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relaxing his face into a smile. ‘And you be sure to tell me what you think of Adams.’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘OK . . . so it was great seeing you both. We’ll do it again sometime soon.’
    Roberts straightened up, tapped his hand twice against the body of the car, and it rolled away down the drive.
    ‘What was that about?’ Alix asked as they drove towards the compound gates. ‘The President looked worried when he was talking to you.’
    ‘He’s concerned I’ve made too many enemies over the years. He thinks they might come after me, or something.’
    ‘God . . . that’s a little scary.’
    ‘Well, there was something I couldn’t really tell him about my enemies.’
    ‘Which was?’
    ‘They’re dead. And if I didn’t kill them personally then I damn sure saw the corpse.’
    Alix gave an involuntary shudder. ‘I’m not sure I wanted to hear that. Tell me that those days are over.’
    ‘Come here,’ he said. Alix wriggled across the seat and nestled next to him. ‘Yes, I promise,’ he murmured, soothing her with the deep, calm tone of his voice. ‘Those days are over and I never want to go back.’

4
    SAMUEL CARVER HAD indeed killed a lot of people. His victims had died in cars, planes, helicopters and powerboats. He had dispatched them with bullets, bombs, knives, poisons and nooses. He had even stood and watched in stomach-churning disgust as one had been eaten alive.
    But not all of those who had reason to wish Carver harm had paid for their enmity with their lives. And one who had survived against all the odds was at that moment running hard around the lower lake in the Bois de Boulogne – a striking female figure in skintight black training pants and a lightweight turquoise jacket that set off the mane of flaming red hair, gathered into a ponytail, that bounced and swished behind her as she sped through the gathering November dusk.
    Her real name was Celina Novak, though she’d called herself Ginger Sternberg when she’d first attracted Carver’s attention at the start of the Malachi Zorn business. Carver had been on holiday at the time, a single man in a beat-up Jeep, taking ferries between the Greek islands with no big plan in mind other than enjoying himself . Ginger had been behind the wheel of a Porsche Boxter in the line for the ferry at Piraeus, the port of Athens. She’d been tanned, carefree, laughing at some private joke when he saw her; mostly she was laughing at how easy it was to catch a man’s eye. She wouldn’t have laughed so much if she’d known how it would all end.
    But that was more than two years ago. Now she was in Paris, running at the very limit of her speed and endurance because her fitness at least was something she could control. Then she slowed as an object caught her eye, lying on the ground amidst the brown and russet of the fallen leaves. She stopped and bent down to find a small stuffed monkey in a bright-red jacket – a much-loved toy, to judge by the way its fur had been rubbed almost bare from all the hugs, sucks and kisses it had received.
    Novak looked up and saw the monkey’s likely owner a little further up ahead, a girl of five or six walking hand-in-hand with her mother.
    ‘Excuse me, madam!’ she called out, holding up the monkey so that the mother could see. She added, ‘Your daughter dropped her little monkey!’
    The mother smiled and shooed her girl in the direction of Novak, who was crouching down on her haunches, so as to be at the child’s level. The girl gave a shriek of delight when she saw the monkey held out towards her, and hurried back to her favourite toy as fast as her little legs would carry her, her face wreathed in undiluted joy. She grabbed the monkey and held it to her heart. Then she looked at Celina Novak and all the happiness drained from her face. For a second the girl’s eyes seemed uncertain, as if she did not quite know what she was seeing, and then her expression turned to one of fear and revulsion. She shrieked and