“Then I shall oblige you, and speak to those very points,” Dr. Tilsen said. He smiled, tentatively. Talking was his stock in trade, and for the next thirty minutes, Tilsen did what he did best, describing a battery of initiatives and programs and projects. After a few minutes, the words seemed to form a verbal curtain, woven from the opaque nomenclature and slogans favored by professional idealists: nongovernmental organizations … reinvigorating the institutions of deliberative democracy … a commitment to promoting the values, institutions, and practices of an open and democratic society … His accounts were detailed and prolix, and Janson found his eyes beginning to glaze. With a tight, fixed smile, he nodded at intervals, but his mind wandered. Was Peter Novak’s wife among the conspirators? Had she herself engineered the death of her husband? The prospect seemed inconceivable, and yet what could explain her conduct?

And what of this Dr. Tilsen? He seemed earnest, unimaginative, and well meaning, if more than a little self-important. Could such a man be part of a nefarious conspiracy to destroy the most important agent of progress the fragile world had? He watched the man talk, watched the small, eroded, coffee-stained teeth, the pleased look with which he punctuated his monologue, the way he had of nodding approvingly at his own points. Was this the face of evil? It seemed hard to believe.

A knock at the door. The petite redhead from downstairs.

“I’m terribly sorry, Dr. Tilsen. There’s a call from the prime minister’s office.”

“Ah,” Dr. Tilsen said. “You will kindly excuse me.”

“But of course,” said Janson.

Left to himself, he examined the relatively spare furnishings of the room, and then he walked over to the window, looking at the busy canal below him.

A feeling of cold ran down his spine, as if it had been stroked with a shard of ice.

Why? Something in his field of vision—once again, an anomaly he responded to instinctively before he could rationally analyze or describe it.

What?

Oh Jesus! Behind the bell-shaped gable of the house opposite, there was the shadow of a man crouched upon the tightly imbricated slate tiles. A familiar error: the sun changes position, and shadows appear where there had been no shadows, betraying the hidden observer—or sniper. Which? The glint of sun from the glass of a scope did not settle the question.

His eyes now scrutinized the eaves and attic windows of the house for anomalies. There—a small section of a large double-hung window had been cleaned, by someone who wanted to be able to see out of it more clearly.

The hoist beam in front of him: something was odd about it as well. A moment later, he realized what. It was no hoist beam—the beam had been replaced by the barrel of a rifle.