Luc O’Neil was lost.

He wasn’t particularly worried.

His cell phone wouldn’t work down in the labyrinth nine hundred feet below the frozen layer of earth, but the homing device required of everyone entering the mine was glowing bright green. The pipe, the vein of rock that contained the diamonds, was a reasonably rich one. Nothing exceptional but productive, small, brown gems that would go mainly into industrial tools and the vast stockpile of the Russian diamond monopoly Alorosa, which in turn sold its holdings to DeBeers.

Twenty percent of all diamonds mined worldwide were from Russia and all of the mines, Luc knew, were located in Siberia. If they dared, which they would not do because there would be no profit in it, Alorosa could challenge DeBeers and flood the market with relatively inexpensive diamonds of all quality levels. It was a standing, unspoken suicidal threat, a doomsday scenario for the diamond market. The price paid by the world for diamonds allowed Russia a preferred seat at the table.

The value of diamonds, as Luc knew, was not dependent on their rarity, but on the ability of the diamond cartel to control their flow and price. Luc was well aware that diamonds are nothing but pieces of compressed carbon found not only in Siberia but in Botswana, Australia, South Africa, and, to a smaller degree, all over the planet.

But production was down in this mine. Or at least that was what Luc had been told. His job was to find out if the mine was so tapped out that it would not pay to keep it operating.

Luc was a geologist with a good underground sense of direction. But if that failed him, he could always follow the dull yellow lights that glowed indifferently every fifty yards or so on the jagged walls of the tunnel.

He was contracted with and well paid by the Canadian company that owned a piece of this operation. And so, screw ’em. He had a job to do, plain and simple. He would get it done and get out of here, e-mail his report to London, let DeBeers deal with it, and get the hell back to Toronto. Luc had missed his son’s birthday only two months ago, when he was in Australia. Collette had not bothered to reproach him. What was the point? Let the boy know what kind of father he had, she had said. Well, she was right.

“What do you know of diamonds, Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov?”

They were seated in the office of Igor “the Yak” Yaklovev, Director of the Office of Special Investigations. Compared to the offices of other departments and bureaus in the central police headquarters on Petrovka Street, the Yak’s was modest. It had a small conference table with eight chairs near the door, and a desk rumored to have belonged to Lavretiy Pavlovich Beria, chief of the Soviet police under Stalin. When Stalin died, his successors executed Beria, and his office furniture, like that of many of his colleagues, was divided by the grabbing hands of middle-level apparatchiks.

“They are mostly white when cut. They are valuable as jewels and for industrial use. We have diamond mines in Siberia,” Rostnikov answered.

“That’s all?”

Rostnikov shrugged. The two men looked at each other over the desk. The Yak was lean, fit, and reported to occasionally engage in martial arts exercises with Vladimir Putin, with whom he had served in the old KGB in St. Petersburg. He was well aware that he was called “the Yak” behind his back. He did not mind. The wild yak can weigh more than 2,000 pounds and survive in extreme cold. It is wary and fast.

Behind the Yak, and on the wall just above his head, was a modest black-and-white photograph of Putin almost smiling. When the Yak had been appointed to head the Office of Special Investigations, it had not been considered a prize for an ambitious man. The Office was part of the 15th investigative division of the Investigative Directorate. The Directorate was itself a unit of the Moscow Criminal Investigation Division. The Office of Special Investigations was at the very bottom of the Moscow police force. The Office had been created solely as a receptacle in which to dump unsolvable and politically sensitive cases filled with a high likelihood of failure. The Office’s first director, Colonel Ivan Snitkonoy, whom the Yak considered a pompous, uniformed ass, had seemed blissfully unaware that he had been dumped into a job whose present and future promised only oblivion. But something had changed. And the change had come with the man who sat across the desk, Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov.

Rostnikov had been demoted from the procurator’s office to life under Snitkonoy, the Gray Wolfhound. Rostnikov had brought his own team, all of whom, like Rostnikov, had left after Procurator Anna Timofeyeva had her second heart attack and was forced to retire-along with the protective cloak, which she had provided the far too inquisitive Rostnikov.

Like Yaklovev, Rostnikov had a nickname: the Washtub. He was squat, compact, and heavy, with a dour Russian peasant face. He seldom smiled broadly. His voice was a soft, bearlike growl, but not a frightening one.

At the moment, Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov was not thinking of diamonds, but of his left leg, which was made not of flesh, blood, and bone, but of metal, plastic, and wood. His other left leg, the one that had been replaced, the shriveled one he had dragged behind him since his childhood, was floating in a very large jar in the second level below the ground floor of Petrovka, in Paulinin’s laboratory. Paulinin, agreed by the detectives of Petrovka to be a forensic genius and a lunatic, who talked to the corpses he worked on and far preferred their company to that of the living.

As the Yak continued to talk of diamonds, slowly coming to the point where Rostnikov would have to pay attention, the Chief Inspector was trying to decide on an issue of great importance. Should he take the shoe off of his left foot before climbing into bed each night, or simply leave it on when he removed the leg? Since getting the leg, he had been taking the shoe off, but what was the point? His wife Sarah told him simply to be comfortable. The bed was large. It made no difference to her.

Rostnikov considered bringing up the question to the Yak, but knew he would not. The Yak’s mind was on diamonds, and he had no sense of humor or irony and little curiosity. All of these attributes contributed to Rostnikov’s appreciation of the man. Anything the Yak said converted to how his words might be exchanged for political, economic, or social advantage. Rostnikov, however, always considered the irony of human existence, engaged in uncertain acts of humor, and was eternally curious about everything from whether a man should take the shoe off of his artificial leg when he went to sleep to who might kill a drunken policeman in an alleyway, not that anyone had recently killed a drunken policeman in an alleyway.

This train of thought reminded him that Russia, even with the passing of Communism, was still among the three countries in the world with the highest rate of alcoholism.

“You will learn,” said the Yak leaning forward, folding his hands on his desk and meeting his Chief Inspector’s eyes with a practiced, unblinking look that caused at least a drying of the mouth in everyone-everyone except Rostnikov.

Rostnikov blinked, adjusted his leg, and looked back at the Yak. Rostnikov nodded. He was not sure whether the Yak was issuing an order about diamonds or warning him that he was going to be in a situation in which his survival might be at stake when the lesson came. Rostnikov pursed his lips and nodded his head as if he knew what the Yak was talking about. And then the connection came.

“You are going to Siberia, to a diamond mine where a man, a Canadian geologist, died two days ago. You will determine if he was murdered. If he was, you are to tell me who killed him.”

“When am I leaving?”

“Tonight. There is a supply load of medication for the mining town, Devochka, leaving at nine by plane. You will be on it.”

“I will take Karpo.”

“Take whomever you wish. Pankov will arrange for a car to pick you and Karpo up at your home and get you to the plane.”

Pankov was the sweaty, frightened little man who sat at a desk outside of Yaklovev’s office, listened at the doorway when he considered it safe to do so, and did what he was told with nervous dispatch and an impressive number of contacts who owed him for small favors.

Rostnikov nodded again, considering the oddity of the name Devochka, a man’s name that meant “little girl.” Why had it come into being and why had a mining town in Siberia been given such a name?

Rostnikov started to rise, no mean trick for a box of a man with an artificial leg. The Yak held up a hand to let him know that the conversation had not ended. Rostnikov eased himself back into the chair and looked at Yaklovev. Was the Yak enjoying his Chief Investigator’s discomfort? Perhaps.

The two men had an uneasy and mutually beneficial alliance. The Yak protected Porfiry Petrovich, and the small band of investigators working under him, from political pressure on the outcomes of their investigations. He protected them well and with keen sincerity. In return, each success by Rostnikov was another potential step upward for the Yak. Except at the moment, he did not want to step upward. He gathered information, evidence, tapes, confessions, and indiscretions and locked them away in a safe hidden in his apartment.

Thanks to Rostnikov, when the time was right, the contents of that safe would secure Igor Yaklovev’s future, a future that would move the Yak far above his present office.

Rostnikov knew all this. It was the way of the world.

In a system in which the old laws had been thrown out and new ones still not fully defined, Rostnikov addressed puzzles, found the answers to questions, met people, and, when possible, engaged in the dispensation of justice, something the courts did only on occasion.

His was a fragile and questionable pursuit, but one he had accepted and in which he did well enough to survive.

“Your lesson,” said the Yak, handing Rostnikov a file folder.

Rostnikov took it.

“Devochka is one of the oldest diamond mines in Siberia. It dates back to 1887 when the Tsar ordered the exploration of Siberia for precious metals. It is estimated that as many as 40,000 people died looking for jewels in the ground that could be polished to fit into the rings, tiaras, bracelets, and precious little jewel boxes and precise gleaming eggs of the nobility. Aside from those who supervised, most of the workers were convicts, criminals, and political prisoners. They died, as many as twenty-five a day at the site of Devochka, where they began to mine. And then the mine was abandoned for lack of success after four fruitless years, but remained a prison camp.”

The Yak pointed at the report.

“The mine was and is not the most productive and profitable. The rocks containing the tiny gems are reluctant to give up their treasure.”

Rostnikov didn’t ask the Yak why he was telling him what must surely be in the report. He knew the Director well enough to know that there was a point-not historical, but very much in the present, and possibly the future.

“The mine has always been the bastard stepchild of Siberian diamond mines, almost closed when Stalin ordered new exploration for Siberian diamonds in 1957. Geologists and a new generation of convicts, political and criminal, died in the digging in numbers greater than those who had died at the mine in the service of the Tsar. Diamond pipes, veins of diamonds, were discovered. New mining machines were brought in, modern techniques employed, but Devochka kept steadily producing in a small stream. It was and is a mine and a town passed by time, its residents a congregation of generations of criminals and outcasts.”

And then Rostnikov knew why the Yak was telling him about the diamonds. He looked at the man as he spoke and saw a dreamy glaze in his eyes as if he were looking somewhere at something that didn’t exist. It was the first time Rostnikov had ever seen a hint of imagination in the Yak, and it had been brought on by a vision of diamonds or what diamonds could give him.

The Yak went silent. Moments passed. Rostnikov spoke.

“I see.”

But what I see is not what you are seeing, Rostnikov thought. You want me to deliver to you the key to control a crumbling diamond mine and the possibility that one more vein will be struck and bleed.

Rostnikov started to rise.

“Wait,” said the Yak, coming out of his reverie.

He turned his head not to see if Rostnikov had noticed his weakness. The Yak was certain that he had. The question was how he would handle this instant.

Rostnikov pretended not to have noticed.

“We are taking on two other cases related to this investigation. Assign who you will to them and have those doing the investigation report to you and only you. You, in turn, will keep me informed on a daily basis.”

“From Siberia?”

“From Siberia. The connection of sorts between the cases,” said the Yak, “is not a coincidence.”

Two more folders appeared in the Yak’s right hand. He passed them to Rostnikov.

“The cases must be resolved in nine days,” said the Yak, “one week from Tuesday.”

Rostnikov looked for a sign in the man’s eyes or the movement of his fingers. There was none.

“You know who General Mihail Frankovich is?”

“Yes,” said Rostnikov.

Frankovich was Director of the Division of Murder in the Investigative Directorate. The joke in Petrovka was that Frankovich was well qualified for the job because he was reported to have murdered at least two suspects who had refused to confess. Frankovich was not of the KGB old-boy network. He had risen from the ranks in the Army as his father had done before him.

“General Frankovich would like to incorporate the Office of Special Investigations into the Division of Murder,” said the Yak. “We have been too successful. This office has moved, at least in the eyes of some, from being a dark hole to being a small diamond.”

Rostnikov nodded.

