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into a couple of unfortunate pedestrians, killing them instantly, before sliding belly up to a stop.
    In the next moment, I am off the motorcycle and walking calmly, purposefully to the passenger door of the car. It only takes me an instant to crouch down and look at the bleeding, helpless visage of Anton Noel.
    “ Aide—” he mutters a moment before I shoot him in the face.
    Men and women race into the street from nearby buildings, bewildered by the sudden eruption of the accident, and somewhere in the distance, the bleating two-note shriek of a French police siren fills the air.

CHAPTER THREE
    I STAND AT A PAY PHONE OUTSIDE THE TRAIN STATION IN N APLES, WAITING FOR IT TO RING. I am angry. The emotion has been brewing inside me for three days, unabated.
    I failed. I was sloppy, I was unprepared, and two pedestrians died in Paris because they chose to brave the cold and cross an avenue at the most unfortunate of times. They are dead and here I stand, alive and empty.
    Le Monde reported their names as Jerome Coulfret, a forty-five-year-old jeweler, and Jason Baseden, a twenty-eight-year-old fitness instructor. They did not know each other. Further information about them is scant. They are merely a footnote to the professional execution of Anton Noel, the pharmaceutical CIO shot down as he left work in the middle of the afternoon in Paris.
    Though I am waiting for it, the phone’s ring manages to startle me.
    “You are safe?”
    Ryan’s voice is unemotional, impassive.
    “Yes.”
    “The city is on edge. Investigations are under way.”
    “I understand.”
    He pauses, and I wait. There is more he wants to say.
    “I have been doing what I do for a quarter of a century. I have no regrets. So tell me why I’m having misgivings about our relationship now.”
    “I fucked up. What do you want me to say?”
    “I want you to say you are committed to your work.”
    I press the receiver against my forehead and close my eyes. I’d like to tell him I don’t need a goddamn lecture—that I’m more angry with myself than he could ever be—but maybe I do need to hear it from him. Maybe I do need a good tongue-lashing, a slap in the face. Something, anything to push me back to the surface where I can breathe fresh air again.
    “I underestimated the time necessary to complete this job. It won’t happen again.”
    “I’m not assuaged.”
    “Well, there’s nothing I can—”
    “You can stop seeing the bookshop owner.”
    I feel a dull pulse in my ear where the cool plastic of the phone receiver presses against it. I don’t know why I’m surprised; a good fence finds out everything about his targets, and similarly knows everything about his assassins. I won’t insult him by asking how or why he was tailing me. I know he was right to do so. And I know he was right to tell me to stop seeing Risina.
    “I’ll take care of it.”
    He wants to say more, but it is his turn to be circumspect. After a moment, his voice comes through the phone again, softer.
    “We should meet. Discuss our strategy for the remainder of the year where we can talk freely. I think it might be time to evaluate a return to work in America.”
    “Okay.”
    “A week from today.”
    “Okay.”
    There is no need for us to discuss over a telephone where this encounter will take place. We have planned our meetings sequentially. The last one was in Turin. The next one will be here, at the train station in Naples. We always meet at noon.
    I’m about to say “goodbye,” but the line has gone dead in my hand.
    The Piazza Navona is a giant oval surrounding an Egyptian obelisk and a large fountain in the heart of Rome. The emperor Maxentius built the oval in the fourth century as a stadium for chariot races, where losing competitors were often executed before they left the competing ground. I wonder how much blood has been spilled here over the centuries, what forgotten man once stood where I stand, defeated, waiting for a sword to run him through.
    Risina