Seth Ridgeway sat at the mahogany bar nursing his genever and watching the man who had followed him for the past three days.

The man had a pale, ascetic face, wild dark eyebrows, and eyes that the old masters used to paint on the faces of the insane. The man’s coat hung on a thin reedy frame. What little hair he had left on his head seemed to be a dull chestnut color.

Seth took a sip of the genever and let it roll on his tongue before swallowing it. In the image that played across the mirror behind the bar, he saw the man sitting alone at a small round table with a glass of lager in front of him, reading from a paperback novel.

Seth had first noticed the man at Schiphol Airport, standing in the corridor just past the customs area. He had been dressed in an ill-fitting suit that looked as if it came from a secondhand shop. He looked like one of the tens of thousands of bums, street people, panhandlers, and genuine homeless attracted to Holland by its liberal attitudes and its even more liberal social welfare programs.

As Seth had walked past the man at the airport, he had looked directly at Seth and taken a single tentative step. Seth had looked quickly away and picked up his pace to avoid the expected plea for spare change.

Thoughts of the man had quickly vanished on the cab ride into downtown Amsterdam, as fatigue and jet lag leeched the energy from first his body and then his mind.

But the man had been sitting in the lobby of the Hotel Victoria when Seth came down for breakfast the next morning.

Seth downed the last of his genever and signaled the bartender for another. He shifted in his seat. The .357 Magnum in his coat pocket, obtained for a small ransom the night before, bumped softly against the bar.

He had assumed the man worked for Stratton until he had called the NS A man from the Hotel Victoria to report in.

“My man?” Stratton asked with alarm. “I don’t have a man in Amsterdam. At least not yet.”

Seth had felt his legs go wobbly. He had let his guard down, had given the man plenty of chances to kill him, to hurt him. But the man hadn’t hurt him. He told this to Stratton.

“That doesn’t mean he won’t do something,” Stratton replied. “We’ve gotten some more information in the last twenty-four hours that indicates there are more players in this game than we originally thought. And they’re all dangerous.”

“Game?” Seth said. “Is that what all this is to you? A game? This is my life—and my wife’s life, too. This is no game.”

“It’s all a game, Seth,” Stratton replied calmly. “You really start getting into trouble when you begin to take it seriously. You lose your perspective. That’s why you need to come into the fold. We can protect you. This isn’t being a cop anymore, Seth. This is a different game, a very different game.”