“Nine days from now there will be a meeting of the Moscow Criminal Investigation Commission,” the Yak went on, carefully watching the emotionless face of his Chief Inspector. “General Frankovich will bid to take over this Office. It is possible he will succeed, unless. .”

“You present evidence of a success so great that the General will have to withhold his bid,” said Rostnikov.

“Precisely,” said the Yak. “I do not intend for the Office of Special Investigations to be lost.”

That was not exactly the truth. The Yak’s plan was far more bold. He had prepared for it over the past four years, gathering information about the failures of the Division of Murder and the weaknesses of General Frankovich. The Yak had his own plan to take over the Division of Murder, employing concise reports of failure and private documents that might uncharitably but accurately be labeled blackmail.

“Frankovich has his own loyal staff,” the Yak continued. “It is unlikely he would retain the personnel now working in this Office. You and your detectives would be reassigned, as would I. You understand?”

“Perfectly.”

“Good. You have provided for me in the past, Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov. It is vital that you do so once more.”

The Yak had delivered what the Americans called “a pep talk.” It lacked the emotion one might expect at halftime from the coach of the Dynamo Soccer Team. The Yak may have felt emotion, but he was incapable of conveying it. Besides, Rostnikov didn’t need a pep talk.

While he did not know what the Yak’s plan was this time, he knew it was more than simple survival. One did not survive in Russia at the Yak’s level, particularly in the police hierarchy, just by protecting one’s rear. One had to tear a painful, bloody chunk out of the rear of the enemy as well.

While he did not welcome the prospect of losing his job, Porfiry Petrovich did not mind having a deadline, a clock ticking over his shoulder. He knew he had a tendency to sit back and listen rather than advance. He was a man of great curiosity. He was not in the least ambitious, which was one of the reasons Yaklovev trusted him, or came as close to trusting him as the Yak was capable of.

“That’s all,” said the Yak.

He was rubbing the thumb and a finger of each hand together as if he were about to count a stack of money. The movement was small. It didn’t escape Rostnikov.

Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov rose with difficulty, tucked the three file folders under his arm, and looked at the Yak. Their eyes met. There was a warning in the eyes of the man behind the desk under the photograph of Vladimir Putin. Rostnikov was to ask no more questions.

When Rostnikov had moved slowly across the room and out the door, Yaklovev removed from his desk drawer a more detailed copy of the reports he had given his Chief Inspector.

There were many things in the reports he had not mentioned, though he had included the tale of the ghost girl. It was part of the peasant fabric of lore that built up around every small town and most of the large ones throughout Russia. Russians could be ignorant and superstitious. It was one of the many weaknesses in the national psyche that a careful, ambitious man could exploit.

The two little girls looked forward to the nightly ritual. Laura and Nina Ivanovna stood solemnly next to each other in the Rostnikov living room as Porfiry Petrovich moved the padded knee-high bench from the corner.

The girls’ grandmother, Galina, was in the little kitchen off of the living room talking to Rostnikov’s wife Sarah. Galina, the girls, Sarah, and Porfiry Petrovich all lived in the same one-bedroom apartment on Krasnikov Street where the Rostnikovs had lived for more than three decades.

Laura, nine, and Nina, seven, had been abandoned by their mother, Miriana. Galina had tried to take care of them on her pension and odd jobs. She had endured and then, while working at night at a bakery, she had asked the manager for a stale bread to take home to the girls. He had loudly refused. It had never been clear, but somehow Galina had shot the manager with his own gun during a struggle over the bread. Galina was sixty-four, accustomed to a life of hardship, and reasonably strong.

Rostnikov had accepted the case, though the Yak thought it not worthy of the attention of the Office of Special Investigations. Galina had gone to prison. Sarah and Porfiry Petrovich had taken in the girls. And when Galina got out of prison, she joined them.

It was tight, but Sarah and Galina were extremely good at making the space work with a minimum of claustrophobia. Sarah and Porfiry Petrovich had the bedroom. Galina and the girls slept in the living room, Galina on the couch, the girls on a soft mattress on the floor.

“Do you know why I do this each night?” Rostnikov said, moving the weights from the cabinet near the apartment door.

Laura shook her head no. She had no idea, but she knew it was a sight worth beholding.

“I do it to commune with my inner self, to lose Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov in a meditation that transcends my body.”

Both girls looked puzzled as Rostnikov put out the weights and set up the rack on which he could place the bar so he could do his presses. He wore a gray sweat suit with the letters “FSU” in red across the chest. Under the letters was the faded image of the head of an Indian with a colorful feather in his hair.

“Really?” asked Nina.

For months after they had first come, the girls had said little to nothing, held each other’s hands, sat on the sofa watching television, and gone to school quietly. For the past four or five months, they had begun to feel as if their world might not be ripped open. They trusted Sarah and Rostnikov, though they could never be sure when he was serious or just trying to be funny. They were still unable to allow themselves to laugh.

“No,” said Rostnikov, sitting on the bench and reaching down for a fifty-pound weight with which to do curls and arm lifts. “That was nonsense. You recognized nonsense. Good. I lift these weights because they are old friends who welcome me, test me, challenge me. When I’m not with them each night, I miss them. It is the same way I feel about you. Am I telling you the truth now?”

“Yes,” the girls said together.

Sarah and Galina looked across from the kitchen to see what the ‘yes’ might mean, but Rostnikov was silent under the strain of the weight in his right hand.

“Coffee?” asked Sarah.

Rostnikov grunted his assent and looked at his wife. He never stopped worrying about her. Two operations, both successful, for lesions on her brain. No guarantees that these invaders would not return. Her hair was still red, but it no longer flamed, and the strength in her face he so admired, while still present, was touched with a weary strain.

“Chocolate?”

Both girls said “Yes” without taking their eyes from Rostnikov. Soon he would be perspiring. Dark, uneven spots would appear against the gray sweat suit. Rostnikov put the weight down and lifted it with the other hand.

“Change mine to chocolate,” Rostnikov growled.

Galina moved to start the chocolate. She worked in a grocery and often came home with small tokens of gratitude. The Rostnikovs would not accept any of her meager supply of money. They urged her to set aside whatever she could for the girls, and that is what she had done and would continue to do.

“Mrs. Dudenya stopped before you got home,” said Laura.

“What did she want?” asked Rostnikov.

“Her toilet is backing up and making strange noises,” said Sarah from the other room.

Sarah did not understand her husband’s fascination with plumbing, though she tolerated it. He clearly enjoyed getting his tools out of the closet in the bedroom and heading cheerfully out the door to engage the rusting maze of pipes and the reluctant and fickle valves in the old building.

“It will have to wait till I return from Siberia.”

“Why are you going to Siberia?” asked Nina.

“To talk to a ghost.”

“You aren’t telling the truth again?”

“Yes, I am,” said Rostnikov, picking up the fresh towel he had placed on the bench and wiping his face and neck.

The television set was off. Rostnikov didn’t like it on when he was with his weights. Often he played music on the small CD player atop the table on which the weights rested. His musical taste was eclectic. Recently he had discovered a soothing, dreamlike group of young females called Destiny’s Child. But he never abandoned Credence Clearwater and Dinah Washington.

“Question,” said Rostnikov in the process of arm lifts, holding his hand at his side, gripping the weight, and then lifting it straight out from his side to shoulder level and holding it there till his arm trembled and he could hold it out no longer.

When he did this, his face turned red and his eyes closed. This was the most solemn moment of the evening display.

“Should I take the shoe off of my artificial leg at night when I put it next to the bed or leave the shoe on?”

“Leave it on, but change the socks every day,” said Laura.

“Why?” asked Nina. “A wooden leg doesn’t sweat and smell.”

“It isn’t wood,” said Laura.

“I’m inclined to take off the shoe,” said Rostnikov after setting the weight back down and lying on the bench.

“Why?” asked Laura.

“Some habits of a lifetime are difficult to break and there is no reason to do so. Others should be broken no matter how long a lifetime has been.”

“I don’t have bad habits,” said Nina.

“You pick your nose,” said Laura.

“I don’t, much.”

“I advocate doing such things in private,” said Rostnikov. “In fact, I advocate doing most things in private. The moment you share them with others is the moment they feel they have the right or obligation to advise you about your ideas or behavior. You understand?”

“No,” said Laura.

“No,” said Nina.

“Good,” said Rostnikov, putting down the block of chalk that he had rubbed into his palms. “At your ages, it would be dangerous to understand.”

He reached up, gripped the bar, and with an explosive grunt lifted the three hundred and fifty pounds from the rack and held it steady. Working without a spotter was a bad idea, but he had little choice. If there were a problem, no one in the household could control the weight. No, the challenge was Rostnikov’s alone.

Years earlier, when Iosef was in his teens and already broad and strong but far better looking than his father, Iosef, who had been mistakenly named for Stalin in a misguided moment of nationalistic zeal, had spotted for his father.

Iosef never had his father’s interest in the weights. He had been a contentious soldier and a failed playwright before he became, with his father’s support, a policeman.

Now Iosef worked under his father in the Office of Special Investigations and seemed to enjoy it with one exception. He had little tolerance for the intrigue, the cautious politics that went on inside Petrovka. He was particularly incensed by the perception, quite true, that Igor Yaklovev was self-serving, disinterested in justice, and quite corrupt.

“That’s too many,” said Laura counting his repetitions.

“Yes,” said Rostnikov. “I was thinking.”

“What about?” asked Nina.

“Diamonds,” said Rostnikov.

Later, when the girls and Galina were talking quietly in the kitchen alcove, Rostnikov, with an ancient, much-traveled suitcase in hand, stood at the door waiting for the driver. Sarah stood at his side touching his arm, and said, quietly, “Siberia is cold.”

“Not so much in November,” he answered.

Porfiry Petrovich had been known to become absorbed in thinking about everything from the case at hand to the possibility of distant planets, and walk out coatless in freezing winter. He had, in fact, suffered frostbite on several occasions.

She had packed his things, including his fur-lined hat and coat and his boots, though she too knew that Northern Siberia at this time of year was not quite at the edge of the impending winter.

“You have your book?”

He pulled a new paperback novel from his jacket pocket. It was the last of the 87th Precinct novels written by Ed McBain before the author died. Rostnikov had savored the book, held off reading it until now. It was his Siberian treat. He feared he would weep when he read it and said good-bye to old friends on the pages.

“You spoke of a ghost to the girls,” Sarah said.

“Yes.”

“You were talking about him?”

“I was,” said Rostnikov.

“I’d almost forgotten that he exists,” she said.

“I have not.”

“You are certain he is alive, that he is there?”

“His name is in the file I was given by Yaklovev.”

“No ghost,” Sarah said, more to herself than Rostnikov.

“Not a real ghost, but can a ghost be real? Certainly not as satisfyingly real as Mrs. Dudenya’s toilet. If he were a ghost it would, by definition, not be real.”

“You will be careful?”

“I am always careful,” he said.

“We define ‘careful’ differently,” she said. “You are more curious than careful.”

“Are the two necessarily exclusive?”

“I always hope they are not,” Sarah said as they heard the knock at the door. “Call.”

Rostnikov kissed his wife’s cheek, picked up his suitcase, waved back at Galina and the girls, and went through the door.

“You’ve come to visit your father’s leg,” Paulinin said, stepping back to let Iosef and Zelach through the reinforced door.

Paulinin’s laboratory was two levels below ground in Petrovka. It was an anomaly. A bureaucracy bustled or shuffled in the sparsely furnished rooms above, but Paulinin’s laboratory stood alone as a testament to a time long gone if it ever existed at all.

“Among other things,” said Iosef.

