He was back in seconds, much too fast to have reached the toilet. He headed directly for the bald man and even with the bum leg got to him before he could get all the way up. The cop put his right hand on the bald guy's shoulder like an old friend in friendly conversation, but McQuinton knew the bald guy was trying to rise and was being stopped by the pressure. Lester's respect for the cop with the bad leg went up another notch. He was keeping the man down with one hand and almost no effort.
'We can do that, can't we, Lester?' Andy said.
'Sure,' said Lester, though he had paid no serious attention to the conversation of the two women.
The Russian cop with the bad leg was sitting next to the bald man now. They were talking like two strangers who strike up a conversation while hanging on to bus straps on the way home from work and find they have something in common. Lester smiled.
Behind the two Russians Lester McQuinton was watching, two men appeared in the open doorway that led to the lobby.
They were an odd couple-a giant and a nervous little man who looked at Lester and then at Rostnikov. The smile left Lester McQuinton's face.
One of the privileges of being a policeman in Moscow was having a phone in your apartment. One of the disadvantages of being a policeman in Moscow was that you were seldom at home to use it, Maya answered after the first ring, actually before the first ring had even ended. Sasha had been standing at the lonely booth at the corner across from the park, trying every three minutes to call his number. He had been trying for half an hour when he finally got through.
'It's me,' Sasha Tkach said, trying to hide his irritation.
'The baby just fell asleep,' Maya whispered. 'A few minutes ago.' ' 'I wanted to say good night to her,'' he said. ' 'Your phone has been busy.'' 'Your mother, Lydia,' said Maya, and that was all that needed to be said. 'Are you all right?'
'Yes,' he said.
'Did you eat?'
'Yes,' he said.
He wanted to tell her that he was filled with frustration. They had spent only four nights in the apartment together. He wanted to make love to her without worrying about his mother listening in the next room. He wanted to hear her purr like a cat when he rubbed her back. He wanted to cover her wide mouth and full lips in his and lose himself in her. He wanted her to keep talking, for he loved her voice, her Georgian accent, and he dreaded the walk back to Zelach and the apartment in Engels Four. He wanted to say these things, but instead he heard her say, 'Sasha?'
'Yes.'
'I have to work early tomorrow.''
Maya worked in the day-care center for mothers in the TsUM department store. She brought Pulcharia with her when she worked and put in as many hours as she could. A new baby was coming. Seven months away. Sasha had hoped for intimate months together before Maya was too large and uncomfortable.
'I'm sorry I'm keeping you,' he said with sarcasm. 'I'll hang up and let you get some sleep.'
'I wasn't trying to say I wanted to go to sleep,' she said. 'I was… You weren't talking. I was just telling you.'
The movement was slight, a change in the light dancing off the leaves of the bushes fringing the cement path. It could have been many things, but it wasn't.
It was a person. Sasha sensed it before he knew with certainty. But he had almost missed it. He had almost lost himself in the conversation with Maya, a conversation he should not be having. He had been ordered specifically to make no contact with his friends or family for the duration of the operation.
'I'm sorry,' he said, turning his back on the movement in the bushes and holding up his wristwatch as if he were weary of the conversation and checking the time.
Sasha pretended to adjust the watch and flipped the supple band so the back of the watch was facing him, the shiny back of the watch in which he could see the bush as he put his hand up to lean on the side of the phone booth.
'Get some sleep, Sasha,' Maya said.
'I will,' he said. 'You, too. And kiss Pulcharia in her sleep.'
The man moved carefully from behind the bush. He was large, appeared to be young, and was wearing dark slacks and a dark sweater. He ducked behind a second bush, somewhat closer to Sasha. A second man, with long blond hair and a blond beard, followed the first man. Sasha lowered his arm.
'I'm not tired, Sasha,' Maya said. 'We can talk if you like.'
'Tomorrow, Maya,' he said. 'I have to go.'
'Good night,' she said. 'I love you.'
'And I love you,' Sasha said.
Maya hung up the phone, but Sasha continued to talk, turning as the men worked their way closer to him. Sasha had no gun. He was supposed to carry one, but less than three years earlier he had shot a boy during a robbery of a government liquor store. The image of the moment in which Sasha's eyes had met those of the boy. who was only sixteen, haunted Tkach. But what was worse, Sasha found that he could not remember the boy's face. For almost a year he had searched the faces of young men he encountered on the street, hoping that a face would bring back a vivid memory, but it did not happen. Tkach carried no gun, and he knew the two men were making their way toward him.
'No,' Tkach said aloud now so that they could hear him. 'I've got to be at work.
Why? Because I'm the only one who can handle the program. You think any fool can deal with a computer program like that?'
Sasha rummaged through his mind to find some work phrase that would be particularly Jewish, a phrase that would be right for Yon Mandelstem, but he could come up with none. He settled for an inflection, a movement of the shoulders and arms that he had observed in his former neighbor, Eli Houseman.
'Then you don't, Eli,' Sasha said. 'I'm sorry for you.'
A group of women suddenly burst through the bushes not ten yards from where the two men watching Sasha Tkach were hidden. The women were laughing: two of them were holding hands. Sasha recognized the woman Tamara, whom he had met in the hall of Engels Four a few hours earlier.
'Good-bye, Eli,' he said vehemently, and hung up the phone.
He turned as if irritated by his call and let his eyes meet those of the woman who was looking at him. Sasha smiled and stepped onto the path so that the quartet of women would meet him.
Tamara held out her arms to stop her companions, one of whom was very young, perhaps eighteen, and trying to look much older, which only succeeded in making her look even younger than she was.
'Ah,' Tamara cried, 'there he is, the one I told you about. Man petit Juif.''
The woman's French accent was weak, much weaker than that of Sasha, who pretended that he did not know she had called him her little Jew.
The women giggled, and Tamara stepped forward. 'Out for a walk?' she asked.
Sasha looked directly at her but saw the movement of the men in the bushes as they stepped back into deeper darkness.
'Yes,' he said. 'I couldn't sleep.'
'Maybe you'd like that drink?' she asked.
Her friends giggled. She turned to them with a warning look.
'I'd like it,' Sasha said.
Tamara took his arm and moved out along the path.
'Tell us about it tomorrow, Tamma,' one of the women shouted.
'I hear they tickle,' another woman added.
Sasha pretended not to hear as Tamara waved her friends away and led him toward the buildings. Sasha turned his head and smiled, looking back at the trio of women behind but seeing along the path, in the light of a lamp, the two men, perhaps fifty yards away. They may have been looking at the three women. At least a passerby would assume so, but Sasha knew that their eyes were on him.
He smiled and let Tamara take him. She smelled of cheap makeup, alcohol, and woman, and she held him as
