"Da!" Herman said. "Amsterdam transfer code—it cycles through too many times to 
be accident. Your fairy godmother uses an Amsterdam bank."
"Can you tell which one?"
"Baked Alaska is what you are," Berman said reprovingly. "Give him inch, he take 
isle! Impossible to get specific account unless … Nyet, impossible."
"Unless what?"
"Private key?" Berman cringed as if he expected to be slapped for even saying 
those words. "Use digits like sardine key, scroll open can. Twist, twist, twist. 
Very powerful." Moving funds in or out of the account required a private key, an 
authorizing sequence of digits known only to the account holder; the key would 
not appear in any transmission. This separate, ultrasecure digital pathway 
protected both the customer and the bank.
"You really expect me to entrust you with the private-key sequence?"
"Nyet," he said, shrugging.
"Can I trust you with it?"
A booming laugh. "Nyet! What do you take me for! Girl Scout? Private key must be 
kept private, from everyone. Hence name. All men mortal. Grigori more mortal 
than most." He looked up at Janson. "Please, keep key to self." It was an 
entreaty.
Janson was silent for a while. Berman liked to say he could resist everything 
except temptation. To provide him with the private key would present him with a 
tremendous temptation indeed: he could siphon off its contents with a few 
keystrokes. Yet at what cost? Berman loved his life here; he knew that to make 
an enemy of Janson would jeopardize everything he had, and was. No threats were 
necessary to underscore the risks. Didn't this explain the real source of his 
reluctance? He didn't want the key because he knew he could not allow himself to 
give in to temptation—and wanted to avoid the anguish of waking up the next day 
and knowing he had left a sizable pile of money on the table.
Now Janson recited a fifteen-digit string and watched Berman type the sequence. 
The Russian's face was sickly and tense; he was obviously wrestling with 
himself. Within moments, however, he had succeeded in establishing connections 
to dozens of financial institutions, burrowing from within the Bank of Mont 
Verde mainframe to retrieve the digital signatures that uniquely identified the 
counterparty to every transaction.
Several minutes elapsed, the silence disturbed only by the soft clicking of keys 
and the quiet drone of the fans. Then Berman stood up. "Da!" he said. "ING. 
Which stands for International Netherlands Group Bank. Which you perhaps once 
knew as Nederlandsche Middenstandsbank."
"What can you tell me about it?"
"Beautiful new central office in Amsterdam. So energy-efficient, nobody can bear 
to work there. Second-largest bank in country. And Amsterdam women—the most 
beautiful women in the whole world."
"Grigori," Janson began.
"You must meet Gretchen. Play around-the-world with Gretchen, I guarantee you'll 
rack up frequent flier miles on your back. Or hers. Gretchen is friend of 
Grigori. Friend of all weary travelers. Out calls only, but very reasonable 
prices. You tell her you are friend of Grigori. I give you her number. Easier to 
remember than wire transfer codes to ING. Ha!"
"I'm not convinced we've hit a wall here. If you can identify the bank, can't 
you narrow it even further?"
"Very difficult," said Grigori, biting cautiously into his scone, as if it might 
bite back. In a tone of troubled confession, he said, "Cook not really make 
scones. Cook say she makes scones. I know she buy premade from Sainsbury's. One 
day I saw plastic shrink-wrap in the bin, so, so. So bag is out of cat. I not 
say anything. Everyone must feel they have victory, or nobody happy."
"Let's focus on making me happy. You said getting account info would be 
difficult. 'Difficult' doesn't mean impossible. Or is there somebody else you'd 
recommend for the job?"
His bearlike host looked injured. "Nothing impossible for Grigori Berman." He 
glanced warily around him, then spooned a generous amount of strawberry jam into 
his cup of tea and stirred. "Must not let butler see," he said in a low voice. 
"This Russian way. Mr. French would not understand. It would shock him."
Janson rolled his eyes. Poor Grigori Berman: a prisoner of his household staff. 
"I'm running out of time, I'm afraid," he said.
With a hangdog look, Berman stood and padded heavily back to the RS/6000 
workstation. "This very boring," he said, like an overgrown child dragged away 
from his toys and forced to work on his multiplication tables. Meanwhile, Janson 
established a direct connection with the Bank of Mont Verde via his tri-band 
PDA.
Fifteen minutes later, Berman, sweating with concentration, suddenly looked up 
and turned around. "All done." He saw the device in Janson's hand. "You change 
private key now?"
Janson pressed a button and did precisely that.
"Thank God!" He sprang to his feet. "Otherwise I break down and do the bad, bad 
thing—today, tomorrow, next month, in middle of night while sleepwalking! Who 
can say when? To have private key and not put to personal use would be like … " 
He adjusted his trousers.
"Yes, Grigori," Janson interjected smoothly, "I've got the general idea. Now 
talk to me. What have we found out about the payer?"
"Is great joke," Berman said, smiling.
"How do you mean?" Janson demanded, suddenly alert.
"I traced the originating account. Very difficult, even with sardine key. 
Required nonreusable back-door codes—burned through valuable property to push 
through. Just like American pop song, 'What I Did for Love,' da?" He hummed a 
few bars as Janson glared. Then he reverted to the matter at hand. "Reversed 
asymmetric algorithm. Data-mining software go on hunt for pattern, search out 
signal buried in noise. Very difficult … "
"Grigori, my friend, I don't need the War and Peace version of this. Cut to the 
chase, please."
Berman shrugged, slightly miffed. "Powerful computer program does digital 
equivalent of triathlon competition, Olympic level, no East German steroids to 
help, but still identified originating account."
Janson's pulse began to race. "You are a wizard."
"And all a great joke," Berman repeated.
"What are you saying?"
Berman's smile grew wider. "Man who pay you to kill Peter Novak? Is Peter 
Novak."


As he arrived with his small convoy at the training camp, Ahmad Tabari felt a 
glimmering of relief. Traveling hopefully, he had long known, was overrated. 
Despite the many hours he had spent in a meditative trance, it had been a long 
journey and felt like one. The Caliph had made his way first by air to Asmara, 
in Eritrea. No one would have expected to find the head of the Kagama Liberation 
Front there. Then he had taken a highspeed boat north along the Red Sea coast to 
land in the Nubian deserts of northern Sudan. A few hours after landing, his 
Sudanese guides had taken him on the long and bumpy tracks through the desert, 
up to the camp near the Eritrean border. Mecca was only a few hundred kilometers 
to the north, Medina only the same distance farther. It pained him to know that 
he was as close as he had ever been to the holy places and yet could not walk 
where the Prophet, blessings be upon him, had stepped while he was on earth. He 
accepted, as always, God's will, and he drew strength from the righteousness of 
his cause. Despite the recent setbacks in the Kenna province, the Caliph was a 
leader in the struggle against the corruption of the West, the brutality and 
depredation of a global order the West imagined to be "natural." He prayed that 
his every choice, his every act, would move his country closer to the day when 
its people would rejoin the ummah, the people of Islam, and he could be their 
rightly guided Caliph in more than name.
Welcomed into the camp by smooth-faced boys and gray-bearded eminences alike, he 
felt the powerful brotherhood of his fellow believers. The desiccated, 
dun-colored soil was so different from the vibrant tropical vegetation of his 
native land, yet his brethren of the desert had a pitch of vigilance, zealotry, 
and devotion that came less naturally to-many of his own Kagama followers. 
Barren land, perhaps, but it bloomed with the righteousness of the Holy One. The 
desert leaders were enmeshed in their own campaigns, in Chechnya, in Kazakhstan, 
in Algeria, in the Philippines. But they knew that every one of their conflicts 
was a skirmish in a greater battle. That was why he knew they would help him, as 
he had helped them in the past. God willing, they would, by working together, 
recover the whole earth for Allah one day.
The first order of business was to allow his hosts to impress him with their 
training school. He had heard about it, of course. Every leader in the worldwide 
fellowship of struggle knew of this university of terror. Here, while the 
government in Khartoum turned a blind eye, the members of this secret 
brotherhood could learn the ways of the new kind of war. In bunkers carved into 
the rock were computers that stored the plans of electric generator plants, 
petroleum refineries, airports, railroads, military installations in scores of 
countries. Every day, they searched the Web for more of the open secrets that 
the West so carelessly made available. Here, in the model of an American city, 
you could study urban warfare: how to block roads and storm buildings. Here, 
too, you could learn the patient arts of surveillance, methods of assassination, 
a hundred ways to make explosives from materials available in every American 
hardware store. As he passed from one unit to the next, he smiled his humorless 
smile. They were treating him like a visiting dignitary, the way they must treat 
the president of Sudan on his secret visits. They knew, as he did, that he was 
destined to rule his homeland. It was just a matter of time.
He was tired, of course. But he had no time to rest. The evening prayer was 
over. It was time for the meeting.
Within a tent, they sat on low cushions on the cloth-covered ground and drank 
tea from simple clay cups. The conversation was cordial yet shied away from 
specifics. All knew the Caliph's extremely fraught situation—his astonishing 
recent gains, and the fact that they were under ceaseless assault by the 
coordinated forces of the Republic of Anura. There had been reversals, humbling 
ones. There would continue to be reversals—unless additional assistance could be 
provided. The Kagama's repeated attempts to enlist the support of the Go-Between 
were met with frustration. The Go-Between not only declined to provide the 
needed support but grew emphatic that the Caliph desist in his efforts at 
exacting vengeance! Oh, the perfidy of the infidel! Then his further attempts to 
reestablish contact with the Go-Between, to persuade him of the inexorability of 
the Caliph's will to justice, had failed, utterly and mysteriously. That was why 
the Kagama leader was here.
Finally, they could hear the sound of a military helicopter, feel the 
whomp-whomp percussion of its propellers. The camp leaders glanced at one 
another and at their Kagama guest.
It was the visitor they had been waiting for. The man they called Al-Mustashar, 
the Adviser.
Colonel Ibrahim Maghur was a man of the world, and his connection with the 
insurrectionists in the camps was necessarily clandestine. He was, after all, a 
senior member of Libyan intelligence, and Tripoli had officially renounced its 
direct links to terrorism. At the same time, many powerful members of the regime 
retained their sympathies for their brethren in the struggle against Western 
imperialism and did their best to provide discreet assistance. Ibrahim Maghur 
was one such man. In the course of his secret visits to the camp, he had 
provided valuable information from Libyan intelligence. He had pinpointed the 
location of enemies and even provided suggested assassination techniques. He had 
supplied valuable terrain maps and detailed satellite imagery that gave the 
freedom fighters significant strategic advantage. And he had provided them with 
caches of ordnance and small arms. Unlike so many members of Libya's effete and 
decadent elite, Ibrahim Maghur was a true believer. He had guided them toward 
the lethal satisfactions of their objectives in the past; he would do so again.
Now the colonel strode from the helicopter, emerging from a small artificial 
dust storm, and bowed before the leadership of the Islamic Jihad, which had 
assembled to greet him.
His eyes met those of Ahmad Tabari, and he bowed again before extending a hand.
The Libyan's gaze was at once penetrating and respectful. "It is truly an honor 
to meet you," he said.
"The Prophet smiles upon us both that we two should be introduced," Tabari 
returned.
"Your military successes are astounding, truly brilliant—deserving of attention 
in the textbooks," said the colonel. "And I am a student of history."
"As am I a student of history," said the Kagama rebel chief. His ebony face 
looked almost coal black in the dim light of the desert evening. "My studies 
tell me that territories swiftly claimed can as swiftly be reclaimed. What do 
your studies tell you?"
"They tell me that history is made by great men. And something about you 
indicates that you are a great man—a Caliph indeed."
"The Prophet has been generous with his gifts," said the Kagama, who had little 
time for false humility.
"Yet great men have great enemies," the Libyan intelligence official said. "You 
must be very cautious. You must be very cautious indeed. You are a threat to 
powers that will stop at nothing to annihilate you."
"It is possible to be crippled by caution," said Tabari.
"You speak truly," said the Libyan. "A risk for lesser men than you. It is your 
very boldness that vouchsafes your greatness, the security and survival of your 
cause, its final victory. Your khalifa shall be established. Yet everything will 
depend upon the timing and the targeting." He looked around at the rapt faces of 
the five seniormost leaders of the Islamic Jihad, and then returned to the 
fabled leader of the Kagama Liberation Front. "Come," he said. "Let us go for a 
walk together, Caliph. Just you and I."
"Al-Mustashar's advice is a treasure beyond price," one of the hosts told Ahmad 
Tabari. "Go with him."
As the two men strolled around the desert encampment, a cool wind began to gust, 
billowing through the Caliph's long robes.
"I can assure you that your setbacks will prove only temporary," the Libyan 
colonel told him in a low voice. "There is much I will be able to help you with, 
as will certain of our allies within the Islamic Republic of Mansur. Soon your 
cause will be coming along swimmingly."
"And in what will it swim?" the islander asked the desert warrior with a 
brooding half smile.
"That's easy," Ibrahim Maghur replied, and his face was utterly serious. "Blood. 
The blood of the infidel."
"The blood of the infidel," the Caliph repeated. The words were both reassuring 
and uplifting.


"How the hell can you know such a thing?" Janson demanded.
"Cross-tabulation of wire transfer indices," said Berman, vigorously stirring 
jam into his tea. "Origination code can't be spoofed."
"Come again?"
"Sixteen million dollars comes from account in name of Peter Novak."
"How? Where?"
"Where I say. Amsterdam. International Netherlands Group. Where Liberty 
Foundation have headquarters?"
"Amsterdam."
"So no surprise."
"You're telling me that at a time when Peter Novak was locked away in a dungeon 
in Anura, he authorized a transfer of sixteen million dollars into a blind 
account I controlled? What kind of sense does that make?"
"Could be preauthorization. Preauthorization possible. Postauthorization not 
possible."
"No jokes, Grigori. This is crazy."
"I just tell you origination code."
"Could somebody else have laid their hands on the Novak account, got control of 
it somehow?"
The Russian shrugged. "Origination code just tell me ownership of account. Could 
be many specifications as to access. This I cannot tell you from here. This 
information not flow from modem to modem. Legal certification held by 
institution of origination. Bank in Amsterdam follows instructions established 
by owner. Account suffix says it's linked to Foundation. Paperwork at bank, 
paperwork at headquarters." Berman pronounced the word paperwork with the 
distaste he reserved for older financial instruments, directives and 
stipulations that could not be reduced to strings of ones and zeros.
"This makes no sense."
"Makes dollars!" Herman said merrily. "If somebody put sixteen million dollars 
in Grigori account, Grigori not insist on dental examination of gift horse." He 
held out his hands. "I wish I could tell you more."
Had Peter Novak been betrayed by somebody near and dear to him? If so, by whom? 
A high-ranking member of his organization? Marta Lang herself? She spoke of him, 
it seemed, with genuine affection and respect. Yet what did that prove, aside 
from that she might have been an accomplished actress? What now seemed 
irrefutable was that whoever had betrayed Novak was in a position to have earned 
his trust. And that meant the agent was a master of deception, a virtuoso of the 
patient arts of craft and deceit and waiting. But to what end?
"You come with me," Berman said. "I show you house." He put an arm around 
Janson's shoulder and propelled him up the stairs, down the magnificent hallways 
of the estate, and into the airy, light-filled kitchen. He pressed a finger to 
his lip. "Mr. French not want us in kitchen. But Russians know that heart of 
house is kitchen."
Berman stepped toward the glittering stainless-steel sink, where the casement 
windows looked onto a beautifully tended rose garden. Beyond it stretched 
Regent's Park. "Take a look—twenty-four hundred acres in the middle of London, 
like my backyard." He pulled out the sink spray nozzle and held it to his mouth 
like microphone. "Someone left the scones out in the rain," he sang in a thick 
Russian basso. "I don't think that I can take it … " He pulled Janson closer, 
trying to form a duet. He raised an expressive hand high in the air, like an 
opera singer on the stage.
There was a tinkle of glass, and Berman broke off with a sharp expulsion of 
breath. A moment later, he slumped to the floor.
A small red hole was just visible on the front of his hand. On the upper left 
quadrant of his shirtfront was another puncture wound, just slightly rimmed with 
red.
"Jesus Christ!" Janson shouted.
Time slowed.
Janson looked down at Berman, stunned and motionless on the gray tiled kitchen, 
and then out of the window. Outside, there was no sign of disturbance whatever. 
The afternoon sun nuzzled well-tended rosebushes, their small pink and white 
blossoms radiantly emerging from the tight-clustered leaves. The sky was blue, 
dappled with sparse wisps of white.
It seemed impossible, but it had happened, and his brain raced to make sense of 
it, even as he heard the approaching footsteps of the butler, obviously roused 
by his exclamation. On arrival, the butler immediately pulled Berman's supine 
body out of range of the window, sliding it along the floor. It was the correct 
response. He, too, scanned the view from the window, holding a P7 sentry pistol 
in a hand as he did so. An amateur might have fired a shot out of the window for 
show: the butler did not do so. He had seen what Janson had seen; an exchange of 
glances revealed his bafflement. Just a few seconds elapsed before the two 
retreated to the hallway, safely away from the window. From the floor, Berman 
made rasping, wet noises, as breath forced its way through his injured airway, 
and his fingers began to scrabble at his chest wound. "Motherfucker," he said in 
a strangled voice. "Tvoyu mat'!"
The fingers of his intact right hand trembled with exertion, as the Russian 
probed his wound with remarkable single-mindedness. He was fishing for the 
bullet, and gasping for breath, he yanked a crumpled mass of brass and lead from 
his chest.
"Look," Janson said to the butler. "I know this has to be a shock to you, but 
I'm going to need you to stay calm and collected, Mr … "
"Thwaite. And I've had fifteen years in the SAS. This isn't a perimeter breach, 
we both know that. We're looking at something else."
"SAS, huh?"
"Mr. Berman may be crazy, but he's not a fool. A man like that's got enemies. 
We've prepared for the usual exigencies. But that shot came out of the clear 
blue. I can't explain it."
How had it happened?
Janson's mind emptied, and then filled with elliptic curves and right angles. 
The horrific scene of bloodshed he had just witnessed dissolved into a shifting 
geometrical schema.
He'd need every fact that was available to him. He connected the point of 
penetration of Berman's upstretched arm to the upper-left-quadrant chest wound. 
An elevation of approximately thirty-five degrees from the horizontal. Yet there 
was nothing visible in the vicinity at that angle.
Ergo the bullet had not been fired from the immediate vicinity.
The mass that Berman had pulled out was confirmation. It had to have been a 
long-distance shot, toward the end of its trajectory. Had it been fired within a 
hundred yards, it would have penetrated Berman's body and punched an exit wound. 
The amount of crumple and the size of the projectile: the crucial information 
was there.
He stooped and picked up the bullet. What had it been? A six- or 
seven-hundred-grain, brass-jacketed round. Penetration had been two inches; had 
it struck Berman's head, it would have been instantly fatal. As it was, the lung 
hemorrhage made a fatal outcome fairly probable. What had it delivered: a 
hundred, two hundred foot-pounds of force?
Because of air resistance, impact diminished in a nonlineal relation to distance 
elapsed. The greater the velocity, the greater the air resistance, or drag 
force, so it wasn't a simple, linear relation. The velocity-distance matrix 
involved a first-order differential equation, and Reynolds number—the sort of 
thing Alan Demarest could solve in his head, maybe Berman, too—but, relying on 
trained intuition, Janson estimated that the distance traversed would have been 
twelve hundred yards out, or about two-thirds of a mile.
Janson's mind filled with the skyline of the area, the Palladian roofs of 
Hanover Terrace, the round dome of the Central London Mosque … and the minaret, 
the tall, slender tower with the small balcony, used by the muezzin to summon 
the faithful to prayer. Lacking intrinsic value, it was likely unguarded; a 
professional would have had no problem gaining entry. If Janson's rough 
calculations were correct, one had.
It was diabolical. A sniper had stationed himself on the balcony of the minaret, 
a flyspeck from the perspective of Berthwick House, and bided his time, waiting 
in case his target appeared in the casement windows. He would have had plenty of 
time to figure out the requisite angles and trajectories. But how many men were 
even capable of such a shot? Were there forty such in the world? A couple of 
Russians. The Norwegian sniper who came in first in a worldwide competition 
hosted in Moscow last year. A couple of Israelis, with their Galil 7.62 rifles. 
A handful of Americans.
A master sniper had supernal skill, but he had supernal patience, too. He had to 
be responsive to uncertainties: in a long-range shot, even a slight unexpected 
breeze could push a flat shot several feet from its intended destination. A 
subject could move unexpectedly; in this case, Berman had raised his hand after 
the shot was fired. A sniper had to be aware of such possibilities. And he had 
to be more patient than his target.
And yet who was the target?
The butler had assumed it was his employer, Berman. A natural assumption. And a 
dangerous one. He recalled Berman's arm around his shoulder, drawing him close. 
The bullet that hit the Russian was fifteen inches from Janson's head.
Fifteen inches. An uncontrollable variance at two-thirds of a mile. Whether it 
was a hit or a near miss, the shot's accuracy was incredible. But the sensible 
assumption had been that Janson was the real target. He was the only new element 
in the situation.
He could hear the siren of the ambulance Thwaite had summoned. And now he felt a 
tug on his trouser leg—Berman, from the floor, feebly trying to communicate, to 
get his attention.
"Janson," he said, speaking as if through a mouthful of water.
His fleshy face had taken on a veal-like pallor. A thin rivulet of blood seeped 
from the corner of his lips down his chin. Air was sucking through his chest 
wound, and he pressed his good right hand to the area. Now he raised his 
bloodied left hand and extended a wagging index finger. "Tell me truth: Turnbull 
and Asser shirt ruined?" A wet cough came instead of the usual guffaw. At least 
one of his lungs had filled with blood, and would soon collapse.
"It's seen better days," Janson said gently, feeling a rush of affection toward 
the ebullient, eccentric maven.
"Get son of whore who did this," Berman said. "Da?"
"Da," Janson said huskily.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Thwaite took Janson aside and spoke to him in a low voice. "Whoever you are, Mr. 
Berman must have trusted you, or he wouldn't have invited you here. But I've got 
to ask you to make tracks." A wry look. "Chop-chop."
Janson raced down oak parquet floors, past the eighteenth-century French 
paneling a Woolworth heiress had installed decades ago, and through a rear exit. 
A few minutes later, he had vaulted over the wrought-iron fence and into the 
eastern bulge of Regent's Park. "Twenty-four hundred acres in the middle of 
London, like my backyard," Berman had said.
Was it safe?
There were no guarantees—except that it was the only place to which he dared 
retreat. A sniper on the minaret could easily target anyone emerging from the 
other exits of Berthwick House. The perch would not afford a sight line to most 
areas of the park itself.
Besides, Janson knew this area; when he was at Cambridge, he'd had a friend who 
lived in the Marylebone neighborhood, and they had taken long strolls through 
the great verdant expanse, three times the size of New York's Central Park. Some 
of it was overlooked by the neoclassical grandeur of Hanover Terrace, with its 
noble Georgian exteriors and creamy hues, the white and blue friezes adorning 
its architrave. But the park was a world unto itself. The waterways bustled with 
swans and odd, imported fowl; they were banked with concrete in some stretches 
while in others they lapped onto stands of marshy reeds. On the concrete walkway 
along the embankment, pigeons competed for crumbs with swans. Farther out, 
trimmed rows of boxwood provided a dense green border. A red lifesaver was 
mounted on a small wooden kiosk.
To him, it had always felt like a refuge, this vast campus of trees and grass, 
playing fields and tennis courts. The boating lake stretched like an amoeba, 
narrowing to a stream that, edged by flower beds, ran under York Bridge in the 
southern part of the park. And in the inner circle was Queen Mary's Garden, 
filled with exotic flora and rare fowl, discreetly penned: a sanctuary for wild 
birds and lonely, fragile people. Regent's Park, a legacy of the crown architect 
John Nash, represented an Arcadian vision of an England that, perhaps, never 
was—the Windermere in the middle of the metropole, at once artfully rusticated 
and carefully manicured.
Janson jogged toward the boating lake, past the trees, trying to clear his head 
and make sense of the astounding assault. Even as he ran, though, he was 
intensely alert to his surroundings, his nerves jangling.
Was it safe?
Was he dealing with a single sniper? It seemed unlikely. With such exhaustive 
preparation, there must have been flanking gunmen in place, covering different 
wings of the house, different exposures. No doubt, perimeter security was as 
exacting as Thwaite had indicated. But there were few local defenses against 
such long-distance marksmanship.
And if other snipers were in the area, where were they?
And who were they?
The intrusion of menace in this pastoral redoubt struck Janson as itself an 
obscenity. He slowed down and looked at the great willow tree in front of him, 
its branches drooping into the boating lake. A tree like that might be a century 
old; his eyes must have fallen on it when he visited the park twenty-five years 
ago. It had survived Labour governments and Tory governments alike. It had 
survived Lloyd George and Margaret Thatcher, the Blitz and rationing, eras of 
fear and of boisterous self-confidence.
As Janson approached it, the thick trunk suddenly revealed a rude patch of 
white. A soft, tapping noise: lead hitting puckered bark.
A shot that had missed him, again, by a matter of inches. The uncanny accuracy 
of a bolt-action sniper rifle.
He craned his neck around as he ran, but could see nothing. The only sound he 
had heard was that of the projectile slamming into the tree: there was no sound 
of the detonation within a rifle chamber. Sound-suppression gear was quite 
possibly in use. But even with a silenced rifle, a supersonic round produced a 
noise as it emerged from the muzzle—not necessarily a conspicuous one, but a 
noise all the same, like the crack of a whip. Janson knew that noise well. The 
fact that he had not heard it suggested something else: it was another 
long-distance shot. If the gunman were a hundred yards away, the noise would be 
lost amid the baffling provided by the tree leaves and the park's ambient 
sounds. Conclusion: an extremely skilled marksman was in pursuit.
Or a team of them.
Where was safety? It was impossible to say. Worms of apprehension writhed in his 
belly.
Dirt kicked up a couple of feet from him. Another near miss. The shot had been 
taken from a very great distance, and the subject had been in motion: for a shot 
to have come within ten yards of him would have represented impressive 
technique. Yet this shot had come within a couple of feet. It was astounding. 
And terrifying.
Keep moving: confronted with unseen pursuers, it was the one thing he could do 
to make himself a more difficult target. But movement itself was not sufficient. 
He had to keep his speed irregular, for otherwise a trained sniper could 
calculate the "lead" in his sighting. It was a straightforward exercise to fire 
at a target who was moving at a fixed speed in a fixed direction: taking into 
account distance and target speed, you measured out a few degrees to the left of 
the figure in your scope, firing at where the target would be when the bullet 
arrived, not where it had been when the bullet was fired.
Then there was the crucial matter of the sniper grid. Lateral 
movement—transverse velocity—was one thing. But movement that took the 
pedestrian target toward or away from the sniper was of almost negligible 
importance: it would not prevent the bullet from reaching its target.
Janson had not determined how many marksmen were in position, or where those 
positions were. Because he did not know the grid, he did not know which 
movements were transverse, which not. The rules of flanking and enfilading would 
stipulate an axial array; marksmen as accomplished as these would be conscious 
of the peril of bullet "overtravel," which could be fatal to a member of the 
team or a bystander.
The snipers—where were they? The last two shots came from the southwest, where 
he could see nothing but, a few hundred yards away, a stand of oak trees.
He starting running, his gaze roaming around him. The very normalcy was what was 
so eerie. The park was not crowded, but it was far from vacant. Here was a young 
man swaying to whatever was pulsing through his Walkman. There was a young woman 
with a stroller, talking to another woman, a close friend, from the looks of it. 
He could hear the distant cries of young children in paddleboats, frolicking in 
a shallow, fenced-off area of the boating pond. And, as always, lovers walked 
hand in hand between the copses of oak and white willow and beech trees. They 
were in their own world. He was in his. They shared a terrain, blithely unaware 
that anything was amiss. How could there be?
That was the genius of the operation. The sniping was virtually soundless. The 
tiny explosions of bark or turf or water were too fleeting and inconspicuous to 
be noticed by anybody who was not primed for such evidence.
Regent's Park—that serene glade—had been converted into a killing field, with 
nobody the wiser.
Except, of course, the prospective victim.
Where was safety? The interrogative rose in Janson's head, rose with screechy, 
needful urgency.
He had the sole advantage of action over reaction: he alone knew his next move; 
they would have to respond to what he did. But if they could condition his 
actions, make him act according to a curtailed number of options in reaction to 
their own actions, that edge would be lost.
He darted this way and that, along what he estimated as a line transverse to the 
axial array of the sniper team.
"Practicing your footwork?" remarked an amused older man, his white hair combed 
forward and trimmed, Caesar-style. "Looking good. You'll be playing for 
Manchester United one of these days!" It was the sort of jibe reserved for 
somebody one took to be insane. What else made sense of Janson's strange, 
darting movements, his dashes right and left, seemingly random, seemingly 
pointless? It was the zigzagging of a wingless hummingbird.
He put on a sudden burst of speed and plunged through a crowd of pedestrians 
toward York Bridge. The bandstand beckoned: it would shelter him from the 
snipers.
He ran along the banks of the boating lake and past an elderly woman who was 
throwing bread crumbs to ravenous pigeons. An enormous flock of the birds took 
flight as he pounded through their midst, like an exploding cloud of feathers. 
One of them, batting its wings just a few yards ahead, suddenly dropped like a 
stone, landing near his feet. The smudge of red on the pigeon's breast told him 
that it had caught a stray bullet intended for him.
And still nobody noticed. For everyone but him, it was a perfect day in the 
park.
A small burst of wooden splinters erupted at waist level, as another shot 
flicked off the rail of the wooden bridge and into the water. The quality of the 
shooting was remarkable: it was only a matter of time before one reached the 
X-ring.
He'd made a mistake when he'd charged toward York Bridge: the two shots they'd 
just taken was proof of it. It meant, from the vantage of his assailants, that 
the movement had changed his distance but not his angle, which was harder to 
correct for. That was another piece of information: he would have to make use of 
it if he wanted to survive another minute.
Now he made his way around two sides of the tennis courts, which were set off 
with mesh fencing. Ahead of him was an octagonal gazebo, made of 
pressure-treated lumber decked out to look rustic and old. It was an 
opportunity, but a risk as well: if he were a sniper, he would anticipate that 
his subject would seek temporary refuge there, and cluster his shots in its 
direction. He could not approach it directly. He ran at an angle, veering away 
from it altogether; then, when he was some distance past it, he ran jaggedly, 
bobbing and weaving, to its shadow. He could walk behind it for a bit, because 
it would serve as a barrier between him and the tree stand where the team of 
marksmen was based.
An explosion of turf, a yard from his left foot. Impossible!
No, it was all too possible. He had been guilty of wishful thinking—assuming 
that the snipers had restricted themselves to the tall trees behind the boating 
lake. It made sense that they would station themselves there; professional 
snipers liked to keep the sun to their backs, partly for viewing purposes, but 
even more to prevent a visible glare from flashing off their scopes. The spray 
of dirt suggested that the bullet had arrived from the same approximate 
direction as the others. Yet the tall gazebo would have shielded him from a 
tree-mounted marksman. He surveyed the horizon with a sinking feeling.
Farther away, much farther away: the steel lattice of a twenty- or thirty-story 
crane, from a construction site on Rossmore Road. Distance: about three-quarters 
of a mile.
Christ! Was it possible?
The sight line was direct: with proper optics and perfect zeroing, it would be 
possible, just, for a top-of-the-league marksman.
He scurried back to the gazebo but knew that it was only a very temporary place 
of refuge. Now an entire team would know his precise location. The more time he 
spent there, the better coordinated and more effective the sniper fire would be 
once he tried to leave. They could wait him out. Not that they needed to. They 
would be able to radio backup—summon a stroller, as pedestrian adjuvants were 
known in the trade. A stroller in a tweed jacket with an ordinary silenced 
pistol would be able to pick him off, conceal the weapon, and resume his walk, 
with nobody alerted. No, the seeming safety of his position was spurious. Every 
moment increased the risks he would face. Every moment made escape less likely.
Think! He had to act. Something like annoyance was welling up in him: he was 
tired of being used for target practice, dammit! To maximize his safety at this 
second would be to minimize his safety five minutes from now. Immobility was 
death. He would not die cowering behind a gazebo, waiting to be picked off from 
the air or the ground.
The hunted would become the hunter; the quarry would turn predator, or die in 
the attempt: this was the only option he had left.
Facts: these were marksmen of extraordinary expertise. But they had been 
deployed in such a way as to put those skills to the test. All the shots were 
long-range ones, and however extraordinary the shooter, there were dozens of 
uncontrollable variables—small breezes, an interceding twig—that could put the 
bullet off its intended trajectory. At great distances, even tiny factors became 
enormously significant. Nor was the shooting heedless: there clearly was a 
concern to avoid bystanders. Berman was doubtless seen as an accomplice of his, 
his possible death of no account, perhaps even beneficial to the mission.
Question: Why was the team stationed at such a remove? What made the pursuit so 
unnerving was the fact that he could not see his pursuers. They stayed well out 
of the way. But why?
Because they—or their controllers—were risk-averse. Because they were afraid of 
him.
Dear Christ. It was true. It had to be. They must have been commanded to avoid 
close contact at all costs. Subject deemed unpredictable and dangerous at close 
quarters. He would be destroyed at long distance.
A counterintuitive conclusion was unavoidable: the reflexive tactic of evasion, 
increasing the distance between himself and his assailants, was precisely the 
wrong response.
He had to embrace his enemy, move toward his attackers. Was there a way to do so 
and live?
Standing near the Inner Circle, the stone path surrounding Queen Mary's Garden, 
a stocky woman in a denim skirt was handing a pair of binoculars to her girl. 
The woman had the sort of complexion, pale but splotchily reddened, that must 
have had suitors calling her an "English rose" when she was a teenager; but the 
once becoming blush had coarsened and grown definite.
"See the one with the blue on its wing? That means it's a bluebird."
The girl, who looked about seven, peered through the binoculars 
uncomprehendingly. The binoculars were the genuine article, a 10X50 by the looks 
of them: the woman must have been a devoted bird-watcher, like so many Brits, 
and eager to show her child the wonders of the avian world. "Mummy, I can't see 
anything," the little girl bleated. Her mother, with her trunklike legs, leaned 
over and adjusted the binoculars so that the eyecups were closer together.
"Now try."
"Mummy! Where's the bird!"
There was another safety factor just now: a breeze was passing through, ruffling 
the leaves of the trees. A distance shooter would be vigilant about evidence of 
wind, especially irregularly gusting winds, knowing how much it could disturb 
the shot's trajectory. If a shot had to be made under such conditions, there 
were rules for compensation, for "doping the wind." Estimation of wind speed 
followed rough rules of thumb: a four-mile-per-hour wind was a wind you can feel 
on your face; between five and eight miles per hour, tree leaves are in constant 
motion; in twelve-mile-per-hour winds, small trees sway. And then the angle of 
the breeze had to be figured in. A direct crosswind was rare; most winds were at 
an irregular angle to the line of fire. Moreover, wind zones downrange often 
varied from the wind experienced by the sniper himself. To complete the 
necessary calculations before the wind changed was infeasible. And so accuracy 
was inevitably diminished. If they had any choice, and they did, the snipers 
would wait until it subsided.
Janson approached the mother and daughter, his heart thudding. Though conscious 
of his lethal halo, he had to trust to the professional self-regard of the 
marksmen: snipers of that order prided themselves on their precision; hitting 
such bystanders would look like unacceptable amateurism. And the breeze was 
still gusting.
"Excuse me, madam," he said to the woman. "But I wonder if I might borrow your 
binoculars." He winked at the little girl.
Immediately, the girl burst into tears. "No, Mummy!" she screamed. "They're 
mine, mine, mine!"
"Just for a moment?" Janson smiled again, swallowing his desperation. In his 
head, the seconds ticked off.
"Don't cry, my poppet," the mother said, caressing the girl's purple face. 
"Mummy will buy you a lollipop. Wouldn't that be nice!" She turned to Janson. 
"Viola's very sensitive," the mother said coolly. "Can't you see how you've 
upset her?"
"I'm very sorry … "
"Then please leave us alone."
"Would it matter if I said it was a matter of life and death?" Janson flashed 
what he hoped was a winning smile.
"My gawd, you Yanks, you think you own the bloody world. Take no for an answer, 
would you?"
Too many seconds had elapsed. The breeze had subsided. Janson could picture, in 
his head, the sniper he could not see. Hidden in foliage, or braced on a strong 
lateral tree branch, or perched on a telescoping boom crane, the steel lattice 
and base hydraulics minimizing any sway. However positioned, the sniper's main 
camouflage was his very stillness.
Janson knew the terrible, emptied-out clarity of the sniper's mind firsthand. He 
had received extensive sniper training in Little Creek, and had been required to 
draw upon those skills in country. There had been the afternoons spent with a 
Remington 700 braced on two sandbags, the barrel itself resting on nothing but a 
cushion of air, waiting for the shimmering motion in his scope that told him his 
target was emerging. And, on radiophone, Demarest's voice in his ear, coaching, 
coaxing, reassuring. "You'll feel it before you see it, Janson. Let yourself 
feel it. Relax into the shot." How surprised he was when he took it and hit his 
target. He was never in the same league as those who now pursued him, but he did 
it well and reliably because he'd had to. And his having been on the other side 
of the scope made his current position that much more nerve-racking.
He knew what they saw. He knew what they thought.
The master sniper's world would be reduced to the circular image through his 
scope, and then to the relation between the darting body and the scope's 
crosshairs. His gun is a Remington 700, or a Galil 7.62, or an M40A1. He would 
have found the spot-weld, the contact point between his cheek and the rifle 
stock; the rifle would feel like an extension of his body. He would take a deep 
breath and let it out fully, and then another breath, and let it out halfway. A 
laser range finder could tell him the precise distance: the scope adjusted to 
compensate for bullet drop. The crosshairs would settle upon the rectangle that 
was the subject's torso. More breath would be expelled, the rest held, and the 
finger would caress the trigger … 
Janson dropped to the ground, adopting a sitting position by the crying girl. 
"Hey," he said to her. "It's going to be all right."
"We don't like you," she said. Him personally? Americans in general? Who could 
fathom the mind of a seven-year-old?
Janson gently took her binoculars, lifting the straps from around her shoulders, 
and quickly set off.
"Mummy!" It came out somewhere between a scream and a whine.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" the mother bellowed, red-faced.
Janson, clutching the binoculars, dashed toward the wooden bandstand, two 
hundred yards away. Every time his position changed significantly, the snipers 
would have adjusted their sightings. The woman ran after him, puffing but 
determined. She had left her child behind, and now stomped after him with a 
spray bottle she had extracted from her purse.
An aerosol can of pepper spray. She was striding toward him with a look that 
combined disapproval and rage, Mary Poppins with mad cow disease. "Damn you!" 
she shouted. "Damn you! Damn you!" There were countless Brits just like her, 
their powerful calves stuck into Wellingtons, their bird-watching manuals stuck 
into bottomless handbags. They invariably collected string and ate Marmite and 
smelled of toast.
He turned to see her holding the bottle of pepper spray at arm's length, her 
features twisted into a vicious grin as she prepared to spray a noxious jet of 
capsicum oleoresin into his face.
There was an odd clang a split second before her bottle burst, and a cloud of 
pepper exploded around the torn metal of the canister.
A look of utter disbelief passed over her face: she had no experience with what 
happened when a bullet destroyed a pressurized container. Then the cloud drifted 
over her.
"Defective, I guess," Janson offered.
Tears streaming from her eyes, the woman spun on her flat-heeled shoes and 
rushed away from him, gagging and hacking, her breathing now a reedy stridor. 
Then she threw herself into the lake, hoping for relief from the searing heat.
Thwack. A bullet struck the wood of the bandstand, the closest shot yet. Snipers 
who used high-precision bolt-action rifles paid for greater accuracy with 
reduced frequency. Janson rolled on the ground until he was under the bandstand, 
the abandoned concert area, before which plastic chairs were neatly set out for 
a concert that evening.
The trelliswork of the base would not protect him from bullets, but it would 
make him more difficult to sight. It would buy him a little time, which was what 
he most needed right now.
Now he dialed up the binoculars, testing various focal points, avoiding dazzle 
from the late-afternoon sun.
It was maddening. The sun lit up the boom derrick of the crane like a match; it 
cast a halo over the trees.
The trees, the trees. Oak, beech, chestnut, ash. Their branches were irregular, 
the leafy canopies irregular, too. And there were so many of them—a hundred, 
maybe two hundred. Which was the tallest, and the densest? A rough eyeballing of 
the arboreal clusters suggested a couple of candidates. Now Janson zoomed the 
binoculars to maximum magnification and scrutinized just those trees.
Leaves. Twigs. Branches. And—
Movement. The hairs on his neck raised.
A breeze was scurrying through the trees: of course there was movement. The 
leaves fluttered; the slender branches swayed, too. Yet he had to trust his 
instinct, and soon his rational mind made sense of what had pricked his 
intuition. The branch that moved was thick, too thick to have been affected by 
the passing gust. It moved—why? Because an animal had shifted its weight on it, 
a scampering squirrel? Or a person?
Or: because it was not a branch at all.
The light made it difficult to make out details; though Janson fine-tuned the 
scope, the object remained frustratingly indistinct. He imposed different mental 
images on it, which was an old field trick he had learned as one of Demarest's 
Devils. A branch, with twigs and leaves? Possible, but not satisfactory. Could 
it be that it was a rifle, covered in arboreal-camouflage decals, to which small 
twigs had been attached? When he pictured the optical image according to that 
mental model, all sorts of tiny irregularities suddenly clicked into place. A 
gestalt effect.
The reason that the branch seemed unnaturally straight was that it was a rifle. 
The twigs were attached with furred twist-wires. The tiny area of darkness at 
the end of a branch was not a tar-healed tree wound, but the rifle's bore hole.
Five hundred yards away, a man was peering through a scope, just as he was, with 
the settled resolve of sending him to his death.
I'm coming for you, Janson thought to himself. You won't see me when I get 
there, but I'll get there.
A team of soccer players were making their way toward the playing fields, and he 
joined them briefly, knowing that, from a distance, he would be hard to pick out 
among the dense crowd of tall, athletic men.
The lake thinned into a stream, and as the men crossed the wooden bridge, he 
rolled off into the water. Had the marksmen seen him? There was a good chance 
that they had not. He expelled all the air from his lungs and swam through the 
murky, turbid water, staying near the bottom. If his misdirection succeeded, the 
sniper scopes would still be trained on the crowd of athletes. High-powered 
scopes inevitably had a narrow field of vision; it would be impossible to keep 
an eye on the rest of the terrain and follow the crowd. But how much longer 
before they realized he was not in it?
Now he crossed the water to the south bank, pulled himself up the concrete basin 
wall, and dashed over to a copse of beech trees. If he had slipped their 
purview, the reprieve was only temporary—one mistake could put him in the deadly 
snare. It was the most thickly forested area of Regent's Park, and it brought to 
mind training exercises along the ridgelines outside Thon Doc Kinh.
He had studied the formation of trees from a distance and had determined the 
tallest one. Now he had to turn a distance map into a proximal map, 
corresponding to the very terrain under his feet.
It was the hour when the park emptied out. This had advantages and 
disadvantages, and yet everything had to be used for advantage: there was no 
choice. Willed optimism was the order of the day. A sober reckoning of the odds 
might well lead to defeatism and paralysis, making the dire outcome even more 
probable.
He sprinted toward one tree, waited, then rushed toward another. He felt a 
tingle in his stomach. Had he been silent enough? Inconspicuous enough?
If his instincts were correct, he was directly below the tree where at least one 
of the snipers had positioned himself.
Marksmanship was an activity of intense concentration. At the same time, 
concentration required shutting out peripheral stimuli, as he knew from 
experience. Tunnel vision was a matter not merely of the narrowness of field 
through the scope but of the intensity of mental focus. Now he had to take 
advantage of that tunnel vision.
The soccer team had crossed the bridge, then made its way past a brick building, 
Regent's College, a Baptist institution. If he were one of the snipers, that 
would arouse suspicions, particularly when the crowd spaced out and he 
discovered that his target was not among them. They would have to entertain the 
possibility that he had somehow ducked into the brick building. It was not a 
terribly worrying possibility: they could wait him out.
The marksmen would be intensely scrutinizing every square yard of the park in 
their purview. But one did not scrutinize one's own feet. Then, too, the snipers 
would have radiophones to keep them in touch with their coordinator. Yet these 
would further reduce their sensitivity to ambient sounds. So there were elements 
in Janson's favor.
Now he heaved himself up the trunk, as quietly as he could. Progress was slow 
but steady. When he reached ten feet, what he saw astonished him. Not only was 
the sniper rifle brilliantly camouflaged, but the entire apron of branches on 
which the sniper reposed was fake. It was incredibly lifelike, admittedly—the 
work of an arboreal Madame Tussaud—but up close he could see that it was an 
artificial construction attached to the trunk by means of metal rigging, an 
arrangement of steel-wire rope, rings, and bolts, all spray-painted an olive 
drab. It was the kind of equipment that no individual had access to, and only a 
very few agencies. Consular Operations was one.
He reached for the rigging and, with a sudden yank, he released the central 
eyebolt; the steel cable slithered free, and the sniper's nest was suddenly 
unanchored.
He heard a muffled curse, and the whole nest dropped through the tree, breaking 
branches as it tumbled to the ground.
Finally, Janson could make out the green-clad body of the sniper beneath him. He 
was a slender young man—some sort of prodigy, no doubt, but momentarily stunned 
by the fall. Janson lowered himself to the ground in a controlled drop, landing 
with his legs spread over the sniper.
Now he wrenched the rifle from the marksman's hands.
"Damn!" the curse came out like a whisper. It was light in timbre, the voice of 
a youth.
Janson found himself holding a forty-inch rifle, hard to maneuver at such close 
distances. A modified M40A1, which was a bolt-action sniper rifle hand made at 
Quantico by specially trained armorers of the Marine Corps Marksmanship Unit.
"The tables are turned," Janson said softly. He reached down and knotted the 
sniper's collar around his neck, ripping off the radio communicator. He was 
still prone. Janson noticed his short, spiky brown hair, his slender legs and 
arms: not a formidable specimen of manhood at first glance. He started to pat 
the sniper down, removing a small .32-caliber Beretta Tomcat pistol from his 
waistband.
"Get your stinking hands off me," the sniper hissed, and rolled over looking at 
Janson with a look of the purest venom.
"Christ," Janson said, involuntarily. "You're—"
"What?" A defiant glare.
Janson just shook his head. The sniper reared up and Janson responded with 
force, shoving the sniper back down to the ground. Then, once more the two 
locked eyes.
The sniper was lithe-bodied, agile, surprisingly strong—and a woman.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Like a wild animal, she lunged at him yet again, frantically trying to retrieve 
the Beretta pistol in his hand. Janson deftly stepped back and pointedly pulled 
back the slide lock with his thumb.
Her gaze kept returning to the Beretta.
"You're overmatched, Janson," she said. "No embassy lardasses this time. See, 
this time they cared enough to send the very best." Her voice had the twang of 
the Appalachian backcountry, and though she was trying to sound conversational, 
the tension showed.
Was the bravado meant for him, or for her? Was she trying to demoralize him, or 
ginning up her own courage?
He put on a bland smile. "Now, let me make you a very reasonable proposition: 
You deal, or I kill you."
She snorted. "Think you're lookin' at number forty-seven? In your dreams, old 
man."
"What are you talking about?"
"That would make me number forty-seven." When he did not reply, she added. 
"You've done forty-six people, right? I'm talking sanctioned, in-field 
killings."
Janson's face went cold. The number—which was never a source of pride and 
increasingly a source of anguish—was accurate. But it was also a count that few 
people knew.
"First things first," Janson said. "Who are you?"
"What do you think?" the sniper replied.
"No games." Janson pressed the muzzle of her M40A1 hard into her diaphragm.
She coughed. "Same as you—same as you were."
"Cons Op," Janson ventured.
"You got it."
He hefted the M40A1. At three and a third feet and almost fifteen pounds, it was 
too big and bulky if much repositioning was required; it was for the stationary 
shooter. "Then you're a member of its Sniper Lambda Team."
The woman nodded. "And Lambda always gets its man."
She was telling the truth. And it meant one thing: a beyond-salvage order had 
gone out. Consular Operations had sent a directive to an elite squad of 
specialists: a directive to kill. Terminate with extreme prejudice.
The rifle was obviously well maintained and was, in its own way, a thing of 
beauty. The magazine held five rounds. He opened the chamber and removed a 
cartridge. He gave out a low whistle.
A mystery solved. It was a 458 Whisper, a cartridge made by SSK Industries, 
which propelled a custom six-hundred-grain very-low-drag Winchester magnum. The 
VLD bullets lost velocity slowly, retaining a great deal of energy even at 
distances exceeding a mile. But the feature that had made it irresistible was 
that it launched the bullet at subsonic velocities. It eliminated the cracking 
noise of the supersonic bullet, while the small amount of powder diminished the 
internal detonation. Hence the name: Whisper. Someone just a few yards away 
would hear nothing.
"OK, sport," Janson said, impressed despite himself by her cool. "I need to know 
the location of the others. And don't bullshit me." With a few quick movements, 
he stripped the M40A1 of its magazine, and threw it high into the tree's tangled 
branches, where it lodged, once more a branch among branches to the casual 
viewer. Then he leveled the Beretta at her head.
She glared at him for a few long moments. He returned her look with complete 
impassivity: he would kill her, without compunction. Only luck had prevented her 
from killing him.
"There's one other guy," she started.
Janson looked at her appraisingly. She was an antagonist, but with luck, she 
could be turned into an asset, someone he could use as a shield and as a source 
of information. She knew where the fortified positions were, where the members 
of the sniper team were nested.
She was also a glib and effortless liar.
With his gun hand, he reached over and cuffed her hard on the side of the head.
"Let's not begin this relationship with lies, sweetheart," he said. "As far as 
I'm concerned, you're just a killer. You almost shot me, and you endangered 
lives of noncombatants in the effort."
"Bullshit," she drawled. "I knew just what the margin of error was at all times. 
Four feet in any direction from your torso midline. None of my shots exceeded 
that error margin, and the field of fire was clean before each trigger pull. 
Nobody was in jeopardy. Except you."
The geometry she described was consistent with what he had observed: that much 
was probably the truth. But to achieve that tight a cluster from more than five 
hundred yards away made her an off-the-charts marksman.
A phenomenon.
"OK. Axial formation. It would be a waste of manpower to station another 
marksman within fifty yards of you. But I also know there are at least three 
others spread out in the vicinity. Not to mention whoever's on the Wilmut-Dixon 
crane … Plus at least two others using tree cover."
"If you say so."
"I admire your discretion," Janson said. "But if you're not any use to me alive, 
I really can't afford to keep you around." He cocked the Beretta, his forefinger 
curling around the trigger, testing its resistance.
"OK, OK," she blurted. "I'll deal."
The concession came too quickly. "Forget it, baby. There's no trust." He flipped 
back the safety once more and placed his finger on the trigger, flexing the 
hardened steel. "Ready for your close-up?"
"No, wait," she said. Any vestige of bravado had evaporated. "I'll tell you what 
you want to know. If I'm lying, you'll find out and you can kill me then."
"My game, my rules. You give me the location of the nearest sniper. We approach. 
If you're wrong, you die. If the sniper repositioned himself without notifying 
the team, too bad. You die. If you give me away, you die. Remember, I know the 
systems, the protocols, and the procedures. I probably wrote half of them."
She stood up shakily. "All right, man. Your game, your rules. First thing you 
gotta know is, we're all working as singletons—camouflage requirements ruled out 
partners, so we're all doing our own range finding. Second thing is, we've got 
somebody stationed on the roof over Hanover Terrace."
He flashed on the majestic neoclassical villa facing the park, where many of 
England's grandest citizens made their homes. The blue and white frieze over the 
architrave. The white pillars and cream-colored walls. The marksmen would have 
to be perched behind the balusters. True? No, another lie. He would have been 
dead by now.
"You're not using your head, sport," he said. "A sniper on the balustrade would 
have already taken me out. He'd also be visually exposed to the crew repairing 
the roofs on Cumberland Terrace. You considered the position, and rejected it." 
Once more, he cuffed her hard, and she staggered back a few steps. "Two strikes. 
One more, I kill you."
She lowered her head. "Can't blame a girl for trying," she said under her 
breath.
"Got anyone stationed by Park Road?"
A beat. She knew he knew; prevarication would be pointless. "Ehrenhalt's on the 
minaret," she admitted.
He nodded. "And who's enfilading to your left?"
"Take my range finder," she said. "You don't trust me, you can see for yourself. 
Marksman B is in position three hundred yards northwest." It was a low brick 
structure that housed telecom equipment. "He's on top. The height's not optimal: 
that's why he hasn't been able to get any good shots yet. But if you had tried 
to leave via the Jubilee Gate, you'd be a dead man. There are men on foot on 
Baker Street, Gloucester Street, and York Terrace Way. Strollers with Clocks. 
Two sharpshooters have a complete review of Regent's Canal. And there's a man on 
the roof of Regent's College. We were hoping you'd try to use it as shelter. 
Within two hundred yards, all of us are X-circle accurate—head-shot accurate."
We were hoping you'd try to use it as shelter. He almost had.
Janson mapped out in his head the vertices she had specified: they made sense. 
It was how he would have designed the operation.
Keeping the gun securely in one hand, he looked through her Swarovski 12x50 dual 
range finder scope. The concrete bunker she'd mentioned was exactly the sort of 
structure that dotted the urban landscape, that people saw without seeing. A 
good position. Was there really someone there? It was mostly obscured through 
the leafy canopies, but a few centimeters of concrete were visible. A sniper? He 
dialed up the magnification until he saw—something. A glove? Part of a boot? It 
was impossible to say.
"You're coming with me," Janson announced abruptly, grabbing the sniper's wrist. 
With every lingering moment, the team of marksmen would begin to reevaluate 
probabilities: if they decided that he had left the purview of their axial sight 
lines, they would reposition, and that would change the ground rules altogether.
"I get it," she said. "It's just like at the Hamas encampment in Syria, near 
Qael-Gita. You took one of the sentries hostage, forced him to divulge the 
location of another one, repeated the process, had the perimeter defenses peeled 
off in less than twenty minutes."
"Who the hell have you been talking to?" Janson said, taken aback.
Those operational details were not widely known, even within the organization.
"Oh, you'd be surprised the things I know about you," she said.
He strode down the greenway, dragging her along with him. Her footsteps were 
noisy, deliberately so. "Soundlessly," he said. "Or I'll start to think you're 
not cooperating."
Immediately, her footfalls grew careful, picking out landing spots, avoiding 
leaves and twigs; she had been trained in how to move quietly: every member of 
her team would have received such training.
As they grew nearer to the boundary of Regent's Park, the noise of traffic and 
the smell of exhaust drifted toward them. They were in the heart of London, a 
greensward established almost two centuries before and preserved, lovingly, 
every year since. Would the carefully trimmed grass end up soaked with his 
blood?
They approached the concrete bunker, and Janson placed a finger on his lips. 
"Not a sound," he said. The Beretta remained loosely gripped in his hand.
Now he stooped down, and signaled her to do the same. Atop the low brick 
structure, the marksman was, he could now see, in prone position, the fore end 
of his rifle supported by his left hand. No sniper ever let the barrel rest on 
anything; it distorted the resonance, affecting the shot. He was a picture of 
complete concentration, peering through the scope, using his left elbow as a 
pivot as he moved the field of view slightly. His shoulders were level, the 
rifle butt close to his shoulder pocket. The rifle itself rested in the V of his 
left thumb and forefinger, its weight resting on the palm. Perfect position.
"Victor!" the woman called out suddenly.
The gunman jerked at the sound, swiveled his rifle around, and squeezed off a 
shot, wildly. Janson leaped to one side, lifting the woman with him. Then he 
somersaulted toward the bunker and, with a lightning-fast motion, seized the gun 
by the barrel and jerked it out of the marksman's grasp. As the man hurriedly 
reached for his side arm, Janson swung the scoped rifle like a bat, connecting 
with the man's head. He slumped forward, prone as before but now unconscious.
The woman propelled herself with all her coiled force toward Janson's gun hand. 
She wanted the Beretta—it would change everything. At the last fraction of a 
second, Janson dodged her outstretched arms. She seized his wet jacket instead, 
and hammered her knee toward his groin. As he torqued his pelvis back 
defensively, she flexed her wrist into a slap block, and sent the Beretta flying 
through the air. Both took a few steps back.
The woman assumed the classic military stance: her left arm was out and 
perpendicular to her body, a barrier to a rush. A blade struck at the arm would 
hit only skin and glance off bone; the major muscles, arteries, and tendons were 
on the side facing inward, protected from attack. Her right arm was extended 
straight down, and held a small knife; it had been boot-holstered, and he had 
not even seen her draw it. She was good, faster and more agile than he was.
If he lunged forward, her posture made it clear, she would peel his arm with her 
blade: an effective counter. And straight from the manual.
She was well trained, which, oddly, reassured him. He choreographed the next ten 
seconds in his head, preparing a counter-response to her probable actions. The 
fact that she was well trained was her weakness. He knew what she would do 
because he knew what she had been taught. He had taught enough people those very 
maneuvers. But after twenty-five years in the field, he had a far richer 
repertory of moves, of experiences, of reflexes. It would make all the 
difference.
"My poppa used to tell me, 'Don't bring a knife to a gunfight,'" she said. 
"Don't know about that. I was never the worse for having a backup blade." She 
gripped the knife handle like a fiddle bow, loosely but firmly; she was 
obviously somebody who knew how to wield it with slashing force.
Suddenly, he fell forward, grabbing her extended arm; she raised her knife hand, 
as he had predicted, and he delivered a crushing blow to its wrist. The median 
nerve was vulnerable about an inch from the heel of her hand; his precisely 
directed blow caused her knife hand to open involuntarily.
Now he grabbed the weapon she had released—yet at the same moment, her other 
hand shot out toward his shoulder. She dug her thumb deep into his trapezius 
muscle, jolting the nerves that ran beneath and temporarily paralyzing his arm 
and shoulder. A bolt of agony shot through the area. Her fighting stance was 
awesome, the triumph of training over instinct. Now he swept his foot toward her 
right knee, causing intense pain and destabilizing her footing. She toppled 
backward, but his own leg sweep wrong-footed him, and he ended up falling on top 
of her.
He could feel the heat of her sweaty body beneath him, feel her muscles tense as 
she squirmed and thrashed like a practiced wrestler. With his powerful thighs, 
he pinned her legs down, but her arms were capable of doing him serious damage. 
He could feel her striking at his brachial plexus, the bundle of nerves that 
reached from the top of his shoulder to the vertebrae of his neck. He hammered 
his elbows outward, and pinned her arms to the ground, relying on his greater 
weight and brute strength.
Her face, inches from his, was contorted in rage and, so it seemed, disgust with 
herself for having allowed him to gain the stronger position.
He saw the muscles of her neck flex, saw she intended to break his nose by 
butting with her forehead, and pressed his forehead to her own, immobilizing it. 
Her breath was warm against his face.
"You really want to kill me, don't you," Janson said, almost with amusement. It 
was not a question.
"Shit, no," she said with heavy sarcasm. "This is just foreplay as far as I'm 
concerned." Struggling mightily, she thrashed beneath him, and he only barely 
maintained his position.
"So what did they tell you? About me?"
She inhaled and exhaled heavily for a few moments, catching her breath. "You're 
a rogue," she said. "Somebody who's betrayed everything that ever mattered in 
his life, somebody who murdered for money. Lowest kind of dirtbag there is."
"Bullshit."
"Bullshit's what you are. Double-crossed everything and everybody you could. 
Sold out the agency, sold out your country. Good agents are dead because of 
you."
"That right? They say why I went bad?"
"You fucking snapped, or maybe you were always a piece of shit. Don't matter. 
Every day you live is a day when our lives are in danger."
"That's what they told you?"
"It's the truth," she spat. Another writhing attempt to throw him off her passed 
through her body like a powerful shudder. "Shit," she said. "At least you don't 
have bad breath. I should be grateful for that, huh? So what's on the agenda? 
You gonna kill me, or is it just gonna be a lot of dry humping?"
"Don't flatter yourself," he said. "A sharp cookie like you—you believe 
everything they tell you?" He grunted. "No shame in it. I did once." Their 
foreheads were still pressed together, nose to nose, mouth to mouth: the strange 
and unsettling intimacy of lethal combatants.
Her eyes narrowed to slits. "You got another story? I'm listening. Can't do 
anything else." But she made another convulsive effort to shake him.
"Try this on. I was set up. I served in Consular Operations for over two 
decades. Look, you seem to know a lot about me. Ask yourself if what they've 
told you about me really fits the picture."
She said nothing for a moment. "Give me something real," she said. "If you 
didn't do what they say you did, give me something to show you're telling me the 
truth. I realize I'm not in any position to negotiate. I just want to know."
For the first time, she spoke without hostility or japery. Was it something in 
his own voice that gave her pause, that made her wonder if he was the villain 
she'd been told he was?
He inhaled deeply, his chest expanding next to hers: again, an odd, unwanted 
intimacy. He felt her relax beneath him.
"OK," she said. "Get offa me. I ain't gonna rear, ain't gonna run—I know you'd 
get to the rifle first. I'm just going to listen."
He made sure her body was completely slack and then—a crucial decision, a moment 
of trust in the midst of deadly combat—rolled off her in a quick movement. He 
had a destination in mind: the Beretta, now nestled under a nearby ash tree. He 
grabbed it and stowed it in his front waistband.
Looking wobbly and uncertain, the woman rose to her feet. Then she smiled 
coolly. "Is that a gun in your pocket, or—"
"It's a gun in my pocket," he said, cutting her off. "Let me tell you something. 
I was once like you. A weapon. Aimed and discharged by someone else. I thought I 
had an autonomous intelligence, made my own decisions. The truth was otherwise: 
I was a weapon in the hands of another."
"That's just a bunch of word music as far as I'm concerned," she said. "I'm into 
specifics, not generalities."
"Fine." He took a deep breath, dredging up an old memory. "A penetration 
identified in Stockholm … "
He could picture the man now. Blunt, pudgy features, a soft-in-the-middle, 
sedentary soul. And scared, so scared. Dark smudges under his eyes spoke of 
sleeplessness and exhaustion. Through Janson's scope, those features formed a 
rictus of anxiety; the subject made quiet popping noises with his lips, an 
absurd, nervous tic. Why so scared, if this was a typical contact? He had seen 
such contacts, men going about their business, making a dead drop, the twentieth 
or thirtieth dead drop of the year, with a bored and vacant expression. This 
man's face was different—filled with self-loathing and fear. And when the Swede 
turned toward the other man, the putative Russian contact, his face read not 
greed or gratitude but repugnance.
"Stockholm," she said. "May of 1983. You witnessed the subject make contact with 
the KGB control, and took him out. For a nonspecialist, it was a pretty neat 
shot: from an apartment rooftop to a park bench two blocks away."
"Stop the tape," he said. Her knowledge of these things was unnerving. "You've 
described it as I did in my report. Yet how did I know he was a penetration 
agent? I'd been told he was. And the KGB agent? I recognized the face, but that, 
too, was a datum I'd been provided with by operations control. What if it were 
wrong?"
"You mean he wasn't KGB."
"In fact, he was. Sergei Kuzmin was his name. But the man who met with him was 
frightened, blackmailed into the meeting. He had no interest in providing the 
KGB with anything useful. He was going to try to persuade the man that he had 
nothing further to offer, that his diplomatic rank was too low to make him a 
valuable asset. He was going to tell him to buzz off, damn the consequences."
"How do you know?"
"I spoke to his wife. That wasn't part of my mission instructions."
"That's so random, man. And how did you know she spoke the truth?"
"I just did," he responded, shrugging. It was not a question that a highly 
experienced field agent would have to ask. "Tutored intuition, call it. It's not 
a hundred percent reliable—but accurate enough."
"How come this wasn't part of your report?"
"Because it wasn't news to those who designed the mission," he said coldly. "The 
planners had another game in mind. Two objectives, both fulfilled. One, to send 
a message to any other member of the diplomatic forces that entanglement with 
the enemy could carry a steep price. I was just ringing up the sale."
"Two objectives, you said. The other?"
"The young Swede had already given dossiers to the KGB. By killing him, we 
conveyed the message that the information leak was taken seriously—that valuable 
information had been transferred. In fact, it was planted. Carefully designed 
disinformation. But it became validated by the man's blood, and KGB analysts 
bought it."
"So that was a win, too."
"Yes, within narrowly defined parameters. Kuzmin actually got a promotion out of 
the whole thing. Pull the camera back, though, and you ask another question: Did 
it matter? The KGB was misled in this particular, but with what ultimate 
consequences, if any? And was it worth the man's life? He had a wife. Had he 
lived, they would have had children, probably grandchildren. Decades of 
Christmases and glogg and skiing vacations and—" Janson broke off. "Sorry," he 
said. "I didn't mean to make heavy weather of this. None of it will make much 
sense to you, not at your age. But there are instances when your instructions 
amount to a web of lies. And in some cases, the person giving you the 
instructions is perfectly unaware of that fact. I expect that's the case here."
"Jesus," she said softly. "No, I do understand. I do. You're telling me they had 
you take this guy out—without ever letting you in on the real reasons for the 
job."
"They had me kill Kuzmin's contact as part of a manipulation. And one of the 
people being manipulated was me. What a directive specifies and what a directive 
signifies are two different things."
"Jesus, this is making my head swim worse than any goddamn sucker punch."
"I don't mean to confuse you. Just to make you think."
"Comes to the same thing," she said. "But why? Why would they target you?"
"You think I haven't been asking myself that?"
"You were a legend in Consular Operations, especially among the younger people. 
You've got no idea, Janson. No idea how demoralizing it was when they told us 
you'd turned traitor. They'd never do that on a whim."
"On a whim? No, that's not how it works. Most people lie to save themselves, or 
better themselves, anyway. Maybe they claim credit for an idea that wasn't 
really theirs. Or they shift blame from themselves to another. Or they luck out, 
somehow, and let on that the outcome was the result of skill. That's not the 
kind of lie that worries me. The kind of lie that worries me is the 'noble lie.' 
The lie spread for higher purposes. The sacrifice of small men for larger ends." 
He spoke bitterly. "The liars who lie in the interest of the greater good, or 
what they decree to be that greater good."
"Whoa," she said. She made a whizzing noise, passed a hand over her head like a 
discus. "You're losing me. If somebody's scapegoating you, they've got to have a 
good reason."
"What they believe to be a good reason. A good reason that might strike others 
of us as an administrative convenience."
"Lookit," she said. "Earlier, you said something about your profile. That 
happens to be something I know a lot about. Well, you're right, now that you say 
it. Something about the story doesn't make sense. Either you weren't as good as 
you were supposed to have been or you're not as bad as they're saying you are." 
She took a step closer to him.
"Let me ask you something. Does Lambda have operational authorization from 
Whitehall?"
"Wasn't time to cross the diplomatic t's. It's all extraterritorial."
"I see," Janson said. "Then you've got a decision to make."
"But our directive … "
"It's my life, of course. I have an interest. But it's yours, too. A lesson I 
learned the hard way."
She looked confused. "OK, take a peek through the range finder again. Marksman C 
you'll find in the really tall tree near Primrose Hill Gate."
As he lifted the Swarovski dual scope to his eyes, parsing the foliage, Angus 
Fielding's words echoed in his head. Are you so confident about your own 
government? Indeed, there was a certain logic there. What if Cons Ops, perhaps 
working with an agent-in-place on Novak's staff, had been responsible for the 
assassination? Wouldn't that help explain America's official refusal to have any 
direct involvement in the operation? But then who had set him up with the 
sixteen million dollars? And if Cons Ops, or some other U.S. government agency, 
had arranged Novak's death—why? Why was Novak seen as such a threat? This, 
Janson knew, was the crucial piece of the puzzle—a puzzle he had to solve not 
only for his own sense of justice but for his own physical survival.
His thoughts came to a halt as a crushing blow landed on the side of his head. 
He reeled backward, stunned, bewildered.
It was the woman. A ridged steel rod in her hand, the kind used in reinforced 
concrete. On one end it was wet with his own blood. She had wrenched it from the 
stack of construction materials behind the bunker a few feet away.
"Like the lady says, every tool is a weapon if you hold it right." Another 
clout, this one just above his ear, the bar bouncing off with the sickening thud 
of metal against bone. The world around him seemed to waver.
"They warned us about your lies," she growled. His vision was blurred, a red 
haze, but the expression on her face was unmistakable: pure immaculate loathing.
Dammit! At a time when he should have been fully vigilant, he had allowed her to 
lull him with her lies, her pretense of sympathy; in fact, she had merely been 
biding her time, awaiting an opportunity. And playing him for a fool.
Sprawled on the ground, he could hear the blood pounding in his head, like a 
steam engine. Groggily, he reached for the Beretta, but it was too late. She was 
racing away from him at top speed.
The impact of the rebar had caused a mild concussion at the least; it would take 
him a few minutes to struggle back to his feet. And by then, she would be gone. 
An enemy, an asset—gone.
He felt a wave of nausea welling from his gut, and a sense, too, of emptiness. 
Whom could he trust? Which sides had taken arms against him?
Which side was he on?
At this point, he could only say: his own. Could he expect allies? Did he 
deserve them? The sniper believed that he was guilty; would he have done 
anything different in her place?
He glanced at his watch, tried to rise, and blacked out.


"Annunciate radio check."
"Annunciate, annunciate. All secure. Over."
Vietnam was seldom quiet. Combat zones were a cascade of sounds and sights. 
Artillery pounded, parachute flares whistled as they illuminated the night sky 
like a hundred kliegs. There was the streak of tracer bullets, the whomp of 
choppers, the winking lights of jets. Soon, it was all as meaningless as the 
bleating horns and motors of rush-hour traffic. At the same time, their 
commanding officer had helped them develop a sense of what wasn't routine.
Dialing his scope furiously, zooming through the marsh grasses and palms, Janson 
saw the clearing with two hutches. There was a cooking fire in front of one, and 
two VCs squatting in front of them. Were there trip-flares? Three days earlier, 
Mendez had blundered across one; within seconds, an illumination round was 
automatically fired—a loudly hissing magnesium flare, which drifted slowly 
toward earth on a tiny parachute, casting an eerie white glow on them all. They 
could afford no such mistake now.
Janson radioed Demarest. At least two Victor Charlies identified. Three hundred 
meters away. Awaiting instructions.
Awaiting instructions.
Awaiting instructions.
There was a crackle of static from the radio headphones, and Demarest's voice 
came online: "Handle contents with care. You bring them two clicks north of base 
camp, and pretend they're Waterford crystal. No breaks, bruises, or scrapes. 
Think you can manage that?"
"Sir?"
"Capture with kindness, Lieutenant. Don't speak English? I can say it in seven 
other languages if you prefer."
"No, sir. I understand, sir. But I'm not sure just how we'll manage—"
"You'll find a way, Janson."
"I appreciate the confidence, sir, but—"
"Not at all. You see, I know that I would find a way. And, like I say, I've got 
a feeling that you and I are a lot alike."


His finger groped the ground: trimmed grass, not jungle vine. He forced his eyes 
open again, took in the green vistas of Regent's Park, looked at his watch. Two 
minutes had elapsed. The retention of consciousness itself would be a supreme 
effort, yet one at which he must not fail.
The thoughts that had coursed through his brain were drowned out by another, 
more urgent one: There was no time.
The collapse of the axial array must already have been detected, simply by the 
absence of radio signals. Others would proceed into the area. His vision 
swimming, his head ringing with pulsing, pounding agony, he crashed through an 
obstacle course of cone-shaped yews until he had made his way to Hanover Gate.
A black cab was letting out an elderly couple as he staggered to the curb. They 
were American, and slow-moving.
"No," the bloated and dyspeptic-looking woman was saying, "you don't tip. This 
is England. They don't tip in England." Garish red-orange lipstick ringed her 
mouth, drawing attention to the vertical creases of age above and below.
"Sure they do," her husband groused. "What do you know? You don't know anything. 
Always got an opinion, though." He was feebly looking through the unfamiliar 
currency in his wallet, with the care and deliber-ateness of an archaeologist 
prizing apart ancient papyrus. "Sylvia, do you have a ten-pound note?"
The woman opened her purse and, with agonizing slowness, began peering into it.
Janson watched with mounting frustration, for there were no other cabs visible 
on the street.
"Hey," Janson said to the American couple. "Let me pay for it."
The two Americans looked at him with frank suspicion.
"No, really," Janson said. The American couple kept moving in and out of focus. 
"It's no problem. I'm in a generous mood today. Just … let's get a move on."
The two exchanged glances. "Sylvia, the man here said he'll pay … "
"I heard what the man said," the woman replied peevishly. "Tell him thank you."
"So what's the catch?" the old man said, his thin lips drawn into a half frown.
"The catch is, you get out, now."
The two lumbered to the sidewalk, and stood there blinking. Janson slid inside 
the roomy vehicle, one of the classic black cabs made by Manganese Bronze 
Holdings PLC.
"Wait a minute," the woman called out. "Our bags. I had two shopping bags … " 
She spoke slowly and petulantly.
Janson found two plastic bags emblazoned with the Marks & Spencer logo, opened 
the door, and heaved them at her feet.
"Where you bound, guy?" the driver asked. Then he looked at Janson through the 
rearview mirror and winced. "Got yourself a nasty gash there."
"Looks worse than it is," Janson murmured.
"You better not get any claret on my upholstery," the driver groused.
Janson pushed a hundred-pound note through the glass partition.
"That's a bit of all right," the driver said, his tone suddenly shifting. 
"You're the boss, I'm the hoss, crack the whip, I'll make the trip." He seemed 
pleased with his taxi doggerel.
Janson told the driver the two stops he had to make.
"Bob's your uncle," the driver said.
The pounding in his head had the force and regularity of a jackhammer. Janson 
pulled out a handkerchief and tied a bandana around his scalp, trying to staunch 
the seepage of blood. "Can we go now?" He looked out the rear windshield of the 
cab—which suddenly spiderwebbed in the lower left corner, near his head. A 
subsonic bullet remained lodged in the laminated glass.
"Mother of Christ!" shouted the driver.
"Just floor it," Janson said unnecessarily, hunching down in his seat.
"Bob's your fucking uncle," the driver said, as the engine roared to life.
"He is if you say he is." Janson pushed another hundred-pound note through the 
partition.
"Am I gonna have any more problems?" the driver asked, looking dubiously at the 
banknote. They were now at Marylebone Road, merging into fast-moving traffic.
"Not at all," said Janson grimly. "Trust me on this. It's going to be a walk in 
the park."