Paulinin, dressed in a white laboratory apron spotted with something that was probably more unpleasant than blood, looked at Zelach who was decidedly uncomfortable.

“The man who slouches,” said Paulinin, adjusting his glasses.

Zelach immediately straightened up. There was much in the laboratory that made Zelach uncomfortable-the seemingly random jars of specimens arranged in no apparent order, the unmatched desks covered with books and towers of reports that threatened to tumble over, the laboratory and autopsy tables under bright lamps.

But what made Zelach most uncomfortable was Paulinin himself.

The lean, bald man was clean shaven. His ears were large, as were his teeth. He spoke quickly, softly, and often burst out loudly with a “Don’t touch that” or an “Are you paying attention?”

But, as the scientist led the way around the desk toward the low music from a CD player or radio, Zelach saw that there were two naked black bodies on adjoining autopsy tables.

“Over there.” Paulinin pointed with his left hand as they moved.

“I know,” said Iosef, looking at the leg of his father floating in a large jar.

Zelach looked too.

“I don’t talk to it enough,” Paulinin said almost sadly. “Too much to do. Chopin.”

He had turned his head and was looking at Zelach who was puzzled. Did the mad scientist call Rostnikov’s leg Chopin?

“The music,” Paulinin said as they moved between the two autopsy tables. “Chopin.”

Akardy Zelach knew little about classical music. Heavy metal, fine. Jazz, fine. Classical, no.

Iosef, Porfiry Petrovich, and Karpo had long assured Zelach that the scientist was brilliant. Detectives and even members of military law enforcement came to him, but most police avoided him, preferring mediocrity in their investigation to the prospect of having to deal with the man who now patted the arm of the dead man on the table.

“What has he been telling you?” asked Iosef.

“Ah, this one does not speak Russian very well, and my other guest speaks no Russian.”

“How do you. .?” Zelach started and then stopped himself. Too late.

Iosef folded his arms and waited patiently.

“This one was tortured. Slowly, slowly. His mouth, throat, lungs, vocal cords were unharmed. Someone wanted him able to speak. In his pocket were receipts, notations. No rubles. The money was taken. I know because he was well if not expensively dressed, very good serviceable English shoes. He would not be walking around without money. He was a man who didn’t have to be bereft of funds. His friend. .”

Paulinin turned and patted the arm of the other dead man reassuringly.

“His friend here had no rubles either, no notes or bills or receipts in Russian. He relied on his friend for all necessary conversation and transactions with Russians. He was not tortured, only murdered, which shows that a knowledge of the Russian language is not always a blessing.”

Paulinin seemed to be waiting for confirmation.

“It is not,” agreed Iosef.

Zelach wanted to get out of the alcoholic and chemical smell, the dark corners, the glaring specimens enlarged by the glass bottles that surrounded them, the two dead men to whom Paulinin spoke.

“Can you imagine what it would be like to have a tube forced down your nose, rubbing the lining raw and bloody all the way to your stomach, and have food forced down the tube?”

He was looking at Zelach.

“No I cannot,” said Zelach.

Paulinin shook his head and scratched his neck.

“Old KGB torture,” he explained. “Many are the afflicted who were feasted so inside Lubyanka, but a long walk or a short Metro ride from where we now stand.”

“Our torturer is former KGB?” asked Iosef.

“Perhaps still secret police,” Zelach tried.

“No, they know how to rid themselves of bodies.”

“Anything else?” asked Iosef.

“Small, very sharp knife. The torturer was not tall, maybe five feet and eight inches. The tortured man was seated. See his ankles, the rope burn around his groin. The highest wounds indicate the man’s height. Other wounds indicate that our man with the knife was nervous, attention deficit disorder or something like that. He kneels, stands upright, crouches, keeps moving. His hair is dark brown and long. He is alcoholic.”

“How. .?”

Zelach again.

“Hair samples on both bodies. Not the victims. DNA,” explained Paulinin. “I called in favors. The men and women in the DNA laboratory owe me. There is a faint but detectable smell of alcohol on both of my guests, though neither of them has the slightest trace of alcohol in his stomach.”

“Did your guest talk to the Russian?” asked Iosef.

“Oh yes. The torture stopped abruptly. The tale was told, but not the end. The end depends, I think, on the third man.”

“The third man,” Iosef repeated.

“What third man?” asked Zelach.

“Two blood types on the body of my guests are Type B. So, I believe, is the man who tortured them. Ironic. Torturer and victims are blood brothers. But there is a third blood type, AB, on the skin of these two men. My guess is that all three men struggled, were beaten, bled on each other. We are fortunate. The third man carries the virus for narcolepsy. The man was bitten by a tsetse fly. It is, therefore, likely that he is from somewhere in the south of Africa.”

“Because tsetse flies are only found in Africa?” said Zelach.

“No, because my two friends here bear tattoos on the backs of warriors from the same Southern African tribe, a Botswanan tribe.”

“Warriors?”

This from Iosef.

“Yes,” said Paulinin. “Perhaps, but modern ones. These tattoos are only an homage to the past. They are like the tattoos prisoners wear to mark them as being from a particular gang.”

“Anything else?” asked Iosef.

“One moment,” said Paulinin, moving back into darkness, changing the CD. When he returned he looked at Iosef.

“Rachmaninov,” said Iosef.

Paulinin smiled.

“There is one more thing. Pa’smatril. Look.”

He turned the tortured dead man on his side and said, “You have to look very carefully.”

Paulinin pressed his finger into a red spot on the dead man’s back. His finger disappeared into the body.

“They both have them. The other one’s is on his thigh, like little pockets.”

“Drugs,” said Zelach.

“Diamonds,” said Iosef.

“Possibly,” said Paulinin.

Iosef did not press the issue. He was certain. The meeting in Porfiry Petrovich’s office made it clear that they were all in search of diamonds.

“Now,” said Iosef, “if you can only tell us where to begin looking for this third man. .”

“Four-seven-two-four Kropotkin Street,” said Paulinin.

“You cannot know. .” Zelach could not stop himself.

“Rent receipt in my friend’s pocket,” said Paulinin, touching the nearest corpse.

“Spa’siba. Thank you,” said Iosef.

“Yes,” added Zelach resisting the urge to run out of the laboratory.

“Zelach wants to know if it is true that you have Stalin’s head and Lenin’s teeth and eyes,” said Iosef.

No, no, no, thought Zelach looking at Paulinin.

“I have treasures pathological, historical, and cultural,” said Paulinin who was looking over his glasses at Zelach. “It would be unwise to share treasure. Let yourselves out.”

Rachmaninov bloomed in the garden of glass, wood, and metal at their backs as Iosef and Zelach moved toward the door to the corridor.

A voice spoke cheerily behind them.

Paulinin was talking to the dead men. The scientist seemed certain that the dead men also talked to him.

And in some sense, he was right.

Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, Chief Inspector in the Office of Special Investigations, was airsick. The seat was small, the space for his legs-one real, one artificial-was restrictive, the ride bumpy, the smell of human bodies and tobacco cloying.

Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov would be fine when they were on the ground, according to the young woman in a military uniform who seemed to be in charge of avoiding questions. She was also in charge of giving them each a bottle of water and a bar of whole grains held together by congealed honey.

Dubious information about the nature of his illness did not soothe Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov. He tried to read the slightly tattered paperback copy of his Ed McBain 87th Precinct novel.

There were two seats on each side of the aisle. Emil Karpo, erect as always, sat looking out the window at clouds. Rostnikov preferred the aisle. Actually, Rostnikov preferred not to be on any airplane at all.

There was no one to whom he could complain. He was resigned. It was not unlike most things in life.

Rostnikov closed his eyes and leaned back. Six of the other passengers on the plane were heading for Devochka. All six of them worked for the mining company. There was no one else to work for. The plane would drop them off at Devochka and then take the remaining thirty-seven passengers to Noril’sk.

Rostnikov had read the folder the Yak had given him. The security folder for Devochka had been prepared by the Director of Security at the mine. The name of the man and his signature were on the reports in that folder. Rostnikov knew the man. He was also certain that Yaklovev was well aware of Porfiry Petrovich’s connection to the man.

“You are ill, Porfiry Petrovich,” came Karpo’s voice through the hazy pink of Rostnikov’s closed eyes.

“The air.”

“Here,” said Karpo, putting something in Rostnikov’s hand.

Rostnikov opened his eyes and looked at the pill in his palm.

“For airsickness?” Rostnikov asked, swallowing the pill without waiting for an answer.

“Yes.”

“You get airsick?”

“No,” said Karpo. “But I prepare for the contingency when I fly.”

“Are you prepared for all contingencies, Emil?”

“No, that would be impossible. I try to prepare for those I can anticipate.”

“A wise life plan,” said Rostnikov. “We make a good team, Emil Karpo. You are logical and unimaginative. . no insult intended.”

“And none perceived. I see little value in having an imagination. Besides, it is not a choice one makes.”

“And I am intuitive,” said Rostnikov, feeling a bit better already. “Intuition can deceive.”

“As can logic,” said Karpo.

“You realize Emil, this is one of the longest conversations we have ever had that did not involve murder, mayhem, theft, or imminent danger.”

Rostnikov was about to say something about Mathilde Verson, but he decided not to, maybe some time later when her ghost did not still stand so close to Karpo’s shoulder.

“See if you can find the young lady. See if any of the passengers were in Devochka the day the Canadian was murdered. If so, I would like to talk to each of them before we land.”

Karpo clicked his seat belt open and began to rise.

“Another thing,” said Rostnikov. “If anything exists on this plane that resembles food, I should like very much to eat it.”

Just beyond a sparse forest of what looked like leafless trees, six elk darted across the snowless tundra. In the distance there was a long range of low mountains topped with snow. No sign of man had been seen from the air for more than five hundred miles.

And then, Devochka appeared, a collection of eight identical one-story concrete block buildings with slightly pitched roofs and a wide road of cracked concrete which stretched from the concrete block buildings to a far different structure, the mine. The structure was taller, older than the town and reflected the cloud-covered sun from the few unrusted spots of its steel beams.

Next to the structure was a dark strip, perhaps three hundred yards long. Karpo could not tell how deep a bite had been taken to create the strip.

“What do you see, Emil Karpo?”

“It was a strip mine and then tunnels were dug when the stripping ceased to yield diamonds.”

“They had to go deeper,” said Rostnikov, sitting back to adjust his leg before the landing.

“Yes.”

“We shall have to go deeper,” said Rostnikov. “Ferret out secrets, talk to people, drink their vodka, rub our hands together as they do, listen to their complaints.”

“I do not drink vodka,” said Karpo.

“I know. You drink no alcohol. I was speaking of us collectively. I’ll drink the vodka for both of us. Perhaps they have celery juice for you.”

“Water will be sufficient,” said Karpo, looking out the window.

Rostnikov was not a drinker unless there was a celebration or an investigation that warranted it. He was not repulsed by alcohol and, in fact, enjoyed the occasional thrust of liquid heat and euphoria, particularly from French brandy. He got a similar and far more satisfying reaction from fixing his neighbor’s maze of water pipes or from the weights in his cabinet, and with no dulling of the senses.

“They will drink and try to find our secrets,” said Rostnikov, “and in trying to find our secrets, we will discover theirs.”

“We have no secrets,” said Karpo.

“But they do not know that,” whispered Rostnikov.

“Why are you whispering?”

“To simulate conspiracy. To ready us for an inevitable duel.”

“And if they do not engage you in such a duel?”

Rostnikov looked at the unsmiling man next to him and resisted the powerful urge to put an arm around the shoulders of his dour companion.

“They are Russians, Emil Karpo. It is in their nature to protect themselves even when they are not being attacked.”

