“Let me tell you something. I’ve had a protégé or two in my time. They’ve got something in common.”

“Lemme guess. They’re all men.”

Janson shook his head grimly. “They’re all dead.” In the distance, nineteenth-century church spires were interspersed with Soviet-era tower blocks: symbols of aspiration that had outlived the aspirations themselves.

“So your idea is, keep me at arm’s length and you’ll keep me alive.” She turned in her seat and faced him. “Well, I don’t buy it.”

“They’re all dead, Jessie. That’s my contribution to their career advancement. I’m talking about good people. Hell, extraordinary people. Gifted as you can get. Theo Katsaris—he had the potential to be better than me. Only, the better you are, the higher the stakes. I wasn’t just reckless with my own life. I’ve been reckless with the lives of others.”

“‘Every operation with potential benefits also has potential risks. The art of planning centers on the coordination of these two zones of uncertainty.’ You wrote that in a field report once.”

“I’m flattered by the way you boned up on me. But there are a few chapters you seemed to have skipped: Paul Janson’s protégés have a nasty habit of getting killed.”

The National Archives were housed in a block-long neo-Gothic building; its narrow windows of intricately leaded glass were set in cathedral-like arches, sharply limiting the amount of sunlight that reached the documents within. Jessie Kincaid had taken to heart Janson’s idea of beginning at the beginning.