The secretary-general swiveled his chair around toward the window as he spoke. “This organization was established by a world that was weary of war.”

“Dumbarton Oaks,” Janson said. “1944.”

Zinsou nodded. “However broad its mandate has become, its central mission has always been the promotion of peace. There are attendant ironies. Did you know that the ground where this very building stands had previously been a slaughterhouse? Cattle were brought up the East River on a barge, then led by a Judas goat to the city’s abattoirs, on this very spot. It is something I regularly remind myself: this property was once a slaughterhouse.” He turned around to face the American operative. “We must take care that it does not become one again.”

“Look into my eyes,” the tall black-haired man intoned in a soothing voice. His high cheekbones gave an almost Asiatic cast to his features. The man who called himself Peter Novak hovered over the elderly scholar, who was lying prone on a Jackson table, a large translucent platform that supported his chest and thighs while permitting his abdomen to hang free. It was standard equipment in spinal surgery, for it shifted blood away from the spinal area and minimized bleeding.

Intravenous fluids dripped into his left arm. The table was adjusted so that the old scholar’s head and shoulders were propped upward, and he and the man who called himself Peter Novak could commune face-to-face.

In the background, a twelfth-century plainsong could be heard. Slow, high voices in unison; they were words of ecstasy, yet to Angus Fielding it sounded like a dirge.

O ignis spiritus paracliti,
vita vite omnis creature,
sanctus es vivificando formas

A six-inch-long incision had been made in the middle of the old man’s back, and metal retractors parted the paraspinal muscles, exposing the ivory-white bones of the spinal column.

“Look into my eyes, Angus,” the man repeated.

Angus Fielding looked, could not help looking, but the man’s eyes were nearly black, and there was no pity in them whatsoever. They seemed scarcely human. They seemed like a well of pain.

The black-haired man had dropped the cultivated Hungarian accent; his voice was uninflected but distinctly American. “What exactly did Paul Janson tell you?” he demanded once more as the frail old scholar shivered with terror.

The black-haired man nodded to a young woman, who had extensive training as an orthopedic technician. A large, open-bore trocar, the size of a knitting needle, was pushed through the fibrous sheath surrounding the soft disk that separated the fifth and sixth thoracic vertebrae. After less than a minute, the woman nodded at him: the trocar was in position.

“And—good news—we’re there.”