“Find what Roger Gordian most loves, and we will know his greatest weakness,” DeVane had said. “Strike at it, and we will have struck at his heart.”

“I will be moving on from here right away, then.”

“Yes.”

“To America.”

“That’s correct, Siegfried. America. Where Gordian’s heart is. And where opportunity is a wild running horse to be roped and ridden.”

Kuhl had asked only a few practical questions after that.

Though far away, DeVane had felt his arousal.

Slowly now, he let his eyes glide over the row of four African masks aligned on the wall above the plasma screen. There was a reptilian gold fetish mask that Ebrie chieftains had carried to laud the killing of their tribal enemies, a blockish, primitive Dogon hunter’s helmet worn for protection against the spirits of slaughtered prey, an Ashante ghost mask with curling horns and sharply filed teeth, and the Fang Ngi secret society mask of which Begela’s face had somehow reminded DeVane—or more accurately, Mr. Fáton—at their recent appointment in Port-Gentil.

Gerard Fáton. Jack Nemaine. Henry Skoll. The Facilitator. El Tío. All of them were masks of DeVane’s creation, available to him when necessary. Even his Harlan DeVane identity was a guise of sorts. Form-fitted, true. Designed and developed around basic elements of his personality. Yet no less a careful invention than the others, a role he had learned to play fully and well . . .

A vivid memory bobbed up into DeVane’s thoughts and he closed his eyes as if to stave it off, his fingers unmeshing, pressing lightly against his temples. He sat a while in quiet struggle with himself. It was useless, though. Impossible. The recollection pulsed with a kind of independent, insuppressible life.

DeVane knew he could only let it unfold and hope it did so quickly. He lowered his hands from the sides of his head, rose from his chair, strode across the carpeted floor, and drew the curtain back from a brass opening porthole.

Sunlight washed over him. He lifted the porthole and stared outside without seeing anything. Fresh sea air breezed through into the study, but DeVane’s nostrils registered heavy urban smog as the images and sensations came on.

First, the building.

It always started with the building.

As he’d approached from the street, it had seemed to rise infinitely above him.

Nervous, he had walked through the entrance to a security desk and told his name to a uniformed guard who consulted a visitor list, cleared him for entry, and then pointed him toward the elevators.

His stomach had lurched as the car sped him up to a corporate suite filled with employees. They were darting busily between doorways, though he’d sensed their quick, concealed glances. It was as if they were the inhabitants of a lush, sheltering forest, unsure what to make of the stray and anxious creature that had wandered in from some outer barrens.