As the lineaments of the realm of the dead grew more apparent to Zorya, she saw the girl’s head turn in her direction. The girl was interested in her, and Zorya sensed that the girl knew who she was, what she was.

Then the girl spoke.

‘Jennifer,’ she said.

The girl was dangerous.

‘My name is Jennifer Parker.’

Very, very dangerous.

‘Come closer. Let me see you.’

But Zorya remained within sight of the bridge, and the crossing back to her own world. This was far enough. From here she could see all that she needed to see, because the shadows in this place were not only those of the dead but also of those who brought death with them. Zorya glimpsed them now: two men, radiating purpose.

And approaching fast.

II

Is it justice to make evil, and then punish for it?

James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans

Chapter XXXIV

Louis’s flight arrived at Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle Airport shortly after 9 a.m. He took a taxi to a small hotel in the 16th arrondissement, regarded as the most boring area in the city. Nothing exciting had happened in the 16th arrondissement since 1794, when an explosion at the Grenelle gunpowder factory in the almost equally boring 15th arrondissement caused body parts to soar across the Seine and land in the streets and yards of its marginally more nondescript neighbor. He supposed that, after a rain of limbs, centuries of tedium might seem like a blessed relief.

Louis checked into a room decorated by someone who had never encountered a shade of gray he didn’t like, and waited for the arrival of a courier carrying four Rohrbaugh R9 Stealth Elite pistols, each weighing less than a pound and built without a slide lock, magazine release, safety catch, or sights, all to ensure that the weapon didn’t catch on clothing. The Rohrbaughs retailed for in excess of a thousand dollars each, and the four Osprey suppressors that accompanied them cost only slightly less, but Louis’s delivery had still totaled €12,000, the premium reflecting the various gradations of illegality involved in the transfer of the goods, and the absence of any questions afterward.

Louis trusted Harris about as much as he trusted Ross, which meant that he did not trust him at all, but he had fulfilled government contracts in the past, even if they had never been formally identified as such. Many administrations preferred to farm out their wet work, in part because this made it easier to avoid telling the truth at inquiries, but also because men and women willing to kill at close quarters without the imprimatur offered by a uniform, or even a plausible reason for the sanction, were comparatively few, and often ill-suited to the strictures of intelligence agencies. Even the Russians, who were as close to conscienceless as one could get in this modern age, liked to maintain the illusion of distance and the comfort of deniability.