seeking medical help. He had tried sleeping on the plane. Impossible. He had managed to finish the book he had begun on the flight to Moscow, an Ed McBain tale, Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man. He had read the book many times before. The pages were now, like many of his favorite books in his American detective-novel collection, unglued and ready to escape from the battered cover that held them loosely together. It helped a bit, but he could not read for more than a few minutes at a time.
He took the envelope and looked at his wife in the red-sun twilight. Her hair had grown back quickly since the surgery, and though he knew there was a scar, it could not be seen. She had lost weight, but she was still a solid woman whose face was remarkably unlined considering the roughness of the life she had led for her forty-eight years.
'Porfiry Petrovich,' his wife said, looking over the top of her glasses as she had done since the day he had first met her. 'You are ill.'
'And you are quite beautiful,' he said.
'That is your fever talking.'
'No,' he said, opening the envelope. There was a single-spaced typed, unsigned sheet inside. He read it, put it back in the envelope, and put the envelope into his pocket.
'What is wrong, Porfiry?'
'Nothing. My leg, that's all. And I need sleep.'
'Can you sleep with this pain?'
People were moving past them, around them.
'We shall see,' he said.
'We shall not see, Porfiry Petrovich. We shall find a physician and get you something for your pain. Then you will go to bed, and I will bring you soup and medicine and take care of you.'
'You are not well enough yet,' Rostnikov said, stopping to regain his strength.
He looked at her in the evening light, and she shook her head.
'I'm well enough, Porfiry Petrovich. I've been lying around recovering for weeks. I'd like to feel useful. Will you deprive me of the opportunity to feel useful for the first time in months?'
'I will not,' he said, moving again but trying to put as little weight on his wife as he possibly could.
'Enjoy being ill,' she said. 'You deserve it. Porfiry Petrovich, I have never asked you a question about your work. Is this true?'
'Yes,' he said as they entered the bright airport terminal.
'What is in the envelope?'
'A KGB colonel named Zhenya has met with an accident,' he said. 'He fell over the side of one of the tourist boats on the Moscow River and was pulled into the propeller.'
'And you knew this man?'
'I knew this man,' said Rostnikov, wondering how many other officers in the MVD, KGB, and GRU would be having accidents in the near future.
'It's time you stopped thinking for a while,' Sarah said, letting go of her husband's arm so he could make his own way with dignity through the crowded waiting room of the airport. 'If you cannot stop thinking on your vacation, when can you?'
'Yes,' Rostnikov agreed, taking a step on his own, 'when can you?'
