To the left, at the end of the darkened hallway, a curving staircase led to the floor below. To the right was another doorway; it appeared that it led to a bedroom, or perhaps several. The main floor seemed to be the one beneath them. Lang had to be there. They scanned the area for fish-eye lenses, for anything that might suggest surveillance equipment. There was none.

“OK,” Janson murmured. “Now we go by the book.”

“Whose book?”

“Mine.”

“Got it.”

Another faint sound of china: a cup clinking against a saucer. Janson peered carefully down the staircase. There was nobody visible, and he was grateful that the stairs were of worn marble: no squeaky floorboard would serve as an inadvertent alarm system.

Janson signaled Jessie: remain behind. Then he swiftly descended the stairs, keeping his back against the curving wall. In his hands was a small pistol.

Ahead of him: an enormous room, with thick curtains drawn shut. To his left: another room, a sort of double parlor. The walls were of white painted wood, intricately paneled; paintings and engravings of no particular distinction hung at geometrically precise intervals. The furnishings had the look of a New York pied-à-terre designed, long-distance, for a Tokyo businessman: elegant and expensive, yet devoid of individuality.

In a flash, Janson’s mind reduced his surroundings to an arrangement of portals and planes: one representing both exposure and opportunity, the other the prospect of safety and concealment.

Wall to wall, surface to surface, Janson progressed through the double parlor. The floor was a polished parquet, much of which was covered with large Aubusson rugs in subdued colors. The rug did not, however, prevent the soft creak of a plank underfoot as he reached the entrance to the adjoining parlor. Suddenly, his nerves crackled as if receiving a jolt of electricity. For there, in front of him, was a housekeeper in a cotton uniform of pale blue.

She turned toward him, holding an old-fashioned feather duster out in front of her, frozen, and her round face was contorted into a terrible grin—a rictus of fear?

“Paul, watch yourself!” It was Jessie’s voice. He had not heard her descend, but she was a few feet behind him.

Suddenly the housekeeper’s chest erupted in a spray of scarlet and she toppled forward onto the carpet, the sound muffled by the soft woven fabric.

Janson whirled around and saw the silenced gun in Jessie’s hand, a wisp of cordite seeping from its perforated cylinder.

“Oh, Jesus,” Janson breathed, gripped with horror. “Do you realize what you just did?”

“Do you?” Jessica strode over to the body and, with a foot, nudged the feather duster that remained in the housekeeper’s outstretched hand.

It was not a device used for cleaning house, save in the bloodiest of senses: artfully concealed beneath the fan of brown feathers was a high-powered SIG Sauer, still affixed to the dead woman’s hand by an elastic strap.