She was looking at him. He wasn't imagining it.
Kazuo Onishi glanced across the smoky singles bar and then looked back at the 
sudsy inch of beer remaining in his mug. She was stunning: long blond hair, a 
pert nose, a mischievous smile. What was she doing alone at the bar?
"Kaz, is that honey on the bar stool hitting on you?"
So it had to be true: even his friend Dexter had noticed.
Onishi smiled. "Why do you sound surprised?" he smirked. "The ladies know a true 
stud muffin when they see one."
"Must be why you've gone home alone the last half a dozen times we've been 
here," said Dexter Fillmore, a bespectacled black man whose own luck wasn't much 
better. The two had known each other since their days at Caltech; now, they 
never discussed work—since what they both did was classified, that issue simply 
did not arise—but they had few secrets when it came to affairs of the heart, or 
just plain affairs. "I'm an eligible bachelor, I make a good living: the ladies 
should be taking a number and getting in line," Onishi regularly complained.
"Would that be an irrational number or an imaginary one?" Fillmore would 
snicker.
But now it looked as though Kazuo Onishi had himself a live one.
The woman's third glance definitely had some linger to it.
"Call in the referee," Onishi said, " 'cause we're looking at a knockout."
"Come on, you're always saying how much a girl's personality matters," Dexter 
protested playfully. "What could be more superficial than to make judgments from 
across the room?"
"Aw, she's got a great personality," Onishi said. "You can just tell."
"Yeah," said his friend. "I bet you love the way her personality fills that 
tight sweater of hers."
And now the woman was walking toward him, daintily holding a cosmopolitan. His 
luck was definitely changing.
"Somebody sitting here?" she asked, pointing to an empty chair near Onishi. She 
sat down and placed her cocktail next to his beer mug, then signaled a waitress 
for refills. "OK, I don't usually do this, but I was waiting for my ex-boyfriend 
who still has issues, if you know what I'm talking about, and I swear, the 
bartender here starts hitting on me. I mean, what's up with that?"
"I can't imagine," said Onishi, looking innocent. "So where's the boyfriend?"
"Ex," she said pointedly. "Just got a call on my cell phone, said a sudden 
emergency at work came up. So whatever. Trust me, I wasn't looking forward to 
it, anyway. I think the only way he's going to stop calling me is for him to get 
a new girlfriend." She turned to Onishi and smiled a dazzling smile. "Or for me 
to get a new boyfriend."
Dexter Fillmore finished his beer and coughed. "I'm going to get a pack of 
Camels. You guys want anything?"
"Get me one," Onishi said.
After Fillmore left, the blonde turned to Onishi and made a face. "You smoke 
Camels?"
"Not big on smoking, huh?"
"That's not it. But, please, we can do better than that slot-machine shit. You 
ever try a Balkan Sobranie? Now that's a real cigarette."
"A what?"
She opened her handbag and pulled out a metal tin. It contained a row of black 
unaltered cigarettes with gold tips. "Fresh from a diplomatic pouch," she said. 
She handed him one. "Try it," she said. A lighter materialized in her hand as 
well.
A girl who's good with her hands, Onishi thought as he took a deep drag. 
Promising. He was also relieved that she hadn't slipped in the what-do-you-do 
question yet. He always answered that he was a "systems administrator for the 
government," and nobody ever asked further, though if they did he had a 
practiced line about "platform interoperability" involving the Departments of 
Agriculture and Transportation. It was so stupefying that it was guaranteed to 
repel further inquiries. But the real reason he was glad she hadn't asked was 
that the one thing he did not want to think about was his job. His real job. In 
recent days it had become so stressful that his shoulders began to ache as soon 
as he went to his office. What a string of bad luck they'd had. Fucking 
unspeakable. All that sweat, all those years—and the goddamn Mobius Program was 
imploding. He needed to get lucky in some other department of life. Hell, he 
deserved to get lucky.
The beautiful blonde's eyes lingered on his face as the thick smoke filled his 
lungs. Something about him seemed to fascinate her. A new song came on: the one 
from the soundtrack of that big new World War II flick. Onishi loved that song. 
For a moment, he felt he might fly away with happiness.
He coughed. "Strong," he said.
"It's what cigarettes used to be like," she said. She spoke with a very faint 
accent, but he couldn't tell what kind. "Now be a man. Suck it in."
He took another drag.
"Special, isn't it?" she said.
"A little harsh," he said, tentatively.
"Not harsh, rich. I swear with most American cigarettes you might as well be 
smoking typing paper."
Onishi nodded, but in truth he was beginning to feel more than a little dizzy. 
It must really be strong tobacco. He felt himself flushing, and starting to 
sweat.
"Oh my poor dear, look at you," the blonde said. "You seem like you could use 
some fresh air."
"Might do some good," Onishi agreed.
"Come on," she said. "Let's go for a walk together." He started to reach for his 
wallet but she put down a twenty, and he was feeling too faint to demur. Dexter 
would be wondering what happened to him, but he could explain later.
Outdoors, in the cooler air, the dizzy feeling persisted.
She reached out and squeezed his hand reassuringly. In the streetlights, she 
looked even more beautiful—unless that was more evidence of his dizzy state.
"You don't seem so steady on your feet, you know," she said.
"No," he said, and he knew he had a silly grin on his face but could do nothing 
about it.
She made a tsking noise of mock reproach. "Big hunk like you, laid low by a 
Balkan Sobranie?"
Blondie thought he was a big hunk? That was encouraging. A major positive data 
point in the multivariate mess that was his sex life. His grin became wider.
At the same time, he found his thoughts growing oddly scrambled, though he also 
found it hard to care.
"Let's get in my car and go for a drive," she said, and her voice sounded as if 
it were coming from miles away and something inside him was saying, Maybe this 
isn't a good idea, Kaz, and he found he could do nothing but say yes.
He would go with the beautiful stranger. He would do what she said. He would be 
hers.
He was only dimly aware of her smoothly shifting the gears of her blue 
convertible and driving off somewhere with the controlled movements of somebody 
who had a schedule to keep.
"I'm going to show you the time of your life, Kazuo," she said, her hands 
brushing his crotch as she reached over to lock his door.
A thought glinted and flashed: I never told her my name. It was followed by 
another thought: Something is very wrong with me. And then all such thoughts 
disappeared into the dark void that was now his mind.
PART THREE
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Hasid, nervously clutching his battered hard-sided briefcase, walked over to 
the railed edge of the upper foredeck in an old man's shuffle. His eyes were 
vaguely fearful, owing more, it seemed, to his temperament than to his 
particular circumstances aboard the Stena Line HSS. The giant twin-hull ferry 
took just four hours to travel from Harwich to Hoek van Holland, where special 
trains, stationed right alongside the ferry, brought passengers to Amsterdam's 
Centraal Station. The high-speed ship did all it could to make the trip 
comfortable: on board were several bars, a couple of restaurants, a number of 
shops, and a movie theater. The Hasidic man with the battered case did not have 
the appearance of someone who would avail himself of these diversions, however. 
He was a recognizable type: the diamond dealer—could there be any doubt of 
it?—who had no interest in such luxuries as he purveyed, like a teetotaler 
running a distillery. Other passengers glanced at him and looked away. It 
wouldn't do to stare. One would not want the Hasid to get the wrong idea.
Now the salty breeze ruffled the man's full white beard and earlocks, his black 
woolen coat and trousers. The round black hat remained firmly planted on his 
head as the man continued to take in the pewter sky and the gray-green seas. The 
vista wasn't inspiring, but the Hasid seemed to find comfort in it.
A figure like him, Janson knew, became invisible by virtue of standing out. If 
the spirit gum on his cheeks itched, and the woolen cloak was uncomfortably hot, 
it was easy to produce the low-grade anxiety that his role called for. He let 
the breeze cool him, dry his sweat. There wasn't any reason to doubt that he was 
who his passport said he was; from time to time, he took out a small, 
plastic-encased photograph of the late Rabbi Schneerson, considered by many 
Hasids to be the messiah, or mosiach, and regarded it lovingly. Such details 
mattered when one was in character.
He turned around slowly, hearing the footfalls of someone approaching him. His 
stomach dropped as he took in the man's round-brimmed hat and severe black garb. 
It was a Hasid—a real one. A fellow Hasid, he told himself urgently. You are who 
you pretend to be—it was an honored koan of spycraft. Another, though, was not 
to be an idiot about it.
The other man, shorter than Janson, and perhaps in his early forties, smiled at 
him. "Voos hurst zich?" he said, bowing his head a little. His hair was reddish, 
his eyes a watery blue beneath plastic National Health spectacles. A small 
leather portfolio was tucked beneath an arm.
Janson bobbed his head, clutching his briefcase, and gave him a cautiously 
friendly smile, a smile constrained by the imperfect plasticity of the facial 
adhesive he had employed. How to respond? There were people who had a gift for 
acquiring new languages, sometimes with uncanny fluency; Alan Demarest was one. 
Janson, though he had decent German and French from his days as a student, and a 
certain amount of Czech, gleaned from his Czech-speaking mother, was not among 
them. Now, he racked his brain, trying to dredge up some scrap of Yiddish. It 
was an eventuality he should have foreseen. Rather than venture a simpering 
"sha-lom," he would be safest discouraging any conversation. He had a fleeting 
fantasy of hurling the inconvenient interloper over the side. After a moment, he 
gestured toward his throat, and shook his head. "Laryngitis," he whispered, in 
some approximation of an East End accent.
"Ir fill zich besser?" the man said with a kindly look. He was a lonely soul, 
undeterred in his attempt to bond with someone he took to be spiritual kin.
Janson coughed explosively. "Sorry," he whispered. "Very contagious."
The other man took a few steps back, alarmed. He bowed again, clasping his hands 
together. "Sholem aleichem. Peace and blessings be upon you," he said, and 
shakily raised a hand in farewell, retreating politely but swiftly.
Once more, Janson surrendered himself to the cooling head wind. We know more 
than we know, Demarest used to admonish. Janson believed that it was true in 
this case—that he could make progress if only he could properly assemble the 
data points he already had.
He knew that a covert branch of the U.S. government sought his death. That a 
staggering sum had, through elaborate electronic manipulations, been deposited 
in his account. That the result was to create a perception that he had been paid 
to kill Novak.
Could he put that money to use in some way? A voice inside him cautioned him not 
to—not yet. Not while its true origins remained mysterious. It could prove 
crucial as evidence. And—the possibility gnawed at him—it could, in some 
high-tech fashion, be booby-trapped so that any attempt at withdrawal would 
notify his enemies of his location. Which simply returned him to the question of 
who these enemies might be.
Whose side are you on, Maria Lang? Before boarding, he had once again tried to 
contact her, without success. Was she part of a murderous intrigue? Or had she 
been kidnapped, even killed—a victim of the intrigue that had cost Peter Novak 
his life? Janson had called upon an old friend of his who lived in Manhattan—a 
veteran of the intelligence services, now retired—to keep a lookout for her at 
the New York offices of the Liberty Foundation, where Lang ostensibly was based. 
So far, there had been no sign of her having returned to the Fortieth Street 
building. She had to be somewhere else—but where?
Then, too, Janson found it as curious as Fielding had that the news of Novak's 
death continued to go unreported. As far as the general public knew, none of 
it—not the kidnapping, not the killing—had even happened. Was something afoot, 
some plan involving insiders at the Liberty Foundation, that made it inopportune 
to divulge the momentous tragedy? Yet how long did they really think they could 
conceal such a thing? Janson knew of rumors that Deng Xiaoping's death had been 
covered up for more than eight days, while the matter of succession was 
resolved: the regime decided it could not risk even a brief period of public 
uncertainty. Was something similar at stake with the Liberty Foundation? Novak's 
enormous wealth, or most of it, was already bound up with the Liberty 
Foundation. Therefore it was not clear that his passing should directly affect 
its finances. At the same time, Grigori Berman told him that the wire transfer 
had originated from Amsterdam, specifically from a Liberty Foundation account of 
Peter Novak's. Who within the Foundation might have been able to arrange that?
Novak was a powerful man, and his enemies would be powerful as well. He had to 
accept that Novak's enemies were his enemies, too. And, the most infernal part 
of the infernal equation, they could be anyone. They could be anywhere. 
Fielding, before he turned, had spoken incisively about Novak's opponents. The 
"oligarchs" of corrupt plutocratic regimes, especially those of Eastern Europe, 
could have found common interest with a cabal of planners within the United 
States who had regarded Novak's growing influence with dismay and envy. Ask 
yourself why America is so hated: Andres's words. The answers were complex, 
encompassing the rancor and resentment of those who felt displaced by its 
dominance. Yet America was no toothless innocent: its efforts to protect its 
global preeminence could be ruthless indeed. Members of its foreign-policy 
establishment might well feel threatened by the actions of a truly benevolent 
figure, simply because those actions were beyond its control. Fielding: Everyone 
knew that he'd spurned America's advances, that he'd angered its foreign-affairs 
establishment by steering his own course. His only polestar was his own 
conscience. Who could predict the rage of Washington's planners—shortsighted 
unilateralists blinded by a zeal for control they mistook for patriotism? This 
was not America's best face, not the better angels of its nature. But it was 
sheer naivete to pretend that the establishment was incapable of such actions. 
Lieutenant Commander Alan Demarest, he sometimes reflected, believed himself to 
be a true American. Janson had long considered that a noxious figment of 
self-delusion. Yet what if the Demarests of the world were right? What if they 
did represent not America, no, but a strain of America, an America that 
foreigners in troubled lands were more likely to encounter than most? Janson 
closed his eyes but could not banish the piercing, vivid memories that 
transfixed and haunted him even now.


"No, don't bring them in," the lieutenant commander had told Janson. Faintly, 
even in the weather-befouled headphones, he could hear choral music. "I'll come 
out there."
"Sir," Janson replied. "There's no need. They're securely bound, as you 
requested. The prisoners are unharmed but immobilized."
"Which I'm sure took some doing. I'm not surprised you rose to the challenge, 
Janson."
"Transport would not present any difficulties," Janson said. "Sir."
"Tell you what," Demarest said. "Take them to Candle Bog."
Candle Bog was what the Americans had named a clearing in the jungle four clicks 
north of the main army encampment. There had been a skirmish there a month 
earlier, when American sentinels came upon a couple of hooches and three men 
they identified as VC couriers. One American was shot in the engagement; all 
three Viet Cong were eventually killed. An injured member of the American party 
had corrupted the Vietnamese name of the area, Quan Ho Bok, to Candle Bog, and 
the appellation stuck.
Transporting the prisoners to Candle Bog took two hours. Demarest was waiting 
for them when they arrived. He was in a jeep, with his executive officer, Tom 
Bewick, behind the wheel.
Janson saw that the prisoners were thirsty; because their arms were bound to 
their sides, he held his canteen to their lips, dividing its contents between 
the two. Despite their terror and uncertainty, the prisoners slurped the water 
down gratefully. He let them rest on the ground between the two hooches.
"Good work, Janson," Demarest said.
"Humane treatment of prisoners of war, just like the Geneva Convention says," 
Janson replied. "If only the enemy followed our lead. Sir."
Demarest chuckled. "You're funny, schoolboy." He turned to his XO. "Tom," he 
said. "Could you … do the honors?"
Bewick's tawny face looked as if it were carved of wood, with crude gashes for 
eyes and mouth. His nose was small, narrow, and almost sharp in appearance. The 
overall effect was reinforced by the streaky tan that somehow suggested wood 
grain. His movements were swift and efficient, but jerky rather than fluid. It 
added to Janson's sense that Bewick had become a mannequin of Demarest's.
Bewick strode over to the first of the prisoners, withdrew a large knife, and 
started sawing through the restraints that kept their arms to their sides.
"They need to get comfortable," Demarest explained.
It soon became clear that comfort was not precisely Bewick's objective. The XO 
fashioned a sling of nylon cord, tightly knotted it around the prisoners' wrists 
and ankles, and then snaked it around the central beams of each hooch. They were 
splayed, spread-eagled, their limbs extended outward by the taut rope. They were 
utterly defenseless, and knew it. That realization of their defenselessness 
would have psychological effects.
Janson's stomach furled. "Sir?" he began.
"Don't speak," Demarest replied. "Just watch. Watch and learn. It's the old 
rule: See one, do one, teach one."
Now Demarest approached the prisoner who rested on the ground nearest him. He 
ran a caressing hand over the young man's cheeks, and said, "Toi men ban." He 
tapped himself on his heart and repeated the words: "I like you."
The two men seemed bewildered.
"Do you speak English? It doesn't matter if you do, because I speak Vietnamese."
The first one spoke, at last. "Yes." His voice was tight.
Demarest rewarded him with a smile. "I thought you did." He ran his index finger 
down the man's forehead, over his nose, and stopped at his lips. "I like you. 
You people inspire me. Because you really care. That matters to me. You have 
your ideals, and you're going to fight until the bitter end. How many nguoi My 
have you killed, do you think? How many Americans?"
The second man burst out, "We no kill!"
"No, because you're farmers, right?" Demarest's tones were honeyed.
"We farm."
"You're not VC at all, are you? Just honest, ordinary hardworking fishermen, 
right?"
"Dúng." Right.
"Or did you say you were farmers?"
The two looked confused. "No VC," the first man said pleadingly.
"He's not your army comrade?" Demarest indicated his bound companion.
"Just friend."
"Oh, he's your friend."
"Yes."
"He likes you. You help each other."
"Help each other."
"You people have suffered a lot, haven't you?"
"Much suffering."
"Like our savior, Jesus Christ. Do you know that he died for our sins? Do you 
want to know how he died? Yes? Well, why didn't you say so! Let me tell you. No, 
better idea: let me show you."
"Please?" The word came out like plis.
Demarest turned to Bewick. "Bewick, it's downright uncivil to leave these poor 
young men on the ground."
Bewick nodded, allowing a grin to flicker on his wooden features. Then, rotating 
a wooden stick twice, he winched the rope tighter. The tension of the rope 
lifted the prisoners off the ground; the weight of their bodies was supported by 
their tightly bound wrists and ankles. Each emitted a loud, panicked gasp.
"Xin loi," Demarest said gently. Sorry about that.
They were in agony, their limbs hyperextended, their arms straining at their 
sockets. The torsion of the position made breathing extraordinarily difficult, 
requiring a tremendous exertion to arch their chests and extend their 
diaphragms—an exertion that only increased the torque on their extremities.
Janson flushed. "Sir," he said sharply. "May I have a word with you, alone? 
Sir?"
Demarest walked over to Janson. "What you're watching may take some getting used 
to," he said quietly. "But I will not have you interfering with the exercise of 
executive discretion."
"You're torturing them," Janson said, his face tight.
"You think that's torture?" Demarest shook his head disgustedly. "Lieutenant 
First Class Bewick, Lieutenant Second Class Janson is upset right now. For his 
own protection, I need you to restrain him—by any means necessary. Any problems 
with that?"
"None, sir," Bewick replied. He leveled his combat pistol at Janson's head.
Demarest walked over to the nearby jeep and pressed the play button on his 
portable tape cassette. Choral music spilled from small, tinny speakers. 
"Hildegard von Bingen," he said to no one in particular. "Spent most of her life 
in a convent she founded, in the twelfth century. One day when she was forty-two 
years old she had a vision of God, and with that she became the greatest 
composer of her age. Each time she sat down to create, it was always after she 
had suffered the most excruciating pain—what she called the scourge of God. For 
only when the pain brought her to the point of hallucination did her work pour 
from her—the antiphons and plainsongs and religious treatises. Pain made Saint 
Hildegard produce. Pain made her sing." He turned to the second man, who was 
starting to sweat profusely. The prisoner's breath came in strangled yelps, like 
a dying animal's. "I thought it might relax you," he said. He listened to a few 
bars of the plainsong, pensively.
Sanctus es unguendo
periculose fractos:
sanctus es tergendo
fetida vulnera.
Then he stood over the second prisoner. "Look into my eyes," Demarest said. He 
pulled a small knife from a waist holster and made a small slice in the man's 
belly. The skin and the fascia beneath immediately sheared, pulled apart by the 
tension of the ropes. "Pain will make you sing, too." The man screamed.
"Now, that's torture," Demarest called to Janson. "What would you like me to 
say? That it hurts me as much as it hurts them?" He returned to the screaming 
man beneath him. "Do you think you'll be a hero to your people by resisting me? 
Not a chance. If you're heroic, I can ensure that nobody ever learns of it. Your 
bravery will be wasted. You see, I am a very bad man. You think Americans are 
soft. You think you can wait us out.
You think you can watch while we ensnare ourselves with our silly bureaucratic 
regulations, like a giant tripped up by his own shoelaces. But you think all 
these things because you've never come across Alan Demarest. Of all Satan's 
forms of trickery and deceit, the very greatest was persuading man he did not 
exist. Look into my eyes, my fisherman friend, I because I exist. A fisherman 
like you. A fisherman of men's souls."
Alan Demarest was mad. No: it was worse than that. He was all too sane, too in 
control of his actions and their controllable consequences. At the same time, he 
was wholly devoid of the most elemental sense of conscience. He was a monster. A 
brilliant, charismatic monster.
"Look into my eyes," Demarest intoned, and leaned closer to the man's face, 
which was already stretched in agony, an agony beyond words. "Who's your ARVN 
contact? Which South Vietnamese do you deal with?"
"I farm!" the man whimpered, barely able to catch his breath. His eyes were red, 
his cheeks wet. "No Viet Cong!"
Demarest pulled down the man's pajama trousers, exposing his genitals. 
"Prevarication will be punished," he said in a bored tone. "Time for the juniper 
cables."
Janson heaved a few times, leaning forward, and a hot flow of vomit surged up 
the back of his throat and splattered on the ground before him.
"Nothing to be ashamed of, my son. It's like surgery," Demarest said, 
soothingly. "The first time you see it done, it's a little rocky. But you'll get 
the hang of it in no time. It's as Emerson tells us, when a great man 'is 
pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something.' "
He turned to Bewick. "I'm just going to juice up the motor, make sure there's 
plenty of jump in the jumpers. We'll give him every chance to talk. And if he 
doesn't, he'll die the most painful death we can contrive."
Demarest looked at Janson's stricken face.
"But don't worry," he continued. "His companion will be kept alive. You see, 
it's important to leave somebody to spread the news among the VC: this is what 
you get when you fuck with nguoi My."
And, horrifyingly, he winked at Janson, as if to invite him into the debauchery. 
How many other soldiers, burned out and callused by too much time in the combat 
zone, had responded positively to that invitation, finding a club of genuine 
zealots, losing their souls. An old refrain echoed in the dim recesses of his 
mind. Where you going? Crazy—want to come along?
Want to come along?


Prinsengracht, perhaps the most gracious of the old canal streets of old 
Amsterdam, was built in the early seventeenth century. The streetfront facades 
had, at first glance, all the regularity of accordion-folded paper dolls. When 
one looked more closely, one saw all the ways each tall, narrow brick house had 
been painstakingly differentiated from its neighbors. The gables atop each house 
had been carefully designed: step gables, zigzagging to a flat top, alternated 
with the swooping curves of neck gables and spout gables. Because the staircases 
within were narrow and steep, most of the houses had projecting ledges that 
allowed furniture to be brought to higher floors by means of hoists. Many houses 
boasted fake attics and intricate entablatures. Festoons hung from simple brick. 
Behind the houses, he knew, discreet hofjes, or inner courtyards, were hidden 
away. To the extent that the burghers of Amsterdam's golden age prided 
themselves on their simplicity, it was an ostentatious simplicity.
Janson strode down the street, attired in a light zippered jacket and sturdy 
brogues, like so many of his fellow pedestrians. He kept his hands in his 
pockets, and his eyes regularly scanned his surroundings. Was he being followed? 
So far, there was no sign of it. Yet he knew from experience that if his 
presence was detected, a team could be assembled and deployed with impressive 
rapidity. Always have a backup plan: Demarest had said that, and however 
appalling its source, the injunction had served him well. File it next to 
Management Secrets from Genghis Khan, Janson reflected bitterly.
A few blocks from the so-called golden curve, he encountered a cluster of 
houseboats, anchored on the rust-and-silt-tinctured waters of the canal. These 
floating domiciles had been a feature of Amsterdam since the 1950s, the result 
of a housing shortage; a few decades later, the city council passed measures 
against them, but the existing waterborne dwellings were grand-fathered in, 
tolerated as long as an annual fee was tendered.
Janson kept a sharp eye out, scrutinizing each in turn. The nearest resembled a 
long, brown-shingled bungalow, with a small turbine vent atop a roof of red 
corrugated steel. Another resembled a tall, floating greenhouse; inside, the 
long glass panels were lined with curtains, affording the residents some 
privacy. Nearby was a houseboat with an intricate trellislike fence around a 
flat-topped enclosure. A pair of lanterns sprouted out from what looked like 
stone bird feeders. Boxes of geraniums spoke of a house-proud squatter.
Finally, he saw the familiar blue-painted cabin with an abandoned look.
The flowerpots were mainly empty; the windows were small and sooty. On the deck 
next to the cabin was a bench of age-silvered wood. The boards of the low, wide 
deck were warped and irregular. It was anchored just next to a small quayside 
parking lot, and as Janson approached, he felt his pulse quicken. Many years had 
passed since he had last been there. Had it changed hands? He detected the 
distinctive resinous scent of cannabis, and he knew it had not. He stepped on 
board and then walked through the door of the cabin; as he expected, it was 
unlocked.
In one corner of the sun-dappled space, a man with long, dirty-gray hair was 
crouched over a large square of vellum. He had pastels in both hands, which 
veered toward the paper in alternation. A smoldering marijuana cigarette lay 
next to a red pastille.
"Freeze, motherfucker," Janson said softly.
Barry Cooper turned around slowly, giggling at some private joke. When he 
identified his visitor, he sobered up a little: "Hey, we're cool, right? You and 
me, we're cool, right?" There was a fatuous half smile on his face, but the 
question was tinged with anxiety.
"Yeah, Barry, we're cool."
His relief was visible. He held his arms open wide, his palms speckled with 
pigment. "Show me some love, baby. Show me some love. How long has it been? 
Jeepers."
Cooper's speech had long retained an odd mixture of idioms—part stoner, part 
Leave It to Beaver—and the fact that the American had lived abroad for nearly a 
quarter century served as a linguistic fixative.
"Too long," Janson said, "or maybe not long enough. What do you think?" The 
history they shared was complex; neither man fully understood the other, but 
both understood enough for a working relationship.
"I can make you some coffee," Cooper said.
"Coffee would be fine." Janson sat down on a lumpy brown sofa and looked around.
Little had changed. Cooper had aged, but exactly as one would have expected him 
to. A tangle of graying brown hair had surrendered almost fully to gray. 
Crow's-feet crowded his eyes, and the lines between the corners of his mouth and 
his nose were incised now with a fine line; there were vertical creases between 
his eyebrows, and horizontal creases on his forehead. But it was Barry Cooper, 
the same old Barry Cooper, a little scary and somewhat crazy, but mostly neither 
of those things. In his youth, the ratios had been different. In the early 
seventies, he had drifted from college radicalism to the real thing, a harder, 
more callous reality, and, by incremental steps, ended up a member of the 
Weather Underground. Smash the system! It was a greeting in those days, a simple 
salutation. Hanging around the college town of Madison, Wisconsin, he'd fallen 
in with others who were smarter and more persuasive than he was and who took his 
inchoate disquiet with the misdeeds of Authority to a crystalline extreme. Small 
pranks, designed to nettle law enforcement, led to more extreme acts.
One day, in New York, he found himself in a Greenwich Village town house when a 
bomb one of the members was concocting went off prematurely. He had been taking 
a shower and, singed and sooty but largely unharmed, walked around in a daze for 
a while before he was arrested. When he was out on bail, the police determined 
that his fingerprints matched those found at the scene of another bombing, this 
one of a university laboratory in Evanston. It had happened at night, and there 
were no casualties, but that was a matter of luck as much as anything; a night 
watchman could easily have been in the area. The charges were increased to 
attempted murder and federal conspiracy, and Cooper's bail was revoked. By that 
point, however, he had fled the country, making his way first to Canada and then 
to Western Europe.
And in Europe, another chapter of his curious career began. The exaggerated 
reports about him circulated by American law enforcement were swallowed whole by 
the radical groups of Europe's revolutionary left—the circle associated with 
Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, known formally as the Rote Armee Fraktion, 
informally as the Baader-Meinhof Gang; the tight-knit organization that called 
itself the Movement 2 June; and, in Italy, the Red Brigade. Intoxicated by the 
romance of urban insurrection, these militants regarded the shaggy-haired 
American as a latter-day Jesse James, a free rider for the revolution. They 
welcomed him into their circles and disputatious factions, asking him for advice 
about tactics and techniques. Barry Cooper was pleased by the adulation, but his 
visits were also a strain. He knew a great deal about varieties of 
marijuana—about how Maui sinsemilla differed from Acapulco red, say—but had 
little interest in, or knowledge of, the practical affairs of revolution. Far 
from the criminal mastermind of the Interpol advisories, he had been a slacker, 
along for the ride—for the drugs and the sex. He had been too dazed to 
comprehend the ferocity of his new comrades—too dazed to comprehend that what he 
regarded as student pranks, the equivalent of stink bombs in the bathroom, they 
regarded as prelude to violent upheaval and the forcible overthrow of the 
existing order. When he was among the revolutionaries, he kept this to himself, 
hiding behind gnomic responses. His reticence and pointed lack of interest in 
their own activities rattled them-surely this showed that the American terrorist 
did not trust them or take them seriously as a revolutionary vanguard. They 
responded by revealing to him their most ambitious plans, trying to impress him 
by disclosing the extent of their human and material assets: the safe house in 
East Berlin the front organization in Munich that provided them with financial 
support, the officer in the Bundesrepublik national guard who kept his radical 
lover supplied with quantities of military-grade ordnance.
As time passed, Barry Cooper grew uncomfortable, and not simply with the 
masquerade: he had no stomach for the acts of violence they vividly described. 
One day, in the aftermath of a subway bombing in Stuttgart arranged by the 
Revolutionary Cells, he saw a list of victims in a newspaper. Pretending to be a 
newspaper reporter himself, he visited the mother of one of the passersbys who 
were slain. The experience—coming face-to-face with the human reality of the 
glorious revolutionary violence—left him shaken and repulsed.
Janson paid him a visit not long afterward. In the attempt to gain entree to the 
shadowy world of these terrorist organizations, he searched for people whose 
fealty to civilization might not have completely eroded—people who were not yet 
dead to so-called bourgeois morality. Barry Cooper's association with those 
organizations always struck him as odd; he knew his file well, and what he saw 
was someone who was essentially a joker, a cutup, a clown, rather than a killer. 
A get-along go-along guy who had found himself getting along and going along 
with some very bad company.
Cooper was already living in Amsterdam, in the very same houseboat, making a 
living selling colorful sketches of the old town to tourists—kitsch, but sincere 
kitsch. He had the affect of someone who had smoked too much pot for too long a 
time: even when he wasn't stoned, he had a slightly unfocused and ingenuous 
manner. The two men did not bond right away: it was hard to imagine two souls 
less alike. Still, Cooper finally appreciated that his visitor from the U.S. 
government tried neither to ingratiate himself nor to make threats. He looked 
like a jarhead but he didn't come on like one. Oddly low-key in his approach, he 
played it straight. When Cooper diverted the conversation to the inequities of 
the West, Janson, as a trained political scientist, was happy to follow him.
Rather than jeering at his politics, Janson was happy to concede that there was 
much to criticize in the Western democracies—but then rejected the dehumanizing 
simplifications of the terrorists in direct, hard-hitting language. Our society 
betrays humanity whenever it doesn't live up to its own expressed ideals. And 
the world your friends wish to create? It betrays humanity whenever it does live 
up to its expressed ideals. Was the choice so hard?
That's deep, Barry Cooper had said, sincerely. That's deep: the reflexive 
rejoinder of the shallow. But if Cooper were shallow, his very shallowness had 
saved him from the worst temptations of the revolutionary left. And his 
information proved to be the undoing of dozens of violent cells. Their safe 
houses were shut down, their leaders imprisoned, their sources of funding 
identified and rooted out. The pothead in the funky blue houseboat had helped to 
do that. In that respect, the posturing, hard-hearted spokesmen of the 
revolutionary vanguards had it right: sometimes a small man can make a big 
difference.
In return, the State Department quietly desisted in its attempts to seek 
extradition.
Now Janson sipped hot coffee from a mug that still bore smudges of acrylic 
paint.
"I know you're here just to hang," Cooper said. "I know you don't, like, want 
something from me." It was banter that survived from their first interviews, a 
quarter century ago.
"Hey," Janson said. "OK if I crash here for a while?"
"Mi casa es su casa, amigo," Cooper replied. He raised the small marijuana 
cigarette to his lips; Janson was never sure whether it still really affected 
Cooper or whether the maintenance dose just returned him to what passed as 
normal. The smoke made his voice pebbly. "I could use the company, tell you the 
truth. Doris left me, I ever tell you that?"
"You never told me Doris joined you," Janson said. "Barry, I have no idea who 
you're talking about."
"Oh," Cooper said, and his forehead knit in a moment or two of furious 
concentration. He was visibly searching for consequence: And therefore … and 
therefore … and therefore. The engine of reason was turning over but not 
catching. Finally, he raised an index finger. "Then … never mind." He had 
obviously worked out that someone he hadn't seen in eight years might have 
little interest in the recent end of a six-week relationship. Cooper was so 
pleased to have come up with an appropriate response that were inappropriate to 
the situation he now confronted. He needed to think differently.
Demarest's words of counsel—echoing from another age—came to him j now: Can't 
see a way out? Take the time to see things differently. See the two white swans 
instead of the one black one. See the slice of pie instead of the pie with the 
slice missing. Flip the Necker cube outward instead of inward. Master the 
gestalt. It will make you free.
He closed his eyes for a few seconds. He had to think as they had. Exposure and 
publicity, they saw, could be the most effective shields of clandestinity—which 
was a logic that Janson himself would have to embrace. A stealthy entrance was 
what they were anticipating, what they would be well protected from. He would 
not arrive stealthily, then. He would arrive as conspicuously as possible, and 
at the front door. This operation called not for discretion but for brazenness.
Janson surveyed the balled-up papers on the floor near the pastels. "Got a 
newspaper?"
Cooper padded over to the corner and triumphantly returned with a copy of the 
latest De Volksrant. The front page was smeared with paints and pastels.
"Anything English-language?"
"Dutch papers are in Dutch, man," he answered in a cannabis croak. "They're 
fucked-up that way."
"I see," Janson replied. He scanned the headlines, and his knowledge of English 
and German cognates allowed him to get the gist of most. He turned the page, and 
a small article caught his eye.
"Here," Janson said, tapping it with a forefinger. "Could you translate this one 
for me?"
"No sweat, man." Cooper looked up for a moment, gathering his powers of 
concentration. "Not the jukebox selection I'd have gone for. Now wait a 
minute—didn't you tell me your mother's Czech?"
"Was. She's dead."
"Put my foot in it, didn't I? That's awful. Was it, like, a sudden thing?"
"She died when I was fifteen, Barry. I've had some time to adjust."
Cooper paused for a moment, digesting the fact. "That's cool," he said. "My mom 
passed last year. Couldn't even go to the goddamn funeral. Tore me up. They'd 
clap irons on me in customs, so, like, what would be the point? Tore me up, 
though."
"I'm sorry," Janson said.
Cooper began to read the article, laboriously translating the Dutch into English 
for Janson's benefit. It was not, on the face of it, a remarkable story. The 
Czech foreign minister, having been in The Hague to meet with members of the 
government, was visiting Amsterdam. There he would meet members of the stock 
exchange and leading figures of its financial community, to discuss Dutch-Czech 
cooperative ventures. Another inconsequential trip, by someone whose job it was 
to make such trips, hoping to raise the level of foreign investment in a country 
that was pining for it. Holland was rich; the Czech Republic was not. It was the 
same sort of trip that might have taken place a century ago, or two centuries 
ago, or three, and probably had. It would, one could safely hazard, solve no 
problems for the Czech Republic. But it just might solve a problem for Janson.
"Let's go shopping," Janson said, standing up.
Cooper was not taken aback by the sudden change of topic; his cannabis haze made 
the world as aleatory as a roll of the dice. "Cool," he said. "Munchies?"
"Clothes shopping. Fancy stuff. Top of the line."
"Oh," he said, disappointed. "Well, there's a place I never go, but I know it's 
real expensive. On Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, just off the Dam, a few blocks away.
"Excellent," Janson said. "Why don't you come along? I might need a translator." 
More to the point, if anybody was keeping an eye out for him, they would not be 
expecting him to be traveling with a companion.
"Happy to," Cooper said. "But everybody understands 'MasterCard.' "
The building that housed the Magna Plaza was erected a hundred years ago as a 
post office, though, with its ornate stonework, vaulted ceilings, pilasters, 
string courses, and little round-arched galleries, it seemed overdressed for the 
purpose. Only after it was converted into a shopping mall did its excesses come 
to seem appropriate. Now forty stores lined its gallery walkway. At an upscale 
men's clothing store, Janson tried on a suit, a size 53. It was Ungaro, and its 
price tag came to the equivalent of two thousand dollars. The regularity of 
Janson's frame meant that off-the-rack clothing tended to look bespoke on him. 
This suit did.
A salesman with a stiffly gelled comb-over glided across the floor and attached 
himself like a remora to his American customer.
"If I may say, the fit is excellent," the salesman said. He was smarmy and 
solicitous, as no doubt he always was around price tags with commas. "And the 
fabric is superb on you. It's a beautiful suit. Very elegant. Dashing yet 
understated." Like many Dutch, he spoke English with only a trace of an accent.
Janson turned to Cooper. His bloodshot, unfocused eyes suggested that his mental 
fog had not entirely dispersed. "He's saying he thinks it looks good on you," 
Cooper said.
"When they're talking in English, Barry, you actually don't need to translate," 
Janson said. He turned to the salesman. "I assume you take cash. If you can do 
up the cuffs right now, you've got a sale. If not, not."
"Well, we have a fitter here. But the tailoring is normally done elsewhere. I 
could have it sent by courier to you tomorrow … "
"Sorry," Janson said, and turned to leave.
"Wait," the salesman said, seeing his commission on a substantial sale 
evaporate. "We can do it. Just let me have a talk with the fitter, and give us 
ten minutes. If I have to walk it across the street, I'll see that it's done. 
Because, how do you say it in the States, the customer is always right."
"Words to gladden a Yank's heart," Janson said.
"Indeed, we know this about you Americans," the salesman said carefully. 
"Everywhere we know this."


Washington, D.C.
The large man with the maroon tie flagged the taxicab at the corner of 
Eighteenth and M Streets, near a bar-and-grill with a neon sign in the window 
advertising a carbonated beverage. The cabdriver wore a turban and favored 
public radio. His new passenger was a well-dressed man, a little wide around the 
waist, thick around the haunches. He could bench-press three hundred pounds, but 
he also liked his beer and his beef, and didn't see why he needed to change his 
habits. He was good at what he did, had never had any complaints, and it wasn't 
as if he moonlighted as a catalog model.
"Take me to Cleveland Park," he said. "Four thirty Macomb Street."
The Sikh driver repeated the address, jotted it down on his clipboard, and they 
set off. The address turned out to be an out-of-business supermarket, boarded up 
and bleak.
"Are you sure this is it?" the driver asked.
"Oh yeah," he said. "Actually, would you mind driving into the parking lot and 
around the back? I've got to pick up something."
"No problem, sir." As the cab eased around the low brick-and-glass building, the 
passenger's heart started to beat harder. He had to do this without making a 
mess. Anybody could do this. But he was someone who could do it neatly.
"This is great," he said, and sat forward. In a lightning-fast motion, he 
lowered the garrote over the driver's head and pulled it tight. The Sikh emitted 
a faint rasp of escaped breath; his eyes widened, and his tongue lolled out. 
Unconsciousness would come quickly, the passenger knew, but he could not stop 
there. Another ten seconds of maximum pressure, and the anoxia would result in 
permanent respiratory cessation.
Now he returned the wooden-handled garrote to his breast pocket, and dragged the 
limp body of the driver out of the car. He popped the trunk, and arranged the 
body around the spare tire, the jumper cables, and a surprising number of 
blankets. It was important to get the man out of the driver's seat as quickly as 
possible; he had learned this from unpleasant experience. The incontinence that 
sometimes followed a sudden death could cause a soiled seat. Not something he 
cared to deal with at a time like this.
His RIM BlackBerry communicator purred from deep in his breast pocket. It would 
be an update on the location of the subject.
He glanced at his watch. He had little time remaining.
His subject had less.
The voice in his earpiece gave him the precise coordinates of his subject, and 
as the passenger-turned-driver maneuvered the taxicab toward Dupont Circle he 
was given regular updates as to her movements. Timing was essential if he was to 
succeed.
The crowd in front of the department store was sparse; the subject was wearing a 
navy peacoat, a gold silk neckerchief knotted loosely around her throat, a 
shopping bag with the elegant logo of the upscale store in one hand.
It was the only thing he was conscious of, the figure of the black woman, 
growing larger and larger as he gunned the motor of the cab and then, abruptly, 
swung the steering wheel far to the right.
As the cab lurched onto the sidewalk, shrieks of disbelief filled the air, 
blending into a sound that was almost choral.
A curious intimacy, again, the woman's startled face coming close and closer to 
his, like a lover leaning forward into a kiss. As the front bumper smashed into 
her body—he was traveling at close to fifty miles per hour—her upper body 
smashed onto the hood of the cab, and only when he braked did her body fly 
forward, vaulting through the air and finally landing on the pavement of the 
busy intersection, where a Dodge van, despite its squealing brakes, left tire 
tracks on her broken body.
The cab was recovered later that day, abandoned in an alley in Southwest 
Washington. It was an alley that, in the best of times, was littered with the 
brown and green shards of broken beer bottles, the clear curved glass of crack 
vials, the translucent plastic of hypodermics. The local youth treated the cab 
as just another found object. Before the car was recovered by the authorities, 
it had been stripped of its hubcaps, its license plate, and its radio. Only the 
body in its trunk was left undisturbed.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Aside from its location, across the street from the Liberty Foundation 
headquarters, there was little that would draw anyone's eye to the small 
canal-bank house, or voorhuis. Inside, Ratko Pavic regarded its furnishings with 
a purely utilitarian eye. There was a faint but cloying kitchen odor—pea soup, 
was it? It must have been from the night before, but the smell was oddly 
permeating. He wrinkled his nose with distaste. Still, nothing more of that sort 
would be cooked here. He thought of the two bodies sprawled in the bathtub 
upstairs, the blood seeping steadily down the drain. He had no feelings about 
what he had done: the elderly couple, engaged to maintain the house while the 
owners were in Corfu, were in the way. They were faithful retainers, no doubt, 
but they had to be dispatched. And it was for a good cause: seated by the small 
square window in a darkened room, Ratko Pavic had an excellent view of the 
mansion opposite, and two parabolic microphones conveyed conversations from its 
front-facing antechambers with reasonable clarity.
All the same, it had been a tedious morning. Administrators and staff arrived 
between eight-thirty and nine-thirty. The scheduled visitors made their 
scheduled visits: a senior civil servant from the Netherlands' Ministry of 
Foreign Affairs was followed by the deputy to the Dutch minister of education, 
culture, and science. A U.N. high commissioner for refugees was followed by a 
senior director of the U.N.'s Division for Sustainable Development, and then by 
another exalted bureaucrat, from its Economic Commission for Europe. Others in 
Ratko's team had complementary perimeter views. One of them, Simic, was 
stationed on the very roof of the voorhuis, three stories directly overhead. 
None had glimpsed any sign of Paul Janson. It was not surprising. A daytime 
infiltration made little sense, although the agent was known to do the 
unexpected simply because it was unexpected.
It was tedious work that required complete concealment, but it was what suited 
him best since he became a marked man. The jagged, glossy cicatrix that ran from 
his right eye to his chin—a scar that glowed red when he allowed himself to 
become upset—made his visage too memorable for any job that demanded visibility. 
He had been marked: that was the thought that filled his mind, even as his 
assailant had lashed out at him with a knife meant for scaling fish. More 
punishing even than the searing pain from his ripped flesh was the realization 
that he would never be able to work undercover in the field any longer. As a 
shooter, of course, he was as invisible as his Vaime silenced sniper rifle, 
which was ready for deployment at any moment. As the hours passed, he began to 
wonder whether that moment would ever come.
To keep himself amused, Ratko regularly zoomed in on the petite receptionist, 
watched the redhead's haunches move as she bent over, and he felt a warmth in 
his belly and groin. He had something for her, oh yes he did. He remembered the 
Bosnian women with whom he and his fellow soldiers disported a few years 
back—remembered faces convulsed with hatred, remembered how similar the 
expression was to sexual transport. It required only a little imagination. As he 
pounded himself into them, what thrilled him most was the recognition of how 
utterly powerless they were. It was an experience unlike any he had ever had 
with a woman. It didn't matter whether his breath was fetid, or if his body 
stank, because there was simply nothing they could do. They knew they had to 
give it up, to surrender abjectly, or they would be made to watch their parents, 
their husbands, their children, shot through the head, before they were 
slaughtered themselves.
Fine-tuning his scope, he imagined the redhead roped and pinned to a mattress, 
her eyes rolled into her head, her pale softness yielding to the pistoning of 
his Serbian flesh.
In the event, Ratko did not need a scope to see the small motorcade of three 
black Mercedes-Benzes make its stately way down Stadehouderskade and onto 
Leidsestraat, stopping at the Liberty Foundation headquarters. A uniformed 
driver of the stretch limo walked around to the rear and held open the door. A 
dark-suited man with horn-rimmed glasses and a felt-brimmed hat came out and 
stood next to the car for a moment, admiring the majestic stretch of southwest 
Prinsengracht. Then the uniformed man—the minister's personal factotum, it 
appeared—pressed the buzzer beside the deeply carved front door. Ten seconds 
later, the door was opened.
The uniformed man spoke to the woman at the door. "Madame, the foreign minister 
of the Czech Republic," the uniformed man said. "Jan Kubelik." Captured by the 
twin parabolics, the voices were scratchy but audible.
The foreign minister spoke a few words of Czech to his factotum and made a 
gesture of dismissal. The uniformed man turned and stepped away, back toward the 
limousine.
"You almost look as if you were not expecting me," the man in the elegant navy 
suit told the receptionist.
Her eyes widened. "Of course not, Minister Kubelik. We are most pleased by your 
arrival."
Ratko smiled, remembering the small panic that had swept through the 
Foundation's support staff when they received the phone call, thirty minutes 
earlier, telling them that the recently appointed foreign minister would be 
keeping his appointment with the executive director. A series of flustered 
underlings compared notes, for the appointment had gone unrecorded. Nobody 
wanted to admit to having made a scheduling error, and yet someone must have 
done so. Through his Schmidt & Bender scope, Ratko had seen the little redheaded 
woman's consternation. Just two weeks ago, you double-scheduled the Swedish 
minister of foreign affairs and the man from the U.N. disarmament program, the 
redhead said, berating a particularly thickheaded junior secretary upstairs. The 
junior secretary protested that it wasn't her fault, but did so with an air of 
hesitation that was tantamount to a confession. Another secretary, coming to the 
other's defense, maintained that the error was probably on the side of the Czech 
bureaucrats. Yet it would be simply impossible, a hopeless breach of protocol, 
to tell them so.
Now Ratko watched the red-haired receptionist lead the minister inside to a 
fancy antechamber, where vision and sound alike grew indistinct. The Serb turned 
up the electronic light amplification of his scope and switched the microphone 
to a special signal-enhancement mode so that the input from the parabolics would 
be further digitally improved—sharpened, with meaningless noise filtered out.
"Our executive director will be with you shortly," he heard the redhead say, as 
the aural signal was restored.
"You're very kind," the Czech diplomat said airily, removing his hat. "And this 
is a beautiful estate. Do you mind terribly if I take a look around?"
"Sir, we would be honored," she replied as if by rote.
Silly bureaucrat—searching for decor tips to give to his wife. He would return 
to the drab presidential palace in Prague and tell his friends about the deluxe 
details of Peter Novak's Amsterdam lair.
Ratko had done Warsaw Pact exercises with Czech soldiers back when he was in the 
Yugoslav army, long before the six republics of Yugoslavia struck out on their 
own, and at each other. The Czechs, he always thought, had a very high opinion 
of themselves. He did not share it.
A man walking very slowly in front of the house caught his attention: would 
Janson be so bold? The man, seemingly a tourist, stood against the low railing 
beside the canal. Slowly, he took out a map.
Ratko directed his scope toward him; the angle was not ideal, but as he took in 
the tourist's slight build and short hair, he saw how mistaken he had been. No 
matter how cleverly Janson disguised himself, he could never pass for a 
twenty-something woman.
Once more, Ratko felt a warmth stirring in his belly.


Janson's eyes swept over the beautifully appointed antechamber. Paintings from 
the Dutch renaissance were positioned in the center of squares formed by gilt 
moldings, with obsessive concern for symmetry. The fireplace mantel was of 
intricately carved marble, veined with blue. It all seemed perfectly in 
character for a Dutch mansion: far from the public's prying eyes, the vaunted 
ideal of Nordic moderation was banished.
So far, so good, he thought to himself. Cooper had cleaned up remarkably well, 
and once attired in that silly uniform, he conducted himself in a manner that 
did not quite slide into parody. His movements were stiff and official; his 
expressions imbued with a servile pomposity, every inch the dedicated assistant 
of a very important official. Janson himself was relying upon the assumption 
that nobody would have any idea what the Czech foreign minister looked like. The 
man had been in the job for a mere two weeks, after all. And the country was not 
high on the Foundation's list of trouble spots.
No disguise was the best disguise: A bit of grease in his hair, a pair of 
spectacles in a style fashionable in Eastern Europe, the sort of suiting common 
to diplomats all over the Continent … and a manner that was by turns amiable and 
imperious. The fact that Janson's mother was Czech was helpful, of course, 
though chiefly in imbuing his English with a persuasive Czech accent. A Czech 
diplomat would be expected to speak English in a country like Holland.
Janson peered at the red-haired receptionist over his round hornrimmed glasses. 
"And Peter Novak? He is here as well?"
The petite woman smiled dreamily. "Oh no, sir. He spends most of his time on the 
road, flying from place to place. Sometimes we don't see him for many weeks at a 
time."
When Janson had arrived, he did not know whether a pall of grief would be 
hanging over the Foundation. But what Agger had told him remained true: they 
clearly had no idea that anything had befallen their revered founder. "Well!" 
said Janson. "He's got the whole world in his hands, yes?"
"You could say that, sir. But his wife is in today. Susanna Novak. She helps run 
the NGO development program."
Janson nodded. Novak was insistent about keeping his family from the public 
gaze, evidently afraid of kidnapping. His own public stature was necessary for 
the success of his work; he reluctantly acceded to media coverage for that 
purpose. But he was not a Hollywood star, and his family was not fair game: that 
had been the message for years, and by and large the press agreed to abide by 
those rules. The fact that his primary residence was in Amsterdam made it 
easier: the burgerlich sensibilities of that city served to shield the great 
man's privacy.
Hidden in plain view.
"And what's over here?" He pointed toward another room, to the left of the main 
hallways.
"Peter Novak's office," she said. "Where you would surely be meeting Mr. Novak 
if he were in town—he'd insist on it." She opened the door and pointed to a 
canvas on the wall opposite. "That painting is by Van Dyck. Remarkable, don't 
you think?" The portrait was of a seventeenth-century nobleman, rendered in a 
palette of muted browns and blues, yet curiously vivid all the same.
Janson turned on the overhead lights and strode toward the canvas. He peered 
closely. "Extraordinary," he said. "He's one of my very favorite artists, you 
know. Of course, the artistic heritage of the Czech Republic is illustrious 
indeed. But, between us, we have nothing like this in Praha."
He reached into his pocket and, fingering the side buttons of his Ericsson cell 
phone, he dialed one of the numbers he had preprogrammed into it. This number 
went to the receptionist's direct line.
"Would you excuse me," she said, hearing her phone ring.
"Certainly," Janson said. As she hastened to her telephone, he scanned the 
papers that lay neatly stacked on Novak's desk and credenza. They were from the 
usual assortment of great and good institutions, with a heavy representation of 
Dutch ministries. One item of correspondence, however, caused a memory to clang 
distantly, hazily—a freighter just out of view in foggy weather. Not the brief, 
innocuous message, but the letterhead. unitech ltd. The company name meant 
something to him—-but did it mean something to Paul Janson, corporate security 
consultant, or to Paul Janson, quondam Consular Operations agent? He wasn't yet 
sure.
"Minister Kubelik?" A woman's voice.
"Yes?" Janson looked up to see a tall blond woman smiling at him.
"I'm Peter Novak's wife. I'd like to welcome you here on his behalf. Our 
executive director is still in a meeting with Holland's ambassador to the United 
Nations. It won't be long at all." She spoke with a neutral American accent.
The woman was beautiful in the Grace Kelly mode, at once voluptuous and 
patrician. Her frosted, wet-looking lipstick seemed less than businesslike, but 
it suited her, as did the chartreuse suit that hugged her contours a little more 
snugly than was strictly necessary.
This was not a woman in mourning. She could not have known. She did not know. 
Yet how could that be?
Janson strode up to her and bowed slightly. Would a Czech diplomat kiss her 
hand? He decided that a handshake would suffice. But he could not take his eyes 
off her. Something about her was familiar. Hauntingly so. The blue-green Côte 
d'Azur eyes, those long, elegant fingers … 
Had he seen her before recently? He racked his brain. Where? In Greece? England? 
Had it been a fleeting glimpse, enough to register on the subconscious mind 
only? It was maddening.
"You're American?" Janson said.
She shrugged. "I'm from a lot of places," she said. "Like Peter."
"And how is the great man?" There was a catch in his voice as he asked.
"Always the same," she replied, after a pause. "Thank you for asking, Dr. 
Kubelik." Her gaze was almost playful—verging, he could have sworn, on the 
flirtatious. No doubt this was simply the way that certain women were trained to 
make conversation with international eminences.
Janson nodded. "As we Czechs like to say, 'To be the same is better than to be 
worse.' A certain peasant realism there, I think."
"Come," she said. "I'll take you upstairs to the conference room."
The second floor was less palatial, more intimate; the ceilings were ten feet 
high, not fifteen, and the decor was much less fustian. The conference room 
faced the canal, and the late-morning sun slanted through a multi-paned picture 
window, casting golden parallelograms on the polished long teak table. As Janson 
entered, he was greeted by a man of slightly less than average height with 
neatly combed gray hair.
"I'm Dr. Tilsen," the man said. "My in-house title is executive director for 
Europe. A bit misleading, no?" He laughed a tidy, dry laugh. "Our Europe 
program—that would be more accurate."
"You'll be safe with Dr. Tilsen," Susanna Novak said. "A lot safer with him than 
with me," she added, leaving it up to her visitor whether to read a double 
entendre in her remark.
Janson sat down opposite the pale-faced administrator. What to discuss with him?
"I expect you know why I wanted to make contact with you," he began.
"Well, I think so," Dr. Tilsen said. "Over the years, the Czech government has 
been very supportive of some of our efforts, and less so of others. We 
understand that our objectives will not always mesh with those of any particular 
government."
"Quite so," Janson said. "Quite so. But I have begun to wonder whether my 
predecessors have been too hasty in their judgments. Perhaps a more harmonious 
relationship might be possible."
"That would be most pleasing to contemplate," Dr. Tilsen said.
"Of course, if you provide me with a tour d'horizon of your projects in our 
country, I would be able to make the case more effectively with my colleagues 
and associates. Really, I'm here to listen."
"Then I shall oblige you, and speak to those very points," Dr. Tilsen said. He 
smiled, tentatively. Talking was his stock in trade, and for the next thirty 
minutes, Tilsen did what he did best, describing a battery of initiatives and 
programs and projects. After a few minutes, the words seemed to form a verbal 
curtain, woven from the opaque nomenclature and slogans favored by professional 
idealists: nongovernmental organizations … reinvigorating the institutions of 
deliberative democracy … a commitment to promoting the values, institutions, and 
practices of an open and democratic society … His accounts were detailed and 
prolix, and Janson found his eyes beginning to glaze. With a tight, fixed smile, 
he nodded at intervals, but his mind wandered. Was Peter Novak's wife among the 
conspirators? Had she herself engineered the death of her husband? The prospect 
seemed inconceivable, and yet what could explain her conduct?
And what of this Dr. Tilsen? He seemed earnest, unimaginative, and well meaning, 
if more than a little self-important. Could such a man be part of a nefarious 
conspiracy to destroy the most important agent of progress the fragile world 
had? He watched the man talk, watched the small, eroded, coffee-stained teeth, 
the pleased look with which he punctuated his monologue, the way he had of 
nodding approvingly at his own points. Was this the face of evil? It seemed hard 
to believe.
A knock at the door. The petite redhead from downstairs.
"I'm terribly sorry, Dr. Tilsen. There's a call from the prime minister's 
office."
"Ah," Dr. Tilsen said. "You will kindly excuse me."
"But of course," said Janson.
Left to himself, he examined the relatively spare furnishings of the room, and 
then he walked over to the window, looking at the busy canal below him.
A feeling of cold ran down his spine, as if it had been stroked with a shard of 
ice.
Why? Something in his field of vision—once again, an anomaly he responded to 
instinctively before he could rationally analyze or describe it.
What?
Oh Jesus! Behind the bell-shaped gable of the house opposite, there was the 
shadow of a man crouched upon the tightly imbricated slate tiles. A familiar 
error: the sun changes position, and shadows appear where there had been no 
shadows, betraying the hidden observer—or sniper. Which? The glint of sun from 
the glass of a scope did not settle the question.
His eyes now scrutinized the eaves and attic windows of the house for anomalies. 
There—a small section of a large double-hung window had been cleaned, by someone 
who wanted to be able to see out of it more clearly.
The hoist beam in front of him: something was odd about it as well. A moment 
later, he realized what. It was no hoist beam—the beam had been replaced by the 
barrel of a rife.
Or was his overheated imagination conjuring things into existence, seeing 
threats in shadows, the way children turned their bedposts into the talons of 
monster? The bruise on the side of his head throbbed painfully. Was he jumping 
at ghosts?
Then one of the small square panes exploded, and he heard the harsh splitting of 
wood as a bullet buried itself somewhere in the parquet floor. Another pane 
exploded, and then another, shooting splinters of glass through the air, 
showering the conference table.
Jagged cracks appeared in the plaster of the wall opposite the window. Another 
pane exploded, another bullet shattered the plaster, this one cracking inches 
above his head. He sank to the floor, and began to roll toward the door.
Gunshots without shots: they had come from a silenced rifle. He should have been 
used to it by now.
Then a loud gun blast came from outdoors, an odd counterpoint to the silenced 
firing. Other sounds ensued: The screeching of tires. The noise of a car door 
opening and closing.
And from elsewhere in the mansion, panicked screams.
Madness!
A quiet fusillade was loosed, as deadly projectiles snapped though the air, some 
hitting glass, some traveling uninterrupted through already broken panes. They 
buried themselves in the walls, ceilings, floors. They pinged off the brass 
chandelier, ricocheted in unpredictable ways.
The throbbing of his temple had grown so forceful that it required a conscious 
exertion simply to focus his eyes.
Think! He had to think! Something had changed. What made sense of the assault, 
the contrast in weaponry and approach?
Two teams were attacking. Two teams that were not coordinated.
Mrs. Novak must have reported him. Yes, he was certain of it now. She had been 
onto him the whole time, playing along, playing him. Hence the mischievous look. 
She was one of Them.
The only place of refuge from the fusillade was deep in the mansion, in one of 
the inner chambers: yet surely they were counting on him seeking it out, which 
meant that this refuge was the most dangerous place he could be.
He phoned Barry on his Ericsson.
Cooper was uncharacteristically flustered. "Jeepers, Paul! What the hell's going 
on? It's like the Battle of Midway out here."
"Can you make visual on anyone?"
"Um, you mean, can I see 'em? A glimpse, once in a while. There's a couple of 
them in military drab. They look mean. The arms-are-for-hugging message hasn't 
reached these guys, Paul."
"Listen, Barry, we specified that the limo have bulletproof windows when we 
ordered it. You'll be safest there. But be ready to haul ass at my signal."
Now Janson bolted for the door and raced down the stairs to the first floor. 
When he reached the landing, he saw the security guard unholster his weapon and 
approach the front window. Then the gun clattered to the floor.
The guard's mouth sprang open, and a circle of red formed about his left 
eyebrow. Blood spewed out in a pulsing rush that rolled over the unblinking eye. 
And all the while, the man stood, upright, as if transmuted into a statue. 
Slowly, as if in some danse macabre, the man's legs started to twitch, then give 
way, and he toppled onto the ancient Chinese carpet. Janson rushed over and 
retrieved the man's gun, a Clock pistol.
"Minister Kubelik," the red-haired receptionist cried out. "We've all been 
ordered to the rear annex. I can't explain what's happening but … " She trailed 
off, stunned and perplexed at the sight of a high government minister in a 
controlled firing roll.
The roll got him across the hallway and near the front door while remaining 
within two feet of the ground. It was faster than a crawl, and speed was now of 
the essence. "Toss me my hat."
"What?"
"Toss me the goddamn hat," Janson yelled. More quietly: "You'll find it's about 
a meter from your left hand. Throw it to me."
The terrified receptionist did so, as one obeys a dangerous madman, and fled to 
the rear annex.
The small square in the double-hung window that was cleaner than the rest of it: 
a sniper would be there.
He had to use the thick wooden door as a movable shield. He jumped up, turned 
the knob, and opened it a crack.
Two thuds: bullets that dug into the thick wood. Bullets that would have struck 
him had he continued out the door.
The door was now ajar, just eighteen inches, but it should suffice for a 
well-targeted shot. That grimeless, sparkling square of glass—with luck, he 
could hit it from here, even with a mere handgun.
His enemies would be scoped; he would not be. But scopes had their limitations, 
too. The greater the magnification, the more restricted the field of vision. And 
it took perhaps ten or twenty seconds to reposition the scope and adjust its 
optics when the target position changed abruptly.
He crawled to where the security guard lay slain on a pale blue carpet now 
darkening with his blood and dragged the body toward the foyer, knowing that he 
would be shielded by the four-foot wall of brick beneath the window. He pulled 
out a handkerchief and hurriedly wiped the blood from the man's face. He draped 
his suit jacket on the man's upper body and jammed his felt-brimmed hat on the 
corpse's head. Firmly grasping the hair on the nape, he positioned the head 
precisely. In a darting gesture, he pushed the head toward the gap left by the 
cracked-open door, and swiveled it, emulating the movements of a man cautiously 
craning to see.
The head would be glimpsed fleetingly, in profile, and from a distance.
A pair of sickening spits confirmed his worst suspicions. The dead man's head 
absorbed heavy-caliber bullets from two different directions.
Another second or so would pass before the bolt-action rifles would permit a 
second tap. Now Janson sprang up, to his full height. The snipers' scopes would 
be trained on the spot where the guard's head had appeared. Janson would expose 
himself several feet higher. He had to make his sighting and shoot nearly 
instantaneously.
Time turned to syrup.
He peered out, identified the small, gleaming square of glass, and squeezed out 
a burst of three shots into it. With luck, he would at least damage the sniper's 
equipment. The gun bucked in his hand as it sent out its blast, and Janson 
retreated behind the heavy door. A guttural spray of curses was audible through 
the broken glass, telling him that he had scored some kind of hit.
One perch may have been deactivated. But how many more remained? He studied the 
two additional bullet wounds on the guard's head. One projectile had traveled 
from a steep downward trajectory, evidently from the house opposite. The other, 
which entered high on a cheek, came at a sharp angle, indicating a sniper from a 
neighbor to the right.
He could have Cooper pull up in the armored limo, but just the few feet of 
exposure would, with an active sniper in the vicinity, prove deadly. At least 
one person would have his rifle aimed directly on the stoop.
Janson heaved the corpse upward in a vaulting movement across the main front 
room, and studied the reaction.
An unsilenced blast shattered what remained of the window, followed by a cluster 
of spits, shots that were sound-suppressed but no less deadly. How many? How 
many guns were trained on this house; how many riflemen were awaiting a clean 
shot? At least five, and the real number could be much higher.
Oh, dear God. An all-out assault on Peter Novak's headquarters was in progress. 
Had he brought this about by his presence? It strained belief, but then little 
made sense any longer.
All he was certain of was that he had to get out of the house and that he could 
not use the doors. He charged up the stairs. Another flight up, narrower, 
brought him to the third floor, where he found himself looking at a closed door. 
Was there time? He had to check it out—had to make time. He tried the handle; it 
was locked. Janson broke it open with a forceful kick and found himself in a 
private office.
A desk. A credenza, stacked with cardboard mailers from the ultra-secure, 
ultra-expensive express-delivery service Caslon Couriers. Beside it, a black 
metal filing cabinet. Locked, too, but easily forced. Inside was an array of 
reports about nongovernmental organizations and lending libraries in Slovenia 
and Romania. And correspondence from Unitech Ltd., content seemingly 
unexceptionable. Unitech: yes, it meant something—but he had no time to think 
now. Survival was his one goal, and his thoughts had to be directed toward that 
singular imperative. It had been a thirty-second detour; now he charged up the 
two remaining flights and clambered up a crude wooden ladder that led to the 
loft, beneath the roof. It was stifling there, but under the rafters there had 
to be an opening to a part of the roof that would be hidden by the gables. It 
was his only chance. A minute later, he had found it and arrived stumbling on 
the roof. It was steeper than he expected, and he clung to the nearby chimney, 
as if it were a great tree offering protection in the jungle. It was, of course, 
nothing of the kind. He scanned the adjoining rooftops, looking for his 
executioners.
Being at roof level would take him out of range of most of their fixed 
positions.
But not all.
Perched on a higher rooftop, diagonally opposite to his right, he could make out 
the deadly brunette from Regent's Park. There she had narrowly missed him from 
an enormous distance. Now she was a hundred feet away. She could not fail to hit 
her target. She had not missed when she hit the grotesque puppet he had made of 
the dead security guard, for he knew now that the diagonal shot was hers.
He turned his head and saw, to his dismay, that there was another rifleman on 
the adjoining roof, just thirty-five feet to his left.
The rifleman had heard his feet scrambling on the slate roof and was now 
swiveling his weapon toward him.
Alerted by the drab-suited rifleman, the deadly brunette raised her scope to 
roof level. His bruised temple flared once again, with almost incapacitating 
pain.
He was pinned between two sharpshooters, with only a handgun for protection. He 
saw the woman squinting through her scope, saw the utter blackness of the 
rifle's bore hole. He was staring at his own death.
It was a shot she could not miss.
CHAPTER TWENTY
He forced himself to focus on the countenance of his executioner: he would look 
death in the face.
What he saw was a play of confusion on her face as she swiveled her rifle a few 
degrees to the left and squeezed off a shot.
The rifleman on the next roof over arced his back and tumbled off the roof like 
a falling gargoyle.
What the hell was going on?
The noisy chatter of a nearby automatic weapon immediately followed—aimed not at 
him but at her. A piece of the ornate cornice behind which she was stationed 
broke off, leaving a cloud of dust.
Was somebody rescuing him, saving him from the Regent's Park executioner?
He tried to puzzle out the complex geometry. Two teams, as he supposed. One 
using American-issue sniper equipment, the sniper team from Consular Operations. 
And the other? An odd assortment of weaponry. Irregulars. Hirelings. To judge 
from the fabric and hardware, Eastern Europeans.
In whose employ?
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. If the old saw was true in this case, he was 
far from friendless. But was it true?
The man with the automatic gun, a Russian-made AKS-74, now stood above the 
parapet, trying to get a better angle on the woman sniper.
"Hey," Janson called out to him.
The man—Janson was near enough to see his coarse features, close-set eyes, and 
two days' growth of beard—grinned at Janson, and turned toward him.
With his gun set at full fire.
As a raking blast hit the roof, Janson dove into a roll, hurtling down the tiled 
incline. A fragment of stone whipped past his ear as a noisy fusillade swept the 
area where he had been moments before. His forehead scraped against another 
piece of masonry, the palm of his hand stung as it pressed against jagged roof 
tile. Finally, his body slammed against the balustrade. The impact was jarring, 
debilitating, yet the alternative would have been worse—a plumb drop from the 
high roof to the pavement.
He heard shouts, from there, and there. His dazed brain strove to process the 
sounds as they raced and echoed and faded.
What had just happened? The woman had him within her sights. She had him.
Why didn't she take the shot?
And the other team—who were they? Angus Fielding had mentioned the shadowy 
enemies Novak had made among corrupt Eastern European oligarchs. Were they a 
private militia? Everything about them suggested as much.
He was their target. But so was the team from Consular Operations. How could 
that be?
There was no time. He poked his pistol between the ornamental sandstone 
balusters and squeezed off two quick shots. The man with the AKS-74 staggered 
backward, making an odd gurgling sound; one of the bullets had pierced his 
throat, which exploded in a gush of arterial blood. As he slumped to the tiles, 
his weapon fell with him, secured by the nylon sling around his shoulders.
That gun could be Janson's salvation—if he could get to it.
Now Janson stood atop the balustrade and leaped the short distance to the 
adjoining house. He had an objective. The AKS-74: a crude, chattering, powerful 
submachine gun. He landed imperfectly, and pain shot like a bolt of electricity 
up his left ankle. A bullet twanged through the air just inches from his head, 
and he threw himself down on the tiled peak, a few feet away from the man he had 
just shot dead. The too-familiar smell of blood wafted toward him. He reached 
out and wrested the submachine gun from its nylon sling, hastily cutting it free 
with a pocketknife. Without shifting his position, he craned his head around to 
situate himself.
The planar geometry of the roofs was, he knew, deceptive. Peaks met peaks at 
what looked like perpendicular angles, but the angles were not truly 
perpendicular. Parapets that appeared parallel were not truly parallel. Eaves 
that appeared level were not truly level. Cornices and balustrades, built and 
rebuilt over the centuries, settled and shifted in ways that the quick glance 
would not detect. Janson knew that the human mind had a powerful tendency to 
abstract away such irregularities. It was a cognitive economy that was usually 
adaptive. And yet when it came to the trajectory of a bullet, small 
irregularities could make all the difference in the world.
No angles were true; intuition had to be overridden, again and again, with the 
hard data of range finder and scope.
Now his hands patted down the dead man until he found and retrieved a small 
device with two angled mirrors attached to a telescoping rod that resembled the 
antenna of a transistor radio. It was standard equipment for an urban commando. 
Janson carefully adjusted the mirrors and pulled out the rod. By extending it 
over the cornice, he would be able to see what threats he still confronted 
without putting himself in the line of fire.
The weapon that was nestled in Janson's arms was hardly a precision 
instrument—it was a fire hose, not a laser.
What he saw was far from encouraging. The deadly brunette was still in position, 
and though he was currently protected from her by the roof-line geometry of the 
eaves, peaks, and gables, she would be alert to any movement, and he could not 
reposition himself without exposure.
A bullet thwacked into the chimney, chiseling off a piece of the centuries-old 
brick. Janson rotated the periscope-like device to see who was responsible. One 
roof over, standing with an M40 braced against his shoulder, was a former 
colleague of his from Consular Operations. He recognized the broad nose and 
quick eyes: an old-school specialist named Stephen Holmes.
Janson moved carefully, sheltering himself from the riflewoman by keeping 
himself low and behind the projecting brick gable while he snaked himself up the 
incline of the slate roof. He had to execute his next move perfectly, or he was 
dead. Now he kept his head down as his hands lifted the muzzle of the AKS-74 
over the roofline. He relied on memory, on a fleeting image from the periscope, 
as he directed a burst of fire toward the long barrel of the rifle. An answering 
clang—the sound of metal-jacketed bullets striking a long barrel fashioned of a 
superhard composite resin—told him he had succeeded.
Now he raised his head over the roofline and directed a second, more targeted 
burst: the steel-tipped bullets tore into the barrel of Holmes's M40 until the 
green-black shaft shattered.
Holmes was now defenseless, and when his eyes met Janson's it was with the 
resigned, almost weary look of someone convinced he was about to die.
Janson shook his head disgustedly. Holmes was not his enemy, even if he thought 
he was. He craned around and, peering through a loophole in the elaborate 
semicircular pediment, was able to glimpse the brunette diagonally opposite. 
Would she take him out with one of her trademark double taps? She had seen what 
had happened, knew that her colleague was out of commission and that she would 
have to assume responsibility for a larger field. Would she wait until he moved 
from the protection of the second gable? The slotlike loophole was too narrow 
and deep to permit a clean shot from a diagonal perch. She would have to wait. 
Time was a sniper's best friend—and his mortal foe.
He squinted and brought her face into focus. She was no longer in shooting 
position—had broken from her spot-weld with the rifle and was staring at her 
colleague with a look filled with uncertainty. A moment later, Janson saw a 
flicker of movement behind her, and then something more dramatic: an attic door 
burst open and a giant of a man loomed suddenly behind the slight brunette. He 
smashed something over her head—Janson could not quite make it out; it could 
have been the butt of a long firearm. The brown-haired woman slumped limply to 
the parapet, evidently unconscious. Now the giant seized her bolt-action rifle 
and squeezed off one, two, three shots to his right. The strangled cry from the 
adjoining roof told him that at least one had hit its target: Stephen Holmes.
Janson hazarded a quick look, and what he saw sickened him: the shots seemed 
casual, but were well aimed. The large-caliber bullets had blown off Holmes's 
jaw. From the destroyed lower half of his face, blood drenched down his tunic; a 
final breath was expelled like noisy gargle, half cough, half feckless scream. 
Then Holmes toppled off his roof perch and tumbled down the tiled roof until he 
slammed into the parapet. Through the ornamental stonework, his lifeless brown 
eyes stared at Janson.
All that Janson knew was that the giant was no savior. He sprayed a long 
fusillade toward the hulking man who stood where the Cons Op sniper had been—it 
would force him into a defensive crouch, at least momentarily—then, using the 
various stone ornaments as handholds, quickly clambered down the side of the 
mansion, which was safely out of range. He hit the paved surface of the shadowed 
alley with as little noise as he could manage and, positioning himself behind 
two metal trash cans, studied the street scene in front of him.
The giant was fast, his agility astonishing for someone of his size. Already he 
was charging out the front door of the building, dragging the unconscious 
brunette with him like a sack. The man had a hideous, puckered scar running down 
his cheek, a grotesque memento of a violent past. His blue eyes were small, 
piggish but alert.
A second man, attired in similar drab, raced over, and Janson heard them 
talking. The language was unfamiliar—but not entirely so. Straining, he could 
make out a fair amount of it. It was Slavic—Serbo-Croatian, in fact. A distant 
cousin to Czech, but close enough that, by concentrating, he was able to make 
out the basics.
A small, powerful sedan roared up to them, and after another brief, barked 
exchange, the two men leaped into the backseat. Police sirens screamed in the 
distance.
They were leaving the scene because the police were beginning to arrive. Other 
drab-clad gunmen piled into an SUV and drove off as well.
Battered, bloodied, Janson staggered to the side street where Barry Cooper, 
sweating and wide-eyed, remained in the driver's seat of the armored limo.
"You need to go to a hospital," Cooper said, shaken.
For a moment Janson was silent, and his eyes were closed. Concentrating 
intensely, he returned to the words he had heard. Korte Prinsen-gracht … 
Centraal Station … Westerdok … Oosterdok … 
"Get me to Centraal Station," Janson said.
"We're going to have half the cops in Amsterdam on our tail." A light drizzle 
had begun to fall, and Cooper switched on the window wipers.
"Pedal to the metal."
Cooper nodded, and set off north on Prinsengracht, the wheels squealing against 
the slick pavement. By the time they reached the bridge over Brouwersgracht, it 
was apparent that they had no police pursuers. But were there pursuers of 
another kind?
"Serbian irregulars," Janson murmured. "They're mostly mercenaries these days. 
But whose?"
"Serbian mercenaries? You're harshing my groove, man. I'm gonna pretend I didn't 
hear that."
Separating Korte Prinsengracht from the Westerdok, where largely abandoned 
warehouses stood, was the man-made island on which the Centraal Station was 
built. But that was not where the giant and his friends were headed. They would 
be heading toward the vast maintenance buildings to the south of the station, 
which were sheltered from casual observation. At night, heroin addicts went 
there to score and shoot up; during the day, however, it was almost entirely 
abandoned.
"Keep going, straight!" Janson yelled, jerking to full attention.
"I thought you said Centraal Station … "
"There's a maintenance building to the right, five hundred yards away. 
Overlooking the wharves of Oosterdok. Now floor it."
The limo powered past the parking lot of the train station and bounded down the 
broken pavement of the derelict yards where, years ago, the business of the 
wharves had been conducted. Most of the commercial harbors had relocated to 
North Amsterdam; what remained were phantoms of brick and concrete and 
corrugated steel.
A gated Cyclone fence suddenly loomed before them. Cooper stopped the car, and 
Janson got out. The fence was old, the links frosted with oxide. But the knob 
set, set into a large rectangular metal plate, was bright and shiny, obviously 
new.
From a distance, he heard shouts.
Frantically, Janson withdrew a small bump key from his pocket and set to work. 
He positioned the very end of it into the keyway and then, in a sudden, plunging 
movement, thrust the rest of it into the lock and twisted it in a single 
continuous motion. The speed of that motion was crucial: the key had to be 
turned before the lock's spring pressed the top pin down.
His fingers could feel that the top pin had bounced high enough to fly beyond 
the shear line, that his twist had taken advantage of the split second in which 
the pin columns had bounced out of alignment. The gate was open.
He waved Cooper through and gestured for him to park the car about a hundred 
yards away, behind a rusting, abandoned train car.
Janson himself raced over to the side of a huge steel shed and, flattening 
himself against it, edged swiftly toward the shouts he had heard.
Finally, he could see through the dim light into the vast interior, and what he 
made out sickened him.
The woman from Consular Operations was roped to a cement pillar with a thick 
hawser, her clothes crudely torn off her.
"This shit is getting old fast," she growled, but the fear beneath the bravado 
was all too evident.
Before her, the giant with the glossy, puckered scar loomed. He belted her with 
his hand, and her head snapped back against the concrete. He pulled out a knife 
and sliced off her undergarments.
"Don't you touch me, you son of a bitch!" she yelled.
"What are you going to do about it?" The voice was harshly guttural. The giant 
laughed as he loosened his belt.
"I wouldn't get Ratko mad if I were you," said his companion, who held a long 
thin blade that glinted even in the gloom. "He prefers 'em alive—but he's not 
that particular."
The woman loosed a bloodcurdling shriek. Sheer animal terror? Janson suspected 
that there was more to it—that she was hoping against hope that somebody might 
hear.
Yet the wind and the rumble of distant barges drowned out whatever sounds might 
be made.
In the gloom of the warehouse, he could make out the gleaming shape of the 
powerful sedan the men had ridden in, the engine ticking as it cooled.
The man slapped her again, and then the slaps became rhythmic. The aim was not 
interrogation. It was, in fact, part of a sexual ritual, Janson realized to his 
horror. As the killer's trousers dropped heavily to the floor, his organ was 
silhouetted in the gloom: the woman's death would be preceded by indignity.
Janson froze as he heard a soft Serbian-accented voice from behind him: "Drop 
the gun."
Janson whirled around and found himself face-to-face with a slender man who had 
gold-rimmed glasses perched high on an aquiline nose. The man wore khaki 
trousers and a white shirt, both neatly pressed. He stood very close to him and, 
with a casual movement, pressed a revolver against his forehead.
It was a setup.
"Drop the gun," the man repeated.
Janson let his pistol fall to the concrete. The steady pressure of the man's gun 
against his forehead admitted no negotiation. Another piercing scream rent the 
air, this time with a quaver that signified profound terror or rage.
The man with the gold-rimmed glasses smiled grimly. "The American bitch sings. 
Ratko likes to fuck them before he kills them. The screams turn him on. What is 
in store for you, I'm afraid, will be far less enjoyable. As you will learn for 
yourself. He'll be finished shortly. And so will she. And so, if you are 
fortunate, will you."
"Why? For Christ's sakes, why?" Janson demanded in a low, urgent voice.
"Such an American question, that," the man replied. His voice was more 
cultivated than the giant's, but equally devoid of emotion. He was probably the 
operation's leader. "But we will be the ones asking questions. And if you do not 
answer them to our satisfaction, you will suffer an excruciatingly painful death 
before your body disappears in the waters of the Oosterdok."
"And if I do what you ask?"
"Your death will be merciful and swift. Oh, I'm sorry. Were you hoping for more 
choices?" The man's thin lips twitched with contempt. "You Americans always want 
things that aren't on the menu, don't you? You can never have enough choices. 
Only, I am not an American, Mr. Janson. I offer you one choice. Death with 
agony—or death without." His quiet words had the effect of an icy wind.
As the woman released another ear-piercing scream, Janson contorted his face 
into a look of terror. "Please," he said, in a half whimper. "I'll do anything … 
" Janson reached into a place deep within and began to tremble visibly.
A gratified, sadistic smile came to the man with the gold-rimmed glasses.
Suddenly, Janson's shaking knees buckled, and he dropped down two feet, 
remaining perfectly erect as he bent his knees. At the same time, his right hand 
shot straight up, grabbing the wrist of the man's outstretched hand.
The man's smile faded as Janson pulled his arm down in a powerful wrist lock, 
wrenching it toward his elbow and twisting it at an acute angle. Now the man 
bellowed in pain as the ligaments in his arm were strained and torn, but Janson 
was relentless, taking a long step back with his left foot and pulling the 
attacker to the ground. He yanked on the arm with all his strength and heard a 
pop as the ball joint was dislocated from the socket. The man roared again, 
agony mingling with disbelief. Janson fell on him, bringing all his weight down 
on his right knee, driving it into the man's rib cage. He could hear at least 
two ribs break. The man gasped, and behind the gold-rimmed glasses, tears rushed 
to his eyes. The broken ribs would make simply breathing exquisitely painful.
Roused by the nearby footfalls of his companions, the man tried to free his gun 
arm, despite his dislocated joint, but Janson had it pinned between his chest 
and left knee. Janson turned his right hand into a claw and clamped it around 
the man's throat, lifting and slamming his head against the ground until his 
body was limp. Moments later, when Janson reared up, he had a gun in both hands—
And squeezed off two shots—one at a rough-hewn man rushing toward him with an 
automatic pistol, a second at a bearded man several feet behind him, with a 
submachine gun held at his side. Both slumped to the ground.
Janson strode toward where the man they called Ratko stood, only to find the 
raking fire of an AKS-74 pocking the concrete floor in a storm of sparks and 
micro-explosions. It had to be directed by a man on a catwalk high above, and it 
created an impassable zone between Janson and Ratko—who had hastily hiked up his 
trousers and was turning to face him. A .45 handgun looked small in the Serb 
giant's enormous hand.
Now Janson ducked behind a concrete pillar. As he expected, the man with the 
submachine gun overhead repositioned himself to gain an angle on Janson. But in 
doing so he had exposed himself. Peering around the corner, Janson caught a 
fleeting glimpse of a short, stocky moonfaced man who held the AKS-74 as if it 
were part of him. A brief fusillade tore into the pillar he hid behind. Janson 
snaked a hand around it and squeezed off a blind shot. He heard it twang against 
steel-pipe railing and knew he had missed. Sudden footsteps on the steel catwalk 
helped him locate the man in space, however, and he squeezed off three more 
shots.
Each one missed. Damn—what had he expected? And yet he could not visually locate 
the man with the assault weapon without exposing himself to his deadly fire.
Light briefly flooded the dim warehouse as somebody opened a side door.
He heard footsteps—somebody racing into the cavernous space.
Another burst came from the AKS-74, directed not at Janson but at the unseen 
arrival.
"Oh shit! Oh shit!" It was Barry Cooper's voice.
He couldn't believe it: Barry Cooper had made his way into the abandoned 
warehouse.
"Barry, what the hell are you doing here?" Janson called.
"Right now, I'm asking myself that. Heard all this gunfire when I was in the 
car, got scared, and I ran in here trying to escape. Pretty dumb, huh?"
"Truthfully? Yes."
Another fusillade brought up a storm of sparks from the concrete floor.
Janson stepped back from the pillar and saw what was happening. Barry Cooper was 
huddled behind a large steel drum while the man on the catwalk began to 
reposition himself.
"I don't know what to do," Cooper said in a half wail.
"Barry, do what I'd do."
"Gotcha."
A shot rang out, and the short, stocky man on the catwalk abruptly stiffened.
"That's right, baby. Make love, not war, motherfucker," Cooper yelled as he 
emptied the entire clip of his pistol into the gunman overhead.
Now Janson could move around the pillar, and he immediately squeezed off a shot 
at Ratko's companion, who hovered with a knife near the trussed woman.
"Sranje! Shit!" the man called out. The bullet had struck his shoulder, and he 
let the knife drop. The man sank to the ground, moaning and incapacitated.
Janson saw the woman snake a foot out toward the knife, and bring it close to 
her. Then she wedged it between her two heels and, her legs shaking with the 
effort, gradually raised it off the ground.
The Serb giant seemed torn between two targets, Cooper and Janson.
"Drop the gun, Ratko!" Janson yelled.
"I fuck your mother!" the giant Serb spat, and he squeezed off a shot at Barry 
Cooper.
"Dammit!" Cooper bellowed. The bullet had penetrated both his arm and his lower 
chest. His gun fell to the ground and he retreated, in agony, behind a row of 
steel drums near the side entrance.
"You OK, Barry?" Janson called out, stepping behind another stanchion.
There was a moment of silence. "I dunno, Paul," he replied weakly. "Hurts like a 
motherfucker. Plus, I feel like I've fallen off the whole Gandhian-pacifist 
wagon. I'm probably going to have to become a vegan just to get my karma 
straightened out."
"Nice shooting, though. Weather Underground experience?"
"YMCA summer camp," Cooper said, sheepish. "BB guns."
"Can you drive?"
"Not the Indy 500 or anything, but, yeah, I guess."
"Keep calm and listen to me. Get into the car and drive yourself to a hospital. 
Now!"
"But what about … ?"
"Don't worry about me! Just haul ass."
A bullet from the giant's .45 echoed loudly through the steel enclosure, and a 
piece of concrete landed near Janson's feet.
It was a standoff now, between the two of them.
Two men, with nothing to lose but their lives.
Janson did not dare shoot blindly, for risk of hitting the man's captive. He 
took a few steps back until he could make out his target clearly. Ratko, 
steadying his gun hand with his other hand for precision shooting, had his back 
to her. A glint of steel told him that the woman was not as helpless as he 
imagined.
With her one free arm, she had reached down, stretching farther than seemed 
possible, and grabbed the hilt of the knife, which through extraordinary 
contortions she had managed to raise to mid-thigh level. Now she was raising it 
high, keeping the blade horizontal, the better to avoid the ribs, and—
Plunged it into the giant's back.
Shock wiped out the menacing expression on his hideously scarred face. As Janson 
stepped forward, the giant squeezed off another shot, but it went high. Janson 
had one more bullet left in his magazine: he could not miss.
He assumed the standard Weaver stance and squeezed off his sole remaining shot, 
aiming for the man's heart.
"I fuck your mother," the Serb rumbled, and then, like falling timber, he 
pitched forward, dead.
Now Janson strode over to the woman captive. He felt a surge of fury and 
revulsion as he took in the tattered clothes, the bruised flesh, the red marks 
left by hands that had groped and grasped her flesh like so much modeling clay.
Wordlessly, Janson withdrew the knife from the Serb's back and sliced through 
the hawser, freeing her.
She slid to the floor, her back resting against the pillar, seemingly unable to 
stand. She curled herself up, putting her arms around her knees, drawing them 
toward her, and resting her head on her forearm.
He disappeared for a moment, returning with the white shirt and khaki trousers 
that had been worn by the man with the gold-rimmed glasses.
"Take them," he said. "Put 'em on."
Finally, she raised her head, and he saw that her face was wet with tears.
"I don't understand," she said dully.
"There's a U.S. Consulate General at Museumplein nineteen. If you can get there, 
they'll take care of you."
"You rescued me," she said in a strange, hollow voice. "You came for me. What 
the hell would you do that for?"
"I didn't come for you," he snapped. "I came for them."
"Don't lie to me," she said. "Please don't lie to me." A quaver entered her 
voice. She seemed to be on the verge of collapse, and yet she started to talk, 
drawling through her tears, desperately clinging to the tattered vestiges of her 
professionalism. "If you wanted to interrogate one of them, you could have taken 
one alive and left. You didn't. You didn't, because they'd have killed me if you 
did."
"Get yourself to the consulate," he said. "File an After-Action Report. You know 
the regs."
"Answer me, goddammit!" She rubbed the tears from her face desperately, 
frantically, with the palms of both hands. However traumatized and battered, she 
remained fiercely ashamed of the display of weakness, vulnerability. She tried 
to stand up, but the muscles in her legs rebelled and she only ended up sinking 
to the ground again.
"How come you didn't take out Steve Holmes?" She was breathing heavily. "I saw 
what happened. You could have taken him out. Should have taken him out. Standard 
combat procedure is, you take the guy out. But all you did was disarm him. Why 
would you do that?" She coughed, and tried for a brave smile, but it looked like 
a wince. "Nobody uses a goddamn Havahart trap in the middle of a gunfight!"
"Maybe I missed. Maybe I was out of ammunition."
Her face was red as she slowly shook her head. "You think I can't handle the 
truth? Well, I don't know if I can. I just know that I can't hear any more lies 
right now."
"Museumplein nineteen," Janson repeated.
"Don't leave me here," she said, her voice cracking with fear and bewilderment. 
"I'm scared, all right? These fuckers weren't in the prep book. I don't know who 
they are or what they want or where they are. All I know is, I need help."
"The consulate will help." Janson started to walk away.
"Don't you turn your back on me, Paul Janson! I almost killed you three times. 
The least you owe me is an explanation."
"Report back to work," Janson replied. "Go back to your job."
"I can't. Don't you understand anything?" Suddenly, her voice became thick; the 
woman who sought to kill him was choking up. "My job—my job is to kill you. I 
can't do that now. I can't do my job." She laughed bitterly.
Slowly, slowly, she struggled to her feet, holding on to the pillar for support.
"Listen to me now. I met this American in Regent's Park who told me some lunatic 
story that maybe us Cons Op folks had got caught up in some big … manipulation. 
That the bad guy we were supposed to take down wasn't really the bad guy. I 
ignored that, because if that were true, up was down and down was up. Can you 
understand that? If you can't trust the people who give you your orders, what's 
the point of anything? Later, I filed my Memorandum of Conversation about it, 
just pro forma, and I get a phone call not from my boss, but my boss's boss. And 
he wants me to remember that Paul Janson is a genius liar, and was I sure he 
hadn't gotten to me somehow? Now I'm shivering in this godforsaken warehouse and 
thinking if I ever want to learn what's going on in the world, I'm probably not 
going to get that from my bosses. Now I'm thinking that the only one who can 
tell me what time it is is the guy I'm looking at." Trembling, she began to put 
on the clothes he had brought her. "The same guy I've spent forty-eight hours 
trying to drill."
"You've just gone through a traumatic experience. You're not yourself. That's 
all."
"I'm not finished with you, Paul Janson." She licked her cracked lips. Raised 
welts were beginning to appear on her bruised cheeks.
"What is it that you want from me?"
"I need help. I need … to know what's going on. I need to know what's a lie and 
what isn't." More tears welled up in her eyes, and she wiped them away, 
mortified. "I gotta get somewhere safe."
Janson blinked. "You want to be safe? Then stay the hell away from me. It's not 
safe where I am. And that's the one thing I am certain of. Do you want me to 
take you to a hospital?"
An angry stare. "They'd get me there. They'd find me, for sure they would."
Janson shrugged uneasily. She was right.
"I want you to tell me what the hell is going on." Her gait was unsteady, but 
she took a step toward him.
"That's what I'm trying to find out."
"I can help. You have no idea. I know stuff, I know plans, I know faces—I know 
who's been dispatched to come after you."
"Don't make things worse for yourself," Janson said, not unkindly.
"Please." The woman looked at him forlornly. She had the air of someone who had 
never experienced a moment's doubt in her professional life before now—someone 
who did not know how to deal with the uncertainties that now thronged her.
"Forget it," Janson said. "In about a minute, I'm going to steal a car. This is 
an act of larceny, and anybody who's with me at the time is legally an 
accomplice. That put things into perspective for you?"
"I'll steal it for you," she said huskily. "Lookit, I don't know where you're 
going. I don't care. But if you get away, I'll never know the truth. I need to 
know what's true. I need to know what isn't."
"The answer is no," Janson said shortly.
"Please."
His temple began to throb again. To take her with him was madness, self-evident 
madness.
But maybe there was some sense in the madness.


