Frantically, Janson withdrew a small bump key from his pocket and set to work. He positioned the very end of it into the keyway and then, in a sudden, plunging movement, thrust the rest of it into the lock and twisted it in a single continuous motion. The speed of that motion was crucial: the key had to be turned before the lock’s spring pressed the top pin down.

His fingers could feel that the top pin had bounced high enough to fly beyond the shear line, that his twist had taken advantage of the split second in which the pin columns had bounced out of alignment. The gate was open.

He waved Cooper through and gestured for him to park the car about a hundred yards away, behind a rusting, abandoned train car.

Janson himself raced over to the side of a huge steel shed and, flattening himself against it, edged swiftly toward the shouts he had heard.

Finally, he could see through the dim light into the vast interior, and what he made out sickened him.

The woman from Consular Operations was roped to a cement pillar with a thick hawser, her clothes crudely torn off her.

“This shit is getting old fast,” she growled, but the fear beneath the bravado was all too evident.

Before her, the giant with the glossy, puckered scar loomed. He belted her with his hand, and her head snapped back against the concrete. He pulled out a knife and sliced off her undergarments.

“Don’t you touch me, you son of a bitch!” she yelled.

“What are you going to do about it?” The voice was harshly guttural. The giant laughed as he loosened his belt.

“I wouldn’t get Ratko mad if I were you,” said his companion, who held a long thin blade that glinted even in the gloom. “He prefers ’em alive—but he’s not that particular.”

The woman loosed a bloodcurdling shriek. Sheer animal terror? Janson suspected that there was more to it—that she was hoping against hope that somebody might hear.

Yet the wind and the rumble of distant barges drowned out whatever sounds might be made.

In the gloom of the warehouse, he could make out the gleaming shape of the powerful sedan the men had ridden in, the engine ticking as it cooled.

The man slapped her again, and then the slaps became rhythmic. The aim was not interrogation. It was, in fact, part of a sexual ritual, Janson realized to his horror. As the killer’s trousers dropped heavily to the floor, his organ was silhouetted in the gloom: the woman’s death would be preceded by indignity.

Janson froze as he heard a soft Serbian-accented voice from behind him: “Drop the gun.”

Janson whirled around and found himself face-to-face with a slender man who had gold-rimmed glasses perched high on an aquiline nose. The man wore khaki trousers and a white shirt, both neatly pressed. He stood very close to him and, with a casual movement, pressed a revolver against his forehead.