So this was how it was to end. He thought of everything that had gone wrong with life. He thought about the athletic scholarship to State he didn’t get, because he was off his game the day the scout showed up to check out what West Lafayette High School had to offer. And then with his frickin’ knee injury, the coach wouldn’t give him any playing time in the regional and state championship games. He thought about the apartment he and Irene were going to buy, until it turned out they couldn’t scrape together the money they needed for the down payment, and his dad refused to help, steamed that they’d been counting on his chipping in without having consulted him, so they lost the earnest money, too, a loss they could hardly afford. He remembered how Irene left him soon after, and he could hardly blame her, though he sure did his best to. He remembered the jobs he’d applied for, the string of searing rejections. No-promotion material, that was what he’d been labeled, and try as he might, the label would never come off. Like the gummy backing of a bumper sticker you’d tried to scrub away, it was somehow just there. People took one look at him and they could see it.

Now Callahan lacked even the strength to sustain the fantasy of being elsewhere. He was … where he was.

He was cold, and wet, and breathless, and terrified, and consciousness itself was beginning to darken, to flicker, to narrow to a few essential thoughts.

He thought: Everybody has to die. But nobody should die like this.

He thought: It isn’t going to last much longer, it can’t last much longer, it can’t.

And he thought: Why?

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Fifteen

Berthwick House—what the Russian had described as his humble abode—was in fact a grand redbrick Georgian mansion abutting Regent’s Park: a three-story pile with dormers in the slate roof and three chimneys. Security was both discreet and overt. It was surrounded by a ten-foot black wrought-iron fence, with rods that came to a sharp, spearlike end. A high-mounted video-camera in an enameled hood surveyed the driveway. There was a small gatehouse with a guard … who waved Berman’s raspberry-colored Bentley through with a respectful nod.

The spacious reception hall was painted coral and was crowded with antique reproductions. There were side chairs, highboys, and chess tables in the manner of Sheridan and Chippendale: but they were glossy with thick shellac and given an odd orange cast by antiquing stain. A pair of large hunting scenes in gilt frames looked, at first glance, like distinguished eighteenth-century canvases: up close, they looked as if they came from a department store—copies done by a hurried art student.

“You like?” Berman was puffed up with pride as he gestured around the jumble of Anglophilic knockoffs.

“I’m speechless,” Janson replied.