it seemed, with genuine affection and respect. Yet what did that prove, aside
from that she might have been an accomplished actress? What now seemed
irrefutable was that whoever had betrayed Novak was in a position to have earned
his trust. And that meant the agent was a master of deception, a virtuoso of the
patient arts of craft and deceit and waiting. But to what end?
“You come with me,” Berman said. “I show you house.” He put an arm around
Janson’s shoulder and propelled him up the stairs, down the magnificent hallways
of the estate, and into the airy, light-filled kitchen. He pressed a finger to
his lip. “Mr. French not want us in kitchen. But Russians know that heart of
house is kitchen.”
Berman stepped toward the glittering stainless-steel sink, where the casement
windows looked onto a beautifully tended rose garden. Beyond it stretched
Regent’s Park. “Take a look—twenty-four hundred acres in the middle of London,
like my backyard.” He pulled out the sink spray nozzle and held it to his mouth
like microphone. “Someone left the scones out in the rain,” he sang in a thick
Russian basso. “I don’t think that I can take it … ” He pulled Janson closer,
trying to form a duet. He raised an expressive hand high in the air, like an
opera singer on the stage.
There was a tinkle of glass, and Berman broke off with a sharp expulsion of
breath. A moment later, he slumped to the floor.
A small red hole was just visible on the front of his hand. On the upper left
quadrant of his shirtfront was another puncture wound, just slightly rimmed with
red.
“Jesus Christ!” Janson shouted.
Time slowed.
Janson looked down at Berman, stunned and motionless on the gray tiled kitchen,
and then out of the window. Outside, there was no sign of disturbance whatever.
The afternoon sun nuzzled well-tended rosebushes, their small pink and white
blossoms radiantly emerging from the tight-clustered leaves. The sky was blue,
dappled with sparse wisps of white.
It seemed impossible, but it had happened, and his brain raced to make sense of
it, even as he heard the approaching footsteps of the butler, obviously roused
by his exclamation. On arrival, the butler immediately pulled Berman’s supine
body out of range of the window, sliding it along the floor. It was the correct
response. He, too, scanned the view from the window, holding a P7 sentry pistol
in a hand as he did so. An amateur might have fired a shot out of the window for
show: the butler did not do so. He had seen what Janson had seen; an exchange of
glances revealed his bafflement. Just a few seconds elapsed before the two
retreated to the hallway, safely away from the window. From the floor, Berman
made rasping, wet noises, as breath forced its way through his injured airway,
and his fingers began to scrabble at his chest wound. “Motherfucker,” he said in
a strangled voice. “Tvoyu mat’!”
The fingers of his intact right hand trembled with exertion, as the Russian
probed his wound with remarkable single-mindedness. He was fishing for the
bullet, and gasping for breath, he yanked a crumpled mass of brass and lead from
his chest.
“Look,” Janson said to the butler. “I know this has to be a shock to you, but
I’m going to need you to stay calm and collected, Mr … ”
“Thwaite. And I’ve had fifteen years in the SAS. This isn’t a perimeter breach,
we both know that. We’re looking at something else.”
“SAS, huh?”
“Mr. Berman may be crazy, but he’s not a fool. A man like that’s got enemies.
We’ve prepared for the usual exigencies. But that shot came out of the clear
blue. I can’t explain it.”
How had it happened?
Janson’s mind emptied, and then filled with elliptic curves and right angles.
The horrific scene of bloodshed he had just witnessed dissolved into a shifting
geometrical schema.
He’d need every fact that was available to him. He connected the point of
penetration of Berman’s upstretched arm to the upper-left-quadrant chest wound.
An elevation of approximately thirty-five degrees from the horizontal. Yet there
was nothing visible in the vicinity at that angle.
Ergo the bullet had not been fired from the immediate vicinity.
The mass that Berman had pulled out was confirmation. It had to have been a
long-distance shot, toward the end of its trajectory. Had it been fired within a
hundred yards, it would have penetrated Berman’s body and punched an exit wound.
