This was all the more strange because the boy was growing into a handsome young man. His features were thin, well-defined, and wholly aristocratic, betraying barely a drop of his mother’s Indian blood. Further, he had about him a charisma as was found in natural leaders. His company was sought after by the more popular boys. Always he refused. The spurned invitations quickly turned into taunts. He was labeled a queer, a bastard, and a freak. He responded with a savagery uncommon in a boy so young. He discovered that he was good with his fists and that he enjoyed bloodying his opponent. Before long, the word went out. He was a loner and not to be bothered.

The second sin, and in the school’s eyes, by far the graver, was the boy’s unwillingness to participate in worship. The school was of Roman Catholic denomination and demanded that its students attend daily mass. While he would take his place in the pews, he would neither pray nor join in hymns. When kneeling at the altar, he refused the body and the blood of his Lord Jesus Christ. Once, when the father tried to force the sacrament into his mouth, he bit the priest’s fingers hard enough to draw blood. Even worse, the school’s chieftains observed that he was teaching himself his mother’s ancestors’ language and had taken to uttering prayers to a pagan deity in the forgotten words.

Of all this, the commandante was apprised. Instead of being disheartened with the way his “project” had turned out, he was pleased. He had uses for individuals whose conscience had been scrubbed clean of artifice. Especially a man who by appearance and education possessed all the qualities of a gentleman. Such a man would be able to move in the highest circles of society. He would be granted access to the most rarefied gatherings.

In short, he was a perfect assassin.

In a minute, “the perfect assassin” was through the town and into the surrounding hills. He turned onto the Via della Nonna and found the Villa Principessa easily enough. He continued on a kilometer and parked his car at the top of a shaded dead-end street. There he followed his ritual. He freed the vial from around his neck and dipped the bullets into the amber liquid, blowing lightly on each. All the while, he offered his prayer.

When he finished, he stepped out of the car and opened the trunk. He donned a fleece pullover, a rain slicker, and a flaming red Ferrari cap. People saw the cap, never the face. Off came the loafers. In their place, he donned a pair of hiking boots. As a final touch, he threw a rucksack over his shoulder. The Swiss were crazy for walking. Closing the trunk, he tucked the weapon into his belt and set off down the street.

He had walked a hundred meters when he saw a dark-haired man led by three dachshunds emerge from the front door of Villa Principessa and start toward him up the street. The man was in his mid-fifties. He had blue eyes and wore a navy sweater. It was him.

The Ghost approached with a welcoming smile. “Good morning,” he said amicably. It was not often he had the chance to speak to those he was assigned to kill. He enjoyed the opportunity. Over the years, he had developed certain beliefs about mortality and fate, and was curious to see if this man had any notion that his time on earth was at an end.

“Morning,” Gottfried Blitz replied.

“May I?” The Ghost bent to pet the dogs, who eagerly licked his hands.

Blitz crouched and scratched the dogs about the head and neck. “My children,” he said. “Grete, Isolde, and Eloise.”

“Three daughters. Do they take good care of their father?”

“Very good care. They keep me in good health.”

“What else is a child’s job?”

Inches separated the men. The Ghost gazed into Blitz’s eyes. He sensed a current of disquiet within the man. Not fear, but caution. He held the man’s gaze long enough to convince him that he was not a threat. He does not see it, mused the Ghost. He is oblivious to his fate.

Giving a casual “salud,” the assassin rose and walked on to the bottom of the street. A glance over his shoulder told him that Blitz had continued in the opposite direction.

The encounter left him shaken. The man might be nervous, but he did not suspect that his life was at its end. His soul had not considered the idea.

The Ghost pressed down a bolt of fear. Nothing terrified him more than the prospect of dying suddenly and without warning.

Turning the corner, he jogged up a short hill. Fifty meters along, a dirt road ran into the street from the right. He headed down the track, counting the houses as he went. Coming to the fourth in line, he hopped the low fence and walked unhurriedly to the villa’s back door. He looked to his left and right, scanning for inquisitive eyes. Satisfied that he couldn’t be seen, he knocked twice loudly. The gun rested in his palm, one bullet chambered, three more to make sure the first did the job. He noted that the house wasn’t wired with an alarm system. Arrogant, but a nice touch all the same. He pressed his fingertips to the door, feeling for any vibrations. The house was quiet. Blitz had not returned from his walk.

Seconds later, the Ghost was inside.

Milli Brandt couldn’t sleep. Tossing in her bed in her home in Josefstadt, a fashionable district of Vienna, she was unable to think of anything but the damning verdict delivered by Mohamed ElBaradei at the emergency meeting six hours earlier. “Ninety-six percent concentration…one hundred kilos…enough for four or five bombs.” The words haunted her like the memory of a bad accident. But the look on ElBaradei’s face was worse. Anguish and anger and frustration, all covering what she read as surrender. The future was a foregone conclusion. The world was going to war again.

Suddenly, she sat up. Her breath came fast, and she had to pause as she gulped down the glass of water next to her bed. Quietly, she rose, and with a glance at her husband, padded down the hallway to her study. Inside, she locked the door behind her, then moved to her desk. A sense of resolve stirred within her. She was no longer thinking, but doing. This is duty, she told herself.

It was with a steady hand that she lifted the receiver. Amazingly, she recalled the number she’d been told to memorize all those years ago for use in emergencies only. The phone rang once, twice. Waiting, she realized that her life had changed drastically from what it had been only a minute ago. She was no longer the deputy director for Technical Cooperation at the International Atomic Energy Agency. As of this moment, she was a patriot, and a little bit of a spy. She had never felt so sure of herself in her life.

“Yes,” a voice answered, brusque, demanding.

“This is Millicent Brandt. I need to speak with Hans about the Royal Lipizzaners.”

“Stay on the line.” She could practically hear the man on the other end of the line consulting his files or logs, or whatever it was that intelligence professionals look at when an agent calls in.

“Agent,” of course, was not the right word. Then again, Millicent Brandt was not her real name. Born Ludmilla Nilskova in Kiev, she was the third daughter of an outspoken Jewish chemist, a refusenik, who had immigrated to Jerusalem, and then to Austria, some thirty-odd years earlier. Though brought up speaking German, attending Austrian schools, and holding an Austrian passport, she had never forgotten the country that had secured her family’s release from the Soviet Union. Not long after beginning at the IAEA, she received a phone call from a man claiming to be an old family acquaintance. She recognized the accent, if not the name.

They met at a discreet restaurant near the Belvedere, across the city from her workplace. It was a friendly dinner, the conversation never lingering on any one subject. A little politics, a little culture. Interestingly, the acquaintance (whom she had never, in fact, met) knew all about her passion for riding, her love of Mozart, and even her attendance of a monthly Bible study group.