Janson looked intently at the aging scholar’s face; he saw a man who feared he was confronting a profoundly treacherous opponent. But he also saw a glimmering of doubt—saw a man who was not absolutely certain of his judgment. Everything you know must be continually reassessed, critically reviewed. Abandoned if necessary. Their two small-caliber handguns continued to face each other like mirror images.

“You used to say that academic battles are so fierce because so little is at stake.” Janson felt, and sounded, oddly calm. “I guess things change. But as you know, Angus, there are people who have tried to kill me for a living. They’ve tried for good reasons, sometimes—or, anyway, understandable ones. Mostly they’ve done so for bad reasons. When you’re in the field, you don’t think very much about reasons. Afterward, though, you do. If you’ve hurt somebody, you hope to God you’ve done it for good cause. I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but I do know that somebody lied to you, Angus. And knowing that, I’m having a hard time staying mad at you. My God, Angus, look at yourself. You shouldn’t be standing here with a gun in your hand. Neither should I. Somebody’s caused us to forget who we are.” He shook his head slowly, sadly. “You want to squeeze that trigger? Then you’d better be surer than sure that you’re doing the right thing. Are you, Angus? I don’t believe you are.”

“You always did have a rash tendency to make assumptions.”

“Come on, Angus,” Janson went on. There was warmth in his voice, but not heat. “What did Oliver Cromwell say? ‘I beseech you, from the bowels of Christ, to consider that you may be mistaken.’” He repeated the old saw wryly.

“Words I always found strangely ironic,” Fielding said, “coming from a man who, to the detriment of his country, was essentially incapable of self-doubt.”

Without breaking eye contact, Janson extended his gun hand, unfurled his fingers from the pistol grip, and held out his hand, palm up, the weapon lying on it not as a threat but as an offering. “If you’re going to shoot me, use mine. That flintlock of yours is liable to backfire.”

The tremor in Fielding’s hand grew. The silence was nearly unbearable.

“Take it,” Janson said in a tone of reprimand.

The master of Trinity was ashen, torn between the humanitarian he had come to revere and a former pupil to whom he had once been devoted. That much, at least, Janson could read from the old man’s etched, stricken face.

“May God have mercy on your soul,” Fielding said at last, lowering his side arm. The words were something between a benediction and a curse.