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Austria’s countryside. He stopped when he reached Hallstatt, a lake town in the mountains. A fairy tale church tower with a small graveyard loomed over the old village of timber cottages. Flowers were out in droves on the balconies. Smoke from burnt wood rose out of the chimneys. White clouds came rolling over the mountaintops on the other side of the mirroring lake.
    This was his mother’s hometown. He remembered visiting that church the day his grandmother died and walking to that graveyard. A charnel house held the skulls of past citizens. It was here that he looked into the eyes of death for the first time. He didn’t know that countless more meetings would follow.
    It was also where he told Nigel to send ‘Blake Griffin’s’ business card, not that he believed for a second it was his real name. Death came in many guises.
    Antoine would find out who this man really was.
    The shadow of the mountain fell over the lake as Antoine maneuvered the wooden boat toward a private estate on the opposite shore. It was a small castle, formerly Castle Grub—beautiful in the sunlight peeking over the mountain top.
    There was no public entrance. A waist-high fence encircled the grounds. It was well-kept but there was not a soul around.
    He tied the boat to the jetty and went to the letter box at the gate. It still bore the family name, even though they’d left this country a long time ago. He took out a small key and opened it. He leafed through the mail and took out one letter. The white envelope was from London, marked priority shipping.
    Nigel .
    Antoine looked around to make sure he was alone even though there was only nature for more than a mile in every direction.
    Antoine turned his attention back to the envelope. Inside was a bone-cream colored card with anthracite metallic letters embedded in its thick paper. He remembered having cards like this. It read: “Blake Griffin, Houston and Howard’s Consulting Group.” This was the man who was after him. The question was, who was he really? After a year he was finally a step closer. But he still needed help and he knew just the person for the job: Bekkend.
     
    ***
     
    Vienna, Austria
     
    DC tower’s glass-surface mirrored the rising sun over Vienna’s modern city center.
    A subterranean complex of parking spaces, traffic circles and tunnels obscured the road, ostensibly to leave the ground level free for pedestrians. On that day though, like most others, it was a desolate canyon. To Antoine’s schooled eye, the towers afforded free lines of fire for snipers. Even better, there would be no witnesses.
    His agency, or as Rose put it, ‘The United Nations Intelligence’ occupied the top five of the tower’s sixty floors.
    To get there, Antoine had to first take the deep-level garage elevator, which brought him to the lobby.
    The concierge awaited him.
    “Welcome Mr. Springer,” she said with a smile on her face. “Glad to see you again. We were wondering when you will be back.”
    “Had a reunion to attend,” Antoine replied.
    “How was it?”
    “Too many people, if you ask me. I am glad to be back.”
    He entered the ground floor elevator, and the doors closed.
    It was a long way up but the elevator was fast. His ears popped as it rose higher and higher.
    The doors slid open. An automatic voice spoke.
    “Level fifty-eight: Lance Private Banking.”
    Antoine stepped out of the lift and walked to the door. He leant forward and put his eye to the retina scanner.
    “Identification,” a different female computer voice said. “Springer, Antoine.”
    His iris matched the one on file for him in the database. The high-security locks of the bulletproof door opened with a clack.
    Antoine stepped through to a hallway.
    This was the agency’s home, as far as anything could considered home for a shadow organization of international vigilante spies. While the lake estate was Antoine’s secret refuge, the black tower in the heart of Vienna was the center of all