"Oh Jesus! Oh Jesus!" Clayton Ackerley, the man from the CIA's Directorate of 
Operations, was practically keening, and the sterile phone line did nothing to 
diminish the immediacy of his terror. "They're fucking taking us out."
"What are you talking about?" Douglas Albright's voice was truculent but 
alarmed.
"You don't know?"
"I heard about Charlotte, yes. It's awful. A terrible accident—and a terrible 
blow."
"You don't know!"
"Slow down and tell it to me in English."
"Sandy Hildreth."
"No!"
"They fished up his limo. Goddamn armored limo. On the bottom of the Potomac. He 
was in the backseat. Drowned!"
A long silence. "Oh Jesus. It's not possible."
"I'm looking at the police report right now."
"Couldn't have been some sort of accident? Some horrible, horrible coincidence?"
"An accident? Oh sure, that's what they've got it down as. Driver was speeding, 
eyewitnesses saw the car as it skidded off the bridge. Like with Charlotte 
Ainsley—some cabdriver loses control of his car, does a hit-and-run. And now 
there's Onishi."
"What?"
"They found Kaz's body this morning."
"Dear God."
"Corner of Fourth and L Streets in the near Northeast."
"What the hell was he doing there?"
"According to the coroner's report, there was phencyclidine in his blood. That's 
PCP—angel dust. And a lot of other shit besides. Officially, he OD'd on the 
street corner, outside a crack house. 'We see this all the time,' is what one of 
the city cops said."
"Kaz? That's crazy!"
"Of course it's crazy. But that's how they did it. The fact is that these three 
key members of our program have been killed within twenty-four hours of one 
another."
"Christ, it's true—they're picking us off, one by one. So who's next? Me? You? 
Derek? The secretary of state? POTUS himself?"
"I've been on the phone with them. Everybody's trying not to panic and not doing 
the greatest job of it. Fact is, we're all marked. We just joined the goddamn 
endangered-species list."
"But it doesn't make any sense!" Albright exploded. "Nobody knows who we are. 
Nothing connects us! Nothing except the most tightly guarded secret in the 
United States government."
"Let's be a little more precise. Even if nobody who's not in the program knows, 
he knows.
"Now wait a minute … "
"You know who I'm talking about."
"Christ. I mean, what have we done? What have we done?"
"He hasn't just cut his strings. He's killing everybody who ever pulled them."
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The sun filtered through the mulberry trees and tall pines, which spread their 
boughs protectively over the cottage. It was remarkable how well it blended into 
its surroundings, Janson noted with satisfaction as he walked through the door. 
He had just returned from a stroll down the path to the tiny village, a few 
miles down the mountain, and carried groceries and an armload of newspapers: 17 
Piccolo, Corriere delle Alpi, La Repubblica. Within the cottage, the austerity 
of the stone exterior was belied by the richly burnished boiserie and warm 
terra-cotta tiling throughout; the frescoes and ceiling paintings seemed to 
belong to another age and way of life altogether.
Now Janson entered the bedroom where the woman was still sleeping and prepared a 
cool, damp compress for her forehead. Her fever was subsiding; time and 
antibiotics had had their effect. And time had had its healing effect on him, 
too. The drive to the Lombardy redoubt had taken all night and some of the next 
morning. She was conscious for little of it, waking up for only the last few 
miles. It had been picture-perfect northern Italian countryside—the yellow 
fields of dried cornstalks, the groves of chestnut trees and poplars, the 
ancient churches with modern spires, the vineyards, Lombard castles perched on 
crags. Behind them, the gray-blue Alps stood over the horizon like a wall. Yet 
by the time they arrived, it was clear that the woman had been badly affected by 
her ordeal, much more so than she had realized.
The few times he had watched her sleep, he saw a woman tossing and turning, in 
the grip of powerful and disturbing dreams. She would whimper, occasionally lash 
out with an arm.
Now he draped a cloth drenched in cold water upon her forehead. She tossed 
feebly, a low moan of protest escaping her throat. After a few moments, she 
coughed and opened her eyes. He quickly poured water into a glass from the jug 
at her bedside, and had her drink from it. Before, once she'd taken a drink, she 
had sunk back into her deep and troubled sleep. This time, however, her eyes 
remained open. Staring off.
"More," she whispered.
He poured her another glass of water, and she drank it, steadily, without 
requiring his support or assistance. Quietly, her strength was returning. Her 
eyes focused, and fell upon him.
"Where?" she said, the one-word question costing her no little effort.
"We're in a cottage belonging to a friend of mine," he said. "In Lombardy. The 
Brianza countryside. Lago di Como is ten miles to our north. It's a very 
isolated, very private spot." As he spoke, he saw that her bruises looked even 
worse; it was a sign of the recovery process. Yet even the livid swellings could 
not conceal her simple beauty.
"How long … here?"
"It's been three days," he said.
Her eyes filled with disbelief, alarm, fear. Then, gradually, her face 
slackened, as consciousness ebbed.
A few hours later, he returned to her bedside, simply watching her. She's 
wondering where she is. She's wondering why she's here. Janson had to ask 
himself the same question. Why had he taken her in? His decision to do so had 
been anguishing: cold, hard reason had ensured his survival so far. And there 
was no doubt that the woman could potentially prove useful to him. But cold, 
hard reason told him that she could also prove fatal—and that his decision to 
take her in had been largely a matter of emotion. The kind of emotion that could 
cost someone his life. What did it matter if she were hunted down in Amsterdam? 
She had, indeed, repeatedly sought to kill him. I need to know what's a lie and 
what isn't, she had said, and he knew that this much was not a lie.
The woman had endured a shattering experience—made more so, surely, by the fact 
that she had once imagined herself invulnerable. He knew what that was like, 
knew it firsthand. What had been violated was not so much her body as her sense 
of who she was.
He held another compress to her forehead, and after a while she stirred again.
This time, she ran her fingertips over her face, felt the raised weals. There 
was shame in her eyes.
"I guess you don't remember much since Amsterdam," Janson said. "That's typical 
of the kind of contusions and concussions you suffered. Nothing helps but time." 
He handed her a glass of water.
"Feel like shit," was her cotton-mouthed reply.
She drank it greedily.
"I've seen worse," he said.
She covered her face with her hands and rolled over, turning away from him, as 
if embarrassed to be seen. A few minutes later, she asked, "Did you drive here 
in the limo?"
"No. That's still in Amsterdam. Don't you remember?"
"We put a 'bumper beeper' on it," she explained. Her eyes roamed across the 
ceiling, which was covered by an elaborate baroque painting of cherubim 
gamboling among clouds.
"I figured," Janson said.
"Don't want them to find us," she whispered.
Janson touched her cheek gently. "Remind me how come."
For a few moments she said nothing. Then she slowly sat up in the bed. Anger 
settled onto her bruised countenance. "They lied," she said softly. "They lied," 
she repeated, and this time there was steel in her voice.
"There will always be lies," Janson said.
"The bastards set me up," she said, and now she was trembling, with cold, or 
with fury.
"No, I think I was the one being set up," Janson said levelly.
He refilled her glass, watched her raise it to her cracked lips, drink the water 
in a single swallow.
"Comes to the same thing," she said. Her voice was distant. "When it's your own 
team does it to you, there's only one word for it. Betrayal."
"You feel betrayed," Janson said.
She covered her face with her hand, and words came out in a rush. "They set me 
up to kill you, but I don't feel guilty, somehow. Mostly, I just feel … so 
pissed off. So angry." Her voice broke. "And so damn ashamed. Like a goddamn 
dupe. And I'm starting to wonder about everything I think I know—what's real, 
what isn't. Do you have any idea what that's like?"
"Yes," Janson said, simply.
She fell silent for a while. "You look at me like I'm some kind of wounded 
animal," she finally said.
"Maybe we both are," Janson said gently. "And there's nothing more dangerous."
While the woman rested, Janson was downstairs, in the room that the house's 
owner, Alasdair Swift, used as a study. Before him was a stack of articles he 
had downloaded from online electronic databases of newspapers and periodicals. 
These were the lives of Peter Novak—hundreds of stories about the life and times 
of the great philanthropist.
Janson pored over them obsessively, hunting for something that he knew he would 
probably not find: a key, a clue, an incidental bit of data with larger 
significance. Something—anything—that would tell him why the great man had been 
killed. Something that would narrow the field. He was looking for a rhyme—a 
detail that would be meaningless to most people, yet would resonate with 
something that his subconscious mind had stowed away. We know more than we know, 
as Demarest liked to say: our mind stores the impress of facts that we cannot 
consciously retrieve. Janson read in a zone of receptivity: not trying to puzzle 
out a problem but hoping simply to take in what could be taken in, without 
preconception or expectations. Would there be a fleeting allusion to an 
embittered business rival? To a particular current of buried animus in the 
financial or international community? To a conflict involving his forebears? 
Some other enemy as yet unsuspected? He could not know the kind of thing he was 
looking for, and to imagine that he did would only blind him to the thing he 
must see.
Novak's enemies—was he flattering himself to think this?—were his enemies. If 
that were so, what else might they have in common? We know more than we know. 
Yet as Janson read on ceaselessly, his eyes beginning to burn, he felt as if he 
knew less and less. Occasionally he underlined a detail, though what was 
striking was how little the details varied. There were countless renditions of 
Peter Novak's financial exploits, countless evocations of his childhood in 
war-torn Hungary, countless tributes to his humanitarian passions. In the Far 
Eastern Economic Review, he read:
In December of 1992, he announced another ambitious program, donating $100 
million in support of scientists of the former Soviet Union. His program was 
designed to slow down that country's brain drain—and prevent Soviet scientists 
from taking up more lucrative employment in places like Iraq, Syria, and Libya. 
There's no better example of Novak in action. Even while Europe and the United 
States were wringing their hands and wondering what to do about the dispersal of 
scientific talent from the former superpower, Novak was actually doing something 
about it.
"I find it easier to make money than to spend it, to tell you the truth," says 
Novak with a big grin. He remains a man of simple tastes.
Every day starts with a spartan breakfast of kasha, and he pointedly eschews the 
luxury resorts and high-living ways favored by the plutocratic set.
Even Novak's small, homey eccentricities—like that unvarying daily breakfast of 
kasha—cycled from one piece to another: a permanent residue of personal "color," 
PCBs in the journalistic riverbed. Once in a while, there was a reference to the 
investigation of Novak's activities after Great Britain's "Black Wednesday," and 
the conclusion, as summarized by the head of MI6, in the line that Fielding had 
quoted: "The only law this fellow has broken is the law of averages." In another 
widely repeated quote, Peter Novak had explained his relative reticence with the 
press: "Dealing with a journalist is like dancing with a Doberman," he had 
quipped. "You never know if it's going to lick your face or rip your throat 
out." Testimonials from elder statesmen about his role in rebuilding civil 
society and promoting conflict resolution were woven through every profile. 
Soon, paragraphs of journalistic prose seemed to blend into one another; quotes 
recurred with only minor variations, as if struck from boilerplate. Thus, the 
London Guardian:
'Time was you could dismiss Peter Novak, ' says Walter Horowitz, the former 
United States Ambassador to Russia. 'Now he's become a player and a major one. 
He's very much his own man. He gets in there and does it, and he has very little 
patience with government. He's the only private citizen who has his own foreign 
policy—and who can implement it.' Horowitz voices a perspective that seems 
increasingly common in the foreign-policy establishment: that governments no 
longer have the resources or the will to execute certain kinds of initiatives, 
and that this vacuum is being filled by private-sector potentates like Peter 
Novak.
The U.N. Under Secretary-General for Political and Security Council Affairs, 
Jaako Torvalds, says, 'It's like working with a friendly, peaceable, independent 
entity, if not a government. At the U.N., we try to coordinate our approach to 
troubled regions with Germany, France, Great Britain, Russia—and with Peter 
Novak.'
In Newsweek, similar tributes echoed:
What sets the Magyar mogul apart? Start with his immense sense of assurance, an 
absolute certainty that you see in both his bearing and his speech. "I don't 
deal with affairs of state for the thrill of it," says Novak, whose exquisitely 
tailored wardrobe doesn't distract from his physical vigor. Yet by now he has 
matched himself against the world markets and won so frequently that the game 
must not feel like much of a challenge. Helping rebuild civil society in 
unstable regions such as Bosnia or the Central Asian republics, however, 
provides as much challenge as any man could hope for, even Peter Novak.
Hours later, he heard quiet footsteps, bare feet on terra-cotta tile. The woman, 
wearing a terry-cotton robe, had finally emerged from the bedroom. Janson stood 
up, his head still a blur of names and dates, a fog of facts as yet undistilled 
into the urgent truths he sought.
"Pretty swank place," she said.
Janson was grateful for the interruption. "Three centuries ago, there was a 
mountainside monastery here. Almost all of it was destroyed, then overgrown by 
the forest. My friend bought the property and sank a lot of money into turning 
the remnants into a cottage."
For Janson, what appealed wasn't so much the house as the location, rustic and 
isolated. Through the front windows, a craggy mountain peak was visible, rising 
from the nearby forest. Streaks of gray, naked stone interrupted its green 
textures—the distance made the trees look like clinging moss—and the whole was 
outlined against the azure sky, where small black birds wheeled and circled and 
plunged, their movements coordinated but seemingly aimless. An iron pergola, 
draped in vines, stood in the back not far from a centuries-old campanile, one 
of the few vestiges of the old monastery.
"Where I come from," she said, "this isn't a cottage."
"Well, he discovered a lot of frescoes in the course of renovation. He also 
installed a number of trompe l'oeil paintings taken from other villas. Went a 
little wild with the ceiling art."
"Damn bat babies got into my dreams."
"They're meant to be little angels. Think of them that way. It's more soothing."
"Who's this friend anyway?"
"A Montreal businessman. 'Friend' is an exaggeration. If it really belonged to a 
friend, I wouldn't go near it—the risk would be too great. Alasdair Swift is 
someone I did a few favors once. Always urged me to stay at his place if I were 
ever in northern Italy. He spends a few weeks here in July, otherwise, it's 
pretty much vacant. I figure it'll serve a turn.
There's also a fair amount of high-tech communication equipment here. A 
satellite dish, high-bandwidth Internet connection. Everything a modern 
businessman might need."
"Everything but a pot of joe," she said.
"There's a sack of coffee in the kitchen. Why don't you make us a pot?"
"Trust me," she said. "That's a real bad idea."
"I'm not fussy," he said.
She held his gaze sullenly. "I don't cook and I don't make coffee. I'd say it 
was out of feminist principle. Truth is, I don't know how. No big whoop. 
Something to do with my mom dying when I was a little girl."
"Wouldn't that turn you into a cook?"
"You didn't know my dad. He didn't like me messing around in the kitchen. Like 
it was disrespecting my mom's memory, or something. Taught me how to microwave a 
Hungry-Man dinner, though, and scrape the gunk out of the foil sections and onto 
a plate."
He shrugged. "Hot water. Coffee grounds. Figure it out."
"On the other hand," she went on, her cheeks aflame, "I am crazy good with a 
rifle. And I'm generally considered hot shit at field tactics, E and E, 
surveillance, you name it. So if you had a mind to, you probably could put me to 
good use. Instead, you're acting like you got nothing in your head but boogers 
and a peanut shell."
Janson burst out laughing.
It was not the reaction she had expected. "That's something my dad used to say," 
the young woman explained, sheepishly. "But I meant what I told you. Don't sell 
me short. Like I say, I can come in real handy. You know it."
"I don't even know who you are." His eyes came to rest on her strong, regular 
features, her high cheekbones and full lips. He had almost stopped noticing the 
angry welts.
"The name's Jessica Kincaid," she said, and extended a hand. "Make us some joe, 
why don't you, and we'll sit down and talk proper."
As a pot of coffee made its way into mugs, and into their bellies, accompanied 
by a few fried eggs and pieces of coarse bread torn from a round loaf, Janson 
learned a few things about his would-be executioner. She grew up in Red Creek, 
Kentucky, a hamlet nestled in the Cumberland Mountains, where her father owned 
the town's only gas station and spent more of his money at the local hunting 
supply store than was good for them. "He always wanted a boy," she explained, 
"and half the time he kinda forgot I wasn't one. Took me hunting with him first 
time when I wasn't any more'n five or six. Thought I should be able to play 
sports, fix cars, and take down a duck with a bullet, not a cartridge full of 
shot."
"Little Annie Oakley."
"Shit," she said, grinning. "That's what the boys in high school called me. 
Guess I had a tendency to scare 'em off."
"I'm getting the picture. Car would break down, boyfriend would start hoofing it 
for a roadside phone box, and meanwhile you'd be communing with the carburetor. 
A few minutes after they set off, the motor roars to life."
"Something like that," she said, apparently smiling at a memory his words 
brought back.
"I hope you don't take offense if I say you're not standard-issue Cons Ops."
"I wasn't standard-issue Red Creek, either. I was sixteen when I finished high 
school. Next day, I lift a thick handful from the gas station cash register, get 
on a bus, and keep going. Got a knapsack filled with paperback novels from the 
wire racks, and they're all about FBI agents and shit. I don't get off until I'm 
in Lexington. Can you believe, I'd never been there before. Never went 
anywhere—my daddy wouldn't stand for it. Biggest town I'd ever seen. Go straight 
to the FBI office there. There's a fat-mama secretary at the front desk. 
Sweet-talked her into giving me an application form. Now, I'm just a gawky 
teenager, all skin and bones, mostly bones, but when this young Fed happens by, 
I'm batting my eyes at him like crazy. He's like, 'Somebody got you in for 
questioning?' I'm like, 'Why don't you take me in for some questioning, 'cause 
you hire me, it'll be the best decision you ever made.' " She blushed at the 
recollection. "Well, I was young. Didn't even know you had to have a college 
degree to be an agent. And he and another guy in a navy suit are, like, joshing 
around with me, since it's a slow day, and I tell 'em I can pretty much hit 
whatever I aim at. And one of them, as a lark, takes me to the shooting range 
they got in the basement. He's calling my bluff, kinda, but mostly just foolin' 
with me. So I'm on the shooting range, and they're like, be sure you got the 
safety goggles on, and the ear muffles, and you sure you've handled a twenty-two 
before?"
"Don't tell me. You hit in the X-ring."
"Shit. One shot, one bull's-eye. Four shots, four bull's-eyes. No scatter. That 
hushed their mouths, all right. They kept punching up new targets, I kept 
hittin"em. They went long-distance, gave me a rifle, I showed 'em what I could 
do."
"So the sharpshooter got the job."
"Not exactly. I got a position as a trainee. Had to get a college-equivalency 
certificate in the meantime. A pile of book learning. Wasn't all that hard."
"Not for a bright-eyed girl with engine grease beneath her nails and cordite in 
her hair."
"And Quantico was a piece of cake. I could skedaddle up a rope faster than 
almost anybody in my class. Hand-over-hand climbing, second-story entrances, 
first-over-fence, whatever. Buncha football clods, they couldn't keep up with 
me. I apply for a job at the Bureau's National Security Division, and they take 
me. So a few years later, I'm on a special NSD assignment, and I catch the eye 
of some Cons Op spooks, and that's that."
"Like Lana Turner getting discovered on a fountain stool at Schwab's Drugstore," 
Janson said. "So why do I think you're skipping over the most interesting part?"
"Yeah, well, the details are messy," she said. "I'm in sniper position, in 
Chicago. A stakeout. It's a funny case, corporate espionage, only the spy 
actually works for the People's Republic of China. It's Cons Ops' baby, but the 
Feds are providing local backup and support. My job's pretty much just to keep 
watch. Things get a little out of hand, though. The guy slips the net. He's got 
a whole mess of microfiche on him, we know, so we definitely don't want him to 
escape. Somehow he slipped the lobby cordon, and he's racing down the street to 
his car. If he gets in the car, he's gone, because we don't have vehicular 
coverage. Nobody expected him to get that far, see. So I request permission to 
blow the handle off the car door. Slow him down. Operation manager says no—they 
think it's too dangerous, that I'll hit the subject, risk an international 
incident. Shit, the manager's covering his ass. I know what I can hit. The 
risk's zero. Manager doesn't know me, and he's saying, Hold fire. Stand down. 
Red light. Desist. "
"You squeeze off a shot anyway."
"Pop in a steel-jacketed round, blast off the door handle. Now he can't get into 
the car, and he's scared shitless to boot, I mean he just freezes, saying his 
prayers to the Chairman, and our guys end up hauling him off. Fellow has 
beaucoup microfiche on him, technical specs on every kind of telecom device you 
could name."
"So you save the day."
"And get shit-canned for my troubles. 'Acting in contravention of orders,' that 
kind of bullshit. Sixty-day suspension followed by disciplinary proceedings. 
Except these spooks swoop in and say they like my style, and how'd I like a life 
of travel and adventure."
"I think I've got the general idea," Janson said, and he did. In all likelihood, 
he knew from his own experience as a recruiter, the Consular Operations team 
first checked out her scores and field reports. Those had to have been 
startlingly impressive, for Cons Ops had a generally low estimation of the Feds. 
Once she was identified as a serious talent, someone in Cons Ops probably pulled 
strings with a contact at the Bureau and arranged for her suspension—simply to 
facilitate the transfer. If Cons Ops wanted her, they would get her. Hence 
they'd take steps to ensure that their offer of employment was accepted with 
alacrity. The scenario Jessica Kincaid had described sounded accurate, but 
incomplete.
"That's not all," she said, a little shyly. "I went through heavy-duty training 
when I joined up Cons Ops, and everyone in my class had to prepare a history 
paper on something or somebody."
"Ah, yes, the Spy Bio paper. And who'd you pick for Spy Bio—Mata Hari?"
"Nope. A legendary field officer by the name of Paul Janson. Did a whole 
analysis of his techniques and tactics."
"You're kidding." Janson built a fire in the stone fireplace, stacking the logs 
and crumpling sections of the Italian newspapers beneath them. The dry logs 
caught on quickly and burned with a steady flame.
"You're an impressive guy, what can I say? But I also identified certain 
mistakes you were liable to make. A certain … weakness." Her eyes were playful, 
but her voice was not.
Janson took a long sip of the hot, strong Java. "Shortly before Rick Frazier's 
1986 match with Michael Spinks, Frazier's coach announced to the boxing world 
that he'd identified a 'weakness' in Spinks's position. There was a lot of 
discussion and speculation at the time. Then Rick Frazier got into the ring. Two 
rounds later, he was knocked out." He smiled. "Now, what were you saying about 
this weakness?"
The ends of Jessica Kincaid's mouth turned down. "That's why they chose me, you 
know. I mean, for the hit."
"Because you were a veritable Paul Janson scholar. Someone who'd know my moves 
better than anybody. Yes, I can see that logic. I can see an operations director 
thinking he was pretty clever to come up with it."
"For sure. The idea of staking out Grigori Berman's place—that was mine. I was 
sure we'd catch up with you in Amsterdam, too. Lot of people were guessing you'd 
be lighting out for the U.S. of A. Not me."
"No, not you, with your graduate-equivalency degree in Janson Studies."
She fell silent, staring into the lees of her mug. "There's one question I've 
been meaning to ask you."
"Have at it."
"Just something I've always wondered about. In 1990, you had a drop on Jamal 
Nadu, big-deal terrorist mastermind. Reliable intelligence accounts, from 
sources you cultivated, identified an urban safe house he was using in Amman, 
and the car he was going to be transported in. A raggedy, funky ol' beggar 
approaches the car, gets shooed away, falls to his knees in apology, moves on. 
Only, the beggar is none other than Paul Janson, our own Dr. J, and while he was 
kowtowing, he rigged an explosive device under the vehicle."
Janson stared at her blankly.
"An hour later, Jamal Nadu does pile into the car. But so do four high-priced 
ladies—Jordanian hookers he'd hired. You notify control of the changed 
circumstances, and the orders are to proceed anyway. In your report, you say 
that you subsequently attempted to blow up the car but that the detonator 
failed. Operation foiled by mechanical screwup."
"These things happen."
"Not to you," she said. "See, that's why I never believed the official account. 
You were always a goddamn perfectionist. You made that detonator yourself. Now, 
two days later Jamal Nadu is on his way back from a meeting with a group of 
Libyans when suddenly his brains start to leak down his collar, because 
somebody, with a single well-aimed shot, had blown off the back of his head. You 
file a report suggesting that a rival from Hamas did him in."
"Your point?"
"You might have thought what really went down was pretty obvious. Four women in 
the car—the operative didn't have the stomach to kill 'em. Maybe didn't see why 
it was necessary. Maybe figured once he had a drop on the sumbitch, he could 
find another way to do it without a lot of collateral killing. And maybe the 
Department of Planning didn't see it that way. Maybe they wanted a flashy, fiery 
end and didn't give a shit about the whores. So you made things happen the way 
you thought they should happen."
"You did have a point, didn't you?"
"The really interesting question, way I see it, is this. In the world of covert 
ops, taking out a superbaddy like Nadu would make a lot of people's careers. 
What kind of man does it, and then doesn't take credit for it?"
"You tell me."
"Maybe somebody who doesn't want the controlling officer to be able to claim a 
big win."
"Tell me something else, if you know so much. Who was controlling the 
operation?"
"Our director, Derek Collins," she said. "At the time, he headed up the Middle 
East sector."
"Then if you have any questions about procedures, I suggest you take it up with 
him."
She formed a W with her thumbs and forefingers. "Whatever," she said, half 
sulkily. "Truth is, I had a hard time getting a fix on you."
"How do you mean?"
"It's one of the reasons the Jamal Nadu thing was a puzzle. Hard to say what 
makes you tick. Hard to square what I seen with what I heard. For damn sure, you 
ain't no choirboy. And there are some pretty brutal stories about the stuff you 
got up to in Vietnam—"
"There's a lot of bullshit out there," he said, cutting her off. He was 
surprised at the anger that flared in his voice.
"Well, the rumors are pretty heavy, is all I'm saying. They make it sound like 
you had a hand in some real sick shit that went down there."
"People make things up." Janson was trying to sound calm, and was failing. He 
did not quite understand why.
She looked at him oddly. "OK, man. I believe you. I mean, you're the only person 
who would know for sure, right?"
Janson stabbed at the fire with a poker, and the pine logs crackled and hissed 
fragrantly. The sun had begun to sink over the far mountain peak. "I hope you 
won't take offense if I ask you to remind me how old you are, Miss Kincaid," he 
asked, watching her hard face soften in the glow of the hearth.
"You can call me Jessie," she said. "And I'm twenty-nine."
"You could be my daughter."
"Hey, you're as young as you feel."
"That would make me Methuselah."
"Age is just a number."
"In your case, but not mine, a prime number." He stirred red smoking embers with 
the poker, watched them burst into yellow flames. His mind drifted back to 
Amsterdam. "Here's a question for you. You ever hear of a company called Unitech 
Ltd."
"Well, sure. It's one of ours. Supposed to be an independent corporate entity."
"But used as a front by Consular Operations."
"It's about as independent as a dog's leg," she said, running a hand through her 
short, spiky hair.
"Or a cat's paw," Janson said. The dim memories were surfacing: Unitech had 
played a minor role over the years in a number of endeavors; sometimes it helped 
anchor part of an undercover agent's legend, providing an ersatz employment 
record. Sometimes it transferred funds to parties that were being recruited to 
play a small role in a larger operation. "Somebody from Unitech is corresponding 
with the executive director of the Liberty Foundation, offering to provide 
logistical support for its education programs in Eastern Europe. Why?"
"You got me."
"Let's imagine that somebody, some group, wanted the opportunity to get close to 
Peter Novak. To learn about his whereabouts."
"Somebody? You're saying Consular Operations took him down? My employers?"
"Arranged for it to happen, more precisely. Orchestrated the circumstances at a 
remove."
"But why?" she asked. "Why? Don't make a lick of sense."
Few things did. Had Consular Operations really arranged Novak's death? And why 
hadn't his passing been reported anywhere? It was growing stranger by the day: 
people who should have been his close associates seemed completely oblivious of 
the cataclysmic event.
"What you been reading all this time?" Jessie said presently, gesturing toward 
the various stacks of printouts.
Janson explained.
"You really think there could be something valuable buried in the public 
record?" she asked.
"Don't be fooled by the mystique of 'intelligence gathering'—half of the stuff 
you find in foreign-situation reports filed by agents-in-place they get from 
reading the local papers."
"Tell me about it," she said. "But you only got two eyes—"
"So says the woman who tried to drill me a third."
She ignored the barb. "You can't read that whole stack at once. Give me some. 
I'll go through it. Another set of eyes, right? Can't hurt."
They read together until he felt the weight of exhaustion start to press down 
upon him: he needed sleep, could hardly focus his eyes on the densely printed 
pages. He stood up and stretched. "I'm going to hit the sack," he said.
"Gets chilly at night—sure you don't need a hot-water bottle?" she asked. She 
held out her hands. Her tone suggested she was joking; her eyes indicated she 
might not be.
He raised an eyebrow. "Take more than a hot water bottle to warm these bones," 
he said, keeping his voice light. "Think I'd better pass."
"Yeah," she said. "I guess you'd better." There was something like 
disappointment in her voice. "Actually, I think I'll just stay up a little while 
longer, keep slogging away."
"Good girl," he said, winking, and dragged himself up. He was tired, so tired. 
He would go to sleep easily, but he would not sleep well.


In the jungle was a base. In the base was an office. In the office was a desk. 
At the desk was a man.
His commanding officer. The man who had taught him nearly everything he knew.
The man he was facing down.
Twelfth-century plainsong came through the small speakers of the lieutenant 
commander's eight-track tape system. Saint Hildegard.
"What did you want to see me about, son?" Demarest's fleshy features were 
settled into bland composure. He looked as if he genuinely had no idea why 
Janson was there.
"I'm going to file a report," Janson said. "Sir."
"Of course. SOP following an operation."
"No, sir. A report about you. Detailing misconduct, in re Article Fifty-three, 
relating to the treatment of prisoners of war."
"Oh. That." Demarest was silent for a moment. "You think I was a little rough on 
Victor Charlie?"
"Sir?" Janson's voice rose with incredulity.
"And you can't think why, can you? Well, go ahead. I've got a lot on my mind 
right now. You see, while you're filling out your forms, I've got to figure out 
how to save the lives of six men who have been captured. Six men you know very 
well, because they're under your command—or were."
"What are you talking about, sir?"
"I'm talking about the fact that members of your team have been captured in the 
vicinity of Lon Due Than. They were on special assignment, a joint 
reconnaissance with the Marine Special Forces. Part of a pattern, you see. This 
place is a goddamn sieve."
"Why wasn't I notified about the operation, sir?"
"Nobody could find you all afternoon—an Article Fifteen offense right there. 
Time and tide wait for no man. Still, you're here now, and all you can think to 
do is find the nearest pencil sharpener."
"Permission to speak freely, sir."
"Permission denied," Demarest snapped. "You do what the hell you want. But your 
team has been captured here, men who placed their lives in your hands, and 
you're the person best positioned to lead a force to get them free. Or you would 
be if you gave a damn about them. Oh, you think I was unfeeling, inhumane toward 
those Victor Charlies in the boonies. But I did what I did for a reason, dammit! 
I've lost too many men already to leaks between ARVN reps and their VC cousins. 
What happened to you in Noc Lo? An ambush, you called it. A setup. Goddamn right 
it was. The operation was vetted by MACV, standard procedure, and somewhere 
along the lines, Marvin tells Charlie. It happens again and again, and every 
time it does somebody dies. You saw Hardaway die, didn't you? You cradled him in 
your arms while his guts were spilling onto the jungle. Hardaway was short, just 
a few days before his tour was over, and they ripped him open, and you were 
there. Now tell me how that makes you feel, soldier? Dewy and cuddly and 
sensitive? Or does it piss you off? You got a pair of balls on you, or did you 
lose 'em playing football for Michigan? Maybe it's slipped your mind, but we're 
in counterintelligence, Janson, and I am not going to let my men be horsefucked 
by the VC couriers who have turned MACV into a goddamn Hanoi wire service!" 
Demarest never raised his voice as he spoke, and yet the effect was only to 
reinforce the gravity of his words. "An officer's first imperative is the 
welfare of the men under his command. And when the lives of my men are at stake, 
I will do anything—anything consistent with our mission—to protect them. I 
couldn't give a good goddamn what forms you end up filing. But if you're a 
soldier, if you're a man, you'll rescue your men first: it's your duty. Then 
pursue whatever disciplinary proceedings your little bureaucratic heart 
desires." He folded his arms. "Well?"
"Awaiting grid coordinates, sir."
Demarest nodded soberly and handed Janson a sheet of blue paper dense with 
neatly typed operation specifications. "We've got a Huey gassed and gussied." He 
glanced at the large round clock mounted on the wall opposite. "The crew's ready 
to go in fifteen. I hope to hell you are."


Voices.
No, a voice.
A quiet voice. A voice that did not wish to be overheard. Yet the sibilants 
carried.
Janson opened his eyes, the darkness of the bedroom softened by the glow of the 
Lombard moon. An unease grew within him.
A visitor? There was an active Consular Operations branch based at the U.S. 
Consulate General in Milan, on Via Principe Amedeo—just a fifty-minute drive 
away. Had Jessie somehow made contact with them? He got up and found his jacket, 
felt the pockets for his cellular phone. It was missing.
Had she taken it while he slept? Had he simply left it downstairs? Now he put on 
a bathrobe, took the pistol from under his pillow, and crept toward the voice.
Jessie's voice. Downstairs.
He stepped halfway down the stone staircase, looked around. The lights were on 
in the study, and the asymmetry of illumination would provide him with the cover 
he needed—the bright lights inside, the shadowy darkness outside. A few steps 
farther. Jessie, he could now see, was standing in the study, facing a wall, 
with his cell phone pressed to her ear. Talking quietly.
He felt a wrenching feeling in his gut: it was as he had feared.
From the snippets of conversation he made out through the open door, it was 
apparent that she was speaking to a colleague from Consular Operations in 
Washington. He edged nearer the room, and her voice grew more distinct.
"So the status is still 'beyond salvage,' " she repeated. "Sanction on 
sighting."
She was verifying that the kill orders were still in effect.
A shudder ran down his spine. He had no choice but to do what he should have 
done much earlier. It was kill or be killed. The woman was a professional 
assassin: it was of no account that her profession had once been his—that her 
employers had as well. He had no choice but to eliminate her; sentiment and 
wishful thinking, and her own accomplished line of blather, had distracted him 
from that one essential truth.
As cicadas filled the evening breeze with their rasping—a window was open in the 
study—he moved the pistol to his right hand, following her pacing figure with 
its muzzle. The sudden certainty of what he had to do filled him with loathing, 
self-disgust. Yet there was no other way. Kill or be killed: it was the awful 
shibboleth of an existence he had hoped he'd put behind him. Nor did it mitigate 
the larger truth, the ultimate truth of his career: kill and be killed.
"What do the cables say?" she was saying. "The latest signals intelligence? 
Don't tell me you guys are working blind."
Janson coolly regarded the slightly built woman, the roundness of her hips and 
breasts offset by the tightly muscular frame; in her way, she was indeed quite 
beautiful. He knew what she was capable of—had seen, firsthand, her astonishing 
marksmanship, her extraordinary strength and agility, the swiftness and 
shrewdness of her mind. She had been built to kill, and nothing would deter her 
from doing so.
"Are the boys in position, or are they just sitting on their asses?" She kept 
her voice low, but her intonation was heated, almost hectoring. "Jesus! There is 
no excuse for this. This makes us all look bad. Shit, it's true what they say: 
when you want a job done right, you gotta do it yourself. I mean, that's how I'm 
feeling right now. Whatever happened to team efficiency?"
Another dumb, inanimate slug would shatter another skull, and another life would 
be stricken, erased, turned into the putrid animal matter from which it had been 
constituted. That was not progress; it was the very opposite. He cast his mind 
back to Theo and the others, snuffed out, and for what? Some of the rage that 
filled him was displaced rage at himself, yes. But what of it? The woman would 
die—die in a five-million-dollar mountainside estate in Alpine Lombardy, a land 
she had never seen before in her life. She would die at his hands, and that 
would be their one moment of true intimacy.
"Where is he? Where? Hell, I can tell you that." Jessie Kincaid spoke again to 
her unseen interlocutor, after a period of silence. "You big lummox, you mean 
you guys really haven't figured that out? Monaco, man. There's no doubt in my 
mind. You know Novak's got a house there." Another pause. "Janson didn't say it 
in so many words. But I heard him making a joke to his little friend there about 
playing baccarat—you do the math. Hey, you boys are supposed to be in 
intelligence, so why don't you try acting intelligent?"
She was lying to them.
Lying for him.
Janson returned his gun to his holster, and felt flooded, almost lightheaded, 
with relief. The intensity of the emotion surprised and puzzled him. She had 
been asked for his location, and she had lied to protect him. She had just 
chosen sides.
"No," she was saying, "don't tell anybody I called in. This was a private chat, 
all right? Just me and you, pookie. No, you can take all the credit, and that'll 
be fine with me. Tell 'em, I dunno, tell 'em I'm in a coma somewhere and the 
Netherlands national health plan is paying for real expensive treatment, because 
I didn't have any identity papers on me. Tell 'em that and I bet they won't be 
in such a rush to bring me back to the States."
A few moments later, she clicked off, turned around, and was startled to see 
Janson in the doorway.
"Who's 'pookie'?" he asked, in a bored voice.
"God damn you," she erupted. "You been spying on me? The famous Paul Janson 
turns out to be some kind of goddamn Peeping Tom?"
"Came down for some milk," he said.
"Shit," she said in two syllables, glowering. Finally, she said, "He's a fat-ass 
desk jockey at State, Bureau of Research and Intelligence. Sweet guy, though. I 
think he likes me, because when I'm around, his tongue comes out like Michael 
Jordan doing a fadeaway. Stranger things, right? But what's really strange is 
what he told me about Puma."
"Puma?"
"Shop name for Peter Novak. And before you ask, you're Falcon. The Puma update 
is what's freaking me out, though. They don't think he's dead."
"What, are they waiting for the obituary in The New York Times?"
"Story is that you took money to arrange his death. But you failed."
"I saw him die," Janson said sadly, shaking his head. "God, I wish it were 
otherwise. I can't tell you how much."
"Whoa," she said. "What, you trying to claim credit for the kill?"
"I'm afraid your contact is either putting you on or, more likely, just hasn't 
got a clue." He rolled his eyes. "Your tax dollars at work."
"Mentioned there was a news segment with him on CNN today. We got CNN here? 
Probably still be showing on the early-morning Headline News retreads."
She wandered over to the large-screen television set, and switched on CNN. Then 
she located a blank videotape atop the connected VCR, popped it in, and hit 
record.
A special report on the declining power of the Federal Reserve. Renewed tensions 
between North and South Korea. The latest fashion craze among Japanese youth. 
Protests against genetically modified foods in Britain. Forty minutes of 
videotape had been recorded by now. Then came a three-minute segment about an 
Indian woman who ran a clinic in Calcutta for her countrymen with AIDS. A 
homegrown Mother Teresa, someone called her. And—the occasion for the 
segment—the ceremony yesterday honoring the woman's efforts. A 
distinguished-looking man presenting her with a special humanitarian award. The 
same man who had helped fund her clinic.
Peter Novak.
The late, great Peter Novak.
Janson watched the large-screen TV with a swirling sense of bewilderment. Either 
this was some kind of technical trickery or, most likely, it had been filmed 
earlier, much earlier.
Surely a closer inspection would make this clear.
Together, he and Jessie rewound the recording she had made. There was Peter 
Novak, the familiar figure, unmistakably so. He was grinning and speaking into a 
microphone, "There's a favorite Hungarian proverb of mine: Sok kicsi sokra megy. 
It means that many small things can add up to a big one. It's a privilege to be 
able to honor the remarkable woman who, through countless small acts of kindness 
and compassion, has given the world something large indeed … "
There had to be an easy explanation. There had to be.
Then they watched the segment again, frame by frame.
"Stop there," Jessie said at one point. It was their third viewing. She pointed 
toward a magazine, fleetingly glimpsed at a cluttered table where Novak was 
interviewed after the ceremony. She ran to the kitchen and retrieved Janson's 
copy of The Economist, purchased at the newsstand earlier that day.
"Same issue," she said.
The very same image appeared on the cover, which was dated to expire the 
following Monday. It was not an old tape that had been broadcast. It was filmed, 
had to have been filmed, after the catastrophe in Anura.
Yet if Peter Novak were alive, who had died in Anura?
And if Peter Novak was dead, who were they were watching?
Janson felt his head starting to swim.
It was madness!
What had they seen? A twin? An impostor?
Had Novak been murdered and … replaced with a double? It was diabolical, almost 
beyond imagining. Who could do such a thing?
Who else knew? He reached for his cell phone, trying Novak's staffers both in 
New York and in Amsterdam. An urgent message for Peter Novak. Having to do with 
matters involving his personal security.
He used every code-red word he knew—to no avail, yet again. The response was the 
familiar one: bored, phlegmatic, unalarmed. A message would be conveyed; no 
promises of whether it would be returned. No information would be divulged as to 
Mr. Novak's whereabouts. Marta Lang—if that was even her real name—remained 
equally elusive.
A quarter of an hour later, Janson found himself clutching his head, trying to 
order his whirling thoughts. What had happened to Peter Novak? What was 
happening to Janson himself? When he looked up, he saw Jessie Kincaid staring 
back at him with wounded eyes.
"I ask only one thing of you," she said, "and I know it's a biggie, but here it 
is: do not lie to me. I've heard too many lies, hell, I've told too many lies, 
as it is. As for what happened in Anura, I got your word for it, nobody else's. 
Tell me this, what I am supposed to believe?" Her eyes were moist, and she was 
blinking hard. "Who am I supposed to believe?"
"I know what I saw," Janson said softly.
"That makes two of us." She jerked her head at the TV screen.
"What are you saying? That you don't believe me?"
"I want to believe you." She took a deep breath. "I want to believe somebody."
Janson was silent for a long moment. "Fine," he said. "I don't blame you. 
Listen, I'll call for a cab, he'll ferry you down to the Cons Op station in 
Milan, and you can report back in. Trust me, a crack shot like you, they'll be 
relieved to have you back. And I'll be long gone by the time you get the cleanup 
crew here."
"Hold it," she said. "Slow down."
"I think it's best," he said.
"For who?"
"Both of us."
"You don't speak for both of us. You speak for one of you." She was silent for a 
while, pacing. "All right, you goddamn son of a bitch," she said abruptly. "You 
saw what you saw. Christ on a raft, you saw what you saw. Shit, now this is what 
I call a total mindfuck." A mordant chuckle. "Shouldn't do that on a first date, 
or they won't respect you in the morning."
Janson was lost in his own whirring thoughts. Peter Novak: just who was this 
living legend, this man who emerged from obscurity to global prominence in such 
a meteoric blaze? Questions crowded his mind, but they were questions without 
answers. His stomach churning, Janson threw his Deruta mug into the fireplace, 
where it smashed against the heavy stones. He felt better for a moment, but only 
a moment.
He returned to the scarred leather chair near the fireplace, settling one 
battered hide against another. Jessie stood behind him, and began to rub his 
aching shoulders.
"I hate to add to the tension," she said, "but if we're gonna figure out what 
the hell's going on, we have got to get out of here. How long do you think it's 
going to take Cons Ops before they find us? They've got all that eye-in-the-sky 
data, and believe me, they got technicians working around the clock to identify 
your car, alternate means of conveyance, whatever. From what my friend told me, 
the cables so far are worthless, just a lot of false sightings—but there'll be a 
true one before long. They'll be shaking down known contacts in Europe, 
following thousands of dangling threads, reviewing video from highway tolls and 
border crossings. All that cybergumshoe shit. And sooner or later, something's 
going to lead them here."
She was right. He thought of the philanthropist's motto: Sok kicsi sokra megy. 
Hungarian folk wisdom. Would their own small efforts yield a larger result? Now 
he recalled Fielding's words: It's in Hungary, still, that you'll find his 
greatest admirers, and his most impassioned foes. And Lang's observation: For 
better or worse, Hungary made him who he is. And Peter is not one to forget his 
debts.
It made him who he is.
And who was that?
It made him who he was: Hungary. That had to be Janson's destination.
It was his best chance at flushing out Peter Novak's blood enemies—the ones who 
had known him longest and, perhaps, best.
"You look like a man who's just made up his mind," Jessie said, almost shyly.
Janson nodded. "What about you?"
"What kind of question is that?"
"I'm thinking about my next move. What about yours? You going to go back to Cons 
Ops now?"
"What do you think?"
"Tell me."
"Let me break it down for you. I report in to my operations director, I'd be 
taken out of the field for at least a year, maybe forever. And I'd be the 
subject of a very lengthy 'interview.' I know how the system works. That's what 
would be in store for me, and don't try to tell me otherwise. But that's not 
even the bigger problem. The bigger problem is, how I am supposed to rejoin this 
world where I don't know what can be trusted and what can't be. It's like, I 
know too much and I don't know enough, and for both reasons, I can't go back. I 
can only go forward. Only way I can live with myself."
"Live with yourself? You don't increase your odds of living by hanging around 
me. You know that. I've told you that."
"Lookit, everything's got a price," she said quietly. "If you let me, I'm a tag 
along with you. If you don't, I'ma do my darndest to tail you."
"You don't even know where I'm off to."
"Sugar bear, it don't really matter." Jessie stretched her lean, loosely jointed 
body. "Where you off to?"
He hesitated but a moment. "Hungary. Where it all began."
"Where it all began," she repeated softly.
Janson stood up. "You want to come along, you can. But remember, try to make 
contact with Cons Ops, and you're as good as deactivated—and not by me. If 
you're along for the ride, you follow the rules of the road. And I set those 
rules. Otherwise—"
"Done," she said, cutting him off. "Quit drilling, you struck oil."
He looked at her coolly, appraising her as a soldier and an operative. The truth 
was, he needed the backup. What would await them was beyond knowing. If she was 
half as deadly working with him as she had been working against him, she'd prove 
a formidable weapon indeed.
He had many phone calls to make before he slept, many legends to resurrect. The 
path had to be prepared.
Where it would lead, of course, was impossible to say. Yet what choice was 
there? Whatever the risks, it was the only way they could ever penetrate the 
mystery that was Peter Novak.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
He was baiting a trap.
The thought did little to calm Janson's nerves, for he knew how often traps 
caught those who set them. In this phase, his principal weapon would be his own 
composure. He thus had to steer clear of the pitfalls of anxiety and 
overconfidence. One could lead to paralysis, the other to stupidity.
Still, if a trap had to be set, he could think of no setting more appropriate. 
Thirty-five seventeen Miskolc-Lillafiired, Erzsébet sétány 1, was a couple of 
miles west of Miskolc proper, and the only notable building in the resort area 
of Lillafüred. The Palace Hotel, as it was now called, stood near the wooded 
banks of Lake Hámori, surrounded by a sylvan glade that suggested a long-past 
feudal Europe of parks and palaces. If the place evoked nostalgia, it was in 
fact a tribute to it. The completion of the faux hunting castle, in the 1920s, 
was an imperial project of Admiral Horthy's regime, designed as a monument to 
the nation's historical glories. The restaurant, fittingly, was named for King 
Matthias, the fifteenth-century Hungarian warrior-sovereign who led his people 
to greatness, a greatness that gleamed with the blood of their enemies. In the 
post-Communist era, the place was swiftly restored to its former opulence. Now 
it drew vacationers and businessmen from all over the country. A project borne 
of imperial vainglory had been co-opted by a still more powerful dominion, that 
of commerce itself.
Paul Janson strode through the lavishly appointed lobby and down to the 
cellar-style restaurant on the level below. His stomach was tight with tension; 
food was the last thing on his mind. And yet any sign that he was on edge would 
only betray him.
"I'm Adam Kurzweil," Janson told the maitre d'hotel, in a well-modulated 
transatlantic accent. It was the sort of language-school English that was common 
both to educated citizens of the British Commonwealth—Zimbabwe, Kenya, South 
Africa, India—and to affluent Europeans who had received early instruction in 
the tongue. "Kurzweil" wore a chalk-striped suit and a scarlet tie, and bore 
himself with the erect hauteur of a businessman used to being deferred to.
The maître d', dressed in a swallowtail dinner jacket, his black hair oiled and 
combed into obsidian waves, gave Janson a sharp, appraising look before his face 
creased into a professional smile. "Your guest is already here," he said. He 
turned to a younger woman beside him. "She will show you to your table."
Janson nodded blandly. "Thank you," he said.
The table was, as his guest had obviously requested, a discreet corner 
banquette. The man he was meeting was a resourceful and careful man, or he would 
not have survived in his particular line of business for as long as he had.
As Janson walked toward the banquette, he concentrated on entering into a 
character he would have to make wholly his own. First impressions did indeed 
matter. The man he was meeting, Sandor Lakatos, would be suspicious. As 
Kurzweil, therefore, he would be more so. It was, he knew, the most effective 
countermeasure.
Lakatos turned out to be a small, hunched man; the curvature of his upper spine 
set his head oddly forward on his neck, as if he were tucking in his chin. His 
cheeks were round, his nose bulbous, and his wattled neck was continuous with 
his jawline, giving his head a pearlike shape. He was a study in dissipation.
He was also among the biggest arms dealers in Central Europe. His fortunes had 
risen markedly during the arms embargo of Serbia, when that republic had to seek 
irregular sources for what was no longer available to it legally. Lakatos had 
begun his career in long-haul trucking, specializing in produce and then dry 
goods; his business model, and his infrastructure, required little modification 
to expand into the armaments trade. That he had agreed to meet with Adam 
Kurzweil at all was a testament to another factor behind his success: his sheer, 
unappeasable greed.
Employing a long-disused legend, that of a Canadian principal in a 
security-services—that is, private militia—company, Janson left calls with a 
number of businessmen long since retired from the trade. In each instance, the 
message was the same. A certain Adam Kurzweil, representing a client who could 
not be named, sought a supplier for an extremely large and lucrative 
transaction. The Canadian—a legend Janson had created for himself, without 
notifying Cons Ops—was remembered fondly, his low profile and long periods of 
invisibility respected. Still, the men he contacted demurred, albeit 
reluctantly; all were cautious men, had made their fortunes and now had moved 
on. No matter. In the small world of such merchants, Janson knew, word of a 
serious buyer would spread; the one who arranged a successful contact could 
expect a commission on the transaction. Janson would not get in touch with 
Lakatos; he would contact those around him. When one of the businessmen he spoke 
to, a resident of Bratislava whose close ties with government officials had kept 
him safe from investigation, asked him why this Adam Kurzweil did not try 
Lakatos, he was told that Kurzweil was not a trusting soul and would not use 
anyone who had not been personally vouched for. Lakatos, as far as Kurzweil was 
concerned, was simply not trustworthy. He and his clients would not expose 
themselves to the risk of such an unknown. Besides, wasn't Lakatos too 
small-time for such a transaction?
As Janson anticipated, the haughty reproach filtered down to the porcine 
Hungarian, who bristled at being dismissed in those terms. Untrustworthy? 
Unknown? Lakatos was not good enough for this Adam Kurzweil, this mysterious 
middleman? Outrage was joined with pragmatic calculation. To allow his 
reputation to be thus impugned was simply bad business. And there was no more 
effective way to expunge any lingering aspersions than by landing the elusive 
account.
Yet who was this Kurzweil? The Canadian investor was cagey, obviously unwilling 
to say what he knew. "All I can say is that he has been a very good client of 
ours." Within hours, Janson's cell phone began chirping with testimonials on the 
Hungarian's behalf; the man had obviously been calling in favors. Well, the 
Canadian conceded, Kurzweil would be passing through the Miskolc area, near 
Lakatos's primary residence. It was possible he could be persuaded to meet. But 
everyone had to understand: Kurzweil was a very untrusting man. If he declined, 
no offense should be taken.
Despite the tactical pretense of reluctance, Janson's eagerness for the meeting 
bordered on desperation. For he knew that the one sure way to reach the ancient 
and entrenched enemies of Peter Novak would be through the Hungarian merchant of 
death.
Janson, seated at a tall leather chair in the hotel lobby, had observed 
Lakatos's arrival and deliberately waited ten minutes before joining him. As he 
approached the Hungarian at the banquette, he maintained a pleasantly blase 
expression. Lakatos surprised him by standing up and embracing him.
"We meet at last!" he said. "Such a pleasure." He pressed his breasty upper body 
to Janson's and reached around, his plump sweaty hands vigorously patting his 
back and then his waist. None too subtly, the effusive embrace served as a kind 
of crude security check: any upper-body holster—shoulder, small of back, 
bellyband—would have been detected easily.
As the two took their seats, Lakatos nakedly scrutinized his guest; avidity vied 
with no little suspicion of his own. There were, the merchant had learned, 
opportunities that were too good to be true. One had to distinguish between 
low-hanging fruit and poisoned bait.
"The libamaj roston, the grilled goose liver, is excellent. And so is the 
brassoi aprépecsenye—a sort of braised pork." Lakatos's voice was slightly 
breathless and fluting.
"Personally, I prefer the bakanyi sertéshús," Janson replied.
The Hungarian paused. "Then you know this place," he said. "They told me you 
were a worldly man, Mr. Kurzweil."
"If they told you anything, they told you too much," he said, a trace of steel 
in his voice belying his half smile.
"You'll forgive me, Mr. Kurzweil. Yet, as you know, ours is a business based on 
trust. Handshakes and reputation substitute for contracts and paperwork. It is 
the old way, I think. My father was a butter-and-egg man, and for decades you'd 
find his little white trucks up and down the Zemplén range. He started in the 
thirties, and when the Communists took over, they found it was easier to cede 
these little shipments to somebody who understood the routes. You see, when he 
was a teenager he was a truck driver himself. So when his employees would tell 
him that this or that difficulty—a flat tire, a blown radiator—meant that their 
route would be delayed by half a day, well, he knew better. He knew just how 
long it took to fix these things, because he'd had to do so himself. His men 
came to understand that. They could pull nothing over on him, but this did not 
breed resentment, only respect. I think maybe I am the same way."
"Do people often try to pull things over on you?"
Lakatos grinned, flashing a row of porcelain teeth, unnaturally white and 
regular. "Few are so foolhardy," he replied. "They recognize the dangers." His 
tone wavered between menace and self-regard.
"No one has ever prospered by underestimating the Hungarian people," Janson said 
soberly. "But then yours is a language, a culture, that few of us can pretend to 
understand."
"Magyar obscurity. It served the country well when others sought to dominate it. 
At other times, it has served us less well. But I think those of us who operate 
under conditions of, shall we say, circumspection have learned its value."
A waiter appeared and filled their water glasses.
"A bottle of your 'ninety-eight Margaux," Lakatos said. He turned to Kurzweil. 
"It's a young wine, but quite refreshing. Unless you'd like to try the local 
specialty—one of those 'Bull's Blood' vintages. Some are quite memorable."
"I believe I would, in fact."
Lakatos wriggled his fat fingers at the waiter "Instead, a bottle of the Egri 
Bikaver, 'eighty-two." He turned again to his companion. "Now tell me," he said, 
"how do you find Hungary?"
"An extraordinary land, which has given the world some extraordinary people. So 
many Nobel Laureates, film directors, mathematicians, physicists, musicians, 
conductors, novelists. Yet there is one laureled son of Hungary who—how shall I 
say this politely?—has given disquiet to my clients."
Lakatos looked at him, transfixed. "You intrigue me."
"One man's liberty is another's tyranny, as they say. And the foundations of 
liberty may be the foundations of tyranny." He paused to make sure that his 
import was taken.
"How fascinating," Lakatos said, swallowing hard. He reached for his water 
glass.
Janson stifled a yawn. "Forgive me," he murmured. "The flight from Kuala Lumpur 
is a long one, however comfortable one is made." In fact, the seven-hour ride 
from Milan to Eger in the bone-rattling confines of a truck trailer loaded with 
cured meats had been both uncomfortable and nerve-racking. Even as he dined with 
the arms merchant, Jessie Kincaid would be using a false passport and credit 
card to rent another automobile for tomorrow's trip and carefully working out 
the itinerary in advance. He hoped she would be able to get some rest before 
long. "But travel is my life," Janson added grandly.
"I can imagine," Lakatos said, his eyes bright.
The waiter, in black tie, appeared with the local red wine; it came in a 
ribboned bottle without a paper label, the name of the vineyard etched directly 
on the glass. The wine was dark, rich, seemingly opaque as it splashed into 
their crystal goblets. Lakatos took a healthy swallow, sluiced it around his 
mouth, and pronounced it superb.
"As a region for viticulture, Eger is nothing if not robust." He held up his 
wineglass. "You may not be able to see through it," he added, "but, I assure 
you, Mr. Kurzweil, you always get value for your money. You made an excellent 
choice."
"I am pleased to hear you say so," Janson replied. "Another tribute to Magyar 
opacity."
Just then, a man in a sky blue suit but no tie came over to the table—obviously 
an American tourist, and obviously drunk. Janson looked up at him, and alarm 
bells began ringing in his head.
"It's been a while," the man said, slurring his words slightly. He placed a 
hairy, beringed hand on the white linen tablecloth near the bread basket. 
"Thought it was you. Paul Janson, big as life." He snorted loudly before he 
turned and walked away. "Told you it was him," he was saying to a woman who sat 
at his table across the room.
Dammit! What had happened was always a theoretical possibility in covert 
operations, but so far Janson had been fortunate. There had been an occasion 
once in Uzbekistan when he was meeting with a deputy to the nation's oil 
minister, posing as a go-between to a major petrochemical corporation. An 
American happened to breeze through the office—a civilian, a Chevron oil buyer, 
who knew him under another name, and in another context, one involving the 
Apsheron gas and oil fields of Azerbaijan. Their gaze met, the man nodded, but 
said nothing. For distinctly different reasons, he felt as chagrined at being 
spotted by Janson as Janson had at being spotted by him. No words were 
exchanged, and Janson knew he would make no inquiries. But what had happened 
here was a worst-case scenario, the sort of cross-context intrusion that any 
field agent hoped he would never encounter.
Now Janson focused on slowing his heartbeat, and he turned to Lakatos with an 
impassive expression. "A friend of yours?" Janson asked. The man had not made it 
clear to whom his remarks were addressed: "Adam Kurzweil" would not have assumed 
he was their subject.
Lakatos looked bewildered. "I don't know this man."
"Don't you," Janson said softly, defusing suspicion by placing the arms dealer 
on the defensive. "Well, no matter. We've all had such experiences. Between the 
drink and the dim lighting, he might have taken you for Nikita Khrushchev 
himself."
"Hungary has always been a land densely populated with ghosts," Lakatos 
returned.
"Some of your own making."
Lakatos set his glass down, ignoring the comment. "You'll forgive me if I'm 
curious. I have quite a few accounts, as you know. Yours isn't a name I'd come 
across."
"I'm glad to hear it." Janson took a long, savoring sip of the local wine.
"Or do I only flatter myself about my discretion? I've spent most of my life in 
southern Africa, where, I must say, your presence is not a noticeable one."
Lakatos tucked his chin deeper into the pillow of fat that was his neck, 
signaling assent. "A mature market," he said. "I cannot say there has been any 
great call for my offerings down there. Still, I have had occasional dealings 
with South Africans, and I've always found you people exemplary trading 
partners. You know what you want, and you don't mind paying what it's worth."
"Trust is honored with trust. Fairness with fairness. My clients can be 
generous, but they are not profligate. They do expect to get what they pay for. 
Value for money, as you put it. I should be clear, though. The assets they seek 
are not simply material, or materiel. They are equally interested in the sort of 
thing doesn't come on pallets. They seek allies. Human capital, you might say."
"I do not wish to mistake your meaning," Lakatos said, his face a mask.
"Put it however you like: they know that there are people, forces on the ground, 
who share their interests. They wish to enlist the support of such people."
"Enlist their support … " Lakatos echoed warily.
"Conversely, they wish to offer support to such people."
A deep swallow. "Assuming such people are in need of additional support."
"Everybody can use additional support." Janson smiled smoothly. "There are few 
certainties in this world. That is one."
Lakatos reached over and tapped his wrist, smiling. "I think I like you," he 
said. "You're a thinker and a gentleman, Mr. Kurzweil. Not like the Swabian 
boors I so often have to deal with."
The waiter presented them with fried goose liver, "compliments of the chef," and 
Lakatos speared his portion greedily with his fork.
"But I think you understand where I'm going, yes?" Janson pressed.
The American in the light blue jacket was back, with more on his mind. "You 
don't remember me?" the man demanded belligerently. This time he made it 
impossible for Janson to pretend he did not know to whom he was speaking.
Janson turned to Lakatos. "How amusing. It would appear I owe you an apology," 
he said. Then he looked up at the surly American, keeping his face bland and 
devoid of interest. "It would appear you have mistaken me for someone else," he 
said, his transatlantic vowels immaculate.
"The hell I have. Why the hell are you talking funny, anyway? You trying to hide 
from me? That it? You trying to dodge me? Can't say as I blame you."
Janson turned to Lakatos and shrugged, seemingly unconcerned. He worked on 
controlling his pounding pulse. "This happens to me on occasion—apparently I 
have that kind of face. Last year, I was in Basel, and a woman in the hotel bar 
was convinced that she'd run across me in Gstaad." He grinned, then covered his 
grin with a hand, as if embarrassed by the memory. "And not only that—we'd 
apparently had an affair."
Lakatos was unsmiling. "You and she?"
"Well, she and the man she took me for. Admittedly, it was quite dark. But I was 
tempted to take her up to my room and, shall we say, carry on where her 
gentleman friend left off. I regret that I did not—although I guess she would 
have realized her mistake at some point." He laughed, an easy and 
unforced-sounding laugh, but when he glanced up, the American was still there, a 
drunken sneer on his face.
"So you don't have anything to say to me?" the American snarled. "Shit."
The woman who had been at his table—almost certainly his wife—came over to him 
and pulled on his arm. She was slightly overweight, and dressed in an 
inappropriately summery frock. "Donny," she said. "You're bothering that nice 
man. He's probably on vacation, same as us."
"Nice man? That shitheel's the one got me fired." His face was red, his 
expression frankly choleric. "Yeah, that's right. The CEO brought you in to be 
his hatchet man, didn't he, Paul? This fucker, Paul Janson, arrives at Amcon as 
a security consultant. Next thing he's handing in this report about 
pre-employment screening and employee theft, and my boss is handing me my ass, 
because how come I let all this happen on my watch? I gave that company twenty 
years. Did anybody tell you that? I did a good job. I did a good job." He 
scrunched up his crimson face, his countenance radiating both self-pity and 
hatred.
The woman gave Janson an unfriendly look; if she was embarrassed for her 
husband, her narrow eyes made it clear that she had also heard plenty about the 
outside security consultant who cost her poor Donny his job.
"When you sober up and wish to apologize," Janson said, coldly, "please do not 
concern yourself. I accept your apologies in advance. Such confusions happen."
What else could he say? How would the victim of mistaken identity react? With 
bafflement, amusement, and then ire.
Of course, it was not a case of mistaken identity, and Janson remembered exactly 
who Donald Weldon was. A senior manager in charge of security at a 
Delaware-based engineering firm, he was a complacent lifer who filled his 
staffing positions with cousins, nephews, and friends, treating the security 
division as a source of sinecures. As long as no major disaster occurred, who 
would call his competence and probity into question? Meanwhile, employee theft 
and the systematic filing of false workmen's compensation claims had become an 
invisible drag on the operating budget, while a company vice president was 
doubling his executive compensation by reporting confidential information to a 
competitor firm. It was Janson's experience that errant executives, rather than 
blaming themselves and their own dereliction for their dismissal, invariably 
blamed whoever brought their misconduct to light. In truth, Donald Weldon should 
have been grateful that he was only fired; Janson's report made it clear that 
some of the false-compensation claims were made with his complicity, and he 
provided sufficient evidence for criminal prosecution, one that could easily 
have resulted in jail time. Janson's recommendation, however, was that Vice 
President Weldon be relieved of his duties but not prosecuted, to spare the 
company further embarrassment and prevent potentially damaging revelations at 
the pretrial and discovery phases. You owe me your freedom, you corrupt son of a 
bitch, Janson thought.
Now the American wagged a finger very near Janson's nose. "You goddamn candy-ass 
bastard—you'll get yours some day." As the woman led him back to their seats, 
several tabletops away, his unsteady gait betrayed the alcohol that fueled his 
fury.
Janson turned brightly to his companion, but a sense of dread filled him. 
Lakatos had grown cold; he was not a fool, and the drunken American's display 
could not automatically be discounted. The Hungarian's eyes were hard, like 
small black marbles.
"You're not drinking your wine," Lakatos said, gesturing with his fork. He 
smiled an icy executioner's smile.
Janson knew how such people thought: probabilities were weighed, but caution 
dictated that negative inferences were assumed true. Janson also knew that his 
protestations could have provided little reassurance. He had been burned, 
exposed, shown to be someone other than the person as whom he had presented 
himself. Men like Sandor Lakatos feared nothing more than the possibility of 
deception: Adam Kurzweil now represented not opportunity, but danger. And, 
however obscure its motivations, such danger was to be eliminated.
Lakatos's hand now disappeared into the inner breast pocket of his bulky woolen 
jacket. Surely he was not handling a weapon—that would be too crude a gesture 
for someone in his position. The hand lingered oddly, manipulating a device. He 
was, it appeared, thumbing some sort of automatic pager or, more likely, a 
text-messaging device.
And then the merchant looked across the room, toward the maître d's station. 
Janson followed his gaze: two dark-suited men, who had been inconspicuously 
loitering around the long zinc bar, suddenly stood a little straighter. Why 
hadn't he picked them out earlier? Lakatos's bodyguards—of course. The arms 
dealer would never have met with a broker he did not personally know without 
taking such an elementary precaution.
And now, as an exchange of glances suggested, the bodyguards had a new mission. 
They were no longer simply protectors. They were executioners. Their unbuttoned 
heavy jackets hung loosely around their torsos; a casual observer would assume 
that the slight bulge near the right breast pocket was from a cigarette pack or 
a cell phone. Janson knew better. His blood ran cold.
Adam Kurzweil would not be permitted to leave the Palace Hotel grounds alive. 
Janson could envisage the scenario all too clearly. The meal would be hurriedly 
completed, and the two would stroll together out of the lobby, accompanied by 
the gunmen. At any convenient distance from the crowds, he would be dispatched 
with a silenced shot to the back of the head, his body disposed of either in the 
lake or in the trunk of a vehicle.
He had to do something. Now.
Reaching for his glass, he carefully elbowed his fork to the floor and, with an 
apologetic shrug, bent down to retrieve it. As he reached down, he lifted the 
cuff of his trousers, released the thumb-break of his ankle holster, and gained 
a firing grip on the small Clock M26 he had acquired earlier in Eger. Beneath 
the table, he could use the finger grooves to position his hand on the grip 
frame. The weapon was now in his lap. The odds had shifted slightly.
"Have you walked around the lake?" Sandor Lakatos asked. "So beautiful this time 
of year." Another display of his porcelain teeth.
"It's very beautiful," Janson agreed.
"I would like to take you on a walk, afterward."
"Isn't it rather dark for that?"
"Oh, I don't know," Lakatos said. "We'll be able to be alone. That's really the 
best way to get to know each other, I find." His eyes had an anthracite gleam.
"I'd like that," Janson said. "Do you mind if I excuse myself for a minute?"
"Be my guest." His gaze drifted toward the two suited guards in the bar area.
Janson tucked his Clock into his front trouser waistband before he stood up and 
wandered to the rest rooms, which were off a short hallway extending from the 
far corner of the main dining room. As he approached, he felt a sharp pang of 
adrenaline: before him was another dark-suited man, his posture identical to 
those at the bar. This man was clearly neither a diner nor an employee of the 
restaurant. He was another guard of Lakatos's, stationed there for such an 
eventuality. Janson walked into the marble-floored bathroom, and the 
man—broad-chested, tall, his face a mask of bored professionalism—followed him 
in. As Janson turned toward the sinks, he heard the man lock the door. That 
meant that they were alone. Yet an unsilenced gunshot would only summon the 
others in Lakatos's employ, who were also armed. Janson's pistol was not the 
advantage he had hoped. The imperative of visual concealment ruled out the 
possibility of aural concealment: the bulk of a silenced gun could not have been 
secreted undetectably in an ankle holster. Now Janson walked to the urinals; in 
the stainless steel of the knob, he could make out a distorted reflection of the 
burly guard. He could also make out the long cylindrical shape of the man's 
weapon. His weapon was silenced.
There would be no need to wait for Janson to leave the Palace Hotel; Janson 
could be dispatched where he was.
"What's he paying you?" Janson asked, without turning around to look at the man. 
"I'll double it."
The guard said nothing.
"You don't speak English? I bet you speak dollars?"
The guard's expression did not change, but he put away the gun. Janson's very 
defenselessness suggested a better approach: now the man removed a two-foot loop 
of cord with small plastic disks on either end serving as handles.
Janson had to concentrate to hear the whisper-quiet sound of the man's jacket 
stretching as he extended his arms, preparing to loop the garrote precisely 
around Janson's throat. He could only applaud his would-be executioner's 
professional judgment. The garrote would ensure not only a soundless death but a 
bloodless one. In a restaurant like this, particularly given the alcohol 
consumption patterns in Central Europe, it would take little creativity to 
escort him out. The guard might well drag him out more or less upright, propping 
him up with a powerful arm around his shoulder: a sheepish grin, and everyone 
would assume that the guest had simply imbibed too much Zwack Unicum, the spirit 
of choice at the Palace Hotel.
Janson bowed deeply, placing his forehead against the marble tiled wall. Then he 
turned, his stooped body signaling boozy exhaustion. Suddenly, explosively, he 
surged upward and to the right, and as the guard reeled back from the impact, he 
smashed his knee into his groin. The man grunted and reared up, throwing his 
looped cord against Janson's shoulders, and frantically trying to slide it 
upward, around his vulnerable neck. Janson felt the cord digging into his flesh, 
searing like a band of heat. There was no way but forward: instead of 
retreating, Janson pressed closer to his assailant, and dug his chin into his 
opponent's chest. He thrust a hand into the man's shoulder holster and removed 
the long, silenced handgun: his assailant could not free up his own hands and 
maintain the pressure on the cord. He had to choose. Now the man dropped the 
garrote and struck Janson's hand with an underhand blow, sending the gun 
skidding along the marble floor.
Suddenly, Janson thrust the top of his head against the man's lower jaw. He 
heard the clicking sound of the man's teeth banging together as the impact of 
the head butt traveled from jaw to cranium. Simultaneously, he wrapped his right 
leg around the man's facing leg and drove forward with all his might until the 
burly man toppled backward to the marble floor. The guard was well trained, 
though, and swept his leg toward Janson's feet, knocking him to the floor as 
well. His spine jangling from the impact, Janson scrambled to his feet again and 
stepped forward, delivering a powerful kick to the man's groin and keeping his 
leg planted between his thighs. With his right hand, he pulled out the guard's 
left leg as, with his left hand, he bent the man's other leg at the knee, 
folding it so that the ankle went over his other knee. There was a look of fury 
and fear on the man's face as he thrashed violently against Janson's grip, 
battering him with his hands: he knew what Janson was attempting, and would do 
anything to prevent it. Yet Janson would not be deterred. Coldly following 
method when every instinct called for the simplicities of collision or retreat, 
he lifted the man's straightened leg up and over his own knee for leverage, and 
wrenched it with all his strength until he heard the joint break. From beneath 
the wet sheaths of muscle, the sound was not like a piece of wood snapping; it 
was a quiet popping sound, accompanied by the tactile sense, the sudden give as 
the ligament of a complicated joint tore irremediably.
The man opened his mouth as if to scream, the excruciating pain reinforced by 
his awareness that he had just been maimed for life. The knee was broken and 
would never work quite properly again. Combat injuries usually produced their 
greatest pain afterward; endorphins and stress hormones dampened much of the 
acute agony at the time the injuries were inflicted. But the figure-four leg 
lock had its intended consequence, and the agony of the break was, Janson knew, 
often sufficient to induce unconsciousness by itself. The guard was no ordinary 
specimen, however, and his powerful arms were forming grapple hooks even as the 
pain convulsed him. Janson dropped abruptly, pitching forward so that his knees 
hit the man's face with the weight of his body. It was an anvil blow. Janson 
heard the man's quick expulsion of breath as unconsciousness overtook him.
He picked up the silenced revolver—it was, he now saw, a CZ-75, a highly 
effective handgun of Czech manufacture—and shoved it awkwardly into his deep 
breast pocket.
There was a knock on the door—dimly, he realized there had been such knocks 
earlier, which the focus of his mind had not permitted to register—and there 
were urgent Magyar mutterings as well: guests in need of relief. Janson lifted 
the burly guard and carefully positioned him on one of the toilets, pulling his 
trousers down around his ankles. The upper body lolled against the wall, but 
only his lower extremities would be visible to the guests. He latched the door 
from the inside, slid underneath the partition, and retracted the dead bolt of 
the rest room. He walked out to the baleful glares of four florid-faced diners 
and shrugged apologetically.
The bulky revolver was pressed uncomfortably against his chest; Janson buttoned 
the lowermost button of his jacket, and that one only. At the end of the 
hallway, he saw the two bodyguards who had been at the bar. From their 
expressions—dismay turning to congealed hatred—he saw that they had expected to 
assist their colleague in escorting a "drunk" from the restaurant. As he turned 
the corner to the dining room, one of them, the taller of the two, stepped 
directly in front of him.
The man's hatchet face was perfectly expressionless as he spoke to Janson in 
quiet, accented English. "You'll want to be extremely careful. My partner has a 
gun trained on you. Very powerful, very silent. The rate of heart attacks is 
very high in this country. Nonetheless, if you are stricken, it will attract 
some attention. I should not prefer it. There are more graceful ways. But we 
will not think twice about dealing with you right here."
Drifting in from the main dining room were the sounds of merriment and the 
festive tune that had become universal in the past century, "Happy Birthday to 
You." Boldog szuletesnapot! he heard. The song lost nothing in the Hungarian, 
Janson was sure, recalling the large table filled with a couple of dozen 
revelers, a table on which four frosty bottles of champagne had been assembled.
Now with a look of stark terror on his face, Janson placed both his hands on his 
chest, in a theatrical gesture of fright. At the same time, he slipped his right 
hand beneath his left hand, stealing toward the handgrip of the bulky firearm.
He waited another moment for the other sound associated with celebration, at 
least as much in Hungary as elsewhere: the pop of a champagne cork. It arrived a 
moment later, the first of the four bottles that would be opened. At the sound 
of the next popped cork, Janson squeezed the trigger of the silenced revolver.
A soft phut was lost among the clamorous festivities, but now a horrifed look 
appeared on the gunman's face. Janson was conscious of the tiny corona of woolen 
threads puffing out from a barely visible hole in his jacket as the man 
collapsed to the floor. An abdominal injury alone would not cause a professional 
to plummet as he did. The immediate collapse could mean only one thing: the 
bullet had plowed through his upper abdomen and lodged in his spine. The result 
was the immediate cessation of neural impulses, and the resultant paralysis of 
all muscles of the body's lower regions. Janson was familiar with the telltale 
signs of complete cataplexy and numbness, and he knew what the experience 
uniquely did to combatants, even hardened ones: they mourned. They mourned what 
they recognized to be the irreversible loss of their physicality, sometimes even 
forgetting to take measures to prevent the loss of their very lives.
"Take your hand from your pocket, or you're next," he told the man's partner in 
a harsh whisper.
The authority of his voice, more than the gun in his grip, was his ultimate 
weapon here, Janson knew. In theory, theirs was a Mexican standoff, two men with 
their fingers on short triggers. There was no logical reason for the other man 
to stand down. Yet Janson knew that he would. Janson's actions were unexpected, 
as was his confidence. Too many factors could underlie this confidence and they 
could not be assessed with any certainty: Did Adam Kurzweil know that he would 
be able to squeeze off a shot faster? Was he perhaps wearing concealable soft 
body armor? Two seconds were not enough to make such an evaluation. And the 
penalty of guessing wrong was starkly visible. Janson saw the man's eyes dart 
toward his ashen-faced, immobilized partner … and the spreading pool of urine 
around him. The loss of urinary continence indicated the severing of the sacral 
nerves caused by an injury to a mid- or lower-spinal vertebra.
The man held out his hands before him, looking sickened, humiliated, scared.
If your enemy has a good idea, steal it, Lieutenant Commander Alan Demarest used 
to say, referring to the wily snares of their Viet Cong adversaries; and it came 
to Janson's mind, along with a darker thought: When you gaze too long into an 
abyss, the abyss will gaze back. What they had planned for him, he would use on 
them, including even the burly guard's silenced CZ-75.
"Don't just stand there," Janson said softly, leaning in close to the man's ear. 
"Our friend has just had a heart attack. Common in your country, as he was just 
explaining. You're going to lift this man, let him lean against you, and 
together we're going to walk out of the restaurant." As he spoke, he buttoned 
the fallen man's jacket, ensuring that the splash of blood was concealed beneath 
it. "And if I can't see both your hands, you'll find that the attack is 
contagious. Perhaps the diagnosis will be changed to acute food poisoning. And 
you two will be shopping for wheelchairs together—assuming either of you lives."
What ensued was ungainly but effective: one man supporting his stricken 
companion, moving him swiftly out of the restaurant. Sandor Lakatos, Janson saw 
as they rounded the corner, was no longer at his table. Danger.
Janson suddenly reversed direction and dove through the double doors to the 
restaurant's kitchen. The din was surprisingly loud: there were the noises of 
meat sizzling in oil, of fluids boiling, of knives rapidly chopping onions and 
tomatoes, of veal cutlets being pounded, dishes being washed. He paid little 
attention to the white-coated men and women at their stations as he raced 
through the kitchen. He knew there had to be some sort of service entrance. It 
was impossible that the supplies to this kitchen arrived through the exquisitely 
carpeted lobby.
At the far end, he found the rusty metal stairs, cramped and steep. They led to 
an unlocked steel panel, flush with the ground overhead. Janson barged through, 
and the night air felt cool on his skin after the steamy warmth of the kitchen.
He closed the steel panel doors as quietly as he could and looked around him. He 
was on the rear right side of the Palace Hotel, next to the parking lot. As his 
eyes adjusted, he saw that twenty yards ahead of him were long-limbed trees and 
grass: concealment, but not protection.
A sound—a scraping noise. Someone moving with his back to the wall, his feet 
planted firmly on the ground. Someone who was moving toward him. The person knew 
he was armed, and was taking all possible precautions.
He felt the stinging spray of brick and mortar against his face before he heard 
the cough of the gun. His assailant had gained an angle on him! His assailant 
was three hundred feet away; accuracy would be paramount. He had, he calculated, 
four seconds to assume the rollover prone position. Four seconds.
Janson dropped to both knees and extended his left hand in front of him to break 
his fall as he pitched forward; then he extended his firing arm downrange and 
rested it upon the ground, rolling up on his right side as he did so. With his 
left ankle braced against the back of his right knee, he stabilized his 
position. Now he was able to put his supporting hand on the weapon, the heel of 
his palm firmly and squarely on the packed-gravel ground: it would provide a 
solid shooting rest as he placed his forefinger inside the trigger guard of the 
CZ-75. What the Czech gun lacked in concealability, it made up for in stopping 
power and accuracy. It would enable far more accurate cluster shooting than his 
own palm-sized weapon.
He identified his target—it was the suited guard he had just left below—and 
squeezed off two shots. They were silenced, but the recoil reminded him of just 
how much force they conveyed. One missed his target; the other struck him in the 
neck, and the man sprawled to the ground, spouting blood.
A muted explosion came from behind him: Janson tensed until he realized that it 
was the tire of an SUV ten feet away, abruptly deflating as a bullet struck it. 
There was another gunman stalking him, it appeared, and the direction of the 
impact plus the geometry of the building told him approximately where he was 
situated.
Still in the rollover prone firing position, Janson pivoted thirty degrees and 
saw Sandor Lakatos himself, holding a gleaming, nickel-plated Clock 9mm. The 
preening peacock, he thought to himself. The shiny surface reflected the light 
of the parking lot halogens, making him an easier target. Janson aligned the 
gun's small sights along the man's round torso and he felt his gun buck as he 
squeezed off another two shots.
Lakatos returned fire spasmodically, the muzzle flash leaving a dark shadow in 
Janson's night vision, and he heard the thunk of one of the Hungarian's bullets 
hitting the hard-packed gravel a few inches from his right leg. He was proving a 
deadly adversary after all. Had Janson missed? Was the man protected by body 
armor?
Then he heard Lakatos breathing hard, heaving as he slowly sank to the ground. 
Janson's bullets had struck him in the lower chest and punctured his lungs, 
which were slowly filling up with the resultant hemorrhage. The merchant of 
death was too wise not to know precisely what was happening to him: he was 
drowning in his own blood.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
"Goddamn you, Paul Janson," said Jessie Kincaid. He was driving the rented car 
at just under the speed limit while she kept an eye on the map. They were making 
their way to Budapest, headed for the National Archives, but doing so via a 
circuitous route, keeping off the main roads. "You should have let me come. I 
should have been there."
Having finally elicited the details of what had happened last night, she was 
steamed and reproachful.
"You don't know what sort of trip wires there might be at a rendezvous like 
that," Janson said patiently, his eyes regularly scanning the rearview mirror 
for any signs of unwanted company. "Besides, the meeting was in an underground 
restaurant, out of range of any perimeter stakeout. Would you have parked your 
M40A1 on the bar, or checked it in the cloakroom?"
"Maybe I couldn't have helped inside. Outside's different. Plenty of trees 
around, plenty of perches. It's a game of odds, you know that better'n anyone. 
Point is, it would have been a sensible precaution. You didn't take it."
"It represented an unnecessary risk."
"Damn straight."
"To you, I mean. There was no reason to put you at risk unnecessarily,"
"So instead you exposed yourself to that risk. That don't seem exactly 
professional. What I'm saying is, use me. Treat me like a partner."
"A partner? Reality check. You're twenty-nine. You've been in the field for how 
many years, exactly? Don't take this the wrong way, but—"
"I'm not saying we're equals. All I'm saying is, teach me. I'll be the best 
student you ever had."
"You want to be my protégée?"
"I love it when you speak French."
"Let me tell you something. I've had a protégé or two in my time. They've got 
something in common."
"Lemme guess. They're all men."
Janson shook his head grimly. "They're all dead." In the distance, 
nineteenth-century church spires were interspersed with Soviet-era tower blocks: 
symbols of aspiration that had outlived the aspirations themselves.
"So your idea is, keep me at arm's length and you'll keep me alive." She turned 
in her seat and faced him. "Well, I don't buy it."
"They're all dead, Jessie. That's my contribution to their career advancement. 
I'm talking about good people. Hell, extraordinary people. Gifted as you can 
get. Theo Katsaris—he had the potential to be better than me. Only, the better 
you are, the higher the stakes. I wasn't just reckless with my own life. I've 
been reckless with the lives of others."
" 'Every operation with potential benefits also has potential risks. The art of 
planning centers on the coordination of these two zones of uncertainty.' You 
wrote that in a field report once."
"I'm flattered by the way you boned up on me. But there are a few chapters you 
seemed to have skipped: Paul Janson's protégés have a nasty habit of getting 
killed."


