She stood up shakily. “All right, man. Your game, your rules. First thing you gotta know is, we’re all working as singletons—camouflage requirements ruled out partners, so we’re all doing our own range finding. Second thing is, we’ve got somebody stationed on the roof over Hanover Terrace.”

He flashed on the majestic neoclassical villa facing the park, where many of England’s grandest citizens made their homes. The blue and white frieze over the architrave. The white pillars and cream-colored walls. The marksmen would have to be perched behind the balusters. True? No, another lie. He would have been dead by now.

“You’re not using your head, sport,” he said. “A sniper on the balustrade would have already taken me out. He’d also be visually exposed to the crew repairing the roofs on Cumberland Terrace. You considered the position, and rejected it.” Once more, he cuffed her hard, and she staggered back a few steps. “Two strikes. One more, I kill you.”

She lowered her head. “Can’t blame a girl for trying,” she said under her breath.

“Got anyone stationed by Park Road?”

A beat. She knew he knew; prevarication would be pointless. “Ehrenhalt’s on the minaret,” she admitted.

He nodded. “And who’s enfilading to your left?”

“Take my range finder,” she said. “You don’t trust me, you can see for yourself. Marksman B is in position three hundred yards northwest.” It was a low brick structure that housed telecom equipment. “He’s on top. The height’s not optimal: that’s why he hasn’t been able to get any good shots yet. But if you had tried to leave via the Jubilee Gate, you’d be a dead man. There are men on foot on Baker Street, Gloucester Street, and York Terrace Way. Strollers with Glocks. Two sharpshooters have a complete review of Regent’s Canal. And there’s a man on the roof of Regent’s College. We were hoping you’d try to use it as shelter. Within two hundred yards, all of us are X-circle accurate—headshot accurate.”

We were hoping you’d try to use it as shelter. He almost had.

Janson mapped out in his head the vertices she had specified: they made sense. It was how he would have designed the operation.

Keeping the gun securely in one hand, he looked through her Swarovski 12 × 50 dual range finder scope. The concrete bunker she’d mentioned was exactly the sort of structure that dotted the urban landscape, that people saw without seeing. A good position. Was there really someone there? It was mostly obscured through the leafy canopies, but a few centimeters of concrete were visible. A sniper? He dialed up the magnification until he saw—something. A glove? Part of a boot? It was impossible to say.

“You’re coming with me,” Janson announced abruptly, grabbing the sniper’s wrist. With every lingering moment, the team of marksmen would begin to reevaluate probabilities: if they decided that he had left the purview of their axial sight lines, they would reposition, and that would change the ground rules altogether.