pistol aimed at Yakov, whose rifle hung at his side in his right hand.
'Drop the weapon,' Death said, and Yakov sighed.
It wasn't really fair. Carla had been twenty-three. She had lived five years longer than Yakov would, for Yakov knew he would not drop the weapon, that he would lift it and aim and fire and that the man who was certainly Death would shoot him before he could do so.
The shot came before Yakov could get his weapon into both hands. It came howling over the nearby siren, the music, the crying woman in the apartment across the hall. Yakov paused. The bullet had gone through him or missed. There was no pain. Death turned and fired down the stairwell at his right. Yakov raised his rifle and aimed at Death, who stepped away from the stairwell, raised his right foot, and kicked at the door of an apartment. The doors, as Yakov knew, were made of thin pressed wood. He had kicked his in three times in the month he had been using the apartment. So it was no surprise that Death disappeared into the apartment as Yakov fired, blowing a fist-sized hole in the corridor wall.
'Yakov,' Jerold called.
'Yes,' Yakov called back, firing again.
Jerold stood at the top of the stairs, gun in hand. Jerold, so confident, a bearded aristocrat, a gangster, a real gangster, just as Yakov wanted to be.
Jerold was teaching him many things, weapons, organization. Jerold was teaching him English so that Yakov could live in the United States, in Las Vegas, when it was over.
'Come on,' Jerold called.
'My discs,' Yakov called.
'No time,' Jerold said calmly. 'Come with me. We'll get more.'
'You can't get Madonna,' Yakov said, looking back at the apartment but walking toward Jerold. Tears were coming to his eyes. The loss of Madonna was too much to bear, was too unfair, given the miracles of this night.
'Yes, I can,' said Jerold, who had his gun trained on the door of the apartment through which Death had plunged. 'Let's go.'
Something stirred inside the apartment. Jerold fired and nudged Yakov down the stairway.
'Hurry,' Jerold commanded without the slightest sign of panic, although the police siren had stopped very close by.
Jerold covered their retreat to the next landing and urged Yakov down the hall to an apartment that was unfamiliar to the young man. Jerold tucked his pistol away, took out a key, opened the door, and ushered Yakov inside. The room was dark. Jerold closed and locked the door.
'Stand still,' he said, and Yakov could hear Jerold's feet move across the wooden floor.
Yakov's stomach gave a first warning. He was coming down, coming down from whatever height he had reached with the help of the capsules. He did not want to come down. He wanted to remain in the dark and float, upside down, right side up, until there was no up or down. And then came a panic.
'Lights,' he said. 'Lights.'
A light came on from a kitchen alcove on his left, and he could see Jerold, and behind Jerold he could see a woman seated at a small table. The woman's arms were taped together and then taped behind her head. Her legs were taped, too, as was her mouth. Her eyes were wide, tear-filled and frightened.
'Come,' said Jerold, who turned to a window behind the woman.
Yakov moved past the woman, pausing to stare into her eyes. His nose almost touched hers, and he tried to smell her fear and see himself in those frightened eyes.
'Carla is dead,' Yakov said in English, following Jerold to the window and slinging the rifle over his left shoulder. A wooden plank about two feet wide lay between this window and an open one in the next building, four feet away.
'I know,' said Jerold softly, also in English. 'I saw her. Go ahead.'
'Shouldn't we kill her?' Yakov said, pausing to look at the woman, who whimpered.
'There's no reason,' said Jerold. 'The policeman saw us both.'
'It was a policeman,' said Yakov with a laugh, gripping the shoulder strap of the rifle. 'I thought it was Death.'
'Crawl,' said Jerold.
And Yakov went through the window, and over his shoulder and the barrel of the rifle, against which he rubbed his cheek, he whispered, 'You can get Madonna?'
'Yes,' said Jerold. 'You'll have much more than Madonna after Thursday. Just be ready.'
'Walther and I will be ready,' Yakov said. 'We will be ready.'
FOUR
The food at the Lermontov Hotel was all right for quantity. Anton saw to that when Sarah and Porfiry Petrovich entered the dining room. He flitted from the Rostnikovs to the American couple who had checked in three days before to the Sabolshevs from Minsk to the twig of a man who spoke with an accent that Rostnikov recognized as Romanian.
'Anton works hard for his tips, Porfiry Petrovich,' Sarah said. 'We should remember that when we go.'
She was holding her plate in front of her. On the plate was a mound of something dark, a treacherous hill of kasha, mystery vegetables, and small, dark, jagged pieces that may have been meat. The entire creation was topped with a tiny cap of barely cooked dough. At the base of this mountain was a thin white sauce in which floated two very thin slices of tomato. Rostnikov's plate was identical, as were the plates of all forty-six people in the room.
'This way,' Rostnikov said, nodding toward a table near the window where the new American couple sat, forks in hand, glasses of pee 'va, tepid beer, near their plates of food.
The man looked up as Sarah and Rostnikov approached.
'Have a seat,' the man, who had two chins and very white hair, said.
Rostnikov and Sarah put down their plates and sat.
'You speak English?' the man asked.
'Yes,' said Rostnikov.
'What the hell is this stuff?' he said, pointing at the mound in front of him with his fork.
'Lester,' his wife, a thin woman with dyed blond hair, whispered.
'I'm curious, is all,' Lester said.
'I think it is cheburekl, an Armenian meat pie fried in fat,' said Rostnikov.
'Appetizing,' said the man, with a frown.
'Lester,' said the wife, trying not to move her lips, as if her act of inept ventriloquism would hide her words from the Rostnikovs. 'You don't need to offend-'
'Am I offending you?' Lester said, looking at Sarah and Porfiry Petrovich.
'We did not cook the food,' Rostnikov answered.
'See,' said Lester. 'They don't like it, either.'
The subdued chatter in the room was broken by the sound of a concertina.
'Oh, hell, no,' groaned Lester. 'She's back.'
'Lester,' his wife warned, looking apologetically at Sarah, who was much more discomfited by the American woman's embarrassment than by Lester's complaints.
'Is that native Crimean music?' Lester asked, leaning over toward Rostnikov to be sure he was heard over the noise of the concertina playing a particularly bad version of a folk song Rostnikov recognized but could not name.
'I don't know,' said Rostnikov.
Sarah was picking at her food. Rostnikov had almost downed the entire mound.
'Look at her,' Lester said in disgust, pointing his chins at the concertina lady.
Rostnikov dabbed at his mouth with his napkin and turned to look at the slightly overweight woman in a
