Hennessy felt for his notebook and cell phone, his palm resting for a moment on each as if over his heart. He then struggled to his knees and fingered the wet ground around him to discern whether anything had fallen from his pockets. After finding nothing, he rose and leaned against a pine and wiped his hands on its needles. He couldn’t risk another fall, so he covered his eyes with his palms and tried to force them to adjust to the dark.

His heavy breath drew in the smell of resin, bringing back memories of where his journey had begun almost a decade earlier, hiding in the Fisher Hill woods in Brookline, Massachusetts, watching his target and the men gathering around him, the professor’s house seeming more like a mosque than a home, and the special agent in charge encouraging him, pressuring him, whispering in his ear, “Get this guy. It’ll make your career.”

When Hennessy opened his eyes again, the blackness around him had grayed and a route reappeared.

A rush of vertigo shook him as he looked down. He grabbed the pine again to steady himself. When it passed, he descended, hoping to arrive on the street below near where he’d parked his car.

Twenty yards farther down, he emerged into a meadow. He covered one eye to protect its night vision, and looked over his shoulder at the glowing Madonna statue. He used it to approximate a path and then angled to his left until he reached the edge of the pavement. He crouched behind a bush and peeked out; first left, then right. A cat hissed at the darkness between him and his car twenty yards away. His body realized his miscalculation before his mind, and it pulled him back. Someone was lying in wait.

Hennessy scanned the rooftop at the near end of the three-story apartment building across the road. A light blinked. Movement against the bright city. He made out the silhouette of a raised head. It rotated like a periscope and then lowered.

The hourglass again began to drain. Thirty minutes left. It was a twenty-five-minute drive and now no car to take him. The nearest taxi would be on Boulevard Notre Dame, two blocks away, but the shortest route wasn’t a straight line. Instead, it was a looping route through woods that would take him only to a connecting street.