A desk. A credenza, stacked with cardboard mailers from the ultra-secure, ultra-expensive express-delivery service Caslon Couriers. Beside it, a black metal filing cabinet. Locked, too, but easily forced. Inside was an array of reports about nongovernmental organizations and lending libraries in Slovenia and Romania. And correspondence from Unitech Ltd., content seemingly unexceptionable. Unitech: yes, it meant something—but he had no time to think now. Survival was his one goal, and his thoughts had to be directed toward that singular imperative. It had been a thirty-second detour; now he charged up the two remaining flights and clambered up a crude wooden ladder that led to the loft, beneath the roof. It was stifling there, but under the rafters there had to be an opening to a part of the roof that would be hidden by the gables. It was his only chance. A minute later, he had found it and arrived stumbling on the roof. It was steeper than he expected, and he clung to the nearby chimney, as if it were a great tree offering protection in the jungle. It was, of course, nothing of the kind. He scanned the adjoining rooftops, looking for his executioners.

Being at roof level would take him out of range of most of their fixed positions.

But not all.

Perched on a higher rooftop, diagonally opposite to his right, he could make out the deadly brunette from Regent’s Park. There she had narrowly missed him from an enormous distance. Now she was a hundred feet away. She could not fail to hit her target. She had not missed when she hit the grotesque puppet he had made of the dead security guard, for he knew now that the diagonal shot was hers.

He turned his head and saw, to his dismay, that there was another rifleman on the adjoining roof, just thirty-five feet to his left.

The rifleman had heard his feet scrambling on the slate roof and was now swiveling his weapon toward him.

Alerted by the drab-suited rifleman, the deadly brunette raised her scope to roof level. His bruised temple flared once again, with almost incapacitating pain.

He was pinned between two sharpshooters, with only a handgun for protection. He saw the woman squinting through her scope, saw the utter blackness of the rifle’s bore hole. He was staring at his own death.

It was a shot she could not miss.

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

He forced himself to focus on the countenance of his executioner: he would look death in the face.

What he saw was a play of confusion on her face as she swiveled her rifle a few degrees to the left and squeezed off a shot.

The rifleman on the next roof over arced his back and tumbled off the roof like a falling gargoyle.

What the hell was going on?