Yet the mention of a memorandum worried him. After 9/11, promising careers had been torpedoed by evidence of unwillingness to act on intelligence leads. His head would roll as easily as any other.

‘I don’t want to know about it,’ said Holt at last. ‘Officially, I’ve warned you against disseminating this information either within the Bureau or beyond it. Understood?’

‘Perfectly,’ said Ross, without resentment. He knew how the game was played, and had long ago resigned himself to the fact that the cards were almost irredeemably stacked against him. Under such circumstances, a man had three choices. He could fold; he could continue to play the hand that was dealt, relying on bluff and the hope of an improbable reversal of fortune; or he could cheat, and in Ross’s dictionary, cheating was just another word for pragmatism. Holt knew this, too, hence his use of the word ‘officially’, which implied that, unofficially, Ross had latitude.

‘But if what you believe is true,’ said Holt, ‘and Armitage sold Louis out to the Vuksans, wouldn’t they have made their move by now?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Ross, ‘but some men prefer to wait.’

‘For what?’ said Holt.

‘For the perfect moment.’

Chapter V

It had been whispered of Spiridon Vuksan that he was in poor health, although he showed no signs of this as he entered the kitchen of the safe house, and the rumor could more correctly have been ascribed to wishful thinking. He was shorter than his brother, stocky and muscular where Radovan was thin and birdlike, paunch apart. Spiridon had also retained all of his hair, which was short and mostly gray, although patches of dark remained like the speckling on an egg. Just as Radovan had never been seen to smile, Spiridon had never been heard to raise his voice in anger: his speech rarely exceeded a murmur, as of one offering prayers in humility to his god. His aspect was entirely gentle, and every act of violence he had committed, every rape, mutilation, and murder, had been accompanied by an air of regret, as though some force outside and above Spiridon – whether an unknown deity, an unnamed superior, or even the victims themselves – had forced him to act against his better nature.

Spiridon had kindness in his eyes, but – as with his brother – it was painted on glass, and whatever reality lay behind them was revealed in the work of his hands. Had it been possible to excise the orbs, leaving only the ocular hollows, one might have discerned a cloudy blackness resembling ink in water, a mass that occasionally assumed the form of something ancient and predatory, an entity that would feed even when untroubled by hunger, for the pleasure of tearing another living creature apart. Spiridon Vuksan operated in a realm beyond reason, and his madness was all the more terrifying for its equanimity.