Janson seized him by the shoulders and slammed him against the slate floor. He did so again. And again. The back of the Caliph’s head no longer made the sound of hard bone against a hard floor, for the rear cranial bone had been smashed into fragments, exposing the soft tissues beneath. The Caliph’s eyes grew unfocused, glazed. The eyes were said to be the windows to the soul, yet this man had no soul. Certainly not anymore.

Janson jammed the Ruger into his own shoulder holster. Using a small pocket mirror, he adjusted his beard and kaffiyeh and made sure there were no visible bloodstains on his person. Then he walked out of the chapel and into the General Assembly Hall, where he stood near the back.

For years he had fantasized about killing the man who had killed his wife. Now he had done so.

And all he felt was sick.

The black-haired man stood at the podium, giving a speech about the challenges of a new century. Janson’s eyes searched every hollow and contour. He looked like Peter Novak. He would be accepted as Novak. Yet he lacked the sense of command associated with the legendary humanitarian. His voice was thin, wavering; he seemed slightly nervous, out of his depth. Janson knew what the consensus would be afterward: Very fine speech, of course. Yet poor Mr. Novak was a bit under the weather, was he not?

“Half a century ago,” the man at the podium was saying, “the very ground under our feet, the land of the entire United Nations complex, was donated to the U.N. by the Rockefellers. The history of private assistance for this most public of missions goes to the origins of the institution. If I can, in my own small way, provide such assistance, I would be profoundly gratified. People talk about ‘giving back to the community’: my own community has always been the community of nations. Help me to help you. Show me how I can be of greatest assistance. To do so would be my pleasure, my honor—indeed, nothing less than my duty. The world has been very good to me. My only hope is that I can return the favor.”

The words were vintage Novak, by turns charming and hard-edged, humble and arrogant, and, in the end, nothing short of winning. Yet the delivery was atypically hesitant and tentative.

And only Janson knew why.

The master of escape had escaped again. How could he ever have imagined that he might trump his great mentor? Your arms are too short to box with God, Demarest had once told him, half joking. Still, there was an uncomfortable truth there. The protégé was pitting himself against his mentor; the student was testing his wits against his teacher. Only vanity had prevented him from seeing that failure was foreordained.