One of the limousines spun away, north into the woven alleys of La Panier, the Basket—Abrams had broken free.

Hennessy’s eyelids shut and his held breath exploded. He pushed up his sleeve and looked down. The glowing face of his watch marked the remaining time: forty minutes to drive across town to the North African restaurant where the chairman would be waiting.

Hennessy slid along the foundation wall behind him until he could look down the dark hillside. Gray-scaled shadows between the trees and bushes tunneled toward streetlights below and marked the path toward his car.

A medieval gloom met him as he left the concrete curtilage of the church and descended into the obscurity of the forest. He sidestepped down into the blackness, reaching for branches and boulders, counting his steps, trying to impose a rhythm on his staccatoed pace.

His right shoe lost purchase. His spine wrenched as he jerked backward. Arms flailing, body twisting, tumbling through shrubs, sliding—sliding—sliding, and thudding against a tree trunk.

And silence.

Wings fluttered. A dog barked. Car tires squealed below.

Pain in his hip overwhelmed feeling in his arms and legs. Then hot panic. A terror of paralysis. Pinned to the earth and condemned to watch the hourglass of his hope for redemption drain away.

He clenched his teeth and hardened his body against the throbbing, and then rolled onto his stomach.

An image displayed itself on the screen of darkness: him walking vagrantlike, scraped and soiled, through the restaurant entrance. The chairman gazing up at him in disgust and in self-reproach for having agreed

to meet with a lunatic, then pushing back from the table and striding out through the door and escaping back into his limousine.