The American in the light blue jacket was back, with more on his mind. “You don’t remember me?” the man demanded belligerently. This time he made it impossible for Janson to pretend he did not know to whom he was speaking.

Janson turned to Lakatos. “How amusing. It would appear I owe you an apology,” he said. Then he looked up at the surly American, keeping his face bland and devoid of interest. “It would appear you have mistaken me for someone else,” he said, his transatlantic vowels immaculate.

“The hell I have. Why the hell are you talking funny, anyway? You trying to hide from me? That it? You trying to dodge me? Can’t say as I blame you.”

Janson turned to Lakatos and shrugged, seemingly unconcerned. He worked on controlling his pounding pulse. “This happens to me on occasion—apparently I have that kind of face. Last year, I was in Basel, and a woman in the hotel bar was convinced that she’d run across me in Gstaad.” He grinned, then covered his grin with a hand, as if embarrassed by the memory. “And not only that—we’d apparently had an affair.”

Lakatos was unsmiling. “You and she?”

“Well, she and the man she took me for. Admittedly, it was quite dark. But I was tempted to take her up to my room and, shall we say, carry on where her gentleman friend left off. I regret that I did not—although I guess she would have realized her mistake at some point.” He laughed, an easy and unforced-sounding laugh, but when he glanced up, the American was still there, a drunken sneer on his face.

“So you don’t have anything to say to me?” the American snarled. “Shit.”

The woman who had been at his table—almost certainly his wife—came over to him and pulled on his arm. She was slightly overweight, and dressed in an inappropriately summery frock. “Donny,” she said. “You’re bothering that nice man. He’s probably on vacation, same as us.”

“Nice man? That shitheel’s the one got me fired.” His face was red, his expression frankly choleric. “Yeah, that’s right. The CEO brought you in to be his hatchet man, didn’t he, Paul? This fucker, Paul Janson, arrives at Amcon as a security consultant. Next thing he’s handing in this report about pre-employment screening and employee theft, and my boss is handing me my ass, because how come I let all this happen on my watch? I gave that company twenty years. Did anybody tell you that? I did a good job. I did a good job.” He scrunched up his crimson face, his countenance radiating both self-pity and hatred.

The woman gave Janson an unfriendly look; if she was embarrassed for her husband, her narrow eyes made it clear that she had also heard plenty about the outside security consultant who cost her poor Donny his job.