Disengaging from Consular Operations had involved more than a dozen exit interviews, some decorous, some frankly uncomfortable, and some outright stormy. The one he remembered best was with Undersecretary Derek Collins. On paper, he was the director of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research; in reality, he was the director of its covert branch, Consular Operations. Even now, he could see Collins wearily removing his black-framed glasses and massaging the bridge of his nose. “I think I pity you, Janson,” Collins had said. “Never thought I’d hear myself say it. You were ‘the machine,’ Janson. You were the guy with a slab of granite where your heart’s supposed to be. Now you say you’re repulsed by the thing you’re best at. What goddamn sense does that make? You’re like a master pastry chef announcing he’s lost his sweet tooth. You’re a pianist who’s decided he can’t stand the sound of music. Janson, violence is something you’re very, very, very good at. Now you’re telling me you’ve lost the stomach for it.”

“I don’t expect you to understand, Collins,” he had replied. “Let’s just say I’ve had a change of heart.”

“You don’t have a heart, Janson.” The undersecretary’s eyes were like ice. “It’s why you do what you do. Goddammit, it’s why you are who you are.”

“Maybe. And maybe I’m not who you think I am.”

A short, bark-like laugh. “I can’t climb a hawser, Janson. I can’t pilot a blessed PBR, and looking through an infrared scope makes me seasick. But I know people, Janson. That’s what I do. You tell me you’re sickened by the killing. I’m going to tell you what you’ll discover one day for yourself: that’s the only way you’ll ever feel alive.”

Janson shook his head. The implication made him shudder and reminded him why he had to leave, why he should have done so long before. “What kind of man—” he started, and then halted, overcome with revulsion. He took a deep breath. “What kind of man has to kill to feel alive?”

Collins’s gaze seemed to burrow through his flesh. “I guess I’d ask you the same thing, Janson.”

Now, in Novak’s private jet, Janson pressed the point. “How much do you know about me?”

“Yes, Mr. Janson, as you supposed, your former employers explained that you had unfinished business with the Kagama.”

“Was that the phrase they used? ‘Unfinished business’?”

She nodded.

Shreds of clothing, bone fragments, a few severed limbs that had been thrown clear. They were what remained of his beloved. The rest: “collectivized,” in the grim words of a U.S. forensic technician. A communion of death and destruction, the blood and body parts of the victims impalpable and indistinguishable. And for what?

And for what?