With a reluctant mechanical noise, the elevator door opened on a floor two-thirds filled with cars. One of the cars was the yellow Fiat she had parked there half an hour ago. It was shortly before the appointed time, and nobody else was around.

Or was there somebody?

Where had she parked the car, anyway? She’d come up a different elevator this time, on the opposite end of the lot. As she looked around, she noticed in her peripheral vision a darting motion—someone’s head ducking down, she realized a split second later. It was a hallmark of bad surveillance: being noticed by trying too hard not to be. Or was she jumping to conclusions? Perhaps it was an ordinary thief, someone trying to steal a hubcap, a radio; such thefts were prevalent in Budapest.

But these alternate possibilities were irrelevant. To underestimate the risks was to increase them. She had to get out of there, quickly. How? The odds were too great that someone was watching the elevators. She needed to drive out—in a different car from the one she had taken in.

She casually walked between an aisle of cars, and suddenly dropped to the ground, cushioning her fall with her hands. She crawled, at tire level, arms and legs moving together. Flattening herself toward the ground, she made her way between two cars to the adjoining aisle and scurried rapidly toward where she had seen the ducking man.

She was behind him now, and as she approached, she could see his slender figure. He was not the clerk; presumably, he was whomever the clerk’s controller had arranged to send in his place. The man was standing upright now, looking around, confusion and anxiety written on his middle-aged face. His eyes moved wildly, from the exit ramps to the elevator doors. Now he was squinting, trying to see through the windshield of the yellow Fiat.

He had been tricked, knew it, and knew, too, that if he did not reclaim the advantage, he would have to face the consequences.

She sprang up and flung herself at him from behind, throwing the man down on the concrete, vising his neck in a hammerlock. There was a crunch as his jaw hit the floor.

“Who else you got waiting for me?” she demanded.

“Just me,” the man replied. Jessie felt a chill.

He was an American.

She flipped him over and dug the muzzle of her pistol into his right eye. “Who’s out there?”

“Two guys on the street, right in front,” he said.

“Stop! Please! You’re blinding me!”

“Not yet I’m not,” she said. “When you’re blinded, you’ll know. Now tell me what they look like.” The man said nothing, and she pressed the muzzle in harder.

“One’s got short blond hair. Big guy. The other … brown hair, crew cut, square chin.”