To keep himself amused, Ratko regularly zoomed in on the petite receptionist, watched the redhead’s haunches move as she bent over, and he felt a warmth in his belly and groin. He had something for her, oh yes he did. He remembered the Bosnian women with whom he and his fellow soldiers disported a few years back—remembered faces convulsed with hatred, remembered how similar the expression was to sexual transport. It required only a little imagination. As he pounded himself into them, what thrilled him most was the recognition of how utterly powerless they were. It was an experience unlike any he had ever had with a woman. It didn’t matter whether his breath was fetid, or if his body stank, because there was simply nothing they could do. They knew they had to give it up, to surrender abjectly, or they would be made to watch their parents, their husbands, their children, shot through the head, before they were slaughtered themselves.

Fine-tuning his scope, he imagined the redhead roped and pinned to a mattress, her eyes rolled into her head, her pale softness yielding to the pistoning of his Serbian flesh.

In the event, Ratko did not need a scope to see the small motorcade of three black Mercedes-Benzes make its stately way down Stadhouderskade and onto Leidsestraat, stopping at the Liberty Foundation headquarters. A uniformed driver of the stretch limo walked around to the rear and held open the door. A dark-suited man with horn-rimmed glasses and a felt-brimmed hat came out and stood next to the car for a moment, admiring the majestic stretch of southwest Prinsengracht. Then the uniformed man—the minister’s personal factotum, it appeared—pressed the buzzer beside the deeply carved front door. Ten seconds later, the door was opened.

The uniformed man spoke to the woman at the door. “Madame, the foreign minister of the Czech Republic,” the uniformed man said. “Jan Kubelik.” Captured by the twin parabolics, the voices were scratchy but audible.

The foreign minister spoke a few words of Czech to his factotum and made a gesture of dismissal. The uniformed man turned and stepped away, back toward the limousine.

“You almost look as if you were not expecting me,” the man in the elegant navy suit told the receptionist.

Her eyes widened. “Of course not, Minister Kubelik. We are most pleased by your arrival.”