The National Archives were housed in a block-long neo-Gothic building; its 
narrow windows of intricately leaded glass were set in cathedral-like arches, 
sharply limiting the amount of sunlight that reached the documents within. 
Jessie Kincaid had taken to heart Janson's idea of beginning at the beginning.
She had a list of missing information that might help them unravel the mystery 
of the Hungarian philanthropist. Peter Novak's father, Count Ferenczi-Novak, was 
said to have been obsessively fearful for his child's safety. Fielding had told 
Janson that the count had made enemies who, he was convinced, would seek to 
revenge themselves against his scion. Is that what had finally happened, half a 
century later? The Cambridge don's words had the keenness of a blade: The old 
nobleman may have been paranoid, but as the old saw has it, even paranoids have 
enemies. She wanted to retrace the count's movements back in those fateful years 
when the Hungarian government underwent such bloody tumult. Were there visa 
records that might indicate private trips that Novak's father had made, with or 
without his son? But the most important information they could get would be 
genealogical: Peter Novak was said to be concerned with protecting the surviving 
members of his family—a typical sentiment among those who had seen such 
destruction in their tenderest years. Yet who were these relations—were there 
surviving cousins with whom he might have kept in touch? The family history of 
Count Ferenczi-Novak might be mired in obscurity, but it would repose somewhere 
in the vastness of Hungary's National Archives. If they had the names of these 
unknown relatives and could locate them, they might get an answer to the most 
vexing question of all: was the real Peter Novak alive or dead?
Janson dropped her off in front of the National Archives building; he had some 
dealings of his own to conduct. Years in the field had given him an instinct for 
where to find the black-market vendors of false identity papers and other 
instruments that could come in handy. He might or might not get lucky, he told 
her, but decided he might as well give it a try.
Now Jessica Kincaid, dressed simply in jeans and a forest green polo shirt, 
found herself inside an entrance hall, scanning a chart of the Archives' 
holdings that hung beside a vast and intimidating list of sections.
Archives of the Hungarian Chancellery (1414-1848) I. "B." Records of Government 
Organs between 1867 and 1945 II. "L." Government Organs of the Hungarian Soviet 
Republic (1919) II.
"M." Records of the Hungarian Working People's Party (MDP) and the Hungarian 
Socialist Workers' Party (MSZMP) VII. "N." Archivum Regnicolaris (1222-1988) I. 
"O." Judicial Archives (13th century-1869) I. "P." Archives of Families,
Corporations and Institutions (1527-20th century).
And the list went on.
Jessie pushed through the next door, where a large room was filled with 
catalogs, tables, and, along the walls, perhaps a dozen counters. At each 
counter was an archival clerk, whose job was to deal with requests from members 
of the public and certified researchers alike. Over one counter was a sign in 
English, indicating that it was an information desk for English-speaking 
visitors. There was a short line in front of the desk, and she watched a bored, 
coarse-featured clerk deal with his supplicants. As best she could tell, the 
"information" he dispensed consisted largely of explanations of why the 
information sought could be not provided.
"You're telling me that your great-grandfather was born in Székesfehérvár in 
1870," he was saying to a middle-aged Englishwoman in a checked woolen jacket. 
"How nice for him. Unfortunately, at that time, Székesfehérvár had more than a 
hundred and fifty parishes. This is not enough information to find the record."
The Englishwoman moved on with a heavy sigh.
A short, round American man had his hopes dashed almost as summarily.
"Born in Tata in the 1880s or '90s," the clerk repeated, with a reptilian smile. 
"You would like us to look through every register from 1880 to 1889?" 
Sardonicism turned to umbrage. "That is simply impossible. That is not a 
reasonable thing to expect. Do you understand how many kilometers of material we 
house? We cannot do research without something far more specific to guide us."
When Jessie reached the counter, she simply handed him a sheet of paper on which 
she had neatly written precise names, locations, dates. "You're not going to 
tell me you're going to have a hard time finding these records, are you?" Jessie 
gave him a dazzling smile.
"The necessary information is here," the clerk admitted, studying the paper. 
"Let me just make a call to verify."
He disappeared into an inventory annex that extended behind his counter, and 
returned a few minutes later.
"So sorry," he said. "Not available."
"How do you mean, not available?" Jessie protested.
"Regrettably, there are certain … lacunae in the collections. There were serious 
losses toward the end of the Second World War—fire damage. And then to protect 
it, some of the collection was stored in the crypt of St. Steven's Cathedral. 
This was meant to be a safe place, and many files remained there for decades. 
Unfortunately, the crypt was very damp, and much of what had been there was 
destroyed by fungus. Fire and water—opposites, yet both formidable enemies." The 
clerk threw up his hands, pantomiming regret. "These records of Count 
Ferenczi-Novak's—they belonged to a section that was destroyed."
Jessie was persistent. "Isn't there some way you could double-check?" She wrote 
a cell phone number on the paper and underlined it. "If anything turns up, 
anywhere, I would be just so grateful … " Another dazzling smile. "So grateful."
The clerk bowed his head, his frosty manner beginning to melt; evidently he was 
unaccustomed to being on the receiving end of a young woman's charms. 
"Certainly. But I am not hopeful, and neither should you be."


Three hours later, the clerk called the number. His pessimism, he confessed to 
Jessie, had perhaps been premature. He explained that he had sensed that this 
was a matter of particular importance to her, and thus made a special effort to 
ascertain that the records had indeed been lost. Given the vastness of the 
National Archives, after all, a certain amount of misfiling was inevitable.
Jessie listened to the long-winded clerk with mounting excitement. "You mean to 
say you've turned them up? We can get access to them?"
"Well, not exactly," the clerk said. "A curious thing. For some reason, the 
records were removed to a special section. The locked section. I'm afraid access 
to these files is strictly regulated. It would simply be impossible for a member 
of the public to be allowed to see this material. All sorts of high-level 
ministerial certifications and documents of exception would be required."
"But that's plain silly," Jessie said.
"I understand. Your interests are genealogical—it seems absurd that such records 
are treated like state secrets. I myself believe it to be another instance of 
misfiling—or miscategorization, anyway."
"Because it would just break me up, having come all this way," Jessie began. 
"You know, I can't tell you how grateful I'd be if you could see a way to help." 
She pronounced the word grateful with infinite promise.
"I think I am too softhearted," the clerk said with a sigh. "Everyone says so. 
It is my great weakness."
"I could just tell," Jessie said in a sugary tone.
"An American woman alone in this strange city—it must all be very bewildering."
"If only there was somebody who could show me the sights. A real native. A real 
Magyar man."
"For me, helping others isn't just a job." His voice had a warm glow. 
"It's—well, it's who I am."
"I knew it as soon as I met you … "
"Call me Istvan," said the clerk. "Now, let's see. What would be simplest? You 
have a car, yes?"
"Sure do."
"Parked where?"
"At the garage across the street from the Archives building," Jessie lied. The 
five-story garage complex was a massive structure of poured concrete, its 
ugliness compounded by the contrast with the splendors of the Archives building.
"Which level?"
"Fourth."
"Say I meet you there in an hour. I'll have copies of these records in my 
briefcase. If you like, we might even go for a drive afterward. Budapest is a 
very special city. You'll see how special."
"You're special," said Jessie.


With a reluctant mechanical noise, the elevator door opened on a floor 
two-thirds filled with cars. One of the cars was the yellow Fiat she had parked 
there half an hour ago. It was shortly before the appointed time, and nobody 
else was around.
Or was there somebody?
Where had she parked the car, anyway? She'd come up a different elevator this 
time, on the opposite end of the lot. As she looked around, she noticed in her 
peripheral vision a darting motion—someone's head ducking down, she realized a 
split second later. It was a hallmark of bad surveillance: being noticed by 
trying too hard not to be. Or was she jumping to conclusions? Perhaps it was an 
ordinary thief, someone trying to steal a hubcap, a radio; such thefts were 
prevalent in Budapest.
But these alternate possibilities were irrelevant. To underestimate the risks 
was to increase them. She had to get out of there, quickly. How? The odds were 
too great that someone was watching the elevators. She needed to drive out—in a 
different car from the one she had taken in.
She casually walked between an aisle of cars, and suddenly dropped to the 
ground, cushioning her fall with her hands. She crawled, at tire level, arms and 
legs moving together. Flattening herself toward the ground, she made her way 
between two cars to the adjoining aisle and scurried rapidly toward where she 
had seen the ducking man.
She was behind him now, and as she approached she could see his slender figure. 
He was not the clerk; presumably, he was whomever the clerk's controller had 
arranged to send in his place. The man was standing upright now, looking around, 
confusion and anxiety written on his middle-aged face. His eyes moved wildly, 
from the exit ramps to the elevator doors. Now he was squinting, trying to see 
through the windshield of the yellow Fiat.
He had been tricked, knew it, and knew, too, that if he did not reclaim the 
advantage, he would have to face the consequences.
She sprang up and flung herself at him from behind, throwing the man down on the 
concrete, vising his neck in a hammerlock. There was a crunch as his jaw hit the 
floor.
"Who else you got waiting for me?" she demanded.
"Just me," the man replied. Jessie felt a chill.
He was an American.
She flipped him over and dug the muzzle of her pistol into his right eye. "Who's 
out there?"
"Two guys on the street, right in front," he said. "Stop! Please! You're 
blinding me!"
"Not yet I'm not," she said. "When you're blinded, you'll know. Now tell me what 
they look like." The man said nothing, and she pressed the muzzle in harder.
"One's got short blond hair. Big guy. The other … brown hair, crew cut, square 
chin."
She eased up on the pressure. An interception team outside. Jessie recognized 
the basics of the stakeout. The thin man would have a car of his own on this 
level: he was here to observe, and when Jessie drove to the exit ramp, he would 
be in his car, a discreet distance behind her.
"Why?" Jessie asked. "Why are you doing this?"
A defiant look. "Janson knows why—he knows what he did," he spat. "We remember 
Mesa Grande."
"Oh Christ. Something tells me we ain't got time to get into this shit right 
now," Jessie said. "Now here's what's going to happen. You're going to get into 
your car and drive me out of here."
"What car?"
"No wheels? If you won't be driving, you won't be needing to see." She pressed 
the pistol into his right eye socket again.
"The blue Renault," he gasped. "Please stop!"
She got into the backseat of the sedan as he got into the driver's seat. She 
slumped low, out of sight, but kept her Beretta Tomcat pointed at him; he knew 
that the slug would easily penetrate the seat, and followed her commands. They 
sped down the spiraling ramp until they approached the glass booth and the 
orange-painted wooden lever-gate blocking the way.
"Crash it!" she yelled. "Do just what I said!"
The car rammed through the insubstantial barrier and roared out onto the street. 
She heard the footsteps of racing men.
Through the rearview mirror, Jessie was able to make out one of them—crew cut, 
square-jawed, just as he'd described. He had been stationed at the other end of 
the street. As the car hurtled in the opposite direction, he spoke rapidly into 
some kind of communicator.
Suddenly the front windshield spiderwebbed, and the car started to careen out of 
control. Jessie peered between the two front seats and saw a large blond-haired 
man several yards off to the side in front of them, holding a long-barreled 
revolver. He had just squeezed off two shots.
The American at the steering wheel was dead; she could see blood oozing from an 
exit wound in the rear of his skull. They must have figured out that what had 
happened was not according to plan—that the thin man had been taken hostage—and 
resorted to drastic action.
Now the driverless car drifted through the busy intersection, cutting across 
lines, rolling into traffic. There was a deafening cacophony of blaring horns, 
squealing brakes.
A tractor-trailer, its powerful horn blasting like a ship's, missed hitting the 
car by a few feet.
If she kept down, out of range, she risked a serious collision with on-rushing 
traffic. If she tried to clamber to the front seat and take control of the 
vehicle, she would likely get shot in the attempt.
A few seconds later, the car, moving ever more slowly, rolled through the 
intersection, across the four lanes of traffic, and crashed gently into a parked 
car. Jessie was almost relieved when she felt herself slammed against the back 
of the bucket seats, for it meant that the car had come to a stop. Now she 
opened the door on the side nearer the street—and she ran, ran along the 
sidewalk, weaving in and out of groups of pedestrians.
It was fifteen minutes before she was absolutely convinced that they had lost 
her. At the same time, the requisites of survival had trumped the requisites of 
investigation. Yes, they had lost her, but the converse was also true, she 
realized with a pang: she had lost them.


They rejoined each other in the spartan accommodations of Griff Hotel, a 
converted workers' hostel on the street Bartok Bela.
Jessie had with her a volume she'd picked up somewhere along her wanderings. It 
was apparently a sort of tribute to Peter Novak, and though the text was in 
Hungarian, there wasn't much of it: it was basically a picture book.
Janson picked it up and shrugged. "Looks like it's for die-hard fans," he said. 
"A Peter Novak coffee-table book. So what'd you find out at the Archives?"
"A dead end," she said.
He looked at her closely, saw her face mottled with apprehension. "Spill," he 
said.
Haltingly, she told him what had happened. It had become obvious that the clerk 
was on the payroll of whoever was trying to stop them, that he'd sounded the 
alarm and then set her up.
He listened with growing dismay, bordering on fury. "You shouldn't have done it 
alone," Janson said, trying to maintain his equipoise. "A meeting like that—you 
had to have known the risks. You can't go freelancing like that, Jessie. It's 
damn reckless … " He broke off, trying to control his breathing.
Jessie tugged on an ear. "Am I hearing an echo?"
Janson sighed. "Point taken."
"So," she said after a while, "what's Mesa Grande?"
"Mesa Grande," he repeated, and his mind became crowded with images that time 
had never faded.
Mesa Grande: the high-security military prison installation in the eastern 
foothills of California's Inland Empire region. The white crags of the San 
Bernardino Mountains visible in the near horizon, dwarfing the small, low-slung 
beige-brick buildings. The dark blue outfit the prisoner had been made to wear, 
with the white cloth circle attached by Velcro to the center of his chest. The 
special chair, with a pan beneath it to catch blood, and head restraints that 
were attached loosely to the prisoner's neck. The pile of sandbags behind, to 
absorb the volley and prevent ricochets. Demarest had faced a wall, twenty feet 
away—a wall with firing ports for each of the six members of the squad. Six men 
with rifles. The wall was what he had protested most about. Demarest had 
insisted on execution by firing squad, and his preference had been accommodated. 
Yet he also wanted to be able to see his executioners face-to-face: and this 
time he had been refused.
Now Janson took another deep breath. "Mesa Grande is where a bad man met a bad 
end."
A bad end, and a defiant one. For on Demarest's face there had indeed been 
defiance—no, more than that: a wrathful indignation—until the volley was loosed, 
and the white cloth circle turned bright red with his blood.
Janson had asked to witness the execution, for reasons that remained murky even 
to him, and the request had reluctantly been granted. To this day, Janson could 
not decide whether he had made the right decision. It no longer mattered: Mesa 
Grande, too, was part of who he was. Part of who he had become.
To him, it had represented a moment of requital. A moment of justice to repay 
injustice. To others, so it appeared, that moment meant something altogether 
different.
Mesa Grande.
Had the monster's devoted followers gotten together, somehow decided to avenge 
his death all these years later? The idea seemed preposterous. That did not, 
alas, mean it could be dismissed. Demarest's Devils: perhaps these veterans were 
among the mercenaries that Novak's enemies had recruited. How better to counter 
one disciple of Demarest's techniques than with another?
Madness!
He knew that Jessie wanted to hear more from him, but he could not bring himself 
to speak. All he said was "We need to make an early start tomorrow. Get some 
sleep." And when she placed a hand on his arm, he pulled away.
Turning in, he felt roiled by shadowy ghosts he could never put to rest, however 
hard he tried.
In life, Demarest had taken too much of his past; in death, would he now take 
his future?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
It was three decades ago, and it was now. It was in a jungle far away, and it 
was here.
Always, the sounds: the mortar fire more distant and muffled than ever before, 
for the trail had led them many miles away from the official combat zones. 
Immediate proximity made the sounds of mosquitoes and other small stinging 
insects louder than the immense blasts of the heavy artillery. Cheap ironies 
were as thick on the ground as punji sticks, the sharpened bamboo stakes that 
the VC placed in small, concealed holes, awaiting the unwary footfall.
Janson checked his compass once again, verified that the trail had been leading 
in the correct direction. The triple-canopy jungle left the ground in permanent 
twilight, even when the sun was shining. The six men in his team moved in three 
pairs, each spaced a good ways apart, the better to avoid the vulnerability of 
clustering in hostile territory. Only he traveled without a partner.
"Maguire," he radioed, quietly.
He never heard the response. What he heard, instead, was automatic rifle fire, 
the overlapping staccato bursts of several ComBloc carbines.
Then he heard the screaming of men—his men—and the barking commands of an enemy 
patrol party. He was reaching for his M16 when he felt a blow to the back of his 
head. And then he felt nothing at all.
He was at the bottom of a deep, black lake, drifting slowly along the silt like 
a carp, and he could stay there forever, swathed in the muddy blackness, cool 
and close to motionless, but something began to drag him toward the surface, 
away from his comforting and silent underwater world, and the light began to 
hurt his eyes, began to sear his skin, even, and he struggled to stay below, but 
the forces that drew him up were irresistible, buoyancy dragging him up like a 
grappling hook, and he opened his eyes only to see another pair of eyes upon 
him, eyes like bore holes. And he knew that his world of water had given way to 
a world of pain.
He tried to sit up, and failed—from weakness, he assumed. He tried again, and 
realized that he was tied, roped to a litter, rough canvas stretched between two 
poles. He was stripped of his trousers and tunic. His head swam and his focus 
wavered; he recognized the signs of a head injury, knew there was nothing he 
could do about it.
A harsh exchange in Vietnamese. The eyes belonged to an officer, either of the 
NVA or the Viet Cong. He was a captive American soldier, and there was clarity 
in that. From some distance came the static of a shortwave radio, like a section 
of tuneless violins: the volume waxed and waned until he realized that it was 
his perception, not the sound, that was shifting, that his consciousness was 
zoning in and out. A black-clad soldier brought him rice gruel and spooned it 
into his parched mouth. He felt, absurdly, grateful; at the same time, he 
realized that he was an asset to them, a potential source of information. To 
extract that information was their job; to prevent them from extracting it, 
while keeping himself alive, was his. Besides, he knew, amateur interrogators 
would sometimes reveal more information than they elicited. He told himself that 
he would have to use his powers of concentration … when they returned. Assuming 
they ever did.
A bit of the rice gruel caught in his throat, and he realized it was a beetle 
that had fallen into the pasty substance. A half smile flickered on the face of 
the soldier who fed him—the indignity of feeding a Yank made up for by the 
indignity of what he was feeding him—but Janson was past caring.
"Xin loi," the soldier said, cruel as a jackknife. One of the few Vietnamese 
idioms Janson knew: Sorry about that.
Xin loi. Sorry about that: it was the war in a nutshell. Sorry we destroyed the 
village in order to save it. Sorry we napalmed your family. Sorry we tortured 
those POWs. Sorry about that—a phrase for every occasion. A phrase nobody ever 
meant. The world would be a better place if someone could say it and mean it.
Where was he? Some sort of Montagnard hut, was it? Abruptly, a greasy cloth was 
wrapped around his head, and he felt himself unroped and dragged down, dragged 
under—not to the bottom of the lake, as in his dream, but into a tunnel, 
burrowed around and beneath the shallow tree roots of the jungle soil. He was 
dragged until he started to crawl, simply to spare his flesh the abrasion. The 
tunnel veered one way and then another; it sloped upward and downward and 
intersected with others; voices grew muffled and close, then very distant; 
smells of tar and kerosene and rot alternated with the fetor of unwashed men. 
When he reemerged into the insect symphony of the jungle floor—for it was the 
sound of insects that told him he had left the network of tunnels—he was trussed 
up again and lifted onto a chair. The cloth around his head was removed, and he 
breathed deeply the clammy air. The rope was coarse, the sort of hemp twine used 
for tying river sloops to bamboo docks, and it bit into his wrists, his ankles. 
Small insects hovered around the fretwork of small cuts and abrasions that 
covered his exposed flesh. His T-shirt and underpants—that was all he had been 
left with—were encrusted with dirt from the tunnels.
A large-boned man with eyes that looked small beneath his steel-framed glasses 
approached him.
"Where … others?" Janson's mouth was cottony.
"Members of your death squad? Dead. Only you safe."
"You're Viet Cong?"
"That is not correct term. We represent Central Committee of the National 
Liberation Front."
"National Liberation Front," Janson repeated, his cracked lips forming words 
only with difficulty.
"Why you not wear dog tags?"
Janson shrugged, prompting an immediate whack with a bamboo stick across the 
back of his neck. "Must've got lost."
Two guards stood to either side of the scowling interrogator. They each carried 
AK-47s and a link-belt of rounds around their waists; a Makarev 9.5mm pistol 
hung just below the ammo belt. One of them had clipped to his belt a U.S. Navy 
SEALs combat knife, the six-inch blade gleaming. Janson recognized the scars on 
its Tenite handle; it was his.
"You lie!" the interrogator said. His eyes darted toward the man standing behind 
Janson—Janson could not see him, but he could smell him, could feel his body 
heat even through the heat of the moist jungle air—and a crushing blow struck 
Janson's side. The barrel of a rifle, he guessed. A bolt of agony shot through 
his side.
He had to concentrate—not on his interrogator but on something else. Through the 
bamboo struts of the hut, he could see large flat leaves dripping with water. He 
was a leaf; whatever fell upon him would drip off like beads of water.
"We hear about your special soldiers who do not wear tags."
"Special? I wish." Janson shook his head. "No. I lost it. Snagged on a thornbush 
while I was bellying through your trails."
The interrogator looked annoyed. He moved his chair closer to Janson and leaned 
forward. He tapped Janson on his left forearm, and then his right. "You can 
choose," he said. "Which one?"
"Which one what?" Janson asked dazedly.
"Not to decide," the rawboned man said somberly, "is to decide." He glanced up 
at the man behind Janson and said something in Vietnamese. "We break your right 
arm," he told Janson, explaining almost tenderly.
The blow arrived with sledgehammer force: a barrel unscrewed from a machine gun 
deployed as a weapon itself. His wrist and elbow were supported by the bamboo of 
his chair; the bone of his forearm extended between those two points. It gave 
way like a dry branch. The bone had split from the blow: he knew it from a soft 
crunching noise that he felt rather than heard—and from the horrendous pain that 
surged up his arm, taking his breath away.
He wriggled his fingers, to see whether they would still obey him; they did. 
Bone but not nerve had been severed. Yet his arm was largely useless now.
The noise of metal sliding against metal alerted him to what was to happen next: 
a two-inch-thick bar was inserted through the heavy irons around his ankles. 
Next, the unseen torturer tied a rope around the bar, looped it over Janson's 
shoulders, and pulled his head down between his knees, even while his arms 
remained bound to the arms of the chair. The torque on his shoulder was a 
growing agony, vying with the pulsating pain of his broken forearm.
He waited for the next question. But minutes elapsed, and there was only 
silence. The gloom turned into darkness. Breathing became even more difficult, 
as his diaphragm strained against his folded body, and his shoulders felt as if 
they were in a vise that narrowed and narrowed without end. Janson passed out, 
and regained consciousness, but it was consciousness only of pain. It was light 
outside—had morning come? Afternoon? Yet he was alone. He was only 
half-conscious when his bonds were loosened and bamboo gruel was poured into his 
mouth. His underpants had been cut off him now, and a rusty metal bucket was 
placed on the ground beneath the stool. Then the loop was tightened again, the 
loop that bound his shoulders to the ankle irons, that forced his head between 
his knees, that threatened to tear his arms from his shoulders. He repeated a 
mantra to himself: Clear like water, cool like ice. As his shoulders burned, he 
thought about the summer weeks he had spent ice fishing in Alaska as a child. He 
thought of the emerald beads on the huge flat jungle leaves, the way they 
dripped away, leaving nothing behind. Later still, two boards were tied to his 
broken arm with twine, as a sort of makeshift cast.
From the inner recesses of his mind, the words of Emerson that Demarest so often 
quoted returned to him: Whilst he sits on the cushions of advantages he goes to 
sleep. When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn 
something.
And another day passed. And another. And another.
His innards cramped powerfully: the fly-ridden gruel had given him dysentery. He 
desperately sought to defecate, hoping he could rid himself of the agony that 
now convulsed his very guts, but his bowels would not move. They harbored their 
pain greedily. The enemy within, Janson thought mordantly.
It was either evening or morning when he heard a voice, once more, in English. 
His bonds were loosened, and he could now sit up straight once more—a postural 
shift that initially caused his nerve endings to scream in renewed agony.
"Is that better now? It soon will be, I pray."
A new interrogator, no one he had seen before. It was a small man with quick 
intelligent eyes. His English was fluid, the accent pronounced but with clipped, 
crisp articulation. An educated man.
"We know you are not imperialist aggressor," the voice went on. "You are a dupe 
of the imperialist aggressors." The interrogator came very close; Janson knew 
that his smell must be offensive to the man—it was foul even to himself—but he 
evinced no sign of it. The Vietnamese touched Janson's cheek, rough with 
stubble, and spoke softly. "But you disrespect us when you treat us like dupes. 
Can you understand this?" Yes, he was an educated man, and Janson was his 
special project. This development alarmed him: it suggested that they had 
figured out that he was, indeed, no ordinary soldier.
Janson ran his tongue over his teeth; they felt furry and somehow foreign, as if 
they had been replaced with a set of choppers carved of an old balsa raft. A 
noise of assent came from his mouth.
"Ask yourself how it was you were captured."
The man walked around him, pacing like a schoolmaster in front of a class. "You 
see, we are actually very similar, in a way. Both of us are intelligence 
officers. You have served your cause bravely. I hope the same might be said of 
me."
Janson nodded. The thought briefly flickered: In what demented scheme did the 
torture of a defenseless prisoner count as bravery? But he quickly stowed it 
away; it would not help him now; it would cloud his composure, betray an 
attitude of sedition. Clear like water, cool like ice.
"My name is Phan Nguyen, and I think that, really, we are privileged to know 
each other. Your name is … "
"Private Kevin Jones," Janson said. In his moments of lucidity, he had created a 
whole life behind that name—an infantryman from Nebraska, a little trouble with 
the law after high school, a pregnant girlfriend at home, a brigade that had got 
lost and wandered away from where it was supposed to be. The character seemed 
almost real to him, though it was cobbled together from snippets of popular 
novels, movies, magazine stories, TV shows. Out of the thousand tales of 
America, he could craft something that would ring truer than any true American 
tale. "U.S. Infantry."
The small man flushed as he boxed Janson on his right ear, leaving it bruised 
and ringing. "Lieutenant Junior Grade Paul Janson," said Phan Nguyen. "Do not 
undo all the good work you have done."
How did they know his true name and rank?
"You told us all this," Phan Nguyen insisted. "You told us everything. Have you 
forgotten, in your delirium? I think so. I think so. This happens often."
Was it possible? Janson locked eyes with Nguyen, and both men saw their 
suspicions confirmed. Both saw that the other had lied. Janson had revealed 
nothing—or nothing until now. For Nguyen could tell from his reaction, not of 
fear or perplexity but of rage, that his identification was correct.
Janson had nothing to lose: "Now it is you who lie," he growled. He felt a 
sharp, stinging thwack of the bamboo stick across his upper body, but it was 
more for show than anything else; Janson had come to be able to judge these 
minuscule gradations.
"We are practically colleagues, you and I. Is that the word? Colleagues? I think 
so. I think so." Phan Nguyen, as it emerged, often said those words, I think so, 
almost beneath his breath: they distinguished questions that did not require 
voiced assent from those that did. "Now we will speak candidly to each other, as 
colleagues do. You will drop your lies and fables, on the pain of … pain." He 
seemed pleased with the English idiom, with the way it could be twisted this way 
and that. "I know you are a brave man. I know you have a high tolerance for 
suffering. Perhaps you would like us to test just how high, like an experiment?"
Janson shook his head, his innards churning. Suddenly he heaved forward and 
retched. A small amount of vomit reached the hard-packed ground. It looked like 
coffee grounds. A clinical sign of internal hemorrhage.
"No? Just for now, I'm not going to press you for answers. I want you to ask 
yourself the questions." Phan Nguyen sat down again, looking intently at Janson 
with his intelligent, curious eyes. "I want you to ask yourself how it was that 
you were captured. We knew just where to find you—that must have puzzled you, 
no? What you faced wasn't the response of surprised men, was it? So you know 
what I say is so."
Janson felt another heaving surge of nausea: what Phan Nguyen said was true. It 
may have been wrapped in deceit, but the truth remained, stony and indigestible.
"You say you did not divulge the details of your identity to me. But that leaves 
you with a more troubling question. If not you, who? How is it that we were able 
to intercept your team and capture a senior officer of the legendary American 
counterintelligence division of the legendary Navy SEALs? How?"
How indeed? There was only one answer: Lieutenant Commander Alan Demarest had 
tunneled the information to the NVA or its VC allies. He was too careful a man 
for the leak to have been inadvertent at this point. It would have been 
extraordinarily easy. The information would have been "accidentally" revealed to 
one of the ARVN personnel whom Demarest knew to have close NVA links; it could 
have been "hidden" in a cache of papers "accidentally" left behind at a jungle 
outpost, too hastily decamped under enemy fire. The details could have been 
deliberately transmitted via a code and radio frequency known to the enemy. 
Demarest had wanted Janson out of the way; he had needed him out of the way. And 
so he had taken care of the matter as only he could. The whole mission had been 
a goddamn snare, a subterfuge from the master of subterfuge.
Demarest had done this to him!
And now the lieutenant commander was no doubt sitting at his desk, listening to 
Hildegard von Bingen, and Janson was trussed to a stool in a VC compound, foul 
pus oozing from open sores where the rope cut into his flesh, his body 
shattered, his mind reeling—reeling, most of all, at the realization that his 
ordeal had only begun.
"Well," Phan Nguyen said. "You must concede that our intelligence is superior. 
We know so much about your operations that to hold back would be pointless, like 
depriving the ocean of a teardrop. Yes, I think so, I think so." He walked out 
of the compound, conferring in a low voice with another officer, and then 
returned, taking his seat at his chair.
Janson's eyes fell on the man's feet, which didn't touch the ground, and took in 
the large American lace-ups, the childlike calves.
"You must get used to the fact that you will never return to the United States 
of America. Soon, I will tell you about Vietnamese history, starting with Trung 
Trac and Trung Nhi, the joint queens of Vietnam who ousted the Chinese from our 
lands in thirty-nine a.d.—yes, as far back as that! Before Ho, there were the 
Trung sisters. Where was America in thirty-nine a.d.? You will come to 
understand the futility of your government's efforts to suppress the rightful 
national aspirations of the Vietnamese people. You have many lessons to learn, 
and you will be well taught. But there is much you must tell us as well. Are we 
in agreement?"
Janson said nothing.
At an eye signal from the interrogator, a carbine smashed into his left side: 
another electric bolt of agony.
"Perhaps we can start with something easier and work up to the more advanced 
subjects. We shall talk about you. About your parents and their role in the 
capitalist system. About your childhood. About America's abundant popular 
culture."
Janson paused, and he heard the sound of metal sliding on metal, as the thick 
steel bar was inserted between his leg irons again.
"No," Janson said. "No!" And Janson began to speak. He spoke about what was 
shown on television and at the movie theaters; Phan Nguyen was particularly 
interested in what counted as a happy ending, and what sort of endings was 
permissible. Janson spoke about his childhood in Connecticut; he spoke about his 
father's life as an insurance executive. The concept intrigued Phan Nguyen, and 
he grew scholarly and serious, pushing Janson to explain the underlying 
concepts, parsing the notions of risk and liability with near Confucian 
delicacy. Janson might have been telling a fascinated anthropologist about the 
circumcision rites of the Trobriand Islanders.
"And he led a good American life, your father?"
"He thought so. He made a good living. Owned a nice home, nice car. Could buy 
the things he wanted to buy."
Phan Nguyen sat back in his chair, and his broad weathered features were alert 
and quizzical. "And this is what gives meaning to your life?" he asked. He 
folded his slender, childlike arms around his chest and tilted his head. "Hmm? 
This is what gives meaning to your life?"
The questioning went on and on—Nguyen refused to call himself an interrogator; 
he was, he said, a "teacher"—and each day Janson was permitted more and more 
mobility. He could walk around a small bamboo hut, although always under 
watchful guard. Then one day, after an almost good-humored discussion of 
American sports (Nguyen suggested, as if it were self-evident, that in 
capitalist societies the class struggle was provided imaginary resolution on the 
playing field), Janson was given a document to sign. It stated that he had been 
given good medical care and had been kindly treated by the National Liberation 
Front, whom the document heralded as freedom fighters devoted to peace and 
democracy. It called for the withdrawal of the U.S. from imperialist wars of 
aggression. A pen—a fine fountain pen of French manufacture, evidently a legacy 
of one of the old colonials—was placed in his hand. When he declined to sign the 
document, he was beaten until he lost consciousness.
And when he regained it, he found himself chained inside a sturdy bamboo cage, 
six feet tall and four feet in diameter. He could not stand up straight; he 
could not sit down. He could not move around. He had nothing to do. A pail of 
brackish water, strewn with ox hair and dead insects, was placed near his feet 
by a closed-faced guard. He was a bird in a cage, waiting only to be fed.
It would be, he somehow knew, a very long wait.
"Xin loi," the guard taunted. Sorry about that.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Molnar. The town that history erased.
Molnar. Where it all began.
It now looked like their last hope of finding any link to Peter Novak's origins. 
The last hope of unraveling the web of deceit that ensnared them.
Yet what, if anything, remained of it?
The route they took the next morning skirted the major cities and highways, and 
the Lancia groaned and bounced as they drove through the Bükk Hills in northeast 
Hungary. Jessie seemed preoccupied for much of the time.
"There's something about those men yesterday," she finally said. "Something 
about the way they set it up."
"The triangle config?" Janson said. "Pretty standard, actually. It's what you do 
when you've got just three men on hand. Surveillance and blocking. Straight out 
of the manual."
"That's what's bothering me," she said. "It's straight out of our manual."
Janson did not speak for a few moments. "They had Cons Op training," he said.
"Felt that way," Jessie said. "Sure felt that way. And seeing that blond guy 
blasting away … "
"Like he'd anticipated the possibility of your maneuver and was resorting to the 
countermeasure."
"Felt like it, yeah."
"Very sound, from a tactical point of view. Whatever his reasons, he had to 
eliminate you or the hostage. Nearly did both. Shooting a colleague like that 
meant that a hostage—and therefore the possibility of a security breach—was the 
one thing he couldn't risk."
"I gotta tell you, it's freaking me out," Jessie said, "The whole Cons Op angle. 
It's like everything's lined up against us. Or maybe it's more complicated than 
that. Maybe it's like what that creep at the Archives was saying about how 
records get destroyed. Something about how fire and water are opposites, but 
they're both enemies."
The terrain grew increasingly hilly; when even the Soviet-era tower blocks had 
vanished from the horizon, they knew they were approaching their destination. 
The village of Molnar was near the Tisza River, between Miskolc and Nyiregyhaza. 
Sixty miles to the north was the Slovak Republic; sixty miles to the east was 
Ukraine and, just beneath it, Romania. At different points in history, all 
represented expansionist powers—geopolitical predators. The mountains funneled 
the river; they also funneled whatever armies wished to proceed from the eastern 
front to the Magyar heartland. The countryside was deceptively beautiful, filled 
with emerald-like knolls, foothills ramping toward the low, bluish mountains 
farther away. Here and there, one of the hills swelled to a lofty peak, lower 
elevations terraced with vineyards, ceding the higher altitudes to the 
camouflage drab of forests. Yet the landscape was also scarred, in ways that 
were visible and in ways that were not.
Now they rolled over a small bridge across the Tisza, a bridge that had once 
connected two halves of the village of Molnar.
"It's unbelievable," Jessie said. "It's gone. Like somebody waved a magic wand."
"That would have been a lot kinder than what happened," Janson said. One winter 
day in 1945, he had read, the Red Army swept down these mountains and one of 
Hitler's divisions attempted an ambush. The artillery units had been passing 
through the road along the Tizsa River when the German and Arrow Cross soldiers 
sought to head them off, failing, but taking many lives in the attempt. The Red 
Army believed that the villagers of Molnar had known all along of the ambush. A 
lesson had to be taught to the rural Hungarians in the area, a penalty paid in 
blood. The village was torched, its inhabitants slaughtered.
When Jessie had scrutinized maps of the region, she found that on the same spot 
where the prewar maps showed the small village, the contemporary atlases showed 
nothing at all. Jessie had pored over the densely printed maps with a jeweler's 
loupe and a draftsman's ruler; there could be no mistake about it. It was an 
absence that spoke louder than any presence could.
They pulled into a roadside tavern. Inside, two men sat at a long, copper bar, 
peering into their Dreher pilsners. Their garb was rustic: tattered, muddy-hued 
cotton shirts and blue dickeys, or some old Soviet version thereof. Neither man 
looked up as the Americans arrived. The barkeep followed them with his eyes 
wordlessly. He wore a white apron and busied himself drying beer steins with a 
gray-looking towel. His receding hairline and the dark indentations beneath his 
eyes contributed to an impression of age.
Janson smiled. "Speak English?" he called to the man.
The man nodded.
"See, my wife and I, we've been sight-seeing hereabouts. But it's also kind of 
an explore-your-roots thing. You follow?"
"Your family is Hungarian?" The barkeep's English was accented but unhalting.
"My wife's," Janson said.
Jessie smiled and nodded. "Straight up," she added.
"Is that so?"
"According to family lore, her grandparents were born in a village called 
Molnar."
"It no longer exists," the barkeep said. He was, Janson saw now, younger than he 
had first seemed. "And the family's name?"
"Family name was Kis," Janson said.
"Kis is like Jones in Hungary. I'm afraid that does not narrow your search very 
much." His voice was cool, formal, reserved. Not a typical rural tavernkeeper, 
Janson decided. As he took a step back from the bar, a blackish horizontal 
stripe was visible on his apron where his big belly rubbed against the ledge of 
the bar.
"I wonder whether anybody else might have any memories of the old days," Jessie 
said.
"Who else is here?" The question was a polite challenge.
"Maybe … one of these gentlemen?"
The barkeep gestured toward one with his chin. "He's not even Magyar, really, 
he's Paloc," he said. "A very old dialect. I can hardly understand him. He 
understands our word for money, and I understand his for beer. So we get along. 
Beyond that, I would not press." He shot a glance toward the other man. "And 
he's a Ruthenian." He shrugged. "I say no more. His forints are as good as any 
other's. " It was a statement of democratic sentiment that conveyed the 
opposite.
"I see," Janson said, wondering whether he was being let in on things by being 
told of the local tensions, or deliberately frozen out. "And there wouldn't be 
anybody who lives around here and might remember the old days?"
The man behind the bar ran his gray cloth along the inside of another stein, 
leaving behind a faint beard of lint. "The old days? Before 1988? Before 1956? 
Before 1944? Before 1920? I think these are the old days. They speak of a new 
era, but I think it is not so new."
"I hear you," Janson said folksily.
"You are visiting from America? Many fine museums in Budapest. And farther west, 
there are show villages. Very picturesque. Made just for people like you, 
American tourists. I think this is not such a nice place to visit. I have no 
postcards for you. Americans, I think, do not like places that do not have 
postcards."
"Not all Americans," Janson said.
"All Americans like to think they are different," the man said sourly. "One of 
the many, many ways in which they are all the same."
"That's a very Hungarian observation," Janson said.
The man gave a half smile and nodded. "Touché. But the people around here have 
suffered too much to be good company. That is the truth. We are not even good 
company to ourselves. Once upon a time, people would spend the winters staring 
into their fireplaces. Now we have television sets, and stare into those."
"The electronic hearth."
"Exactly. We can even get CNN and MTV. You Americans complain about drug 
traffickers in Asia, and meanwhile you flood the world with the electronic 
equivalent. Our children know the names of your rappers and movie stars, and 
nothing about the heroes of their own people. Maybe they know who Stephen King 
is, but they don't know who our King Stephen was—the founder of our nation!" A 
petulant head shake: "It's an invisible conquest, with satellites and broadcast 
transmitters instead of artillery. And now you come here because—because why? 
Because you are bored with the sameness of your lives. You come in search of 
your roots, because you want to be exotic. But everywhere you go, you find your 
own spoor. The slime of the serpent is over all."
"Mister," Jessie said. "Are you drunk?"
"I have a graduate degree in English from Debrecen University," he said. 
"Perhaps it comes to the same." He smiled bitterly. "You are surprised? 
Tavernkeeper's son can go to university: the glories of communism. 
University-educated son cannot find job: glories of capitalism. Son works for 
father: glories of Magyar family."
Jessie turned to Janson and whispered, "Where I come from, people say that if 
you don't know who the mark is at the table after ten minutes, it's you."
Janson's expression did not change. "This was your dad's place?" he asked the 
big-bellied man.
"Still is," the man said warily.
"I wonder if he'd have any recollections … "
"Ah, the wizened old Magyar, swilling brandy and spinning sepia pictures like an 
old nickelodeon? My father is not a local tourist attraction, to be wheeled out 
for your entertainment."
"You know something?" Jessie said, interrupting. "I was once a barkeep. In my 
country, it's considered you're in the hospitality business." A trace of heat 
crept into her voice as she spoke. "Now I'm sorry your fancy degree didn't get 
you a fancy job, and it just tears me up that your kids prefer MTV to whatever 
Magyar hootenannies you got for them, but—"
"Honey," Janson interjected, with a warning tone. "We'd better hit the road now. 
It's getting late." With a firm hand on her elbow, he escorted her out the door. 
As they stepped into the sun, they saw an old man seated on a canvas folding 
chair on the porch, a look of amusement in his eyes. Had he been there when they 
arrived? Perhaps so; something about the old man blended into the scenery, as if 
he were a piece of nondescript furniture.
Now the old man tapped the side of his head, the sign for "loco." His eyes were 
smiling. "My son is a frustrated man," he said equably. "He wants to ruin me. 
You see the customers? A Ruthenian. A Paloc. They don't have to listen to him 
talk. No Magyar would come anymore. Why pay to listen to his sourness?" He had 
the uncreased, porcelain complexion of certain elderly people, whose skin, 
thinned but not coarsened by age, acquires an oddly delicate appearance. His 
large head was fringed with white hair, scarcely more than wisps, and his eyes 
were a cloudy blue. He rocked back and forth gently in his chair, his smile 
unwavering. "But Gyorgy is right about one thing. The people around here have 
suffered too much to be civil."
"Except you," Jessie said.
"I like Americans," the old man said.
"Aren't you the sweetest," Jessie returned.
"It's the Slovaks and the Romanians who can go hang themselves. Also the Germans 
and the Russians."
"I guess you've seen some hard times," Jessie said.
"I never had Ruthenians in the bar when I was running things." He wrinkled his 
nose. "I don't like those people," he added, softly. "They're lazy and insolent 
and do nothing but complain, all day long."
"You should hear what they say about you," she said, leaning in toward him.
"Em?"
"I bet the bar was packed when you were running things. I bet there were lots of 
ladies flocking there especially."
"Now why would you think that?"
"A good-looking guy like you? I got to spell it out? Bet you still get yourself 
in a heap of trouble with the ladies." Jessie knelt down beside the old man. His 
smile grew wider; such proximity to a beautiful woman was to be savored.
"I do like Americans," the old man said. "More and more."
"And Americans like you," Jessie said, taking his forearm and squeezing it 
gently. "At least this one does."
He drew in a deep breath, inhaling her perfume. "My dear, you smell like the 
Tokaj of the emperors."
"I'm sure you say that to all the girls," she said, pouting.
He looked severe for a moment. "Certainly not," he said. Then he smiled again. 
"Only the pretty ones."
"I bet you knew some pretty girls from Molnar once upon a time," she said.
He shook his head. "I grew up farther up the Tisza. Nearer Sarospatak. I moved 
here only in the fifties. Already, no more Molnar. Just rocks and stones and 
trees. My son, you see, belongs to the generation of the disappointed. A 
csalódottak. People like me, who survived Bêla Kun and Miklós Horthy and Perene 
Szálasi and Mátyás Rákosi —we know when to be grateful. We never had great 
expectations. So we cannot be greatly disappointed. I have a son who pours beer 
for Ruthenians all day, but do you see me complaining?"
"We really should be getting along now," Janson put in.
Jessie's eyes did not leave the old man's. "Well, things used to be a whole lot 
different, I know that. Didn't there used to be some baron from these parts, 
some old Magyar nobleman?"
"Count Ferenczi-Novak's lands used to stretch up that mountainside." He gestured 
vaguely.
"Now that must have been a sight. A castle and everything?"
"Once," he said, distractedly. He was not eager for her to leave. "A castle and 
everything."
"Gosh, I wonder if there'd be anybody alive who might have known that count guy. 
Ferenczi-Novak, was it?"
The old man was silent a moment, his features looking nearly Asiatic in repose. 
"Well," he said. "There's the old woman, Grandma Gitta. Gitta Békesi. Can speak 
English, too. They say she learned as a girl when she worked in the castle. You 
know how it is—the Russian noblewomen always insisted on speaking French, the 
Hungarian noblewomen always insisted on speaking English. Everybody always wants 
to sound like what they aren't... "
"Békesi, you said?" Jessie prompted gently.
"Maybe not such a good idea. Most people say she lives in the past. I can't 
promise she's all there. But she's all Magyar. Which is more than you can say 
for some." He laughed, a phlegm-rattling laugh. "Lives in an old farmhouse, the 
second left, and then another left, up around the bend."
"Can we tell her you sent us?"
"Better not," he said. "I don't want her cross at me. She doesn't like strangers 
much." He laughed again. "And that's an understatement!"
"Well, you know what we say in America," Jessie said, giving him a soulful look. 
"There are no strangers here, only friends we haven't met."
The son, his white apron still stretched around his round belly, stepped onto 
the porch with a look of smoldering resentment. "That's another thing about you 
Americans," he sneered. "You have an infinite capacity for self-delusion."


Situated halfway up a gently sloping hill, the old two-story brick farmhouse 
looked like thousands of others that dotted the countryside. It could have been 
a century old, or two, or three. Once, it might have housed a prosperous peasant 
and his family. But, as a closer approach made clear, the years had not been 
kind to it. The roof had been replaced with sheets of rusting, corrugated steel. 
Trees and vines grew wild around the house, blocking off many of the windows. 
The tiny attic windows, beneath the roof, had a cataract haze; at some point 
glass had been replaced with plastic, which was starting to decompose in the 
sun. A few fissures ran from the foundation halfway up the side of the front 
wall. Shutters were encrusted with peeling paint. It was hard to believe that 
anyone lived here. Janson recalled the old man's amused look, the laughter in 
his eyes, and wondered whether he had played some Magyar prank on them.
"I think that's what you call a fixer-upper," Jessie said.
They pulled the Lancia off to the side of the road—a road that was hardly 
deserving of the name, for its pavement was crumbled and pitted by neglect. 
Proceeding on foot, they made their way down what had once been a cow path, now 
almost impassable with overgrown brambles. The house was nearly a mile down the 
slope, the very picture of neglect.
As they approached the entrance, though, Janson heard a noise. An eerie, low 
rumble. After a moment, he recognized it as the growl of a dog. And then they 
heard a throaty bark.
Through narrow slot glass set into the door, he saw the white figure springing 
impatiently. It was a Kuvasz, an ancient Hungarian breed, used as a guard dog 
for more than a millennium. The breed was little known in the West, but it was 
all too well known to Janson, who years ago had had an encounter with one. Like 
other canines bred to be guard dogs—mastiffs, pit bulls, Alsatians, 
Dobermans—they were fiercely protective of their masters and aggressive toward 
strangers. A fifteenth-century Magyar king was said to trust only his Kuvasz 
dogs, not people. The breed had a noble build, with its protruding forechest, 
powerful musculature, long muzzle, and thick white coat. But Janson had seen 
such white fur stained with human blood. He knew what a slathering Kuvasz was 
capable of when roused to action. The incisors were sharp, the jaws powerful, 
and its light-footed stance could instantly become a pounce that seemed to turn 
the animal into nothing but muscle and teeth.
Gitta Bekesi's animal was not the giant creature spoken of in ancient times; it 
was three feet tall and 120 pounds, Janson estimated. At the moment, it seemed 
to be pure hostile energy. Few creatures were as deadly as an enraged Kuvasz.
"Mrs. Békesi?" Janson called out.
"Go away!" a quavering voice replied.
"That's a Kuvasz, isn't it?" Janson said. "What a handsome animal! There's 
nothing like them, is there?"
"That handsome animal would like nothing so much as to clamp its jaws around 
your throat," the old woman said, her voice gaining resolve. It floated through 
the open window; she herself remained in the shadows.
"It's just that we've traveled a long, long way," Jessie said. "From America? 
You see, my grandfather, he came from this village called Molnar. People say 
you're the one person who might be able to tell us something about the place."
There was a long pause, silent save for the rasping growl of the enraged guard 
dog.
Jessie looked at Janson and whispered. "That dog's really got you spooked, 
hasn't it?"
"Ask me sometime about Ankara, 1978," Janson replied quietly.
"I know about Ankara."
"Trust me," Janson said. "You don't."
Finally, the woman broke her silence. "Your grandfather," she said. "What was 
his name?"
"Kis is what the family was called," she said, repeating the deliberately 
generic name. "But I'm more interested in getting a feel for the place, the 
world he grew up in. Not necessarily him in particular. Really, I just want 
something to remember … "
"You lie," she said. "You lie!" Her voice was a wail. "Strangers come with lies. 
You should be ashamed of yourself. Now go! Go, or I will give you something to 
remember." They heard the distinctive sound of a shotgun cartridge being 
chambered.
"Oh shit," Jessie whispered. "What now?"
Janson shrugged. "When all else fails? The truth."
"Hey, lady," Jessie said. "You ever hear of a Count Janos Ferenczi-Novak?"
A long silence ensued. In a voice like sandpaper, the woman demanded, "Who are 
you?"


Ahmad Tabari was impressed by the rapidity with which the intelligence chief 
worked. It was now their third meeting, and already Al-Mustashar had started to 
work his magic.
"We work in phases," the Libyan told him, his eyes bright. "A shipment of small 
arms is even now on its way toward your men at Nepura." He referred to the port 
in the northwesternmost point of Kenna. "These arrangements were not easy to 
broker. I assume that there will be no difficulties with interception. The 
Anuran gunboats have created some difficulty for your people, have they not?"
The Kagama warrior was cautious in his reply. "One steps back to step forward. 
Even the Prophet's struggles did not always go smoothly. Otherwise, they would 
not have been struggles. Remember the Truce of Hu-daybiyah." He referred to the 
compact that Muhammad had made with the denizens of Khaybar, not far from 
Medina.
Ibrahim Maghur nodded. "Only when the Prophet's troops were strong enough did he 
break the pact, overrun the Khaybar rulers, and expel the infidels from Arabia." 
His eyes flashed. "Are your troops strong enough?"
"With your help, and Allah's, they will be."
"You are a Caliph indeed," said Colonel Maghur.
"When first we met, you told me that history was made by great men," the Kagama 
said after a while.
"This is what I believe."
"It would follow that history can also be unmade by great men. Men of power and 
prominence whose imperial ambitions masquerade as humanitarian compassion. Men 
who seek to outmaneuver righteous resistance through preachments of peace—who 
will do whatever they can to suppress the violence that ultimate justice 
requires."
Maghur nodded slowly. "Your discernment as well as your tactical genius will 
guarantee your place in the history books, and the ultimate triumph of your 
struggles on behalf of ummah. I understand whom you speak of. He is indeed a 
true enemy of revolution. Alas, our attempts to strike at him have so far been 
futile."
"I cannot forget that he was once my prisoner."
"And yet he slipped from your clutches. He is as slippery as the serpent in the 
garden."
Ahmad Tabari's face tightened at the memory. All his reverses could be traced 
back to that humiliating blow. The jewel in his crown had been stolen by a thief 
in the night. Until then, nothing had marred Tabari's aura of inexorable triumph 
and serene confidence: his followers believed that Allah had himself blessed the 
Caliph's every move. Yet just a day shy of Id ul-Kebir came the shocking 
invasion of the Caliph's newly claimed stronghold—and the seizure of his 
legendary captive. Nothing had gone smoothly since.
"The serpent must be hunted and killed before progress can resume," Maghur said.
Tabari's gaze was distant, but his mind was furiously engaged. A movement like 
his depended upon the sense that ultimate success was inevitable: the event had 
shaken that air of inevitability. The diminishment of morale was subsequently 
exploited by the incursions of the Republic of Anura's troops—and every 
successful raid of theirs compounded the loss of confidence among the Caliph's 
followers. It was a vicious circle. A bold act was essential to break out of it. 
The Libyan understood that. Now Tabari looked at him closely. "And you will 
provide support?"
"My position in my government is such that I must operate through many veils. 
Tripoli cannot be connected to your activities. There are others, however, whose 
hospitality can be turned to your advantage."
"You refer, again, to the Islamic Republic of Mansur," the gimlet-eyed guerrilla 
said. Mansur had originated as a secessionist movement within Yemen, spearheaded 
by a charismatic mullah: if the breakaway was not fiercely contested by the 
Yemeni forces, it was because nothing of value was being lost. Confined largely 
to the shifting sands of the Rub' al-Khali desert, Mansur was a desperately poor 
country, with few exports other than khat and some paltry handicrafts. The 
government itself had little to offer to its citizens save a Shiite version of 
Sharia: piety in medieval garb. Yet if its material exports were scant, it had 
begun to make a name for itself as an exporter of radical Islam, and the 
revolutionary fervor it entrained.
Ibrahim Maghur smiled. "On certain occasions, the holy men of Mansur have spoken 
to me of their security concerns. I have taken the liberty of telling them that 
I have identified somebody who is both devoted to Allah and truly expert in such 
matters. You will accompany me to Khartoum, where I have arranged special air 
transport for you. You will be received in the desert town they call the capital 
and will, I believe, find them a welcoming people indeed. At that point, you can 
write your own ticket."
"And they will help me find the serpent?"
Maghur shook his head. "7 will help you find the serpent. We will remain in 
close contact, you and I. Your Mansur hosts will merely provide you with the 
official identity and mobility you will need. In short, Mansur will be the 
stalking horse upon which you will ride."
A gust of desert air whipped at their loose-fitting garments.
"They say if you strike at a king, you must kill him," the Caliph mused.
"Your enemies will soon learn the truth of that," the Libyan said. "Through his 
hirelings, Peter Novak struck at you—but failed to kill you. Now you will strike 
at him … "
"And kill him." The words were spoken as simple fact.
"Indeed," Maghur said. "Allah's own justice demands it. Yet time grows short, 
for the thirsts of your revolutionary followers are great."
"And what will slake that thirst?"
"The blood of the infidel," Maghur said. "It will flow like juice from the 
sweetest pomegranate, and with it your cause will regain its life-spirit."
"The blood of the infidel," the Caliph repeated.
"The only question is whom you can trust to … extract it."
"Trust?" The Caliph blinked slowly.
"What surrogate will you dispatch?"
"Surrogate?" The Kagama warrior appeared faintly affronted. "This is not a task 
to be delegated. Recall, it was the Prophet himself who led the onslaught 
against Khaybar."
The Libyan's eyes widened with what seemed to be even greater respect for the 
rebel leader.
"The blood of the infidel will indeed flow," the Caliph said, and he held out 
his hands. "These palms will brim with Peter Novak's blood."
"And it will bear the blessings of Allah." The Libyan bowed. "Come with me now. 
The stalking horse must be saddled. Mansur awaits you, el Caliph."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
With supreme reluctance, Gitta Békesi finally agreed to let them enter the 
decaying farmhouse where she now lived alone with her savage dog. The dog's 
reluctance seemed greater still: though it obediently stood back, one could tell 
from its rigid posture that, at the slightest signal from its mistress, it would 
throw itself at the visitors in a frenzy of bristling fur and snapping teeth.
The old crone shared the decrepitude of her lodgings. The skin hung loosely from 
her skull; pale, dry scalp showed through her thinning hair; her eyes were 
sunken, hard and glittering behind loose snakeskin-like folds. If age had 
softened what had been hard, it had hardened what had been soft, turning her 
high cheeks gaunt and hollow, her mouth into a cruel slash.
It was the face of a survivor.
From the many articles Janson had digested, he knew that Peter Novak was eight 
years old in 1945, when clashing forces commanded by Hitler and Stalin 
essentially liquidated the farming village of Molnar, his place of birth. The 
population of Molnar had always been small enough—under a thousand, in the early 
forties. Nearly all perished. Even aside from her age, could someone have 
experienced such a cataclysmic event and not still bear the impress of the 
trauma?
In the large sitting room, a fire burned slowly in the fireplace. On the wooden 
mantel above it, a sepia photograph in a tarnished silver frame showed a 
beautiful young woman. Gitta Békesi as she once was: a robust peasant girl, 
exuding rude health, and something else, too—a sly sensuality. It gazed upon 
them, cruelly mocking the ravages of age.
Jessie walked over to it. "What a beauty you were," she said simply.
"Beauty can be a curse," the old woman said. "Fortunately, it is always a 
fleeting one." She made a clicking noise with her tongue and the dog came over 
and sat at her side. She reached down and rubbed its flanks with her clawlike 
hands.
"I understand that you once worked for the count," Janson said. "Count 
Ferenczi-Novak."
"I do not speak of these things," she said curtly. She sat in a caned rocking 
chair, the webbing of the seat half torn. Behind her, resting against the wall 
like a walking stick, was her old shotgun. "I live alone and ask nothing more 
than that I be left alone. I tell you that you are wasting your time. So. I have 
let you in. Now you can say that you have sat with the old woman and asked her 
your questions. Now you can tell everyone concerned that Gitta Békesi says 
nothing. No, I tell you one thing: there was no Kis family in Molnar."
"Wait a minute—'everyone concerned'? Who's concerned?"
"Not me," she said, and staring straight ahead, she fell silent.
"Are those chestnuts?" Jessie asked, looking at a bowl on a small table by the 
woman's chair.
Békesi nodded.
"Could I have one? I feel so rude asking, but I know you just roasted those, 
'cause this whole place of yours smells like it, and it's just making my mouth 
water."
Békesi glanced at the bowl and nodded. "They're still hot," she said 
approvingly.
"Makes me think of my grandma somehow—we'd come to her house and she'd roast us 
some chestnuts … " She beamed at the memory. "And it made every day seem like 
Christmas." Jessie peeled a chestnut and ate it greedily. "This is perfect. Just 
a perfect chestnut. This alone was worth the five-hour drive."
The old woman nodded, her manner noticeably less aloof. "They get too dry when 
you overroast them."
"And too hard when you don't roast them long enough," Jessie put in. "But you 
got it down to a science."
A small, contented smile settled on the old woman's face.
"Do all your visitors beg you for 'em?" Jessie asked.
"I get no visitors."
"None at all? Can't hardly believe that."
"Very few. Very, very few."
Jessie nodded. "And how do you handle the nosy ones?"
"Some years ago, a young journalist from England came here," the old woman said, 
looking off. "So many questions he had. He was writing something about Hungary 
during the war and after."
"Is that right?" Janson asked, his eyes intent. "I'd love to read what he 
wrote."
The crone snorted. "He never wrote anything. Just a couple of days after his 
visit, he was killed in an accident in Budapest. The accident rates are terrible 
there, everyone says so."
The temperature seemed to drop in the room as she spoke.
"But I always wondered," the old woman said.
"He ask about this count, too?" Jessie prompted.
"Have another chestnut," the old woman said.
"Could I really? You don't mind?"
The old woman nodded, pleased. After a while she said, "He was our count. You 
could not live in Molnar and not know the count. The land you worked was his 
land, or once had been. One of the very old families—he traced his ancestry back 
to one of the seven tribes that formed the Hungarian nation in the year 1000. 
His ancestral estate was here, even though he spent a great deal of time in the 
capital." She lifted her small dark eyes toward the ceiling. "They say I am an 
old woman who lives in the past. Perhaps it is so. Such a troubled land we lived 
in. Ferenczi-Novak understood that better than most."
"Did he, now?" Jessie said.
She regarded her quietly for a moment. "Perhaps you will join me in a small 
glass of pálinka."
"I'm fine, ma'am."
Gitta Békesi stared ahead stonily and said nothing, evidently offended.
Jessie looked at Janson and then back at the old woman. "Well, if you're having 
some."
The old woman slowly rose and walked unsteadily to the glass-front sideboard. 
There, she lifted an enormous jug filled with a colorless liquid, and poured a 
small quantity into two shot glasses.
Jessie took one. The old woman settled back into her chair and watched as Jessie 
had a sip.
Explosively, she sprayed the liquid out. It was as involuntary as a sneeze. 
"Jeez, I'm sorry!" she got out in a strangled voice.
The old woman smiled mischievously.
Jessie was still struggling for breath. "What the … " Jessie gasped, her eyes 
watering.
"Around here, we make it ourselves," the woman said. "A hundred and ninety 
proof. A bit stiff for you?"
"Little bit," Jessie said hoarsely.
The old woman swallowed the rest of the brandy, and looked more relaxed than she 
had been. "It all goes back to the Treaty of Trianon, in 1920, and the lost 
territories. We had to give up almost three-quarters of our land to the 
Romanians and the Yugoslavs. Can you imagine what that felt like?"
"Like an amputation," Janson offered.
"That's it—there was a ghostly sense that a part of you was there and yet not 
there. Nem, nem soha! It was the national motto, and it means 'No, no never.' It 
is the answer to the question 'Can it remain like this?' Every stationmaster 
would inscribe the catechism in flowers in his garden. Justice for Hungary! But 
nobody in the world took it seriously, this thirst for the lost territories. 
Nobody but Hitler. Such madness—like riding a tiger. In Budapest, the government 
makes friends with this man. Soon they are in the belly of the beast. It was a 
mistake for which this country would suffer so terribly. But nobody suffered 
more than we did."
"And were you around when … "
"All the houses were set on fire. The people who lived here—whose ancestors had 
worked here as long as anyone could remember—rousted from their beds, their 
fields, the breakfast tables. Rounded up and forced at gunpoint to walk along 
the iced-over waters of the Tisza until the ice broke and they fell in. Whole 
families, walking hand in hand—then, a minute later, drowning, freezing, in the 
icy waters. They say you could hear the ice cracking all the way up the 
vineyards. I was in the castle at the time, and it was being shelled. I thought 
the walls would collapse in on us. Much of it was destroyed. But in the cellars, 
we were safe. A day later, the army had moved on, and I wandered back to the 
village of my birth, the only home I had ever known, and—nothing."
Her voice faded to an inexorable whisper. "Nothing but pillage and destruction. 
Charred ruins, black embers. The occasional farmhouse on the mountain had 
escaped destruction. But the village of Molnar, which had survived the Romanian 
pillage, the Tartars and the Turks, was no more. No more. And in the river, so 
many bodies were floating, like an ice floe. And among them, naked, bloated, 
bluish, were the bodies of my very own parents." She raised a hand to her 
forehead. "When you see what human beings can do to each other, it makes you … 
ashamed to be alive."
The two Americans were silent for a moment.
"How did you find yourself in the castle?" Janson asked after a while.
The old woman smiled, remembering. "Janos Ferenczi-Novak—a wonderful man, and so 
was his Illana. To serve them was a privilege, I never forgot that. You see, my 
parents and my grandparents and my great-grandparents worked the land. They were 
peasants, but over time, the nobleman deeded them small parcels of land. They 
grew potatoes, and grapes, and berries of all sorts. They had hopes for me, I 
think. I was a pretty little girl. It's true. They thought if I worked as a 
servant at the castle, I would learn a thing or two. Perhaps the count would 
take me with him to Budapest, where I might meet a special man. My mother 
nurtured these sorts of dreams. She knew one of the women who helped run 
Ferenczi-Novak's household, and had her meet her little girl. And one thing led 
to another, and I met the great man himself, Count Ferenczi-Novak, and his 
beautiful blue-eyed wife, Illana. The count was spending more and more time in 
Budapest, in the circles of the government of the Regent Horthy. He was close to 
Miklos Kallay, who would become prime minister. I think he was some sort of high 
minister in Kallay's government. The count was an educated man. The government 
needed such men as he, and he had a strong sense of public service. But even 
then, he would spend several weeks at a time in his country estates, in Molnar. 
A tiny village. A tavern owner. The grocer, a Jew from Hódmezövásárhely. But 
mostly farmers and woodcutters. Humble folk, eking out a living along the Tisza 
River. Then came the day my mother took me to the castle on the hill—the castle 
we had somehow imagined, growing up, to be part of the mountain itself."
"It must be hard to remember something that happened so long ago," Jessie 
ventured.
The old woman shook her head. "Yesterday is sunk into the mists of the past. 
What happened six decades ago, I can see as if it is happening now. The long, 
long path, past his stables. The stone gateposts with their worn carvings. And 
then, inside—the curving staircase, the worn steps. It took my breath away. 
Drunken guests, people said, would slip on those worn steps. Later, when I 
joined the household staff, I would overhear Countess Illana talking about such 
things—she was so funny, and so dismissive about it all. She never liked the 
staghorns mounted on the walls—did any castle not have them? she protested. The 
paintings, Teniers, Teniers the Younger. 'Like every castle in Central Europe,' 
I once heard the countess say to someone. The furniture, 'Very late Franz 
Josef,' she would say. And how dark it was in the main hall. You didn't want to 
put a hole through the frescoes, you see, to put in electric lighting. So 
everything
glowed with candlelight. In that hall, I remember, there was a grand piano, of 
rosewood. With the most delicate lace cloth on top, and a silver candelabra that 
had to be carefully polished every Saturday. And outside it was as beautiful. I 
was dizzy with excitement the first time I walked through the English-style 
garden in the back. There were overgrown catalpa trees, with their misshapen 
limbs, littering pods everywhere, and pollarded acacias and walnut trees. The 
countess was very proud of her jardin anglais. She taught us to call everything 
by its proper name. In English, yes, English. Another member of her household 
drilled me in this language. Illana enjoyed addressing people in English, as if 
she were living in a British country house, and so we learned." She looked oddly 
serene. "That English garden. The smell of freshly mown grass, the fragrance of 
roses, and hay—it was like Paradise to me. I know people say I live in the past, 
but it was a past worth living in."
Janson recalled the ruins that were visible farther up the hill: all that 
remained of the vast estate were jagged remnants of walls that rose only a few 
feet from the ground, barely visible through the tall grass. Eroded brick mounts 
of once grand chimneys protruded through the scrub like tree stumps. A castle 
that had stood proudly for centuries was reduced to rubble—not much more than a 
rock garden. A lost world. The old woman had entered an enchanted garden once. 
Now she lived in the shadows of its ruins.
The wood fire cracked and hissed quietly, and for a minute no one spoke.
"And what about the scampering of little feet?" Jessie asked finally.
"They had only one child. Peter. Would you like a drop more pálinka?"
"You're real kind, ma'am," Jessie said. "But I'm fine."
"Peter, you said," Janson repeated, deliberately casual. "When was he born?"
"His naming day was the first Saturday in October 1937. Such a beautiful boy. So 
handsome and so clever. You could tell he was meant to be a remarkable human 
being."
"Was he, now?"
"I can picture him still, walking up and down the long mirrored hallway in his 
Peter Pan collar and his little plus fours and his sailor's cap. He loved to 
watch his reflection reflected back and forth between two facing mirrors, 
multiplying forever, smaller and smaller." Her smile drew with it a trellis of 
wrinkles. "And his parents were so devoted to him. You could understand that. He 
was their only child. The birth was a difficult one, and it left the countess 
unable to conceive." The old woman was in another place, another world: if it 
was a lost world, it was not lost to her. "One day, just after lunch, he ate 
some pastries the cook had made for tea, like a naughty little boy, and the cook 
berated him. Well, Countess Illana happened to overhear. Don't you ever talk 
that way to our child, she told her. And just the way she said it—little icicles 
hung off her words. Bettina, she was the cook, her cheeks flamed, but she didn't 
say anything. She understood. We all did. He was … unlike other boys. But not 
spoiled, you must understand. Sunny as the first of July, as we Hungarians say. 
When something pleased him, he'd smile so hard you'd think his face would split. 
Blessed, that child was. Magical. He could have been anything. Anything at all."
"Peter must have been everything to them," Jessie said.
The old woman stroked her dog's flank again, rhythmically. "Such a perfect 
little boy." Her eyes lit up, briefly, as if she were seeing the boy in front of 
her, seeing him in his knickerbockers and sailor's cap swanning in front of the 
mirrors on both sides of the hall, his reflections trailing off into an infinite 
regress.
The crone's eyelids fluttered and she closed them hard, trying to halt the 
pictures in her mind. "The fevers were terrible, he was like a kettle, tossing 
in bed and retching. It was a cholera epidemic, you know. So hot to the touch. 
And then so cold. I was one of those who attended him on his sickbed, you see." 
She put both her hands on her dog's face, gaining comfort from the creature's 
steadfast strength. "I can never forget that morning—finding his body, so cold, 
those lips so pale, his cheeks like wax. It was heartbreaking when it happened. 
He was just five years old. Could anything be sadder? Dead, before he truly had 
a chance to live."
A heaving sense of vertigo, of utter disorientation, overcame Janson. Peter 
Novak had died as a child? How could that be? Was there some mistake—was this 
another family the old woman was describing, another Peter?
And yet the accounts of the philanthropist's life were all agreed: Peter Novak, 
the beloved only son of Janos Ferenczi-Novak, had been born in October 1937, and 
reared in the war-torn village of Molnar. That much was part of the official 
record.
But as for the rest of it?
There could be no doubt that the old woman was telling the truth as she 
remembered it. And yet what did it mean?
Peter Novak: the man who never was.
Amid a growing unease, possibilities fluttered through Janson's mind, like 
shuffled and reshuffled index cards.
Jessie unzipped her knapsack, took out the picture book on Peter Novak, and 
opened it to a color close-up of the great man. She showed it to Gitta Bekesi.
"See this fellow? His name is Peter Novak."
The old woman glanced at the picture and looked at Jessie, shrugging. "I do not 
follow the news. I have no television, take no newspapers. Forgive me. But, yes, 
I think I have heard of this man."
"Same name as the count's boy. Sure it couldn't be the same person?"
"Peter, Novak—common names in our country," she said, shrugging. "Of course this 
is not Ferenczi-Novak's son. He died in 1942. I told you." Her eyes returned to 
the photograph. "Besides, this man's eyes are brown." The point seemed to her 
almost too obvious to belabor, but she added, "Little Peter's were blue, like 
the waters of the Balaton. Blue, like his mother's."


