Now Janson removed his headdress and his beard and waited around the corner from where the elevator banks opened. Sheltered by the recessed doorway leading to the library, he would be able to monitor both the hallway to the secretary-general’s office and the elevator banks.

He knew he would not be waiting long.

The elevator chimed.

“And this will be our floor,” said Mathieu Zinsou as the elevator doors opened. He made an after-you-my-dear-Alphonse gesture to the man who looked, for all the world, like Peter Novak.

Could Janson have been correct? Zinsou wondered. Or was the strain finally getting to the American operative, a man whom circumstances had given responsibilities far greater than any man should have to shoulder?

“You have to forgive us—almost everybody who normally staffs my office here is in the General Assembly Building. Or somewhere else altogether. The annual meeting of the General Assembly is like a bank holiday for some U.N. employees.”

“Yes, I’m aware of this,” his companion said tonelessly.

As Zinsou opened the door to his office, he startled as he saw the figure of a man seated behind his own desk, silhouetted by the ebbing light.

What the hell was happening?

He turned to his companion: “I don’t know what to say. It seems we have an unexpected visitor.”

The man at Zinsou’s desk rose and stepped toward him, and Zinsou gaped in astonishment.

The helmet of thick black hair, only lightly flecked with gray, the high, almost Asiatic cheekbones. A face the world knew as Peter Novak’s.

Zinsou turned to the man at his side.

The same face. Essentially indistinguishable.

Yet there were differences, Zinsou reflected, just not physical ones. Rather, they were differences of affect and mien. There was something hesitant and cautious about the man by his side: something implacable and imperious about the man before him. The marionette and the marionette master. Zinsou’s whirling sense of vertigo was lessened only by the recognition that Paul Janson had guessed right.

Now the man at Zinsou’s side handed an envelope to the man who could have been his mirror image.

A subtle nod: “Thank you, Laszlo,” said the man who had been waiting for them. “You may go now.”

The impostor by Zinsou’s side turned and left without so much as a word.

“Mon cher Mathieu,” said the man who stayed behind. He held out a hand. “Mon très cher frère.”

Chapter Forty-two

Chapter Forty-two

Janson heard Zinsou’s voice distinctly in his earpiece: “My God.” At the same time, he saw the Peter Novak who was not Peter Novak press the DOWN elevator button.

He was leaving.

In Janson’s earpiece, another man’s voice: “I must apologize for the confusion.”

Janson raced to the elevator and stepped in. The man who was not Peter Novak wore an expression that was startled—but devoid of recognition.

“Who are you really?” Janson demanded.