Now, for a few moments, Janson kept perfectly still, not even breathing: just listening. There was the distant, soft roar of the sea, washing at the base of the promontory. A few bird noises—a cormorant, perhaps—and, from the forests to the south, the scraping and buzzing of tropical insects. This was the aural baseline of the night, and they would do well to be aware of it. It was impossible to move with absolute silence: fabric slid against fabric, nylon fibers stretched and contracted around a person’s moving limbs. Soles, even those of thick, soft rubber, registered their impact on the ground; the hard shells of a dead beetle or cicada would crunch with a footfall. The night’s acoustic tapestry would conceal some noises but not others.

He listened for sounds of Katsaris’s movement, straining harder than any sentry would, and heard nothing. Would he be as successful in maintaining silence?

Ten feet, then twenty feet, along the wall. There was a scraping sound, then the burst of a tiny combustion: the third guard was lighting up.

Janson was near enough to watch the motion: a thick, self-lighting match struck against brick, its candlelike flame held under what looked like a thin cigarillo. After twenty seconds, the tobacco smell wafted toward him—it was indeed a cigarillo—and Janson relaxed a little. The flare of the match would constrict the sentries’ irises, temporarily reducing their visual acuity. The tobacco smoke would render their noses all but useless. And the activity of smoking would compromise their ability to respond, in an encounter where a split second was the difference between life and death.

He was now fifteen feet away from the northern veranda. He took in the rusticated limestone and wrought-iron grille. The terra-cotta mission roof tiles were a late addition and sat oddly on a structure that had been built and rebuilt over centuries. Four stories; the grand rooms on the second floor, where the leaded glass, hood moldings, and arched transoms suggested the transformation of a Portuguese fortress into what a Dutch overlord pretentiously dubbed his “palace.” Most of the windows were dark; dim hallway lights seeped through some of them. And where was the Caliph, the architect of death, sleeping tonight? Janson had a pretty good guess.

It would be so easy. A fragmentation grenade, lobbed through the leaded glass. A stinger missile, blasting into the bedroom. And Ahmad Tabari would be dead. No more would remain of his corporeal existence than remained of Helene’s. He batted the thought away. It was a fantasy merely, and one he could not afford to indulge. It was inconsistent with the mission objective. Peter Novak was a great man. Not only did Janson owe him his life, but the world might owe him its future survival. The moral and strategic calculus was incontrovertible: the preservation of a great man had to take precedence over the destruction of an evil one.