In a state of shock, the two began the long walk back to the Lancia, one mile up 
the hill. As the house receded into the overgrowth, they began to talk, slowly, 
tentatively, exploring the deepening mystery.
"What if there was another child?" Jessie asked. "Another kid nobody knew about, 
who took on his brother's name. A hidden twin, maybe."
"The old woman seemed certain that he was their only one. Not an easy thing to 
hide from the household staff. Of course, if Count Ferenczi-Novak was as 
paranoid as his reputation had it, any number of ruses are conceivable."
"But why? He wasn't crazy."
"Not crazy, but desperately fearful for his kid," Janson said. "Hungarian 
politics was in an incredibly explosive condition. Remember what you've read. 
Béla Kun took power in March 1919, ruled for a hundred and thirty-three days. A 
reign of terror. That was followed, once he'd been toppled, by an even more 
horrifying massacre of the people who helped him gain power. Whole families were 
slaughtered—Admiral Hor-thy's so-called White Terror. Reprisals and 
counter-reprisals were just a way of life back then. The count might have felt 
that what comes around goes around. That his association with Prime Minister 
Kállay could be a death sentence, not just for him but for his family."
"He was afraid of the Communists?"
"The Fascists and the Communists both. Hundreds of thousands of people were 
killed in late forty-four and early forty-five after the Arrow Cross took over. 
Remember, these Arrow Cross were people who thought Horthy was too lax! True 
homegrown Hungarian Nazis. When the Red Army took control of the country, you 
had another round of purges. Hundreds of thousands were killed, again. Enemies 
of the revolution, right? People like Ferenczi-Novak were caught in a pincer. 
How many instances are there of that kind of ideological whiplash—a country 
switching from far left to far right to far left again, with nothing in 
between?"
"So we're back to the old question: How do you bring a child into that world? 
Maybe these guys thought they couldn't. That any child of theirs would have to 
be hidden."
"Moses in the basket of bulrushes and pitch," Janson mused. "But that raises a 
lot more questions. Novak tells the world that these are his parents. Why?"
"Because it's the truth?"
"Not good enough. A child like that would have been raised to be afraid of the 
truth, to regard the truth as a very dangerous thing—for Christ's sake, he might 
not even know the truth. That's the thing about a child: you can't tell him what 
he can't deal with. In Nazi Germany, when a Jewish toddler was hidden by a 
Christian family, the child wouldn't, couldn't, be told the truth. The risk was 
too great: he might say something inappropriate to his playmates, to a teacher. 
The only way to protect him from the consequences of a potentially deadly truth 
was to keep him in ignorance of that truth. Only later, when the child was 
grown, would he be told. Besides, if Novak's parents were who he said they were, 
this Gitta Békesi would know about it. I feel sure of it. I don't think they had 
another child. I think she told us the truth: Peter Novak, the count's only son, 
died when he was little."
Shadows lengthened into long narrow stripes as the sun dipped behind the distant 
peak. Minutes later, clearings that had been golden suddenly turned gray. On a 
hillside, sunset came quickly and with little warning.
"This is getting to be a goddamn hall of mirrors, like the one Grandma Gitta 
talked about. Yesterday, we were wondering whether some impostor had taken on 
Peter Novak's identity. Now it's looking more and more like Peter Novak himself 
took on somebody else's identity. A dead kid, a wiped-out village—and, for 
somebody, an opportunity."
"Identity theft," said Janson. "Beautifully executed."
"It's genius, when you think about it. You choose a village that was totally 
liquidated in the war—so there's practically nobody around who'd remember a 
thing about his childhood. All the records, certificates of birth and death, 
destroyed after the place was torched."
"Making himself an aristocrat's son was a good move," Janson said. "It helps 
deal with a lot of questions that might have arisen about his origins. Nobody 
has to wonder how he could be so well educated and worldly without an 
institutional record of his schooling."
"Exactly. Where'd he go to school? Hey, he was privately tutored—a count's kid, 
right? Why was he off the radar? Because this aristocrat, this Janos 
Ferenczi-Novak, had tons of enemies and good reason to be paranoid. Everything 
fits, real tight."
"Like dovetailed planks. Too tightly. The next thing you know, he's a big-time 
currency trader."
"A man with no past."
"Oh, he's got a past, all right. It's just a past that nobody knows."
He flashed on the philanthropist's Gulfstream V, and the white cursive letters 
on its indigo enamel: Sok kicsi sokra megy. The same Hungarian proverb Novak had 
repeated on the news segment. Many small things can add up to a big one. It was 
a proposition that held for benefaction—and for deception. Marta Lang's words, 
in that jet, returned to him with a chilling resonance: Novak's proved who he 
really is, again and again. A man for all seasons, and a man for all peoples.
Yet who was he really?
Jessie stepped easily over an immense bough that lay in their path. "Thing I 
keep going back to is why? Why the trickery? Everybody loves him. He's a goddamn 
hero of the age."
"Even saints can have something to hide," Janson parried, choosing his path more 
carefully "What if the man came from a family that had been involved with Arrow 
Cross atrocities? Again, you've got to imagine a country where people have long 
memories, where reprisal is a byword, where whole families, including children 
and grandchildren, were killed or deported because they were on the wrong side. 
These cycles of revenge were a motive force of twentieth-century Hungarian 
history. If there was evil like this in your past, you might very well want to 
escape it, leave it behind you, by whatever means necessary. Grandma Gitta isn't 
the only person who lives in the past around here. Think about it. Say that this 
man came from an Arrow Cross family. No matter what he did, it would come up 
again and again—in every interview, every conversation, every discussion."
Jessie nodded. " 'The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth 
are set at edge,' " she said. "Like it says in the Book of Jeremiah."
"The motivation could be as simple as that," said Janson. Still, he suspected 
that nothing about it was truly simple. Something—not an idea, but an inkling of 
one—hovered indistinctly in his mind, just out of reach, but dartingly present, 
like a tiny insect. Faint, nearly imperceptible, and yet there.
If only he could focus, shut everything else out and focus.
A few moments elapsed before he recognized the sound that drifted up the hill. 
It, too, was faint and nearly imperceptible, and yet as his senses tuned to the 
auditory stimulus, he recognized the source, and his heart began to thud.
It was a woman screaming.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Oh Christ, no!
The thorny privet and overgrown vines whipped and scratched at Janson as he 
raced down the winding hillside path. He was mindful only of his footfalls as he 
vaulted over boulders and burst through bushes; a misplaced step in the 
treacherous terrain could result in a sprain or worse. He had ordered Jessie to 
return to the Lancia posthaste: it would be a disaster if their enemies reached 
it first. Her trek was uphill, but she ran like a gazelle and would get there 
soon.
A few minutes later, only slightly winded, Janson arrived at the old woman's 
dilapidated farmhouse. The screams had ceased, replaced by something even more 
ominous: utter silence.
The door was ajar, and inside was a spectacle that Janson knew would be forever 
etched on his mind. The noble Kuvasz lay on its side; it had been disemboweled, 
and its viscera spilled from its belly onto the flatweave rug, in a glistening, 
red mound, steaming faintly in the chilly air. Splayed in the nearby rocking 
chair was Gitta Bekesi, a woman who had survived Red Terrors and White, the 
annihilating clashes of two world wars, the tanks of 1956, outbreaks and plagues 
of man and nature both. Her face was hidden by her coarse muslin frock, which 
had been yanked up and over her head, exposing her flaccid torso—and the 
unspeakable horrors that had been visited upon it. Small, red-rimmed wounds—each 
corresponding to the plunge of a bayonet, Janson knew—crisscrossed her silvery 
flesh in a grotesque arrangement. The blades of her assailants had plunged into 
her dozens of times. On her exposed arms and legs he could see a cluster of red 
weals caused by the pressure of gripping fingers. The woman had been held down, 
and tortured with a plunging blade. Were they seeking information from her? Or 
merely punishing her, sadistically, for the information she had already divulged 
to him?
What kind of monsters would do such a thing?
Janson's face felt frozen, numb. He looked around, saw spatters of the dead 
woman's blood on the floor and on the walls. The atrocity had occurred just 
minutes before. Her visitors had been as swift as they were savage.
And where were they now? They could not be far. Was he meant to be their next 
victim?
Janson's heart beat in a powerful, slow rhythm. The prospect of confrontation 
did not fill him with anxiety, but with a strange sense of transport. The old 
woman might have been easy prey; whoever had done this to her would find that he 
was not. A convulsing feeling of rage ran through him, familiar and oddly 
comforting in its familiarity. It would find release.
The half-taunting words of Derek Collins returned to him: Violence is something 
you're very, very, very good at, Janson … You tell me you're sickened by the 
killing. I'm going to tell you what you'll discover one day for yourself: that's 
the only way you'll ever feel alive.
It felt true now. For years, he had run from his nature. He would not run from 
it today. As he surveyed the carnage, one thought ran through his mind like a 
saber. Those who had inflicted such suffering would themselves know suffering.
Where were they?
Close, very close. Because they were looking for him. They would be up the hill. 
Would Jessie make it to the Lancia in time?
Janson needed elevation if he was to get a proper view of the field of 
operation. The farmhouse, he saw, was built around a courtyard in the 
traditional L, with living and working areas under one roof. At right angles to 
the house was a big portico with a hayloft above and, adjoining it, horse 
stables. Now he ran into the courtyard and climbed a ladder to the tall hayloft 
opposite. A hinged door in the rough-planked roof allowed him to clamber to its 
highest point.
A quarter mile up the hill, he could see, a small party of armed men were making 
their way toward Jessie Kincaid. Their figures were difficult to make out in the 
dim light, but broken tree limbs and trampled grass showed their progress. Then 
Janson saw and heard the flutter of black birds, swooping from the nearby 
underbrush into the sky, with strident caws; something had disturbed them. A 
moment later he saw movement in the overgrown trees and bushes surrounding the 
old farmhouse, and he realized what it meant.
He had fallen into a trap!
The men had been counting on his overhearing the old woman's screams. They had 
sought to lure him back to the old farmhouse.
They had him exactly where they wanted him—would do to him exactly what they 
wanted to! Adrenaline filled his veins, brought a terrible icy focus to his 
perception.
The farmhouse was itself a gated enclosure, but the armed men had it surrounded 
on all four sides, and now they showed themselves, edging out of the underbrush 
and into the yard. They must have seen him enter, had probably been waiting for 
him to dash out. For there was no way Janson could escape undetected. Kincaid 
would be intercepted on her way to the Lancia; he would be destroyed or captured 
in a gated compound that was now his prison.
The spill of their flashlights illuminated each side of the old woman's home; in 
the light, he could also see their carbines. They would fire at their quarry at 
the first opportunity. Janson was, at the moment, an easy target indeed—and it 
would not take them long before their beams sliced toward the hayloft roof and 
silhouetted him with the clarity of a shooting-range cutout.
Janson lowered himself from the roof with as much speed and stealth as he could 
manage. Then he let himself down from the loft to the dirt floor. If the men had 
not rushed the place, it was only because they did not know whether he was 
armed. They would bide their time, proceed with caution, ensure his death 
without allowing him to take one of them with him.
Now he darted across the courtyard and back into the woman's parlor. The 
flickering light from the fireplace cast a ghostly glow on the carnage. Yet he 
had no choice but to return there. The old woman had a shotgun, hadn't she?
The shotgun was gone. Of course it was. It was not the sort of thing that would 
have escaped their notice, and disarming an octogenarian would have been easy. 
Yet if the woman kept a shotgun, she must also have a supply of cartridges 
stowed away somewhere.
A roving beam of yellow light flashed through the windows into the woman's 
parlor, looking for signs of movement—for signs of him. Janson promptly eased 
himself to the floor. They wanted to locate him, to narrow his mobility 
progressively. Once they knew for sure which building he was in, they could 
force the gate of the courtyard and surround the particular structure into which 
he had retreated. Their uncertainty was his only ally.
Janson crawled toward the kitchen, keeping well out of sight. The shotgun 
cartridges—where would the old woman have kept them? By themselves, they would 
be useless as offensive weapons against his pursuers. But there might just be 
another way of using them. He was alive so far only because of their uncertainty 
about his precise location, but he had to do better than that. He would win only 
if he could turn uncertainty into error.
He tried several drawers in the woman's kitchen, finding cutlery in one, bottles 
of condiments and spices in another. It was in a small pantry, next to the 
kitchen, that he finally found what he was looking for, and in even more 
plentiful supply that he had hoped. Ten boxes of Biro Super 10-gauge cartridges, 
twenty to the box. He pulled out a couple of boxes and crawled back to the 
parlor.
He heard shouts from outside, in a language he could not make out. But there was 
no missing the larger meaning: more men were arriving to take up perimeter 
positions.
In the iron pan over the fireplace, where the woman had been roasting chestnuts 
earlier that day, Janson placed a handful of the long cartridges, the cupped 
brass on either end connected by a ridged brown plastic tube. Within them was 
lead shot and gunpowder, and though they were designed to be detonated by the 
firing pin of a shotgun, sufficient heat would produce a similar effect.
The fire was slow, dying, and the pan was a couple of feet above it. Could he 
depend upon it?
Janson added another small log to the fire, and returned to the kitchen. There 
he placed a cast-iron skillet on the decades-old electric range, and scattered 
another handful of cartridges on it. He set the heat on medium low. It would 
take a minute for the element just to heat the bottom of the heavy skillet.
Now he turned on the oven, and placed the remaining fifty cartridges on the 
rack, a foot below the top heating element, and set the temperature on high. The 
oven would surely take the longest to heat of all. He knew that his calculations 
were crude, at best. He also knew he had no better alternatives.
He crept across the courtyard, past the stables, and climbed the rungs to the 
hayloft again.
And he waited.
For a while, all he heard was the voices of the men as they grew nearer and 
nearer, taking positions safely away from windows, communicating to one another 
with terse commands and flickers of their flashlights. Suddenly, a bang 
shattered the still air, followed, in rapid succession, with four more bangs. 
Then he heard the return fire of an automatic rifle, and the sound of broken 
glass. The old warped frames of the front window had to be a scatter of shards 
and dust now.
To Janson, the acoustic sequence relayed a precise narrative. The cartridges 
over the fireplace had detonated first, as he had hoped. The gunmen made the 
logical assumption. Gun blasts from within the parlor indicated that they were 
being fired upon. They had what they needed: an exact location.
Exactly the wrong location.
Urgent shouts summoned the other men to join the apparent gunfight in the front 
of the farmhouse.
A series of low-pitched blasts told Janson that the cartridges on the rangetop 
skillet had been heated to the point of detonation. It would tell the gunmen 
that their quarry had retreated into the kitchen. Through the gap between the 
slats of the barn wall, he saw that a solitary gunman with a cradled automatic 
weapon remained behind; his partners had raced to the other side of the compound 
to join the others in their assault.
Janson withdrew his small Beretta and, through the same gap, aimed it at the 
burly, olive-clad man. Yet he could not fire yet—could not risk the gunshot 
being heard by others and exposing the subterfuge. He heard the footfalls of 
heavy boots drifting in from the main house: the other gunmen were splintering 
the house with their gunfire as they tried to discover Janson's hiding place. 
Janson waited until he heard the immense boom-roar of fifty shotgun cartridges 
exploding in the oven before he squeezed the trigger. The sound would be utterly 
lost amid the blast and the attendant confusion.
He fired at the exact instant.
Slowly, the burly man toppled over, face forward. His body made little sound as 
it hit the leafy ground cover.
The position was now unguarded: Janson unlatched a door and strode over to the 
fallen man, knowing that he would not be seen. For a moment, he contemplated 
disappearing into the dark thickets of the hillside; he could do so, had 
disappeared into similar terrains on other occasions. He was confident he could 
elude his pursuers and emerge safe, a day or two later, in one of the other 
hillside villages.
Then he remembered the slain woman, her savagely brutalized body, and any 
thought of flight vanished from his mind. His heart beat hard, and even the 
shadows of the evening seemed to be glimpsed through a curtain of red. He saw 
that his bullet had struck the gunman just above his hairline; only a rivulet of 
blood that made its way down his scalp to the top of his forehead revealed its 
lethal impact. He removed the dead man's submachine gun and bandolier, and 
adjusted its sling around his own shoulders.
There was no time to lose.
The team of assailants was now gathered in the house, tramping around heavily, 
firing their weapons. He knew that their bullets were flying into armoires and 
closets and every other conceivable hiding place, steel-jacketed projectiles 
splintering into wood, seeking human flesh.
But they were the trapped ones now.
Quietly, he circled around to the front of the farmhouse, dragging the dead man 
behind him. In the roving beams of light, he recognized a face, a second face, a 
third. His blood ran cold. They were hard faces. Cruel faces. The faces of men 
he had worked with many years ago in Consular Operations, and whom he had 
disliked even then. They were coarse men—coarse not in their manners, but in 
their sensitivities. Men for whom brute force was not a last resort but a first, 
for whom cynicism was the product not of a disappointed idealism but of naked 
avarice and rapacity. They had no business in government service; in Janson's 
opinion, they reduced its moral credibility by their very presence. The 
technical skill they brought to their work was offset by a lack of any real 
conscience, a failure to grasp the legitimate objectives that underwrote 
sometimes questionable tactics.
He placed his jacket on the dead man, then positioned him behind the sprawling 
chestnut tree; with the man's shoelaces, he tied his flashlight to the lifeless 
forearm. He pulled tiny splinters of wood from a dead branch and placed them 
between the man's eyelids, propping his eyes open in a glassy stare. It was 
crude work, turning the man into an effigy of himself. But in the shadows of the 
evening, it would pass on a first glance, which was all Janson needed. Now 
Janson directed a raking burst of fire through the parlor's already shattered 
windows. The three exposed gunmen twitched horribly as the bullets perforated 
diaphragm, gut, aorta, lungs. At the same time, the unexpected burst summoned 
the others.
Janson rolled over to the scraggly chestnut tree, switched on the flashlight 
laced to the dead man's forearm, and silently dashed to the boulder ten feet 
away, where he waited in the gloom.
"There!" one of them called out. It took seconds for the effigy to attract their 
attention. All they would be able to see was the glare of the flashlight; the 
spill would illuminate the taupe-colored jacket and, perhaps just faintly, the 
staring eyes of the crouching man. The inference would be nearly instantaneous: 
here was the source of the lethal fusillade.
The response was as he expected: four of the commandos directed their automatic 
weapons at the crouching figure. The simultaneous chattering of their 
high-powered weapons, set at full fire, was nearly deafening: the men pumped 
hundreds of bullets into their former comrade.
The noise and the gunmen's furious concentration worked to Janson's advantage: 
with his small Beretta Tomcat, he squeezed off four carefully aimed shots in 
rapid succession. The distance was only ten yards; his accuracy was flawless. 
Each man slumped, lifeless, to the ground, his automatic weapon abruptly falling 
silent.
One man remained; Janson could see his profile shadowed against the curtains on 
the top floor. He was tall, his hair cut short but still curly, his bearing 
rigid. His was one of the faces Janson had recognized, and he could identify him 
now simply from his gait, the stiff, decisive efficiency of his movements. He 
was a leader. He was their leader, their commanding officer. From what little 
Janson had seen of their interactions earlier, that much, at least, had been 
clear.
The name came to him: Simon Czerny. A Cons Op operative specializing in 
clandestine assaults. Their paths had crossed more than once in El Salvador, 
during the mid-eighties, and Janson had even then considered him a dangerous 
man, reckless in his disregard for civilian life.
Janson would not kill him, though. Not until they had had a conversation.
Yet would the man allow himself to put in that position? He was smarter than the 
others. He had seen through Janson's subterfuge a little quicker than the 
others, had been the first to recognize the decoy for what it was and called 
warningly to his men. His tactical instincts were finely honed. A man like that 
would not expose himself to danger unnecessarily, but would bide his time until 
an opportunity presented itself.
Janson could not permit him that luxury.
Now the team commander was invisible; out of range of gunfire. Janson ran toward 
the ruins of the parlor, saw the shattered glass everywhere, saw the splashes of 
soot around the fireplace mantel from the exploded shotgun cartridges, saw the 
steel pellets, the ruined glass-front cabinet.
Finally, he saw the gallon-sized jug of brandy, the poisonous pálinka.
A hairline crack now ran down the side, no doubt from the pinging of a stray 
steel pellet, but it had not yet shattered. Janson knew what he had to do. 
Frisking one of the slain gunmen, he extracted a Zippo lighter. Then he splashed 
the 190-proof brandy around the room, extending to the hallway that led to the 
kitchen, and used the lighter to ignite the volatile spirits. Within seconds, a 
blue fire trail erupted across the room; soon the blue flames were joined by 
yellow flames as curtains, newspapers, and the canework of the chairs caught on. 
Before long, the heavier furniture would be flaming, and with it the planking of 
the floor, the ceiling, the floor above.
Janson waited as the flames grew in strength; leaping and joining one another in 
a rising sea of blue and yellow. Billows of smoke funneled up the narrow 
staircase.
The commander, Simon Czerny, would have to make a choice—only, he had no real 
choice. To remain where he was meant being consumed in an inferno. Nor could he 
escape the back way, into the courtyard, without exposing himself to a wall of 
flames: Janson had made sure of that. The only way out was down the stairs and 
through the front door.
Still, Czerny was a consummate professional; he would expect Janson to be 
waiting for him outside. He would take precautions.
Janson heard the man's heavy footsteps, even sooner than he had expected. Just 
as he reached the threshold, though, Czerny loosed a spray of bullets, sweeping 
around an almost 180-degree range. Anybody laying in wait for him outside would 
have been struck by the wildly chattering submachine gun. Janson admired 
Czerny's efficiency and forethought as he watched the gunman's pivoting 
torso—from behind.
Now he rose up from where he was hidden, by the staircase on the very floor of 
the burning parlor, perilously near the gathering conflagration—the one place 
the gunman would not have expected.
As Czerny directed another raking fusillade at the grounds outside, Janson 
lunged, lashing his arm around the gunman's neck, his fingers hurtling toward 
the trigger enclosure, tearing the weapon from his hands. Czerny thrashed 
violently, but rage made Janson unstoppable. He smashed his right knee into 
Czerny's kidney and dragged him onto the stone porch. Now he scissored the man's 
waist with his legs and forced his neck into a painful backward arch.
"You and I are going to spend some quality time together," Janson said, his lips 
close to Czerny's ear.
With an almost supernal effort, Czerny reared up and threw Janson off him. He 
ran down the yard, away from the burning house. Janson raced after him, taking 
him down with a powerful shoulder tackle, throwing him to the stony ground. 
Czerny let out a groan as Janson sharply wrenched one of his arms upward behind 
him, simultaneously dislocating the arm and turning him over onto his back. 
Tightening his grip on the man's neck, he leaned in close.
"Now, where was I? That's right: if you don't tell me what I want to hear, 
you'll never speak again." Janson yanked a combat blade from a holster in 
Czerny's belt. "I will peel the skin off your face until your own mother 
wouldn't recognize you. Now come clean—you still with Consular Operations?"
Czerny laughed bitterly. "Goddamn overgrown Eagle Scouts—that's all they were. 
Should have been selling cookies door-to-door, for all the difference they made, 
any of them."
"But you're making a difference now?"
"Tell me something. How the fuck do you live with yourself? You're a piece of 
shit and you always were. I'm talking way back. The shit you pulled—you goddamn 
traitor. Somebody once tried to help you, a true-blue hero, and how did you 
repay him? You gave him up, turned him in, pushed him in front of a firing 
squad. That should have been you at Mesa Grande, you son of a bitch—that should 
have been you!"
"You twisted bastard," Janson roared, sickened and dizzy. He pressed the flat of 
the man's knife against his lightly bearded cheek. The threat would not be 
abstract. "You part of some Da Nang revenge squad?"
"You gotta be joking."
"Who are you working for?" Janson demanded. "Goddammit! Who are you working 
for!"
"Who are you working for?" the man coughed. "You don't even know. You've been 
programmed like a goddamn laptop."
"Time to face the music," Janson said in a low, steely voice. "Or you won't have 
a face."
"They've messed with your head so bad, you don't know which end is up, Janson. 
And you never will."
"Freeze!" The abruptly shouted command came from above him; Janson looked and 
saw the big-bellied tavernkeeper they had spoken to earlier that day.
He was no longer wearing his white apron. And his large, reddened hands were 
clutching a double-barreled shotgun.
"Isn't that what they're always saying on your crappy American cop shows? I told 
you that you were not welcome," the beetle-browed man said. "Now I will have to 
show you how unwelcome you are."
Janson heard the noise of a runner, vaulting over boulders and branches, 
plunging through thickets. But even from a distance, he could identify the 
lithe, leaping figure. Seconds later, Jessie Kincaid emerged, her sniper rifle 
strapped to her back.
"Drop the goddamn antique!" she shouted. She held a pistol in her hand.
The Hungarian did not even look in her direction as he carefully cocked the 
Second World War-era shotgun.
Jessie squeezed one well-aimed shot into his head. The big-bellied man toppled 
backward like a felled tree.
Now Janson grabbed the shotgun and scrambled to his feet. "I've run out of 
patience, Czerny. And you've run out of allies."
"I don't understand," Czerny blurted.
Kincaid shook her head. "Drilled four fuckers up the hill." She hocked on the 
ground near Czerny. "Your boys, right? Thought so. Didn't like their attitude."
Fear flashed in Czerny's eyes.
"And get a load of that barkeep showing up. You'd have thought we stiffed him on 
the tab."
"Nice shooting," Janson said, tossing her the shotgun.
Jessie shrugged. "I never liked him."
"Eagle Scout," Czerny said. "Collecting your merit badges while the world 
burns."
"I'll ask you one more time: Who are you working for?" Janson demanded.
"The same person you are."
"Don't talk in riddles."
"Everybody works for him now. It's just that only some of us know it." He 
laughed, a dry, unpleasant laugh. "You think you've got the upper hand. You 
don't."
"Try me," Janson said. He placed his boot on Czerny's neck, not yet applying any 
pressure, but making it clear that he could crush him at any moment.
"You fool! He's got the whole U.S. government under his thumb. He's calling the 
shots now! You're just too ignorant to see it."
"What the hell are you trying to say?"
"You know what they always called you: the machine. Like you weren't human. But 
there's something else about machines. They do what they're programmed to do."
Janson kicked him in the ribs, hard. "Get one thing straight. We're not playing 
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. We're playing Truth or Consequences."
"You're like one of those Japanese soldiers in the Philippine caves who doesn't 
know the war's over and they've lost," Czerny said. "It's over, OK? You've 
lost."
Now Janson bent down and pressed the point of the combat knife to Czerny's face, 
drawing a jagged line under his left cheek. "Who. Do. You. Work. For."
Czerny blinked hard, his eyes watering with pain and with the realization that 
nobody would save him.
"Grip it and rip it, baby," Jessie said.
"You'll tell us, sooner or later," Janson said. "You know that. What's up to you 
is whether you … lose face over it."
Czerny closed his eyes and a look of resolve settled itself on his face. In a 
sudden movement, he reached for the hilt of the knife and, with one powerful 
twist, wrested control of it. Janson pulled back, away from the blade's range, 
and Jessie stepped forward with the gun, but neither anticipated the man's next 
move.
He forced the blade down with shaking muscles and, carving deeply, drew it 
across his own neck. In less than two seconds, he had sliced through the veins 
and arteries that sustained consciousness. Blood geysered up half a foot, then 
ebbed as the shock stilled the pumping organ itself.
Czerny had killed himself, had sliced his own throat, rather than expose himself 
to interrogation.
For the first time in the past hour, the hard ball of rage within Janson 
subsided, giving way to dismay and disbelief. He recognized the significance of 
the spectacle before him. Death had been deemed preferable to whatever Czerny 
knew was in store for him if he were compromised. It suggested a truly fearsome 
discipline among these marauders: a leadership that ruled, in no small part, 
through terror.
Millions in a Cayman Islands bank account. A beyond-sanction order from Consular 
Operations. A Peter Novak who never was, who died and who came back. Like some 
grotesque parody of the Messiah. Like some Magyar Christ.
Or Antichrist.
And these men, these former members of Consular Operations. Janson had known 
them only dimly, but something nagged at his memory. Who were these assailants? 
Were they truly former Cons Op agents? Or were they active ones?
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The drive to Sarospatak took only two hours, but they were two hours racked with 
tension. Janson kept a careful eye out for anyone who might be following them. 
In town, they made their way past the vast Arpad Gimnazium, part of a local 
college, with its intricate, curving facade. Finally, they pulled up to a 
kastély szálloda, or mansion hotel, which had been converted from the property 
of the former landed gentry.
The clerk at the front desk—a middle-aged man with a sunken chest and an 
overbite—barely glanced at them or their documents. "We have one vacancy," he 
said. "Two beds will be suitable?"
"Perfectly," Janson said.
The clerk handed him an old-style hotel key with a rubber-ringed brass weight 
attached. "Breakfast is served from seven to nine," he said. "Enjoy Sárospatak."
"Your country is so beautiful," Jessie said.
"We think so," the clerk said, smiling perfunctorily without showing teeth. "How 
long will you be staying?"
"Just one night," Janson said.
"You'll want to visit the Sárospatak castle, Mrs. Pimsleur," he said, as if 
noticing her for the first time. "The fortifications are most impressive."
"We noticed that, passing through," Janson said.
"It's different up close," the clerk said.
"A lot of things are," Janson replied.
In the sparsely decorated room, Jessie spent twenty minutes on his cell phone. 
She held a piece of paper on which Janson had written the names of the three 
former Consular Operations agents he had identified. When she clicked off, she 
looked distinctly unsettled.
"So," Janson said, "what does your boyfriend tell you about their status: 
retired or active?"
"Boyfriend? If you ever saw him, you wouldn't be jealous. He makes wide turns, 
OK?"
"Jealous? Don't flatter yourself."
Jessie formed another W with her hands and rolled her eyes. "Look, here's the 
thing. They're not active."
"Retired."
"Not retired, either."
"Come again?"
"According to all the official records, they've been dead for the better part of 
a decade."
"Dead? Is that what they're telling you?"
"Remember the Qadal explosion in Oman?" Qadal had been the location of a U.S. 
Marines installation in Oman and a station for American intelligence gathering 
in the Persian Gulf. In the mid-nineties, terrorists set off a blast that cost 
the lives of forty-three American soldiers. A dozen "analysts" with the State 
Department had also been on site, and had perished as well.
"One of those 'unsolved tragedies,' " Janson said, expressionless.
"Well, the records say that all those guys you mentioned died in the blast."
Janson furrowed his brow, trying to assimilate the information. The terrorist 
incident in Oman must have been a cover. It enabled an entire contingent of 
Consular Operations agents to conveniently disappear—only to reappear, perhaps, 
in the employ of another power. But what power? Who were they working for? What 
kind of secret would motivate a hard man like Czerny to slash his own throat? 
Was his final deed an act of fear, or conviction?
Jessie paced for a while. "They're dead, but they're not dead, right? Is there 
any chance—any chance whatever—that the Peter Novak we saw on CNN is the same 
Peter Novak as ever? Never mind what his birth name might have been. Is it 
conceivable that—I don't know—he somehow wasn't on the aircraft that exploded? 
Like maybe he boarded it and then somehow slipped away before takeoff?"
"I was there, I observed everything … I simply don't see how." Janson shook his 
head slowly. "I've gone through it again and again. I can't imagine it."
"Unimaginable doesn't mean impossible. There must be a way to prove that it's 
the same man."
On a wood-veneer table, Jessie spread out a stack of Novak images from the past 
year, downloaded from the Internet back in Alasdair Swift's Lombardy cottage. 
One of them was from the CNN Web site and showed the philanthropist at the award 
ceremony they had watched on television, honoring the woman from Calcutta. Now 
she took out the jeweler's loupe and ruler she had acquired for analyzing the 
maps of the Bükk Hills region, and applied them to the images spread in front of 
her.
"What are you trying to do?" Janson asked.
"I know what you think you saw. But it ought to be possible to prove to you that 
we're dealing with the very same person. Plastic surgery can do only so much."
Ten minutes later, she interrupted a long, unbroken silence.
"Christ on a raft!" she said under her breath.
She turned to look at him, and her face was pale.
"Now you got to take into account things like lens distortion," she said, "and 
at first I thought that's all I was seeing. But there's something else going on. 
Depending on the photograph, the guy seems to be slightly different heights. 
Subtle—no more than half an inch difference. Here he is, standing next to the 
head of the World Bank. And here he is again, separate occasion, standing next 
to the same guy. Looks like everybody's wearing the same shoes in both shots. 
Could be the heels or whatever, right? But—subtle, subtle, subtle—he's got 
slightly different forearm spans. And the ratio between forearm span and femur 
span … " She jabbed at one of the pictures, which showed him walking alongside 
the prime minister of Slovenia. The outline of a bent knee was visible against 
his gray trousers, as was the line where the upper thigh turned at the hip. She 
pointed to a similar configuration in another photograph. "Same joints, 
different ratios," she said, breathing deeply. "Something is deeply fucked-up."
"Meaning what?"
She riffled through the picture book she'd bought in Budapest, and busied 
herself with the ruler again. Finally she spoke. "Ratio of index finger length 
to forefinger length. Not constant. Photographs can be flopped, but he's not 
going to switch the hand he's got his wedding band on."
Now Janson approached the array of images. He tapped certain areas of the 
photographs. "Trapezium to metacarpal. That's another index. Check it out. The 
ventral surface of the scapula—you can see it against his shirt. Let's look at 
that ratio, too."
With the loupe and the ruler, she continued to look for and find tiny physical 
variances. The length of the forefinger in relation to the middle finger, the 
precise length of each arm, the exact distance from chin to Adam's apple. 
Skepticism melted as examples multiplied.
"The question is, Who is this man?" She shook her head bleakly.
"I think you mean the question is, Who are these men?"
She pressed her fingertips to her temples. "OK, try this on. Let's say you 
wanted to take everything this guy has. You kill him, and you take his place, 
because you've somehow made yourself look identical to him, almost. Now his life 
is your life. What's his is yours. It's genius. And to make sure you can get 
away with it, you go on some public outings pretending to be the guy, kinda like 
a dress rehearsal."
"But wouldn't the real Peter Novak catch wind of that?"
"Maybe, maybe not. But say you also had the goods on him, somehow, knew about 
some secret that he had tried to bury … so you could blackmail him some kinda 
way. Couldn't that make sense of it?"
"When you've got no good explanations, the bad ones start looking better and 
better."
"I guess." Jessie sighed.
"Let's try another route. I can't get to Peter Novak, or whoever is calling 
himself that. Who else do we know who might know?"
"Maybe not the people trying to stop you, but whoever's giving the orders."
"Exactly. And I've a strong suspicion I know who that is."
"You're talking about Derek Collins," she said. "Director of Consular 
Operations."
"Lambda Team doesn't get dispatched without his direct approval," he said. "Let 
alone the other teams we've seen deployed. I think it's time I paid the man a 
visit."
"Listen to me," she said urgently. "You need to keep a good safe distance from 
that man. If Collins wants you dead, don't count on leaving his company alive."
"I know the guy," Janson said. "I know what I'm doing."
"So do I. You're talking about putting your head in the lion's mouth. Don't you 
know how crazy that is?"
"I've got no choice," Janson said.
Heavily, she said, "When do we leave?"
"There's no 'we.' I'm going by myself."
"You don't think I'm good enough?"
"You know that's not what I'm talking about," Janson said. "Are you looking for 
validation? You're good, Jessie. Top-drawer. Is that what you need to hear? 
Well, it's true. You're smart as a whip, you're fast on your feet, you're 
adaptable and levelheaded, and you're probably the best marksman I've come 
across. The point remains: what I've got to do next, I've got to do alone. You 
can't come along. It's not a risk you need to take."
"It's not a risk you need to take. You're going into the lion's den without so 
much as a chair and a whip."
"Trust me, it'll be a walk in the park," Janson said with a trace of a smile.
"Tell me you're not still sore about London. Because … "
"Jessie, I really need you to reconnoiter the Liberty Foundation offices in 
Amsterdam. I'll rejoin you there shortly. We can't ignore the possibility that 
something, or somebody, might turn up there. As far as Derek Collins, though, I 
can take care of myself. It's going to be OK."
"What I'm thinking is, you're scared of putting me at risk," Jessie said. "I'd 
call that a lapse of professionalism, wouldn't you?"
"You don't know what you're talking about."
"Hell, maybe you're right." She was silent for a moment, averting her gaze. 
"Maybe I ain't ready." Suddenly, she noticed a small splotch of blood on the 
back of her right hand. As she examined it more closely, she looked a little 
sick. "What I did today, in those hills … "
"Was what you needed to do. It was kill or be killed."
"I know," she said in a hollow voice.
"You're not supposed to like it. There's no shame in what you're feeling. Taking 
the life of another human being is the ultimate responsibility. A responsibility 
I spent the past five years running from. But there's another truth you've got 
to remember. Sometimes lethal force is the only thing that will defeat lethal 
force, and though zealots and crazies may twist that precept to their own 
perverted ends, it remains a truth. You did what had to be done, Jessie. You 
saved the day. Saved me." He gave her a reassuring smile.
She tried to return it. "That grateful look doesn't become you. We saved each 
other's lives, OK? We're even-steven."
"What are you, a sniper or a CPA?"
She gave a rueful laugh, but her eyes returned to the dot of dried blood. She 
was silent for a moment. "It's just all at once I had the thought that, you 
know, these guys had moms and dads, too."
"You'll find you learn not to think about that."
"And that's a good thing, right?"
"Sometimes," Janson said, swallowing hard, "sometimes it's a necessary thing."
Now Jessie disappeared into the bathroom, and Janson heard the shower run for a 
long time.
When she returned, a terry-cloth bathrobe was wrapped around her slim yet softly 
curving body. She walked toward the bed nearest the window. Janson was almost 
startled at how delicately feminine the field agent now appeared.
"So you're leaving me in the morning," she said after a few moments.
"Not the way I'd put it," Janson said.
"Wonder what the odds of my ever seeing you again are," she said.
"Come on, Jessie. Don't think like that."
"Maybe we'd better seize the day—or the night. Gather ye rosebuds or whatever." 
He could tell she was afraid for him, and for herself, too. "I got real good 
eyes. You know that. But I don't need a sniper scope to see what's in front of 
my face."
"And what's that?"
"I see the way you look at me."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Oh, come on now, make your move, soldier. Now's the time you tell me how much I 
remind you of your late wife."
"Actually, you couldn't be less like her."
She paused. "I make you uncomfortable. Don't try to deny that."
"I don't think so."
"You survived eighteen months of torture and interrogation from the Viet Cong, 
but you flinch when I come too close."
"No," he said, but his mouth was dry.
She stood up and moved toward him. "And your eyes widen and your face flushes 
and your heart starts to race." She reached over, took his hand, and pressed it 
to her throat. "Same with me. Can you feel it?"
"A field agent shouldn't make assumptions," Janson said, but he could feel the 
pulse beneath her warm, silky skin, and it seemed to keep rhythm with his own.
"I remember something you once wrote, about interagency cooperation between 
nations. 'To work together as allies, it is important that any unresolved 
tensions be addressed through a free and open exchange.' " There was laughter in 
her eyes. And then something softer, something like heat. "Just close your eyes 
and think of your country."
Now she stood closer and parted her bathrobe. Her breasts were two perfectly 
shaped globes, the nipples swollen with tension, and she leaned toward him, 
cupping his face now with her hands. Her gaze was warm and unwavering. "I'm 
ready to accept your diplomatic mission."
As she started to remove his shirt, Janson said, "There's an ordinance in the 
reg book prohibiting fraternization."
She pressed her lips to his, smothering his halfhearted demurrals. "You call 
this fraternization?" she said, shouldering off her robe. "Come on, everyone 
knows what a great deep-penetration agent you are."
He became aware of a delicate fragrance that emanated from her body. Her lips 
were soft and swollen and moist, and they moved across his face to his mouth, 
inviting his into hers. Her fingers gently stroked his cheeks, his jawline, his 
ears. He could feel her breasts, soft yet firm, pressed against his chest, and 
her legs thrust against his, matching his strength with hers.
Then, abruptly, she began to tremble, and convulsive sobs came from her throat 
even as she gripped him all the more fiercely. Gently, he pulled her face back, 
and saw that her cheeks were now stained with tears. He saw the pain in her 
eyes, pain that was compounded by her own fear, and her humiliation that he was 
now witness to it.
"Jessie," he said softly. "Jessie."
She shook her head, helplessly, and then cradled it against his deeply muscled 
chest. "I've never felt so alone," she said. "So frightened."
"You're not alone," Janson said. "And fear is what keeps us alive."
"You don't know what it's like to be afraid."
He kissed her forehead tenderly. "You've got it wrong. I'm always afraid. Like I 
say, it's why I'm still here. It's why we're here together."
She pulled him to her with a savage intensity. "Make love to me," she said. "I 
need to feel what you feel. I need to feel it now."
Two intertwined bodies rolled over on the still-made bed, flushed with an almost 
desperate passion, flexing and shuddering toward a moment of fleshly communion. 
"You're not alone, my love," Janson murmured. "Neither of us is. Not anymore."


Oradea, in the westernmost point of Romania, was a three-hour drive from 
Sarospatak, and like a number of Eastern European cities, its beauty was a 
beneficiary of its postwar poverty. The magnificent nineteenth-century spas and 
Beaux Arts vistas had been preserved simply because there had been no resources 
available to tear them down and replace them with what Communist bloc modernity 
would have favored. To glimpse what the city missed out on, one had only to see 
the faceless, featureless industrialism of its airport, which could have been 
any one of a hundred just like it found throughout the Continent.
For the purposes at hand, though, it would do just fine.
There, at the fifth terminal, the man in the yellow and blue uniform tucked his 
clipboard toward his body, preventing the papers from napping in the breeze. The 
DHL cargo plane—a repurposed Boeing 727—was preparing to make a direct flight to 
Dulles, and the inspector accompanied the pilot to the craft. The punch list was 
long: Were the oil caps properly tightened? Was the engine compartment as it 
should be, the intake vanes free of foreign materials? Were the cotter pins 
properly positioned on the landing-gear wheels, the tire pressure normal, the 
ailerons, flaps, and rudder-hinge assemblies in good working order?
Finally, the cargo area was inspected. The other members of the ground crew 
returned to service a short-run propeller plane, used to ferry packages from the 
provinces to Oradea. As the pilot received clearance for takeoff, nobody noticed 
that the man in the yellow and blue uniform remained within the craft.
And only when the plane had reached cruising altitude did Janson remove his 
felt-and-nylon inspector's jacket and settle in for the ride. The pilot, sitting 
next to him in the cockpit, switched on the automatic avionics and turned to his 
old friend. It had been two decades since Nick Milescu had served as a fighter 
pilot in the American Special Forces, but the circumstances in which he and 
Janson became acquainted had produced powerful and enduring bonds of loyalty. 
Janson had not offered to explain the need for this ruse, and Milescu had not 
asked. It was a privilege to do Janson a favor, any favor. It did not go far 
toward the repayment of a debt, but it was better than nothing at all.
Neither of them noticed—could have noticed—the broad-faced man in the 
food-services truck, idling under one of the loading ramps, whose hard, alert 
eyes did not quite match the bored and jaded air he affected. Nor could they 
have heard the man speak hurriedly into a cell phone, even as the cargo plane 
raised its wheels and angled into the sky. Visual identification: confirmed. 
Flight plans: filed and validated. Destination: verified.
"You want to bunk out, there's a lounger right behind us," Milescu told Janson. 
"When we fly with copilots, they use it sometimes. Oradea to Dulles is a 
ten-hour flight."
From Dulles, however, it would be a very short drive to reach Derek Collins. 
Maybe Jessie was right and he would not survive the encounter. It was simply a 
risk he had to take.
"I wouldn't mind catching up on some sleep," Janson admitted.
"It's just you, me, and a few thousand corporate memos here. No storms ahead of 
us. Nothing should disturb your dreams." Milescu smiled at his old friend.
Janson returned the smile. The pilot could not know how wrong he was.


The Viet Cong guard that morning had thought the American captive might already 
be dead.
Janson was slumped on the ground, his head at an awkward angle. Flies clustered 
around his nose and mouth, without a flicker of response from the emaciated 
prisoner. The eyes were slightly open, in a way you often saw with cadavers. Had 
malnutrition and disease finally completed their slow work?
The guard unlocked the cage and prodded the prisoner with a shoe, hard. No 
response. He leaned over and put a hand on the prisoner's neck.
How shocked and terrified the guard looked as the prisoner, thin as a wooden 
jumping jack, suddenly flung his legs around his waist like an amorous lover, 
then yanked his pistol from his holster and slammed the butt of it against his 
head. The dead had come to life. Again, with greater force, he crashed the gun 
into the guard's skull, and this time the guard fell limp. Now Janson crept into 
the jungle; he figured he could get a fifteen-minute head start before the alarm 
was raised and the dogs were loosed. Perhaps the dogs would find the dense 
jungle impassable; he nearly found it so himself, even as he knifed through the 
thick underbrush with automaton-like movements. He did not know how he managed 
to keep moving, how he managed to stave off collapse, yet his mind simply 
refused to acknowledge his physical debility.
One foot in front of the other.
The VC encampment, he knew, was somewhere in the Tri-Thien region of South 
Vietnam. The valley to the south was dense with the guerrillas. On the other 
hand, it was a region where the width of the country was especially narrow. The 
distance from the border with Laos to the west and the sea to the east was no 
more than twenty-five clicks. He had to get to the coast. If he could get to the 
coast, to the South China Sea, he could find his way back to safety.
He could get home.
A long shot? No matter. Nobody was coming for him. He knew that now. Nobody 
could save his life but him.
The land beneath him crested and dipped until, sometime the next day, he found 
himself at the bank of a wide river. One foot in front of the other. He began to 
wade through the brown, bath-warm water and found that his feet never left the 
bottom, even at its deepest. When he was almost halfway across, he saw a 
Vietnamese boy on the far bank. Janson closed his eyes, wearily, and when he 
opened them the boy was gone.
A hallucination? Yes, it had to have been. He must have imagined the boy. What 
else was he imagining? Had he really escaped, or was he dreaming, his mind 
falling apart in pace with his body in his miserable bamboo cage? And if he were 
dreaming, did he really want to wake up? Perhaps the dream was the only escape 
he would ever enjoy—why bring it to an end?
A water wasp alighted on his shoulder and stung him. It was painful, startlingly 
so, and yet it brought an odd sense of relief—for if he felt pain, surely he was 
not dreaming, after all. He shut his eyes again and opened them, and looked to 
the riverbank before him and saw two men, no, three, and one of them was armed 
with an AK-47, and the muddy water in front of him was blistered by a warning 
blast, and exhaustion, like a tide, swept over him, and he slowly raised his 
hands. There was no pity—no curiosity, even—in the gunman's eyes. He looked like 
a farmer who had trapped a vole.


As a passenger on the Museumboot circle line, Jessie Kincaid looked like all the 
other tourists, or so she hoped. Certainly, the glass-topped boat was filled 
with them, chattering and gawking and funning their little videocameras as they 
floated smoothly down Amsterdam's muddy canals. She clutched the garish brochure 
for the Museumboot—"bringing you to the most important museums, shopping streets 
and leisure centres of downtown Amsterdam," as it boasted. Kincaid had little 
interest in shopping or visiting museums, of course, but she saw that the boat's 
itinerary included Prinsengracht. How better to disguise stealthy surveillance 
than by joining a crowd of people engaged in overt surveillance?
Now the boat rounded the bend and the mansion came into view: the mansion with 
the seven bay windows—the headquarters of the Liberty Foundation. It seemed so 
innocuous. And yet evil, as if an industrial effluent somehow polluted its 
grounds.
At intervals, she raised to her eyes what looked like an ordinary 35mm camera, 
equipped with the bulky zoom lens of the amateur enthusiast. This was only a 
first go, of course. She would have to figure out how to get nearer without 
being detected. But for the moment she was, in effect, staking out her stakeout.
Just behind her, and occasionally jostling her, were a couple of unruly 
teenagers who belonged to an exhausted-looking Korean couple. The mother had a 
shopping bag with sunflowers on them, containing booty from the Van Gogh Museum 
souvenir shop; her bleary-eyed husband had his headphones plugged in, no doubt 
dialed to the Korean audio channel, listening to the prerecorded tour guide: On 
your left … On your right … The teenagers, a girl and a boy, were engaged in one 
of those private sibling tussles that were both sport and squabble. Trying to 
tag each other, they would, every so often, bump into her, and their giggling 
apologies were perfunctory at best. The parents seemed too tired to be 
embarrassed. Meanwhile, the kids happily ignored her glares.
She wondered whether she should have sprung for the Rederij Lovers cruise, the 
passengers of which were promised "an unforgettable evening whilst enjoying an 
outstanding five-course menu." That scene might have been imprudent for a woman 
on her own, but she hadn't known the choice was between getting hit on by 
strange men and getting hit by strange children. Once more, she forced her eyes 
to focus.
Unseen by her, a man shifted slightly from his rooftop perch, high above 
Prinsengracht's busy streets. The time of waiting had been long, almost 
intolerably so, but now he had reason to think that it had not been wasted. 
Yes—there, standing in the glass-topped boat. It was her. As he fine-tuned his 
sniper scope, suspicion settled into certainty.
The American woman's face was now perfectly centered in his scope; he could even 
make out her spiky brown hair, her high cheekbones and sensual lips. He exhaled 
halfway, and then held his breath as the crosshairs settled upon the woman's 
upper torso.
His concentration was unwavering as his fingers caressed the trigger.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Less than an hour from Dulles, Janson found himself on small winding roads that 
took him through some of the most tranquil territory on the Eastern Shore. 
Deceptively so. He recalled Jessie's words of warning. If Collins wants you 
dead, don't count on leaving his company alive. Jessie believed he was taking an 
enormous risk, meeting a deadly adversary face-to-face. But a bolus of sheer 
rage impelled Janson. Besides, Derek Collins gave orders: he did not execute 
them himself. To do so would be infra dig, beneath him. Those long-fingered 
hands would not be sullied. Not as long as there were others to take care of 
matters for him.
Chesapeake Bay covered 2,200 miles of coastline, far more if one counted the 150 
tributaries along with all the coves and creeks and tidal rivers. The bay itself 
was shallow, ranging from ten to thirty feet. Janson knew that all sorts of 
creatures thrived here: muskrats and nutria, swans, geese, ducks, even osprey. 
The bald eagle itself bred around the lowlands of Dorchester County, as did the 
great horned owl. The profusion of wildlife, in turn, made it an inviting place 
for hunters as well.
And Janson was there to hunt.
Now he drove over the Choptank River at Cambridge, onto 13, and farther south, 
over another bridge, and finally to the long spit of land known as Phipps 
Island. As he drove the rented Camry along the narrow road, he could see the 
water through the salt-marsh grass, the sun glaring off its surface. Fishing 
sloops were moving slowly along the bay, hauling in nets laden with blue crabs 
and menhaden and rockfish.
A few miles farther down the road, he entered Phipps Island proper. He saw why 
Derek Collins had chosen it for a vacation home, a retreat from the pressures of 
his Washington existence. Though only a relatively short distance from 
Washington, it was isolated, peaceful; it was also, by dint of the land 
formation, secure. Janson, approaching the undersecretary's bayside cottage, was 
feeling distinctly exposed. A long, skinny strip of land connected it to the 
main peninsula, making a surreptitious land approach difficult. An amphibious 
arrival would be impeded by the shallowness of the water surrounding the land, 
much of which had only recently been reclaimed by the steadily erosive sea. The 
wooden docks for boat landings extended far out, where the depth of the water 
was sufficient for safe navigation; and the length of those docks, too, rendered 
potential intruders exposed and vulnerable. Without the need to rely on fallible 
electronics, Collins had selected an area where nature itself assured him the 
advantages of easy surveillance and the attendant security.
Don't count on leaving his company alive. The director of Consular Operations 
was a deadly and determined man; Janson had learned that from experience. Well, 
that made two of them.
The tires of the sedan kicked up dust—beach sand and dried salt—from the surface 
of the pale gray road, which stretched ahead like a discarded snakeskin. Would 
Collins seek to kill him before they spoke? He would do so if he believed Janson 
represented a mortal threat to him. More likely, he would summon backup—the 
Oceana Naval Air Station, outside Virginia Beach, could send a pair of H-3 Sea 
King helicopters to Phipps Island in fifteen minutes; an F-18 Hornet squadron 
could be scrambled in even less time.
The important factors to be gauged had to do with character, not technology. 
Derek Collins was a planner. That was how Janson thought of such men: the ones 
who sat in air-conditioned offices as they deployed men on missions doomed to 
failure, all in the course of some chess game they called strategy. A pawn was 
moved, a pawn was taken. From the perspective of men like Collins, that was what 
his "human assets" amounted to: pawns. Yet now Janson had the blood of five 
former Cons Op agents on his hands, and he was hell-bent on confronting the man 
who had enlisted them, trained them, guided them, directed them—the man who 
sought to control his destiny, like a piece of carved boxwood on a playing 
board.
Yes, Collins was a determined man. But so was Janson, who detested him with a 
remarkable purity and intensity. Collins was why he had left Consular Operations 
in the first place. A stiff-necked, cold-blooded son of a bitch, Derek Collins 
had one supreme advantage: he knew precisely who he was. About himself, anyway, 
he had few illusions. He was a masterful bureaucratic politician and a 
thoroughgoing credit-stealing bastard, and such men would always thrive in the 
marmoreal jungle that was the nation's capital. None of that bothered Janson; he 
regarded it as nearly humanizing. What incensed Janson was the man's smug 
certainty that the ends always justified the means. Janson had seen where that 
led—even seen it, sometimes, in himself—and it sickened him.
Now he pulled off the road, nosing the car into a particularly exuberant growth 
of bayberries and marsh willows. The remaining mile he would traverse on foot. 
If Jessie's contacts had provided her with accurate information, Collins should 
be in his cottage, and by himself. A widower, Collins had a penchant for 
spending time alone; and here another truth about him was illuminated—that he 
was a deeply unsociable person who was nonetheless skilled at affecting 
sociability.
Janson walked through the shoreline grass to the shoreline itself, a jagged tan 
strip of rocks and sand and battered shells. Despite his thick-soled shoes, he 
stepped lightly through the dampness of the shore, making little sound. 
Collins's cabin was built low to the ground, which made it a somewhat more 
elusive target for anyone with unfriendly intentions. By the same token, 
however, it assured Janson that as long as he remained on the shoreline, he 
would not be visible from it.
The sun beat against his neck, and his pale cotton shirt grew dappled with sweat 
and the salt spray that breezed in from the bay. Occasionally, as the tide 
gently pulled back the water level, he could make out the silhouette of an 
intricate tracery upon the water: he realized that flat nets had been stretched 
from the coastline some distance outward, held afloat by small buoys. The 
security measures were discreet but not negligible, for doubtless the nets were 
studded with sensors; an amphibious landing would have been nearly impossible 
without serving notice of the intrusion.
He heard the sound of heavy boots on the planked walkway just twenty feet away, 
where the land formed a crown near the top of the beach. A young man in a 
uniform of green and black camouflage, cinched trousers, a weapons belt: 
standard-issue National Guard attire. His gait on the boardwalk was a regular 
tattoo of hard rubber against wood—this was a guard doing a required patrol, not 
one who was alert to an intruder's presence.
Janson continued to trudge quietly along the wet sand of the shore.
"Hey, you!" The young guardsman had spotted him, and was walking toward him. 
"You see the signs? You can't be here. No fishing, no shell scavenging, no 
nothing." The man's face was sun-reddened, not tanned; this was obviously a 
recent posting for him, and he had not yet adjusted to the long hours of 
exposure to the elements.
Janson turned to face him, stooping his shoulders slightly, willing himself to 
appear older and feebler. A salty waterman, a local. How would a local respond? 
He recalled his long-ago conversations with one of them, a fellow angler. "Do 
you have any idea who I am, young man?" He made his face muscles slack, and his 
voice developed a slight quaver suggestive of infirmity. He spoke with the 
vowels of the old Eastern Shore regional accent. "Me, my family been living here 
when you were still eatin' your white bread. Been here through the rubs, been 
here when things was pretty. Shoreline here is public property. My 
daughter-in-law's been five years on the Lower Eastern Shore Heritage Committee. 
You think you're going to tell me I can't go where the law says I can, you got a 
whole 'nother think come at you. I know my rights."
The guardsman scowled, half amused at the old salt's line of blather and not 
ungrateful for the interruption of his tedious routine. But his orders were 
clear. "Fact remains, this is a restricted area, and there's about a dozen signs 
saying so."
"I'll have you know, my ancestors were here when the Union troops were in 
Salisbury, and—"
"Listen, Pappy," the guardsman said, rubbing the red and peeling bridge of his 
nose, "I will frog-march your ass into federal custody at gunpoint if I have 
to." He stood directly in front of the other man. "You got a complaint, write 
your congressman." He puffed out his chest, placed a hand near his bolstered 
side arm.
"Why, look at you, you're just breath and britches." Janson limply made a 
swatting gesture with a hand, indicating dismissal and resignation. "Ah, you 
park rangers wouldn't know a bufflehead from a widgeon."
"Park ranger?" the guardsman sneered, shaking his head. "You think we're park 
rangers?"
Suddenly, Janson sprang at him, clamping his right hand around his mouth, his 
left around the back of his neck. They fell together, the sound of the impact 
muffled by the sand, a quiet crunch lost amid the cawing of gulls and the 
rustling of the salt-meadow cordgrass. Even before they hit the ground, though, 
Janson had snaked his hand around and grabbed the man's bolstered M9 pistol.
"Nobody likes a smart-ass," he said quietly, dropping the accent, jabbing the M9 
Beretta into his trachea. The young man's eyes widened in terror. "You got new 
orders, and you'd better obey them: a sound out of you and you're dead, 
greenhorn."
With swift movements, Janson undid the guardsman's weapons belt and used it to 
bind his wrists to his ankles. Next, he ripped narrow strips of cloth from his 
camouflage tunic and stuffed them in the man's mouth, finally securing the gag 
with the guardsman's own bootlaces. After pocketing the man's M9 and his 
Motorola "handy-talky," he lifted him like a heavy rucksack and left him hidden 
amid a thick growth of cordgrass.
Janson pressed on, and when the beach disappeared, he walked farther up the 
grass. There would be at least another guard on patrol duty—the undersecretary's 
weekend house had clearly been designated a federal facility—but there was a 
good chance that the Motorola TalkAbout T6220 would let him know if any 
irregularities had been detected.
A fast five-minute walk and Janson found himself on the south side of a sparsely 
grassed dune, the cottage just out of view. His pace lessened as, with each 
step, his boots sank into the loose, silty sand, but his destination was not 
much farther.
He looked out once more and saw the placid water of Chesapeake Bay—misleadingly 
placid, for it was invisibly swarming with life. In the distant glare, he could 
just make out Tangier Island, several miles to the south. Now it styled itself 
the soft-shell capital of the world; yet in 1812, the one war in the country's 
history where foreign troops were deployed on U.S. soil, it was the base of 
British operations. The shipbuilding firms of St. Michaels were nearby; 
blockade-runners circulated around the port. A scrap of military history 
returned to Janson: it was in St. Michaels that the shorefolk conducted one of 
the classic ruses of nineteenth-century warfare. Hearing of an impending British 
attack, the townsmen extinguished their lanterns. Then they hoisted them high 
into the trees and lit them again. The British fired upon the town but, misled 
by the lantern placement, aimed too high, their shells uselessly lodging in 
treetops far overhead.
That was the Eastern Shore: so much serenity hiding so much blood. Three 
centuries of American strife and American contentment. It was altogether fitting 
that Derek Collins should have established his private redoubt here.
"My wife Janice used to love that spot." The familiar voice came without 
warning, and Janson whirled around to see Derek Collins. Inside his jacket, 
Janson gingerly fingered the trigger to the M9, testing its tension as he looked 
over his adversary.
The only thing that was unfamiliar was the bureaucrat's garb: a man he had 
always seen in three-button suits of navy or charcoal worsted was wearing 
khakis, a madras shirt, and moccasins—his weekend attire.
"She'd set her easel up right there, where you're standing, get her watercolors 
out, and try to capture the light. That's what she always said she was doing: 
trying to capture the light." His eyes were dull, his customary bright and 
scheming avidity replaced by something somber and careworn. "She had 
polycythemia, you know. Or maybe you didn't. A bone marrow disease, made her 
body produce too many blood cells. Janice was my second wife, I guess you do 
know that. A new beginning and all. A few years after we were married, she'd 
start to feel itchy after she took a warm bath, and that turned out to be the 
first sign of it. Funny, isn't it? It progresses slowly, but eventually there 
came the headaches, the dizziness, and just this feeling of exhaustion, and she 
got the diagnosis. Toward the end, she spent most of her time here, on Phipps. 
I'd drive down, and there she'd be, sitting at the easel, trying to get her 
watercolors to make that sunset. She struggled with the colors. Too often, she 
said, they'd look like blood. As if there was something inside her, wildly 
signaling to be let out." Collins was standing only ten feet from Janson, but 
his voice was far away. He stood with his hands in his pockets, looking out at 
the slowly darkening bay. "She loved watching the birds, too. She didn't think 
she could paint them, but she loved watching them. You see that one near the 
Osage orange tree? Pearl gray, white undersides, black mask like a raccoon 
around the eyes?"
It was about the size of a robin, leaping from one perch to another.
"That's a loggerhead shrike," Collins said. "One of the local birds. She thought 
it was pretty. Lanius ludovicianus."
"Better known as the butcher bird," Janson said.
The bird trilled its two-note call.
"Figures, you know," Collins said. "It's unusual, isn't it, because it preys on 
other birds. But check it out. It doesn't have any talons. That's the beauty 
part. It takes advantage of its surroundings—impales its prey on a thorn or 
barbed wire before it rips it apart. It doesn't need much by way of claws. It 
knows that the world is filled with surrogate claws. Use what's there." The bird 
emitted a harsh, thrasher-like note and fluttered off.
Collins turned and looked at Janson. "Why don't you come inside?"
"Aren't you going to frisk me?" Janson asked, in a tone of indifference. He was 
surprised at how unruffled Collins seemed, and was determined to match his calm. 
"See what weapons I might have on me?"
Collins laughed, and his solemnity broke for a moment. "Janson, you are a 
weapon," he said. "What am I supposed to do, amputate all your limbs and put you 
in a vitrine?" He shook his head. "You forget how well I know you. Besides, I'm 
looking at somebody who has folded his arms beneath a jacket, and that bulge a 
foot below his shoulder is quite likely a handgun, aimed at me. I'm guessing you 
took it off of Ambrose. Young kid, reasonably well trained, but not the sharpest 
knife in the drawer."
Janson said nothing but kept his finger on the trigger. The M9 would shoot 
easily through the fabric of his jacket: Collins was a mere finger twitch from 
death and he knew it.
"Come along," Collins said. "We'll walk together. A peaceable dyad of 
vulnerability. A two-man demonstration of mutual assured destruction, and the 
deep comfort the balance of terror can bring."
Janson said nothing. Collins was not a field agent; he was no less lethal in his 
way, but through more mediated channels. Together, they traipsed over a 
boardwalk of silvery, weathered cedar and into Collins's house. It was a classic 
seaside cottage, probably of early twentieth-century construction: weathered 
shingles, small dormers on the second floor. Nothing that would attract much 
attention, not at a casual glance, anyway.
"You got a federal-facilities designation for your weekend house," Janson said. 
"Good going."
"It's a secure, Class A-four facility—completely to code. After the John Deutch 
debacle, nobody wants to be caught taking office work home, putting classified 
files on an unguarded bedroom PC. For me the solution was to turn this home into 
an office. An offsite location."
"Hence the National Guardsmen."
"A couple of kids patrol the area. This afternoon it's Ambrose and Bamford. Make 
sure nobody's fishing where they shouldn't be, that's what they get up to most 
of the time."
"You stay here alone?"
Collins smiled wanly. "A suspicious mind would find menace in that question." He 
wandered over to his kitchen, which gleamed with stainless-steel counters and 
high-end appliances. "But yes, I've come to prefer it that way. I get more 
thinking done."
"In my experience, the more thinking you people do, the more trouble you make," 
Janson said with quiet mordancy. The Beretta was still in his right hand, its 
butt braced on the counter. When Collins moved behind the exhaust vent of his 
Viking range, Janson repositioned himself subtly. At no point was Collins ever 
protected from the 9mm in Janson's hand.
Now Collins set a mug of coffee by Janson. His movements, too, were 
calculated—calculatedly nonthreatening. A mug of scalding fluid could be a 
weapon, so he was careful to slide the mugs slowly across the counter. He did 
not want Janson even to consider the possibility that their contents might be 
flung into his face, and take countermeasures. It was a way of treating his 
guest with respect, and it was a way of sparing himself any preemptive violence. 
Collins had gone through decades clambering to the top of an elite covert 
intelligence agency without so much as injuring a fingernail; he evidently 
sought to preserve his record.
"When Janice had all this done"—Collins gestured around them, at the fixtures 
and furnishings—"I believe she called this a 'nook.' Dining nook or breakfast 
nook or some such damn thing." They sat together now at the black honed-granite 
counter, each perched on a high round stool of steel and leather. Collins took a 
sip of the coffee. "Janice's Faema super-automatic coffeemaker. A 
seventy-five-pound contraption of stainless steel, plus more computational power 
than the lunar module, all to make a cup or two of Java. Sounds like something 
the Pentagon might have come up with, doesn't it?" Through his chunky black 
glasses, his slate-gray eyes were at once inquiring and amused. "You're probably 
wondering why I haven't asked you to put the gun away. That's what people always 
say in these situations, isn't it? 'Put the gun away and let's talk'—like that."
"You always want to be the brightest kid in the classroom, don't you?" Janson's 
eyes were hard as he took a sip of the coffee. Collins had taken care to pour 
the coffee in front of him, tacitly letting him verify that his coffee had not 
been spiked or poisoned. Similarly, when he brought the two mugs to the counter, 
he let Janson choose the one he would drink from. Janson had to admire the 
bureaucrat's punctiliousness in anticipating his ex-employee's every paranoid 
thought.
Collins ignored the taunt. "Truth is, I'd probably rather you keep the gun 
trained on me—just because it'll soothe your jangled nerves. I'm sure it's more 
calming to you than anything that I could say. Accordingly, it makes you less 
likely to act rashly." He shrugged. "You see, I'm just letting you in on my 
thinking. The more candor we can manage, the more at ease you'll be."
"An interesting calculation," Janson grunted. The undersecretary of state had 
evidently decided he was more likely to escape grievous bodily harm by making it 
clear and unambiguous that his life was in the field agent's hands. If you can 
kill me, you won't hurt me—so ran Collins's reasoning.
"Just to celebrate Saturday, I'm making mine Irish," Collins said, pulling over 
a bottle of bourbon and splashing some in his mug. "You want?" Janson scowled, 
and Collins said, "Didn't think so. You're on duty, right?" He poured a dollop 
of cream in as well.
"Around you? Always."
A resigned half smile. "The shrike we saw earlier—it's a hawk that thinks it's a 
songbird. I think both of us remember an earlier conversation we had along those 
lines. One of your 'exit interviews.' I told you that you were a hawk. You 
didn't want to hear it. I think you wanted to be a songbird. But you weren't 
one, and never will be. You're a hawk, Janson, because that's your nature. Same 
as that loggerhead shrike." Another sip of his Irish coffee. "One day, I got 
here and Janice was at her easel, where she'd been trying to paint. She was 
crying. Sobbing. I thought maybe—I don't know what I thought. Turns out she 
watched as this songbird, that's how she regarded it, impaled a small bird on 
one of the hawthorn shrubs and just let it hang there. Sometime later, the 
shrike came back and started to rip it apart with its curved beak. A butcher 
bird doing what a butcher bird does, the crimson, glistening viscera of another 
bird dripping from its beak. To her, it was horrible, just horrible. A betrayal. 
Somehow she never got the nature-red-in-tooth-and-claw memo. That wasn't how she 
saw the world. A Sarah Lawrence girl, right? And what could I tell her? That a 
hawk with a song is still a hawk?"
"Maybe it's both, Derek. Not a songbird pretending to be a hawk, but a hawk 
that's also a songbird. A songbird that turns into hawk when it needs to. Why do 
we have to choose?"
"Because we do have to choose." He placed his mug down hard on the granite 
counter, and the thunk of heavy ceramic against stone punctuated his shift of 
tone. "And you have to choose. Which side are you on?"
"Which side are you on?"
"I've never changed," Collins said.
"You tried to kill me."
Collins tilted his head. "Well, yes and no," he replied, and his nonchalance 
bewildered Janson more than any emphatic, heated denial would have. There was no 
stiffening, no defensiveness; Collins might have been discussing the factors 
contributing to beachfront erosion.
"Glad you're so mellow about it," Janson said with glacial control. "Five of 
your henchmen who ended their careers in the Tisza valley seemed less 
philosophical."
"Not mine," Collins said. "Look, this really is awkward."
"I wouldn't want you to feel you owe me an explanation." Janson spoke with cold 
fury. "About Peter Novak. About me. About why you want me dead."
"See, that was a mistake, the Lambda Team dispatch, and we feel terrible about 
the whole beyond-salvage directive. Big-time product recall on that 
order—Firestone-tire-size. Mistake, mistake, mistake. But whatever hostiles you 
encountered in Hungary—well, they weren't ours. Maybe once, but not anymore. 
That's all I can tell you."
"So I guess everything's squared away," Janson replied with heavy sarcasm.
Collins removed his glasses and blinked a few times. "Don't get me wrong. I'm 
sure we'd do the same thing again. Look, I didn't institute the order, I just 
didn't countermand it. Everybody in operations—not to mention all the frontline 
spooks at the CIA and other shops—thought you'd gone rogue, took a 
sixteen-million-dollar bribe, all that. I mean, the evidence was plain as day. 
For a while, I thought so, too."
"Then you learned better."
"Except that I couldn't cancel the order without an explanation. Otherwise, 
people would assume either I'd lost it or that somebody had got to me, too. Just 
wasn't feasible. And the thing was, I couldn't offer an explanation. Not without 
compromising a secret on the very highest levels. The one secret that could 
never be compromised. You're not going to be able to look at this objectively, 
because we're talking about your own survival here. But my job is all about 
priorities, and where you've got priorities, you're going to have sacrifices to 
make."
"Sacrifices to make?" Janson interjected, his voice dripping with derision. "You 
mean a sacrifice for me to make. I was that goddamn sacrifice." He leaned in 
closer, his face numb with rage.
"You can remove your curved beak from my torn viscera. I'm not arguing."
"Do you think I killed Peter Novak?"
"I know you didn't."
"Let me ask you a simple question," Janson began. "Is Peter Novak dead?"
Collins sighed. "Well, again, my answer's yes and no."
"Goddammit!" Janson exploded. "I want answers."
"Shoot," Collins said. "Let me rephrase that: ask away."
"Let's start with a pretty disturbing discovery I've made. I've studied dozens 
of photographic images of Peter Novak in exacting detail. I'm not going to 
interpret the data, I'm just going to present the data. There are variances, 
subtle but measurable, of fixed physical dimensions. Ratio of index finger 
length to forefinger length. Trapezium to metacarpal. Forearm length. The 
ventral surface of the scapula, shadowed against his shirt, in two photographs 
taken only a few days apart."
"Conclusion: these aren't pictures of one man." Collins's voice was flat.
"I went to his birthplace. There was a Peter Novak who was born to Janos and 
Illana Ferenczi-Novak. He died about five years later, in 1942."
Collins nodded, and once more, his lack of reaction was more chilling than any 
reaction could have been. "Excellent work, Janson."
"Tell me the truth," Janson said. "I'm not crazy. I saw a man die."
"That's so," Collins said.
"And not just any man. We're talking about Peter Novak—a living legend."
"Bingo." Collins made a clicking sound. "You said it yourself. A living legend."
Janson felt his stomach drop. A living legend. A creation of intelligence 
professionals.
Peter Novak was an agency legend.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Collins slid off the stool and stood up. "There's something I want to show you."
He walked to his office, a large room facing the bay. On rustic wooden shelves 
were rows of old copies of Studies in Intelligence, a classified journal for 
American clandestine services. Monographs on international conflicts were 
interspersed with popular novels and dog-eared volumes of Foreign Affairs. A Sun 
Microsystems UltraSPARC workstation was connected to racked tiers of servers.
"You remember The Wizard of Oz? Bet they asked you about it when you were a POW. 
I gather the North Vietnamese interrogators were obsessed with American popular 
culture."
"It didn't come up," Janson said curtly.
"Naw, you were probably too much of a hardass to give away the ending. Wouldn't 
want to jeopardize our national security that way … Sorry. That was out of line. 
There's one thing that divides us: whatever happens, you'll always be a goddamn 
war hero, and I'll always be a civvy desk jockey, and for some people, that 
makes you a better man. Irony is, 'some people' includes me. I'm jealous. I'm 
one of those guys who wanted to have suffered without ever wanting to suffer. 
Like wanting to have written a book, as opposed to wanting actually to write 
one."
"Can we move on?"
"You see, I've always thought it's the moment when we lose our innocence. Up 
there is the great and powerful Oz, and down there is the schmuck beneath the 
curtain. But it's not just him, it's the whole goddamn contraption, the 
machinery, the bellows, the levers, the steam nozzles, the diesel engine, or 
whatever. You think that was easy to put together? And once you had that up and 
running, it's not going to make much difference who you've got behind the 
curtain, or so we figured. It's the machine, not the man, that matters."
The director of Consular Operations was babbling; the anxiety he displayed 
nowhere else was making him weirdly voluble.
"You're trying my patience," Janson said. "Here's a tip. Never try the patience 
of a man holding a gun."
"It's just that we're approaching la gran scena, and I don't want you to lose 
it." Collins gestured toward the softly humming computer system. "You ready for 
this? Because we're moving toward 
now-that-you-know-I'm-going-to-have-to-kill-you territory."
Janson adjusted the M9 so that the sights were squarely between Collins's eyes, 
and the director of Consular Operations added quickly, "Not literally. We've 
moved beyond that—those of us in the program, I mean. We're playing a different 
game now. Then again, so is he."
"Start making sense," Janson said, gritting his teeth.
"A tall order." Collins jerked his head toward the computer system again. "You 
might say that's Peter Novak. That, and a few hundred interoperable, 
omicron-level-security computer systems elsewhere. Peter Novak is really a 
composite of bytes and bits and digital-transfer signatures with neither origins 
nor destinations. Peter Novak wasn't a person. He's a project. An invention. A 
legend, yeah. And for a long time, the most successful ever."
Janson's mind clouded as if overtaken by a sudden dust storm and, just as 
swiftly, a preternatural clarity set in.
It was madness—a madness that made a terrible kind of sense. "Please," he said 
to the bureaucrat calmly, quietly. "Go on."
"Best if we sit somewhere else," Collins said. "The system here has so many 
electronic security seals and booby-traps, it goes into auto-erase mode if you 
breathe on it hard. A moth once rammed into the window and I lost hours of 
work."
Now the two settled into the living room, the furniture covered with the coarse 
floral chintz that, at some point in the seventies, had evidently been decreed 
by law for seaside vacation houses.
"Look, it was a brilliant idea. Such a brilliant idea that for a long time, 
people were feuding over credit for who had the idea first. You know, like who 
invented the radio, or whatnot. Except that the number of people who knew about 
this was tiny, tiny, tiny. Had to be. Obviously, my predecessor Daniel Congdon 
had a lot to do with it. So did Doug Albright, a protégé of David Abbott."
"Albright I've heard of. Abbott?"
"The guy who devised the whole 'Caine' gambit, back in the late seventies, 
trying to smoke out Carlos. Same kind of strategic thinking went into Mobius. 
Asymmetrical conflicts pit states against individual actors. Mismatched, but not 
the way you'd imagine. Think of an elephant and a mosquito. If that mosquito 
carries encephalitis, you could have one dead elephant, and there's really not 
much Jumbo can do about it. The problem of substate actors is similar. Abbott's 
great insight was that you really couldn't mobilize anything as unwieldy as a 
state against baddies of this sort: you had to counter with a matching 
stratagem: create individual actors who, within a broad mandate, had a fair 
level of autonomy."
"Mobius?"
"The Mobius Program. Basically, you're talking about what began as a small group 
at the State Department. Soon it had to extend beyond State, because it had to 
be interagency if it was going to get off the ground. So there was a fat guy who 
used to be at the Hudson Institute and ran the operations sector at DIA, those 
'committed to excellence' boys. His understudy takes over after he dies—that's 
Doug. A computer whiz kid from Central Intelligence. Oval Office liaison to the 
NSC. But seventeen years ago, you're basically talking about a small group at 
the State Department. And they're tossing around ideas, and somehow they hit on 
this scenario. What if they assembled a small, secret team of analysts and 
experts to create a notional foreign billionaire? The more they toss the idea 
around, the more they like it. They like it because the more they think about 
it, the more doable it seems. They can make this happen. They can do this. And 
when they start to think about what they can do with it, it becomes 
irresistible. They can do good things. They can advance American interests in a 
way that America just can't. They can make the world a better place. Totally 
win-win. Which is how the Mobius Program was born."
"Mobius," Janson said. "As in a loop where the inside is the outside."
"In this case, the outsider is an insider. This mogul becomes an independent 
figure in the world, no ties whatever to the United States. Our adversaries 
aren't his adversaries. They can be his allies. He can leverage situations we 
wouldn't be able to go near. First, though, you've got to create a 'he,' and 
from the ground up. Backstopping was a real challenge. For his birthplace, the 
programmers choose a tiny Hungarian village that was completely liquidated in 
the forties."
"Precisely because all the records were destroyed, nearly all the villagers 
killed."
"Molnar was like a gift from the gods of backstopping. I mean, it was terrible, 
the massacres and all, but it was perfect for the program's purposes, especially 
when you added to that the short, unhappy career of Count Ferenczi-Novak. Made 
perfect sense that our boy was going to have a sketchy early childhood. All his 
peers are dead, and his father's terrified that his enemies are going to take 
his child from him. So he hides him, has him privately tutored. Eccentric, 
maybe, but plausible enough."
"There'd have to be an employment record," Janson said, "but that would have 
been the easy part. You restrict his 'career' to a few front organizations that 
you can control."
"Anybody makes inquiries, there's always some silver-haired department head, 
maybe retired, to say, 'Oh yes, I remember young Peter. A little big for his 
britches, but a brilliant financial analyst. The work was so good, I didn't mind 
that he preferred to do his work from home. A bit of an agoraphobe, but with 
that traumatic background, how can you blame him?' And like that."
These men and women, Janson knew, would have been generously compensated for 
uttering a lie perhaps once or twice to an inquiring reporter, and perhaps 
never. They would not be aware of what else the bargain would entail: the 
around-the-clock monitoring of their communications, a lifelong net of 
surveillance—but what they didn't know couldn't hurt them.
"And the spectacular rise? How could you backstop that?"
"Well, that's where things get a little hairy. But, as I say, there was a 
brilliant team of experts tasked to the Mobius Program. They—we, I should say, 
though I wasn't enlisted until seven years into it—caught a number of breaks. 
And, voilà, you've got a man in charge of an empire of his own. A man who could 
manipulate global events as we never could ourselves."
"Manipulate … ? Meaning what?" Janson demanded.
"I think you know. The Liberty Foundation. The entire conflict-resolution 
agenda. 'Directed democracy.' All of it."
"So this great humanitarian financier, the 'peacemaker'—"
"It was originally a 60 Minutes segment that dubbed him that, and it stuck. For 
good reason. The peacemaker established a foundation with offices in nearly 
every regional capital in the world."
"And his incredible humanitarian assistance?"
"Isn't this country the best? And isn't it messed up that no matter how much 
good we do, so many people around the world hate our guts? Yes, it meant 
offering balm to the world's trouble spots. Look, the World Bank is a lender of 
last resort. This guy's a lender of first resort. Which ensured that he would 
have enormous influence with governments the world over. Peter Novak: your 
roving ambassador for peace and stability."
"Oil on troubled waters."
"Expensive oil, make no mistake. But 'Novak' could mediate, resolve conflicts 
that we could never—openly—go near. He's been able to deal effectively and 
confidentially with regimes that consider us the Great Satan. He has been a 
one-man foreign policy. And what made him so goddamn effective is precisely the 
fact that he appears to have no connection to us."
Janson's mind whirled, buzzed, filled with the echoes of voices—confiding, 
cautioning, threatening. Nikos Andros: You Americans have never been able to 
wrap your minds around anti-Americanism. You so want to be loved that you cannot 
understand why there is so little love for you. A man wears big boots and 
wonders why the ants beneath his feet fear and hate him. Angus Fielding: The one 
thing that you Americans have never quite grasped is how very deep 
anti-Americanism goes … The Serbian with gold-rimmed glasses: You Americans 
always want things that arent on the menu, don't you? You can never have enough 
choices. A Hungarian barkeep with a lethal pastime: You Americans complain about 
drug traffickers in Asia, and meanwhile you flood the world with the electronic 
equivalent … Everywhere you go, you find your own spoor. The slime of the 
serpent is over all.
A cacophony resolved itself into a single refrain, another kind of plain-chant.
You Americans.
You Americans.
You Americans.
You Americans.
Janson suppressed a shiver. "But who is—was—Peter Novak?" he asked.
"It was kind of like the Six Million Dollar Man—'Gentlemen, we can rebuild him, 
we have the technology. We have the capability to make him better than he was 
before. Better. Stronger. Faster.' " He broke off. "Well, richer, anyway. Fact 
is, three agents were assigned to the part. They were all similar-looking to 
begin with, very close to one another in build and height. And then surgery made 
them damned near identical. All sorts of computerized micrometers were used—an 
exhaustive procedure. But we had to have replicas in place: given our 
investment, we couldn't afford to have our guy hit by a bus, or drop dead from a 
stroke. Three seemed like good odds."
Janson looked at Collins strangely. "Who would ever agree to do such a thing? To 
allow his entire identity to be wiped out, to become dead to everyone he ever 
knew, his very countenance transformed … "
"Someone who had no choice," Collins replied cryptically.
Janson felt a gorge of anger. He knew Collins's sangfroid was all on the 
surface, but the heartlessness of the man's reasoning summed everything up: the 
damnable arrogance of the planners. The damn strategic elites with their neatly 
trimmed cuticles and their blithe certainty that what worked on the page would 
work in the real world. They saw the globe as a chessboard, were oblivious to 
the fact that people made of flesh and blood would suffer the consequences of 
their grand schemes. He could hardly stand to look at the bureaucrat before him, 
and his eyes drifted toward the glittering bay, toward the fishing boat that had 
moved into view, safely beyond the security zone that began half a mile from the 
shore, marked off by warning buoys. "Someone who had no choice?" He shook his 
head. "You mean the way I had no choice when you set me up to be killed."
"That again." Collins rolled his eyes. "Like I said, calling off the termination 
order would have raised too many questions. The cowboys at the CIA got credible 
reports that Novak had been killed and that you had something to do with it. 
Cons Ops got hold of the same info. The last thing any of us at Mobius wanted 
bruited about, but you play the cards you're dealt. At the time, I did what I 
thought was best." The words were mere words, expressing neither sadism nor 
sorrow.
A scrim of red momentarily suffused Janson's vision: which was the greater 
insult, he wondered—being executed as a traitor, or being sacrificed as a pawn? 
Once more the fishing vessel caught his attention, but this time the sight was 
accompanied by a wrenching sense of danger. It was too small to be a crabber, 
and too near the shore to be after rockfish or perch.
And the thick staff that extended from the flapping tarpaulin on the deck was 
not a fishing pole.
Janson saw the bureaucrat's mouth moving, but he could no longer hear him, for 
his attention was wholly devoted to an immediate and deadly threat. Yes, 
Collins's bungalow was on a narrow, two-mile-long spit of land, yet the sense of 
security conveyed by the isolation, Janson realized now, was an illusion.
An illusion that was shattered by the first artillery round that exploded in 
Collins's living room.


