“Bollocks. What I can see is that you were sent here to betray me—eliminate anyone who might know you too well, I’ve no doubt. ‘A killing machine’—I’d heard that said of you, a Homeric epithet favored by some of your controllers. Oh yes, I kept in touch with my American counterparts. But I never credited the characterization until now. Your guile commands the admiration of this old Footlights trouper. You know, you really give excellent grief. Had me completely fooled. I’m not ashamed to say so.”

“All I wanted to learn was—”

“The location of Peter’s colleagues—in order to hunt them down, too!” the old professor said hotly. “The ‘inner circle,’ as you referred to it. And once you’d ferreted out this information, you could be sure that Peter’s mission on this planet had been destroyed.” He smiled, a chilly, terrible smile, showing his discolored, irregular teeth. “I suppose I should have appreciated your wit, asking whom I meant by ‘they’ and ‘them.’ But, of course, ‘they’ and ‘them’ are whom you work for.”

“You just met with someone—tell me who?” Janson was flushed with fury and bewilderment. His eyes darted back to the college master’s weapon, a .22 Webley pistol, the smallest and most easily concealed of those in use by British intelligence agents during the early sixties. “Who, goddammit?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know. I suppose you want to add another name to your bloodstained punch list.”

“Listen to yourself, Angus. This is madness! Why would I—”

“That’s the nature of mop-up operations, isn’t it? They’re never quite finished. There’s always another dangling thread to be tied up—or snipped off.”

“Dammit, Angus. You know me.”

“Do I?” The standoff continued as the tutor and his onetime pupil both kept their handguns leveled. “Did any of us really know you?” Despite the don’s affected languor, there was no mistaking his fear and revulsion. This was no ploy: Angus Fielding was mortally certain that Janson had become a renegade, and a murderous one.

And there was nothing he could say to prove otherwise.

What were the facts, after all?

That he, alone, was witness to what had happened. That he, alone, was in charge of the operation that led to Novak’s death. That millions of dollars had been transferred into his account, in a manner that seemed to have no honorable explanation. Powerful interests had clearly been seeking Novak’s elimination; was it inconceivable—was it even unlikely—that they would seek to enlist someone like Janson, a disenchanted ex–field agent with undoubted skills?