“I am Russian. I do not feel this need.”

“You are the exception. Perhaps it is your Mongol blood or a quirk of birth, but I have always found your directness refreshing. We have always made a good team, have we not?”

“Yes.”

“Prepare yourself for a surprise when we land,” said Rostnikov.

Karpo nodded. He was almost curious.

The plane’s low, sudden roar signaled descent. Rostnikov put on his seat belt and felt the slight pop in his ears. He distrusted statistics on airplane fatalities. They were always reported in terms of miles flown and not in terms of takeoffs and landings. Airplanes seldom simply fell from the sky, but they did run into significant problems when trying to leave the earth or come back to it, where they belonged.

The landing on the wide, cracked road to the mine, which doubled as Devochka’s airstrip, was reasonably smooth, and when the engines stopped the voice of the pilot wearily announced, “Voa ta na,” Here it is.

They were within forty yards of the line of concrete block buildings.

Seat belts clicked. The other passengers coughed, talked, shuffled. None of the handful who rose to get off seemed particularly happy to have arrived. It was difficult to imagine that some of them called this place home, that they and many he would meet had lived their lives here and, in all likelihood, so had their parents. Inbreeding had plagued Gulag towns for generations. Perhaps the same would be true of Devochka.

The two policemen were the last to get off. Descent down the aluminum steps was an even bigger adventure than had been the ascent. Rostnikov did not know who was watching, and there was little he could do to make the maneuver anything but slightly awkward at best. He silently urged his young and senseless leg to cooperate in the venture.

When he and Karpo had reached the ground and retrieved their bags, they saw a contingent of four men stepping across the road toward them.

“Well, is it what you expected?” Rostnikov asked Karpo.

The buildings appeared to be solid, well maintained, functional, and bleak. There were many windows, wide windows letting in the sunlight, facing not just the far less modern structure of the mine, but the forest and mountains beyond.

“I had no expectations,” said Karpo.

The quartet was almost on them now. The passengers had all deplaned, retrieved their luggage, and begun walking toward the closest of the buildings.

“It is not like our last adventure in Siberia.”

“That was two thousand kilometers from here.”

“Yes,” said Rostnikov, looking toward a thick gathering of trees in the distance.

Three of the four men were not impressed by the Moscow policemen but they tried not to show it. What they witnessed was a gaunt, thin, and quite dour spectre in black and a limping, average-sized, broad man with a typical Russian face.

The engines of the airplane which had gone down to an uneven, impatient murmur, were now revving up with loud rattling noises of belching anxiety.

“I’m Yevgeniy Zuyev,” said the first man, extending his hand. “I am the Chairman of the Town of Devochka. Let’s go inside where we can sit and talk and complete the introductions without the sound of the airplane.”

Rostnikov nodded his agreement and followed the man, who could not have been more than forty.

As they walked, Karpo observed Porfiry Petrovich’s eyes meeting those of a bearded member of the group who looked back over his shoulder. The meeting of eyes was without emotion. Karpo noted the exchange and thought the man looked familiar. Emil Karpo did not forget names or faces. He was sure he had not met the man before, yet the uncertainty of recognition impelled him to keep his eyes on the man as they walked. The man was perhaps fifty years old, bespectacled with a very serious and not friendly look on his face.

“Slow down for the Inspector, Zhenya,” said the bearded man.

“No need,” said Rostnikov.

“Sorry,” said Zhenya Zuyev, slowing his pace.

“Thank you,” said Rostnikov.

The third man in the group was a tall, remarkably muscular man no more than thirty years old. His head was shaved and he wore no hat. He could have been quite forbidding, but the smile he wore looked genuine. The last man, who walked head down and looked worried, was the oldest of the group. His hair, peeking out from under a fur hat, was white, his back bent, his face furrowed with thin lines like dried up riverbeds.

When they reached the closest building, Zuyev held the door open, and they stepped in behind Rostnikov and Karpo. They moved down a wide, well-lit corridor with Zuyev taking the lead.

They passed a large room to their right, with comfortable chairs facing a wide-screen television set.

“This is our primary building. Government office, security, large town meeting room, largest cafeteria. We have a large collection of DVDs,” said Zuyev. “Of course, most people prefer to watch in their own rooms and apartments.”

Zuyev led them into a cafeteria-style dining room where a few of the several dozen tables held teenagers and older people snacking and drinking tea or coffee.

“We serve three meals a day, every day,” said Zuyev. “Of course, most people prefer to eat in their own rooms and apartments.”

“You said that,” said the old man impatiently.

“Do you have a weight room?” asked Rostnikov.

The bald young man with a smile said, “An outstanding weight room, eleven machine stations and a full range of free weights.”

“Viktor is bench press, snatch, and clean-and-jerk champion of Siberia,” said Zuyev, skirting the tables and going through a door into a small private dining room. “He is training for the Olympics. We are very proud of him.”

“I should like to see the weight room later,” said Rostnikov.

“You lift, don’t you?” said Viktor.

“Yes,” said Rostnikov.

“I knew it,” said the young man.

They sat around the table with white mugs and matching white plates set before them. Two platters of cookies stood on the table, along with insulated pitchers that Zuyev identified as Brazilian coffee and black tea.

It seemed to Rostnikov, who reached for the coffee, more like an informal party than the beginning of an investigation into the death of a foreign visitor.

“You’ve met Viktor Panin,” said Zuyev, nodding at the bald and smiling young man. “He, and the rest of us, are on the governing board, in addition to which Anatoliy Lebedev,” he nodded this time at the old man, “is the Alorosa mine director.”

Which left. .

“Fyodor Andreiovich Rostnikov,” said the bearded man, looking at Karpo. “Director of Security in Devochka and in the mines.”

There was a silence in the room, a waiting for someone to say what had to be said. Now Karpo knew why the bearded man looked familiar.

“Fyodor Andreiovich and I are brothers,” said Porfiry Petrovich.

It was a warm night in Moscow, more than forty years ago. A warm night. The policeman, burly and resigned, sat on a rock tented by two slabs of concrete which might well have given way to crush him. Unfortunately, this was the only reasonable cover while he watched the truck.

The building was going up slowly, typical of projects in the Soviet Union, where no incentive existed for workers to put in a full day of hard work. Appeals to the abstract love of a nation that needed more buildings were to no avail. The workers did not define themselves as Soviets. They considered themselves Russians, Georgians, Chechens, Lithuanians, or whatever.

And so they had no reservations about stealing from the State as the State had no reservations about taking from them. At least, that was the way most of them thought. It was something the policeman understood.

An inventory by the project director and the Communist Party representative at the site had revealed a serious loss of valued equipment and wiring. The conclusion was theft by employees. The solution was the placement of a policeman in the shadows.

And so he sat as he had for the past two nights, a cheese sandwich in his pocket, his holstered gun resting familiarly against his right thigh, the flashlight on his belt pressing against his left leg.

He was hungry. He slowly, quietly unwrapped his sandwich and took a large, satisfying bite.

And then he heard them coming.

He did not know what time it was, could not read the face of his watch in the darkness, but it was definitely past midnight.

They came, three of them, whispering, climbing on the rear of the truck, opening it with a key, their shoes producing a metallic echo as the door swung open. Two of the men stepped into the truck. The third remained on the ground to receive the equipment handed to him. It looked as if they had planned to take no more than they could carry.

The policeman set aside his sandwich and slowly eased his way out of the concrete tent.

The man on the ground was leaning over to place a metal box near his feet when the policeman approached.

As the man got up to receive something else from the two in the truck, the policeman stepped to the rear of the truck, slammed the door closed, and threw the bolt to lock them in.

The thief on the outside took it all in and began to run. He was much younger than the policeman, and much lighter. He would have gotten away had he not tripped on a coil of wire he had taken from the truck.

The policeman had his gun out and pointed at the man on the ground, who realized that it was all over. The two in the truck obviously realized the same thing. They were making no noise, not crying to be let out. They sat and waited.

An hour later, the policeman led all three of his prisoners into the stone shack that served as the local police station. The shack, with temporary cells in the rear, was at least a century old. Not a single renovation had ever been done.

It was not the policeman’s job to talk to the prisoners. He was just there to catch them, turn them in, and go home while the KGB decided what to do with traitors to the Revolution.

And then, within an hour after he had caught the thieves, she appeared.

The policeman did not know how the woman found it. Somehow people knew. Someone would see an arrest taking place or hear a name mentioned by a clerk who worked in Petrovka, or a talkative young jail guard. No matter. She found out.

She was pretty, with healthy country skin and corn blond hair. She had been sitting, waiting, worried about her husband, the man who had tripped over the coil of wire, when she had found out what happened.

Relatives were not allowed into the police station. This was a place of little hope and the province of those who had learned indifference.

She confronted him when he stepped out of the police station into the early morning light. “What has happened to my husband?”

And that was how it had begun.

The policeman never denied to himself, and he could not hide it from his wife, that if ever he were to suffer a downfall, it would be because of a woman or women. He could not help it. In spite of his less-than-handsome features and bulky frame, there was something comforting about him, something sad and peaceful. He recognized this and let it happen.

And that was how it had happened this time.

Her name was Klara. She was a Pole. She did not love her husband, never had, but he had promised the pretty young girl security and love. He had delivered neither. It was not that he did not want to. He was simply incapable of doing more than being a full-time laborer and a part-time thief.

Klara worked in a glass factory, in terrible heat, for little pay. Now her husband was in jail. That would end his income. She might have to go back to Poland, to a family that did not want her and could not afford to have her.

So the policeman and the factory girl became lovers. It lasted for five months. Her husband went to a Gulag. The policeman helped her even though he had little money and a family of his own.

And then she became pregnant.

And that was how Fyodor Andreiovich Rostnikov, half brother of Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, was born.

The office of Fyodor Andreiovich Rostnikov, Director of Security, Alorosa Mine, and the Town of Devochka of the Siberian Territory, did not match his title. It was not tiny, but it was small, about the size of a freight elevator. There was one wall with a window. The window faced an open plane of tundra and a distant vision of taiga-a vast forest of birch, pine, spruce, and larch. Occasionally, if the season was right, there was a chance that a reindeer would appear in the distance, and lemmings ran free and multiplied and multiplied. Few other animals inhabited the perpetually frozen hundreds of thousands of acres of land perma-frosted to a depth of 4,760 feet.

The town was built on steel legs driven into the permafrost and heated by huge pumps. This kept the buildings from freezing in the winter, when the temperature went down to about 100 degrees below zero, and sinking in the summer, when temperatures rose well over 100 degrees and a sickly rotting smell permeated everything. When the first buildings had been constructed in 1950, the warm air they gave off caused the permafrost beneath them to soften. The buildings sank.

Fyodor Rostnikov looked out of the lone window in his office. Behind him bookshelves covered the wall. File cabinets were lined up on the right. On the wall to his left was a single piece of art, a realistic painting, as tall as a man, of a steel girder in a field of green grass. A very small man was craning his neck back and holding onto a workman’s cap as he looked up at the top of the girder, where a glittering, white, multifaceted diamond glowed.

“My wife did it,” Fyodor said, looking at Porfiry Petrovich, whose eyes were on the painting. “Her name is Svetlana. We have two children, a boy, eighteen, and a girl, ten. The girl has what they call mild autism.”

“When did you come here, Fyodor?”

“You may call me Fedya.”

They were seated in wooden chairs in front of the steel desk, cups of tea within easy reach on little wooden mats that looked Japanese.

“Fedya.”

“My mother and I came here forty-two years, four months, and eight days ago to be with her husband. I was raised in this very building.”

Fedya looked around as if he had never noted his surroundings before.