A torrent of adrenaline constricted Janson's consciousness to a laserlike focus. 
The shell smashed through the window and hurled into the opposite wall, spraying 
the room with splinters of wood and chunks of plaster and fragments of glass; 
the blast was so intense that it registered on the ears less as sound than as 
pain. Black smoke began to billow and Janson understood the fluke that had saved 
them. A howitzer shell, he knew, spun more than three hundred times a second, 
and the result of its force and spin was that the shell had burrowed far into 
the cottage's soft-pine and plaster construction before it exploded. Only this 
had spared them a deadly blast of jagged shrapnel. Seemingly conscious of every 
millisecond, Janson realized, too, that an artillery gunner's first few shells 
were fired in order to zero in on the mark. The second shell would not arrive 
ten feet above their heads. The second shell, if they stayed where they were, 
would not leave them to ponder shell rotation speeds and detonation times.
The old wood-frame house would offer them no protection at all.
Janson leaped from the couch and raced to the attached garage. It was his only 
hope. The door was open and Janson took a few steps down to the concrete floor, 
where a small convertible stood. A yellow late-model Corvette.
"Wait a minute!" Collins called out breathlessly. His face was smudged with soot 
from the explosion and he was obviously winded from having followed Janson's 
sprint. "It's my Z-six. I've got the keys right here." He held them out 
meaningfully, asserting the primacy of property rights.
Janson grabbed them from his hand and jumped into the driver's seat. "Friends 
don't let friends drive drunk," he replied, shoving the startled undersecretary 
of state out of the way. "You can come or not."
Collins hastened over to the side, pressed the garage-door opener, and rode 
shotgun with Janson, who revved the motor in reverse and shot out of the garage 
with just a millimeter of clearance between it and the lumbering roll-up door.
"Cutting it a little close, are we?" Collins asked. His face was now drenched in 
perspiration.
Janson said nothing.
Using, in rapid succession, the emergency brake, the steering wheel, and the 
accelerator with an organist's fluidity, Janson executed a reverse bootleg 
turn—a J turn—and gunned the car down the narrow macadamized roadway.
"I'm thinking this wasn't such a smart move," said Collins. "We're now totally 
exposed."
"The flat nets—they extend out all the way around the tip of the island, right?"
"About a half mile out, yes."
"Then use your head. Those nets would entangle any sloop that tried to cut 
across them. So if the gunboat wants to gain a new line of fire on us, it's got 
a very wide apex to sail around. It's a slow-moving vessel—it just isn't going 
to have enough time. Meanwhile, we keep the house itself between us and it: 
that's concealment and protection."
"Point taken," Collins said. "But now I want you to turn onto the pocket marina 
we've got a little farther on the right. We get there, we're out of sight. Plus 
we can take a motorboat to the mainland if we need to." His voice was composed, 
masterful. "See that little path to the right? Turn on it—now."
Janson drove past it.
"Goddammit, Janson!" Collins bellowed. "That marina was our best chance."
"Best chance to get blown to bits. You imagine they won't have thought of it? 
They'll already have lobbed a time-delayed explosive device there. Think like 
they do!"
"Turn around!" Collins yelled. "Goddammit, Paul, I know this place, I live here, 
and I'm telling you—"
A loud explosion from behind them drowned out the rest of his words: the marina 
had been blown up. Part of a rubber dingy was thrown high into the air and 
landed on the side of the road.
Now Janson depressed the accelerator pedal farther, barreling down the narrow 
road faster than would ordinarily be safe. At eighty miles per hour, the tall 
grass and thorn trees zipped past in the rearview mirror. The roar of the motor 
seemed to grow ever louder, as if the muffler was cutting out. Now it seemed as 
if he were floating in the bay, as the spit narrowed to little more than sixty 
feet across, some beach, some low, scruffy vegetation, and the road, half 
covered in drifting sand. Janson knew that the sand itself reduced traction like 
an oil slick, and he reduced speed slightly.
The sound of the motor did not subside.
It was not the sound of his motor.
Janson turned to his right and saw the hovercraft. An amphibious military model.
It was skimming along the surface of the bay, a powerful fan keeping it aloft, a 
couple of feet above the surface of the water and the flat nets stretched 
beneath. It was unstoppable.
Janson felt as though he had swallowed ice. The lowlands of Chesapeake Bay were 
perfectly suited for the hovercraft's capabilities. The land would not provide 
them shelter: unlike a boat, the craft could move almost as easily over dry 
surfaces as over wet ones. And the powerful engine enabled it to keep pace 
easily with the Corvette. It was a more dangerous foe than the gunboat, and now 
it was gaining on them! The sound of the fan was deafening, and the small 
convertible swayed precariously in its mechanical gale.
He sneaked another glance at the hovercraft. From the side, it had some 
resemblance to a yacht, with a small forward windowed cabin. Mounted at the 
other end was a powerful upright fan. Heavy-duty antiplow skirts were mounted to 
the fore of the craft. As it zipped along the placid waters it gave an 
impression of fluid effortlessness.
Janson floored the accelerator—only to realize, sickeningly, that the hovercraft 
was not merely keeping pace; it was passing them. And, perched just below and to 
the left of the rear fan encasement, someone wearing ear protectors was fumbling 
with what looked like an M60 machine gun.
Janson aimed his M9 with one hand and emptied the magazine—yet the relative 
motion of the car and his target made accuracy impossible. The bullets simply 
clanged off the massive steel blades of the fan.
And now he had no more ammunition.
Bouncing lightly on its bipod, the M60 produced a low, grunting noise, and 
Janson remembered why it was known as the "pig" when he was in Vietnam. He 
hunched down as low as he could in his seat without losing control of the car, 
and the car's body jarred to a jackhammer rhythm as a spray of bullets, two 
hundred 7.62mm rounds per minute, sledgehammered the yellow Corvette, tearing 
into its steel body.
There was a momentary pause: A jammed bandolier? An overheated barrel? It was 
customary to replace the barrel every hundred to five hundred rounds to prevent 
overheating, and the overzealous gunman may not have realized just how quickly 
those barrels became hot. Small consolation: the pilot of the hovercraft used 
the interruption to shift direction. The craft eased back, even with the racing 
Corvette, and suddenly up onto the beach, and then to the cambered road itself.
It was just a few yards away, and the powerful sucking propellers seemed to loom 
over the tiny sports car. He heard another noise—a whooshing, bass-heavy thrum. 
That could mean only one thing: an auxiliary Rotex engine and propulsion fan had 
just now been activated. In the rearview mirror, Janson watched, bewildered, as 
the blousing PVC flaps puffed out farther and the entire craft, which had been 
flying about a foot above the ground, suddenly rose higher—and higher still! The 
roar of the Rotex engines blended with the howl of the blasting air as a small 
sandstorm materialized just behind them.
It was increasingly difficult to breathe without choking on the airborne grit. 
The hovercraft itself was partly obscured in the swirling sand and yet from 
behind the fore windshield he made out the goggled face of a powerfully built 
man.
He could also make out that the man was smiling.
Now the hovercraft seemed to jump up another foot into the air, and suddenly it 
was rearing and bucking like a horse. As the antiplow skirts struck the car's 
rear fender, Janson had a horrible realization: It was trying to climb over 
them.
He glanced over to his right and saw Collins doubled forward in his seat, his 
hands over his ears, trying to protect them from the immense din.
The hovercraft bounced and tipped again as the churning blades whipped air into 
a punishing substance, like water from a water cannon. In the rearview mirror, 
through the eddying sand, Janson caught a glimpse of the spinning auxiliary 
propulsion blades mounted on the craft's underside. If the side-strafing from 
the M60 was not sufficient, the assassins wanted them to know that they could 
easily lower the powerful blades of the undermounted propeller over them, like a 
gigantic lawn mower, destroying the car and decapitating its inhabitants.
As the large hovercraft bucked against the rear of the Corvette, Janson swung 
the steering wheel abruptly to the left, and now the car veered off the paved 
surface, its wheels spinning into the sand and scrub as it rapidly lost traction 
and speed.
The hovercraft zoomed past, its motion as effortless as an air-hockey puck, then 
came to a halt and reversed course without turning around.
It was a brilliant maneuver: for the first time, the man with the M60 had a 
direct line of fire at the driver and passenger alike. Even as he watched the 
machine gunner seat a fresh link-belt of ammunition into the M60's drive 
mechanism, he heard the sound of yet another craft—a speedboat, crazily veering 
toward the shore.
Oh Christ no!
And in the speedboat, a figure, arranged in prone firing position, with a rifle. 
Aimed at them.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The speedboat was equipped with an aircraft turbine engine, for it had to have 
been traveling at upward of 150 miles per hour. It skimmed along the water, 
leaving behind a slashing contrail of spume. The small boat became rapidly 
larger, a mesmeric spectacle of death. Two miles from the cottage, the flat 
netting was no longer in place; nothing protected them from the rushing gunman. 
Nothing.
Where could he go? Where was safety?
Janson turned the wheels of the Corvette back onto the road, heard the chassis 
scrape as it lurched from the sodden earth to the hard pavement. What if he 
tried to ram the hovercraft, jamming his foot on the accelerator and testing its 
lightweight fiberglass construction against the steel cage of the Corvette? Yet 
the odds were slim that he could even reach the craft before the M60 had 
perforated the engine—and him.
Crouching below the fan, the machine gunner grinned evilly. The linkbelt was 
seated; full-fire mode was activated. Seconds remained before he served them 
with a lethal fire hose of lead. Suddenly the man pitched forward, slack, his 
forehead dropping like a deadweight against the bipod-propped gun.
Dead.
There was an echoing sound—on the waters of Chesapeake Bay, it sounded oddly 
like a cork popping—and then another, and the hovercraft came to a rest just a 
few feet from the car, half on the road, half on the shoulder. It was not how 
anyone deliberately parked such a craft.
Like those of many military vehicles and devices, the controls must have been 
designed to require continual nonpassive pressure—simply put, the grip of a 
human hand on the tiller. Otherwise, in combat situations, a soldier in command 
could be killed, and a driverless vehicle—like an unmanned automatic 
weapon—might inadvertently cause harm to the wrong side. Now the craft 
depowered, the engines shutting off, the churning blades growing slower and 
slower, the craft's skids setting firmly on the ground. And as the craft fell to 
earth, Janson saw that the pilot, too, was sprawled, limp, on the windshield.
Two shots, two kills.
A voice called across the waters of Chesapeake Bay, as the engine of the 
speedboat sputtered to a halt. "Paul! Are you all right?"
A voice from the speedboat.
The voice of a woman who had saved them both.
Jessica Kincaid.


Janson got out of the car and raced to the shore; he saw Jessie in the boat only 
ten yards away. It was the closest she could bring the speedboat without 
grounding it.
"Jessie!" he shouted.
"Tell me I did great!" Jessie said, triumphant.
"Two head shots—and from a speeding boat? That's one for the goddamn record 
books!" Paul said. He felt suddenly, absurdly lighter. "Of course, I had 
everything under control."
"Yeah, I could see that," she replied drily.
Derek Collins approached. His gait was labored; he was winded, and his sweaty 
face was coated with a layer of sand and silt that gave him a mummified look.
Janson turned around slowly and faced his adversary. "Your idea of fun?"
"What?"
"Were those two your henchmen as well? Or is this another one of those 
I-had-nothing-to-do-with-it moments?"
"Goddammit, I had nothing to do with it! How could you think otherwise! They 
almost killed me, for Christ's sake! Are you too blind and full of yourself to 
see the truth when it's in front of your face? They wanted both us of dead."
His voice rose with the unabated terror that his whole body exuded. He was 
probably speaking the truth, Janson decided. But if so, who was behind this 
latest attempt?
Something about Collins's manner bothered Janson: for all his candor, he was 
holding too much back. "Maybe so. But you seem to know who the attackers were."
Collins looked away.
"Goddammit, Collins. If you've got something to say, say it now!" Revulsion once 
more coursed through Janson as he regarded the frightened yet stony bureaucrat, 
the man with a calculator for a soul. He couldn't forget what he'd learned: that 
Collins was the one who stood by while the sanction order was processed, 
unconcerned about sacrificing a pawn for his great game. He wanted nothing to do 
with this man.
"You lose," Janson said quietly. "Once more. If you want me dead, you're going 
to have to try a little harder."
"I told you, Janson. That was then. This is now. The game plan has changed. 
That's why I told you about the program, goddammit—the biggest, most dangerous 
secret in the entire U.S. of A. And there's a lot more I'm not authorized to 
tell you myself."
"More of your bullshit," Janson snarled.
"No, it's true. I can't tell you what, but there's a lot you need to know. For 
Christ's sake, you've got to come with me to Washington, to meet with the Mobius 
team. We need you to get with the program, OK?" He placed a hand on Janson's 
arm. Janson knocked it off.
"You want me to 'get with the program'? Let me ask you a question first—and 
you'd better give me a straight answer, because I'll know if you're lying."
"I told you, I'm not authorized to reveal—"
"This isn't a big-picture question. It's a little-picture question, a detail. 
You told me about an ace surgical team that performed three procedures on three 
agents. I'm just wondering about the members of that surgical team. Where are 
they now?"
Collins blinked hard. "Damn you, Janson. You're asking a question you know the 
answer to."
"I just want to hear you say it."
"Security on this operation was mammoth. The number of people who were in the 
know could be counted on the fingers of two hands. Each and every one with 
clearance on the very highest level, proven reliability—intelligence 
professionals."
"But you needed to enlist the services of a top-caliber plastic surgeon. A team 
of outsiders, by necessity."
"Why are we even talking about this? You understand the logic perfectly well. 
You said it yourself: each one of them was necessary for the program's success. 
Each one, inherently, posed a security risk. That simply wasn't supportable."
"Ergo, the Mobius Program followed protocol. You planners had them killed. Every 
last one."
Collins was silent, bowing his head slightly.
Something burned within Janson, although Collins had done nothing more than 
confirm his suspicions. They had probably allowed themselves a twelve-month 
period for the mop-up. It would not have been difficult to manage. A car crash, 
an accidental drowning, perhaps a deadly collision on a double-diamond ski 
slope—top surgeons tended to be aggressive sportsmen. No, it would not have been 
difficult. The agents who arranged their deaths would have regarded each as a 
task accomplished, another check against a to-do list. The human reality—the 
bereavement of spouses, siblings, sons and daughters; the shattered families, 
shadowed childhoods, the knock-on effects of desolation and despair beyond 
consolation—that was not a reality to be considered, even acknowledged, by those 
who issued the deadly directives.
Janson's eyes drilled into Collins's. "Small sacrifices for the larger good, 
right? That's what I figured. No, Collins, I'm not going to get with the 
program. Not your program, anyway. You know something, Collins? You're not a 
songbird and you're not a hawk. You're a snake, and you always will be."
Janson looked out toward the water, saw Jessie Kincaid in the idling craft, saw 
her short hair ruffled by the gentle breeze, and all at once his heart felt as 
if it might burst. Maybe Collins was telling him the truth about the role of 
Consular Operations in what had gone down; maybe he wasn't. The only verifiable 
truth was that Janson could not trust him. There's a lot you need to know … Come 
with me. That's just the sort of line Collins would use to lure him to his 
death.
Janson looked again at the gently bobbing speedboat, twenty feet from shore. It 
wasn't a hard choice. Abruptly, he bolted down the beach, without looking back, 
first wading into the shallow water and then propelling himself to Jessie's boat 
with powerful crawl strokes. The water sluiced around his clothing and cooled 
his body.
As he climbed aboard the boat, Jessie reached for him, took his hand in hers.
"Funny, I thought you were in Amsterdam," Janson said.
"Let's just say its charms ran thin. Especially after a couple of brats almost 
knocked me over and accidentally saved my life."
"Come again?"
"Long story. I'll explain later."
He put his arms around her, feeling the warmth of her body. "OK, my questions 
can wait. You've probably got some of your own."
"I'll start with one," she said. "Are we partners?"
He pressed her close to him. "Yeah," he said. "We're partners."



PART FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
"You don't understand," said the courier, a straitlaced black man in his late 
twenties, with lozenge-shaped rimless glasses. "I could lose my job for that. I 
could face criminal and civil penalties, too." He gestured toward the patch on 
his navy jacket with the distinctive calligraphic logo of his company: Caslon 
Couriers. Caslon: the extremely expensive, top-of-the-line, ultrasecure courier 
service to which select individuals and corporations entrusted highly sensitive 
documents. A nearly flawless record of reliability and discretion had won it the 
loyalty of its exclusive clientele. "These brothers don't play."
He was sitting at a small table at the Starbucks on Thirty-ninth Street and 
Broadway, in Manhattan, and the gray-haired man who had joined him there was 
politely insistent. He was, he had explained, a senior officer of the Liberty 
Foundation; his wife was a staff member of the Manhattan office. Yes, the 
approach was all very irregular, but he was at the end of his rope. The trouble 
was, he had reason to believe she was receiving packages from a romantic suitor. 
"And I'm not even sure who the damn guy is!"
The courier grew visibly uncomfortable until Janson began to peel off 
hundred-dollar bills. After twenty of them, his eyes began to warm behind his 
glasses.
"I'm on the road about sixty percent of the time, I mean, I can understand how 
her attention might wander," the gray-haired man said. "But I can't fight off 
somebody I don't know, you understand? And she won't admit that anything's going 
on. I see she's got these little gifts, and she says she bought them herself. 
But I know better. These aren't the sort of things you buy for yourself. These 
are the kinds of things a guy buys a woman, and I know, because I have. Hey, I'm 
not saying I'm perfect or anything. But we need to clear the air, my wife and I, 
and I really mean both of us. Look, I can't believe I'm even doing what I'm 
doing. I'm not that kind of a guy, trust me."
The courier shook his head sympathetically and then glanced at his watch. "You 
know, I meant what I said about criminal and civil prosecution. They spell that 
out when you join up, a dozen ways. You sign all kinds of contracts and if 
you're found in violation, they'll fry your ass."
The wealthy cuckold was all dignity and caution. "They never will. I'm not 
asking you to divert anything, I'm not asking you to do anything wrong. All I'm 
asking is to see copies of the invoice slips. Not to have them, to see them. And 
if I learn something, if it's the guy I think it is, nobody will ever know how. 
But I'm begging you, you've got to give Marta and me a chance. And this is the 
only way."
The courier nodded briskly. "I'm going to get behind on my rounds if I don't get 
a move on. How about you meet me at the atrium of the Sony Building, Fifty-fifth 
and Madison, in four hours?"
"You're doing the right thing, my friend," the man told him with fervor. He made 
no reference to the two thousand dollars he had "tipped" the courier; that would 
have been beneath the dignity of them both.
At the Sony atrium, hours later, sitting on a metal chair near a poured-concrete 
fountain, he was finally able to page through the invoices. He had been, he saw, 
too optimistic: the deliveries lacked a sender's address, being marked only with 
a code of origination that indicated the general location of pickup. He 
persevered all the same, looking for a pattern. There were dozens of packages 
that arrived from all the expected locations, cities corresponding to the major 
Liberty Foundation branch offices. Yet there were also a handful of packages 
that were sent to Marta Lang from a location that corresponded to nothing at 
all. Why was Caslon Couriers making regular pickups from a small town in the 
Blue Ridge Mountains?
"Yes," he told the courier mournfully. "It's just as I thought." He glanced 
around the place—an urban terrarium of plants and sluggish waterfalls arrayed in 
a glassed-in "public space" that some zoning board had demanded in return for a 
height variance. "She told me they'd broken it off, and maybe they did, for a 
while. But now it's on again. Well, it's back to couples therapy for us."
Looking mournful, Paul Janson extended a hand, his palm lined with another 
sheath of slippery large-denomination bills, and the courier grasped it warmly.
"My heartfelt sympathies, man," the courier said.
A little additional research—several hours in the New York Public Library—was 
suggestive. Millington, Virginia, turned out to be the nearest town to a vast 
pastoral estate that was built by John Vincent Astor in the 1890s, a place that, 
by several architectural accounts, rivaled the legendary Biltmore estate in its 
elegance and attention to detail. At some point in the fifties, ownership passed 
into the hands of Maurice Hempel, a secretive South African diamond magnate, 
since deceased. And now? Who owned it now? Who lived there now?
Only one conclusion suggested itself: a man the world knew as Peter Novak. A 
certainty? Far from it. Yet there was surely some validity to the inferences 
that brought the remote spot to his attention. Control required communication: 
if this last surviving "Novak" was still in command of his empire, he would have 
to be in communication with his top deputies. People like Marta Lang. Janson's 
plan called for breaching the channels of communication. By tracing the subtle 
twitchings of the web, he might find the spider.


After spending the following morning on the road, however, Janson felt 
increasingly unsure of his suppositions. Had it not been too easy? His keyed-up 
nerves were not calmed by the monotony of driving. For most of the trip, he 
maintained a near constant speed, shifting from the turnpike, punctuated with 
blue Adopt-A-Highway signs, to the smaller roads that webbed across the Blue 
Ridge Mountains like man-made rivers. Rolling green farmland gave way to 
blue-green hued vistas of rising hills, cresting and ebbing across the horizon. 
Framed by the windshield, the images straight ahead of him had the beauty of the 
banal. Battered guardrails stretched along outcroppings of mossy gray shale. The 
road itself became mesmerizing, an endless procession of small irregularities. 
Cracks in the road that had been daubed with glossy black sealant; skid marks 
that formed staccato diagonals; broken white lines that had started to blur from 
the punishment of a thousand downpours.
A few miles past a camping exit, Janson saw a turnoff marked for the town of 
Castleton, and he knew that Millington would not be much farther. jed sipperly's 
pre-owned auto—buy your next car here! read a garish roadside sign. It was 
lettered with white and blue car-body paint on a metal plaque mounted high on a 
pole. Tear tracks of rust spilled from the corner rivets. Janson pulled into the 
lot.
It would be the second time he had changed cars en route; in Maryland he had 
picked up a late-model Altima from its owner. Switching vehicles was standard 
procedure during long trips. He was confident that he was not being followed, 
but there was always the possibility of "soft surveillance": a purely passive 
system of observation, agents instructed to notice, not to follow. A young woman 
riding shotgun in a Dodge Ram whose eyes flickered from a newspaper to a license 
plate; the fat man with an overheated car stalled on the shoulder, the hood up, 
seemingly waiting for AAA. Almost certainly they were as innocent as they 
appeared, and yet there were no guarantees. Soft surveillance, though of limited 
effectiveness, was essentially undetectable. So at intervals, Janson changed his 
vehicle. If anyone was attempting to keep tabs on his movements, it would make a 
difficult task even more so.
A 120-pound dog lunged repeatedly at a heavy-gauge Cyclone fence as Janson got 
out of his Altima and made his way toward the low trailerlike office. all offers 
considered read a sign in the window. The large animal—he was a mongrel, whose 
ancestors seemed to include a pit bull and a Doberman, and possibly a 
mastiff—was penned into one corner of the lot and once more threw himself 
against the unyielding Cyclone fence. Aside from his size, the wretched mutt was 
a perfect contrast to the old crone's noble white-coated Kuvasz, Janson mused. 
But perhaps the animals were only as different as the masters they served.
A thirtyish man with a cigarette tucked into the corner of his mouth sauntered 
out of the trailer. He thrust out a hand toward Janson, a bit too abruptly. For 
a split instinctual second, Janson readied himself to deliver a crushing blow to 
his neck; then he reached out and clasped the man's hand. It bothered him that 
those reflexes signaled themselves in perfectly civil contexts, but they were 
the same reflexes that had saved his life on countless occasions. Violence, when 
it appeared, so often was inappropriate, out of context. What mattered was that 
such impulses were under Janson's control. He would not be leaving the younger 
man sprawled on the pavement, howling in pain. He would be leaving him pleased 
at an advantageous trade-in supplemented with a pocketful of cash.
"I'm Jed Sipperly," the man said, with a showily firm handshake; somebody must 
have told him that a firm handshake inspired confidence. His face was fleshy but 
firm beneath a thatch of straw-colored hair; the sun had burned a ruddy crease 
that started near the bridge of his nose and curved beneath his eyes. Perhaps it 
was because he had driven for too many hours straight, but Janson suddenly had a 
vision of what the salesman would look like in a few decades. The meaty lips and 
padded cheeks would grow loose; the sun-exposed contours of his face would turn 
into furrows, ravines. What now passed for healthy ruddiness would coarsen into 
a webbing of capillaries, like cross-hatchings on an engraving. The yellow hair 
would whiten and retrench to a zone around his nape and temples, the usual 
follicular fallback.
On the fake-wood table in the shadowed office, Janson could make out an open 
brown Budweiser bottle and a nearly full ashtray. These things, too, would speed 
the transformation, doubtless already had started to.
"Now, what kin I do you for?" Jed's breath was faintly beery, and as he stepped 
closer, the sun picked out his crow's-feet.
There was another cage-rattling lunge from the dog.
"Don't you mind Butch," the man said. "I think he enjoys it. You excuse me for a 
moment?" Jed Sipperly walked outside to the pavement near the chain-link 
enclosure and stooped down to pick up a small Raggedy Ann-style cloth doll. He 
tossed it into the enclosed area. It turned out to be what the mammoth dog was 
pining for: he bounded over to it, and began to cradle it between huge paws. 
With a few laps of his floppy pink tongue he cleaned the dust from the rag 
doll's button-and-yarn features.
Jed returned to his customer with an apologetic shrug. "Look at him slobber on 
it—dog's so attached to that doll, it ain't wholesome," he said. "I guess 
everybody's got a somebody. A real good guard dog, 'cept he won't bark. Which is 
sometimes a saving grace." A professional smile: his lips curved up in an 
isolated movement; the eyes remained watchful and without warmth. It was the 
kind of smile that bureaucrats shared with shopkeepers. "That your Nissan 
Altima?"
"Thinking of a trade," Janson said.
Jed looked slightly pained, a merchant asked to give to charity. "We get a lot 
of those cars. I like 'em. Got a weakness for 'em. Be my undoing. Lots of people 
don't particularly care for those Japan cars, especially hereabouts. How many 
miles you got on it?"
"Fifty thou," Janson said. "A little more."
Another wince. "Good time for a trade, then. Because those Nissan transmissions 
start making trouble once you reach sixty. Give you that for nothing. Anybody'll 
tell you the same thing."
"Thanks for the tip," Janson said, nodding at the patent lies of a used-car 
salesman. There was something almost endearing about the spirited way he upheld 
the stereotype of his trade.
"I personally like 'em, mechanical troubles and all. Like the look of 'em, 
somehow. And repairs ain't a problem for me, because we've got a repair guy on 
call. If what you're looking for is reliability, though, I can steer you toward 
one or two models that'll probably outlast you." He pointed toward a maroon 
sedan. "See that Taurus? One of the all-time greats. Runs perfect. Some of the 
later models all loaded up with special features you never use. More useless 
features, more stuff to go wrong. This one, it's fully automatic, you got your 
radio, your A/C, and you're good to go. Change the oil every three thousand 
miles, gas up with regular unleaded, and you're laughin'. My friend, you are 
laughin."
Janson looked grateful as the salesman fleeced him, taking the late-model Altima 
in trade for the aging Taurus and asking for an additional four hundred dollars 
on top. "A sweet deal," Jed Sipperly assured him. "I just have a weakness for an 
Altima, kinda like Butch and his Raggedy Ann. It's irrational, but love's not a 
thing to reason about, is it? You come in with one of those, of course I'm gonna 
let you waltz off with the nicest car on the lot. And anybody else would say, 
'Jed, you're crazy. That piece of Jap tin ain't worth the hubcap on that 
Taurus.' Well, maybe it is crazy." An exaggerated wink: "Let's do this deal 
before I change my mind. Or sober up!"
"Appreciate your candor," Janson said.
"Tell you what," the salesman said, signing a receipt with a flourish, "you give 
me another fiver and you can have the damn dog in with it!" A long-suffering 
laugh: "Or maybe I should pay you to take it off my hands."
Janson smiled, waved, and as he got into the seven-year-old Taurus heard the 
sibilant hiss of another screwtop Budweiser being opened—this time in 
celebration.


The doubts Janson had as he traveled intensified upon his arrival. The area 
around Millington was down-and-out, struggling and charmless. It simply did not 
feel like an area that a billionaire would have chosen for a country retreat.
There were other towns—like Little Washington, off 211, farther north—where the 
soul-destroying work of entertaining tourists had overtaken whatever local 
economy had been left. Those were museum towns, in effect—towns whose white 
shingled barns were crammed with doubly marked-up Colonial Homestead china and 
"authentic" milk-glass salt-shakers and "regional" beeswax candles crated in 
from a factory in Trenton. Farms were converted into overpriced eateries; 
daughters of woodworkers and pipefitters and farmers—those who sought to stay, 
anyway—laced themselves into frilly "colonial"-style costumes and practiced 
saying, "My name is Linda and I'll be your waitress this evening." The locals 
greeted visitors with manufactured warmth and the wide smile of avarice. What 
kin ah do you for?
That green tide of tourism had never reached Millington. It didn't take Janson 
long to size up the place. Though scarcely more than a village, it was somehow 
too real to be picturesque. Perched on a rocky slope of Smith Mountain, it 
regarded the natural world as something to be overcome, not packaged and sold 
for its aesthetic value. There were no bed-and-breakfasts in the vicinity. The 
nearest motels were utilitarian, boxy affiliates of downscale national chains, 
run by hardworking immigrants from the Indian subcontinent: they did just fine 
by truck drivers who wanted to crash for the night, but had little appeal for 
businessmen in search of "conference center" facilities. It was a town that was 
dark by ten o'clock, at which point the only lights you could see came from 
dozens of miles down the valley, where the town of Montvale sparkled like a 
flashy, decadent metropolis. The biggest single employer was a former paper 
plant that now produced glazed bricks and did a side business in unrefined 
mineral byproducts; about a dozen men spent their working hours bagging potash. 
A smaller factory, a little farther out, specialized in decorative millwork. The 
downtown diner, at Main and Pemberton Streets, served eggs and home fries and 
coffee all day, and if you ordered all three, you got a free tomato or orange 
juice on the side, though it arrived in something little bigger than a shot 
glass. The gas station had an attached "foodmart" with racks of the same 
cellophane-wrapped snacks available everywhere else on the U.S. roadways. The 
mustard in the local grocery store came in two varieties, French's yellow or 
Gulden's brown: nothing coarse-grained or tarragon-infused burdened the 
condiment section of the chipped enameled shelves, no moutarde au poivre vert 
within township limits. Janson's kind of place.
Yet if the decades-old accounts were accurate, there was a vast estate hidden 
somewhere in the hills, as private a residence as you could hope for—legally as 
well as physically. For even its ownership was completely obscure. Was it really 
conceivable that "Novak"—the mirage who called himself that—was nearby? Janson's 
scalp tightened as he mulled the possibilities.
Later that morning, Janson entered the diner at the corner of Main and 
Pemberton, where he started a conversation with the counterman. The counterman's 
sloping forehead, close-set eyes, and jutting, square jaw gave him a slightly 
simian appearance, but when he spoke he proved surprisingly knowledgeable.
"So you're thinking of moving nearby?" The counterman splashed more coffee into 
Janson's cup from his Silex pot. "Let me guess. Made your money in the big city 
and now you want the peace and quiet of the country, that it?"
"Something like that," Janson said. Nailed to the wall behind the counter was a 
sign, white cursive lettering on black: Kenny's Coffee Shoppe—Where Quality & 
Service Rule.
"Sure you don't want someplace a little nearer to your high-class conveniences? 
There's a Realtor lady on Pemberton, but I'm not sure you'll find exactly the 
kind of house you're looking for around here."
"Thinking of building," Janson said. The coffee was acrid, having sat on the hot 
pad too long. He gazed absently at the Formica-topped counter, its pattern of 
loose-woven cloth worn to white in the middle of the counter, where the traffic 
of heavy plates and cutlery was heaviest.
"Sounds like fun. If'n you can afford to do something nice." The man's drugstore 
aftershave mingled unpleasantly with the heavy aroma of lard and butter.
"No point otherwise."
"Nope, no point otherwise," the counterman agreed. "My boy, you know, he had 
some dang-fool way he was going to get rich. Some dotcom thing. Was going to 
middleman some e-commerce gimcrackery. For months he was talking about his 
'business model,' and 'added value,' and 'frictionless e-commerce,' and 
flapdoodle like that. Said the thing about the New Economy was the 'death of 
distance' so that it didn't make no difference where you was. We was all just 
nodes on the World Wide Web, didn't matter whether you was in Millington or 
Roanoke or the goddamn Dulles corridor. He and a couple of friends from high 
school, it was. Burned through whatever was in their piggy banks by December, 
was back to shoveling driveways by January. What my wife calls a cautionary 
tale. She said, just be happy he wuddn't on drugs. I told her I wuddn't so sure 
about that. Not every drug is something you smoke, sniff, or shoot up. Money, or 
the craving for it, can be a drug just as surely."
"Getting money is one trick, spending it's another," Janson said. "Possible to 
build around here?"
"Possible to build on the moon, people say."
"What about transportation."
"Well, you're here, ain't you?"
"I guess I am."
"Roads here are in pretty good repair." The counterman's eyes were on a 
spectacle across the street. A young blond woman was washing the sidewalk in 
front of a hardware store; as she bent over, her cutoffs hitched a little higher 
up her thigh. No doubt the highlight of his day.
"Airport?" Janson asked.
"Nearest real airport's probably Roanoke."
Janson took a sip of coffee. It coated his tongue like oil. "'Real' airport? 
There another kind around here?"
"Naw. Well. There used to be, back in the forties and fifties. Some sort of tiny 
airport that the Army Air Force built. About three miles up Clangerton Road, a 
turnoff to the left. The idea is they were training pilots how to maneuver 
around the mountains in Romania, on the way to bombing the oil fields. So they 
did some practice flights hereabouts. Later on, some of the lumber guys used it 
for a while, but the lumber industry pretty near died off. I don't think it's 
much more than an airstrip anymore. You don't fly masonry if you can avoid 
it—you truck it."
"So what happened to that airstrip? Ever get used?"
"Ever? Never? I don't use those words." His gaze did not leave the blonde in the 
short cutoffs washing the sidewalk across the street.
"Reason I ask, you see, is an old business associate of mine, he lives near 
here, and said something about it."
The counterman looked uncomfortable. Janson pushed his empty coffee cup forward 
to be refilled, and the man pointedly did not do so. "Then you'd better ask him 
about it, hadn't you?" the man said, and his gaze returned to the vision of 
unattainable paradise across the street.
"Seems to me," Janson said, tucking a few bills beneath his saucer, "that you 
and your son both have an eye for the bottom line."
The town grocery store was just down the street. Janson stopped in and 
introduced himself to the manager, a bland-looking man with light brown hair in 
a modified mullet. Janson told him what he had told the man at the diner. The 
store manager evidently found the prospect of a new arrival lucrative enough 
that he was downright encouraging.
"That is a great idea, man," he said. "These hills—I mean, it's really beautiful 
here. And you get a few miles up the mountain and look around and it's totally 
unspoiled. Plus you got your hunting and your fishing and your … " He trailed 
off, seemingly unable to think of a third suitable item. He wasn't sure this man 
would be a regular at the bowling alley or take much interest in the video 
arcade recently installed next to the check-cashing joint. Safe bet they had 
those things in the cities, too.
"And for everyday stuff?" Janson prodded.
"We got a video store," he volunteered. "Laundromat. This store right here. I 
can do special orders, if you need 'em. Do that once in a while for regular 
customers."
"Have you, now?"
"Oh yeah. We got all kinds around here. There's one cat—we've never seen him, 
but he sends a guy down here every few days to pick up groceries. 
Superrich—gotta be. Owns a place somewhere up in the mountains, some kind of Lex 
Luthor hideaway, I like to think. People see a little plane touching down near 
there most every afternoon. But he still uses us for groceries. Ain't that a way 
to live? Get somebody else to do your shopping!"
"And you do special orders for this guy?"
"Oh for sure," the man said. "It's all real, real secure. Maybe he's Howard 
Hughes, afraid somebody going to poison him." He chuckled at the thought. 
"Whatever he wants, it's not a problem. I order it and a Sysco truck comes by 
and delivers it, and he has a guy come get it, he don't care what it costs."
"That right?"
"You bet. So, like I say, I'm happy to special-order whatever you like. And Mike 
Nugent at the video store, he'll do the same for you. It's not a problem. You're 
going to have a great time here. No place like it. Some of the kids can get a 
little rowdy. But basically it's as friendly as all get-out. You're gonna have a 
great time here once you settle in. My bet? You're never gonna leave."
A gray-haired woman at the refrigerated section was calling to him. "Keith? 
Keith, dear?"
The man excused himself, and went over to her.
"Is this sole fresh or frozen?" she was asking.
"It's fresh frozen," Keith explained.
As the two carried on an earnest conversation about whether the designation 
signified a way of being fresh or a way of being frozen, Janson wandered over to 
the far end of the grocery store. The stockroom door was open, and he stepped 
into it, casually. At a small metal desk was a stack of pale blue Sysco 
inventory lists. He flipped through them quickly until he reached one stamped 
special order. Toward the bottom of a long row of foodstuffs in small print, he 
saw a bold check, from the grocer's Sharpie marker. An order of buckwheat 
groats.
A few seconds elapsed before it clicked. Buckwheat groats—also known as kasha. 
Janson felt a stirring of excitement as thousands of column inches from 
newspaper and magazine profiles whirred through his head in a ribbon of light. 
Every day starts with a spartan breakfast of kasha … A homely detail found in 
dozens of them, along with the near obligatory references to his "bespoke 
wardrobe," "aristocratic bearing," "commanding gaze" … Such were the stock 
phrases and "colorful" details of feature writing. Every day starts with a 
spartan breakfast of kasha … 
It was true, then. Somewhere on Smith Mountain lived a man the world knew as 
Peter Novak.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
In the heart of midtown Manhattan, the bag lady stooped over the Bryant Park 
steel-mesh trash can with the diligent look of a postal worker at a mailbox. Her 
clothes, as was usual with derelicts, were torn and filthy and unseasonably 
heavy—the clothing had to be thick enough to ward off the cold of a night spent 
in an alleyway, and the warming rays of the sun would not impel her to strip off 
a single layer, for her clothes and her sack filled with bottles and tin cans 
were all she had to her name. At her wrists and ankles, grime-gray thermal 
underwear showed beneath fraying, soiled denim. Her shoes were oversize 
sneakers, the rubber soles beginning to split, the laces broken and tied 
together again, in floppy schoolgirl knots. Pulled down low on her forehead was 
a nylon-mesh baseball cap, promoting not a sports team but a once-high-flying 
Silicon Alley "incubator" fund that went under the year before. She clutched the 
grungy satchel as if it contained treasure. Her grip expressed the primal 
urgency of possession: This is what I have in this world. It is mine. It is me. 
Time for such as her was meted out by nights she escaped unmolested, by the cans 
and bottles she collected and traded in for nickels, by the small serendipities 
she encountered—the intact sandwich, still soft and protected by plastic wrap, 
untouched by rodents. On her hands were cotton gloves, now gray and sooty, which 
might once have been a debutante's, and as she rummaged through the plastic 
bottles and skeins of cellophane and apple cores and banana peels and crumpled 
advertising flyers, the gloves grew even dirtier.
Yet Jessica Kincaid's eyes were not, in fact, on the refuse; they returned 
regularly to the small mirror that she had propped against the trash can and 
that allowed her to monitor those arriving at and departing from the Liberty 
Foundation offices across the street. After days of a fruitless watch, Janson's 
confederate, Cornelius Eaves, had called last night excitedly: Marta Lang seemed 
finally to have made an appearance.
It was not a mistaken sighting, Jessie now knew. A woman matching Janson's 
detailed description of Deputy Director Marta Lang had been among the arrivals 
that morning: a Lincoln Town Car with darkened windows had dropped her off at 
eight in the morning. In the ensuing hours, there was no sign of her, yet 
Jessica could not risk leaving her post. Attired as she was, Jessica herself 
attracted almost no attention, for the city had long since trained itself not to 
notice such unfortunates in its midst. At intervals, she shuttled between two 
other wire trash baskets that shared a sight line to the office building on 
Fortieth Street, but always returned to the one nearest it. About midday, a 
couple of grounds maintenance people in the bright red outfits of the Bryant 
Park Business Improvement District had tried to shoo her away, but only 
halfheartedly: their minimum wages inspired no great exertions on the park's 
behalf. Later, a Senegalese street merchant with a folding stand and a portfolio 
of fake Rolexes tried to set up shop near her. Twice, she "accidentally" 
stumbled over his display, bringing it crashing to the ground. After the second 
time he decided to relocate his business, though not before hurling a few choice 
epithets at her in his native tongue.
It was nearly six when the elegant, white-haired woman appeared again, striding 
through the revolving door of the lobby, her face a mask of unconcern. As the 
woman stepped into the backseat of the long Lincoln Town Car and purred off 
toward the intersection at Fifth Avenue, Jessica memorized the license, plate. 
Quietly, she radioed Cornelius Eaves, whose vehicle—a yellow taxicab with its 
off duty lights on—had been idling in front of a hotel toward the other end of 
the block.
Eaves did not know the larger purpose of his assignment; he did know enough not 
to ask whether it was an officially sanctioned job. Jessica Kincaid, for her 
part, had been stinting with explanation. Were she and Janson pursuing a private 
vendetta? Had they been assigned to an ultra-secret project requiring the ad hoc 
enlistment of irregular talent? Eaves, who had been retired from active duty for 
a few years and was eager to have something to occupy his time, did not know. 
The only authorization he required was Janson's personal entreaty—and the look 
on the young woman's face: it was the limpid confidence of somebody who was 
doing what had to be done.
Diving into the backseat of Eaves's cab, Jessica yanked off her cap, wriggled 
out of her rags, and changed into ordinary street clothes: pressed chinos, a 
pastel-colored cotton sweater, penny loafers. She scrubbed the grime off her 
face with moist towelettes, fluffed her hair vigorously, and after a few minutes 
was at least vaguely presentable, which is to say, inconspicuous.
Ten minutes later, they had an address: 1060 Fifth Avenue was a handsome prewar 
apartment building, its limestone facade grown pearl gray from the city air. A 
discreet green awning stood before its entrance, which was not on the avenue but 
around the corner, on Eighty-ninth Street. She glanced at her watch.
All at once, her scalp prickled with apprehension. Her watch! She had worn it 
when she was on her observation post in Bryant Park! She knew that the 
Foundation's security guards would be alert to any anomalies, any discordant 
details. Hers was a slim Hamilton tank watch, which had once belonged to her 
mother. Would a bag lady wear such a watch? Anxiety burrowed deep within her as 
she pictured herself the way she had been, trying to figure out whether a guard 
equipped with binoculars might have dialed in on the glinting object on her 
wrist. She would have done so in their place. She had to assume that they would, 
too.
She flashed on the mental picture of her outstretched arms, foraging through the 
trash like a pauper archaeologist … She saw the image of her gloved hand, and 
then, overlapping it, the frayed cuff of the long-sleeved thermal undershirt. 
Yes—the sleeve length of the undershirt was several sizes too big for her: her 
wristwatch would have been entirely concealed by it. The knot in her stomach 
loosened slightly. No harm, no foul, right? Yet she knew it was precisely the 
kind of careless mistake they could ill afford.
"Take me around the block, Corn," she said. "Slowly."


Driving the maroon Taurus up the winding mountain path known as Clangerton Road, 
Janson found the unmarked turnoff that the counterman had mentioned. He 
continued a short distance past it, pulling the car as far off the road as 
possible, plunging it into a natural cave of greenery, behind shrubs and a stand 
of saplings. He did not know what to expect, but caution dictated that his 
arrival be as stealthy as he could manage.
He walked into the woods, a spongy bed of mulched pine needles and twigs beneath 
his feet, and doubled back toward the small lane he had driven past. The air was 
filled with the resinous scent of an old-growth pine forest, a scent that 
recalled nothing so much as the disinfectants and air fresheners that so 
insistently aped it. Much of the woodland seemed wholly untouched by human 
habitation, a roadside forest primeval. It was through such a forest that 
European settlers had journeyed four centuries earlier, establishing themselves 
on the virgin territory, making their way by flintlock, musket, knife, and 
barter with an aboriginal people who greatly outnumbered them and were 
infinitely wiser in the ways of the land. Such were the obscure origins of what 
would become the mightiest power on the planet. Today, the terrain was some of 
the most beautiful in the country, and the less it bore the evidence of those 
who lived there, he reflected, the more beautiful it seemed.
And then he found the airstrip.
It was a sudden clearing in the forest, and disturbingly well maintained: the 
bramble and bushes had been clipped back recently, and a long oval strip of 
grass was neatly trimmed. It was a void, empty except for an SUV with a 
tarpaulin over it. How the vehicle got there was a mystery, for there was no 
apparent means of access to the strip, save from the skies above.
The strip itself was admirably hidden by the dense growth of trees surrounding 
it. Still, those trees could serve Janson's own purposes, protecting him as he 
set up a one-man observation post.
He nested himself in the middle of an old pine tree, largely concealing himself 
behind its trunk and the profusion of its needle-laden fronds. He steadied his 
binoculars against a small branch, and waited.
And waited.
Hours chugged past, his only visitors the occasional mosquito and less 
occasional centipede.
Yet Janson was scarcely aware of the passage of time. He was in another place: 
the sniper's fugue. His mind, part of it, drifted through the zone of 
semiconscious thought, even as another module of consciousness remained at a 
state of acute awareness.
He was convinced that there would be a flight today, not only because of what 
the grocery-store manager had reported but because a command-and-control 
structure could not rely solely upon electronic transfers of information: 
packages, couriers, people, would all have to come in and out. Yet what if he 
was wrong and had been wasting the most valuable commodity of all—time?
He was not wrong. At first it was like the drone of an insect, but when it grew 
steadily louder, he knew that a plane was circling and slowing overhead for a 
landing. Every nerve, every muscle in his body strained for complete alertness.
The plane was a new Cessna, a 340 series twin-engine craft, and its pilot, as 
Janson could tell by the fluid grace with which it touched down and came to a 
stop, was an extremely skilled professional, not a country doctor playing crop 
duster. The pilot, dressed in a white uniform, emerged from the cockpit and 
folded down the hinged, six-step aluminum stairs. The sun glared off the shiny 
fuselage, obscuring Janson's vision. All he could make out was that a passenger 
was quickly ushered off the plane by a second assistant, this one in a blue 
uniform, and brought to the SUV. The assistant yanked the tarpaulin from the 
vehicle, revealing a Range Rover—armored, he surmised, from the way the body 
rode low on the chassis—and he held open the backseat for the passenger. Moments 
later, the 4X4 sped off.
Damn it! Janson strained intently through his scope to see who the passenger 
was, yet the glare of the sun and the car's darkened interior defeated his every 
attempt. Frustration welled up in him like mercury in an overheated thermometer. 
Who was it? "Peter Novak"? One of his lieutenants? It was impossible to say.
And then the car disappeared.
Where?
It was as if it had vanished into thin air. Janson slid from his perch and 
peered through his scope from a number of different vantage points before he 
finally saw what had happened. The lane, only just wide enough to allow passage 
of the vehicle, was carved into the woods at an oblique angle. The surrounding 
stand of trees thus rendered it invisible from most points. It was a brilliant 
feat of landscape design meant to go unnoticed and unappreciated. Now the 
Cessna's engines revved up, and the small plane turned around, taxied, and took 
flight.
As acrid fumes of fuel drifted through the woods, Janson set off toward the 
drive. It was about eight feet wide and was overhung by branches that were about 
six feet off the ground—just high enough to allow clearance for the armored 
Range Rover. The tree-sheltered drive was recently paved—a driver who knew the 
road could make good time—yet could not be seen even from overhead.
It would be an on-foot reconnaissance mission, then.
Janson's task was to follow the drive without walking on the drive; once again, 
he stayed parallel to it, ten yards away, lest he activate any surveillance or 
alarm equipment attached to the drive itself. It was a long walk, and soon a 
strenuous one. He bounded up razorback ridges, pushed through densely wooded 
patches, and across steep, eroded slopes. After twenty minutes, his muscles 
started to protest the strain but he never let his pace slacken. As he grabbed 
another branch for purchase, he was painfully reminded that his hands, once 
tougher than leather, had lost their calluses: too many years of tending to 
corporate clients. Pine sap stuck to his palm like glue; splinters of bark 
worked their way under his skin. As his exertions continued, heat blanketed his 
upper body and neck like a rash. He ignored it, keeping his attention focused on 
his next step. One foot in front of the other: that was the only way forward. At 
the same time, he tried to make his own movements as quiet as possible, 
preferring rocky outcroppings whenever possible to the crackle of the forest 
floor. The car was long gone, of course, and he already had a good notion of 
where the narrow drive would lead, but there was no substitute for direct 
observation. One foot in front of the other: soon his movements became 
automatic, and despite everything, his thoughts drifted.


One foot in front of the other.
The skeletal American bowed his head as he surrendered to his new captors. Word 
of the POW's escape had obviously made it into the surrounding countryside, for 
the Montagnards and other villagers knew just who he was and where he was to be 
returned.
He had fought his way through the thick jungle for two full days, straining the 
very fiber of his existence, and for what? So near and yet so far. For now it 
would begin all over again, but worse: to the compound's commander, the escape 
of a prisoner meant a loss of face. The officer would pummel him with bare hands 
until he had spent his fury. Whether Janson survived the encounter at all 
depended entirely on how energetic the commander happened to be feeling. Janson 
began to succumb to a vortex of despair, pulling him down like a powerful 
riverine current.
No! Not after all he had endured. Not while Demarest still lived. He would not 
cede him that victory.
Two VCs were marching Janson at gunpoint along a muddy path, one in front of 
him, one behind him, taking no chances. Villagers had gawked at him, perhaps 
wondering how someone so wasted, so gaunt, could still move. He wondered that 
himself. But he could not know the limits of his strength until he reached 
beyond those limits.
Perhaps he would not have rebelled if the VC behind him hadn't reached over and 
cuffed him around the neck, exasperated by his slow pace. It seemed the final 
indignity, and Janson snapped—he let himself snap, and let his trained instincts 
take over. Your mind does not have a mind of its own, Demarest had told them in 
their training days, and he meant to emphasize the ways in which they had to 
exert control over their own consciousness. Yet after sufficient training, 
learned reflexes took on the ingrained nature of basic instinct, joining the 
ropy fiber of one's being.
Janson turned around, his feet gliding along the path as if on ice, and cocked 
his hip to the right without turning his right shoulder, which would have 
alerted the guard to what was about to happen: an explosive lunge punch with the 
fingers of his hand tensed and straight, his thumb tucked down and close to his 
palm. The spear hand plunged into the guard's throat, smashing the cartilage of 
his trachea and whipping his head back. Then Janson glanced over his shoulder at 
the other guard, and gained strength from the man's expression of fear and 
dismay. He directed a powerful rear snap-kick toward his groin, hammering his 
heel up and back; the blow's strength came from its speed, and the guard's 
attempt to rush toward him made it twice as effective. Now, as the front guard 
doubled over, Janson followed with an arcing round kick, whipping into the side 
of his exposed head. As his foot connected to the man's skull, jolting vibration 
traveled up his leg, and he wondered briefly whether he had fractured one of his 
own bones. In truth, he was past caring. Now he grabbed the AK-47 that had been 
held by the VC behind him, and used it as a cudgel, beating the still-sprawled 
soldier until he lay limp.
"Xin loi," he grunted. Sorry about that.
He scrambled off, into the jungle and toward the next swell of land. He would 
struggle on until he reached the shore. This time he was not alone: he had a 
submachine gun, its buttstock slick with another man's blood. He would 
persevere, one foot in front of the other, and whoever tried to stop him he 
would kill. For his enemies there would be no mercy, only death.
And he would not be sorry about that.


One foot in front of the other.
Another hour passed before Janson climbed up the last rocky ledge and saw the 
Smith Mountain estate. Yes, it was what he had expected to find, yet the sight 
of it took his breath away.
It was a sudden plateau—encompassing perhaps a thousand acres of rolled Kentucky 
bluegrass, as emerald as golf-course turf. He got out his binoculars again. The 
land dipped a little from the ledge where Janson found himself, and extended in 
a series of ridges that lapped against the sheer stone face of the mountain's 
summit.
He saw what Maurice Hempel had seen, recognized what had made it irresistible to 
someone who was as reclusive as he was rich.
Tucked away, nearly inaccessible by ordinary means, was a brilliantly shimmering 
mansion, more compact than the Biltmore estate and yet, he could see, just as 
artfully designed. It was, however, the perimeter defenses that inspired 
Janson's awe. As if the natural impediments surrounding the site were not 
sufficient, a high-tech obstacle course made the house resistant to any form of 
intrusion.
Straight ahead of him was a nine-foot chain-link fence, and no ordinary one. The 
simple existence of the object would discourage the casual hikers. Yet Janson 
could also see the cunning array of pressure detectors built into the fence: it 
would repel even a highly skilled burglar. Tensioned wire threaded its way 
through the chain links, connecting to a series of boxes. Here were two systems 
in one: a taut wire intrusion-detection system reinforced with vibration 
detectors. His heart plummeted; fences equipped with vibration detectors alone 
could often be penetrated with a pair of nippers and a little patience. The 
taut-wire system made that approach impossible.
Beyond the chain-link barricade, he saw a series of stanchions. These were, at 
first glance, four-foot-high poles with nothing between them. A closer look 
revealed them for what they were. Each received and transmitted a microwave 
flux. In simpler systems, it was possible to clamp a rod on top of a pole and 
simply climb over it, dodging the invisible beams. Unfortunately, these were 
staggered, with overlapping beams that protected the stanchions themselves. 
There was simply no physical way to avoid the microwave flux.
And in the grassy fairway beyond the stanchions? There were no visible 
impediments, and Janson scanned the grounds until, with a sharp pang, he 
identified the small box near the graveled driveway with the logo of TriStar 
Security on it. There, beneath the ground, was the most formidable obstacle of 
all: a buried-cable pressure sensor. It could not be bypassed; it could not be 
reached. Even if he somehow surmounted the other obstacles, the pressure sensors 
would remain.
Infiltration was surely impossible. Logic told him as much. He put down his 
binoculars, rolled back over the rocky ledge, and sat there in silence for a 
long moment. A wave of resignation and despair overcame him. So near and yet so 
far.
It was almost dusk by the time he found his way back to the maroon Taurus. His 
clothing flecked with bits of leaves and many small burrs, he drove back toward 
Millington and then north on Route 58, keeping a vigilant eye on the rearview 
mirror.
With the little time he had left, he had to make a number of stops, a number of 
acquisitions. At a roadside flea market, he bought an electric eggbeater, though 
all he wanted was the solenoid motor. A strip-mall Radio Shack sufficed for a 
cheap cell phone and a few inexpensive add-ons. At the Millington grocery store, 
he bought a large round container of butter cookies, though all he wanted was 
the steel can. Next was the hardware store on Main Street, where he bought glue, 
a canister of artist's powdered charcoal, a roll of electrical tape, a pair of 
heavy-duty scissors, a compressed-air atomizer, and a locking extensible curtain 
rod. "A handyman, are you?" asked the blonde in denim cutoffs as she rang up his 
purchase. "My kinda guy." She gave him an inviting smile. He could imagine the 
counterman across the street glowering.
His final stop was farther down Route 58, and he arrived at Sipperly's car lot 
just shortly before it closed. From his face, he could tell the salesman was not 
pleased to see him. The big mutt's ears pricked up, but when he saw who it was, 
he returned his attentions to his saliva-slick rag doll.
Sipperly took a long drag on a cigarette and walked toward Janson. "You know all 
sales are 'as is,' don't you?" he said warily.
Janson took five dollars out of his billfold. "For the dog," he said.
"Come again?"
"You said I could have the dog for a fiver," Janson said. "Here's a fiver."
Sipperly laughed wheezily, then he saw that Janson was serious. An avaricious 
look crept over his fleshy features. "Well, joking aside, I'm really very fond 
of that dog," he recovered. "He's truly one-of-a-kind. Excellent guard dog … "
Janson glanced at the large animal, his muddy coat of black and tan, his short, 
blunt snout and the curved incisor that jutted outside his lips when his mouth 
was closed, bulldog-style. A homely creature, at best.
"Except he doesn't bark," Janson pointed out.
"Well, sure, he's a little reluctant in that department. But he's really a great 
dog. I don't know if I could part with him. I'm kind of a sentimental guy."
"Fifty."
"A hundred."
"Seventy-five."
"Sold," Jed Sipperly said, with another beery grin. "As is. Just remember that. 
As is. And you'd better take that mangy filth-puppet along with it. The only way 
you'll ever get the beast in the car."
The mammoth dog sniffed Janson a few times before losing interest and, indeed, 
got into the vehicle only when Janson tossed the Raggedy Ann into his backseat. 
It was a tight fit for the enormous animal, but he did not complain.
"Thank you kindly," Janson said. "And, by the way, can you tell me where I can 
pick up a radar detector?"
"Now, you know those are illegal in the state of Virginia, don't you?" Sipperly 
said with mock severity.
Janson looked abashed.
"But if you're interested in a sweet deal on one of those babies, all I can say 
is, you asked the right guy." Sipperly had the grin of someone who knew it was 
his lucky day.
It was early evening before Janson returned to his motel room; and when he had 
finished assembling his equipment and loading it into a knapsack, the light had 
waned. By the time he set out, he and the dog had to walk by the moonglow. Sheer 
tension made the hike seem to go faster this time, despite the weight of the 
knapsack.
Just before Janson approached the final ridge, he removed the dog's collar, and 
scratched him affectionately about the head and neck. Then he scooped up a few 
handfuls of soil and smeared it around the dog's head and into his already muddy 
coat. The transformation was not subtle; the collarless dog now looked feral, a 
particularly large version of the mountain dogs that occasionally roamed the 
slopes. Next, Janson took the Raggedy Ann doll and flung it over the chain-link 
fence. As the dog ran after it, Janson stepped back into the dense stand of 
trees and watched what happened.
The huge dog lunged against the fence, fell back, and sprang forward again, 
crashing against the vibration sensors and the taut-wire system. They were 
designed to have a sensitivity threshold that would prevent them from being 
triggered by a gust of wind or a scampering squirrel; the banging of the 
enormous canine was far above that threshold. With an electronic chirp, both 
systems registered the presence of an intruder, and a row of blue diodes lit up, 
marking out the segment of the fence.
Janson heard the motorized pivot of a closed-circuit videocamera mounted on a 
high pole within the grounds; it was swiveling toward the disturbance. A cluster 
of lights mounted over the camera blinked on, directing a blindingly intense 
halogen blaze toward the section of the fence where Butch was launching his 
repeated assaults. Even sheltered by the trees, Janson found the light searingly 
bright, like multiple suns. Time from initial trigger to camera response: four 
seconds. Janson had to admire the efficiency of the intrusion-detection system.
Meanwhile, the bewildered canine leaped onto the fence, his front paws grabbing 
hold of the wire links: nothing mattered to him but his rag doll. As Janson's 
eyes adjusted, he could see the camera's lens elongate. It seemed that the 
camera was operated remotely from within one of the guard stations; having 
pinpointed the intruder, its operators could zoom in and make a determination.
That determination did not take long. The halogen light was switched off, the 
camera swiveled back to its center position, turned away from the fence and 
toward the gravel driveway, and the blue diodes of the section went black.
Janson heard the springy, clattering noise of the dog lunging once more against 
the chain-link fence: Butch making another go at it. Did he think he would 
retrieve the doll this way? Was he, in some canine fashion, trying to show the 
doll how much he cared? The brute's psychology was opaque; what mattered to 
Janson was that his behavior was predictable.
As was the behavior of those who operated the perimeter security systems. The 
great virtue of the multimillion-dollar system was that it obviated the need to 
send a guard out in a case like this. You could make a thorough inspection 
remotely. This time, as the dog sprang against the fence, no diodes illuminated. 
The segment was deactivated, the siege of false alarms forestalled. Janson knew 
what conclusions had been reached at the guard stations. No doubt the feral 
creature was chasing a squirrel or a groundhog; no doubt its enthusiasm would 
soon pass.
Now, as Butch crouched for another lunge at the chain-link fence, Janson threw 
his knapsack over it and started to run toward the barrier himself. When he was 
just a few yards away, he sprang up into the air, as the dog had. He caught the 
fence with the ball of his foot, flattening it against the vertical as far as he 
could. With his other foot, he pressed the toe of his boot into one of the 
links, and grabbed onto the fence with both hands. Moving hands and feet in 
tandem, he swiftly propelled himself toward the top of the fence, which bristled 
with sharp, pointed spikes. The way to get over, Janson knew, was to overshoot 
it, keeping his center of gravity above the fence top before he climbed over: to 
achieve this, he imagined that the fence was a foot or so taller than it 
actually was, and flung himself over that imaginary point. Maneuvering upside 
down, briefly, he placed all his fingers into one of the diamonds of the chain 
links. Then he torqued his body over the fence, pivoting on his clawlike grip. 
With a flip-twist, Janson righted himself and tumbled to the grass.
There was something soft beneath him as he landed. The rag doll. Janson tossed 
it back over the fence; the dog gently picked it up with his mouth and crept 
away somewhere behind the tree line.
A few moments later, he heard the motorized sound of the camera hood 
repositioning itself, and once again the halogen floodlights blazed.
Was the camera aimed at him? Had he unwittingly tripped some other alarm system?
Janson knew that no buried-cable pressure sensor could be used within fifteen 
feet of a chain-link fence; the ordinary wind sway of such a large metallic 
object would produce too great a perturbation in the electromagnetic detection 
field.
He flattened himself on the ground, his heart thudding slowly. In the dark, his 
black clothing was protective. Against the powerful beams of light, however, it 
might help pick him out from the pale gravel and bright green grass. As his eyes 
began to adjust to the spill of light, he realized that he was not its target. 
From the play of shadows, it seemed clear that it was aimed, once more, at the 
segment of fence he had already surmounted. The guards were double-checking the 
integrity of the barricade before reactivating the segment. Four seconds later, 
the blazing light was extinguished, and the darkness returned, along with a 
sense of relief. Faintly blinking blue diodes indicated that the vibration 
sensors were back online.
Now Janson made his way toward the stanchions. He looked at their configuration 
once more and felt disheartened. He recognized the model, and knew it was a 
state-of-the-art microwave protection system. Mounted on each sturdy pole 
beneath an aluminum hood was a dielectric transmitter and a receiver; a 15 GHz 
signal was set to one of several selectable AM signal patterns. The system could 
analyze the signature of any interference—inferring size, density, and speed—and 
feed it into the multiplex communications modules of the system's central net.
The bistatic sensors were staggered, as he had noticed earlier, so that the 
beams doubled over each other. You could not make use of one of the stanchions 
to climb over the flux, because the flux was doubled where the stanchions stood: 
climbing over one field, you would merely land in the middle of the second 
field.
Janson looked back to the barricade fence. If he triggered the microwave 
barrier—and there was an excellent chance that he would—he would have to 
scramble over the fence before the guards appeared and shooting began. And he 
would be moving in the glare of the quadruple halogen flood, a device that not 
only illuminated an intruder sharply for the camera but also, by its very 
brightness, would tend to blind and so immobilize him. If retreat were 
necessary, he would retreat: but it would be only a little less risky than 
proceeding.
Janson unzipped his knapsack and removed the police radar detector. It was a 
Phantom II, a high-end model meant for motorists who liked to speed and didn't 
like speeding tickets. What made it so effective was that it was both a detector 
and a jammer, aiming to make a motorist's car "invisible" to speed-detecting 
equipment. It worked by detecting the signal and bouncing it back toward the 
radar gun. Janson had removed its plastic casing, shortened the nub of its 
antenna, and installed an additional capacitor, thus shifting its 
radio-frequency spectrum to the microwave bandwidth. Now he used duct tape to 
fasten the device near the end of the long telescoping steel rod. If it worked 
as he hoped, he would be able to exploit an inherent design feature of all 
outdoor security systems: the necessary tolerance for wildlife and weather. A 
security system was useless if it regularly issued false alarms. Outdoor 
microwave systems always used signal processing to distinguish human intruders 
from the thousand other things that could cause anomalies in the signal—a branch 
tumbling in the wind, a scampering animal.
Still, he was taking a stomach-plunging gamble. In less exigent circumstances, 
he would have field-tested his hypothesis before staking his life on it.
One more time, he studied the configuration of the stanchions. The bistatic 
sensors could be placed as far as seven hundred feet away from each other. These 
were merely a hundred feet away—a spare-no-expenses approach that must have 
gladdened whoever had been paid to install the system. And yet the proximity of 
the sensors was another factor in Janson's favor. The farther apart they were, 
the broader the coverage pattern between them. At 250 yards, the coverage 
pattern would swell to an oval that reached, at the midpoint between the two 
sensors, a width of forty feet. At thirty yards, the coverage pattern would be 
tighter and more narrowly focused, no wider than seven feet. That was one of the 
things that Janson was counting on.
As he had expected, the poles along the second, staggered tier beamed to the 
alternating pole in the tier closer to him, and vice versa. The point where the 
two beams intersected, accordingly, was the narrowest possible area of coverage. 
One stanchion was three feet to the left and two feet behind the other pole; 
thirty yards to either side, the pattern was repeated. In his head, he drew an 
imaginary line connecting the pair of adjacent stanchions, then the imaginary 
line connecting the next pair. Midway between those two parallel lines would be 
the point where the area of coverage was at its minimum. Janson moved toward 
that point, or where he intuitively estimated it to be. Holding the steel rod, 
he moved the Phantom II toward that spot. The system would have instantly 
detected the appearance of an object, but it would also immediately determine 
that the waveform patterns did not correspond to that of any human intrusion. It 
would remain quiet and undisturbed—until Janson himself tried to cross. And that 
would be the moment of truth.
Would the radar scrambler confuse the signal receivers, preventing them from 
registering the presence of the very human intruder that was Paul Janson?
He couldn't even be sure that the Phantom II was working. As a precaution, 
Janson had disabled its displays; there would be no reassuring red light 
indicating that it was mirroring the signals it received. He would have to 
proceed on faith. He kept the Phantom II steadily in position, moving himself 
down the pole, hand over hand, keeping it aloft without shifting its position. 
Then he rotated the rod and continued to back away from the microwave barrier.
And … he was through.
He was through.
He was a safe distance on the other side. Which was not a safe place to be at 
all.
As Janson walked toward the gently sloping fairway toward the mansion, he felt 
the hairs on the back of his neck bristling, conscious on some animal level that 
the greatest risks lay ahead.
He looked at the dimly illuminated LCD display of his black Teltek voltmeter, 
holding it in cupped hands. It wasn't field-caliber equipment, but it would do.
Nothing. No activity.
He traveled another ten feet. The digits began to climb; he took another step, 
and they surged.
He was approaching the subterranean pressure sensors. Though the voltmeter 
indicated that the buried cable itself was still a ways off, he knew that the 
electromagnetic flux of TriStar's buried-cable sensors created a detection field 
that was more than six feet wide.
The rate of increase in the voltmeter's display suggested that he was nearing 
the active field. Nine inches beneath the sod, the "leaky" coaxial cable was 
designed to have gaps in the outer conductor, allowing an electromagnetic flux 
to escape and be detected by a parallel receiving cable that ran in the same 
jacket. The result was a volumetric detection field around the coaxial cable, 
about one foot high and six feet wide. Still, as with other outdoor 
intrusion-detection systems, microprocessors were tasked with distinguishing one 
kind of disturbance from another. A twenty-pound animal would not trigger an 
alarm; an eighty-pound boy would. Intruder speeds, too, could be detected and 
interpreted. Snow, hail, gusting leaves, temperature changes—all could alter the 
flux. But the brains of the system would filter out such noise.
Unlike a microwave system, it could not be spoofed. The buried cables were 
inaccessible, and the TriStar system had redundant tamper protection, so any 
interruption of its circuits would itself be detected and prompt an alarm 
response. There was only one way through it.
And that was over it.
Janson retrieved the telescoping rod and, twisting the segments 
counterclockwise, locked it in its fully extended position. He walked some ways 
back toward the microwave poles and, keeping the rod extended in his hands, 
raced toward the buried sensor cables, imagining the invisible six-foot-wide 
band to be a physical barrier.
He held the pole as he ran, then plunged the end of it in the ground, just above 
where he believed the cable to be buried. Now: a step and drive. He swung his 
right knee up and forward and jumped, swinging upward with his hips as he held 
on to the pole. If all went well, his momentum would carry him, and he would 
land a safe distance from the cable. It need not be a soaring, athletic pole 
vault, but a broad jump; it was merely necessary to keep his body several feet 
in the air. The volumetric detector would have been alerted only to the thin 
pole twitching in the ground—nothing even approaching the volume, or flux 
disturbance patterns, consistent with a human being. Now, as he kept his eyes on 
the area of grass where he hoped to land, a comfortable distance from the buried 
sensor cable, he suddenly felt the metal rod buckling under his weight.
Oh dear God, no!
In mid-arch, the rod collapsed and Janson tumbled heavily to the ground, just a 
few feet from where he'd estimated the coaxial to lie.
He was too close!
Or was he? It was impossible to be sure, and the sheer uncertainty was the most 
nerve-racking thing of all.
A cold sweat formed on his skin almost instantly as he rolled out of the zone. 
Any moment now he would know if he had triggered the pressure sensors. The 
floodlights would blaze; the camera would pivot. And then, as his visage came 
into focus, a team of heavily armed guards would rush to the site. The 
barricades and alarm systems to every side would make his chance for escape 
essentially nil.
With bated breath, he waited, feeling relief budding with each passing second. 
Nothing. He had cleared it. All three perimeter security systems were now behind 
him.
Now he stood and looked up at the mansion that loomed before him. Up close, it 
was breathtaking in its grandeur. To either side of the main house were vast 
conical turrets; the exterior of the mansion was fashioned from Briar Hill 
sandstone. The roof was trimmed with an intricate balustrade and topped with a 
smaller one. The place was an eclectic display of architectural bombast. Yet did 
it count as ostentation if nobody could see it?
The windows were dark except for a dim glow of what might be standard nighttime 
illumination; were its inhabitants in the back rooms? It seemed too early for 
anyone to be asleep. Something about the setup bothered Janson, but he could not 
say why, and it was no time for turning around.
Now he crept to the left side of the building and over to a narrow side 
entrance.
Mounted in the stone near the dark, ornately incised door was a discreet 
electrostatic touch screen, of the kind used by ATMs. If the right numbers were 
pressed, the entrance alarm would be deactivated. Janson withdrew the small 
compressed-air atomizer from his knapsack and directed a jet of finely powdered 
charcoal at the pad. If everything went well, it would alight on fingerprints, 
and by the pattern he would be able to tell which digits the alarm code used; 
depending on how light or heavy the oils were, he could make a good guess as to 
their relative frequency.
A dead end. No pattern was revealed at all. As he had feared, the alarm pad 
employed a scrambled video display: the numerals were displayed in a random 
order, never in the same sequence twice.
He cleared his head. So close and yet so … No, he was not down for the count. 
Deactivating the alarm would have been enormously helpful, but he had not 
exhausted his backup plans. The door was alarmed. Accept it. If the alarm system 
did not detect that it had been opened, however, it would not go off. With the 
help of a penlight, Janson scanned the dark-stained door until he saw the tiny 
screws on the topmost section: evidence of the contact switch. Within the door 
frame, the contacts of a ferrous-metal switch were kept together—the circuit was 
kept closed—by a magnet recessed in the top of the door. As long as the door was 
shut, the magnet would keep a plunger within the door frame depressed, 
completing the electric circuit within the switch unit. Janson withdrew a 
powerful magnet from his knapsack and, using a fast-drying cyanoacrylate 
adhesive, fastened it to the lower part of the door frame.
Then he went to work on the door lock. More bad news: there was no keyhole. The 
door was opened by means of a magnetic card. Could the door simply be forced? 
No: he had to assume a heavy steel grid inside the wooden door and a multiple 
door-frame-bolt locking system. You had to ask a door like that to open. Unless 
you meant to take down part of the building, you couldn't force it to.
It was an eventuality he had prepared for; but again, with his rough-and-ready 
tools, the chances of success were far less than with the kind of instruments he 
was accustomed to having at his disposal. Certainly, his magnetic picklock was 
not an impressive-looking piece of equipment, having been jury-rigged with 
electrical tape and epoxy. He had removed the core of the solenoid and replaced 
it with a steel rod. At the other end of the rod, he had attached a thin 
rectangle of steel, which he had cut from a tin of butter cookies using 
heavy-duty scissors. The electronic part—a random noise generator—was a simple 
circuit of transistors he had extracted from a Radio Shack cell phone. Once he 
connected a pair of AA batteries to the apparatus, a quickly oscillating 
magnetic field was created: it was designed to pulse at the sensors until they 
were activated.
Janson inserted the metal rectangle in the slot and waited. Slow seconds ticked 
by.
Nothing.
Swallowing a gorge of frustration, he checked the battery contacts and 
reinserted the metal card. More long seconds ticked by—and suddenly he heard the 
click of the lock's own solenoid being activated. The door's bolts and latches 
were swiftly retracted.
He let out his breath slowly, and opened the door.
As long as the house was occupied, any internal photoelectric alarms would be 
deactivated. If he'd guessed wrong, it wouldn't take long to find out. Janson 
quietly closed the door behind him and, in the gloom, proceeded down a long 
hall.
After a few hundred feet, he saw a crack of light. It was seeping beneath a 
paneled door to his left.
On examination, it appeared to be a simple swing door, unlocked and unalarmed. 
What kind of lair was this? Was it an office? A conference room?
Fear slithered through his bowels. Every animal instinct he had was signaling 
frantically.
Something was wrong.
Yet he could not turn back now, whatever the risks. He removed his pistol from a 
bellyband holster beneath his tunic and, holding it before him, strode into the 
room.
To eyes that had adjusted to the gloom, the space was dazzlingly bright, 
illuminated by floor lamps and desk lamps and a chandelier overhead—and Janson 
squinted involuntarily as an even deeper sense of dread came over him.
His eyes swept the room. He was in the middle of a magnificent drawing room, a 
textural array of damask and leather and richly burnished antique woods. And in 
the middle of it, eight men and women were seated, facing him.
Janson felt the blood drain from his face.
They had been waiting for him.
"What the heck took you so long, Mr. Janson?" The question was asked with a 
practiced show of affability. "Collins here told me you'd make it here by eight 
o'clock. It's practically half past."
Janson blinked hard at his questioner, but the evidence of his eyes remained 
unchanged.
He was staring at the President of the United States.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The President of the United States. The director of Consular Operations. And the 
others?
Janson felt flash frozen by the shock. As he stood rooted to the spot, his mind 
struggled fiercely with itself.
It couldn't be. And yet it was.
Men in suits and ties had been waiting for him in the luxurious mansion, and 
Janson recognized most of them. There was the secretary of state, a hale man 
looking less hale than usual. The U.S. Treasury Department's undersecretary for 
international affairs, a plump, Princeton-trained economist. The sallow-faced 
chairman of the National Intelligence Council. The deputy director of the 
Defense Intelligence Agency, a burly man with a perpetual five o'clock shadow. 
There were also a few colorless but nervous-looking technicians: he knew the 
type immediately.
"Have a seat, Paul." Yes, it was Derek Collins, his slate eyes cool behind his 
chunky black plastic glasses. "Make yourself at home." He gestured around him 
wryly. "If you can call this a home."
The room was both spacious and ornate, paneled and plastered in the 
seventeenth-century English style; burnished mahogany walls gleamed beneath a 
fine crystal chandelier. The floor marquetry was in an intricate pattern of 
lighter and darker woods, oak and ebony.
"Apologies for the programmed misdirection, Paul," Collins went on.
Programmed misdirection?
"The courier was on your payroll," Janson said, toneless.
Collins nodded. "We'd had the same thought as you about getting access to the 
incoming documents. As soon as he reported your contact, we knew we had a golden 
opportunity. Look, you weren't exactly going to respond to an engraved 
invitation. It was the only way I could bring you in."
"Bring me in?" Indignation choked off the words in his throat.
Glances were exchanged between Collins and the president. "And it was the best 
way to show these other good people that you still have what it takes," Collins 
said. "Demonstrate that your abilities live up to your reputation. Hot damn, 
that was one impressive infiltration. And before you get all hurt and sulky, you 
better understand that the people in this room are pretty much the only ones 
left who know the truth about Mobius. For better or worse, you're now a member 
of this select group. Which means we've got an Uncle Sam Wants You situation 
here."
"Goddamn you, Collins!" He reholstered his pistol and put his hands on his hips. 
Fury coursed through him.
The president cleared his throat. "Mr. Janson, we really are depending on you."
"With all respect, sir," he said, "I've had enough of the lies."
"Watch it, Paul," Collins interjected.
"Mr. Janson?" The president was looking into his eyes with his famous high-beam 
gaze, the kind that could be equally mournful or amused. "Lies are pretty much 
the first language for most folks in Washington. You'll get no argument from me. 
There are lies and, yes, there will continue to be lies, because the good of the 
country requires it. But I want you to understand something. You're inside a 
top-secret ultrasecure federal facility. No tape, no log, no nothing. What does 
that mean? It means we're at a place where we can all open our kimonos, and 
that's exactly what we're going to do. This meeting has no official status 
whatsoever. It never happened. I'm not here, you're not here. That's the 
sheltering lie, the lie that's going to make all the truth-telling possible. 
Because here and now, it's all about telling the truth—to you and to ourselves. 
Nobody's going to shine you on. But it's dead urgent that you get briefed on the 
situation with the Mobius Program."
"The Mobius Program," Janson said. "I've already been briefed. The world's 
greatest philanthropist and humanitarian, this one-man roving ambassador, the 
'peacemaker'—he's a goddamn fiction, brought to you by your friends in 
Washington. This latter-day saint is a wholesale creation of … what? A task 
force of planners."
"Saint?" the National Intelligence Council chairman interrupted. "There's no 
religious valence here. We were always careful to avoid anything like that."
"Praise the Lord." Janson's voice was icy.
"I'm afraid there's a lot more going on than you know," offered the secretary of 
state. "And given that it's the most explosive secret in the history of the 
republic, you'll understand if we've been a little skittish."
"I'll give you the log line," the president said. It was clear that he was 
chairing the meeting; a man used to command did not have to make a show of his 
authority. "Our creature has become—well, not our creature anymore. We've lost 
control of the asset."
"Paul?" Collins said. "Really, have a seat. This is going to take a while."
Janson lowered himself into a nearby armchair. The tension in the room was 
palpable.
President Berquist's gaze drifted to the window, which gave a view of the 
gardens in the rear of the estate. In the moonlight, it was possible to make out 
the Italian-style formal garden, a rectilinear maze of clipped yew and box 
hedges. "To quote one of my predecessors," he said, "we made him a god when we 
didn't own the heavens." He glanced at Douglas Albright, the man from the 
Defense Intelligence Agency. "Doug, why don't you start?"
"I gather that you've already had the origins of the program explained to you. 
So you know that we had three extremely dedicated agents who were trained to 
play the role of Peter Novak. The redundancy was necessary."
"Right, right. Too much of an investment had gone into this to have your Daddy 
Warbucks hit by a taxicab," Janson said acidly. "What about the wife, though?"
"Another American agent," the DIA man said. "She went under the knife, too, in 
case she ever encountered anyone who might have known her from the old days."
"Remember Nell Pearson?" Collins said quietly.
Janson was thunderstruck. No wonder there was something about Novak's wife that 
seemed eerily familiar. His affair with Nell Pearson was brief but memorable. It 
had taken place a couple of years after he joined Consular Operations; like him, 
his fellow agent was single, young, and restless. They had both been working 
undercover in Belfast, assigned to play husband and wife. It didn't take much 
for them to add an element of reality to the imposture. The affair had been 
torrid, electric, more an emanation of the body than of the heart. It seized 
them like a fever, and it proved as evanescent as a fever. Yet something about 
her had obviously stayed with him. Those long elegant fingers: the one thing 
that could not be altered. And the eyes: there had been something between them, 
had there not? Some frisson, even in Amsterdam?
Janson shuddered, imagining the woman he knew being reshaped, irreversibly, by 
the cold steel edge of a surgeon's #2 scalpel. "But what do you mean you've lost 
control?" he persisted.
There was an awkward moment of silence before the Treasury Department's 
undersecretary for international affairs spoke. "Start with the operational 
challenge: how do you secure the vast funding necessary to sustain the illusion 
of a world-class tycoon-philanthropist? Needless to say, the Mobius Program 
couldn't simply divert funds from a closely monitored U.S. intelligence budget. 
Seed money could be provided, but nothing more. So the program drew upon our 
intelligence capabilities to create its own fund. We put to use our take from 
signals intercepts … "
"Jesus Christ—you're talking about Echelon!" Janson said.
Echelon was a complex intelligence-gathering system comprising a fleet of 
low-earth-orbit satellites devoted to signals interception: every international 
phone call, every form of telecommunications that involved a satellite 
conduit—which was most of them—could be sampled, intercepted, by the orbiting 
spy fleet. Its mammoth download was fed into an assortment of collections and 
analysis facilities, all controlled by the National Security Agency. It had the 
capability of monitoring every form of international telephony. The NSA had 
repeatedly denied rumors that it used the signal intercepts for purposes other 
than national security, in its strictest sense. Yet here was the shocking 
admission that even the most conspiracy-minded skeptics didn't know the half of 
it.
The jowly Treasury undersecretary nodded somberly. "Echelon enabled us to gain 
sensitive, highly secret intelligence about central-bank decisions around the 
world. Was the Bundesbank going to devalue the deutsche mark? Was Malaysia going 
to prop up the ringgit? Had Ten Downing Street decided to let sterling take a 
tumble? How much would it be worth to know, even just a few days before? Our 
creation was armed with that inside information, because the choicest fruits of 
our intelligence were placed at his disposal. It was child's play. Through him 
we placed a few massive, highly leveraged currency bets. In rapid order, twenty 
million became twenty billion—and then much, much more. Here was a legendary 
financier. And nobody had to know that his brilliant intuition and instincts 
were in fact the result of—"
"The abuse of a U.S. government surveillance program," Janson said, cutting him 
off.
"Fair enough," President Berquist said soberly. "Fair enough. Needless to say, 
it was a program that was in place long before I took office. Through 
extraordinary measures, the Mobius Program had created a highly visible 
billionaire … yet we hadn't counted on the human factor—on the possibility that 
access and control to all that wealth and power might prove too great a lure to 
at least one of our agents."
"Don't you people ever learn?" Janson said, flaring. "The law of unintended 
consequences—you know it? It sure knows you." His eyes moved from face to face. 
"The history of American intelligence is littered with ingenious plans that 
leave the world worse off. Now we're talking about the 'human factor' as if 
there just hadn't been room for it on your goddamn spreadsheets." Janson turned 
to Collins. "I asked you, when we spoke earlier, who would agree to play such a 
role—to have his entire identity erased. What kind of man would do such a 
thing?"
"Yes," Collins said, "and I answered, 'Someone who had no choice.' The fact is, 
you know that someone. A man named Alan Demarest."
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
A chill ran through Janson's veins, and for a moment all he could see was the 
face of his former commanding officer. Alan Demarest. Nausea flooded him, and 
his head began to throb.
It was a lie!
Alan Demarest was dead. Executed by the state. Janson's knowledge of that 
ultimate requital was the only thing that made his memories endurable.
When Janson returned stateside, he filed the lengthy reports that, he had been 
assured, resulted in Demarest's arraignment. A secret military tribunal had been 
convened; a decision had been made at the highest levels: the national morale 
was deemed too vulnerable to permit the public airing of Demarest's activities, 
but justice would be served all the same. Janson's extensive sworn depositions 
had made the case open-and-shut. Demarest had been found guilty after just a few 
hours of deliberation, and was sentenced to death. The man whom one 
counterintelligence operative dubbed the "Mr. Kurtz of Khe Sanh" had been 
executed by a military firing squad. And Janson had watched.
Mesa Grande. In the foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains. The cloth circle 
in front of his heart—white, and then bright red.
As Janson stared wordlessly at Collins, he could feel a vein pulsing in his 
forehead.
"A man who had no choice," Collins said, implacably. "He was a brilliant, 
brilliant man—his mind an extraordinary instrument. He also, as you discovered, 
had decided flaws. So be it. We needed somebody with his capabilities, and his 
absolute loyalty to this country had never been questioned, even if his methods 
were."
"No," Janson said, and it came out as a whisper. He shook his head slowly. "No, 
it's impossible."
Collins shrugged. "Blanks, squibs. Basic stagecraft. We showed you what you 
thought you needed to see."
Janson tried to speak, but nothing came out.
"I'm sorry that you were lied to for all these years. You believed Demarest 
should have been court-martialed and executed for the things he did, and so you 
were told that he was, showed that he was. Your thirst for justice was totally 
understandable—but you weren't looking at the big picture, not as far as our 
counterintelligence planners were concerned. Material like that doesn't come 
along very often, not in our line of work. So a decision was made. Ultimately, 
it was a simple issue of human resources."
"Human resources," Janson repeated dully.
"You were lied to because that was the only way we could hold on to you. You 
were pretty spectacular material yourself. The only way you'd be able to put it 
behind you was to be confident that Demarest had suffered the ultimate 
punishment. So you were better off, and we were better off, too, because it 
meant that you could go on and do what God made you to do. Totally win-win. It 
just made sense every which way the planners looked at it. So Demarest was 
presented with a choice. He could face a tribunal, and the mountainous evidence 
that you had provided, and probably judicial execution. In the alternative, he 
essentially had to give his life to us. He would exist at the discretion of his 
controllers, his very life a revocable gift. He'd accept whatever tasks he was 
given because he had no choice. It all made him a very … singular asset."
"Demarest—alive." It was a struggle to get out the words. "You recruited him for 
the job?"
"The way he recruited you."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Probably 'recruit' is too gentle a word," Collins said.
The DIA man spoke up. "The logic of the assignment was unassailable."
"Damn you!" Janson cried out. He saw it all now. Demarest had been the first 
Peter Novak: primus inter pares. The others would be matched to the frame of his 
body. He had been the first because of his redoubtable gifts, as a linguist, as 
an actor, as a brilliantly resourceful operative. Demarest was the best they 
had. Had the thought even arisen that there might be risks in giving this 
responsibility to someone so utterly devoid of conscience—to a sociopath?
Janson shut his eyes as the images flooded his mind.
Demarest was not merely cruel, he had an unsurpassed gift for cruelty. He 
approached the infliction of pain like a four-star chef. Janson recalled the 
smell of charred flesh as the jumper cables sparked and sputtered at the 
Vietnamese captive's groin. The look of abject terror in the man's eyes.
And Demarest's almost gentle refrain as he interrogated the young fisherman. 
"Look into my eyes," Demarest had repeated in a gentle voice. "Look into my 
eyes."
The prisoner's breath had come in strangled yelps, like a dying animal's. 
Demarest listened to a few bars of choral music. Then he straddled the second 
prisoner. "Look into my eyes," Demarest said. He'd pulled a small knife from a 
waist holster and made a small slice in the man's belly. The skin and the fascia 
beneath immediately sheared, pulled apart by the tension of the ropes. The man 
screamed.
And screamed. And screamed.
Janson could hear the screams now. They echoed in his head, amplified by the 
sickening realization that this man was the one they had chosen to make the most 
powerful on earth.
Now Derek Collins glanced around the room, as if canvassing opinions, before he 
continued. "Let me get to the point. Demarest has been able to seize control of 
all the assets that were created for the use of the Mobius Program. Without 
getting into the details, I can tell you that he's changed all the banking 
codes—and foiled the measures we'd taken to prevent just such an eventuality. 
And they were damn extensive. We had zero-knowledge, top-security cryptosystems 
in place that required central Mobius authorization for substantial movements of 
currencies. Codes were changed regularly, divided among the three principals so 
that no individual could gain control of the whole—one firewall after another. 
The security measures were damn near insurmountable."
"Yet they were surmounted."
"Yes. He got control."
Janson shook his head, sickened by what he was hearing. "Translation: the 
mammoth empire of the Liberty Foundation, the financial leverage, all of it—has 
passed into the control of one dangerously unstable individual. Translation: 
you're not running him—he's running you."
There were no demurrals.
"And the United States can't expose him," said the secretary of state. "Not 
without exposing itself."
"Just when did you figure out this was happening?" Janson demanded.
The two technicians shifted uncomfortably in the Louis XV chairs, their bulk 
threatening the slender wooden frames.
"A few days ago," Collins said. "As I told you, the Mobius Program had fail-safe 
systems in place—what we thought were fail-safe, anyway. Look, we had some of 
our best minds on this thing—don't imagine we didn't think of everything, 
because we did. The controls were formidable. Only recently did he gain the 
wherewithal to circumvent them."
"And Anura?"
"His masterstroke," said the chairman of the National Intelligence Council. "We 
were victims, all of us, of an elaborate ploy. When we heard our man was 
imprisoned there, we panicked, and acted precisely as Demarest knew we would. We 
entrusted him with the second set of codes, the ones that would normally have 
been under the control of the man the guerrillas were about to execute. It 
seemed necessary, as a stopgap. What we didn't realize was that Demarest had 
arranged the hostage taking. Evidently he used a lieutenant of his named Bewick 
as the cutout, a cutout the Caliph knew only as the 'Go-Between.' All very, how 
shall I say, hygienic."
"Jesus."
"For that matter, we failed to realize that he was also responsible for the 
death of the third agent, a year earlier. We thought our marionette strings were 
unbreakable. We know better now."
"Now that it's too late," Janson said, and in the faces of tense men and women, 
Janson saw the acceptance of the rebuke—and its irrelevance. "Question: Why did 
Demarest bring me into it?"
Collins spoke first. "Do you have to ask? The man loathes you, blames you for 
taking away his career, his freedom, almost his life—turning him in to a 
government he thought he'd served with incredible devotion. He didn't just want 
to see you dead. He wanted you to be accused, humiliated, strung up, killed by 
your own government. What goes around comes around—that's how he must have seen 
things."
"You want to say 'I told you so'?" President Berquist said. "You're entitled. 
I've been shown copies of your 1973 reports about Lieutenant Commander Demarest. 
But you've got to understand where this thing stands right now. Not only has 
Demarest eliminated his understudies but he's moved into a second, far more 
deadly phase."
"What's that?"
"The puppet is killing off the puppet masters," said Doug Albright. "He's 
erasing the program. Erasing Mobius."
"And exactly who is the cast of characters?"
"You're looking at 'em. All in this room."
Janson stared around the room. "There had to have been somebody from the NSA," 
he objected.
"Killed."
"Who designed the basic systems architecture?"
"A real wizard, from the CIA. Killed."
"And the—oh Jesus … "
"Yes, the president's National Security Advisor," said Albright. "Charlotte made 
the wire services today, didn't she? Clayton Ackerley didn't—officially, he's a 
suicide, found in his car with the engine running and the garage door closed. 
Oh, Demarest doesn't like loose ends. He's making a list, he's checking it twice 
… "
"At this point, most of the people who know the truth about Peter Novak have 
been eliminated," the secretary of state said, his voice raspy with anxiety.
"Everyone … but the men and women in this room," Collins said.
Janson nodded slowly. A global cataclysm loomed, but so did a far more immediate 
threat to the assembled. As long as Alan Demarest remained in charge of the 
Novak empire, everyone in this room would be in fear for his life.
"Sorry, Paul. It's too late to get into the dead pool," Collins said wanly.
"Christ, Derek," Janson said, turning to the undersecretary with undisguised 
outrage, "you knew what kind of man Demarest was!"
"We had every reason to think we could control him!"
"Now he has every reason to think he can control you," Janson replied.
"It's become apparent that Demarest has been planning his coup d'état for 
years," the secretary of state said. "As the recent killings have revealed, 
Demarest has assembled a private militia, recruited dozens of his former 
colleagues to use as his personal enforcers and protectors. These are operatives 
who know the codes and procedures of our most advanced field strategies. And the 
corrupt moguls of the former Communist states—the ones who pretend to be opposed 
to him—are actually in league with the guy. They've made their own centurions 
available to him."
"You called it a coup d'état," Janson said to him. "A term usually reserved for 
toppling and supplanting a head of state."
"In its own way, the Liberty Foundation is as powerful as any state," the 
secretary replied. "It may soon become more so."
"The fact is," the president said, cutting to the heart of the matter, "Demarest 
has absolute proof of everything we did. He can blackmail us into doing whatever 
he demands. I mean, Jesus." The president exhaled heavily. "If the world ever 
found out that the U.S. had been surreptitiously manipulating global events—not 
to mention using Echelon to bet against the currencies of other countries—it 
would be an absolutely devastating blow. Congress would go berserk, of course, 
but that's the least of it. You'd get Khomeini-style revolutions all over the 
Third World. We'd lose every ally we have—would instantly become a pariah among 
nations. NATO itself would fall apart … "
"So long, Pax Americana," muttered Janson. It was true: here was a secret so 
explosive that history would have to be rewritten if it ever were to come out.
The president spoke again: "He's now sent us a message demanding that we turn 
control of Echelon over to him. And that's just for starters. For all we know, 
nuclear codes could be next."
"What did you tell him, Mr. President?"
"We refused, naturally." Glances were exchanged with the secretary of state. "I 
refused, dammit. Against the wisdom of all my advisers. I will not go down in 
history as the person who handed the United States over to a maniac!"
"So now he's given us a deadline along with the ultimatum," Collins said. "And 
the clock is ticking."
"And you can't take him out?"
"Oh, what a nifty idea," Collins said dryly. "Get a bunch of angry brothers with 
a blowtorch and some pliers and get medieval on his ass. Now why didn't we think 
of that? Wait a minute—we did. Goddammit, Janson, if we could find the son of a 
bitch, he'd be dead meat, no matter how well protected he is. I'd plug him 
myself. But we can't."
"We've tried everything," said the chairman of the National Intelligence 
Council. "Tried to lure him, trap him, smoke him out—but no go. He's become like 
the man who wasn't there."
"Which shouldn't be a surprise," Collins said. "Demarest has become a master at 
playing the reclusive plutocrat, and at this point he's got greater resources 
than we have. Plus, any person we bring in represents a risk, another potential 
blackmail threat: there's no way we can expand the number of people involved. 
That operational logic is self-evident. And sacrosanct. Do you see? It's just 
us."
"And you," said President Berquist. "You're our best hope."
"What about people who genuinely oppose 'Peter Novak,' the legendary 
humanitarian? Fact is, he's not without enemies. Isn't there some way to 
mobilize a fanatic, a faction … ?"
"You're suggesting a pretty underhanded ploy," Collins said. "I like how you 
think."
"This is the place for truth-telling," the president said to Collins with a 
warning glance. "Tell him the truth."
"The truth is, we've tried just that."
"And … ?"
"We've basically thrown up our hands, because, as I say, it's been impossible to 
locate him. We can't find him, and the crazy terror king can't find him, 
either."
Janson squinted. "The Caliph! Jesus."
"You got it in one," said Collins.
"The man lives for vengeance," said Janson. "Lives and breathes it. And the fact 
that his celebrated hostage escaped had to have been a major humiliation to him. 
A loss of face among his followers. The kind of loss of face that can lead to a 
loss of power."
"I could show you a foot-thick analytic report making exactly the same 
inference," Collins said. "So far we're on the same page."
"But how are you in a position to steer him at all? Every Westerner is satanic, 
in his book."
The secretary of state cleared his throat, uneasily.
"We're opening our kimonos," the president repeated. "Remember? Nothing that's 
said in this room leaves this room."
"OK," Derek Collins said. "It's a delicate business. There's somebody high up in 
Libyan military intelligence who … works with us occasionally. Ibrahim Maghur. 
He's a bad customer, all right? Officially, we want him dead. He's known to have 
been involved in the German disco bombing that killed two American servicemen. 
Been linked to Lockerbie, too. He's advised and helped funnel support to all 
sorts of terrorist organizations."
"And yet he's also an American asset," Janson said. "Christ. Makes a fellow 
proud to be a soldier."
"Like I said, it's a delicate business. Similar to the deal we had with Ali 
Hassan Salameh."
A small shiver ran down Janson's spine. Ali Hassan Salameh was the mastermind of 
the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. He was also, for a number of years, the CIA's 
chief contact inside the Palestine Liberation Organization. It was during a 
period when the United States refused to recognize the organization. Yet the 
secret liaison afforded real protection to Americans based in Lebanon. A tip-off 
would arrive when a car bomb or an assassination in Beirut was in the works, and 
a number of American lives were spared as a result. The math may have worked 
out, yet it truly was a deal with the devil. A line from II Corinthians came to 
Janson: What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what 
communion hath light with darkness?
"So this Libyan—our Libyan—has been directing the Caliph?" Janson swallowed 
hard. "Quite an irony if one of the deadliest terrorists on the planet turns out 
to have been triply manipulated."
"I know it sounds preposterous, but we were grasping at straws," said Collins. 
"Hell, we still are. I mean, if you can think of a way to use him, go for it. 
But the problem remains: we can't get Demarest in our sights."
"Whereas," the pasty-faced systems analyst put in, "he seems to have no problem 
getting us in his."
"Which means you're our best hope," President Berquist repeated.
"You were his ace protégé, Paul," Collins said. "Face it. You worked closely 
with the guy for several tours, you know his wiles, you know the quirks of his 
character. He was your first mentor. And, of course, there's nobody better in 
the field than you, Janson."
"Flattery will get you nowhere," Janson said through gritted teeth.
"I mean it, Paul. This is my professional fitness assessment. There's nobody 
better. Nobody with greater resourcefulness and ingenuity."
"Except … " Doug Albright was worrying aloud, then thought better of it.
"Yes?" Janson was insistent.
The DIA man's eyes were pitiless. "Except Alan Demarest."
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The handsome West African, his silver hair neatly trimmed, gold cufflinks 
glinting in the setting sun, looked pensively out the window of his 
thirty-eighth-floor office and waited for his calls to be returned. He was the 
secretary-general of the United Nations, had been for five years, and what he 
was about to do would shock most of the people who knew him. Yet it was the only 
way to ensure the survival of everything he had devoted his life to.
"Helga," Mathieu Zinsou said, "I'm expecting a call back from Peter Novak. 
Please hold all other calls."
"Certainly," said the secretary-general's longtime assistant, an efficient Dane 
named Helga Lundgren.
It was the hour of the day when he could see the furnishings of his own office 
reflected in the vast window. The decor had changed little over the years; it 
would have been sacrilege to replace the modernist furniture custom-designed for 
the building by the Finnish architect Eero Saarinen. Zinsou had added a few 
hangings of traditional textiles from his native country of Benin, for a slight 
flavor of individuality. In addition, gifts from various emissaries were 
stationed at strategic perches, and there were others, in storage, that could be 
brought out when representatives of the nation in question came to visit. If the 
finance minister of Indonesia were keeping an appointment, a Javanese mask might 
appear on the wall where, earlier in the day, a row of Edo netsuke had greeted 
the foreign secretary of Japan. Decoration as diplomacy, as Helga Lundgren liked 
to call it.
The office was positioned outward and away from the bustle of Manhattan. Indeed, 
when he peered through the ghostly reflections on the glass, he saw straight 
across the East River to the desolate industrial wasteland that was West Queens: 
the barnlike brick factory of the Schwartz Chemical Company with its four 
immense smokestacks, evidently long unused. The yellow-brick remains of an 
anonymous-looking warehouse. A few wisps of fog rolled over Hunter's Point, the 
nearest part of West Queens, where an ancient Pepsi-Cola neon sign still blazed, 
as it had since 1936, atop a now closed bottling plant, like an amulet warding 
off enemy incursions, or real-estate developers, and notably failing.
The view was not beautiful, but there were times when Secretary-General Zinsou 
found it oddly mesmerizing. An antique brass telescope was angled from an oak 
stand on the floor, facing the window, but he rarely used it; the unaided eye 
sufficed to see what was to be seen. A petrified forest of former manufacturing 
concerns. Fossils of industry. An archaeology of modernity, half buried, half 
excavated. The waning sun glittered off the East River, flashed from the chrome 
of disused signage. Such were the unloved remnants of bygone industrial empires. 
And what about his own empire, on the banks of Manhattan? Was it, too, destined 
for the scrap heap of history?
The sun had lowered farther in the horizon, giving the East River a rosy tinge, 
when the secretary-general's assistant notified him that Peter Novak was on the 
phone. He picked up at once.
"Mon cher Mathieu," the voice said. It had the crystalline clarity of something 
heavily processed by digital telephony—undoubtedly he was speaking on a 
top-of-the-line satellite phone. The secretary-general had requested that he and 
Novak speak on encrypted phones only, and the additional security probably 
increased the eerily noiseless quality of the signal. After a few pleasantries, 
Mathieu Zinsou began to hint at what he had on his mind.
The United Nations, the West African told the great man, was a magnificent 
freighter that was running out of fuel, which was to say, money. It was the 
simple fact of the matter.
"In many respects, our resources are enormous," the secretary-general said. "We 
have hundreds of thousands of soldiers seconded to us, proudly wearing the blue 
helmets. We have offices in every capital, staffed with teams of experts who 
enjoy ambassadorial status. We're privy to what goes on in these countries at 
every level. We know their military secrets, their development plans, their 
economic schemes. A partnership with the Liberty Foundation is simply a matter 
of common sense—a pooling of resources and competencies."
That much was preamble.
"U.N. officials operate freely in just about every country on the planet," 
Zinsou continued. "We see the suffering of people victimized by the incompetence 
and greed of their leaders. Yet we cannot reshape their policies, their 
politics. Our rules and regulations, our bylaws and systems of oversight—they 
hamstring us into irrelevance! The successes of your Liberty Foundation have put 
the United Nations to shame. And meantime our ongoing financial crisis has 
crippled us in every way."
"All this is true," said Peter Novak. "But it is not new."
"No," Zinsou agreed. "It is not new. And we could wait and, as we have in the 
past, do nothing. In ten years, the U.N. would be as poverty-stricken as any of 
its wards. Utterly ineffective—nothing more than a debate club for bickering 
emirs and tin-pot despots, discredited and ignored by the developed nations of 
the world. It will be a beached whale upon the shore of history. Or we can take 
action now, before it is too late. I have just been elected to another five-year 
term, with the near unanimous support of the General Assembly. I am uniquely in 
a position to make decisive, unilateral executive decisions. I have the 
popularity and the credibility to do so. And I must do so to save this 
organization."
"I've always thought your reputation for foresight was well earned," Novak said. 
"But so is your reputation for strategic ambiguity, mon cher. I wish I had a 
better sense of what you're proposing."
"Simply put, there can be no salvation for us except through partnership with 
you. A special joint division can be established—joint between the Liberty 
Foundation and the U.N.—devoted to economic development. Over time, more and 
more of the U.N.'s institutional resources and responsibilities would migrate to 
this joint division. It will be a powerful, invisible directorate within the 
United Nations. I can serve as the bridge between the two empires, yours and 
mine. U.N. appropriations would continue, of course, but the Liberty Foundation 
would be able to make intimate use of the U.N.'s extensive assets."
"You intrigue me, Mathieu," said Novak. "But we both know the rules of 
bureaucratic inertia. You tell me you envy and admire the extraordinary 
effectiveness of the Liberty Foundation, and I thank you for the kind words. But 
there's a reason for our record: the fact that I have always retained absolute, 
top-to-bottom control of it."
"I am deeply aware of that fact," said the secretary-general. "And when I speak 
of 'partnerships,' I need you to understand my meaning. 'Strategic ambiguity,' 
as you call it, is something my role at the United Nations often requires. But 
on one issue there can be no ambiguity. Ultimate control would be exercised by 
you, Peter."
There was a long moment of silence, and Zinsou briefly wondered whether Novak's 
phone had gone dead. Then the man spoke again. "You are indeed a man of vision. 
It's always nice to meet another one."
"It is a grave, an immense responsibility. Are you prepared for it?" Zinsou did 
not wait for an answer but continued to speak, with passion, eloquence, and 
urgency, elaborating on his vision.
Twenty minutes later, the man who called himself Peter Novak maintained an odd 
reticence.
"We have so much to discuss," Zinsou said, winding up. "So much that can only be 
discussed face-to-face, just you and me, together. Perhaps it is grandiose of me 
to say it, but I truly believe the world is depending on us."
At last, a mirthless laugh came from the phone: "Sounds like you're offering to 
sell me the United Nations."
"I hope I didn't say that!" Zinsou exclaimed lightly. "It is a treasure beyond 
price. But yes, I think we understand each other."
"And in the short term, my Liberty Foundation people would have ambassadorial 
rank, diplomatic immunity?"
"The U.N. is like a corporation with a hundred and sixty-nine CEOs. Nimble it is 
not. But yes, the charter I'll draft will make that quite clear," answered the 
secretary-general.
"And what about you, mon cher Mathieu? You'll be serving out your second 
term—and then what?" The voice on the phone grew friendly. "You have served your 
organization selflessly for so many years."
"You're kind to say so," the secretary-general said, catching his drift. "The 
personal element is an entirely subsidiary one, you appreciate. My real concerns 
are for the survival of this institution. But, yes, I will be frank. The U.N. 
job does not exactly pay well. A job as, let us say, a director of a new Liberty 
Foundation institute … obviously with the salary and benefits to be negotiated … 
would be the ideal way to continue my work for international peace. Forgive me 
for being so forward. The complexity of what I propose makes it imperative that 
we be absolutely straightforward with each other."
"I believe I'm coming to a better understanding, and find it all very 
encouraging," said the man who was Peter Novak, now sounding positively genial.
"Then why don't we have dinner. Something très intime. At my residence. The 
sooner the better. I'm prepared to clear my schedule."
"Mon cher Mathieu," the man on the phone repeated. A warm glow suffused his 
voice, the glow of a man who had just been offered the United Nations. It would 
be a final ornament to his redoubtable empire, and a fitting one. Abruptly, he 
said: "I'll get back to you." And the line went dead.
The secretary-general held on to the handset for a few moments before returning 
it to its cradle. "Alors?"
He turned to Paul Janson, who had been sitting in the corner of the darkening 
office.
The operative looked at the master diplomat with frank admiration. "Now we 
wait," said Janson.


