The air was crisp and salty, the late-afternoon light was brilliant orange, the sea was aflame and flecked with whitecaps. Gabriel stood for a moment in the drive, feeling hollowed out with longing, until the security man nudged him politely toward the entrance—because the security man was under strict orders not to allow him to remain visible to a world that would soon believe him dead. Looking up, he imagined Chiara standing reproachfully in the doorway, her riotous hair tumbling about her shoulders, her arms folded across her childless womb. But as he climbed the three front steps, she slipped away from him. Automatically, he hung his oilskin coat on the hook in the entrance hall and ran a hand over the old suede flat cap he used to wear during his sojourns along the cliffs. Then, turning, he saw Chiara for a second time. She was removing a heavy earthenware pot from the oven, and when she lifted its lid the savor of veal, wine, and sage filled the cottage. Photographs of a missing Rembrandt portrait lay scattered across the kitchen counter where she worked. Gabriel had just agreed to find the painting for an art dealer named Julian Isherwood, not knowing his search would lead directly into the heart of Iran’s nuclear program. He had managed to locate and destroy four secret uranium enrichment facilities, a stunning achievement that significantly slowed Iran’s march toward a nuclear weapon. The Iranians surely did not view Gabriel’s accomplishment in the same flattering light. In fact, they wanted him dead just as badly as the men who had hired Eamon Quinn.

The vision of Chiara was gone. He opened the French doors and for an instant he imagined he could hear the church bells of Lyonesse, the mythical submerged City of Lions, tolling beneath the surface of the sea. A single fisherman stood waist-deep in the breakers; the beach was deserted except for a woman walking along the water’s edge, trailed a few feet by a man in a nylon sailing jacket. She was headed north, which meant she presented him with her long back. A gust of cold wind blew from the sea, cold enough to chill Gabriel, and in his thoughts he was watching her walk along a frozen street in St. Petersburg. Then, as now, he had viewed her from above; he had been standing at the parapet of a church dome. The woman had known he was there but had not looked up. She was a professional, an elite professional. She was of a higher caliber, a better class.