“Are you any good at spotting a tail?”

“Fairly good.”

“Walk to Central Park. Go up Fifth Avenue, against the traffic. Cross the street at least three times, checking for a multiple tail. There’ll be at least four of them. Once in the park, sit on a bench outside the Children’s Zoo.” She hung up.

Stone walked briskly up Fifth Avenue, stopping now and then to check the reflection in a shop window. He crossed the street four times, looking for a repetition in the faces around him, but he saw none. He strolled slowly through the park to the Children’s Zoo and sat down on a bench. His cell phone rang immediately. “Yes?”

“Walk to the Wollman skating rink.” She hung up.

Stone walked to the rink, stopping frequently to look at the zoo’s animals and checking for a tail. He still saw no one. At the rink, his cell phone rang again. “Yes?”

“Go to the carousel, buy a ticket. Don’t ride a horse, you’ll look ridiculous. Sit on a bench.” She hung up.

Stone did as he was told, mixing among the children and their nannies. The carousel had made three revolutions before she sat down beside him. Her hair was long and dark, and she wore a tweed suit and bright red lipstick.

“Good afternoon,” she said.

“Good evening. I assume I wasn’t followed.”

“Only by me. There was no one else on you. Why did you call?” Her accent was American now.

“Do you know who Sir Edward Fieldstone is?”

“Architect? Of course.”

“I had lunch with him today, at his request.”

She looked surprised. “And how did this come about?”

“A friend of mine works for him. I told her I had spoken to you.”

“I suppose that is not a breach of client confidentiality.”

“He wants to meet with you.”

She laughed. “I’ll bet he does.”

“I think you should consider this carefully. He says he’s willing to meet you, alone, in a place of your choosing, as long as it’s a public place. I expect you’re thinking there’ll be a sniper on a rooftop.”

“You’re psychic, Stone. What does he want?”

“He wants a truce.”

She blinked a few times. “He actually said that?”

“To the extent that you can get an upper-class Englishman to say anything explicit, yes.”

“On what terms?”

“You stop killing his people, his people stop trying to kill you. He’ll remove all traces of you from British and European intelligence computers, keeping only backup files, in case you renege.”

“What if he reneges?”

“I asked him that, but I didn’t get a straight answer. Presumably, you could go back to killing his people.”

“I don’t get it. Why would he stop trying to kill me?”