Would he take the bait? It was a bold proposal, yet threaded through with truth. 
The financial straits of the U.N. were genuinely dire. And Mathieu Zinsou was 
nothing if not ambitious for his organization. He was also known to be a 
farseeing man. In his five years at the helm of the U.N., he had reshaped it 
more vigorously than any SG had ever imagined. Was this next step so 
unthinkable?
It had been a chance remark of Angus Fielding's that had inspired the ploy, and 
Janson recalled yesterday's conversation with the man who, not that long ago, 
had threatened him with a gun. Of course, that was the order of the day, wasn't 
it—allies and adversaries switching sides with abandon? The conversation had 
been awkward at first; Fielding had not missed Novak's CNN appearance, and was 
clearly abashed, bewildered, and humiliated, unaccustomed emotions for Trinity's 
laureled master. And yet, without so much as hinting at the explosive secret, 
Janson was able to pick the scholar's agile brain on the question of how one 
might reach the reclusive billionaire.
There was another element that Janson calculated might lend plausibility to the 
scenario. Zinsou had for years been dogged by a reputation for benign, 
small-scale corruption. When Zinsou was a young commissioner at UNESCO, a 
lucrative contract had been taken away from one medical corporation and awarded 
to another. The spurned rival put it out that Zinsou had received "special 
preferments" from the victorious corporation. Had payment been made in a 
numbered account somewhere? The accusations were groundless, yet in some circles 
curiously adhesive. The half-remembered hint of corruption would, ironically, 
make his proposition all the more persuasive.
But what would seal it would be an elemental feature of human psychology: 
Demarest would want it to be true. Intense desire always had a subtle 
gravitational effect upon belief: we are more likely to credit what we wish to 
be so.
Now Janson stood at Zinsou's desk and, from a bulky device there, extracted the 
digital cassette on which the call had been recorded for later study.
"You astonish me," Janson said, simply.
"I'll take that as an insult," the secretary-general said with a small smile.
"The implication being that my expectations were not high? Then I spoke 
poorly—and you should take it, rather, as proof that there is only one true 
diplomat in this room."
"The fate of the world should not hang on a lapse of etiquette. I feel that in 
this case it well may. Have you considered all the things that could go wrong?"
"I have absolute confidence in you," Janson parried.
"An expression of confidence I find dismaying. My confidence in myself is high: 
it is not absolute. Nor should yours be. I speak, of course, in principle."
"Principles," Janson said. "Abstractions."
"Indulgences, you mean to say." A smile hovered over Mathieu Zinsou's lips. "And 
this is not the time for them. Now is the time for particulars. Here's one: your 
plan involves venturing a prediction of somebody who may not be predictable at 
all."
"There are no absolute predictions that we can make. I take your point. But 
there are patterns—there are rules, even for the man who flouts the rules. I do 
know this man."
"Before yesterday, I'd have said the same. Peter Novak and I have met on a few 
occasions. Once at a state dinner in Amsterdam. Once in Ankara, in the wake of 
the Cyprus resolution he brokered—a purely ceremonial event. I was bearing the 
official congratulations of this organization, announcing the withdrawal of U.N. 
troops from the partition line. Of course, now I realize I was meeting with a 
phantom. Perhaps a different man each time—presumably there are files kept by 
the Mobius Program that could tell us. Yet I must say that I found him both 
charismatic and affable. An appealing combination."
"And a combination that's been ascribed to you," Janson said carefully.
Zinsou uttered a sentence in the complex tonal language of Fon, spoken by his 
father's people. Zinsou père had been a descendant of the royal court of 
Dahomey, once a significant West African empire. "A favorite saying of my 
great-uncle, the paramount chief, which he often repeated to the gaping 
sycophants who surrounded him. Loosely translated, it means: The more you lick 
my ass, the more I feel you're trying to slip one past me."
Janson laughed. "You're even wiser than they say—"
Zinsou raised an index finger of mock admonishment. "I can't help wondering. Did 
Peter Novak believe any of it, or was he just playing along? I ask out of 
injured pride, of course. It cudgels my sense of amour propre that someone 
should believe I would, in effect, sell out the organization to which I have 
devoted my life." Zinsou toyed with his thick Montblanc fountain pen. "But 
that's just pride speaking."
"Evil men are always quick to think evil of others. Besides, if it works, you'll 
have plenty of reason for pride. Pull this off, and it will be the greatest feat 
of your career."
An uncomfortable, lonely silence fell upon them.
Zinsou was not, by habit, a solitary man: after decades spent within the U.N. 
bureaucracy, deliberation and consultation were second nature to him. His 
diplomatic skills were most fully engaged in reconciling conflicts among the 
U.N. divisions themselves—calming hostilities between the Department of 
Peace-keeping-Operations and the Humanitarian Affairs people, preventing 
resistance from forming among frontline workers or their superiors in the head 
offices. He knew the thousand ways that the bureaucrats could stall executive 
decisions, for in his long career he himself had had occasion to make use of 
such techniques. The methods of bureaucratic infighting were as advanced and as 
sophisticated as the techniques of aggression on the world's battlefields. It 
was a tribute to his own success on the internal battlefields that he had risen 
as far and as fast as he had. Moreover, the bureaucratic battle was truly won 
only when those you defeated were led to imagine that they had, in some way, 
been victorious.
Being the secretary-general of the United Nations, Zinsou had decided, was like 
conducting an orchestra of soloists. The task seemed impossible, and yet it 
could be done. When he was in good form, Zinsou could lead a conflict-riven 
committee to a consensus position that he had planned out before the meeting had 
begun. His own preferences were masked; he would appear sympathetic to positions 
he secretly found unacceptable. He would play off the preexisting tensions among 
the assembled deputy special representatives and high commissioners; subtly lead 
people into temporary coalitions against detested rivals; guide the discussion 
through ricochets and clashes, like a pool shark bringing about a complex 
sequence of carefully planned collisions by a well-aimed cue ball. And at the 
end, when the committee had worked its way around to the very position he had 
meant them to reach, he would, with a sigh of resignation and a display of 
concessive largesse, say that the others in the room had talked him around to 
their point of view. There were bureaucratic players whose ego demanded that 
they be seen to have won. But true power belonged to those who wanted to win in 
actuality, regardless of appearances. A number of people still accepted Zinsou's 
soft-spoken and courteous demeanor at face value and did not recognize the 
forceful nature of his leadership. They were losers who imagined themselves 
winners. Some of those who supported Zinsou did so because they believed they 
could control him. Others, the smarter ones, supported him because they knew he 
would be the most effective leader that the U.N. had known for decades, and they 
knew that the U.N. was in desperate need of such leadership. It was a winning 
alliance—for Zinsou and for the organization to which he had devoted his life.
But now the virtuoso of manufactured consent had to operate on his own. The 
secret with which he had been entrusted was so explosive that there was nobody 
to whom he, in turn, could entrust it. No colloquy, no consultation, no 
deliberation, real or staged. There was only the American operative, a man 
Zinsou found himself only gradually warming to. What bound them together was not 
merely the explosive secret; it was also the knowledge that their 
countermeasures were likely to end in failure. The so-called Zinsou Doctrine, as 
the press had dubbed it, endorsed only interventions with a reasonable chance of 
success. This one failed the test.
Yet what alternative was there?
Finally, Janson spoke again. "Let me tell you about the man I know. We're 
talking about somebody whose mind is a remarkable instrument, capable of 
extraordinary real-time analysis. He can be a person of immense charm. And even 
greater cruelty. My former colleagues in intelligence would tell you that men 
like him can be valuable assets, as long as they are tightly constrained by the 
situations in which they're placed. The error of the Mobius planners is that 
they placed him in a context that didn't just permit but actively called upon 
his skills at fluid and freeform improvisation. A context in which an immensity 
of wealth and power was placed just out of his grasp. He played the world's 
mightiest plutocrat. Only the rules of the game prevented him from truly being 
that person. So he threw himself into trying to overcome the program's 
safeguards. Eventually, he did."
"It was not predicted."
"Not by the Mobius planners. Incredible technical prowess combined with 
extraordinary stupidity about human nature—typical of their breed. No, it was 
not predicted. But it was predictable."
"By you."
"Certainly. But not only by me. I suspect you, too, would have seen the risks."
Secretary-General Zinsou walked over to his enormous desk and sat down. "This 
monster, this man who threatens us all—you may know him as well as you think you 
do. You do not know me. And so I remain puzzled. Forgive me if I say that your 
confidence in me undermines my confidence in you."
"That's not very diplomatic of you, is it? I appreciate your candor, all the 
same. You may find that I know you a little better than you imagine."
"Ah, those intelligence dossiers of yours, compiled by agents who think people 
can be reduced to something like an instruction manual—the same mind-set that 
gave rise to your Mobius Program."
Janson shook his head. "I won't pretend that we were acquainted, you and I, not 
in the usual sense. But the thrust of world events over the past couple of 
decades did mean that we ended up patrolling a few of the same rough 
neighborhoods. I know what really happened in Sierra Leone, that week in 
December, because I was there—monitoring all communications from the head of 
U.N. Peace-keeping in the region and the head of the special delegation 
appointed to coordinate the U.N. response. Not much peacekeeping was happening, 
needless to say—the bloody civil war was raging out of control. Special Delegate 
Mathieu Zinsou was asked to relay the commander's report and intervention 
request to New York. The designée was a U.N. high commissioner who would then 
present it to the representatives of the Security Council—who would have refused 
it, forbidden the intervention."
The secretary-general looked at him oddly but said nothing.
"If that happened," Janson continued, "you knew that maybe ten thousand people 
would have been massacred unnecessarily." He did not need to detail the 
situation: A cluster of small-arms depots had been identified, freshly stocked 
by a Mali-based dealer. The U.N.'s on-the-ground commanders had received 
reliable intelligence that the rebel leader was going to use them to settle a 
tribal feud—in the small hours of the very next morning. The rebel leader's men 
would use the arms to launch a deep incursion into the Bayokuta region, shooting 
his enemies, demolishing villages, amputating the limbs of children. And it 
could all be prevented by a swift, low-risk sally that would eliminate the 
illegal arms warehouses. The moral and military calculation was not in doubt. 
But neither was the bureaucratic protocol.
"Here's where it gets interesting," Janson went on. "What does Mathieu Zinsou 
do? He's the consummate bureaucrat—just ask anybody. A perfect organization man. 
A stickler for the rules. Only, he's also a fox. Within an hour, your office 
sent a cable to the High Commission for Peacekeeping consisting of 123 reports 
and action items—every insubstantial bit of paperwork you had at hand, I'd 
guess. Buried in the cable, item number ninety-seven, was an 'Unless Otherwise 
Ordered' notification, spelling out the proposed U.N. military action in the 
blandest terms and giving the exact time during which it would be executed. You 
subsequently told your general stationed outside Freetown that the U.N. central 
command had been notified of his plans and had voiced no objection. This was 
literally true. It was also true that the high commissioner's staff didn't even 
stumble on the relevant advisory until three days after the operation."
"I can't imagine where this is leading," Zinsou said, sounding bored.
"At which point, the event was part of history—an impressive success, a 
casualty-free raid that averted the death of many thousands of unarmed 
civilians. Who wouldn't want to claim credit for it? A lily-livered U.N. high 
commissioner proudly told his colleagues that of course he had authorized the 
raid, even intimated that it had been his idea. And as he found himself roundly 
congratulated, he couldn't help but feel kindly disposed toward Mathieu Zinsou."
Zinsou fixed Janson with a stare. "The secretary-general neither denies nor 
confirms. But such a story, I submit, would not confirm one's faith in human 
predictability."
"On the contrary—I came to recognize the hallmarks of your personal style of 
operating. Later, in the flash-point crises in Tashkent, in Madagascar, in the 
Comoros, I noticed the extraordinary gift you had for making the best of a bad 
situation. I saw what others didn't—it wasn't so much that you followed rules as 
that you'd figured out how to make the rules follow you."
He shrugged. "In my country, we have a proverb. Loosely translated, it means: 
When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging."
"I also came to recognize your enormous discretion. You had much to boast about 
privately, and you never did."
"Your comments suggest an unwarranted, invasive, and inappropriate degree of 
surveillance."
"I'll take that as confirmation of their essential truth."
"You're a man of parts, Mr. Janson. I'll grant you that."
"Let me put a question to you: What do you give the man who has everything?"
"There is no such man," Zinsou said.
"Precisely. Demarest is motivated by power. And power is the one thing that 
nobody ever feels he has enough of."
"In part, because power creates its own subversion." The secretary-general 
looked thoughtful. "It's one of the lessons of the so-called American Century. 
To be mighty is to be mightier than others. Never underestimate the strength of 
resentment in world history. The strongest thing about the weak is their hatred 
of the strong." He leaned back in his chair and, for the first time in years, 
regretted having given up smoking. "But I see where you are going. You believe 
this man is a megalomaniac. Somebody who can never have enough power. And that's 
what you have baited the snare with—power."
"Yes," Janson said.
"One of my distinguished predecessors used to say, 'Nothing is more dangerous 
than an idea when it is the only one you have.' You were quite eloquent in your 
critique of the premises of the Mobius Program yesterday. Watch that you don't 
replicate the errors. You are building a model of this man … "
"Demarest," Janson prompted. "But let's call him Peter Novak. Better to stay in 
character, so to speak."
"You're building a model of this man, in effect, and you observe this 
hypothetical creature move this way and that. But will the real man behave as 
your model does? Those you angrily dismiss as the 'planners' are happy to assume 
so. But you? How well founded is your confidence, really?"
Janson looked into the secretary-general's liquid brown eyes, saw the composed 
face that greeted heads of state by the hundreds. He saw the air of mastery, and 
as he stared harder he saw something else, too, something only partly hidden. He 
saw dread.
And this, too, was something they shared, for it arose out of simple realism. "I 
am confident only that a bad plan is better than no plan," Janson said. "We are 
proceeding on as many fronts as possible. We may get a lucky break. We may get 
none. Allow me to quote one of my mentors: Blessed are the flexible, for they 
will not be bent out of shape."
"I like it." Zinsou clapped his hands together. "A smart fellow told you that."
"The smartest man I ever knew," Janson replied grimly. "The man who now calls 
himself Peter Novak."
A chill settled, along with another long silence.
The secretary-general swiveled his chair around toward the window as he spoke. 
"This organization was established by a world that was weary of war."
"Dumbarton Oaks," Janson said. "1944."
Zinsou nodded. "However broad its mandate has become, its central mission has 
always been the promotion of peace. There are attendant ironies. Did you know 
that the ground where this very building stands had previously been a 
slaughterhouse? Cattle were brought up the East River on a barge, then led by a 
Judas goat to the city's abattoirs, on this very spot. It is something I 
regularly remind myself: this property was once a slaughterhouse." He turned 
around to face the American operative. "We must take care that it does not 
become one again."


"Look into my eyes," the tall black-haired man intoned in a soothing voice. His 
high cheekbones gave an almost Asiatic cast to his features. The man who called 
himself Peter Novak hovered over the elderly scholar, who was lying prone on a 
Jackson table, a large translucent platform that supported his chest and thighs 
while permitting his abdomen to hang free. It was standard equipment in spinal 
surgery, for it shifted blood away from the spinal area and minimized bleeding.
Intravenous fluids dripped into his left arm. The table was adjusted so that the 
old scholar's head and shoulders were propped upward, and he and the man who 
called himself Peter Novak could commune face-to-face.
In the background, a twelfth-century plainsong could be heard. Slow, high voices 
in unison; they were words of ecstasy, yet to Angus Fielding it sounded like a 
dirge.
O ignis spiritus paraditi, vita vite omnis creature, sanctus es vivificando 
formas
A six-inch-long incision had been made in the middle of the old man's back, and 
metal retractors parted the paraspinal muscles, exposing the ivory-white bones 
of the spinal column.
"Look into my eyes, Angus," the man repeated.
Angus Fielding looked, could not help looking, but the man's eyes were nearly 
black, and there was no pity in them whatsoever. They seemed scarcely human. 
They seemed like a well of pain.
The black-haired man had dropped the cultivated Hungarian accent; his voice was 
uninflected but distinctly American. "What exactly did Paul Janson tell you?" he 
demanded once more as the frail old scholar shivered with terror.
The black-haired man nodded to a young woman, who had extensive training as an 
orthopedic technician. A large, open-bore trocar, the size of a knitting needle, 
was pushed through the fibrous sheath surrounding the soft disk that separated 
the fifth and sixth thoracic vertebrae. After less than a minute, the woman 
nodded at him: the trocar was in position.
"And—good news—we're there."
A thin copper wire, insulated except for the tip, was then inserted through the 
trocar to the spinal root itself, the trunk through which nerve impulses from 
the entire body made their way. Demarest adjusted a dial until a small amount of 
electrical current began to pulse through the copper wire. The reaction was 
immediate.
The scholar screamed—a loud, bloodcurdling scream—until there was no air left in 
his lungs.
"Now that," Demarest said, cutting off the current, "is a very singular 
sensation, is it not?"
"I've told you everything I know," the scholar gasped.
Demarest adjusted the dial.
"I've told you," the scholar repeated as pain mounted upon pain, penetrating his 
body in convulsions of purest agony. "I've told you!" Shimmering and 
otherworldly, the choral threnodies of joy floated far above the agony that 
consumed him.
Sanctus es unguendo periculose fractos: sanctus es tergendo fetida vulnera.
No, there was no pity in the black pools of the man's eyes. Instead, there was 
paranoia: a conviction that his enemies were anywhere and everywhere.
"So you maintain," Alan Demarest said. "You maintain this because you believe 
the pain will stop if I am persuaded that you have told me the whole truth. But 
the pain will not stop, because I know that you have not done so. Janson sought 
you out. He sought you out because he knew that you were a friend. That you were 
loyal. How can I make you understand that it is me you owe your loyalty to? You 
feel pain, do you not? And that means you are alive, yes? Is that not a gift? 
Oh, your entire existence will be a sensorium of pain. I believe that if I can 
make you understand that, we might begin to make progress."
"Oh dear God no!" the scholar shouted as another course of electricity 
penetrated his body.
"Extraordinary, isn't it?" Demarest said. "Every C fiber in your body—every 
pain-transmitting nerve—feeds into this main trunk of nerve bundles that I'm 
stimulating right now. I could attach electrodes to every inch of your body and 
it wouldn't yield the same intensity of pain."
Another scream reverberated through the room—another scream that ended only 
because breath itself did.
"To be sure, pain is not the same as torture," Demarest went on. "As an 
academic, you'll appreciate the importance of such distinctions. Torture 
requires an element of human intention. It has to be interwoven with meaning. 
Simply to be eaten by a shark, let us say, is not to experience torture—whereas 
if someone intentionally dangles you over a shark tank, that is torture. You 
might dismiss this as a nicety, but I'd beg to differ. The experience of 
torture, you see, requires not only the intention to inflict pain. It also 
requires that the subject of torture recognize that intention. You must 
recognize my intention to cause pain. More precisely, you must recognize that I 
intend you to recognize that I intend to cause pain. One has to satisfy that 
structure of regressive recognition. Would you say that you and I have done so?"
"Yes!" the old man screamed. "Yes! Yes! Yes!" His neck thrashed this way and 
that as a bolt of electricity blasted into him once more. He was being raped by 
pain, felt that the very fiber of his existence had been violated.
"Or would you offer another analysis?"
"No!" Fielding shrieked with pain once more. The agony was simply beyond 
imagining.
"You know what Emerson says of the great man: 'When he is pushed, tormented, 
defeated, he has a chance to learn something; he has been put on his wits on his 
manhood; he has gained facts; learns his ignorance; is cured of the insanity of 
conceit.' Would you concur?"
"Yes!" the scholar shrieked. "Yes! No! Yes!" The muscular convulsions that 
rippled his spine only magnified the already unendurable pain.
"Are you surprised how much pain you're capable of surviving? Are you wondering 
how your consciousness can even contain suffering of this magnitude? It's OK to 
be curious. The thing to remember is, the human body today is really no 
different than it was twenty thousand years ago. The circuits of pleasure and 
pain are as they were. So you might think that there is no difference between 
the experience of being tortured to death during, let us say, the Spanish 
Inquisition and the experience that I can offer you. You might think that, 
wouldn't you? But, speaking as something of an aficionado, I'd have to say you'd 
be wrong. Our evolving understanding of neurochemistry is really quite valuable. 
Ordinarily, the human body has the equivalent of a safety valve: when C-fiber 
stimulation reaches a certain level, endorphins kick in, blunting and assuaging 
the pain. Or else unconsciousness results. God, it used to piss me off when that 
happened. Either way, the phenomenology of pain is limited. It's like 
brightness: you can experience only a certain level of brightness. You maximally 
stimulate the cones and rods of the retina, and after that point, there's no 
change in the perception of brightness. But when it comes to pain, contemporary 
neuroscience changes the whole game. What's in your IV drip is absolutely 
crucial to the effect, my dear Angus. You knew that, didn't you? We've been 
administering a substance known as naltrexone. It's an opiate antagonist—it 
blocks the natural painkillers in your brain, those legendary endorphins. So the 
ordinary limits of pain can be pushed past. Not exactly a natural high."
Another wail of agony—almost a keening—interrupted his disquisition, but 
Demarest was undeterred. "Just think: because of the naltrexone drip, you can 
experience a level of pain that the human body was never meant to know. A level 
of pain that none of your ancestors would ever have known, even if they'd had 
the misfortune to be eaten alive by a saber-toothed tiger. And it can increase 
nearly without limit. The main limit, I would say, is the patience of the 
torturer. Do I strike you as a patient man? I can be, Angus. You'll discover 
that. I can be very patient when I need to be."
Angus Fielding, distinguished master of Trinity College, began to do something 
he had not done since he was eight: he broke down and sobbed.
"Oh, you'll yearn for unconsciousness—but the drip also contains potent 
psychostimulants—a carefully titrated combination of dexmethyl-phenidate, 
atomoxetine, and adrafinil—which will keep you maximally alert, indefinitely. 
You won't miss anything. It will be quite exquisite, the ultimate in-body 
experience. I know you think you've experienced agony beyond endurance, beyond 
comprehension. But I can increase it tenfold, a hundredfold, a thousandfold. 
What you have experienced so far is nothing at all, compared to what lies ahead. 
Assuming, of course, that you continue to stonewall." Demarest's hand hovered 
near the dial. "It's really most important to me that I receive satisfactory 
answers to my questions." "Anything," Fielding breathed, his cheeks wet with 
tears. "Anything." Demarest smiled as the black pools of his gaze bore down on 
the aging don. "Look into my eyes, Angus. Look into my eyes. And now you must 
confide in me utterly. What did you tell Paul Janson?"
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
"Lookit, I've got one person watching the entrance," Jessica Kincaid told Janson 
as they rode together in the back of the commandeered yellow cab. "He thinks 
it's a training exercise. But if she goes out, decides to head for one of their 
private planes in Teeterboro, we might lose her forever." She wore a cotton-knit 
shirt adorned with the logo of the phone company Verizon.
"Did you do the tenant search?"
"Did the whole enchilada," she said.
In fact, with a number of discreet telephone calls, she confirmed what 
observation had suggested, learning more than she needed to know. The 
inhabitants of the building included masters of finance capitalism, foundation 
directors, and old New York types who were better known for their philanthropy 
than for the origins of the wealth that made it possible. Flashier souls, eager 
to flaunt their newfound money, might opt for a penthouse in one of Donald 
Trump's palaces, where every surface gleamed or glittered. At 1060 Fifth Avenue, 
the elevators still retained the brass accordion doors originally installed in 
the 1910s, as well as the darkened fir-wood paneling. The building's co-op board 
rivaled the Myanmar junta in its inflexibility and authoritarianism; it could be 
counted upon to reject the applications of prospective residents who might turn 
out to be "flamboyant"—its favorite term of derogation. Ten sixty Fifth Avenue 
welcomed benefactors of the arts, but not artists. It welcomed patrons of the 
opera, but would never countenance an opera singer. Those who, in a civic-minded 
spirit, supported culture were honored; those who created culture were shunned.
"We've got one Agnes Cameron on the floor above her," Kincaid said. "Serves on 
the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, socially impeccable. I called the 
office of the director, pretending to be a journalist writing a profile of her. 
Said I was told she was in a meeting there, and I needed to double-check some of 
the quotes. A very snotty woman said, 'Well, that's impossible, Mrs. Cameron is 
in Paris at the moment.' "
"That the best candidate?"
"Seems to be, yeah. According to the phone company records, she had a high-speed 
DSL Internet connection installed last year."
She handed Janson a cotton-knit shirt emblazoned with the black and red Verizon 
logo, matching hers. "Turns out your friend Cornelius has a brother at Verizon," 
she explained. "Gets 'em wholesale. His-and-hers." Next came a leather 
instrument belt to cinch around his waist. A bright orange test phone was the 
bulkiest item. Rounding out the costume was a gray metal toolbox.
As they approached the doorman at the awning, Jessie Kincaid did the talking. 
"We've got a customer, I guess she's out of the country now, but her DSL line is 
on the fritz and she asked us to service it while she's gone." She flipped a 
laminated ID at him. "Customer name is Cameron."
"Agnes Cameron, on the eighth floor," the doorman told them, in what Janson 
recognized as an Albanian accent. His cheeks were lightly flecked with acne, and 
his visored hat sat high on his wavy brown hair. He went inside and consulted 
with the guard. "Repair guys from the phone company. Mrs. Cameron's apartment."
They followed him into the elegant lobby, which was trimmed with egg-and-dart 
molding and tiled with black and white marble in a harlequinade pattern.
"How can I help you?" The second doorman, a heavyset man also of Albanian 
origin, had been sitting on a round cushioned stool and talking to the guard. 
Now he sprang to his feet. He was evidently senior to the other doorman and 
wanted it to be clear that he would be making the decisions.
For a few moments, he silently scrutinized the two, frowning. Then he lifted an 
antique Bakelite internal phone and pressed a few digits.
Janson looked at Kincaid: Mrs. Cameron was supposed to be out of the country. 
She shrugged, in a tiny motion.
"Repairmen from Verizon," he said. "Verizon. To fix a phone line. Why? I don't 
know why."
He put his hand over the mouth of the phone and turned to the two visitors. 
"Mrs. Cameron's housekeeper says why don't you come back when Mrs. Cameron's in 
town. Be another week."
Jessie rolled her eyes theatrically.
"We're out of here," Paul Janson said, tight-lipped. "A favor: when you see Mrs. 
Cameron, tell her it'll be a few months before we'll be able to schedule another 
appointment to fix the DSL."
"A few months?"
"Four months is about what we're looking at," Janson replied with implacable 
professional calm. "Could be less, could be more. The backlog is incredible. 
We're trying to get to everybody as fast as we can. But when an appointment is 
canceled, you go to the end of the line. The message we got was, she wanted to 
have the problem dealt with before she got back to town. My supervisor got three 
or four calls about her problem. Bumped her up as a special favor. Now you're 
saying forget it. Fine with me, but just be sure to tell Mrs. Cameron that. If 
somebody's getting blamed, it isn't going to be me."
Weariness and wounded pride competed in the voice of the beleaguered phone 
repairman; this was someone who worked for an immense and immensely resented 
bureaucracy and was accustomed to being blamed personally for the failings of 
the system—accustomed to it, but not reconciled to it.
If somebody's getting blamed: the senior doorman flinched a little. The 
situation called for blame, did it? Such a situation was best avoided. Now, 
speaking into the phone, he said confidingly, "You know what? I think you'd 
better let these guys do their job."
Then he jerked his head in the direction of the elevator bank. "Down the hall 
and left," he said. "Eighth floor. The housekeeper will let you in."
"You're sure? Because I've had a very long day, wouldn't mind knocking off 
early."
"Just go up to the eighth floor, she'll let you right in," the doorman repeated, 
and beneath the impassive manner was the faintest hint of pleading.
Janson and Kincaid walked down the polished floor to the elevators. Though the 
ancient accordion gate was intact, the cab they entered was no longer manned. 
Nor was there a security camera inside: with two doormen and a security guard in 
the lobby; the co-op board undoubtedly had rejected the additional security 
measure as intrusive overkill, the sort of showy technology that one would 
expect in an apartment building put up by Mr. Trump. A couple should be able to 
exchange a chaste peck in the elevator without worrying about gawking 
spectators.
They pressed the button to the eighth floor; would it light? It would not. There 
was a keyhole next to the button, and Janson had to massage it with two thin 
implements for twenty seconds before he was able to rotate it and activate the 
button. They waited impatiently as the small cab rose and then slowly shuddered 
to a halt. Given the munificence of the building's tenants, the unrenovated 
nature of the elevators amounted to something of an affectation.
Finally, the doors parted, directly onto the apartment's foyer.
Where was Marta Lang? Had she heard the elevator door opening and closing? 
Janson and Kincaid stepped quietly into the hallway, and listened for a moment.
A clink of china, but distant.
To the left, at the end of the darkened hallway, a curving staircase led to the 
floor below. To the right was another doorway; it appeared that it led to a 
bedroom, or perhaps several. The main floor seemed to be the one beneath them. 
Lang had to be there. They scanned the area for fish-eye lenses, for anything 
that might suggest surveillance equipment. There was none.
"OK," Janson murmured. "Now we go by the book."
"Whose book?"
"Mine."
"Got it."
Another faint sound of china: a cup clinking against a saucer. Janson peered 
carefully down the staircase. There was nobody visible, and he was grateful that 
the stairs were of worn marble: no squeaky floorboard would serve as an 
inadvertent alarm system.
Janson signaled Jessie: remain behind. Then he swiftly descended the stairs, 
keeping his back against the curving wall. In his hands was a small pistol.
Ahead of him: an enormous room, with thick curtains drawn shut. To his left: 
another room, a sort of double parlor. The walls were of white painted wood, 
intricately paneled; paintings and engravings of no particular distinction hung 
at geometrically precise intervals. The furnishings had the look of a New York 
pied-a-terre designed, long-distance, for a Tokyo businessman: elegant and 
expensive, yet devoid of individuality.
In a flash, Janson's mind reduced his surroundings to an arrangement of portals 
and planes: one representing both exposure and opportunity, the other the 
prospect of safety and concealment.
Wall to wall, surface to surface, Janson progressed through the double parlor. 
The floor was a polished parquet, much of which was covered with large Aubusson 
rugs in subdued colors. The rug did not, however, prevent the soft creak of a 
plank underfoot as he reached the entrance to the adjoining parlor. Suddenly, 
his nerves crackled as if receiving a jolt of electricity. For there, in front 
of him, was a housekeeper in a cotton uniform of pale blue.
She turned toward him, holding an old-fashioned feather duster out in front of 
her, frozen, and her round face was contorted into a terrible grin—a rictus of 
fear?
"Paul, watch yourself!" It was Jessie's voice. He had not heard her descend, but 
she was a few feet behind him.
Suddenly the housekeeper's chest erupted in a spray of scarlet and she toppled 
forward onto the carpet, the sound muffled by the soft woven fabric.
Janson whirled around and saw the silenced gun in Jessie's hand, a wisp of 
cordite seeping from its perforated cylinder.
"Oh, Jesus," Janson breathed, gripped with horror. "Do you realize what you just 
did?"
"Do you?" Jessica strode over to the body and, with a foot, nudged the feather 
duster that remained in the housekeeper's outstretched hand.
It was not a device used for cleaning house, save in the bloodiest of senses: 
artfully concealed beneath the fan of brown feathers was a high-powered SIG 
Sauer, still affixed to the dead woman's hand by an elastic strap.
Jessie had been right to shoot. The safety was off on the powerful automatic 
handgun, a bullet chambered. He had been a split second from death.
Marta Lang was not alone. And she had not been unguarded.
Was it possible she was still unaware of their presence? At the end of the 
second parlor was another doorway with an ordinary swing door, evidently opening 
onto the formal dining room.
There was another sound of movement, coming from within.
Janson lurched to the wall to the left of the door frame and spun around, 
holding his Beretta chest high, preparing to squeeze the trigger or deliver a 
blow, as was required. A burly man holding a gun burst through, apparently 
having been sent to investigate. Janson smashed the butt of his Beretta on the 
back of the man's head. He went limp and Jessie caught him as he went down, 
gentling him to the carpet silently.
Janson stood still for a moment, composing himself and listening intently; the 
sudden violence had drained him, and he could not afford to be anything less 
than focused.
Suddenly, there was a series of loud blasts, and the swinging door was 
perforated by several magnum-force bullets, spraying splinters of wood and 
paint. Were they fired by Marta Lang herself? Somehow he suspected that they 
were. Janson looked at Kincaid, verifying that she, like him, was out of the 
line of fire, safely to the side of the doorway.
There was a beat of silence, and then the sound of quiet footfalls: Janson 
instantly knew what Marta Lang—or whoever it was—was doing, and what he had to 
do. She was going to peer through the bore holes her gun had drilled in the 
wooden door, assess the damage. She had established a line of fire: surely 
nobody would remain standing where bullets had just flown.
Timing would be everything, and Janson had very little to go by. Now! With all 
his strength, Janson reared up and threw himself, shoulder first, against the 
swinging door. It would be his weapon—a battering ram. The door moved too easily 
at first, and then, with a thud, it connected, sending the person on the other 
side of it sprawling.
It was indeed Marta Lang he saw as the door swung all the way open. The door had 
slammed into her, knocking her against a Hepplewhite-style dining-room table. 
The heavy automatic weapon in her hands had been sent flying, too, clattering to 
the table just a few inches beyond her reach.
With catlike agility, Lang scrambled to her feet, rounded the table, and reached 
for the black gleaming weapon.
"Don't even think about it," Jessica said.
Marta Lang glanced up to see Jessica in a perfect Weaver stance, holding her 
pistol with both hands. Her shooting stance said that she would not miss. Her 
face said that she would not hesitate.
Breathing hard, Lang said nothing and did nothing for a long moment, as if torn 
by indecision. At last, she stood up straight, verifying the position of her 
weapon with a sidelong glance. "You're no fun," she said. The lower part of her 
face was reddened from where the door had slammed into her. "Don't you want to 
even up the odds a little? Make the game interesting?"
Janson advanced toward her, and at the moment when his body was interposed 
between Marta Lang and Kincaid, Lang's hand darted out to grab back her weapon. 
Janson anticipated the move, and he immediately wrenched it from her hands. "A 
Suomi burp gun. Impressive. You have a license for this toy?"
"You've broken into my house," she said. "Caused grievous bodily injury to my 
staff. I'd call it self-defense."
Marta Lang ran her fingers through her perfectly coifed white hair, and Janson 
tensed for a surprise, but her hands returned empty. There was something 
different about her; her speech was flatter, her affect more casual. What did he 
really know about this woman?
"Don't waste our time and we'll try not to waste yours," Janson said, pressing 
on. "You see, we already know the truth about Peter Novak. There's no use in 
trying to hold out. He's a dead man. It's over, dammit!"
"You poor muscle-bound idiot," Marta Lang said. "You think you've got everything 
figured out. But you thought that before, didn't you? Doesn't that make you 
wonder?"
"Give him up, Marta," Janson said with gritted teeth. "It's your only chance. 
They've pulled the plug on him. An executive directive from the President of the 
United States himself."
The white-haired woman's contempt was magnificent. "Peter Novak is more powerful 
than he is. The U.S. president is only the leader of the free world." She paused 
to let it sink in. "Getting the big picture, or are you waiting for it to come 
out on video?"
"You're deluded. He's somehow brought you into his own madness. And if you can't 
break free, you're lost."
"Tough talk from a goddamn organization man. Look into my eyes, Janson—I want to 
see if you even believe what you're saying. Probably you do, worse for you. Hey, 
like the fat lady sings, freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. 
You think you're some kind of hero, don't you? I feel sorry for you, you know. 
There's no freedom for people like you. Somebody is always manipulating you, and 
if it's not me, it'll just be someone else, someone a little less imaginative." 
She turned to Jessica. "It's true. Your boyfriend here is like a piano. He's 
just a piece of furniture until someone plays him. And someone's always playing 
him." Something between a grin and a grimace flashed on her face. "Has it never 
struck you that he's been three steps ahead of you all along? You're so 
wonderfully predictable—I suppose that's what you call character. He knows just 
what makes you tick, just what you're capable of doing, and just what you'll 
decide to do. For all your derring-do in the Stone Palace, he was playing with 
you like a kid with a goddamn action figure. We had remote surveillance rigged 
up there, naturally. Kept tabs on everything you did, every move. We knew every 
element of your plan and we'd prepared contingencies for every anticipated 
variant. Of course Higgins—oh, that was the fellow you sprang—was going to 
insist on saving the American girl. And of course you were going to give up your 
seat to the lady. What a perfect gentleman you are. Perfectly predictable. The 
craft was wired to blow by remote, needless to say. Peter Novak was practically 
waving a baton—he could have been conducting the whole goddamn operation. You 
see, Janson, he made you. You didn't make him. He was calling the shots before, 
and he's calling the shots now. And he always will."
"Permission to blow the bitch away, sir?" Jessica asked, raising her left hand 
like an eager cadet.
"Ask again later," Janson said. "You get only so many chances in this world, 
Marta Lang. Is that your name, by the way?"
"What's in a name?" she said, blase. "By the time he gets done with you, you'll 
think it's your name. Now here's a question for you: do you think that if the 
hunt goes on long enough, the fox starts to imagine it's chasing the hounds?"
"What's your point?"
"It's Peter Novak's world. You're just living in it." She flashed a strangely 
ethereal smile. When Janson had met her in Chicago, she seemed the very picture 
of a highly educated foreigner. Her accent was now decidedly American; she could 
have come from Darien.
"There is no Peter Novak," Jessie said.
"Remember, dear, what they say about the Devil—that his greatest trick was 
persuading people he didn't exist. Believe what you like."
A memory pricked at Janson. He looked at Marta Lang intently, alert to any 
flicker of weakness. "Alan Demarest—where is he?"
"Here. There. Everywhere. You should call him Peter Novak, though. It's rude not 
to."
"Where, goddammit!"
"Not telling," she said lightly.
"What does he have over you?" Janson exploded.
"Sad to say, you don't know what you're talking about."
"He owns you somehow."
"You don't get it, do you?" she replied witheringly. "Peter Novak owns the 
future."
Janson stared. "If you know where he is, then, God help me, I will extract the 
information from you. Believe this: after a few hours on a Versed-scopolamine 
drip, you won't know the difference between your thoughts and your speech. 
Whatever comes into your head will come out of your mouth. If it's in your head, 
we'll extract it. We'll extract a lot of garbage, too. I'd rather you came clean 
without chemical assistance. But one way or another, you will tell us what we 
want to know."
"You're so full of it," she said, and turned to Jessica. "Hey, back me up here. 
Can't I get a little feminine solidarity on this one? Haven't you 
heard—sisterhood is powerful." Then she leaned forward, putting her face only 
inches from his. "Paul, I'm really sorry about your friends getting blown 
sky-high off Anura." She fluttered her fingers and, in a voice that was pure 
vinegar, added, "I know you were all broken up about your Greek butt-boy." She 
loosed a short giggle. "What can I say? Shit happens."
Janson felt a vein in his forehead throb painfully; he knew his face was mottled 
with rage. He imagined smashing her face, imagined fracturing her facial bones, 
a spear hand driving the bones of her nose into her brain. Just as swiftly, he 
felt the fog of fury recede. He recognized that the point of her needling was to 
get him to lose control. "I'm not presenting you with three choices," he said. 
"Only two. And if you don't decide, I'll decide for you."
"Is this going to take long?" she said.
Janson grew aware of choral music in the background. Hildegard von Bingen. The 
hairs on Janson's neck stood erect. " 'The Canticles of Ecstasy,' " he said. 
"The long shadow of Alan Demarest."
"Huh? I turned him on to that," she said, shrugging. "Back when we were growing 
up."
Janson stared at her, seeing her as if for the first time. Suddenly, a series of 
small nagging details snapped into place. The movement of her head, her sudden, 
bewildering shifts of affect and tone, her age, even certain lines and 
locutions.
"Jesus Christ," he said. "You're—"
"His twin sister. Told you sisterhood was powerful." She started to massage the 
loose skin beneath her left collarbone. "The fabulous Demarest twins. Double 
trouble. Terrorized fucking Fairfield growing up. The Mobius morons never even 
knew that Alan brought me into the picture." As she spoke, her circular 
movements became deeper, more insistent, seemingly responding to an itch deep 
beneath the skin. "So if you think I'm going to 'give him up,' as you so 
artfully put it, you'd better think again."
"You don't have a choice," Janson said.
"What is she doing?" Jessica asked in a low voice.
"We always have a choice." Lang's movements grew smaller, more focused; with her 
fingers she started to dig at something to the side of her clavicle. "Ah," she 
said. "That's it. That's it. Oh, that feels so much better … "
"Paul!" Jessica shouted. She made the inference a moment before he did. "Stop 
her!"
It was too late. There was the barely audible pop of a subdermal ampoule, and 
the woman threw her head back, as if in ecstasy, her face flushing to a purplish 
red. She made a soft, almost sensual panting sound, which subsided into a 
gargling sound deep in her throat. Her jaw fell open, slack, and a rivulet of 
saliva dribbled from the side of her mouth. Then her eyes rolled up, leaving 
only the whites visible through her half-parted lids.
From unseen speakers, the ghostly voices sang.
Gaudete in ilio, quem no viderunt in terris multi; qui ipsum ardenter 
vocaverunt. Gaudete in capite vestro.
Janson put a hand on Marta Lang's long neck, feeling for a pulse, even though he 
knew there would be none. The signs of cyanide poisoning were hard to miss. She 
chose death before surrender, and Janson was hard-pressed to say whether it 
represented an act of courage or one of cowardice.
We always have a choice, the dead woman had said. We always have a choice. 
Another voice, from decades past, joined it in his memory: one of the Viet Cong 
interrogators, the man with the steel-framed glasses. Not to decide is to 
decide.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The console on the secretary-general's desk chimed. Helga's voice: "I'm sorry to 
disturb you, but it's Mr. Novak again."
Mathieu Zinsou turned to the high commissioner for refugees, a former Irish 
politician who combined a vigorous style with a fair amount of loquacity; she 
was currently feuding with the under secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, 
who had been conducting turf battles with unyielding and unhumanitarian fervor. 
"Madame MacCabe, I'm terribly sorry, but this is a call I must take. I think 
I've understood your concerns about the strictures coming from the Department of 
Political Affairs, and I believe that we can address them if we all reason 
together. Ask Helga to arrange a meeting among the principals." He rose and 
bowed his head in a courtly gesture of dismissal.
Then he picked up the phone. "Please hold for Mr. Novak," a woman's voice said. 
A few clicks and electronic burps, and Peter Novak's voice came on: "Mon cher 
Mathieu," he began.
"Mon cher Peter," Zinsou replied. "Your munificence in even considering what we 
discussed must be honored. Not since the Rockefellers donated the land on which 
the U.N. complex sits has a private individual offered to—"
"Yes, yes," Novak interrupted. "I'm afraid, though, that I'm going to decline 
your invitation to dinner."
"Oh?"
"I have something more ceremonial in mind. I hope you'll agree with my thinking. 
We have no secrets, have we? Transparency has always been a paramount U.N. 
value, no?"
"Well, up to a point, Peter."
"I shall tell you what I propose, and you tell me if you think I'm being 
unreasonable."
"Please."
"I understand that there will be a meeting of the General Assembly this Friday. 
It has always been my fantasy to address that august body. Foolish vanity?"
"Of course not," Zinsou said quickly. "To be sure, few private citizens have 
ever addressed it … "
"But nobody would begrudge me the right and privilege—I think I can say that 
without fear of contradiction."
"Bien sûr."
"Given that a great many heads of state will be present, the level of security 
will be high. Call me paranoid, but I find that reassuring. If the U.S. 
president is present, as seems possible, there will be a Secret Service detail 
on the case as well. All very reassuring. And I shall probably be accompanied by 
the mayor of New York, who has always been so friendly toward me."
"An extremely public and high-profile appearance, then," Zinsou said. "That is 
not like you, I must say. Remote from your reclusive reputation."
"Which is exactly why I suggest it," the voice said. "You know my policy: always 
keep them guessing."
"But our … dialogue?" Confusion and anxiety roiled within him; he struggled not 
to let it show.
"Not to worry. I think you'll find that one never has more privacy than when one 
is in the public eye."


"Goddamn it!" Janson yelled. He was reviewing the tape recording of Demarest's 
last phone call.
"What could I have done differently?" Zinsou asked, and his voice held both fear 
and self-reproach.
"Nothing. If you'd been too insistent, it would only have aroused his 
suspicions. This is a deeply paranoid man."
"What do you make of this request? Bewildering, no?"
"It's ingenious," Janson said bluntly. "This guy has more moves than Bobby 
Fischer."
"But if you wanted to flush him out … "
"He's thought of that and has taken precautions. He knows the forces against him 
are ultracompartmentalized. There's no way the Secret Service could ever be let 
in on the truth. He's using our own people as a shield. That's not all. He'll be 
walking up the ramp to the General Assembly Building with the mayor of New York 
by his side. Any attempt on his life would endanger a well-known politician. 
He's entering into an arena of incredibly tight security, with eagle-eyed 
security details attached to national leaders from around the world. There'll be 
the equivalent of a force field around him at all times. If an American 
operative tried to take a shot, the resulting inquiry would probably blow 
everything sky-high. As long as he's in the General Assembly, we can't touch 
him. Can't. Imagine it—he'll be thronged. Given all his generosity around the 
world, it'll be considered an honor for the international community—"
"To welcome a man who seems to be a light unto the nations," Zinsou said, 
grimacing.
"It's very Demarest. 'Hidden in plain view' was one of his favorite 
descriptions. He used to say that sometimes the best hiding place was in the 
public eye."
"Essentially what he told me," Zinsou mused. He looked at the pen in his hand, 
trying to transform it into a cigarette by the power of thought. "Now what?"
Janson took a swallow of lukewarm coffee. "Either I'll figure something out … "
"Or?"
His eyes were hard. "Or I won't." He walked out of the secretary-general's 
office without another word, leaving the diplomat alone with his thoughts.
Zinsou felt a tightness in his chest. In truth, he had slept poorly since he had 
first been briefed on the crisis by the president of the United States, who had 
only reluctantly acceded to Janson's insistence that he do so. Zinsou was and 
continued to be utterly aghast. How could the United States of America have been 
so reckless? Except it wasn't the United States, exactly; it was a small cabal 
of programmers. Planners, as Janson would say. The secret had been passed down 
from one presidential administration to another, like the codes to the country's 
nuclear arsenal—and scarcely less dangerous.
Zinsou personally knew more heads of state than anyone alive. He knew that the 
president was, if anything, underestimating the bloody tumult that would be 
unleashed were the truth of the Mobius Program ever to emerge. He pictured the 
prime ministers, presidents, premiers, party secretaries, emirs, and kings of a 
duped planet. The whole postwar entente would lay in tatters. Throughout the 
world's trouble spots, scores of treaties and charters of conflict resolution 
would be falsified, invalidated, because their author would have been unmasked 
as an impostor—an American penetration agent. The peace treaty that Peter Novak 
negotiated in Cyprus? It would be shredded within hours, to mutual 
recriminations between the Turks and the Greeks. Each side would accuse the 
other of having known the truth all along; a pact that once seemed impartial 
would now be interpreted as subtly favoring the enemy. And elsewhere?
Your currency crisis in Malaysia? Terribly sorry, old chap. We did that. The 
little dip in the sterling seven years ago that caused the economy of Great 
Britain to lose a few points of GDP? Yes, our exploitation of that made a bad 
situation much, much worse. Awfully sorry, don't know what we were thinking … 
An era of relative peace and prosperity would give way to one bereft of both. 
And what of the Liberty Foundation offices throughout the developing world and 
Eastern Europe—exposed now as an undercover American intelligence operation? 
Many cooperating governments would simply not survive the humiliation. Others, 
to maintain credibility among their citizens, would suspend all relations with 
the United States and designate the former ally as an adversary. American-owned 
businesses, even those unrelated to the Liberty Foundation, would be seized by 
governments, their assets frozen. World trade would be dealt a devastating blow. 
Meanwhile, the planet's embittered and disaffected would, at last, have a casus 
belli; inchoate suspicions would find a catalyst. Among both official political 
parties and broader resistance movements, the revelations would provide a 
rallying cry against the American imperium. The semi-unified entity that was 
Europe would finally coalesce—around a new shared enemy, with a united Europe 
squaring off against the United States.
Who could defend it? Who would think to? Here was a country that had betrayed 
its closest and staunchest allies. A country that had secretly manipulated the 
levers of government across the planet. A country that would now incur the 
unmitigated wrath of billions. Even organizations that were dedicated to 
international cooperation would fall under suspicion. It would, very likely, 
spell the end of the United Nations, if not immediately, then in short order, in 
a tide of broadening rancor and suspicion.
And that would mean—what was the American expression?—a world of trouble.


The Caliph reread the cable he had just received, and felt a pleasurable glow of 
anticipation. It was as if overcast skies had parted to reveal a pure and 
luminous ray of sunlight. Peter Novak was going to be addressing the annual 
meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. The man—and he was, ultimately, no more 
than a man—would show his face at last. He would be greeted by insipid 
gratitude, by laurels and acclamation. And, if the Caliph had his way, by 
something more.
Now he turned to the Mansur minister of security—plainly little more than a 
jumped-up carpet merchant, despite the rhetorical inflation of his title—and 
spoke to him in tones both courteous and commanding. "This meeting of the 
international community will be an important moment for the Islamic Republic of 
Mansur," he said.
"But of course," replied the minister, a small, homely man who wore a simple 
white head wrap. On matters that did not concern Koranic orthodoxy, the 
leadership of this spavined, desolate little country was easily impressed.
"Your delegation will be judged, rightly or wrongly, by its professionalism, 
comportment, and discipline. Nothing must go awry, even in the face of unknown 
and unexpected malefactors. The very highest level of security must be 
maintained."
The Mansur minister bobbed his head; he knew he was out of his depth and, to his 
credit, realized there was no point in pretending otherwise, at least in the 
presence of the master tactician who stood before him.
"Therefore, I shall myself accompany the delegation. You need only provide the 
diplomatic cover, and I shall personally ensure that everything happens as it 
should."
"Allah be praised," the small man said. "We could hope for nothing more. Your 
dedication will be an inspiration to the others."
The Caliph nodded slowly, acknowledging the tribute. "What I do," he said, "is 
merely what must be done."


The narrow town house was elegant and yet anonymous-looking, a brownstone like 
hundreds of others in New York's Turtle Bay neighborhood. The stoop was a 
gray-brown, with raised black grip stripes in diagonals across the steps. They 
would prevent slippage when the stairs became slick with rain or ice; the 
electronic sensors beneath the strips would also detect the presence of a 
visitor. The sun bounced off the thick, leaded glass of the parlor: it was 
purely ornamental in appearance, but proof against even heavy-caliber bullets. 
Sterile Seven is what the deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency had 
called it: it was a safe house reserved by the Mobius planners for their 
occasional use, one of ten around the country. Janson would be protected here, 
he was assured; equally important, he would have access to the most 
sophisticated communications equipment, including direct access to the extensive 
data banks compiled by the joint intelligence services of the United States.
Janson sat in the second-floor study, staring at a yellow pad. Janson's eyes 
were bloodshot from lack of sleep; a headache pounded behind his eyes. He had 
been in scrambler communication with the surviving members of the Mobius 
Program. None was sanguine, or even pretended to be.
If Novak were arriving in the country, how would he do so? What were the chances 
that border control would alert them of his arrival? An advisory had gone out to 
every airport, private and public, in the country. Airport officials were 
notified that because of "credible threats" to Peter Novak's life, it was 
crucial to report his whereabouts to a special security task force coordinated 
by the U.S. State Department and devoted to the protection of foreign 
dignitaries.
He phoned Derek Collins, who was on Phipps Island, where the size of the 
National Guard contingent had been tripled. In the background he heard the 
jangle of a dog's collar.
"Gotta say, Butch has really taken to this place," Collins said. "Hell, the 
sorry-ass mutt's actually growing on me. With all that's been happening, it's 
kind of relaxing having him around. Of course, the workmen who were here 
yesterday fixing things up didn't exactly take to him—he kept looking at them 
like they were food. But I bet you're calling for a status report on other 
matters."
"What's the word?"
"The good news is, the cobra's en route—we're pretty sure, anyway. The bad news 
is, Nell Pearson's body was discovered yesterday. The Mrs. Novak of record. 
Supposedly a suicide. Slit her wrists in her bathtub. So that thread's been 
snipped off."
"Christ," said Janson. "Think she was murdered?"
"Naw, it was a 'cry for help.' Of course she was fucking murdered. But nobody 
will ever be able to prove it."
"What a goddamn waste," Janson said. There was lead in his voice.
"Moving right along," Collins said bleakly, "nobody's sighted Puma. Zip, nada, 
nothing. Four reports of look-alikes, quickly falsified. The fact is, our guy 
might not be arriving from overseas—he might already be in the country. And he'd 
find it child's play to arrive incognito. This is a large, populous country with 
more than five hundred international airports. Our borders are inherently 
porous. I don't have to tell you that."
"This isn't a time to talk about impossibilities, Derek," the operative said.
"Thanks for the pep talk, coach. You think every damn one of us isn't working 
balls-out on this? None of us knows who's going to get killed next. If you want 
to talk about impossibilities, though, you'll be interested in the latest 
thinking around Foggy Bottom."
Five minutes later, Janson hung up with an unsettled feeling.
Almost immediately afterward, the silver-gray phone on the green-baize-topped 
desk rang quietly, the quietness of the ring somehow lending it additional 
significance. It was the line reserved for White House communications.
He picked up the phone. It was the president.
"Listen, Paul, I've gone over and over it with Doug here. This address 
Demarest's giving before the General Assembly—there could well be an implicit 
ultimatum here."
"Sir?"
"As you know, he asked for the control codes to the entire Echelon system. I put 
him off."
"Put him off?"
"Blew him off. I think the message he's sending is pretty unambiguous. If he 
doesn't get what he wants, he's going to appear before the General Assembly and 
set an explosion. Lay the thing out, with the whole world hanging on his every 
word. That's just a surmise. We could well be wrong. But the more we think about 
it, the more we think it's a credible threat."
"Ergo?"
"I hope to God he's hit by a thunderbolt before he can stand up and give that 
speech."
"Now that sounds like a plan."
"Barring that, I've decided to meet with him just beforehand. Capitulate. Give 
in to his first round of demands."
"Are you scheduled to make an appearance at the U.N.?"
"We'd left it unclear. The secretary of state will be there, along with the U.N. 
ambassador, the permanent representative, the trade negotiator, and the rest of 
the tin soldiers we always send. But if we're making this … barter, it'll have 
to come from me. I'm the only one with the clearance and authorization to do 
this."
"You'd be putting yourself in harm's way."
"Paul, I'm already in harm's way. And so are you."
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
U.N. GENERAL ASSEMBLY TO MEET from around the world, hundreds of national 
leaders to assemble in "dialogue of civilizations" By Barbara Corlett
NEW YORK—For most native New Yorkers, the convergence here of hundreds of 
foreign heads of state and high-ranking ministers prompts one big worry: will 
the motorcades make the problem of traffic gridlock worse? In the U.S. 
Department of State and in diplomatic circles elsewhere, however, loftier 
concerns are the order of the day. There are hopes that the 58th General 
Assembly meeting will lead to substantial reforms and a heightened level of 
international cooperation. U.N. Secretary General Mathieu Zinsou has predicted 
that it would be a "watershed moment" in the history of the troubled 
organization.
Anticipation has been bolstered by rumors of a possible appearance before the 
General Assembly by the revered philanthropist and humanitarian Peter Novak, 
whose Liberty Foundation has been compared to the United Nations in its global 
reach and even its diplomatic achievements. The U.N. is owed billions of dollars 
from member nations, including the United States, and the Secretary General 
makes no secret of the fact that the consequent salary freezes and cutbacks have 
made it difficult to recruit and retain high-caliber employees. Mr. Novak, whose 
munificence has been the stuff of legend, may have concrete proposals for easing 
the U.N.'s financial crisis. Top-ranking U.N. officials suggest that the Liberty 
Foundation's director may also propose a joining of forces with the U.N. to 
coordinate assistance to those regions most afflicted by poverty and conflict. 
The reclusive Mr. Novak could not be reached for comment.
Continued on page B4.
It would all happen tomorrow, and what happened would depend on how good their 
preparations were.
One foot in front of the other.
Janson—officially an outside security consultant hired by the Executive Office 
of the Secretary-General—had spent the last four hours wandering through the 
United Nations complex. What had they forgotten? Janson tried to think, but 
mists kept closing in on him; he had slept very little in the past few days, had 
been trying to sustain himself with black coffee and aspirin. One foot in front 
of the other. This was the civilian reconnaissance mission upon which everything 
would depend.
The U.N. complex, extending along the East River from Forty-second Street to 
Forty-eighth Street, was an island unto itself. The Secretariat Building loomed 
thirty-nine stories; in the skyline of the city, celebrated landmarks like the 
Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building were skinny protuberances by 
comparison—trees beside a mountain. What distinguished the Secretariat wasn't 
its height so much as its enormous breadth, greater than a city block. On either 
side of the building, the curtain wall of blue-green Thermopane glass and 
aluminum was identical, each floor demarcated by a black row of spandrels, its 
symmetry interrupted only by the irregularly spaced grilles of the mechanical 
floors. The two narrow ends were covered with Vermont marble—a concession, 
Janson recalled, to the former Vermont senator who had chaired the Headquarters 
Advisory Committee and served as America's permanent representative to the U.N. 
In a more innocent era, Frank Lloyd Wright termed the Secretariat "a 
super-crate, to ship a fiasco to hell." The words now seemed menacingly 
prescient.
The low General Assembly Building, which was situated just to the north of the 
Secretariat, was more adventurous in design. It was an oddly curvate rectangle, 
swooping down in the middle and flaring to either end. An incongruous 
dome—another concession to the senator—was placed on the center of its roof, 
looking like an oversize turbine vent. Now that the General Assembly Building 
was vacant, he paced through it several times, his eyes sweeping every surface 
as if for the first time. The south wall was pure glass, creating a light and 
airy delegates' lounge, overlooked by sweeping white balconies in three tiers. 
In the center of the building, the Assembly Hall was a vast semicircular atrium, 
green leather seats arranged around the central dais, which was a vast altar of 
green marble atop black. Looming over it, mounted on a vast gilded wall, was the 
circular U.N. logo—the two wheatlike garlands beneath a stylized view of the 
globe. For some reason, the globe logo, with its circles and perpendicular 
lines, struck him as a view centered upon the crosshairs of a scope: target 
earth.


