Lakatos’s hand now disappeared into the inner breast pocket of his bulky woolen jacket. Surely he was not handling a weapon—that would be too crude a gesture for someone in his position. The hand lingered oddly, manipulating a device. He was, it appeared, thumbing some sort of automatic pager or, more likely, a text-messaging device.

And then the merchant looked across the room, toward the maître d’s station. Janson followed his gaze: two dark-suited men, who had been inconspicuously loitering around the long zinc bar, suddenly stood a little straighter. Why hadn’t he picked them out earlier? Lakatos’s bodyguards—of course. The arms dealer would never have met with a broker he did not personally know without taking such an elementary precaution.

And now, as an exchange of glances suggested, the bodyguards had a new mission. They were no longer simply protectors. They were executioners. Their unbuttoned heavy jackets hung loosely around their torsos; a casual observer would assume that the slight bulge near the right breast pocket was from a cigarette pack or a cell phone. Janson knew better. His blood ran cold.

Adam Kurzweil would not be permitted to leave the Palace Hotel grounds alive. Janson could envisage the scenario all too clearly. The meal would be hurriedly completed, and the two would stroll together out of the lobby, accompanied by the gunmen. At any convenient distance from the crowds, he would be dispatched with a silenced shot to the back of the head, his body disposed of either in the lake or in the trunk of a vehicle.

He had to do something. Now.

Reaching for his glass, he carefully elbowed his fork to the floor and, with an apologetic shrug, bent down to retrieve it. As he reached down, he lifted the cuff of his trousers, released the thumb-break of his ankle holster, and gained a firing grip on the small Glock M26 he had acquired earlier in Eger. Beneath the table, he could use the finger grooves to position his hand on the grip frame. The weapon was now in his lap. The odds had shifted slightly.

“Have you walked around the lake?” Sandor Lakatos asked. “So beautiful this time of year.” Another display of his porcelain teeth.

“It’s very beautiful,” Janson agreed.

“I would like to take you on a walk, afterward.”

“Isn’t it rather dark for that?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Lakatos said. “We’ll be able to be alone. That’s really the best way to get to know each other, I find.” His eyes had an anthracite gleam.

“I’d like that,” Janson said. “Do you mind if I excuse myself for a minute?”

“Be my guest.” His gaze drifted toward the two suited guards in the bar area.