“Everybody. It’s not exactly a secret anymore.” Petrovitch patted him down and relieved him of a kitchen knife, a Magnum, and the rat. He kissed its shiny cover and slipped it in his inside pocket.

Sorenson growled low in his throat. “In a minute, someone’s going to walk through that door…”

“And what? Judging on the mood in there, they’ll shake my hand and help me pitch your body over the parapet. If anybody could have taken advantage of today, it was the Paradise militia. You fucked it up for them. Something tells me that unless you play it very smart—like listening to me—your reign as czar is going to be over before it starts. Now, get up those stairs.”

There was another door, edged by bright daylight. Sorenson went through first, Petrovitch following. The top of the tower was pooled with water blown into corrugations by the wind. The sky was huge and low, almost as if it could be touched with an upstretched hand. The Metrozone was laid bare around them.

Some of the younger kids were serving as spotters. They saw Sorenson held at gunpoint, and looked nervously at each other.

“Give us five minutes, Okay?” said Petrovitch.

As the children danced past, Sorenson turned and surveyed what he still believed was his kingdom.

“Not enough burning,” he said.

Petrovitch waited for the door to self-shut before replying. “What the zaebis is wrong with you? I mean, I realize that you’re a reckless, patricidal pyromaniac but I thought you wanted to go home. You should have been halfway across the Atlantic by now.”

“I was caught, all right? If I’d have stayed with Oshicora, Chain would have busted my ass. If I’d have gone over to Chain, Oshicora would have hung me out to dry.”

“Yobany stos, Sorenson. Chain—Chain doesn’t care about you anymore. He never did. He just sits in the middle of his spider’s web and never does anything, just as long as he knows. And Oshicora: how stupid do you have to be? Oshicora’s dead and the tower has fallen. When you thought you were kidnapping Sonja, you were rescuing her from Hijo. And you only managed that because the Jihad were helping her.”

It took a few moments for the words to penetrate Sorenson’s skull. He wandered in a drunkard’s walk to the edge of the roof, where he was separated from the precipice by a barely waist-high metal bar. At first, it looked like Sorenson was going to jump. He gripped the railing with whitened knuckles and leaned his body across it until it was almost horizontal. Then he straightened up and started to march toward Petrovitch.

Petrovitch raised his gun hand and sighted between the American’s narrowed eyes. His palm was sweating, and his left arm was aching again. There was a dull pain that stretched all the way from his chest to his fingertips.