Van sat down at the table, careful not to bump his right arm in its sling. His two 'associates' sat down opposite, though Van didn't trust them at all. Within a few minutes, they had proven every suspicion of his right. They looked shifty, kept very obviously looking over to where Van suspected their hired killer was standing, and all in all seemed to be purely stalling for time. Van wasn't worried – he had outgrown death a while back, somewhere between the relentless gunfights, the never-ending nights, the tongue-lashing from the Inspector, and the passion in Sophia's arms. Van watched as one of the two dealers opposite him made a motion with his left hand. To a normal bystander, it would have been a twitch. To Van, it was practically semaphore. As the hired killer started forward, Van caught sight of the man, reflected in a glass bowl being carried past by a waiter. As he had suspected, the man was not well armed, not in the least subtle, and was trying, unsuccessfully, to conceal what was probably an AKS-74u gun under his jacket. Van snorted. The two men looked at him, terrified that he had guessed something was up, he assumed. Van decided the time for games was over. He raised his left arm, which he had kept under the table. In it, he held a MAC10 submachine gun. Both dealers went white. Van looked straight at them. Then, suddenly, he swivelled round and fired a burst at the approaching assassin. The man went down, clearly dead. Van calmly turned his chair back to the pair of quaking arms dealers. They were only too eager to help him after that.