He set off down the avenue, walking under the freeway. Beyond it the streets narrowed. They all looked the same: endless apartment blocks, four or five stories high, occasional bistros, bars, and shops. There was a public toilet on one corner. Kursk put a couple of francs into the slot, let the metal door slide open, and went in. He washed himself as best he could in the basin, soaping his face and scalp, and rinsing the filth out of the cuts that crisscrossed his shaved head, enjoying the sandpapery abrasion of the stubble against his palm.

When he’d finished, he looked in the mirror. It wasn’t too bad. He looked like a tough bastard who’d been in a fight and couldn’t give a damn. Kursk grinned at the thought of all the bourgeois Parisians who might see him and feel a prickle of fear. He took his capacity to intimidate for granted, the same way a beautiful woman assumes she will turn men’s heads. A walk down the street was a parade of his powers.

Kursk left the toilet and looked around for a phone booth. He shoved every coin he had into the box and dialed an overseas number. It was a while before anyone answered.

He spoke in Russian: “This is Kursk. Get me Yuri. Yeah, I do know what time it is. Just shut up and get me Yuri.”

“Can I have one of your filthy cigarettes?”

Papin grinned. “I thought you did not smoke.”

The operations director grimaced. “I don’t usually. But tonight I think I’ll make an exception.”

Papin reached for his Gitanes, then held up his hand for a second before placing it to his own telephone earpiece. He frowned with concentration as he listened, then spoke briefly into the mic that dangled by his throat. Another nod, a quick good-bye, then he turned off his phone.

“I am afraid I have more bad news,” Papin said, handing over a cigarette, then flicking on his lighter. “There has been a killing in the Marais. One of the finest mansions in Paris has been turned into a slaughterhouse. An exploded car. A body in the gateway. Two more bodies in the hall. Two more again upstairs. And human remains from the explosion scattered like confetti across the courtyard. The dead men were armed with submachine guns. These men were professional killers, who were themselves killed. So I ask myself, why would killers be in Paris tonight?”

“All right, you’ve made your point.”

“Then follow me.”

They drove to the mansion in the first gray light of the false dawn. Papin flashed a badge at the police officers guarding the gate and keeping back the increasing crowd of rubberneckers attracted by the flashing lights of the vans and squad cars massed in the road outside the gates. Inside, Papin had a brief, angry conversation with a bull-necked man in an ill-fitting suit with sweat patches under the arms.

“That was the detective in charge of the case,” Papin told the operations director, by way of explanation.

“I gathered. What was his problem?”

“He wants to remove the bodies so that they can be examined as soon as possible. I told him he can have them in five minutes. So let’s not waste time. Tell me everything.”

They walked up to the first body.

“You know him?” asked Papin.

“Yeah. His name was Whelan, ex-Para. Seems fairly obvious what happened. Someone arrives at the front gate, Whelan goes to take a look, gets shot.”

They walked farther in, saw the burned-out shell of the bombed car. The detective was standing by the shattered remnants of the driver’s side door. “Regardez,” he said, and pointed inside. The two men looked in and saw the charred steering wheel. There was a plastic restraint clipped to the wheel. A fragment of a severed hand was still inside it. The rest of the body was in pieces all around the courtyard. A crime-scene investigator was photographing each piece.

Papin reached for his cigarettes. He offered the pack to the Englishman. “Another?”

“No, I’m all right, thanks, seen worse.”

They walked into the building and saw the two men sprawled on the floor of the hall, their blood a vivid crimson splash against the black-and-white tiles.

“Nichol, Jarrett, also Paras,” said the operations director. “They came as a crew with Whelan and two others.”

“Maybe you should think again about your hiring policy,” said Papin.

“Don’t worry. We hire the best. That’s why these two are dead.”

“You know who did this?”

“I’m pretty certain. I’ll know for sure when I see who’s upstairs.”

The men went into the dining room. The operations director winced when he saw Max.

“The one in the jeans is the fourth member of the crew, McCall. I imagine you’ll find what’s left of the fifth man, Harrison, down in the yard.”

“And the other man, the one I suspect you know well?”

“His name is Max. That’s what I called him, anyway. I couldn’t tell you what his birth certificate says. We weren’t on real-name terms.”

“Alors, who is? Have you noticed the interesting variation between the deaths in this room and those downstairs?”

“Of course. Max and McCall were hit by a three-shot burst of automatic fire; the others were killed by separate shots. My guess is your firearms people will find that those came from a SIG-Sauer P226. If they did, the shooter is known to me as Carver. He’s the only person that could have done this, except for one minor detail. He’s supposed to be dead.”

“Assume he is not. Can you describe him, please?”

“He was wearing a bomber jacket, T-shirt and jeans, all black, and he was riding a Honda XR400 dirt bike, also black.”

“You know this because?”

“I paid for them.”

“I see. Did you pay for his accomplice also?”

“No. Carver always works alone.”

“So why are there two weapons?”

“No idea.”

“Please, do not waste my time, huh? Either this man Carver came in with his favorite gun – a gun, you know, with twelve rounds in the magazine – fired four shots, then for some reason decided to pick up a completely different weapon; or there were two different people, firing two different guns. Alors, Charlie, what do you think?

He looked back at the Frenchman. “I don’t know what happened here. I’m not even sure it was Carver. He was meant to have been disposed of immediately after the operation was over. As far as I was concerned, he had been.”

“But if he survived this disposal…”

“Then he would be a very angry man.”

“And he would seek revenge?”

“That would be my assumption, yes.”

“Had he been here before?”

“No.”

“Did he even know of the existence of this place?”

“No.”

“And yet your Mr. Carver apparently manages to find this house, out of all the houses in Paris, and kill all the people inside, using two different guns. Then he disappears without a trace. You are right, Charlie. You do hire the best. Maybe that is why you could not dispose of him as easily as…”

“Damn! The computer!”

“Pardon?”

“Max had a computer, a laptop.”

“And…?”

“And look at the table. It’s not there. That bastard Carver has got our computer!”

Papin paused to gather his thoughts. Then he spoke with the forced, patronizing calm of a man trying to take the heat out of a situation. “Perhaps we are rushing to an assumption too easily, huh? Tell me, how did you intend to kill this man, Carver?”

When the operations director replied, his emotions were back under control. “Two Russians, a man and a woman, names of Kursk and Petrova. They work out of Moscow. But they’re dead too. We blew their apartment to smithereens.”

“Was this apartment on the Ile Saint-Louis?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it certainly exploded. But there was no one inside. No dead, no wounded. So far as the public and the media are concerned, it was just an unfortunate accident, a leaking gas pipe, nothing to worry about.”