She nodded and disappeared around the corner. Pierre wasn’t sure what to do next. He decided to hobble over to the secretary’s desk. He picked up the phone, but it, too, was dead.

Pierre tried to imagine the scene below, the agents and cops storming in the front door, badges flashing — surely they would have started in upon hearing that the microphone had been discovered. They’d be trying to make their way past guards who might well have drawn their pistols.

Pierre remembered what this building looked like more from when he’d last seen it, at the shareholders’ meeting, than from today. He’d been so nervous preparing for this confrontation that he hadn’t really looked at it as he’d driven in this time. A tall building, all glass and steel, with a helicopter landing on its roof…

Sweet Jesus — a helicopter. Marchenko wasn’t working his way down to the ground floor; he’d probably already gone up to the roof, three stories above.

Pierre hobbled around the corner. The door to the stairs was clearly marked, next to the men’s and women’s bathrooms. He pushed it open and felt cold air rushing over him. The interior of the stairwell was naked concrete, with steps painted flat gray. He began slowly, painfully, making his way up the first flight. Each flight covered a half floor — there would be at least six before he reached the roof.

His cane was unnecessary as he pulled himself up using the banister, but he didn’t dare let it go, and so it twirled, Charlie Chaplinesque, as he held it in his free palsied hand.

He could hear faint echoes of footfalls far, far below. Others were using the stairs to try to climb up. But thirty-seven flights — even for a young man, that was a lot of potential energy. He pulled himself higher and higher, turning around now as one flight of stairs gave way to the next. He hoped Avi would also figure out that Marchenko had gone up, not down.

Pierre continued his ascent. His lungs were pumping and his breath came in shuddering wheezes. His heart jumped at the sound of a gunshot from far, far below.

Pierre was rounding the thirty-ninth floor now — the number had been crudely stenciled in black paint on the back of the gray metal fire door.

For a brief moment he cursed his Canadian upbringing: it had never even occurred to him to ask Avi for a gun before going in.

Pierre grabbed the handrail and hauled himself up some more, but suddenly he tripped — his leg had moved left when he’d told it to go forward. His cane pushed out sideways, wedging between two of the vertical metal rods that supported the banister. Pierre fell backward, grabbing on to the cane for support. There was a cracking sound as that one point in the middle of the cane’s shaft took all of Pierre’s weight for a second, but then Pierre lost his grip and found himself tumbling down to the bottom of the current flight. His left elbow smashed into the concrete floor. The pain was excruciating. He reached his right hand over to touch the elbow, and it came away with freckles of blood on it. His cane had landed about two meters away. He crawled over to it and then fought to bring himself to his feet. He stood, unable to go on, waiting for his lungs to stop gulping in air. Finally, with an enormous effort, he started up the stairs again.

Up one half-flight, around the corner, then up another. He was now opposite the door labeled “40.” But — damn it, he wasn’t thinking straight — the heliport was on the roof, another two staircases above him.

And all his efforts were predicated on the assumption that there was an exit to the roof at the top. If not, he’d have to come back down to the fortieth floor and try to find the correct way up to the helipad.

He yanked himself up, step after agonizing step. The footfalls below sounded closer; the Justice agents had perhaps made it as high as the twentieth floor by now.

Finally Pierre reached the top. There was a door here, painted blue instead of gray, with the word ROOF stenciled on it. Pierre turned the knob, then pushed on it, and the door swung outward, revealing the wide concrete top of the Condor Health Insurance tower. After all that time in the dim stairwell, the late-afternoon sunlight, positioned directly in front of him, pierced his eyes. Pierre held on to the doorjamb for support. High winds whipped by him, their sound masking that of the door opening.

Marchenko was standing about twenty meters away, his back to Pierre, waiting by a small green-and-white metal shed that presumably held tools for helicopter maintenance. There was no helicopter in sight, but the rooftop near Marchenko was painted with a circular yellow landing target, and the old man was impatiently watching the skies.

The wind shrieked as it went down the stairwell. Pierre stepped out.

The rooftop was square, with a meter-high lip around its edges. Gulls were perched in a neat row along the southern lip. Nearby were two cement enclosures, presumably housing the elevator equipment. Three small and two large satellite dishes sat at one corner of the roof and a microwave relay jutted up from another. There was a rotating red light mounted on top of one of the elevator houses, and two searchlights, both off, on top of the other.

Marchenko hadn’t noticed Pierre’s arrival yet. The old man was holding a cellular phone at his side in his left hand — doubtless he’d used that to call for a chopper to come and get him.

Pierre tried to assess his chances. He was thirty-five, for God’s sake.

Marchenko was eighty-seven. There should be no contest. Pierre should be able to simply walk up to the old geezer and haul him back downstairs into the arms of justice.

But now — now, who could say? Pierre leaned on his cane. There was a good chance that Marchenko could kill him — especially if he was armed.

There was no indication that he had a gun, and, indeed, a lead pipe had been Ivan Grozny’s favorite weapon half a century ago. But even unarmed, Marchenko might well be able to take Pierre.

Maybe he didn’t have to do anything. He looked up, scanned the sky again. There was no sign of an approaching copter. Avi’s agents would be up here soon enough, and—$

“You!” Marchenko had turned around and spotted Pierre. His shout startled the gulls into flight; their cries were faintly audible above the whipping wind. The old man started moving toward Pierre with a slow and ancient gait. Pierre realized he should move away from the open door leading to the stairwell. All it would take for Marchenko to defeat him would be a good, swift shove down the stairs.

Pierre hobbled to the north. Marchenko changed course and continued to close the distance. Pierre thought of the Pequod and Moby Dick, wallowing in high waves, each ponderously maneuvering around the other.

Marchenko continued to circle in.

He tasks me, thought Pierre, and I shall have him. With an Ahab-like gait, his cane substituting for the peg leg, Pierre moved forward as quickly as he could. He knew that retreating would be stupid. If he allowed himself to be backed up against the meter-high wall around the edge of the roof, Marchenko would have little trouble pushing him over the side to plummet forty stories to a splattering death. Pierre moved toward the center of the roof, wind whipping his hair, cutting through him with fingers of ice.

Marchenko’s broad face was contorted in fury — not just at him, Pierre guessed, but also at whomever he had called to come and get him. There was still no sign of an approaching chopper, although several jet contrails crisscrossed the sky, like lash marks on a prisoner’s back.

Just five meters separated them now. Marchenko’s bald head glistened with a sheen of sweat, looking, in the ruddy late-afternoon light, almost like a film of blood. The climb up the stairs had been hard on him, too; whatever secret exit he’d had from his office had apparently given him access to the stairwell rather than the elevator lobby.