A procession of limousines emerged from the gap-toothed head of the port, down from the four-lane La Canebiere and from the direction of the Old Stock Exchange a block away that had hosted the Forum.

No. Not a procession. Just two. He’d seen more than what was there: If there were two, then there had to be—there had to be—twelve or twenty following behind, and one of those would be Abrams’s.

But there wasn’t.

Chance had once again imposed an order that didn’t exist, and self-doubt vibrated through him, for it had been this same trick of mind that made him see a crime nine years earlier where one hadn’t occurred and made him accuse an innocent man.

Where… was… that… man?

What had the secretary of defense called it in his speech to him and the other members of the FBI Antiterrorism Task Force?

“The prism of 9/11.”

Except Hennessy had realized too late that it hadn’t been a prism, it had been a mirror, or maybe a kaleidoscope in which every turn displayed the same pattern to men predisposed to see it.

He’d been one of those men, and now he trusted no one, not even himself.

As he stared out at the brilliant city, he wondered whether what he really wanted from Abrams wasn’t help in righting a wrong and in averting a disaster, but only someone to bear witness to his sanity.

Another minute. Or three. Or six.

Moving black specks slid across the unified frame of his binoculars’ lenses. More limousines. They headed west toward the water, then swung south along the Quai, a gravitational force seeming to link them in position, invisible strings, mysterious and unbreakable, threading through the chaos of traffic and beyond the reach of his tightening hands.

The last nine years of his life condensed into this instant. His breathing stopped. He felt his eyes turn catlike, lids tensed open, surfaces drying in the wind.