“He is dead, mining accident. She died of cancer just two years ago. Anything else you want to know?”

He ran his flattened fingers over the right side of his bearded chin.

“You no longer hate our father?”

“I’m not venerating his memory,” said Fedya.

“And me, you hate me?”

“I did for a very long time and then I realized one day that what he had done to me and my mother was not your fault. I resented, yes, but no more. It took too much time and energy.”

Porfiry Petrovich nodded and drank some tea. Both men knew why the information was being provided. The brothers had to work together for a few days. Actually, it had to be seven days at most because of the deadline the Yak had given him.

“The murder,” said Rostnikov.

“Which one?”

“There have been more besides the Canadian?”

“Hundreds that I know of. There may have been more. There’s no way of knowing the total number of people who simply died in the mine or while constructing the mine and these buildings. Record keeping was terrible. We’re not Germans. All the possible murders are buried with whatever records exist. Mind if I pace?”

“No.”

“Would you be more comfortable removing your leg?”

“Yes, but it’s not worth the effort of taking it off and putting it back on. It supports me but it does not comfort me. I was able to talk to my old, shriveled leg.”

Fedya nodded in understanding and began to pace, pausing from time to time to look out the window.

“Tsar Nicholas ordered diamond expeditions to Siberia in 1898. No diamonds were found. Every one of the eighteen men who came to the Yakuntia Basin perished. It was not till Stalin ordered expeditions back to Siberia to find diamonds in 1947 that some success was achieved, but the cost was great-not that Stalin cared. Your only son is named Iosef?”

“Yes.”

“For Stalin?”

“Yes. It was a mistake. I have made and continue to make many of them,” said Porfiry Petrovich. “My son is not one of those mistakes.”

“He could change his name,” said Fedya, looking out the window.

“Stalin did not own eternal rights to the name.”

“What does Iosef do?”

“He’s a policeman. He works with me.”

“Runs in the family. Our father, you, me, and your son.”

“It’s possible.”

“The winters,” Fedya said, resuming his pace. “Then as now, seven months of winter. Steel tools became so brittle that they broke like dry kindling. Oil froze solid. Rubber tires exploded. Then, when that first summer came, the top layer of permafrost melted, created a muddy, fly-infested swamp as big as half the countries in Africa.”

“And people died?” said Porfiry Petrovich.

“Hundreds. And all of them and all of us, until the fall of the man of steel, were happy to be here. We had a doctor, medical supplies, books to read, a job to do-a very dangerous job but a job-but most of all we had. .”

“Food,” said Porfiry Petrovich.

“Food,” agreed his brother, almost spilling what remained of his tea. “And warm bedrooms.”

“Murders,” Porfiry Petrovich said.

“Madness, fights, jealousy,” said Fedya.

“Isolation here can be maddening. In 1953 a man, a small man, went mad in the mine. He had a pick. He screamed and imbedded the tool’s sharp point in the head of three people, the back of two people, the stomach of another and, worst of all, he came out of the mine and used his pick on two children, one a little boy and the other a little girl. The alcoholic security guard shot the madman. The children were on the way to wait for their father, who was the wild man’s first victim. You know where this is going, don’t you?”

“The ghost girl,” said Rostnikov.

“The ghost girl. She began appearing in the mine a month or two later. She’s been seen at least nine times since 1963, probably more. There may have been people who did not want to be ridiculed, but ridicule would not have come easily to those who claimed to have seen her.”

“She killed people?”

“Let us say, she was proximate when people died.”

“You believe in this ghost girl?”

Fedya stopped pacing and sat in the chair facing his brother. He lowered his voice and said, “No, but that is said only in the relative privacy of this office which, as far as I can tell, is clean of microphones. In here, I’m an atheist. Out there with the people who live here and work the mines, I am an agnostic. Some of these good and not-so-good people have families that have been here four generations. They are the families of criminals sent to this Gulag. They have developed their own lore. I respect it or I cannot do my job. So, as someone said, ‘Sometimes the prospect of two and two equaling five has a definite attraction.’ ”

“Dostoevsky,” said Porfiry Petrovich.

“I know,” said his brother. “You want to talk to more people or you want to go into the mine?”

“Both. People first. Mine later.”

“I have from time to time kept track of you,” said Fedya. “Curiosity. Even in so remote a spot as this, it is remarkable what a security officer can access with a computer-even information about a Chief Inspector of Police in Moscow.”

“And I, I confess, have from time to time kept track of you. It is remarkable what a Chief Inspector of Police in Moscow can, with a telephone, discover about a security officer at a remote mine in Siberia.”

“Yes, the mine. We must not in our nostalgic journey forget about why you are here. Your man Karpo is down there right now. Would you care for a slice of apple square or a Gogol Mogol?”

“Very much.”

“Good,” said Fedya. “Let’s see what they have in the cafeteria.”

“The restaurant. It was delivered to the restaurant an hour past.”

The speaker was thin, no more than thirty years old, a deep ebony color. He had been one of the men who had engaged Iosef and Zelach in a gun battle and had barely gotten away. In the middle of the table at which he sat were wadded and crumpled remains of pages from Pravda. Resting on the paper was a finger-the small, black finger of a left hand. The curled finger was a matter of debate between the speaker, whose name was Patrice, and the other two young men at the table. They, too, had been in the gun battle.

The other two men were looking at Patrice for guidance, orders. The problem was that the finger on the table appeared to belong to James Harumbaki, their leader. In addition, the note left with the finger had said that both Umbaway and Roger were dead. The hierarchy was clear. Patrice was in charge, a position to which he did not aspire.

“You think they have killed Harumbaki?” asked the tallest of the three men.

Of the three, Biko looked most like a leader. He was erect, decisive in his language, prepared for whatever was to be done. The problem was that he had only one solution for any problem that emerged. Kill. Biko was more than a little crazy, and Patrice well knew it. Patrice also knew that Biko had two wives and six children under the age of ten.

“I don’t think he is dead,” said Patrice, who had no idea if what he was saying was true.

“He is not dead.”

This came from the third man, short, bespectacled, and young, the youngest of the group, named Laurence. Laurence was seventeen. He looked fourteen. He was the most battle-experienced member of the group, having been a shirtless mercenary with a Kalashnikov when he was ten. Now he had an extended family of thirty people to support.

“That’s not the finger of a dead man,” said Laurence, adjusting his glasses. “I’ve removed fingers from the living.”

“You can’t be sure,” said Patrice.

“I can,” said Laurence.

“He is sure,” said Biko.

“If we don’t give them diamonds,” said Laurence, “they will send us a toe.”

“Or his penis,” added Biko.

“No, that might kill him,” said Laurence.

Biko and Laurence looked at Patrice, who stared at the finger and said, “Then we answer them by leaving a message. We set up an exchange location. We tell them they must bring James Harumbaki.”

“We don’t have the next shipment,” said Biko.

“No,” said Patrice.

“What do we give them?” asked Laurence, already knowing the answer.

“Bullets,” said Patrice.

“James might be killed,” said Biko.

“We might be killed,” said Patrice.

“That is true,” said Biko.

“We will give James’s share of everything for three years to his family,” said Patrice. “Agreed?”

“Agreed,” the other two said in near unison.

Patrice was afraid but not for his own safety. He was afraid he would be killed fighting the people who had James. Then who would look after his parents and grandfather?

“Where do we meet them?” asked Laurence.

“The park,” said Patrice.

“Which park?” asked Biko.

“East Gate Park on Kamiaken Street,” said Patrice.

“I do not know it,” said Biko.

“We had an exchange there under some statue when I first came to Moscow last year,” said Laurence.

Patrice nodded to show that this was true.

“The statue is a good place,” said Patrice. “It is quiet.”

“January 7,1951, 11:52 p.m. Report by Serge Vortz, Soviet Party Commissar, Devochka Mine.”

Fyodor Rostnikov, glasses well down his nose, read from the thin black plastic-covered document.

He looked up at Porfiry Petrovich, who nodded at him across the desk, urging him to continue to read the report.

They were sitting in the same small meeting room where the Moscow detectives had sat the day before with the elected board of the town and mine. With the murder of Anatoliy Lebedev, the board was now reduced to four.

In front of Karpo who, as always, sat erect, dressed in black, ignoring the beam of sunlight that streaked past his face, was a mug of hot water. Before Fyodor and Porfiry Petrovich were mugs of strong black tea. All the mugs were white with pictures of a young Linda Ronstadt smiling up at them.

Emil Karpo had spent two futile nights in the cafeteria drinking tea, watching and listening to the few people who approached him. Though everyone acted suspiciously, none was clearly guilty of two murders.

“I was in the shaft,” Fedya continued reading.

Shift Leader and Mine Safety Director Ivan Memendov was ahead of me in Tunnel Number Three, investigating a shifting of rock reported by Mining Crew Four.

Porfiry Petrovich, sharpened pencil in hand and pad of paper before him, wondered how he was going to finish the drawing upon which he was working. The drawing was of the room in which they were sitting. Karpo and Fyodor were rapidly scratched faceless images but seated upon the table a creature of no clear species crouched, ready to leap out of the drawing. Porfiry Petrovich was intrigued.

“After precisely seven minutes of waiting. .”

Fyodor looked up over his glasses at the two detectives. It was highly unlikely that Commissar Vortz would know the precise time of waiting, which suggested to the three men that the commissar was covering his ass. If he were, it was unwise to report what happened next.

I heard singing coming from Tunnel Number Three. The voice sounded like that of a young child, a girl. Then I heard a scream, not that of a child. I was about to enter the tunnel. .

Another incredulous look from Fyodor. Karpo showed nothing. Porfiry Petrovich was busy with his drawing. Fyodor went on:

. . however I did not have the opportunity. I heard something rushing toward me from the tunnel. I assumed it was Ivan Memendov who may have been injured. I saw a light coming toward me and then saw a figure emerge, the figure of a completely naked girl of no more than ten. She was carrying an old kerosene lantern, the kind no longer used. I saw her clearly coming at me, and then she ran toward the mine entrance. She was too fast for me to catch. I have been suffering from a debilitating, recurrent injury received in the defense of Leningrad, for which I was decorated.

Using my flashlight I went quickly into the tunnel and discovered the body of Shift Leader and Mine Safety Director Ivan Memendov. Later examination by Devochka Physician Oleg Dubinin revealed that he had been stabbed at least eight times.

“It is signed,” said Fyodor. “Commissar Vortz was reassigned to a Gulag under suspicion that he had killed the Mine Safety Director over an old feud about the provision of fuel and then made up the ridiculous story about the ghost girl because he knew the lore about such sightings.”

“And there are three more reports about seeing this ghost girl,” said Karpo.

“Yes,” said Fyodor, “a total of six from 1963 till yesterday.”

Porfiry Petrovich had finished his drawing. He held it out to look at without trying to understand what he was seeing.

“May I see the report?” he asked.

It could have been given as an order, but it was delivered as a polite request, which Fyodor honored.

Porfiry Petrovich took the report, opened it, and saw that it had been written on a typewriter whose ink roll had been reused almost once too often. In addition, the carriage had slipped and the upper third of each letter was in a red almost as faint as the black below it. He took a sip of his tea and asked, “Do you note something very strange about this report?”

“I notice very little that is not strange,” said Fyodor.

Rostnikov handed the report to Karpo, who began to read.

“Why is the girl naked?” asked Karpo.

“Precisely,” said Rostnikov. “Why is the beast on the table, and why is the girl running naked?”

“Beast on the table?” asked Fyodor.

“Never mind,” said Porfiry Petrovich. “I am sorry. Emil Karpo asked. .”

“Why is the ghost girl running naked?” Karpo repeated.

