Janson clicked off his Ericsson and kept pacing through the hall. He walked behind the green-marble lectern where speakers stood to address the assembled, and looked out at the banked tiers of seats where the delegates would be congregated. The chief national representatives would fill the first fifteen rows of chairs and tables. Placards were mounted on bars that ran along the curved tables, country names spelled out in white letters on black: along one side of an aisle, PERU, MEXICO, INDIA, EL SALVADOR, COLOMBIA, BOLIVIA, others he could not make out in the dim light. To the other side, PARAGUAY, LUXEMBOURG, ICELAND, EGYPT, CHINA, BELGIUM, YEMEN, UNITED KINGDOM, and more. The order seemed random, but the placards went on and on, signposts for an endlessly various, endlessly fractured world. At the long tables, there were buttons that delegates could press to signal their intention to speak, and audio plugs for headphones, supplying simultaneous translation in whatever language was required. Behind the official delegate tables were steeply raked tiers of seats for additional members of the diplomatic teams. Overhead, a recessed oculus was filled with dangling lights and surrounded by starlike spotlights. The curving walls were of louvered wood, interspersed with vast murals by Fernand Léger. A small clock was centered along a long marble balcony, visible only to those at the rostrum. Above the balcony were yet more rows of seats. And behind them, discreetly framed by curtains, was a series of glassed-in booths, where translators, technicians, and U.N. security staff were stationed.

It resembled a magnificent theater, and in many ways, it was.

Janson left the hall and made his way to the rooms that were immediately behind the rostrum: an office for the use of the secretary-general and a general “executive suite.” Given the placement of the security details, it would simply be impossible to launch an assault on those spaces. On his third walkabout, Janson found himself drawn to what seemed to be a little-used chapel, or as it had more recently come to be styled, meditation room. It was a small narrow space with a Chagall mural at one end, just down the corridor from the main entrance to the Assembly Hall.

Finally, Janson walked down the long ramp on the western side of the building, from which the delegates would be pouring in. The geometry of security was impressive : the looming bulk of the Secretariat itself functioned as a shield, offering protection from most angles. The adjacent streets would be blocked off to nonofficial traffic: only accredited journalists and members of the diplomatic delegations would be permitted in the vicinity.

Alan Demarest couldn’t have chosen a safer venue if he’d retreated to a bunker in Antarctica.

The more Janson explored the situation, the more he admired the tactical genius of his nemesis. Something truly extraordinary would have to happen to foil it—which meant that they were counting on something that could not be counted on.