This was the only logical ending, he supposed. Waiting with the man in a darkened house, hearts beating together, each caught in the same obsession. We could have been friends, Gray suddenly thought, but knew it wasn't true. Well, we could at least have lived in peace—also not true.

He watched the fingers of his left hand move, and wondered if Michard's hand was also moving. He heard the shudder of branches in the wind, and wondered if it was actually the sound of a softly closing door. Then came the footstep on the landing, then definitely footsteps on the staircase.

He felt calm, actually quite relieved. Rolland Michard was a traitor, and everything was suddenly very simple. He slipped off the bed to a chair, vaguely wondering what the signal had been, what little tick-tack from a child's game had told Michard that this was the night. For our supper this evening . . .

He heard the gentle tread of bootheels below, the click of another shutting door. He waited a moment, then parted the curtain. At first he saw nothing, and thought, It's all a bloody joke. But then, between the stark rows of trees—Michard. He wore black in contrast to the snow. He carried that shotgun in the crook of his arm.

There were penny candles in a drawer, a box of matches on the nightstand. Gray stuffed them into the pocket of his coat: So this is how you catch a spy. There was a hurricane lamp on the bureau, one of the classic British models. He checked the wick. So this is how you saved England. Finally, there was also that revolver, oddly lighter than he remembered, somehow more comfortable in the hand. No, this is how you saved Zelle.

Downstairs the rooms were filled with shifting moonlight, while outside snow still reflected a pale glow to the sky. Gray opened the door, stepped onto the gravel. There were tracks between the hawthorns, imprints of the colonel's handmade boots. Still farther it looked as if Michard had paused before veering off into the forest. Then there was nothing except a clean path of virgin snow to the rise above the vale—to Craven's rented farmhouse below.

The farmhouse lay in shadows between the pines, hardly more than a low timber cottage with loose shingles and a crumbling porch. There were lights in two windows but no sound could be heard. The silence was like a presence, a heartbeat in a vacuum. Gray began the descent. The snow was soft, muffling the sound of his footsteps. The wind had momentarily died.

Then he heard the shots: two distinct and clipped, a third and fourth like a cannon reverberating out of the farmhouse, then a fifth, oddly hollow.