The noisy chatter of a nearby automatic weapon immediately followed—aimed not at him but at her. A piece of the ornate cornice behind which she was stationed broke off, leaving a cloud of dust.

Was somebody rescuing him, saving him from the Regent’s Park executioner?

He tried to puzzle out the complex geometry. Two teams, as he supposed. One using American-issue sniper equipment, the sniper team from Consular Operations. And the other? An odd assortment of weaponry. Irregulars. Hirelings. To judge from the fabric and hardware, Eastern Europeans.

In whose employ?

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. If the old saw was true in this case, he was far from friendless. But was it true?

The man with the automatic gun, a Russian-made AKS-74, now stood above the parapet, trying to get a better angle on the woman sniper.

“Hey,” Janson called out to him.

The man—Janson was near enough to see his coarse features, close-set eyes, and two days’ growth of beard—grinned at Janson, and turned toward him.

With his gun set at full fire.

As a raking blast hit the roof, Janson dove into a roll, hurtling down the tiled incline. A fragment of stone whipped past his ear as a noisy fusillade swept the area where he had been moments before. His forehead scraped against another piece of masonry, the palm of his hand stung as it pressed against jagged roof tile. Finally, his body slammed against the balustrade. The impact was jarring, debilitating, yet the alternative would have been worse—a plumb drop from the high roof to the pavement.

He heard shouts, from there, and there. His dazed brain strove to process the sounds as they raced and echoed and faded.

What had just happened? The woman had him within her sights. She had him.

Why didn’t she take the shot?

And the other team—who were they? Angus Fielding had mentioned the shadowy enemies Novak had made among corrupt Eastern European oligarchs. Were they a private militia? Everything about them suggested as much.

He was their target. But so was the team from Consular Operations. How could that be?

There was no time. He poked his pistol between the ornamental sandstone balusters and squeezed off two quick shots. The man with the AKS-74 staggered backward, making an odd gurgling sound; one of the bullets had pierced his throat, which exploded in a gush of arterial blood. As he slumped to the tiles, his weapon fell with him, secured by the nylon sling around his shoulders.

That gun could be Janson’s salvation—if he could get to it.