Janson winced: the don’s speculations had struck a nerve; the question, though seemingly far-fetched, had haunted him since Athens. “But why? How?” he demanded.

Was it possible?

Fielding shifted uneasily in his harp-backed chair, running his fingertips along its alligatored black lacquer. “I don’t state. I don’t even suggest. I ask. Yet consider. Peter Novak had become more powerful than many sovereign nations. And so he may have, wittingly or unwittingly, sabotaged some pet operation, cocked up some plan, threatened some bureaucratic turf, enraged some powerful player … .” Fielding waved a hand, gesturing vaguely at possibilities too hazy to pin down. “Might an American strategist have deemed him too powerful, too much of a threat, simply as an independent actor on the stage of world politics?”

Fielding’s speculations were all too cogent for comfort. Márta Lang had met with high-powered people in the State Department and elsewhere. They had urged her to employ Janson; for all he knew, Lang’s people had relied on them for some of the instrumentation and equipment. They would have sworn her to secrecy, of course, invoking the “political considerations” that Lang had alluded to with such sardonicism. There was no need for Janson to know the provenance of the hardware; no reason for Lang not to keep her word to the U.S. officials with whom she had dealings. Who were these officials? No names were used; all Janson was told was that they knew him, or of him. Consular Operations, presumably. And then the inculpating transfers to his Cayman Islands account; Janson had believed that his former employers remained ignorant of it, but he also knew that the American government, when it wished to, could apply subtle pressure to offshore banking institutions when the activities of U.S. citizens were at issue. Who would have been better placed to interfere with his financial records than high-level members of the American intelligence services? Janson had not forgotten the rancor and ill will that surrounded his departure. His knowledge of still-extant networks and procedures meant that he was, in principle, a potential threat.

Was it possible?

How had the plot been hatched? Was it simply that a golden opportunity had presented itself to quick-thinking tacticians? Two birds with one stone: kill the meddlesome mogul, blame the noncompliant exagent? Yet why not leave the Kagama extremists to carry out their announced plan? That would have been the easy, the convenient thing to do: let murderous fanaticism run its course. Except …

There was the muted sound of an old-fashioned brass bell: somebody was at the rear door, which led to a waiting area outside the master’s office.

Fielding roused himself from his own rumination and stood up. “You’ll excuse me for a minute—I’ll be right back,” he said. “The hapless graduate student makes an inopportune visit. But so it must be.”