Aside from its location, across the street from the Liberty Foundation headquarters, there was little that would draw anyone’s eye to the small canal-bank house, or voorhuis. Inside, Ratko Pavic regarded its furnishings with a purely utilitarian eye. There was a faint but cloying kitchen odor—pea soup, was it? It must have been from the night before, but the smell was oddly permeating. He wrinkled his nose with distaste. Still, nothing more of that sort would be cooked here. He thought of the two bodies sprawled in the bathtub upstairs, the blood seeping steadily down the drain. He had no feelings about what he had done: the elderly couple, engaged to maintain the house while the owners were in Corfu, were in the way. They were faithful retainers, no doubt, but they had to be dispatched. And it was for a good cause: seated by the small square window in a darkened room, Ratko Pavic had an excellent view of the mansion opposite, and two parabolic microphones conveyed conversations from its front-facing antechambers with reasonable clarity.

All the same, it had been a tedious morning. Administrators and staff arrived between eight-thirty and nine-thirty. The scheduled visitors made their scheduled visits: a senior civil servant from the Netherlands’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs was followed by the deputy to the Dutch minister of education, culture, and science. A U.N. high commissioner for refugees was followed by a senior director of the U.N.’s Division for Sustainable Development, and then by another exalted bureaucrat, from its Economic Commission for Europe. Others in Ratko’s team had complementary perimeter views. One of them, Simic, was stationed on the very roof of the voorhuis, three stories directly overhead. None had glimpsed any sign of Paul Janson. It was not surprising. A daytime infiltration made little sense, although the agent was known to do the unexpected simply because it was unexpected.

It was tedious work that required complete concealment, but it was what suited him best since he became a marked man. The jagged, glossy cicatrix that ran from his right eye to his chin—a scar that glowed red when he allowed himself to become upset—made his visage too memorable for any job that demanded visibility. He had been marked: that was the thought that filled his mind, even as his assailant had lashed out at him with a knife meant for scaling fish. More punishing even than the searing pain from his ripped flesh was the realization that he would never be able to work undercover in the field any longer. As a shooter, of course, he was as invisible as his Vaime silenced sniper rifle, which was ready for deployment at any moment. As the hours passed, he began to wonder whether that moment would ever come.