The amount of crumple and the size of the projectile: the crucial information
was there.
He stooped and picked up the bullet. What had it been? A six- or
seven-hundred-grain, brass-jacketed round. Penetration had been two inches; had
it struck Berman’s head, it would have been instantly fatal. As it was, the lung
hemorrhage made a fatal outcome fairly probable. What had it delivered: a
hundred, two hundred foot-pounds of force?
Because of air resistance, impact diminished in a nonlineal relation to distance
elapsed. The greater the velocity, the greater the air resistance, or drag
force, so it wasn’t a simple, linear relation. The velocity-distance matrix
involved a first-order differential equation, and Reynolds number—the sort of
thing Alan Demarest could solve in his head, maybe Berman, too—but, relying on
trained intuition, Janson estimated that the distance traversed would have been
twelve hundred yards out, or about two-thirds of a mile.
Janson’s mind filled with the skyline of the area, the Palladian roofs of
Hanover Terrace, the round dome of the Central London Mosque … and the minaret,
the tall, slender tower with the small balcony, used by the muezzin to summon
the faithful to prayer. Lacking intrinsic value, it was likely unguarded; a
professional would have had no problem gaining entry. If Janson’s rough
calculations were correct, one had.
It was diabolical. A sniper had stationed himself on the balcony of the minaret,
a flyspeck from the perspective of Berthwick House, and bided his time, waiting
in case his target appeared in the casement windows. He would have had plenty of
time to figure out the requisite angles and trajectories. But how many men were
even capable of such a shot? Were there forty such in the world? A couple of
Russians. The Norwegian sniper who came in first in a worldwide competition
hosted in Moscow last year. A couple of Israelis, with their Galil 7.62 rifles.
A handful of Americans.
A master sniper had supernal skill, but he had supernal patience, too. He had to
be responsive to uncertainties: in a long-range shot, even a slight unexpected
breeze could push a flat shot several feet from its intended destination. A
subject could move unexpectedly; in this case, Berman had raised his hand after
the shot was fired. A sniper had to be aware of such possibilities. And he had
to be more patient than his target.
And yet who was the target?
The butler had assumed it was his employer, Berman. A natural assumption. And a
dangerous one. He recalled Berman’s arm around his shoulder, drawing him close.
The bullet that hit the Russian was fifteen inches from Janson’s head.
Fifteen inches. An uncontrollable variance at two-thirds of a mile. Whether it
was a hit or a near miss, the shot’s accuracy was incredible. But the sensible
assumption had been that Janson was the real target. He was the only new element
in the situation.
He could hear the siren of the ambulance Thwaite had summoned. And now he felt a
tug on his trouser leg—Berman, from the floor, feebly trying to communicate, to
get his attention.
“Janson,” he said, speaking as if through a mouthful of water.
His fleshy face had taken on a veal-like pallor. A thin rivulet of blood seeped
from the corner of his lips down his chin. Air was sucking through his chest
wound, and he pressed his good right hand to the area. Now he raised his
bloodied left hand and extended a wagging index finger. “Tell me truth: Turnbull
and Asser shirt ruined?” A wet cough came instead of the usual guffaw. At least
one of his lungs had filled with blood, and would soon collapse.
“It’s seen better days,” Janson said gently, feeling a rush of affection toward
the ebullient, eccentric maven.
“Get son of whore who did this,” Berman said. “Da?”
“Da,” Janson said huskily.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Thwaite took Janson aside and spoke to him in a low voice. “Whoever you are, Mr.
Berman must have trusted you, or he wouldn’t have invited you here. But I’ve got
to ask you to make tracks.” A wry look. “Chop-chop.”
Janson raced down oak parquet floors, past the eighteenth-century French
paneling a Woolworth heiress had installed decades ago, and through a rear exit.
A few minutes later, he had vaulted over the wrought-iron fence and into the
eastern bulge of Regent’s Park. “Twenty-four hundred acres in the middle of
London, like my backyard,” Berman had said.