Drifting in from the main dining room were the sounds of merriment and the festive tune that had become universal in the past century, “Happy Birthday to You.” Boldog születésnapot! he heard. The song lost nothing in the Hungarian, Janson was sure, recalling the large table filled with a couple of dozen revelers, a table on which four frosty bottles of champagne had been assembled.

Now with a look of stark terror on his face, Janson placed both his hands on his chest, in a theatrical gesture of fright. At the same time, he slipped his right hand beneath his left hand, stealing toward the handgrip of the bulky firearm.

He waited another moment for the other sound associated with celebration, at least as much in Hungary as elsewhere: the pop of a champagne cork. It arrived a moment later, the first of the four bottles that would be opened. At the sound of the next popped cork, Janson squeezed the trigger of the silenced revolver.

A soft phut was lost among the clamorous festivities, but now a horrifed look appeared on the gunman’s face. Janson was conscious of the tiny corona of woolen threads puffing out from a barely visible hole in his jacket as the man collapsed to the floor. An abdominal injury alone would not cause a professional to plummet as he did. The immediate collapse could mean only one thing: the bullet had plowed through his upper abdomen and lodged in his spine. The result was the immediate cessation of neural impulses, and the resultant paralysis of all muscles of the body’s lower regions. Janson was familiar with the telltale signs of complete cataplexy and numbness, and he knew what the experience uniquely did to combatants, even hardened ones: they mourned. They mourned what they recognized to be the irreversible loss of their physicality, sometimes even forgetting to take measures to prevent the loss of their very lives.

“Take your hand from your pocket, or you’re next,” he told the man’s partner in a harsh whisper.