“Because,” Fyodor said removing his glasses, “she is a ghost, or she is supposed to be a ghost, and ghosts do very strange things.”

“When was the last time, before this morning, that you read this report?”

“I’ve never read it before this morning,” said Fyodor. “It was in the retired files of the Director. You asked to see all reports of suspicious deaths in the mine and any mention of the ghost girl.”

“I have a whim,” said Porfiry Petrovich. “I would like a search, supervised and conducted by you, Emil, of the entire town, room by room, hiding place by hiding place.”

“What are we looking for?” asked Fyodor.

“An old typewriter with a very worn ribbon.”

“And you expect the typewriter on which this report was written still to be in use, or functional, and still to have the same ribbon?” asked Fyodor.

“I think it possible this report was written very recently,” said Porfiry Petrovich.

“Why?” asked Fyodor.

“That I do not yet know.”

But he did know. The key to two murders, he was sure, was the ghost girl.

“And what of my other requests?”

“Boris Gailov, the old man who was with the Canadian in the mine, is waiting in the hall whenever you wish to talk to him,” said Fyodor, “but, as I told you, he is not a reliable witness. He’s seventy-eight years old and he is more than a little mad from working in the mine for half a century.”

“Then why,” asked Karpo, “was he sent down to serve as a guide for the Canadian?”

“He volunteered,” said Fyodor. “No one expected trouble.”

“The list I requested of all girls in Devochka between the ages of six and eighteen?”

Fyodor took off his glasses, and handed Rostnikov two sheets of paper on which were written the names of seventy-two girls. The names were numbered.

“I’ve indicated the ages of each girl and have added lists of girls between the ages of three and five and eighteen to twenty. I’ve also indicated, as you can see, where each girl was at the time of the death of the Canadian. I’m still working on where they were last night when Anatoliy Lebedev was murdered.”

“How many definitely could not have been in the mine when the Canadian was killed?”

“Fifty-two are completely accounted for,” said Fyodor.

“Still a long list. I would like to see each girl.”

“And their parents?”

“No, not yet.”

“When?”

“As soon as I finish talking to Boris Gailov. What animal do you think this is?”

Fyodor put his glasses back on. Karpo turned his head to see.

“None that I recognize,” said Karpo.

“Let’s see,” said Fyodor, biting his lower lip gently, and tilting his head from side to side. “It’s a very large, hairy man with long teeth. Maybe it’s a werewolf.”

“Maybe,” said Rostnikov. “What happens when a werewolf eats diamonds?”

“Its throat, stomach, and bowels can be torn to pieces,” said Fyodor. “Or then again, nothing may happen.”

“I have drawn a diamond eater,” said Porfiry Petrovich.

“Shall we go out and search for him?” asked Fyodor.

He wasn’t smiling. Porfiry Petrovich liked that his brother wasn’t smiling. Some jests were not meant to be smiled at.

It was the third day, and the list was long. He would have to call Yaklovev shortly. As yet he had nothing to report. He looked at the drawing again and said, “Let us get back to work.”

Karpo and Fyodor stood and went to the door. Porfiry Petrovich did not move. Karpo knew why-Rostnikov’s leg. It had been bothering him lately. He had been moving more slowly, rising more cautiously, climbing steps more tentatively.

“Leave the door open, please, and send in Boris Gailov,” he requested as the two men moved off in search of a typewriter.

Through the open door, Rostnikov could see an old man seated on a metal folding chair in the hallway. The man was pale, gray, and in need of a decision about whether to shave or grow a beard. The man, still over six feet tall in spite of his age, was lean and gnarled. His fingers were crippled by arthritis, and his back was permanently bent over.

“Boris Gailov, please come in and close the door behind you.”

The old man rose slowly, entered the room, and closed the door. Rostnikov motioned for the old man to take a seat across the table.

“I am going to move to St. Petersburg,” Boris said, his voice a crisp rasp.

“You have relatives there?” Rostnikov said, ignoring the non sequitur.

“No, never. That is why I want to go there. Here, I have relatives. Two sons, three grandsons, a daughter, granddaughters. I don’t remember their names. I don’t even remember how many there are. In St. Petersburg I can get a little room somewhere and live on my pension, just watch television, eat sandwiches, and wash and rinse my clothes.”

“It sounds idyllic,” said Porfiry Petrovich.

Boris looked at Rostnikov suspiciously.

“It sounds wonderful. Paradise,” the detective said with sincerity.

“There is no Paradise.”

“I know,” said Rostnikov.

“You want me to tell you about the Canadian.”

“And the ghost girl.”

“There is no ghost girl,” Boris said emphatically.

“I know, but you saw something. You saw a girl with a lantern.”

“I did not.”

“Yes, you did.”

“If I say I did, I go to the asylum instead of St. Petersburg.”

“No, you do not. Tell me, what does this look like to you?”

Rostnikov held up his drawing.

The old man squinted at the drawing and said,

“A large dog sitting on this table.”

“You have trouble seeing.”

“I have trouble picking up a spoon, but I don’t complain about it,” Boris said with pride.

“I have one leg,” said Rostnikov.

“When I was young, men came home without arms, legs, eyes. They also came home with the teeth and bones and weapons of dead Germans.”

“You came here in 1949,” said Rostnikov.

“July fifteenth, a day of rain and sorrow,” said Boris. “Do you know why I came here?”

“Your file says you came here because you were hungry, and there was recruiting for Siberian mine workers.”

“They said I was crazy,” said Boris. “I was seventeen. Everyone else was being sent here for political crimes. I came to get something to eat every day. And I did. I haven’t starved, and I’ve raised a large family.”

“Which you now want to get away from,” said Rostnikov.

“Yes.”

“Tell me about going into the mine with the Canadian. Who picked you to go into the mine with him?”

“I do not know. A man. I got a call. Said, ‘Boris, there is a Canadian needs a guide in the mine. Meet him in front of the mine entrance.’ I got dressed. I did what I was told. I always do what I’m told. I hate doing what I’m told. At this point in my life, I do not like anybody.”

“The ghost girl?” asked Rostnikov.

“They’re all afraid to talk about the ghost girl, but why should I be? I’m ninety years old. I can say what I please.”

“You are seventy-eight,” Rostnikov corrected.

“And you have one leg. Let me see it.”

Rostnikov slid his chair back and pulled up his left pant leg. Boris stood and leaned over, twisted knuckles on the table, mouth open.

“Like on television,” said Boris.

“Just like it,” said Rostnikov, having no idea what the old man was talking about. “Would you tell me about the ghost child now?”

“Why not?”

“Please.”

“I take the American. .”

“Canadian.”

“Canadian, yes,” said Boris. “I take this Amer. . Canadian into the mine. My English? Not good. Canada grumbled, growls all the time. All the time. I take him to the tunnel he wants and wait while he goes in. I hear a noise.”

“Noise?”

“You know. Something clanking, noise. Down there you can hear someone farting two hundred feet away.”

“He farted?”

Boris looked at the barrel-shaped detective.

“No, he did not fart. All right if I continue? I am getting older with the passing of each minute. You want me dropping dead right in here?”

“Please do not drop dead,” Rostnikov said politely.

Boris had not forgotten where he was in his tale.

“I hear the noise. Then I hear singing. Then I. . see the ghost coming toward me from the tunnel.”

“What was the ghost singing?”

Boris burst into gravelly song.

“ ‘The Po ulitse mastavoi.’ Along the paved road there went a girl to fetch water, there went a girl to fetch water, to fetch the cold spring water. Behind her a young lad shouted ‘Girl, stand still. Girl, stand still. Let’s have a little talk.’ ”

“You saw her?”

“She hurried by me, holding her lantern at her side.”

“She wore?”

“A dress, a nice one buttoned at the neck. Chaste, very chaste. I think it was blue, but in the light in the mines here it is difficult to be sure of the color. Everything looks green.”

“The two men who were in here when you came in, what were they wearing?”

“Games? You’re playing games with me now?”

“No,” said Rostnikov. “I would like to know.”

“Tall one,” Boris said. “He was wearing black socks, black pants, black shoes, black jacket, and a black look, as if it were he who had seen the ghost.”

“And the other man?”

“He looked like you with a beard. That was Fyodor Rostnikov, Director of Security, your brother. Everyone knows that.”

“The ghost girl, did she look like any child in Devochka?”

Boris looked at Porfiry Petrovich with a compassion he usually reserved for those of limited intellect.

“She was a ghost.”

“Could you identify the ghost girl if you saw her again?”

“No.”

“No? Why?”

“I am not a fool,” said Boris. “People take me for one, but I’m not a fool. Whoever this ghost girl is, it would not be healthy, if she is not a ghost, to identify her if I saw her.”

“You could be arrested for refusing.”

“And then what would you do? Send me to Siberia?”

Rostnikov laughed, clapped his hands together noiselessly three times, and then clasped them together.

“I guarantee nothing will happen to you if you identify the girl. I’ll arrange for you to move to St. Petersburg.”

“Just pack a bag, get on an airplane, and get out?”

“That can be arranged.”

“I will identify her if I see her, but I would have to look at all the girls here to be sure. I have not memorized the face of every child in this place. I will identify her if I see her again.”

“Good,” said Rostnikov, standing to alter the stiffening of his leg. “I will arrange for every girl in Devochka to be in the meeting room later today. Tell no one what we are doing.”

Boris rose.

“Be careful,” said Rostnikov.

Boris leaned forward to whisper, “I have a gun.”

Rostnikov held a finger to his lips to warn the old man to keep that information quiet.

“One question,” said Boris.

“Ask.”

“Can you dance with only one leg?”

“I do not know. I have never tried.”

“Try,” said Boris.

When he was gone, Porfiry Petrovich gathered his drawings and stood. With the door still closed, he hummed one of the peppier Sarah Vaughan songs he listened to when he worked out. As he was humming, he attempted to take a few dance-like steps. It was not bad. He tried a few more and hummed a bit louder.

His back was to the door when it opened silently. Emil Karpo and Fyodor Rostnikov stood in the open doorway, witnessing Rostnikov’s dance. Rostnikov sensed their presence, stopped dancing, and turned to face them.

“I was dancing,” Rostnikov said.

“Yes,” said Karpo.

“You should try it.”

“I think not.”

Rostnikov tried to imagine the man dancing. It was impossible except for a macabre shuffling of the feet that conjured up the image of a humorless zombie lurching slowly forward.

“I agree.”

“We found the typewriter,” said Fyodor.

“It must not have been well hidden. It took you all of thirty minutes.”

“It was in plain sight.”

“Where?”

“On my bed,” said Fyodor.

“Okay, let’s do it this way.”

Kolokov was pacing around the room. With almost every step the buckled once-yellow linoleum on the floor crackled like the shell of a Botswanan click beetle.

James was now tied to a white plastic chair. Electrical cord bound his wrists behind his back, eliminating all but minimal circulation. The faces of Kolokov and the bald man named Montez offered no sympathy.

The room was large, the former kitchen of a dacha that had once belonged to the member of the Duma designated as Commissar of Transportation. The Commissar was dead, murdered by one of his assistants, named Rasmusen, who wished to show the newly minted Yeltsin government his hatred of the Communist regime.

Now the dacha was abandoned, too close to the city to be considered a reasonable getaway by those who could now afford it, too expensive to restore for those who might consider it.

The rusting pipes groaned. The wooden walls cracked. The linoleum floor buckled.

“Do I blame you for trying to get away?” Kolokov went on, expecting no answer and getting none. “No. I would have done the same. But I must have cooperation.”

