By its long, naked tail, he removed the rodent and flung it toward the veranda in a high parabola. It landed as if, in its nocturnal travels, it had lost its purchase and dropped off the roof.

Its glossy black pelt was now standing on end, and the creature made its telltale piglike grunts. The sentries had a visitor, and within four seconds they knew it. The short head, wide muzzle, scaly, hairless tail. One foot long, two and a half pounds. A bandicoot rat. Bandicota bengalensis was its formal name. Quite literally, Ahmad Tabari’s bête noire.

In their Dravidian tongue, the Kagama guards broke out into short, hushed, frantic exchanges.

“Ayaiyo, ange paaru, adhu yenna theridhaa?”

“Aiyo, perichaali!”

“Adha yepadiyaavadhu ozrikkanum.”

“Andha vittaa, naama sethom.”

“Anga podhu paaru.”

The animal scurried toward an entryway, following its instincts, while the guards, following theirs, tried to stop it. The temptation was to fire a weapon at the giant rodent, but that would awaken everyone in the compound and make them look foolish. Worse, it could draw attention to a failure, and a crucial one. If the Beloved One, asleep in the governor’s suite, were to come across this harbinger of death in his living quarters, there was no telling how he would react. He might, in a black terror, enact its prophecy himself by ordering the death of the sentries who had permitted its entry. They knew what had happened last time.

The consternation had, as Janson had hoped, brought out the others—the second team. How many? Three no, four.

The members of the second team were armed with American M16s, probably Vietnam-era. They were standard infantry issue during Vietnam, and the NVA collected them by the thousands after the South fell. From there, the M16 entered the international market and became the standard semi-automatic of less-than-well-funded guerrilla movements everywhere—the kind that bought on the installment plan, that scrimped and saved and never splurged on nonessentials. Christmas Club warriors. The M16 would fire short, buzz-saw bursts, seldom jammed, and, with a minimum of maintenance, was reasonably rust-resistant, even in humid climes. Janson respected the weapon; he respected all weapons. But he also knew that they would not be fired unnecessarily. Soldiers in proximity to a resting leadership did not make loud noises at four in the morning without good cause.

Janson withdrew a second bandicoot rat, an even larger one, and, as it writhed and squirmed in his gloved hands, pressed into its belly a tiny hypodermic filled with d-amphetamine. It would produce hyperactivity, thus making the rat even bolder and faster than the other one and, in the eyes of the sentries, even more of a menace.

A low, underhand toss. Its small, sharp claws grabbing at thin air, the rat landed on the head of one of the peasant sentries—who let out a brief but piercing scream.

It was more attention than Janson had been aiming for.