Less than a mile from the apartment Carver had booby-trapped, two men with false names were going about their work in a building with bogus ownership papers. One of them was known to Carver as Max. His face had the deep-lined, half-starved look of a jockey or a Rolling Stone. His steely hair was cropped tight to his skull. He wore rimless glasses, a charcoal suit, a white linen shirt, and a pale mushroom-colored knitted tie.

His stark modernity looked out of place in his immediate surroundings. He had just walked into the drawing room of an eighteenth-century townhouse, decorated with lavish extravagance – twelve-foot ceilings, a marble fireplace, antique furniture, and ancestral portraits with heavy gilt. Whoever had chosen the decorations had been trying to evoke the grandeur of a bygone age.

Max looked around in distaste. The place looked like a bloody museum. He turned his attention to the middle-aged man in beige cords, green sweater, and pale blue button-down shirt standing by the unlit fire, holding a glass of whisky. The man was stocky, powerfully built, just starting to run to fat as time, gravity, and lack of exercise took their toll.

“I got news from Carver, sir.”

The other man’s job title was Operations Director. Some of his staff referred to him as “O.D.” When he wanted to give an impression of friendship, he told people to call him Charlie. But Max preferred “sir.” He never liked getting chummy with his bosses. They started taking liberties if you did. Keep it nice and formal, then everyone knew where they stood.

“How’s he getting on?” asked the operations director.

His voice sounded tired. He ran a hand through his hair and down the back of his neck. He’d had less than three hours’ sleep in the past forty-eight. They’d been working fast, under pressure, cutting too many corners. Max wondered whether the old man was up to it anymore.

“Fine,” he said. “Just one thing, though. Looks like he’s had a sudden attack of conscience.”

“Really? How so?”

“He’s worried innocent people might get killed.”

The operations director laughed, composing himself when he saw the disapproval on Max’s face. “Sorry,” he said. “Tension must be getting to me. But you see the irony, surely.”

“Oh, yes, I see that.”

“Right then, are the Russians in place?” He gave a sharp, frustrated sigh. “I don’t like using new people on a job like this. Still, the chairman assures me they’re top-notch. He must know what he’s talking about.”

“They’re in position,” said Max. “And the observation teams are ready. Once there’s a sighting, we’ll be ready to move at once.”

“Excellent,” said the operations director. “Let’s wait for the show to begin.”

The time was a quarter past midnight. Samuel Carver stood astride the Honda, waiting to go into action. He glanced down at the black metal tube clipped to the bike behind his right leg. It looked like a regular, long-barreled flashlight, the kind that police or security guards use. It was, in fact, a portable diode pump laser, otherwise known as a dazzler. Developed as a nonfatal weapon for U.S. police forces, but taken up with deadly enthusiasm by special forces around the world, it emitted a green light beam at a frequency of 532 nanometers. Its nickname, though, was misleading. When this light shone in somebody’s eyes, they weren’t just dazzled. They were incapacitated.

A green laser beam left anyone who looked at it disoriented, confused, and temporarily immobile. The human brain couldn’t process the sheer amount of light data flooding through the optic nerves, so it acted like any other overloaded computer: It crashed.

Night or day, rain or shine, a dazzler was an accident’s best friend.

It would only be a matter of seconds now. Carver was positioned by the exit of an underpass that ran beneath an embankment on the northern side of the Seine. If he turned his head fractionally to the right, he could look across the river at the glittering spire of the Eiffel Tower darting up into the night sky. It was past midnight, but there were still a few pleasure boats out on the water. If Carver had been the slightest bit interested, he’d have seen the lovers standing arm in arm by the rails, looking out at the City of Light. But Carver had other things to think about. He was looking toward the far side of the underpass. All he cared about was the traffic.

The time had come. He took a deep breath, then let the air out slowly, dropping his shoulders, easing the muscles, twisting his neck, and rotating his head to loosen the top of his spinal cord. Then he looked back at the road.

Several hundred meters away, beyond the entrance of the underpass, he saw a black Mercedes. It was traveling fast. Way too fast.

Behind the Merc was the reason for its desperate speed. A motorcycle was chasing it, buzzing around the big black car like a wasp around a buffalo. There was a passenger riding in a pillion, carrying a camera, leaning away from his seat and firing his flashgun, apparently oblivious to his own safety. He looked for all the world like a paparazzo, risking his neck for an exclusive shot.

“Nice work,” thought Carver, watching the speed team doing their job. He started his bike and got ready to move.

For a second, he imagined the passengers in the car, urging their driver to pull away from the relentless pursuit of the bike.

Everything was going according to plan. Carver rolled downhill toward the road leading from the underpass.

As he reached the junction with the main road, a gray Citroën BX hatchback emerged from the underpass. Carver let it go, noting the two Arab men in the driver’s and passenger’s seats. Another car went by, a Ford Ka. Then Carver rode his bike out into the middle of the road.

He crossed to the far side, then turned the Honda into the flow of the oncoming traffic and dashed ahead about a hundred meters to the mouth of the underpass. There was a line of pillars down the middle of the road. They supported the tunnel roof and separated the two directions of traffic. He stopped by the last pillar and reached down to unclip his dazzler.

Something caught Carver’s eye.

At the mouth of the underpass, coming toward him, was a battered white Fiat Uno. It was doing the legal speed, fifty kilometers per hour, and therefore going less than half as fast as the car and bike racing toward its tail.

Carver’s eyes narrowed as he pulled out the laser. His mouth gave a quick twitch of silent irritation. This wasn’t part of the plan.

The Mercedes and the motorcycle were closing on the little white car at breakneck speed. There were a hundred meters between them. Fifty. Twenty.

The Merc came roaring up behind the Fiat in the right-hand lane, then swung left, trying to overtake it. The bike rider had no option. He had to go around the other way, squeezing between the right-hand side of the Fiat and the tunnel wall. Somehow, he shot through without a scratch, rocketing out the far side of the Fiat.

The Merc wasn’t so lucky. The front of the car, on the passenger’s side, caught the Fiat from behind. The Merc smashed through the Fiat’s rear lights and crumpled the thin metal of the Fiat’s rear panels.

The tunnel walls echoed with the cacophony of screaming engines, smashing plastic, and tortured metal. But inside his helmet, Carver felt isolated, unaffected by the chaos that was rushing toward him. He could see the driver of the Mercedes struggling to regain control as his vehicle careered across the road. The guy was good. Somehow the car straightened out. Now it was coming straight at Carver.

Carver stood as immobile as a matador facing a charging black bull. He raised the laser, aimed at the windshield of the car, and pressed the switch.