He stopped pacing and looked at James, whose eyes were fixed straight ahead. He could endure his numb hands and the broken nose the Russian had given him. He could go without food. He had done it many times before, in Africa. What he could not tolerate was the smell of decay and cheap tobacco that came out of the mouth of Kolokov when he placed his face a few inches from James’s, as he did now.

“Cooperation,” Kolokov continued.

James gave no reaction.

“Are you listening? If you are not listening, if you are not cooperating, what use are you to me? That is a real question. Answer it or you die.”

“I am listening,” said James.

“Good,” said Kolokov, looking at the bald man and allowing himself a small smile of success. “You will call your friends. You will tell them to be in front of the Eternal Flame by the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior at the Moscow War Memorial in Alexandrovsky Gardens at ten o’clock tonight. They will have with them either a sizable package of diamonds or an even one. .”

He looked at the bald man who stared blankly back.

“. . no, two million euros. Cash,” Kolokov continued. “You understand?”

“Yes,” said James.

James was having trouble breathing. Kolokov had smashed his nose, blocking off all air. James could only breathe through his swollen mouth.

“You know what happens if you try to escape again?”

“Yes.”

“Are you hungry?”

“No.”

“Thirsty?”

“No,” James lied.

“I killed your companions because they would not tell me how to reach your friends, but you are cooperating. I have no reason to kill you. I am not a monster.”

Kolokov lit a cigarette, pursed his lips, and added, “Now I think I will buy a bar in Zvenigorod. There is one whose bar I would gladly stand behind, within view of the monastery. Perhaps Montez and I could persuade the present owners to sell. What do you think?”

“Yes,” said James.

“Yes? That is not a thought.”

“You can probably convince the owners to sell,” said James.

The bald Montez moved. Yes, like a big, dark click beetle after an hour of dormancy, he moved the right hand at his side and came up with a cell phone.

“Now, you make the call.”

Montez flipped open the phone and brought it in front of James.

“The number,” said Kolokov.

James told him the number, and the Spaniard pressed it into the keypad. Montez placed the phone close enough to James’s face that he could speak into it. There was but one ring before the phone was answered. James gave the man who answered it a succinct message that ended with, “and bring with you either the last shipment of diamonds or two million euros.”

“Yes,” said the man.

“And do no try to free me,” said James. “I am all right.”

“We will not try to free you. We will bring the money or the diamonds.”

Both were lies. James knew there was no way two million euros could be obtained. Nor could they or would they try to raise the money. They could not deliver the diamonds. The diamonds had already been delivered to the woman in Kiev. The courier had been murdered and the murderer had stolen the payment.

There promised to be bloodshed at the War Memorial.

James hoped that the blood would be that of his captors.

Balta watched and listened.

It was cool, but pleasant enough for the tables of the coffee house to be set up out on the street. All the small round Plexiglas tables were taken, which suited Balta just fine. Balta looked at the beautiful Oxana who smiled as if she had a secret.

She was not alone. Balta admired Rochelle Tanquay’s sleek, dark feline beauty. If everything worked out as he planned, Balta expected to be seeing a great deal more of the elegant Miss Tanquay.

Balta sipped strong espresso that was almost thick enough to require a spoon.

Oxana and Rochelle talked about the model’s career, about the shoot in Paris and what it might mean to her. Oxana was delighted to listen to and take part in a conversation that was entirely about her.

There was a swell of laughter from a nearby table. A young man, who looked like a wrestler and wore a supposedly masculine two-day growth of beard, slapped the less-than-sturdy table, setting the cups and saucers into a jangling dance. The sound covered whatever Oxana was saying. Balta heard pieces of the model’s words but not all. He was certain, however, that she had said nothing about diamonds. He really didn’t expect her to.

Then the man who Balta had seen with Oxana in the park strode over, adjusting his tie when he saw Rochelle Tanquay. A smile showing remarkably even and reasonably white teeth appeared as Oxana made the introductions.

“This is Jan Pendowski,” said Oxana. “Jan, this is Rochelle Tanquay.”

“Oxana told me about you,” Jan said, taking Rochelle’s hand and holding onto it a bit longer than might have been considered polite.

“You are a policeman,” Rochelle said, matter-of-factly removing her hand from Jan’s grasp and reaching into her purse for a cigarette.

“I am a policeman,” he said almost with apology.

He quickly removed a lighter from his pocket and extended it to Rochelle, who used it. She had offered a cigarette to Oxana, who took it and waited for Jan to flick the lighter for her. He almost forgot. His eyes were on Rochelle.

Balta watched with amusement and saw a tinge of jealousy color Oxana’s face.

“What kind of policeman are you?” Rochelle asked.

“I catch smugglers.”

“Like people who bring fruit and cheap watches in their pockets?” Rochelle asked impishly.

“Like people who are inventive about bringing drugs into the Ukraine and even transporting gold and precious jewels across our country.”

“Yes,” Oxana said, trying to shift the conversation to another subject. “Jan, tell her about the perfect baby.”

“The perfect baby?” asked Rochelle.

“A young couple is changing planes to head for Istanbul,” said Jan with a grin. “They tell me the baby is asleep but they would be willing to move him gently if it is necessary to search his blankets.

“I say that there is no point in disturbing such a perfect baby. The couple thanks me. I examine the things they had brought in a basket for the baby. It is clear that none of the items, baby food, diapers, changes of clothing have been tampered with or are being used to hide anything.”

“That’s when. . ” Oxana prompted.

“That’s when I knew,” said Jan. “I took the baby from the young woman’s arms, placed it on the table, and cut into its stomach with my pocket knife. An older woman watching from behind in the examination line screamed in horror.”

At this memory, Jan Pendowski laughed.

“Artificial baby,” said Oxana.

“Too perfect,” said Jan. “So perfect that everything in the child’s basket was untouched, new, absolutely clean in spite of the fact that the couple had been traveling most of the day. When I cut the baby open, out came the contents like a Mexican piñata exposing candy. The doll was filled with diamonds.”

“Clever,” said Rochelle, meeting the provocation of his eyes.

“I am not deceived by appearances,” he said. “I have seen too much.”

“I am certain you have many equally interesting stories,” said Rochelle.

“Many,” he said, unsure now of whether she was twitting him.

“Perhaps you can tell them to me when I have more time in Kiev,” she said.

“Who knows?” said Jan as a waiter appeared with coffee for him and refills for Rochelle and Oxana. “I may be getting to Paris in the not distant future.”

“Be sure to look me up,” said Rochelle.

“I will,” said Jan.

Oxana watched the exchange with amusement and perhaps only the slightest hint of jealousy. Rochelle Tanquay was French. Rochelle was engaged in sexual teasing. Jan would gladly have jumped into bed or the back of his car with Rochelle, but without further encouragement, he would promptly forget her. Besides, if all went well, Oxana would have the diamonds and Jan would be dead before the end of the next day. All it took was resolve. Oxana had never killed anyone. She had come close on two occasions, both times as a result of being challenged by other models for work which was rightfully hers. Oxana was confident that with the proper incentive, and almost two million euros, she would have sufficient incentive to murder Jan, who was now outrageously suggesting seduction to another woman. He was a pig, a clever, handsome, and dangerous pig, but a pig nonetheless.

She admitted to herself that she was fascinated by both Jan’s performance and Rochelle’s. She enjoyed playing voyeur and even allowed herself the fantasy of rushing to Jan’s apartment, undressing him, and making him spring to life if he had not already done so under the table. And yes, she also fantasized about seducing Rochelle before they left Kiev, though it was more likely that the clearly worldly Parisian knew more about making love to a woman than did Oxana.

“What is amusing?” asked Jan.

“Thinking about Paris,” said Oxana.

Rochelle smiled.

“Paris will be good to you,” she said.

Rochelle’s eyes met Jan’s. There was no denying the provocation. Jan considered how he would juggle being with Oxana and killing her and seducing the beautiful woman from Paris. It would be difficult, but he decided it would be worth the reward. And if Rochelle did turn him down, he would have one more night with Oxana.

With the diamonds now hidden in his apartment and two beautiful women from which to choose, life looked very good for Jan Pendowski. All that was left for him to do was rid himself of the two Russian police officers, one of whom, the woman, he had given fleeting consideration as a possible object of his attentions. He still might, though it could be a particularly dangerous effort.

Jan Pendowski sat back and glanced at a lean man in a jacket and open-necked shirt who had just risen from the next table. The man seemed vaguely familiar.

Balta had seen and heard enough.

Now he had a plan.

“You know this man, Lillita?” asked Porfiry Petrovich.

The little girl looked at old Boris sitting in the corner of the meeting room with his arms folded. He was bored. He had seen enough of little girls being paraded before him. He had told the one-legged policeman that the ghost girl was not one of the girls in Devochka.

Lillita was no more than ten. She was very thin, but not because food was unavailable. He had spoken to eleven little girls so far this morning, and all of them had been examples of baby fat or healthy fullness. This one was different. She had short, dull amber hair, a pinched, sad face, and moist eyes. Her lower lip jutted out just slightly in what may have been a pout. She wore a dark woolen skirt and a yellow shirt with buttons. She kept pulling up her sleeves, and they kept slipping down.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s Boris.”

She had not bothered to look at the old man.

“You know what his job is?”

“He goes into the mine. He knows the mine. He takes people around.”

“I am responsible for much more,” said Boris defensively.

The girl shrugged. She didn’t care. She had been doing her best to keep from looking at the plate of cookies on the table next to her.

Rostnikov had moved his chair in front of the table to be closer to the girls, but he was careful to gauge the distance so that he allowed plenty of space.

“Have a cookie,” said Rostnikov. “Have two cookies.”

The girl rose slightly from her chair and reached over to take two cookies.

“Spasiba,” she said, holding the cookies lightly in her hand.

“You know about the dead people in the mine?” asked Rostnikov, reaching for two cookies.

“Yes.”

“You knew Anatoliy Lebedev?”

“Old Lebedev,” she said, watching Rostnikov eat a cookie. “I did not know the American.”

“He was a Canadian.”

“They are the same very much,” she said, putting a cookie cautiously to her mouth.

“They might not agree,” said Rostnikov.

Boris mumbled something, wanting to be heard but not wanting Rostnikov to know that he wanted to be heard. It was a very Russian way of making a point. And so, Boris had mumbled, “I will be dead and buried before he finishes talking to little girls and feeding them cookies.”

Lillita Kapronopovich took a deliberate bite of her cookie.

“You think there is a girl with a lantern who wanders through the mine?” asked Porfiry Petrovich.

“Yes,” the girl said.

“Who is she?”

“A ghost.”

“Whose ghost?”

“You don’t know?”

“I’ve heard, but I would like you to tell me.”

“The ghost of a girl who died in the mine,” she explained, “the old mine, when it first opened, the year my grandfather was born. They had little girls carrying lanterns and crawling into holes where adults could not go. The roof fell down and crushed her. Only her lantern was left. She haunts the mine now because she knows she should not have been sent down there. She knows. She tricks men into going into little spaces and then kills them.”

“She makes the room fall?”

“She stabs them in the face,” said the girl sweetly, finishing her cookie.

Boris groaned. He had heard twenty versions of this tale from little girls this day and most of them had gotten it wrong. Boris knew the true story, though he was not quite sure how he had heard it. He took it on faith that his version was the right one.

“I have two girls around your age at home in Moscow,” Porfiry Petrovich said.

“You are too old to have little girls.”

“They are not my children or my grandchildren. They and their grandmother live with my wife and me.”

“In Moscow?”

“Yes.”

“Is it really warm half of the year in Moscow?”

“It is,” he said.

“I think I will live in Moscow when I get older.”

“St. Petersburg is better,” said Boris, and then added, “What am I saying? I don’t want to be followed by little girls. Forget it. You are right. Moscow is better.”

