They started to edge away, and their first tentative movements rapidly translated into full flight. They burst out into the daylight, and it was there, framed against the shadow, that they were scythed down.

At the first shot, the nun flattened the girl with a sweep of her legs and threw herself on top of Petrovitch. Her veil covered his face, forming a seal over his mouth. He couldn’t breathe, but as she lay across his ribs with her full weight, there wasn’t much point in trying. She had even managed to pin his arms; he couldn’t so much as bat his hands against her. He struggled weakly and uselessly. He was powerless to save himself; of all the stupid ways to go, crushed by a nun.

The roar of gunfire went on for longer than was ever necessary. Someone determinedly made a point while Petrovitch meekly suffocated.

It became abruptly silent, and after a pause that was almost his undoing, the nun looked up. Her veil swung to one side, and he managed to drag in a wheezing gasp of air.

He coughed, and filled his lungs again. The air tasted of dust, cordite and blood.

“Stay down,” she said, not realizing that Petrovitch had no option but to obey. Figures made their way through the haze and picked their way over the ruined bodies of the two dead men.

These men also had guns; long-barrelled assault rifles with smoke still curling from their muzzles. They carried them easily, like workmen who knew they’d completed the day’s task.

“Miss Sonja?” said one, a pocket-sized man with a shaved head. He stepped out of the clearing air and looked sadly around him.

“I’m here,” said the woman. She picked herself off the floor and shook out the hem of her skirt.

“We should go,” said the man, “Your father is worried about you.” He brushed a chip of plaster off his suited shoulder while he too waited. The rest of his team materialized behind him. To a man—and they were all men—they were Japanese.

“I’m ready.” She walked toward the doors, the security men surrounding her. She stopped at the entrance to the porch, and looked round at the only other people who had helped her that morning. She screwed up her face, and came back. She leaned over them, and Petrovitch thought it an extraordinary thing that her hair had managed to fall into place with no effort at all.

“Miss Sonja? The police will be here soon. It would be best to avoid them at the moment.”

She held up her hand in a way that indicated that she was in charge now.

“Is he going to be Okay?” she asked the nun.

“I think,” she said, with a surprising amount of viciousness for someone in holy orders, “he needs an ambulance.”

“I’ll have one called. Hijo?”

“Yes, Miss Sonja. At once.”