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there was plenty of light to see the narrow ledge by. Tonight, however, it was cloudy, and damp besides; he felt his feet slip as he pulled himself up onto the narrow lip outside the building. He took a breath, holding himself against the old brown bricks. Then he gently pushed the window closed and began sliding to the right, where a small hip roof led to a wide, nearly flat roof overlooking the back of the hotel where Arna Kerr had her room.
     
    Even at this hour, there was still plenty of traffic in the city. Rankin could hear the dull boom of stereos and smell the stink of exhaust as he moved sideways across the building. If she had gotten a room on the other side of the hotel, his job would have been easier— there was a bar with a broad terrace overlooking the street on that side; he could have gotten a drink and pretended to be copping a smoke.
     
    If Ferguson had had this job, that’s where the room would have been.
     
    Rankin made it to the hip roof and pulled himself over, knees scraping on the hard ceramic shingles. They were a lot more slippery than he remembered. He pushed on, got to the flatter roof. There he took his water from his backpack and took a long pull, resting for a moment. His breath back, he took out the small dish and screwed what looked like a boom mike into the center. The device worked by feeding an infrared laser onto a window and using it to “read” the vibrations, translating them back into sound waves. Rankin put on a pair of glasses tuned to the laser’s frequency and began aiming the device. He had just figured out the correct window when he heard Guns talking to him on the radio.
     
    “Hang on,” he said, adjusting the volume. “What’s up?”
     
    “Ferguson is going over to the Orologio,” Guns said. “How are you doing there?”
     
    “Almost set.”
     
    “You can take your time. She won’t be going back to her room tonight.”
     
    “No shit.”
     
    ~ * ~
     
    F
    erguson had made love to the enemy plenty of times before, but tonight he was off-balance. He went through the motions smoothly, fingers gliding gently down the buttons of her blouse, undoing each one with a simple push, pulling the silk away from her shoulders, letting the shirt fall back and away from her torso. He ran the backs of his hands over her bra—black and silky—then around to undo the clasp.
     
    He pushed his lips against hers. They gave way easily. Her tongue met his, rolling around it. Ferguson slipped the bra from her shoulders and cupped her breasts gently, her nipples hard.
     
    But it wasn’t about sex. It was a job, and as smooth as his hands were, his mind felt as if it were watching through a peephole from another room.
     
    He reached the zipper on her skirt and slipped it downward. The skirt caught against her hips but then gave way, falling to the floor.
     
    It might not be about sex, but it wasn’t just the job, either. Power was involved: getting it, having it, keeping it. That was what spying was. Not that Ferguson considered himself a spy in the classic sense— it was rarely his job to simply get information, and he never had been a “runner of men and women” as his father had been for most of his career. A spymaster manipulated people—sex had probably been one of his tools, though until this moment Ferg had never really thought about that.
     
    “The bed’s in the next room,” said Ferguson when Arna Kerr was down to her panties.
     
    “The couch is right here.”
     
    She leaned backward toward it ever so slightly. He took the hint, pushing against her gently, moving down with her as she gave way.
     
    ~ * ~
     
    8
     
    BOLOGNA, ITALY
     
    Thera had heard enough. She reached for the handle of the car door. “I’ll be back,” she told Guns.
     
    “Where you goin’?”
     
    “Time to run a check,” she said, though she had been around the block making sure they weren’t being watched only a few minutes before. She slapped the Fiat’s door closed and