On the way to Tourrettes-sur-Loup, Carver made a detour to Cannes. He dumped the piece of junk he’d hired at the airport and went to one of the specialist luxury car-rental companies that cater to the assorted stars, producers, and account-toting executives from the entertainment industry who flock to the town’s festivals and sales conventions. There he hired an Audi S6 sedan, his personal transport of choice. He loved it for looking as dull as a Ford Mondeo but driving as fast as a Ferrari-faster, in fact, on many roads, thanks to the grip produced by its four-wheel drive: the perfect getaway vehicle.

He stopped at a Géant big-box store outside town to buy basic provisions, outdoor clothing, and camping gear, including binoculars and some heavy-duty hiking boots. Then he drove up into the hills. These Georgian gangsters had certainly picked a spectacular location for their hideout in the foothills of the Maritime Alps, a landscape of jagged slopes scattered with pines and oaks, and scoured by spectacular gorges, where switchback roads and absurdly picturesque villages clung to the sides of precipitous cliffs.

The most direct way to the house was off the main road between Vence and Grasse, and up through the village of Tourrettes itself. But Carver went the scenic route, skirting the side of the Puy de Tourrettes, until the pavement gave way to a dirt road, and then a track impassable even by a car with four-wheel-drive. He parked the Audi, put on his knapsack, and started hiking toward a point on the mountain directly above the house, making the final approach on his belly until he found the ideal spot for his observation post.

Down below him, he could see the people he had come to rob. Their voices drifted up to him on the breeze, along with the barking of their dogs. They had not spotted him.

Carver got out his binoculars. Now all he had to do was watch, and wait.

That, and work out how the hell he was going to steal Kurt Vermulen’s precious document.

“Man, that’s a sight to behold now, ain’t it?”

Early morning, East River Park, and a steady stream of joggers was taking the path down from Twenty-third Street to the South Street Seaport and back, under the Williamsburg, Manhattan, and Brooklyn bridges, past the Fulton Fish Market. This was New York City and people were too bound up in themselves to spare a glance for the three men standing by the railings, ignoring the views across the river, watching the girls go by.

“Makes me wish I were thirty years younger,” Waylon McCabe went on as a hot young blonde trotted by, her taut thighs and peachy backside sheathed in black running tights. “Hell, even ten years’d do me.”

He turned to one of the other men, who was balding, his overdeveloped muscles now melting into fat, a brown leather jacket open to reveal a spreading paunch. His name was Clinton Tulane and he had been a military instructor back in the days when McCabe was providing assistance to West African guerrillas. Tulane had helped him out then, just as he’d helped out a whole lot of other people, from Sarajevo to El Salvador. That was how he knew Dusan Darko, though that was not the name under which the man in the black overcoat with the lank, greasy hair had entered the United States. When you were a Serbian warlord, wanted across the Western world for crimes against humanity, it paid to travel incognito.

“You can leave us now, Clint,” said McCabe. “It’s been real good of you to make this introduction. But me ’n’ Mr. Darko here gotta talk business, and it’s kinda private.”

“Yes, sir,” said Tulane, any resentment at his exclusion more than covered by the wad of hundred-dollar bills now nestled in his jacket pocket.

McCabe waited long enough to let Tulane get out of earshot, then fixed his attention on the other man.

“So, Mr. Darko, Clint tells me you’re a man of some influence in your country-is that so?”

Darko shrugged as if to suggest that he was, indeed, influential, but too modest to say so out loud.

“So supposing I wanted to enter your country by air, find a place to land and refuel, pick up a package, and leave without anyone hasslin’ me-you could make that happen?”

“But of course… for a price. You understand, people would need to be paid. But it is possible, certainly.”

“Uh-huh, I get it. And you got men under your command, fightin’ men?”

Darko stood a little straighter.

“My men have fought alongside me for seven years. Against Croats. Against Bosnians. Now against Albanian scum. These men are lions-like the partisans who fought against the Nazis, they cannot be defeated.”

McCabe did his best to keep a straight face. He didn’t need any lessons on fighting from some greasy wop who was second cousin to a Gypsy.

“Well, that’s just fine, Mr. Darko. Let me tell you what I have in mind…”

Carver didn’t know what any of the wildflowers covering the hillside were, but he was glad of their rich, herbal scent. He’d been watching the house for forty-eight hours. During that time he’d drunk water, eaten chocolate, nuts, and dried fruit, and crapped into a sandwich bag before burying it in the earth behind his hideout. He’d also refined his plans for getting the document out of the house.

The property was arranged so that all the social areas were on the southern, downhill side, to maximize the views across the hazy, gray-green hills of Provence to the glittering waters of the Riviera. Everything practical was hidden away out of sight. So the driveway up to the house was over by the right-hand perimeter of the grounds, from Carver’s perspective, looking down from above. There was a small drop-off area by the front door to the house, but the actual parking was to the rear, so that cars would be kept out of sight. There was no garage, but a massive seven-seater Mitsubishi Shogun was sitting under a metal-framed, plastic-roofed awning.

Up against the back wall of the house, a lean-to was filled with logs for the fireplace, which was, according to the architect’s plans, the dominant feature of the main living room. Farther along, on the far side of a rear door that led into the kitchen, two red one-hundred-pound canisters of propane, as high as a man’s shoulder, supplied gas for the stove.

There was still work to do on the area between the house and the rear perimeter. The low brick wall enclosing the parking area was unfinished and much of the ground was still covered with builders’ debris: rubble, discarded bits of woodwork, empty cans, even a small cement mixer. Someone, however, had cleared a space for the high chain-link fences that kept the two dogs caged until they were let loose for the night.

The place had six human inhabitants: four male and two female. The weather had stayed warm, and around about midday the men had staggered outside for a busy day of drinking, smoking, and leering at the bimbos lying by the pool, trying to turn their fake tans into the real thing. It hadn’t taken Carver long to work out which one was Baladze. The cock-of-the-walk way he carried himself, the fawning obedience of the men, and the shrieks of female laughter made it obvious who was the alpha male.

Carver had passed the time working out names for the people who would soon come under his attack. He toyed with soap-opera characters, historical figures, even Jesus and his apostles. In the end he went with Beatles. Baladze he code-named John, the original leader of the band. The man who looked like his second-in-command, a pot-bellied greaser with dirty-blond hair, was therefore Paul. A younger, skinny underling with long dark hair was a natural for George. That left Ringo for the fourth gang member. He had the grossly overdeveloped muscles, the furious expression, and the Pizza Hut complexion of a man who sprinkles steroids on his breakfast cereal and spends too much time alone with his dumbbells. The pelt of wiry black hair across his shoulders wasn’t too pleasant, either.