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Chapters (54)
  1. Title Page
  2. Table of Contents
  3. Prologue
  4. PART ONE
  5. Chapter One
  6. Chapter Two
  7. Chapter Three
  8. Chapter Four
  9. Chapter Five
  10. Chapter Six
  11. Chapter Seven
  12. Chapter Eight
  13. PART TWO
  14. Chapter Nine
  15. Chapter Ten
  16. Chapter Eleven
  17. Chapter Twelve
  18. Chapter Thirteen
  19. Chapter Fourteen
  20. Chapter Fifteen
  21. Chapter Sixteen
  22. Chapter Seventeen
  23. PART THREE
  24. Chapter Eighteen
  25. Chapter Nineteen
  26. Chapter Twenty
  27. Chapter Twenty-one
  28. Chapter Twenty-two
  29. Chapter Twenty-three
  30. Chapter Twenty-four
  31. Chapter Twenty-five
  32. Chapter Twenty-six
  33. Chapter Twenty-seven
  34. Chapter Twenty-eight
  35. Chapter Twenty-nine
  36. Chapter Thirty
  37. Chapter Thirty-one
  38. PART FOUR
  39. Chapter Thirty-two
  40. Chapter Thirty-three
  41. Chapter Thirty-four
  42. Chapter Thirty-five
  43. Chapter Thirty-six
  44. Chapter Thirty-seven
  45. Chapter Thirty-eight
  46. Chapter Thirty-nine
  47. Chapter Forty
  48. Chapter Forty-one
  49. Chapter Forty-two
  50. Chapter Forty-three
  51. Epilogue
  52. ALSO BY ROBERT LUDLUM
  53. Critical Praise for Robert Ludlum
  54. Copyright Page

The don made his way to a rostrum where a fat volume of a dictionary reposed. Not just any dictionary, Janson knew—it was the first volume of a rare 1759 edition of Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, A–G stenciled in gold along its spine. Janson remembered it from the don’s shelves back when his rooms were in Trinity’s Neville Court.

“Just want to look up one thing,” he said. But Janson heard the stress beneath the pleasantries. Not the stress of bereavement or loss, but of another emotion. Alarm. Suspicion.

There was something about his manner: the slight tremor, the brittle tone—and? Something else. What?

Angus Fielding was no longer making eye contact: that was it. Some people almost never did so, but Fielding was not one of them. When he spoke to you, his eyes swept back to yours regularly, as if to guide the words home. Almost involuntarily, Janson felt one of his own hands reaching behind him.

He stared, mesmerized, as Fielding, with his back to him, opened the tome, and—it couldn’t be.

The master of Trinity College spun around to face Janson, brandishing a small pistol in a shaking hand. Just behind Fielding, Janson saw the hollowed-out section carved into the dictionary’s vellum pages, where the side arm had been secreted. The side arm that his old don was pointing at him.

“Why have you really come here?” Fielding asked.

At last his eyes met Janson’s, and what Janson saw in them took his breath away: murderous rage.

“Novak was a good man,” Fielding said in a tremulous voice. The scholar sounded far away. “Possibly a great one. I’ve just learned that you killed him.”

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

The aging don lowered his gaze momentarily and gasped in spite of himself. For Janson, too, was holding a gun in his hand—the gun he had, in a fluid motion, grasped from his rear holster as his subconscious mind registered what his conscious mind had difficulty accepting.

Wordlessly, Janson thumbed the safety up of his snub-nosed weapon. For a few long seconds, the two men stood facing each other in silence.

Whoever Fielding’s visitor had been, it was no graduate student in economic history. “Volume A to G,” Janson said. “Appropriate enough. A for ammo, G for guns. Why don’t you put that antique in your hand aside? It doesn’t suit you.”

The economist snorted. “So you can kill me, too?”

“Oh for Christ’s sake, Angus!” Janson erupted. “Use that magnificent brain of yours. Can’t you hear how crazy that sounds?”