"Some people wanna fill the world with silly love songs," the Russian crooned 
tunelessly.
"Grigori?" Janson said into his cell phone. Of course it was Grigori. Janson 
glanced around the vast atrium, taking in the two huge mounted video screens on 
either side of the rostrum. "You doing OK?"
"Never better!" Grigori Berman said stoutly. "Back in own home. Private nurse 
named Ingrid! Second day, I keep dropping thermometer on floor just to watch her 
bend over. The haunches on this filly—Venus in white Keds! Ingrid, I say, how 
about you play nurse? 'Meester Berman,' she squeals, very shocked, 'I am nurse.' 
"
"Listen, Grigori, I've got a request to make. If you're not up to it, though, 
just let me know." Janson spoke for a few minutes, providing a handful of 
necessary details; either Berman would work out the rest or he wouldn't.
Berman was silent for a few moments when Janson finished talking. "Now it is 
Grigori Berman who is shocked. What you propose, sir, is unethical, immoral, 
illegal—is devious violation of standards and practices of international 
banking." A beat. "I love it."
"Thought so," said Janson. "And you can pull it off?"
"I get by with a little help from my friends," Berman crooned.
"You sure you're up to doing this?"
"You ask Ingrid what Grigori Berman can do," he answered, spluttering with 
indignation. "What Grigori up to doing? What Grigori not up to doing?"


Janson clicked off his Ericsson and kept pacing through the hall. He walked 
behind the green-marble lectern where speakers stood to address the assembled, 
and looked out at the banked tiers of seats where the delegates would be 
congregated. The chief national representatives would fill the first fifteen 
rows of chairs and tables. Placards were mounted on bars that ran along the 
curved tables, country names spelled out in white letters on black: along one 
side of an aisle, peru, mexico, india, el salvador, colombia, bolivia, others he 
could not make out in the dim light. To the other side, paraguay, luxembourg, 
iceland, egypt, china, belgium, yemen, united kingdom, and more. The order 
seemed random, but the placards went on and on, signposts for an endlessly 
various, endlessly fractured world. At the long tables, there were buttons that 
delegates could press to signal their intention to speak, and audio plugs for 
headphones, supplying simultaneous translation in whatever language was 
required. Behind the official delegate tables were steeply raked tiers of seats 
for additional members of the diplomatic teams. Overhead, a recessed oculus was 
filled with dangling lights and surrounded by starlike spotlights. The curving 
walls were of louvered wood, interspersed with vast murals by Fernand Leger. A 
small clock was centered along a long marble balcony, visible only to those at 
the rostrum. Above the balcony were yet more rows of seats. And behind them, 
discreetly framed by curtains, was a series of glassed-in booths, where 
translators, technicians, and U.N. security staff were stationed.
It resembled a magnificent theater, and in many ways, it was.
Janson left the hall and made his way to the rooms that were immediately behind 
the rostrum: an office for the use of the secretary-general and a general 
"executive suite." Given the placement of the security details, it would simply 
be impossible to launch an assault on those spaces. On his third walkabout, 
Janson found himself drawn to what seemed to be a little-used chapel, or as it 
had more recently come to be styled, meditation room. It was a small narrow 
space with a Chagall mural at one end, just down the corridor from the main 
entrance to the Assembly Hall.
Finally, Janson walked down the long ramp on the western side of the building, 
from which the delegates would be pouring in. The geometry of security was 
impressive: the looming bulk of the Secretariat itself functioned as a shield, 
offering protection from most angles. The adjacent streets would be blocked off 
to nonofficial traffic: only accredited journalists and members of the 
diplomatic delegations would be permitted in the vicinity.
Alan Demarest couldn't have chosen a safer venue if he'd retreated to a bunker 
in Antarctica.
The more Janson explored the situation, the more he admired the tactical genius 
of his nemesis. Something truly extraordinary would have to happen to foil 
it—which meant that they were counting on something that could not be counted 
on.
What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath 
light with darkness?
Yet Janson saw the imperative for such a fellowship more clearly than anyone. 
Defeating this master of subterfuge would require something more than the 
bloodless, calculated moves and countermoves of the rational planners: it called 
for the unbridled, unslakable, irrational, and, yes, unbounded wrath of a true 
fanatic. About that there could be no dispute: their best chance to defeat 
Demarest was to resort to the one thing that could not be controlled.
To be sure, the planners imagined they could control it. But they never had, 
never could. They were all of them playing with fire.
They had to prepare to get burned.
CHAPTER FORTY
The motorcades started arriving at the U.N. Plaza at seven o'clock the next 
morning, escorting humanity of every cultural and political coloration. Military 
heads of state in their full-dress uniforms strode up the ramp as if reviewing 
their troops, feeling protected and empowered by their self-bestowed ribbons and 
bars. They regarded the narrow-shouldered leaders of the so-called democracies 
as nothing more than puffed-up central bankers: did not their dark suits and 
tight-knotted ties signal allegiance to the mercantile classes rather than to 
the authentic glories of national power? The elected leaders of the liberal 
democracies, in turn, viewed such gaudy regalia as the generals sported with 
scorn and disapproval: what miserable social backwardness enabled these 
caudillos to grab power? Thin leaders looked at fat leaders and entertained 
fleeting thoughts about their lack of self-control: no wonder their countries 
had incurred staggering foreign debts. The stout leaders, for their part, 
regarded their attenuated Western counterparts as colorless and chilly 
Grad-grinds, sapless administrators rather than true leaders of men. Such were 
the thoughts that flickered beyond each toothy smile.
Like molecules, the clusters mingled and collided, formed and reformed. Vacuous 
pleasantries stood in for long-winded complaints. A rotund president of a 
central African state embraced the lanky German foreign minister, and both knew 
precisely what the embrace signified: Can we move forward with debt 
restructuring? Why should I be stuck servicing loans taken by my 
predecessor—after all, I had him shot! A gaudily bedizened potentate from 
Central Asia greeted the prime minister of Great Britain with a dazzling smile 
and the tacit protest: The border dispute we have with our belligerent neighbor 
is not a matter of international concern. The president of a troubled NATO 
member state that was the rump of a once great empire sought out his opposite 
number from stable, prosperous Sweden and made small talk about his last visit 
to Stockholm. The unspoken message: Our actions against the Kurdish villages 
within our borders may disturb your pampered human-rights activists, but we have 
no choice but to defend ourselves from forces of sedition. Behind every 
handclasp, hug, and back clap was a grievance, for grievances were the cement of 
the international community.
Circulating among the delegations was a man wearing a kaffiyeh, a full beard, 
and sunglasses: typical attire among certain ruling-class Arabs. He looked, in 
short, like any of a hundred diplomatic representatives from Jordan, Saudi 
Arabia, Yemen, Mansur, Oman, or the United Emirates. The man looked 
self-possessed and a little pleased: no doubt he was happy to be in New York, 
looking forward to making a side trip to Harry Winston, or simply to sampling 
the sexual bazaar of the great metropolis.
In fact, the ample beard did double duty: it not only helped alter Janson's 
appearance but served to disguise a small filament microphone, activated by a 
switch in his front trouser pocket. He had, as a precaution, placed a microphone 
on the secretary-general as well; it was mounted within a small nodule on his 
gold collar bar, and was completely hidden behind his wide four-in-hand knot.
The long ramp led to a walkway immediately adjoining the General Assembly 
Building, where seven entrances were set back into the marble exterior of the 
curving, low-slung building. Janson kept moving among the incoming crowds, 
always looking as if he had just seen an old friend across the way. Now he 
consulted his watch; the fifty-eighth annual meeting of the General Assembly 
would come to order in just five minutes. Was Alan Demarest going to arrive? Had 
he ever intended to?
It was a barrage of camera flashes that first signaled the legend's arrival. The 
TV crews, which had dutifully recorded the arrival of the great and the good, 
potentates and plenipotentiaries, now focused their video-cameras, boom mikes, 
and key lights upon the elusive benefactor. He was difficult to pick out from 
the tightly huddled group in which he walked. There, indeed, was New York's 
mayor, with a hand around the humanitarian's shoulder, whispering something that 
seemed to amuse the plutocrat. To the man's other side, the senior senator of 
New York State, who served also as the deputy chairman of the Senate's Foreign 
Relations Committee, kept in step. A small entourage of senior aides and civic 
luminaries followed close behind. Secret Service agents were stationed at 
strategic intervals, no doubt ensuring that the area was free of snipers and 
other potential malefactors.
As the man known to the world as Peter Novak entered the West Lobby, he was 
swiftly hustled by his entourage into the executive suite behind the Assembly 
Hall. Outside it, the soles and heels of hundreds of expensive shoes clattered 
against the terrazzo flooring as the lobby began to empty and the hall began to 
fill.
This was Janson's cue to retreat to the central security booth, located behind 
the main balcony of the Assembly Hall. An array of small square monitors 
surrounded a large monitor; they displayed multiple camera angles on the hall 
itself. At his request, hidden cameras had also been placed in the suites tucked 
away behind the dais. The secretary-general's security consultant wanted to be 
able to keep an eye on all the principals.
Adjusting the control panel, he shifted among camera angles, zooming in, looking 
for the table where the delegation from the Islamic Republic of Mansur would be 
seated. It did not take long.
There, seated at the aisle, was a handsome man in flowing robes that matched 
those of the other men in the Mansur delegation. Janson pressed several buttons 
on the console and the image appeared on the large central monitor, supplanting 
the wide-angle overhead view of the assembly. Now he enlarged the image further, 
digitally reduced the shadows, and watched, mesmerized, as the large flat-screen 
monitor filled with the unmistakable visage.
Ahmad Tabari. The man they called the Caliph.
Rage coursed through Janson like electricity as he studied the planes of his 
ebony face, his aquiline nose and strong, chiseled jaw. The Caliph was 
charismatic even in repose.
Janson pressed several buttons, and the central screen feed switched to the 
hidden camera in the executive suite.
A different face, a different kind of merciless charisma: the charisma of a man 
who did not aspire, a man who had. The full head of hair, still more black than 
gray, the high cheekbones, the elegant three-button suit: Peter Novak. Yes, 
Peter Novak: it was who the man had become, and it was the way Janson had to 
think of him. He sat at one end of a blond-wood table, near a telephone that was 
directly connected to a intercommunication system at the high marble dais in the 
Assembly Hall as well as to the technicians' stations. A corner-mounted 
closed-circuit television allowed the VIPs in the executive suite to keep 
abreast of developments within the hall.
Now the door to the suite opened: two members of the Secret Service with curled 
wires descending from their earpieces made a visual inspection of the room.
Janson pressed another button, switching camera angles.
Peter Novak stood up. Smiled at his visitor.
The president of the United States.
A man normally brimming with self-confidence was looking ashen. There was no 
audio feed, but it was clear that the president was asking the Secret Service 
detail to leave the two of them alone.
Wordlessly, the president withdrew a sealed envelope from his breast pocket and 
handed it to Peter Novak. His hands trembled.
In profile, the two were a study in contrasts: one, the leader of the free 
world, seeming defeated and slightly stooped; the other, broad-shouldered and 
triumphant.
The president nodded and looked, for a moment, as if he wanted to say something, 
then thought the better of it.
He walked out.
Camera angle no. two. Novak slipping the envelope into his own breast pocket. 
That envelope, Janson knew, could change the course of world history.
And it was only the first installment.


The Caliph glanced at his watch. Timing would be everything. The metal detectors 
made it impossible for even delegation members to carry in firearms; this was as 
he expected. Yet securing such a weapon would be an elementary task. There were 
hundreds of them in the building, the property of the United Nations security 
guards and other such protectors. He had little respect for them or their skill: 
the Caliph had faced down some of the deadliest warriors in the world. It had 
been his personal valor that earned him the undying respect of his ragged and 
uneducated followers. Mastery of ideology or Koran verses by itself could not 
have sufficed. They were a people who needed to know that their leaders had 
physical courage, intestinal as well as intellectual fortitude.
The aura of invincibility he had lost that dreadful night at the Steenpaleis he 
would regain, redoubled, even, once he had completed this, his most daring act. 
He would do the deed, and in the ensuing uproar, he would be able to make his 
escape in the speedboat docked at the East River, just a hundred feet east of 
the building. The world would learn that their righteous cause could not be 
ignored.
Yes, getting his hands on a high-powered gun would be almost as easy as taking 
it off a warehouse shelf. Prudence, however, had required that he wait until the 
last moment to acquire it. The more time that elapsed afterward, the greater the 
chance of exposure. Securing the weapon, after all, meant deactivating its 
possessor.
According to the schedule of events that had been shared with Mansur's U.N. 
ambassador, Peter Novak would commence his address within five minutes. This 
member of the Mansur security detail would have to take a quick trip to the 
bathroom. He pushed out the latch-lever door that led out of the hall, and made 
his way toward the chapel.
The Caliph walked very fast, his sandals echoing on the terrazzo, until he 
caught the attention of a square-jawed, crew-cut American Secret Service agent. 
This was even better than an ordinary U.N. security officer: his weaponry would 
be of particularly high quality.
"Sir," he said to the dark-suited agent. "I protect the leader of the Islamic 
Republic of Mansur."
The Secret Service agent looked away; foreign heads of state did not fall within 
his bailiwick.
"We have received a report that someone is hiding—in there!" He gestured toward 
the chapel.
"I can ask someone to check it out," the American said impassively. "Can't leave 
my post."
"It's just over there. I myself think there's nobody there at all."
"We had the whole place turned over a few hours before. Be inclined to agree 
with you."
"But you'll take a look? Thirty seconds of your time? Doubtless there's nothing 
to the report, but if we are mistaken on this score, we shall both be 
hard-pressed to explain why we did nothing."
A grudging sigh. "Show the way."
The Caliph held open the small wooden door to the chapel and waited until the 
Secret Service man walked through.
The chapel was a long narrow space, with a low ceiling and recessed lighting to 
either side; a spotlight illuminated a black lacquered box toward the end of the 
hall. It was topped with a glowing slab of glass—some Western designer's notion 
of secular religiosity. On the wall opposite the door was a mural with 
crescents, circles, squares, triangles, all overlapping, evidently signifying 
some amalgam of creeds. So very Western, the conceit that one could have it all, 
like the trimmings on a Big Mac: needless to say, the spurious harmony was 
predicated upon the unquestioned dominion of Western permissiveness. At the 
other end, near the entrance, was a series of small benches with rush seats. The 
floor was of irregular rectangles of slate.
"Ain't no place to hide here," the man said. "There's nothing."
The heavy, soundproofed door closed behind them, cutting off the noises of the 
lobby.
"What would it matter?" the Caliph said. "You have no weapon. You'd be helpless 
against an assassin!"
The Secret Service man grinned and opened his navy jacket, putting his hands on 
his waist, allowing the long-barreled revolver to show from his shoulder 
holster.
"Apologies," the Caliph said. He turned around, his back to the American, 
seemingly captivated by the mural. Then he took a step back.
"You're wasting my time," the American said.
Abruptly, the Caliph whipped his head back, cracking into the American's chin. 
As the burly agent reeled, the Caliph's hands snaked toward his shoulder holster 
and pulled out the .357 Magnum revolver, a Ruger SP101 equipped with a four-inch 
barrel for enhanced accuracy. He slammed the butt down on the agent's head, 
ensuring that smug infidel would be unconscious for many hours.
Now he secreted the Ruger inside his small valise of tooled leather and dragged 
the muscle-bound American behind the ebonized light box, where he would be 
invisible to a casual visitor.
It was time to reenter the Assembly Hall. Time to avenge indignities. Time to 
make history.
He would prove himself worthy of the title that his followers had bestowed upon 
him. He was the Caliph indeed.
And he would not fail.


In the executive suite, the light on the black slimline phone started to glow: 
it was the speaker's "ready in five" notification—standard procedure, alerting 
him a few minutes before he would be asked to step out in front of the assembled 
leadership of the planet.
Novak reached for the phone, listened, said, "Thank you."
And as he watched, Janson felt a jolt of foreboding.
Something was wrong.
Urgently, desperately, he jammed on the rewind button and replayed the last ten 
seconds of video feed.
The light glowing on the glowing phone. Peter Novak reaching for it, bringing it 
to his ear … 
Something was wrong.
But what? Janson's unconscious mind was like a tocsin, wildly tolling its alarm, 
but he was tired, so very tired, and the fog of exhaustion closed in.
He replayed the last ten seconds once again.
The glowing light of a purring internal phone.
Peter Novak, protected by a battery of security guards but, for the moment, 
alone in the executive suite, reaching for the handset, for the instructions to 
prepare himself for his moment in the world's spotlight.
Reaching with his right hand.
Peter Novak holding the handset to his ear.
His right ear.
Janson felt as if his very skin had been coated with a layer of ice. A terrible, 
painful clarity now commanded his mind as it filled with a cascade of images. It 
was maddening, faces and voices intermingling. Demarest at a desk in Khe Sanh, 
reaching for a phone. These H&I reports are worse than useless! Holding the 
phone tight against his ear for a long while. Finally, speaking again: A lot of 
things can happen in a free-fire zone. Demarest in the swampy terrain near Ham 
Luong reaching for the radiophone, listening intently, barking a series of 
commands. Reaching with his left hand, holding the phone to his left ear.
Alan Demarest was left-handed. Invariably so. Exclusively so.
The man in the executive suite was not Alan Demarest.
Christ almighty! Janson felt the blood rush to his head, his temples throbbing.
He had sent a double. An impostor. Janson had been the one to warn the others 
about the danger of underestimating their opponent. Yet he had done just that.
And the stratagem made perfect sense. If your enemy has a good idea, steal it, 
Demarest had told him in the killing fields of Vietnam. The Mobius programmers 
were now Demarest's enemies. He gained his freedom by destroying his own 
duplicates, but then he had been planning his takeover for years. During that 
time he had not only been accumulating assets and allies: he had created a 
duplicate of his own—one who was under his power.
Why hadn't Janson thought of it?
The impostor who sat in the executive suite was not Peter Novak; he was working 
for him. Yes, this was precisely what Demarest would have done. He would have … 
reversed the angle. See the two white swans instead of the one black one. See 
the slice of pie instead of the pie with the slice missing. Flip the Necker cube 
outward instead of inward. Master the gestalt.
The man who was on his way to address the General Assembly was the Judas goat, 
leading them to their slaughter. He was the cat's paw, drawing out their fire.
In just a few minutes, the man, this copy of a copy, this doubly ersatz Novak, 
would take his position before the green-marble podium.
And he would be shot dead.
That would not be Novak's undoing. It would be their own undoing. Alan Demarest 
would have confirmed his most paranoid suspicions: he would have flushed out his 
enemies, would have discovered that the whole invitation had indeed been a plot.
At the same time, they would have destroyed their last direct link to Alan 
Demarest. Nell Pearson was dead. Marta Lang, as she'd called herself, was dead. 
Every human vessel that might lead to him had been severed—except the man in the 
executive suite. A man who must have given half a year of his life to recuperate 
from reconstructive surgery. A man who—willingly or unwillingly—had sacrificed 
his own identity to the brilliant maniac who held the future of the world in his 
hands. If he were killed, Janson would have lost his last remaining lead.
And if he mounted the podium, he would be killed.
The scheme they had set in motion could not be stopped. It was not in their 
control: that was its great recommendation—and, possibly, its lethal flaw.
Frantically, Janson flipped to the camera angle on the Mansur delegation. There 
was the aisle seat that had been occupied by the Caliph.
Empty.
Where was he?
Janson had to find him: it was their only chance to prevent catastrophe.
Now he activated his filament microphone and spoke, knowing his words would be 
relayed to the secretary-general's earpiece.
"You have got to postpone Novak's appearance. I need ten minutes."
The secretary-general was seated at the high marble bench behind the dais, 
smiling and nodding. "That's impossible," he whispered, without altering his 
public expression.
"Do it!" Janson said. "You're the secretary-general, goddammit! You figure it 
out."
Then he raced down the carpeted stairs and toward the hallway that bounded the 
Assembly Hall. He had to find the fanatic from Anura. This assassination would 
not save the world; it would doom it.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Janson's rubber-soled feet raced down the white-tiled hallway. The Caliph had 
disappeared from the Assembly Hall—which meant, presumably, that he was 
retrieving a weapon he or a confederate had somewhere managed to stow earlier. 
The South Lobby, brilliantly lit from the expansive glazed wall, was vacant. The 
giant escalator was empty. He bounded toward the delegates' lounge. Seated on a 
white-leather sofa, two blond women were deep in conversation: from the looks of 
them, they were extras from a Scandinavian delegation who found that there was 
no room for them in the Assembly Hall. Otherwise, nothing.
Where could he be? Janson's mind desperately sorted through possibilities.
Ask it differently: where would you be, Janson?
The chapel. A long, narrow space that was almost never used but was always kept 
open. It was adjacent to the secretary-general's suite, just to the other side 
of the curved wall that fronted the Assembly Hall. The one room in the building 
where one was guaranteed to be unobserved.
Janson put on another burst of speed, and though his rubber-soled shoes made 
little sound, his breathing grew heavier.
Now he pushed open the heavy, soundproofed door and saw a man in flowing white 
robes bending down behind a large ebonized box. As the door closed behind 
Janson, the man whirled around.
The Caliph.
For a moment Janson was so convulsed with hate that he could not breathe. He 
composed his face into a look of friendly surprise.
The Caliph spoke first. "Khaif hallak ya akhi."
Janson remembered his large beard and Arab-style headdress and forced himself to 
smile. He knew that the man had addressed him in Arabic; probably it was an 
insubstantial pleasantry, but he could only guess. In Janson's best version of 
Oxbridge English—an Arab royal might well have been educated at such an 
institution, absorbed its customs—he said, "My dear brother, I hope I wasn't 
intruding. It's just that I've such a migraine, I was hoping to commune with the 
Prophet himself."
The Caliph strode toward him. "Yet we would both be sorry to miss any more of 
the proceedings, having come so far. Don't you agree?" His voice was like the 
hiss of a snake.
"You make a good point, my brother," Janson said.
As the Caliph walked toward him, scrutinizing him closely, Janson's skin began 
to crawl. He came closer and closer, until he was just a foot away. Janson 
remembered that social conceptions of permissible physical distance varied among 
cultures, that Arabs typically stood closer to each other than Westerners did. 
The Caliph placed a hand on Janson's shoulder.
It was a gentle, friendly, confiding gesture—from the man who had killed his 
wife.
Involuntarily, Janson flinched.
His mind filled with a flood of images: a cascade of destruction, the ruined 
office building in downtown Caligo, the phone call informing him that his wife 
was dead.
The Caliph's face suddenly closed.
Janson had betrayed himself.
The assassin knew.
The muzzle of a long-barreled revolver was jabbed into Janson's chest. The 
Caliph had made his decision; his suspicious visitor would not be permitted to 
escape.


Mathieu Zinsou stared at the packed Assembly Hall, saw row after row of powerful 
men and women beginning to grow restive. He had promised that his introductory 
remarks would be brief; in fact, they turned out to be uncharacteristically 
rambling and prolix. Yet he had no choice but to stall! He saw the American 
ambassador to the U.N. exchange glances with his colleague the permanent 
representative; how was it that this acclaimed master of diplomatic oratory had 
become such a bore?
The secretary-general's eyes flicked back to the pages on the lectern in front 
of him. Four paragraphs of text, which he had already read; he had nothing more 
prepared and, in the tension of the moment, very little notion of what might 
appropriately be said. One would have had to know him intimately to notice that 
the blood had drained from his dark brown face.
"Progress has been made all over the world," he said, his vowels orotund, his 
message embarrassingly banal. "Genuine advances in development and international 
comity have been seen in Europe, from Spain to Turkey, from Romania to Germany, 
from Switzerland and France and Italy to Hungary, Bulgaria, and Slovakia, not to 
mention the Czech Republic, Slovenia, and, of course, Poland. Genuine progress 
has been made, too, in Latin America—from Peru to Venezuela, from Ecuador to 
Paraguay, from Chile to Guyana and French Guyana, from Colombia to Uruguay to 
Bolivia, from Argentina to … " He was drawing a blank: I'll take South American 
nation-states for one hundred, Alex. He scanned the rows of delegations before 
him, his eyes darting from one national placard to another. "To, well, 
Suriname!" A sense of relief, fleeting as a glowworm's flash. "The developments 
in Suriname have been most heartening, most heartening indeed." How long could 
he draw this out? What was taking Janson so long?
Zinsou cleared his throat. He was a man who seldom perspired; he was perspiring 
now. "And, of course, we would be remiss if we did not single out for attention 
the progress we have seen among the nations of the Pacific Rim...."


Janson stared at the man who had robbed him of the happiness that had once been 
his, the man who had stolen the treasure of his life.
He bowed his legs slightly, keeping his feet spaced out at shoulder level. "I 
have offended you," he said plaintively. Suddenly, he swept his left elbow up 
over the Caliph's right shoulder and grabbed the wrist of his gun arm with both 
hands. With a powerful upward wrench, he locked the man's arm. Then he lashed 
out with his left leg, and the two men landed hard on the slate floor. The 
Caliph whipped his left hand repeatedly to the side of Janson's head. Yet a 
protective move would enable the Caliph to wriggle free: Janson had no choice 
but to try to endure the painful blows. The only viable defense would be an 
offense. He forced the Anuran's wrist into a lock, twisting it palm upward. The 
Caliph followed the direction of his pressure, angling the Ruger toward Janson's 
body.
It would take only an instant for his trigger finger to fire a lethal shot.
Now, Janson slammed the Anuran's gun hand against the slate floor, producing a 
spasm that caused him to loosen his grip on the weapon. In a lightning-fast 
movement, Janson grabbed it and scrambled to his feet. The Anuran remained limp 
on the polished stone floor.
He had the gun now.
Immediately, he triggered the switch that activated his lip mike. "The threat 
has been neutralized," Janson told the U.N. secretary-general.
Then he felt a staggering blow from behind. The cobralike assassin had leaped 
from the ground and vised a forearm around Janson's throat, choking off his air. 
Janson bucked violently, twisting and thrashing, hoping to throw off the 
younger, lighter man, but the terrorist was all coiled muscle. Janson felt bulky 
and slow by comparison, a bear menaced by a panther.
Now, instead of trying to dislodge the Caliph's grip, he reached around and held 
him even tighter. Then he kicked both his legs into the air and hurled himself 
to the floor, landing heavily on his back—yet cushioning his impact with the 
body of his assailant, who was slammed against the floor as he fell.
He felt an expulsion of breath against the back of his neck and knew that the 
Caliph had been dealt a serious body blow.
Winded and aching himself, Janson rolled over and began to rise to his feet. As 
he did so, the Caliph rose, with incredible endurance, and threw himself at him, 
his hands formed into claws.
If the distance between them was greater, Janson would have ducked or stepped 
aside. Neither was possible. He lacked the speed. He lacked the agility.
A bear.
So be it. He held out his arms, as if in an embrace—and, with a surge of 
strength, he squeezed the Caliph to his body, locking his arms around the other 
man's chest. Tight. Tighter. Tighter still.
Even as he squeezed, however, the assassin rained powerful blows on the back of 
his neck. Janson knew he could not hold out for much longer. In a sudden, 
convulsive effort, he dropped his armlock and lifted the Anuran into the air 
horizontally, where he thrashed like a powerful eel. In an equally abrupt 
movement, Janson fell down into a crouch, his left knee bent to the ground, his 
right knee angled upward. At the same time, he slammed the lithe-bodied 
assailant down against it.
The Caliph's back snapped with a horrifying sound, something between a crunch 
and a pop, and his mouth contorted into a scream that would not come.
Janson seized him by the shoulders and slammed him against the slate floor. He 
did so again. And again. The back of the Caliph's head no longer made the sound 
of hard bone against a hard floor, for the rear cranial bone had been smashed 
into fragments, exposing the soft tissues beneath.
The Caliph's eyes grew unfocused, glazed. The eyes were said to be the windows 
to the soul, yet this man had no soul. Certainly not anymore.
Janson jammed the Ruger into his own shoulder holster. Using a small pocket 
mirror, he adjusted his beard and kaffiyeh and made sure there were no visible 
bloodstains on his person. Then he walked out of the chapel and into the General 
Assembly Hall, where he stood near the back.
For years he had fantasized about killing the man who had killed his wife. Now 
he had done so.
And all he felt was sick.


The black-haired man stood at the podium, giving a speech about the challenges 
of a new century. Janson's eyes searched every hollow and contour. He looked 
like Peter Novak. He would be accepted as Novak. Yet he lacked the sense of 
command associated with the legendary humanitarian. His voice was thin, 
wavering; he seemed slightly nervous, out of his depth. Janson knew what the 
consensus would be afterward: Very fine speech, of course. Yet poor Mr. Novak 
was a bit under the weather, was he not?
"Half a century ago," the man at the podium was saying, "the very ground under 
our feet, the land of the entire United Nations complex, was donated to the U.N. 
by the Rockefellers. The history of private assistance for this most public of 
missions goes to the origins of the institution. If I can, in my own small way, 
provide such assistance, I would be profoundly gratified. People talk about 
'giving back to the community': my own community has always been the community 
of nations. Help me to help you. Show me how I can be of greatest assistance. To 
do so would be my pleasure, my honor—indeed, nothing less than my duty. The 
world has been very good to me. My only hope is that I can return the favor."
The words were vintage Novak, by turns charming and hard-edged, humble and 
arrogant, and, in the end, nothing short of winning. Yet the delivery was 
atypically hesitant and tentative.
And only Janson knew why.
The master of escape had escaped again. How could he ever have imagined that he 
might trump his great mentor? Your arms are too short to box with God, Demarest 
had once told him, half joking. Still, there was an uncomfortable truth there. 
The protégé was pitting himself against his mentor; the student was testing his 
wits against his teacher. Only vanity had prevented him from seeing that failure 
was foreordained.
As the man at the podium finished his remarks, the audience rose in a standing 
ovation. What his address lacked in style of delivery, it made up for in 
rhetorical appeal. Besides, on such an occasion, who could begrudge the great 
man his proper due? Janson, stone-faced, walked out of the hall, and the noise 
of the resounding applause quieted only when the door closed behind him.
If Demarest wasn't at the United Nations, where was he?
The secretary-general had walked off the dais together with the clamorously 
applauded speaker, and now, as a twenty-minute recess began, both would repair 
to the carpeted chamber behind the hall.
Janson realized that his earpiece had been dislodged by his recent struggle; he 
repositioned it and, crackling, heard snippets of dialogue. He remembered the 
hidden microphone on Mathieu Zinsou's collar bar; it was transmitting.
"No, I thank you. But I would like to have that tête-à-tête you mentioned after 
all." The voice was fuzzy but audible.
"Certainly," Zinsou answered. His voice was nearer to the microphone and 
clearer.
"Why don't we go to your office, in the Secretariat?"
"You mean now?"
"I'm rather pressed for time, I'm afraid. It'll have to be now."
Zinsou paused. "Then follow me. The thirty-eighth floor." Janson wondered if the 
secretary-general had added the specification for his sake.
Something was up. But what?
Janson made a dash for the eastern ramp of the General Assembly Building, and 
then lumbered toward the looming Secretariat Building. His right knee twinged 
with every step he took, and the bruises on his body were starting to swell and 
smart—the Anuran's blows had been not only forceful but well aimed. Yet he had 
to put all of it out of his mind.
Inside the Secretariat lobby, he flashed the ID card that had been prepared for 
him, and a guard waved him through. He pressed the button for the thirty-eighth 
floor, and rode up. Mathieu Zinsou and Alan Demarest's agent, whoever he was, 
would be following him within minutes.
As he rode up to the top of the skyscraper, the transmission to his earpiece 
fuzzed out. The metal of the elevator shaft was blocking off the signal.
A minute later, the elevator stopped at the thirty-eighth floor. Janson 
remembered the floor plan: The elevator banks were in the midpoint of the long, 
rectangular floor. The offices of the undersecretaries and special deputies were 
lined against the west-facing wall; to the north were two large, windowless 
conference rooms; to the south, a narrow, windowless library. The 
secretary-general's teak-lined office was along the east wall. Because of the 
special meeting, the floor was almost entirely vacant; every staff member was 
doing duty attending to the visiting delegations.
Now Janson removed his headdress and his beard and waited around the corner from 
where the elevator banks opened. Sheltered by the recessed doorway leading to 
the library, he would be able to monitor both the hallway to the 
secretary-general's office and the elevator banks.
He knew he would not be waiting long.


The elevator chimed.
"And this will be our floor," said Mathieu Zinsou as the elevator doors opened. 
He made an after-you-my-dear-Alphonse gesture to the man who looked, for all the 
world, like Peter Novak.
Could Janson have been correct? Zinsou wondered. Or was the strain finally 
getting to the American operative, a man whom circumstances had given 
responsibilities far greater than any man should have to shoulder?
"You have to forgive us—almost everybody who normally staffs my office here is 
in the General Assembly Building. Or somewhere else altogether. The annual 
meeting of the General Assembly is like a bank holiday for some U.N. employees."
"Yes, I'm aware of this," his companion said tonelessly.
As Zinsou opened the door to his office, he startled as he saw the figure of a 
man seated behind his own desk, silhouetted by the ebbing light.
What the hell was happening?
He turned to his companion: "I don't know what to say. It seems we have an 
unexpected visitor."
The man at Zinsou's desk rose and stepped toward him, and Zinsou gaped in 
astonishment.
The helmet of thick black hair, only lightly flecked with gray, the high, almost 
Asiatic cheekbones. A face the world knew as Peter Novak's.
Zinsou turned to the man at his side.
The same face. Essentially indistinguishable.
Yet there were differences, Zinsou reflected, just not physical ones. Rather, 
they were differences of affect and mien. There was something hesitant and 
cautious about the man by his side: something implacable and imperious about the 
man before him. The marionette and the marionette master. Zinsou's whirling 
sense of vertigo was lessened only by the recognition that Paul Janson had 
guessed right.
Now the man at Zinsou's side handed an envelope to the man who could have been 
his mirror image.
A subtle nod: "Thank you, Laszlo," said the man who had been waiting for them. 
"You may go now."
The impostor by Zinsou's side turned and left without so much as a word.
"Mon cher Mathieu," said the man who stayed behind. He held out a hand. "Mon 
très cher frère."
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Janson heard Zinsou's voice distinctly in his earpiece: "My God." At the same 
time, he saw the Peter Novak who was not Peter Novak press the down elevator 
button.
He was leaving.
In Janson's earpiece, another man's voice: "I must apologize for the confusion."
Janson raced to the elevator and stepped in. The man who was not Peter Novak 
wore an expression that was startled—but devoid of recognition.
"Who are you really?" Janson demanded.
The suited Iran's response was glacial and dignified: "Have we met?"


"I simply don't understand," said the secretary-general.
The other man was magnetic, utterly confident, utterly relaxed. "You'll have to 
forgive me for taking very special precautions. That was my double, as you've no 
doubt figured out by now."
"You sent a double in your place?"
"You're familiar with the role played by the 'morning Stalin,' are you not? The 
Soviet dictator would send a look-alike to make certain public appearances—it 
kept his enemies on their toes. I'm afraid that there had been rumors of an 
assassination attempt in the General Assembly. Credible reports from my security 
staff. I couldn't risk it."
"I see," Zinsou said. "But you know, of course, that the Russian prime minister, 
the premier of China, many others, also have enemies. And they've addressed the 
General Assembly. The U.S. president himself has honored us with his presence 
today. This institution has an unbroken record of security, at least on this 
small plot of land here on the East River."
"I appreciate that, mon cher. But my enemies are of a different order. The heads 
of state you mention could, at least, assume that the secretary-general was not 
himself conspiring against them. It hasn't escaped me that the first person who 
occupied your office and position was a man named Lie."
Zinsou's veins were chilled. After an excruciating moment of silence, he said 
simply, "I'm sorry you think that."
Peter Novak patted Zinsou's shoulder and smiled ingratiatingly. "You mistake my 
meaning. I don't think it anymore. It's just that I had to be sure."
Beads of sweat had broken out on the secretary-general's forehead. None of this 
was anticipated. None of this was according to plan. "Can I get us some coffee?" 
he said.
"No, thank you."
"Well, I think I'll have some," Zinsou said, reaching over to the phone console 
on his desk.
"I wish you wouldn't."
"Very well." Zinsou maintained eye contact. "Tea, perhaps? Why don't I just call 
Helga and tell her to—"
"You know, I'd rather you not make any phone calls, either. No need to clear 
your schedule or consult with anyone. You may think me paranoid, but we don't 
have much time. In just a few minutes, I shall be leaving from the rooftop 
helipad: all arrangements have been made."
"I see," said Zinsou, who didn't.
"So let's get our business done," said the elegant man with the glossy black 
hair. "Here are instructions for getting in touch with me." He handed the 
secretary-general a white card. "It's a number you can call to get a return 
phone call within the hour. As our plans develop, we'll need to be in regular 
touch. Your Swiss bank account has, you'll find, already been enhanced—simply an 
advance on a package of benefits that we can finalize at a later point. And 
there will be regular monthly payments, which will continue as long as our 
partnership remains on a solid footing."
Zinsou swallowed. "Very thoughtful."
"Simply to put your mind at rest, because it will be very important that you're 
able to focus on what truly matters, and not make any errors of judgment."
"I understand,"
"It's important that you do. In your speeches as secretary-general, you've often 
maintained that there's a thin line between civilization'and savagery. Let's not 
put that proposition to the test."


Janson kept a foot in the elevator door, triggering the electric eye and 
preventing the elevator from moving. "Give me the envelope," he said.
"I don't know what you're talking about," the man said; his Hungarian accent did 
not slip. If the words were defiant, however, the tone was apprehensive.
Janson formed his right hand into a spear and delivered a crushing punch to the 
man's throat. As the man fell to the floor in a fit of helpless coughing, Janson 
dragged him out of the elevator. The man swung at Janson, a sluggish, poorly 
aimed uppercut. Janson dodged the punch and struck the Ruger against his temple 
in a controlled blow. The Novak impostor crumpled to the floor, unconscious. A 
quick frisk verified that there was no envelope on his person.
Now Janson crept toward Zinsou's office, pausing just before the doorway. The 
sounds came both from his earpiece and through the door.
A clear, tinny voice in his ear: "This is all a bit unexpected." Zinsou was 
speaking.
Janson turned the knob, threw open the door, and rushed in, the Ruger in his 
right hand. Demarest's reaction to the intrusion was immediate and deft: he 
repositioned himself directly behind Zinsou. There was no line of fire that 
would reach him and not strike the secretary-general.
All the same, Janson fired—wildly, it seemed: three shots high overhead, three 
slugs smashing into the window, causing the whole pane to buckle and then 
disintegrate into a curtain of fragments.
And there was silence.
"Alan Demarest," Janson said. "Love what you've done with your hair."
"A poor shot, Paul. You shame your teacher." Demarest's voice, at once rich and 
astringent, resounded in the room as it had resounded in his memory for so many 
years.
A cool gust of wind riffled a pad of yellow paper on the secretary-general's 
desk: it underscored the odd reality of being windowless on the thirty-eighth 
floor, with nothing but a low aluminum grille between them and the plaza far 
below. Sounds of traffic from the FDR Drive mingled with the cawing of gulls 
that wheeled and soared at eye level. There were darkening clouds overhead; soon 
it would rain.
Janson looked at Alan Demarest peering around Zinsou, who was obviously 
struggling to maintain his composure and doing far better than most would. 
Beneath the black pools of Demarest's eyes, he saw the bore hole of a Smith & 
Wesson .45.
"Let the secretary-general go," Janson said.
"My policy with cat's paws has always been to amputate," Demarest replied.
"You have a gun, I have a gun. He doesn't need to be here."
"You disappoint me. I thought you'd prove a more formidable antagonist."
"Zinsou! Walk. Now. Get out of here!" Janson's instructions were crisp. The 
secretary-general looked at him for a moment, then moved from between the two 
blood enemies. To Demarest, Janson said, "Shoot him and I shoot you. I will take 
the opportunity to shoot you. Do you believe me?"
"Yes, Paul, I do." Demarest spoke simply.
Janson waited, Ruger in position, until he heard the door close.
Demarest's eyes were hard but not devoid of mirth. "The football coach Woody 
Hayes was once asked why his teams so seldom threw the forward pass. He replied, 
'If you put the ball up in the air, only three things can happen, and two of 
them are bad.' "
Incongruously, Janson recalled Phan Nguyen's obsession with American football. 
"You sent me to hell," he said. "I think it's time I returned the favor."
"Why so angry, Paul? Why so much hate in your heart?"
"You know."
"Once things were otherwise. Once there was a connection—something we shared, 
something deep. Deny it if you want. You know it's true."
"I don't think I know what's true, anymore. I owe you that."
"You owe me many things. I shaped you, made you who you are. You haven't 
forgotten, have you? I never held back. You were my prize protégé. You were so 
smart and so brave and so resourceful. You were a fast, fast learner. You were 
made for great things. The way you turned out … " He shook his head. "I could 
have made you great, if you had allowed me to. I understood you the way nobody 
else did. I understood what you were truly capable of. Maybe that's what really 
spooked you. Maybe that's why you rejected me. Rejecting me was a way of 
rejecting you, rejecting who you truly are."
"Is that what you believe?" asked Janson, fascinated despite himself.
"We're different from other people, both of us are. We know the truths that 
others can't deal with. The Scythian called it right. Laws are like 
cobwebs—strong enough to catch the weak, but too weak to catch the strong."
"That's bullshit."
"We're strong. Stronger than the others. And together, we would have been so 
much stronger still. I need you to acknowledge the truth about who you are. 
That's why I brought you in, had you come to Anura, lead that last mission for 
me. Look around you, Paul. Think of the world you live in. Face it, you can't 
stand them any more than I can—the mediocrities, the complacent bureaucrats, the 
shambling paper pushers who never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. 
Mediocrities whom we have permitted to run the world. Do you honestly doubt your 
own ability to run things better than they do, to make better decisions than 
they do? You love your country? So did I, Paul. You had to be made to see what I 
was made to see. Just think, Paul. You sacrificed most of your years on this 
earth to serve a government that took about five seconds to decide to have you 
killed. I had to show you that. I had to show you the true face of your 
employers, of the government you almost gave your life for, time and again. I 
had to show you that they wouldn't hesitate to have you killed. And I did. Once, 
you turned the American government against me. The only way you could see the 
truth was for me to do the same to you."
Janson was sickened by the man's smooth prevarications but found himself at a 
loss for words.
"You're filled with hate. I understand. God forsook his own son in the Garden of 
Gesthemane. I failed you as well. You were calling out for help, and I failed 
you. So much of the time we all live out our individual existences, each of us 
at the center of our own stories, and when you needed me, I wasn't there for 
you. You were upset. Your learning curve was so steep that I made a mistake: I 
tried to teach you things you weren't ready for. And I let you go. You must have 
thought I deserved what I got from you."
"And what was that?"
"Betrayal." Demarest's eyes narrowed. "You thought you could destroy me. But 
they needed me. They always need men like me. Just like they've always needed 
men like you. I did what I had to do—what had to be done. I always did what had 
to be done. Sometimes people like me are seen as an embarrassment, and then 
actions are taken. I became an embarrassment to you. I embarrassed you because 
you looked at me and saw yourself. So much of you was me. How could it be 
otherwise? I taught you everything you knew. I gave you the skills that saved 
your life a dozen times over. What made you think you had the right to judge 
me?" At last, a diamond-hard flash of anger pierced his eerie calm.
"You forfeited any rights you had by your own actions," Janson said. "I saw what 
you did. I saw who you were. A monster."
"Oh please. I showed you what you were, and you didn't like what you saw."
"No."
"We were the same, you and I, and that's what you couldn't accept."
"We weren't the same."
"Oh, we were. In many ways, we still are. Don't think I didn't keep tabs on what 
you got up to in later years. They called you 'the machine.' You know what that 
was short for, of course: 'the killing machine.' Because that's what you were. 
Oh yes. And you presumed to judge me? Oh, Paul, don't you know why you took it 
on yourself to destroy me? Are you that devoid of self-insight? How comforting 
it must be to tell yourself that I'm the monster and you're the saint. You're 
afraid of what I showed you."
"Yes—a profoundly disturbed individual."
"Don't delude yourself, Paul. I'm talking about what I showed you about 
yourself. Whatever I was, you were."
"No!" Janson flushed with rage and horror. Violence was indeed something he 
excelled at: he could no longer run from that truth. But for him it was never an 
end in itself: rather, violence was a last resort to minimize further violence.
"As I used to tell you, we know more than we know. Have you forgotten what you 
yourself did in Vietnam? Have you magically repressed the memories?"
"You don't fool me with your goddamn mind games," Janson growled.
"I read the depositions you filed about me," Demarest continued airily. "Somehow 
they neglected to mention what you'd got up to."
"So you're the one who's been spreading that bilge about me—those twisted 
stories."
Demarest's gaze was steady. "Your victims are still out there, some of them 
still crippled but still alive. Send an agent out there to interview them. They 
remember you. They remember with horror."
"It's a lie! It's a goddamn lie!"
"Are you sure?" Demarest's question was an electric probe. "No, you're not sure. 
You're not sure at all." A beat. "It's as if part of you never left, because 
you're haunted by memories, aren't you? Recurrent nightmares, right?"
Janson nodded; he could not stop himself.
"All these decades later and your sleep is still troubled. Yet what makes those 
memories so adhesive?"
"What do you care?"
"Could it be guilt? Reach down, Paul—reach down inside you and bring it up, 
bring it back to the surface."
"Shut up, you bastard."
"What do your memories leave out, Paul?"
"Stop it!" Janson yelled, and yet there was a tremor in his voice. "I'm not 
going to listen to this."
Demarest repeated the question more quietly. "What do your memories leave out?"


The images came to him now in frozen moments of time, not with the fluidity of 
remembered movement but one frame after another. They had a ghostly surreality 
that was superimposed over what he saw in front of his face.
Humping another mile. And another. And another. Knifing through the jungle, 
taking care to avoid the hamlets and villages where VC sympathizers might make 
all his struggles for naught.
And forcing himself through an especially dense intertwining of vines and trees 
one morning, where he happened upon a vast oval of burn.
The smells told him what had happened—not so much the mingled smells of fish 
sauce, cooking fires, the fertilizing excrement of humans and water buffalo and 
chickens as something that overpowered even those smells: the tangy 
petrochemical odor of napalm.
The air was heavy with it. And everywhere was ash, and soot, and the lumpy 
remains of a fast-burning chemical fire. He trudged through the burned-out oval 
and his feet became black with charcoal. It was as if God had held a giant 
magnifying glass over this spot and burned it with the sun's own rays. And when 
he adjusted to the napalm fumes, another smell caught his nostrils, that of 
charred human flesh. When it cooled it would be food for birds and vermin and 
insects. It had not yet cooled.
From the caved-in, blackened wrecks he could see that there had once been twelve 
thatch-covered houses in a clearing here. And just outside the hamlet, 
miraculously untouched by the flames, was a cooking shack framed with coconut 
leaves, and a meal that had been freshly prepared, no more than thirty minutes 
earlier. A heap of rice. A stew of prawns and glass noodles. Bananas that had 
been sliced, fried, and curried. A bowl of peeled litchi and durian fruit. Not 
an ordinary meal. After a few moments, he recognized what this was.
A wedding feast.
A few yards away, the bodies of the newlyweds lay smoldering, along with their 
families. Yet, by some fluke, the peasant banquet had been saved from 
destruction. Now he put aside his AK-47 and ate greedily, shoveling rice and 
prawns into his mouth with his hands, drinking from a warm cauldron of water 
that had once awaited another sack of rice. He ate and was sick and ate more, 
and then he rested, lying heavily on the ground. How odd that was—so little 
remained of him, and yet it could seem so heavy!
When some of his strength had been replenished, he pushed on through uninhabited 
jungle, pushed on, pushed on. One foot in front of the other.
That was what would save him: movement without thought, action without 
reflection.
And when he had his next conscious thought, it, too, came with the wind. The 
sea!
He could smell the sea!
Over the next ridgeline was the coast. And thus freedom. For U.S. Navy gunboats 
patrolled this very segment of the shoreline, patrolled it closely: he knew 
this. And along the coast, somewhere not far from his latitude, a small U.S. 
navy base had been established: he knew this, too. When he made his way to the 
shore, he would be free, welcomed by his Navy brethren, taken away, taken home, 
taking to a place of healing.
Free!
I think so, Phan Nguyen, I think so.
Was he hallucinating? It had been a long time, too long a time, since he had 
been able to find any water to drink. His vision was often odd and unstable, a 
common symptom of niacin deficiency. His malnutrition surely had brought other 
cognitive impairments as well. But he inhaled deeply, filled his lungs with the 
air, and he knew that there was salt in it, the scent of seaweed and sun; he 
knew it. Liberation lay just over the ridgeline.
We will never meet again, Phan Nguyen.
He trudged up a gentle slope, the ground thinning out now, the vegetation 
growing less dense, and then he startled.
A darting figure, not far from him. An animal? An assailant? His vision was 
failing him. His senses: they all were failing him, and at a time when they must 
not. So close—he was so close.
His gaunt fingers fell, spiderlike, to the trigger enclosure of the submachine 
gun. To be undone by his enemies when he was so near home—that would be a hell 
beyond imagining, beyond any he had endured.
Another darting movement. He squeezed off a triple burst of gunfire. Three 
bullets. The noise and the bucking of the weapon in his arms felt greater than 
they ever had. He rushed over to see what had been hit.
Nothing. He could see nothing. He leaned against a gnarled mangosteen tree and 
craned around, and there was nothing. Then he looked down, and he realized what 
he had done.
A shirtless boy. Simple brown pants, and tiny sandals on his feet. In his hand 
was a bottle of Coca-Cola, its foamy contents now seeping to the ground.
He was, perhaps, seven years old. His crime was—what? Playing hide-and-seek? 
Gamboling with a butterfly?
The boy lay on the ground. A beautiful child, the most beautiful child Janson 
had ever seen. He appeared oddly peaceful, except for the jagged crimson across 
his chest, three tightly clustered holes from which his life-blood pulsed.
He looked up at the gaunt American, his soft brown eyes unblinking.
And he smiled.
The boy smiled.
The images flooded Janson now, flooded him for the first time, because these 
were the images his mind was to banish—banish utterly—the day that followed, and 
then all the days that followed. Even unremembered, they had pushed at him, 
weighed on him, at times immobilized him. He thought of the little boy on the 
basement stairs in the Stone Palace, of his own hand frozen at the trigger, and 
he grasped the power of the unremembered.
Yet he remembered now.
He remembered how he sank to the ground and cradled the child in his lap, an 
embrace between the dead and the almost dead, victim and victimizer.
What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath 
light with darkness?
And he did what he had never done in country. He wept.
The memories that followed were beyond proper retrieval: The child's parents 
soon came, having been summoned by the gunfire. He could see their stricken 
faces, yes—sorrowing, with a sorrow that voided even rage. They took their boy 
from him, the man and the woman, and the man was keening, keening … and the 
mother shook her head, shook her head violently, as if to dislodge the reality 
it contained, and holding the lifeless body of her child in her arms, she turned 
to the gaunt soldier, as if there were any words she could utter that would make 
a difference.
But all she said was, You Americans.


Now the faces, all of them, dissolved, and Janson was left with the hard-eyed 
gaze of Alan Demarest.
Demarest had been talking, was talking now. "The past is another country. A 
country you never fully left."
It was true.
"You could never get me out of your head, could you?" Demarest continued.
"No," Janson said, his voice a broken whisper.
"Why would that be? Because the bond between us was real. It was powerful. 
'Opposition is true friendship,' William Blake tells us. Oh, Paul—what a history 
we shared. Did it haunt you? It haunted me."
Janson did not reply.
"One day, the United States government handed me the keys to the kingdom, 
allowed me to create an empire such as the world had never seen. Of course I 
would make it mine. But however big your coffers are, it's not always easy to 
settle your accounts. I just needed you to acknowledge the truth about us two. I 
made you, Paul. I molded you from clay, the way God made man."
"No." The word came like a groan from deep within him.
Another step closer. "It's time to be truthful with yourself," he said gently. 
"There's always been something between us. Something very close to love."
Janson looked intently at him, mentally imposing Demarest's features over the 
famous countenance of the legendary humanitarian, seeing the points of 
resemblance even on the recontoured visage. He shuddered.
"And a lot closer to hate," Janson said at last.
Demarest's eyes burned into him like glowing coals. "I made you, and nothing can 
ever change that. Accept it. Accept who you are. Once you do, things change. The 
nightmares will cease, Paul. Life gets a whole lot easier. Take it from me. I 
always sleep well at night. Imagine it—wouldn't that be something, Paul?"
Janson took a deep breath, and suddenly felt able to focus once more. "I don't 
want that."
"What? You don't want to leave the nightmares behind? Now you're lying to 
yourself, Lieutenant."
"I'm not your lieutenant. And I wouldn't trade my nightmares for anything."
"You never healed, because you wouldn't let yourself heal."
"Is this what you call healing? You sleep well because something inside you—call 
it a soul, call it what you like—is dead. Maybe something happened that snuffed 
it out one day, maybe you never had it, but it's the thing that makes us human."
"Human? You mean weak. People always mix those two words up."
"My nightmares are me," Janson said, in a clear, steady voice. "I have to live 
with the things I've done on this earth. I don't have to like them. I've done 
good and I've done bad. As for the bad—I don't want to be reconciled with the 
bad. You tell me I can take that pain away? That pain is how I know who I am and 
who I'm not. That pain is how I know I'm not you."
Suddenly Demarest lashed out, batting the gun out of Janson's hand. It flew 
clattering to the marble floor.
Demarest looked almost mournful as he leveled his pistol. "I tried to reason 
with you. I tried to reach you. I've done so much to reach you, to bring you 
back in touch with your true self. All I wanted from you was an acknowledgment 
of the truth—the truth about us both."
"The truth? You're a monster. You should have died in Mesa Grande. I wish to God 
you had."
"It's remarkable—how much you know and how little. How powerful you can be, and 
how powerless." He shook his head. "The man kills the child of another and 
cannot even protect his own … "
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"The embassy bombing in Caligo—did it shake your world? I thought it might when 
I suggested it, five years ago. You'll have to forgive me: the idea of your 
having a child just didn't sit well with me. A Paul Junior—no, I couldn't see 
it. Always easy to arrange these things through the local talent—those wild-eyed 
insurrectionists dreaming of Allah and the virgins of Paradise. I'm afraid I'm 
the only one who could appreciate the delicious irony that it was all brought 
about by a fertilizer bomb. But really, what kind of a father would you have 
made, a baby-killer like you?"
Janson felt as if he had been turned to stone.
A heavy sigh. "And it's time for me to be going. I have great plans for the 
world, you know. Truth is, I'm getting bored with conflict resolution. Conflict 
promotion is the new order of the day. Human beings like battle and bloodshed. 
Let man be man, I say."
"Not your prerogative." Janson struggled to get the words out.
He smiled. "Carpe diem—seize the day. Carpe mundum—seize the world."
"They made you a god," Janson said, recalling the president's words, "when they 
didn't own the heavens.".
"The heavens are beyond even my ken. Still, I'll be happy to keep an open mind. 
Why don't you file a report about the hereafter when you get there? I'll look 
forward to your MemCon in re Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates." He was 
expressionless as he leveled the pistol two feet away from Janson's forehead. 
"Bon voyage," he said as his finger curled around the trigger.
Then Janson felt something warm spray against his face. Blinking, he saw that it 
came from an exit wound at Demarest's forehead. Undeflected by window glass, the 
sniper's shot was as precise as if it had been fired point-blank.
Janson reached out and cupped Demarest's face, holding him erect. "Xin loi," he 
lied. Sorry about that.
For a moment, Demarest's expression was perfectly blank: he could have been in 
deepest meditation; he could have been asleep.
Janson let go, and Demarest crumpled to the ground with the utter relaxation of 
life surrendered.


When Janson peered out from the secretary-general's antique telescope, he found 
Jessie precisely where he had stationed her: across the East River, her rifle 
positioned on the roof of the old bottling plant, directly beneath the mammoth 
neon letters. She was starting to disassemble the weapon with deft, practiced 
movements. Then she looked up at him, as if she could feel his gaze upon her. 
All at once, Janson had a feeling, an odd, lighter-than-air feeling, that 
everything would be all right.
He stepped away from the scope and looked out with his own two eyes, his face 
cooled by the breeze. Hunter's Point. The name had become mordantly appropriate.
Looming above his beloved, the enormous Pepsi-Cola sign glowed red in the 
deepening gloom. Now Janson squinted, saw the reflected light from the neon 
spilled onto the glistening waters below. For a moment, it looked like a river 
of blood.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
"I want to thank you for joining us, Mr. Janson," said President Charles W. 
Berquist Jr., seated at the head of the oval table. The handful of people at the 
table, mainly senior administrators and analysts from the country's principal 
intelligence agencies, had made their separate ways to the blandly handsome 
building on Sixteenth Street, using the side entrance that was accessible from a 
private driveway and guaranteed that arrivals and departures would not attract 
notice. There would be no tape, no log. It was another meeting that had not, 
officially, taken place. "Your nation owes you a debt of gratitude that it will 
never know about. But I know. I don't think it'll be any surprise that you'll be 
receiving another Distinguished Intelligence Star."
Janson shrugged. "Maybe I should get into the scrap-metal business."
"But I also wanted you to hear some good news, and from me. Thanks to you, it 
looks like we're going to be able to resurrect the Mobius Program. Doug and the 
others have walked me through it several times, and it's looking better and 
better."
"Is that right?" Janson said impassively.
"You don't seem surprised," President Berquist said, sounding straitened. "I 
supposed you anticipated the possibility."
"When you've been around the planners as long as I have, you stop being 
surprised by their combination of brilliance and stupidity."
The president scowled, displeased with the operative's tone. "You're talking 
about some very extraordinary people, I'll have you know."
"Yes. Extraordinarily arrogant." Janson shook his head slowly. "Anyway, you can 
just forget about it."
"The question is, where do you get off talking to the president like that?" 
Douglas Albright, the DIA deputy director, interjected.
"The question is whether you people ever learn anything," Janson shot back.
"We've learned a great deal," Albright said. "We won't make the same mistakes 
twice."
"True—the mistakes will be different ones."
The secretary of state spoke. "To jettison the program at this point would be to 
scuttle tens of thousands of man-hours of work, as Doug points out. It would 
also be like trying to unring a bell. As far as the world is concerned, Peter 
Novak still exists."
"We can remake him, recast him, with a whole set of additional safeguards," 
Albright said, giving the secretary of state an encouraging look. "There are a 
hundred measures we can take to prevent what Demarest did from recurring."
"I don't believe you people," Janson said. "A few days ago, you'd all agreed it 
was a colossal error. A basic miscalculation, both political and moral. You 
understood—or, anyway, you seemed to understand—that a plan that was premised on 
massive deception was bound to go awry. And in ways that could never be 
predicted."
"We were panicked," the secretary of state replied. "We weren't thinking 
rationally. Of course we just wanted the whole thing to go away. But Doug here 
went over everything with us, calmly, rationally. The potential upside remains 
extraordinary. It's like atomic energy—of course there's always the risk of a 
catastrophic mishap. None of us are debating that. Yet the potential benefits to 
humanity are even greater." As he spoke, his voice grew smoother and more 
sonorous: the senior diplomat of the press conferences and television 
appearances. He seemed hardly the same man who had been so frightened at the 
Hempel estate. "To turn our backs on it because of something that didn't happen 
would be to abdicate our responsibility as political leaders. You can see that, 
can't you? Are we on the same page?"
"We're not reading the same goddamn book!"
"Get over yourself," Albright snapped. "Fact of the matter is, we owe it all to 
you—you handled things perfectly. You're the one who made the resurrection 
possible." He did not have to refer to the details: that two men had quickly 
been removed from the Secretariat Building, each draped with a sheet, headed for 
very different destinations. "The understudy has recovered nicely. He's been 
kept in one of our security facilities, subjected to extensive chemical 
interrogation. Just as you surmised, he's terrified, absolutely ready to 
cooperate. Demarest never entrusted him with the command codes, of course. But 
that's OK. Without Demarest around to constantly rescramble them, our 
technicians have been able to penetrate the systems. We've regained control."
"That was your mistake in the past, imagining that you had control." Janson 
shook his head slowly.
"We've certainly got control over Demarest's understudy," said the gray-faced 
technician Janson remembered from the Hempel estate gathering. "A fellow named 
Laszlo Kocsis. Used to teach English at a technical school in Hungary. He went 
under the knife eighteen months ago. A carrot-and-stick situation. Make a long 
story short, if he went along with Demarest's plans for him, he'd get ten 
million dollars. If he didn't, his family would be slaughtered. Not a strong 
man. He's pretty much under our thumb now."
"As you anticipated," the DIA man said graciously. "We'll be offering him a 
small island on the Caribbean. Fitting his reclusive ways. He'll be a gilded 
prisoner. Unable to leave. Under twenty-four-hour guard of a Consular Operations 
unit. It seemed appropriate to borrow some funds from the Liberty Foundation to 
pay for the arrangement."
"But let's not get sidetracked by formalities," the president said with a tight 
smile. "The point is, everything's in order."
"And the Mobius Program is back in business," Janson said.
"Thanks to you," Berquist said. He winked, a show of his characteristic affable 
command.
"But better than before," Albright put in. "Because of all that we've learned."
"So you grasp the logic of our position," the secretary of state said.
Janson looked around to see what the president saw: the complacent faces of the 
men and women assembled in the Meridian International Center—senior civil 
servants, senior administrators and analysts, members of permanent Washington. 
The remains of the Mobius Program. They were the best and the brightest, always 
had been. From childhood, they had been rewarded with the top grades and test 
scores; all their lives they had received the approbation of their superiors. 
They believed in nothing greater than themselves. They knew that means were to 
be assessed only in relation to their ends. They were convinced that 
probabilities could be assigned to every unknown variable, that the wash of 
uncertainty could be tamed into precisely quantified risk.
And despite the fact that their ranks had been decimated by unanticipated 
vagaries of human nature, they had learned nothing.
"My game, my rules," said Janson. "Gentlemen, the Mobius Program is over."
"On whose orders?" President Berquist snorted.
"Yours."
"What's gotten into you, Paul?" he said, his face darkening. "You're not making 
sense."
"I get that a lot." Janson faced him squarely. "You know the Washington saying: 
there are no permanent allies, only permanent interests. This program wasn't 
your devising. It was something you inherited from your predecessor, who 
inherited it from his predecessor, and so on … "
"That's true of a lot of things, from our defense program to our monetary 
policy."
"Sure. The lifers work on these things—as far as they're concerned, you're just 
passing through."
"It's important to take a long view of these things," President Berquist said, 
shrugging.
"A question for you, Mr. President. You have just received and accepted an 
illegal personal contribution of $1.5 million." As Janson spoke, he imagined 
Grigori Berman guffawing back in Berthwick House. It had been the sort of 
outsize mischief that pleased him beyond measure. "How are you going to explain 
that to Congress and to the American people?"
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about a big-time Beltway scandal—Watergate times ten. I'm talking 
about watching your political career go up in flames. Call your banker. A 
seven-figure sum was wired to your personal account from an account of Peter 
Novak's at International Netherlands Group Bank. The digital signatures can't be 
faked—well, not easily. So it sure seems like a foreign plutocrat has put you on 
his payroll. A suspicious-minded member of the other party might start to wonder 
about that. Could have something to do with your signing that banking secrecy 
act into law the other week. Could have something to do with a lot of things. 
Enough to keep a special prosecutor busy for years. It's looking like a four- or 
five-column headline in the Washington Post: is president on plutocrat's 
payroll? investigation pending. That sort of thing. The New York tabloids will 
run with something crass, like rent-a-prez. You know those media feeding 
frenzies—there'll be such a din, you won't be able to hear yourself think."
"That's bullshit!" the president exploded.
"And we'll all enjoy watching you explain that to Congress. The details will 
arrive by e-mail tomorrow to the Justice Department as well as the relevant 
members of the House and the Senate."
"But Peter Novak … "
"Novak? Not an angle I'd want to focus any attention on, if I were you. I don't 
think either one of you will come away with your reputation intact."
"You're kidding me," the president said.
"Call your banker," Janson repeated.
The president stared at Janson. His personal and political instincts had gained 
him the highest office of the land. They told him that Janson was not bluffing.
"You're making a terrible mistake," said Berquist.
"I can undo it," Janson said. "It's still not too late."
"Thank you."
"Though soon it will be. That's why you need to decide about Mobius."
"But—"
"Call your banker."
The president left the room. A few minutes passed before he returned to his 
seat.
"I consider this beneath contempt." The president's hard Scandinavian features 
were livid with rage. "And it's beneath you! My God, you've served your country 
with incredible loyalty."
"And was rewarded with a 'beyond salvage' order for my pains."
"We've been through that." Berquist glowered. "What you're proposing amounts to 
nothing less than blackmail."
"Let's not get sidetracked by the formalities," Janson said blandly.
The president rose, his face tight, blinking hard. Wordlessly, he sat down 
again. He had talked down recalcitrant opponents before, had directed the high 
beams of his charm at the disaffected and resistant, and had brought them 
around. He could do this.
"I have devoted my life to public service," he told Janson, his rich baritone 
swelling with grave sincerity. "The welfare of this country is my life. I need 
you to understand that. The decisions that have been made in this room have not 
been made thoughtlessly or cynically. When I was sworn into office, I took an 
oath to protect and defend this nation—the same oath my father had taken twenty 
years before. It is an obligation I take with utmost seriousness … "
Janson yawned.
"Derek," the president said, turning to the director of Consular Operations and 
the one man at the table who had said nothing so far. "Talk to your guy. Make 
him understand."
Undersecretary Derek Collins removed his heavy black glasses and massaged the 
reddened grooves they left on the bridge of his nose. He had the look of someone 
who was about to do something he would probably regret. "I kept trying to tell 
you—you don't know this man," Collins said. "None of you do."
"Derek?" The president's request was clear.
"To protect and defend," Collins said. "Heavy words. A heavy burden. A beautiful 
ideal that sometimes requires doing some ugly things. Uneasy rests the head, 
right?" He looked at Janson. "There aren't any saints in this room, make no 
mistake about that. But let's show some respect to the basic idea of democracy. 
There's one person in this room who's gone a long way on some scraps of common 
sense and some common decency. He's a tough son of a bitch, and he's as true a 
patriot as they come, and, agree with him or not, at the end of the day, this 
has to be his call … "
"Thanks, Derek," President Berquist said, solemn but pleased.
"I'm talking about Paul Janson," the undersecretary finished, facing the man at 
the head of the table. "And if you don't do what he says, Mr. President, you're 
a bigger fool than your father."
"Undersecretary Collins," the president barked, "I'd be happy to accept your 
resignation."
"Mr. President," Collins said in a level tone, "I'd be happy to accept yours."
President Berquist froze. "Goddamn it, Janson. Do you see what you've done?"
Janson stared at the director of Consular Operations. "An interesting song for a 
hawk," he said with a half smile.
Then he turned to the president. "You know what they say. 'Consider the source.' 
The advice you've been given may say more about your advisers' concerns than 
your own. You really ought to think in terms of alignment of interests. Goes for 
you, too, Mr. Secretary." He glanced at the now queasy-looking secretary of 
state and returned to Berquist. "As I said, as far as most of the people in this 
room are concerned, you're just passing through. They've been around before you, 
they'll be here after you. Your immediate, personal interests don't really mean 
a whole lot to them. They want you to take the 'long view.' "
Berquist was silent for half a minute. He was a pragmatist at heart, and used to 
making the cold, hard calculations that political survival depended upon. 
Everything else was secondary to that essential arithmetic. His forehead gleamed 
with sweat.
He forced a smile. "Paul," he said, "I'm afraid this meeting got off to a bad 
start. I'd really like to hear you out."
"Mr. President," Douglas Albright protested. "This is entirely inappropriate. 
We've gone through this again and again, and—"
"Fine, Doug. Why don't you tell me that you know how to nullify what Paul 
Janson's gone and done? I haven't heard anybody here bother to address that 
particular matter."
"These aren't comparables!" Albright stormed. "We're talking about the long-term 
interests of this geopolitical entity, not the greater glory of the second 
Berquist administration! There's no comparison! Mobius is bigger than all of us. 
There's only one right decision."
"And what about, oh, a looming political scandal?"
"Suck it up, Mr. President," Albright said quietly. "I'm sorry, sir. You've got 
a decent chance of toughing it out. That's what you politicians specialize in, 
isn't it? Cut taxes, launch a decency campaign against Hollywood, go to war in 
Colombia—do whatever your pollsters say. Americans have the attention span of a 
gnat. But, if you'll forgive my directness, you cannot sacrifice this program on 
the altar of political ambition."
"Always interesting to hear what you think I can and cannot do, Doug," Berquist 
said, leaning over and squeezing the analyst's beefy shoulders, "But I've think 
you've said enough today."
"Please, Mr. President—"
"Put a sock in it, Doug," Berquist said. "I'm thinking here. Doing some deep 
presidential-level policy revaluation."
"I'm talking about the prospects of reengineering global polities." Albright's 
voice rose to a squawk of indignation. "You're just talking about your 
reelection chances."
"You got that one right. Call me a stick-in-the-mud. I kinda have a hankering 
for the scenario where I'm still president." He turned to Janson. "Your game, 
your rules," he said. "I can live with that."
"Excellent choice, Mr. President," Janson said neutrally.
Berquist gave him a smile that combined command and entreaty. "Now give me my 
goddamn presidency back."



THE NOVAK TO YIELD CONTROL OF THE LIBERTY FOUNDATION
BILLIONAIRE PHILANTHROPIST TURNS OVER FOUNDATION TO
AN INTERNATIONAL BOARD OF TRUSTEES.
MATHIEU ZINSOU TO SERVE AS NEW DIRECTOR
By Jason Steinhardt


AMSTERDAM—In a press conference held at the Amsterdam headquarters of the 
Liberty Foundation, the legendary financier and humanitarian Peter Novak 
announced that he would be relinquishing control of the Liberty Foundation, the 
global organization that he created and ran for more than fifteen years. Nor 
would the organization have any foreseeable difficulties in funding: he also 
announced that he was turning over all his capital assets to the foundation, 
which would be reconstituted as a public trust. An international board of 
directors would include prominent citizens from around the world, under the 
chairmanship of the U.N. Secretary General, Mathieu Zinsou. "My work is done," 
Mr. Novak said, reading from a prepared statement. "The Liberty Foundation must 
be greater than any one man, and my plan, all along, had been to delegate 
control of this organization to a public board, with broad accountability among 
its directors. As the foundation enters this new phase, transparency must be the 
watchword."
Reactions were generally positive. Some observers expressed surprise, but others 
said they had long anticipated such a move. Sources close to Mr. Novak suggested 
that the recent death of his wife had helped catalyze his decision to retire 
from the operations of the foundation. Others point out that the financier's 
reclusive habits were increasingly in conflict with the xposed and highly public 
position that his work at the foundation demanded. Novak was sketchy about his 
future plans, but some aides suggested that he planned to remove himself from 
the public eye entirely. "You won't have Peter Novak to kick around anymore, 
gentlemen," one deputy told members of the press with cheerful irony. Yet the 
mysterious plutocrat has long had a gift for the unexpected, and those who know 
him best agree that it would be a mistake to count him out.
"He'll be back," said Jan Kubelik, the foreign minister of the Czech Republic, 
who was in town for a G-7 Conference. "Depend on it. You haven't seen the last 
of Peter Novak."
EPILOGUE
The lithe woman with the spiky brown hair lay prone and perfectly still, the 
four-foot rifle braced by sandbags fore and aft. The shadows of the belfry 
rendered her perfectly invisible from any distance. When she opened her nonscope 
eye, the cityscape of Dubrovnik seemed oddly flattened, red-tiled roofs 
scattered before her like colored faience, shards of ancient pottery. Beneath 
the bell tower where she had been positioned for the past several hours, there 
was a sea of faces that continued several hundred yards to the wooden platform 
that had been erected in the center of Dubrovnik's old town.
They were the faithful, the devoted. It was lost on none of them that the pope 
had decided to start off his visit to Croatia by addressing an audience in a 
city that had come to symbolize the suffering of its people. Though more than a 
decade had passed since the Yugoslav army laid siege to the Adriatic port city, 
the memory of the assault remained undimmed among the town's citizens.
Many of them had stamp-sized laminated photographs of the beloved pontiff. It 
wasn't merely that he was someone known to be willing to speak truth to power; 
it was the unmistakable radiance he had about him—charisma, yes, but also 
compassion. It was typical of him that he would not merely decry violence and 
terrorism from the safety of the Vatican; he would take his message of peace to 
the very heartlands of strife and separatism. Indeed, word had already got out 
that the pope intended to address a history that most Croatians preferred to 
forget. In the ancient conflict between Catholic and Eastern Orthodox faiths, 
there was much cause for contrition on both sides. And it was time, the pontiff 
believed, for the Vatican and Croatia alike to confront the brutally fascistic 
legacy of the country's Ustashi authority during the Second World War.
Though Croatia's leadership, and much of its citizenry, was bound to react with 
dismay, his moral courage had seemingly only increased the devotion of his 
throngs of admirers here. It had also—Janson's suspicions had recently been 
confirmed by his contacts in the capital city of Zagreb—resulted in a carefully 
organized assassination plot. An embittered secessionist movement of minority 
Serbs would avenge their own historic grievances by murdering the figure whom 
this predominantly Catholic nation venerated above all others. In silent 
collusion was a network of extreme Croatian nationalists: they feared the 
pontiff's reform-minded tendencies and sought an opportunity to extirpate the 
treacherous minorities who had taken root among them. After such a monstrous 
provocation—and no provocation could be greater than the slaying of a beloved 
pope—none would stand in their way. Indeed, even ordinary citizens would 
willingly join in the sanguinary business of cleansing Croatia.
Like all extremists, of course, they had an inability to anticipate the 
consequences of their actions beyond the immediate realization of their goals. 
The Serbs' murderous act would indeed be repaid, ten thousandfold, in the blood 
of his ethnic kin. Yet those massacres would inevitably inspire the Serbian 
government to intervene forcibly: Dubrovnik and other Croatian cities would 
again be shelled by Serbian forces, compelling Croatia itself to declare war 
upon its Serbian antagonists. A conflagration would, once more, burst upon this 
most unstable corner of Europe—dividing neighboring countries into allies and 
adversaries, and with what ultimate results, nobody could say. A global conflict 
had once been sparked by a Balkan assassination; it could happen again.
As a gentle breeze filtered through the medieval buildings of the city's old 
town neighborhood, an unexceptionable-looking man with short, gray hair—nobody 
who would ever get a second look—continued to pace down the street Bozardar 
Filipovic. "Four degrees off the median," he said softly. "The apartment block 
on the middle of the street. Top floor. Got a visual?"
The woman repositioned slightly, and adjusted her Swarovski 12X50: the gunman 
lying in wait filled the scope. The scarred visage was familiar from her face 
book: Milic Pavlovic. Not one of the Serb fanatics of Dubrovnik, but a seasoned 
and highly skilled assassin who had earned their trust.
The terrorists had sent the best.
But then so had the Vatican, which sought to eliminate the assassin without the 
world knowing what it had done.
The executive security business was only formally a new pursuit for Janson and 
Kincaid. For that matter, it was only formally a business: as Jessica had 
pointed out, the millions that remained in Janson's Cayman Islands account were 
his to keep—if he hadn't earned it, who had? Still, s Janson had said, they were 
too young to put themselves out to pasture. He had tried that—tried to run from 
who he was. That was not the answer for him, for either of them; he knew that 
now. It was the hypocrisy—the hubris of the planners—against which he rebelled. 
But for better or worse, neither of them had been made for a peaceable 
existence. "I've done the small-island-in-the-Caribbean thing," Janson had 
explained. "It gets old fast." The bountiful cash reserves simply meant that the 
partnership could be selective in choosing its clients and that there would be 
no need to stint on operating expenses.
Now Kincaid spoke in a low voice, knowing that the filament mike carried her 
words straight to Janson's earpiece. "Goddamn Kevlar body armor," she said, 
stretching her long, loose-jointed body beneath the layers of bulletproof mesh. 
She always found it uncomfortably hot, protested his insistence that she wear 
it. "Tell me the truth—do you think it makes me look fat?"
"You think I'm gonna answer that while you've got a bullet in the chamber?"
She found her spot-weld—stock to cheek—as the craggy-faced assassin assembled 
his bipod, and inserted the magazine into his long rifle.
The pope would be making his appearance in minutes.
Janson's voice in her ear again: "Everything OK?"
"Like clockwork, snookums," she said.
"Just be careful, all right? Remember, the backup shooter's in the warehouse at 
location B. If they get wind of you, you're in his range."
"I'm on top of it," she said, suffused with the deep, glowing calm of a 
perfectly positioned marksman.
"I know," he said. "I'm just saying, be careful."
"Don't worry, my love," she said. "It'll be a walk in the park."