Janson knew what an expert in psychological profiling would make of his dossier: the early history of betrayal and brutality that he had suffered. How deep did the trauma go, and could it be rekindled? His employers never referred to the possibility, but he could see it in their eyes; the personality inventory tests that he regularly underwent—the Myers-Briggs, the Thematic Apperception Test, the Aristos Personality Profile—were designed to ferret out any hairline fissures his psyche might have developed. Violence is something you’re very, very, very good at: Collins’s arctic assessment. It was what made him invaluable to his employers, but it was also why the top-level planners harbored a lingering wariness toward him. So long as he remained, like fix-mounted heavy artillery, directed toward the enemy, he could be a godsend; but if he were ever to turn against the men who had trained him, the planners who used him, he could prove a nemesis like no other.

A memory from a decade ago returned to him, one of a dozen almost indistinguishable ones. He’s an attack dog who slipped his leash, Janson. He’s got to be put down. A file was handed to him: names, patterns of movement, a list of strictures—to be memorized and placed in the burn bag. Too much was at stake for the formalities of a court-martial or “disciplinary proceedings”: the agent had already cost the lives of several good men who had once been his colleagues and cohorts. Severance would be paid out in the form of a small-caliber bullet to the back of his head; the body would be found in the trunk of a car owned by a Russian crime lord who himself had just come to a grisly end. As far as the world was concerned—and it wasn’t, really—the victim was just another American businessman in Moscow who thought he could pull a fast one on his mafiya partners, and had paid for his mistake.

An attack dog that slipped its leash must be destroyed: standard operating protocol at Consular Operations. Janson—having been tasked more than once with the job of executioner—knew this as well as anyone.

Now he chose his words carefully. “There is nothing I can say to dispel your suspicions, Angus. I don’t know who contacted you just now, so I can’t speak to your source’s credibility. I find it striking that someone, or some group, managed to convey the message to you so swiftly. I find it striking that, with only a few words and reassurances, they persuaded you to direct a deadly weapon toward someone you have known for years, known as a protégé and friend.”

“As someone said of Madame de Staël, you are implacably correct. More implacable than correct.” Fielding smiled a sickly, Stilton smile. “Don’t try to construct an argument. This isn’t a tutorial.”