With the dying of the day, Kuhl’s period of latency had also reached its end. Minutes from now he would depart for Barajas airport and exit the country using a fraudulent identity and supporting documents—one of many aliases he’d seeded around the world and kept in reserve for when he received his signal from DeVane. Thousands of miles away, Kuhl’s cell of sleeper agents in America had been activated and made rapid arrangements for his coming. On his specific instructions, they had secured a base that fit his cover and conformed nicely with his tactical imperatives. It would provide crucial seclusion, exploitable terrain, and at the same time place him within close reach of his potential target or targets.

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

Kuhl was confident of achieving those objectives. He had compiled a thorough mental dossier on Gordian, and knew Harlan DeVane’s intelligence was still more comprehensive. His American operatives had also supplied useful information. Much had been readily acquired, for despite his estimable regard for UpLink International’s corporate security, Roger Gordian had put limited emphasis on his individual secrecy. Kuhl had found this unsurprising. Gordian was a prominent businessman, someone who led a highly public life. Whose success depended in part on his accessibility, and a reputation that inspired widespread confidence. His background was common knowledge. His personal and professional linkages were to a considerable extent open, apparent, exposed. Some of them had already come under Kuhl’s pitiless lens, and he believed their order of importance in Gordian’s life to be a relatively simple determination. Once he was convinced beyond doubt of the link best broken, it would be no less simple to assess its vulnerabilities, and learn whatever remaining facts he needed to move with potent, decisive speed.

He moved his glance to the clock on the table next to him, then returned it to the miniature of San Ginés.

The hour and minute had come.

There was only one thing left for him, one thing before he closed out.

Kuhl slid his hand down to the shopping bag he’d leaned against the foot of his chair and took hold of its handle. Then he rose and went over to the worktable where the church of his diligent fashioning glowed bloodred in the ashes of nightfall.

He stood there looking down at it, appraising its every feature, recalling the intensity of his labor with a sense of powerful and intimate connection. Feeling an investment of self that in some indescribable way connected him, in turn, to the old church on Calle del Arenal, after which his exacting replica had been crafted.

Calle del Arenal, the Street of Sand, ancient cemetery of Jews, their dust and bones razed at the order of an inquisitor tribunal.