'It is too cold for you, Natalia?' Varakov asked her. 'No, Uncle.' And he watched as she seemed to draw herself into the mid-calf length, almost black fur coat.
He took her right elbow in his left hand, guiding her along the comparatively narrow peninsula on a sidewalk toward the lake itself. 'Is that coat real fur?'
'Yes, Uncle,' she answered, her voice sounding odd to him. He guessed she was cold but too polite to say it.
'You are not uncomfortable— it is not too cold here?'
'No, I am comfortable,' she answered.
'A lot of money?'
'What, Uncle?'
'The coat, I mean.'
'Yes.'
'Is it easier now?'
'What is that?'
'The passing of your husband, I mean. I should ask. It is perhaps a source of anguish to you still. I am sure, in fact, that it is,' he said, turning to her. 'You are crying?'
He studied her blue eyes. 'It is the wind, Uncle,' she answered.
He could see the lake waters ahead— choppy, he thought. 'I see. But is it any easier?'
He stopped walking. He gazed down to see the waves surround the rocky peninsula, hammering at it as the wind whipped them. Then he turned again to Natalia.
The tears were still in her eyes.
'No. Rourke killed him. He promised he wouldn't, then he murdered him. No!'
'Would you— do you love Rourke, still?' Varakov asked her. 'Would you kill Rourke for what he did?'
'Yes,' she said, the tears stopping in her eyes a moment. He studied her face. 'I love him, but I would kill him. He had no right, no reason to—'
The wind was audible now, howling. Varakov interrupted her, saying, 'No right, no reason.... He may have saved your life, this man Rourke. Karamatsov was an animal. You know this thing. I know this thing. Who knows, perhaps Rourke saw this too.'
'It was deliberate, Uncle— like the gunfight he had just before the helicopters found us in the rain, there in the desert. I told you— we joined the Brigands only to save the lives of the townspeople they were going to kill. Rourke fought the Brigand leader and two of his men. Then he fought one more man with guns— and killed the man. At the time, I felt Rourke was insane. But—' and she turned away. With the wind Varakov could barely hear her. 'I was happy when Rourke survived.'
'Natalia—' Varakov began.
The girl turned, facing him— no longer, he thought, hiding the tears in her eyes. 'He fought Vladmir like that, killed him like that Brigand.'
'You told me once that Brigand had done some horrible thing. What was it?'
'I don't remember,' she said.
'You remember— he had killed a woman's infant child, yes?'
'Yes,' she answered, her voice low again.
'Why do you think Rourke killed Vladmir Karamatsov?'
'I don't know.'
'Jealousy— to get you?'
'No— not jealousy, not for me,' she almost shrieked, looking at him.
'You are right, and you are wrong,' Varakov told her. 'I would never have told you this thing, but I have watched you these days since it had happened. You eat at yourself, you blame yourself, but you should not. Rourke killed your husband only because I forced him to, to save American Resistance fighters captured with him. I ordered him to assassinate Karamatsov.' Varakov watched her face, the eyes widening, the mouth open, the lips parted, the set of her jaw. Her tears had stopped again. 'But he apparently would not— so he killed Vladmir in the fairest way he could— in a cowboy-style gunfight from the American western movies. Rourke killed the man because I forced him to do this thing. He pulled the trigger. I pointed the gun,' Varakov concluded.
'I cannot, cannot believe you would do this thing.'
'Your Rourke— he is smart, he is clever. He could have agreed, then decided to help his comrades escape, never have killed Vladmir. But I told Rourke why— I told him what Karamatsov had done to you, why Karamatsov had to die.'
'No!' she screamed, turning, running from him out along the peninsula.
Varakov watched her, shrugging, not attempting to run after her. He hunched his shoulders against the wind, holding the peak of his cap, walking after her. He shouted once,
'Natalia!'
The girl did not stop running. He could see her, at the far end of the peninsula, stopped now because there was no further place to run.
It took him several minutes, he judged, to reach the end of the peninsula— by a museum of astronomy. He
