Not surprisingly, Reza Nazari did not sleep well that last night in Vienna, and neither did Gabriel. He passed it in the safe flat in the Second District, in the company of Christopher Keller and Eli Lavon. Lisbon was never far from his thoughts: the dreary little apartment in the Bairro Alto, the vines spilling from Quinn’s balcony, the attractive woman of perhaps thirty whom he followed to London’s Brompton Road. Lisbon had been a master performance staged for his benefit, and Gabriel had responded by crafting a story of his own—a story of radioactive material gone missing and of a legendary spy gone to an early grave. The final act would play out tomorrow night in Hamburg, and the star of the show would be Reza Nazari. It was a great deal of responsibility to place upon the shoulders of a mortal enemy, but Gabriel had no other choice. Nazari was the road that led to Alexei Rozanov, ally of the Russian president, patron of Eamon Quinn. The man who could make a ball of fire travel a thousand feet per second. The man who had been at a terrorist training camp in Libya with Tariq al-Hourani. No, he thought as he watched snow falling gently over Vienna, he would not sleep tonight.

The computer was his only companion. He reread the British dossier on Alexei Rozanov and reviewed the photos from Copenhagen. The Russian had arrived a few minutes late that evening, which, according to Nazari, was his custom. Two SVR bodyguards had surreptitiously followed him into the restaurant, and a third had remained with the car. It was a local acquisition, a big Mercedes sedan, Danish registration. The driver had waited on a quiet side street until Alexei Rozanov summoned him with a phone call at the end of the meal. The Russian had left the restaurant alone in order to preserve the illusion that he was not a man under full-time physical protection.

Dawn arrived late that last morning in Vienna, and it never got properly light outside. Gabriel and Keller left the safe flat a few minutes after eight o’clock and took a taxi to the airport. They checked in separately for the morning flight to Hamburg and upon arrival rode in a pair of taxis to the same spot on the Mönckebergstrasse, Hamburg’s main shopping street. From there they walked together from the old city to the new—and from somewhere in the depths of his memory, Gabriel recalled that Hamburg had more canals and bridges than Amsterdam and Venice combined.

“What about St. Petersburg?” asked Keller.

“I wouldn’t know,” said Gabriel with a tense smile.