“What the hell are you trying to say?”

“You know what they always called you: the machine. Like you weren’t human. But there’s something else about machines. They do what they’re programmed to do.”

Janson kicked him in the ribs, hard. “Get one thing straight. We’re not playing Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. We’re playing Truth or Consequences.”

“You’re like one of those Japanese soldiers in the Philippine caves who doesn’t know the war’s over and they’ve lost,” Czerny said. “It’s over, OK? You’ve lost.”

Now Janson bent down and pressed the point of the combat knife to Czerny’s face, drawing a jagged line under his left cheek. “Who. Do. You. Work. For.”

Czerny blinked hard, his eyes watering with pain and with the realization that nobody would save him.

“Grip it and rip it, baby,” Jessie said.

“You’ll tell us, sooner or later,” Janson said. “You know that. What’s up to you is whether you … lose face over it.”

Czerny closed his eyes and a look of resolve settled itself on his face. In a sudden movement, he reached for the hilt of the knife and, with one powerful twist, wrested control of it. Janson pulled back, away from the blade’s range, and Jessie stepped forward with the gun, but neither anticipated the man’s next move.

He forced the blade down with shaking muscles and, carving deeply, drew it across his own neck. In less than two seconds, he had sliced through the veins and arteries that sustained consciousness. Blood geysered up half a foot, then ebbed as the shock stilled the pumping organ itself.

Czerny had killed himself, had sliced his own throat, rather than expose himself to interrogation.

For the first time in the past hour, the hard ball of rage within Janson subsided, giving way to dismay and disbelief. He recognized the significance of the spectacle before him. Death had been deemed preferable to whatever Czerny knew was in store for him if he were compromised. It suggested a truly fearsome discipline among these marauders: a leadership that ruled, in no small part, through terror.

Millions in a Cayman Islands bank account. A beyondsanction order from Consular Operations. A Peter Novak who never was, who died and who came back. Like some grotesque parody of the Messiah. Like some Magyar Christ.

Or Antichrist.

And these men, these former members of Consular Operations. Janson had known them only dimly, but something nagged at his memory. Who were these assailants? Were they truly former Cons Op agents? Or were they active ones?

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-eight