Ten minutes later, they had an address: 1060 Fifth Avenue was a handsome prewar apartment building, its limestone facade grown pearl gray from the city air. A discreet green awning stood before its entrance, which was not on the avenue, but around the corner, on Eighty-ninth Street. She glanced at her watch.

All at once, her scalp prickled with apprehension. Her watch! She had worn it when she was on her observation post in Bryant Park! She knew that the Foundation’s security guards would be alert to any anomalies, any discordant details. Hers was a slim Hamilton tank watch, which had once belonged to her mother. Would a bag lady wear such a watch? Anxiety burrowed deep within her as she pictured herself the way she had been, trying to figure out whether a guard equipped with binoculars might have dialed in on the glinting object on her wrist. She would have done so in their place. She had to assume that they would, too.

She flashed on the mental picture of her outstretched arms, foraging through the trash like a pauper archaeologist … . She saw the image of her gloved hand, and then, overlapping it, the frayed cuff of the long-sleeved thermal undershirt. Yes—the sleeve length of the undershirt was several sizes too big for her: her wristwatch would have been entirely concealed by it. The knot in her stomach loosened slightly. No harm, no foul, right? Yet she knew it was precisely the kind of careless mistake they could ill afford.

“Take me around the block, Corn,” she said. “Slowly.”

Driving the maroon Taurus up the winding mountain path known as Clangerton Road, Janson found the unmarked turnoff that the counterman had mentioned. He continued a short distance past it, pulling the car as far off the road as possible, plunging it into a natural cave of greenery, behind shrubs and a stand of saplings. He did not know what to expect, but caution dictated that his arrival be as stealthy as he could manage.