The girl gave Boris a tolerant look.

“Who told you the story of the ghost girl in the mine?”

“My grandfather,” the child said.

“Where is he?”

“In his little room cleaning his guns. He thinks the Japanese are going to come and try to kill us all. He is a little crazy.”

“I think I would like to talk to your grandfather,” said Porfiry Petrovich.

“Why?” asked Boris. “She told you. He is crazy.”

“I will humor him.”

“Can I go now?” asked the girl.

“Yes, and take two more cookies.”

She got off the chair and took two more cookies.

“Do I have to go back to school?”

“No,” said Rostnikov. “You can eat cookies and drink beer and use bad words all day. You have my permission.”

“You don’t mean it.”

She was smiling now.

“Well, no.”

“Can I see your wooden leg?”

She was standing in front of his chair.

“If you show it to her,” said Boris, “you will have to show it to all of them.”

Rostnikov leaned forward awkwardly in his chair and pulled up the cuff of his left pant leg. The girl stared seriously and said, “Does it hurt?”

“No, we are becoming friends.”

“Friends with a wooden leg?”

“It is plastic and metal.”

“I see,” said the girl, starting on her third cookie. “Friends? You talk to it?”

“Sometimes, but I was friendlier with my bad leg when I still had it, but if I wish I can always visit it.”

“Your leg? Where is it?”

“In a laboratory in a lower basement of police headquarters in Moscow where I have my office.”

“You are making a joke,” she said, tilting her head to one side.

“No,” said Rostnikov seriously. “It is best to keep old friends nearby, when possible.”

Rostnikov let down his pant leg and Boris shuffled behind him.

“Can I tell my friends that you talk to your leg?”

“You have my permission.”

“Thank you,” she said and left the room.

Emil Karpo stepped in.

“Would you like a cookie, Emil Karpo?” Rostnikov asked.

“I do not eat cookies,” said Karpo, who was dressed in his customary black.

Rostnikov knew his associate’s diet quite well, but it did not stop him from an occasional foray into the hope of temptation. Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov firmly believed that the regular consumption of cookies was essential to the well-being of every reasonable Russian. Rostnikov ate a cookie.

“The little girl who just left here has a grandfather,” Rostnikov said. “He cleans guns in preparation for an invasion by the Japanese. I would like you to talk to him about the places in the mine too large for all but little girls to crawl into. I should like to know where they are.”

“There are not any such places,” said Boris emphatically.

“But there is a ghost?” asked Rostnikov.

“The ghost is real, but do not tell anyone I said so. The small caves are not real, and you can tell anyone you like that I said so,” said Boris.

“Enlightening,” said Karpo.

“Hidden places, Emil Karpo. Hidden places,” said Rostnikov.

Gerald St. James threw darts at the target across the room. The target was backed by a corkboard that covered almost half the wall to protect the paneling from the always-sharpened steel points. An open wooden box on his desk contained several dozen finely balanced darts, all neatly lined up.

Ellen Sten sat quietly in a firm red leather armchair near the floor-to-ceiling windows beyond which St. James could see the rooftop of DeBeers of London. She had flown in only hours before on St. James’s private Astra/Gulfstram SPX. Ellen had not slept in more than fifty hours but, thanks to an intentionally slight overdose of Provigil, she was now awake and attentive.

St. James calmly balanced a dart over his shoulder and, with a snap of the wrist, sent it noiselessly across the room and into the target. The target was his own design.

He was not interested in keeping score or hitting anything but the coin-sized black dot within a red circle the size of a baby’s face. One should not get points for coming close. One did not get points in life for coming close. Gerald St. James’s accuracy was uncanny.

Once, many years ago in Estonia, he had sat in a very damp cellar, wheezing and hiding from people who called themselves police. He had nothing to do but eat what was smuggled down to him by an old woman to whom he eventually had paid everything he owned.

In that cellar he had his knife. He kept it sharp against the jutting edges of the stone wall. For forty-one days he had thrown his knife, the knife with which he had killed the opium dealer who had tried to kill him.

That was long before he became Gerald St. James.

He had used the knife to kill the old woman. He took back the money he had given her and the bit more he found hidden in an empty grain jar in her kitchen.

Neither the boy he had been nor the man he had become ever showed anger or emotion of any kind, not that he did not feel them.

“So?” he asked, picking up another dart.

When he had exhausted his supply in the box, he would get up and retrieve the darts. He considered this the exercise his physician had prescribed for him.

“The Moscow policeman Rostnikov,” Ellen Sten said, “will discover our man in Devochka. He is capable. Our man has been careless.”

“He will not talk,” said St. James, hurling a fresh dart.

“You wish to take that chance?”

The chance was that their man would reveal how the diamonds were smuggled out of Devochka and turned over to the Botswanans in Moscow. There was no doubt now that the man who had contacted him, the Russian policeman named Yaklovev, knew about the operation, but he had no proof, no culprits to arrest and parade in court or use as chips to deal himself into a fortune. But the man had not indicated that he was interested in money. He wanted power. Others would not have believed the Russian, but St. James did. He understood. The Russian was a kindred seeker of power and approval. St. James did not intend to give him either.

Gerald St. James had carefully worked out the plan for the demise of his own network. It had outlived its usefulness and had become far too vulnerable. Devochka was only a small part of the St. James empire, a very vulnerable part. Devochka had become too elaborate. If and when it was re-established, he would see to it that it was far more simple. As it stood now, the diamonds were smuggled out of Devochka by the regularly scheduled plane to Moscow. In Moscow, the diamonds were turned over to the Botswanans, who verified their authenticity and made arrangements to safeguard their transfer to a courier who would take them to the contact in Kiev, who, in turn, would get them to Paris, where they would be transported to London. It had evolved thus. It was much too awkward. It had all been set up by a member of the Russian parliament for a steep price. It had been early in Gerald St. James’s expansion. He would never do something so full of unnecessary intrigue again. A simple transfer of diamonds to Ellen in Moscow and a quick flight on St. James’s jet, and that would be that. The present system had to end, and so too did the contacts in Devochka, Moscow, and Kiev.

“No,” said St. James. “Have him killed, but first have him eliminate any trace of what we have done in the mine.”

“Cut off our access to the pipe?” she said calmly.

“The trickle is not worth the risk. We’ll use our source to find another way to the pipe, but we’ll wait a few years. Patience. Moscow?”

“The situation is a bit messy I’m afraid,” Sten said. “Another of our Botswanans has been killed. This time by the police. That leaves two, plus the one the alcoholic Russian is holding.”

St. James shook his head before throwing the dart in his hand.

“Situations involving the kind of people we deal with will often get messy.”

“The Botswanans who are left do not know how to reach us. The one who is a hostage of the Russian. .”

“Kolokov,” she supplied.

“The Botswanan he has is our contact, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And this Kolokov is proving himself an idiot.”

“Yes,” she said. “The two remaining Botswanans seem to be planning a rescue or an exchange. It seems the police know about the planned rescue. Shall we warn Kolokov?”

He looked at her and sighed.

“No,” he said. “Let us not lose sight of our goal, which is. .”

“To end our operation in Devochka, Moscow, and Kiev and eliminate anyone with whom we have had direct business contact so that it looks as if we were not involved.”

“So that it looks as if we have been hurt by the murder and violence,” he amended. “Messy. I wonder if they ever have problems like this at DeBeers?”

“I’m confident they do,” she said.

He had at least fifteen darts left before he had to get up from his chair.

“Eliminate the enterprise,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

“How difficult will it be to replace the Botswanans?”

“Not difficult. Expensive.”

“You will have two years from the time the current enterprise is terminated till we have a new presence in Moscow. That leaves Kiev.”

“Balta is behaving rather strangely,” she said.

“Strangely? The man is mad,” said St. James, deftly letting a dart fly and missing the red circle by at least a foot. “You know what he is doing?”

“I think so,” she said. “With a man like that. .”

“A man like that,” St. James repeated, remembering a time when circumstances had briefly made him a man like Balta, with a knife as sharp.

“He plans to find the diamonds and keep the money for himself,” she said. “He has no intention I’m sure of turning over anything to the Botswanans.”

“Who will not exist in any case. Talk to Balta.”

“I doubt if it will do any good.”

“I don’t intend to reason with him. I intend to lull him into a sense of complacency.”

“And then?”

“You will arrange to get the diamonds and the money and kill Balta. That will be the last step in our temporary closure of the Russian chain. The checkmate of Yaklovev and his Office of Special Investigations.”

He paused, dart in hand, and sighed so slightly that only Ellen, who knew his every move, would have detected it.

“What is it?” she asked.

“What an asinine name. Balta.”

Six-year-old Pulcharia Tkach stood next to the sofa holding her four-year-old brother’s hand. They were dressed in their school clothes, she in a blue blouse and skirt and knee-length white socks, he in a brown shirt and trousers that were slipping. Maya stood behind them protectively. The scene looked posed. It was posed.

Sasha was immediately depressed. He smiled as broadly and sincerely as he could and stepped forward to embrace his children.

Pulcharia looked up at her mother to be sure it was all right to hug her father. Maya smiled. Pulcharia let go of her brother’s hand and rushed into the arms of Sasha, who bent to take her in. He could instantly feel the rapid beating of her heart against his chest, and, at least for an instant, his depression was replaced by a deep, painful sadness.

“Who is he?” asked Sasha’s son, looking up at his mother.

“Your father,” Maya said.

“I have a bug bite on my leg,” Pulcharia said, still hugging.

“Where?” asked Sasha, reluctantly putting her down so she could show him.

He looked at her as she rolled down the sock on her left leg. She looked painfully like her mother.

“Here.”

She pointed at a red bump.

“It itches,” she said.

“Who?” the little boy insisted, now pulling at his mother’s skirt.

“Your father,” Maya repeated patiently.

“Oh. What does a father do?”

“What have you put on it?” Sasha asked his daughter.

“Mother put something on it that Erik gave her,” said Pulcharia.

The Swede. Sasha could not stop himself from looking at his wife. Did her lips tighten? Yes.

“Erik is a sweet dish,” said the boy, turning in a circle.

“Swedish,” Pulcharia corrected.

“Your father cannot stay,” said Maya. “He has to work, and you must go to school.”

“School is cruel,” the little boy said, continuing to turn. “I have a new name.”

“What is that?” asked Sasha.

“Taras. Taras. Taras.”

The boy spun around madly.

“It is a Ukrainian name,” Maya said. “He will get over it.”

“He need not on my account,” said Sasha.

“It was my sister’s husband’s idea,” said Maya. “He thought it was funny. It is a Montagnard tribal name.”

“I like it,” Sasha lied.

“I told my friend Tula that you are a policeman and that you catch fish thieves and people who drink too much vodka and pee in the street,” said Pulcharia.

“Your father catches people who do very bad things,” Maya said. “He protects the good people of Moscow from the bad people of Moscow.”

“Good peeeeeeeople,” the little boy said. “Bad peeeeeople. Taras. Taras. Taras.”

“Your father will come back and see you again before he has to go back to Moscow and catch more bad people,” Maya said.

Was this a sign of hope?

“I will be back tonight?” he said, making it a question and not a statement.

“Tonight,” Maya said.

“For dinner?” asked Pulcharia.

“For dinner,” Maya said.

Pulcharia smiled broadly.

“Will Erik be here too?” the girl asked.

“No, not tonight.”

Pulcharia leaned toward her father and puckered her lips to be kissed. Sasha obliged.

“Taras too,” said the little boy, who ran forward, perfectly balanced in spite of his spinning.

“Seven o’clock,” said Maya.

“You are all very beautiful,” Sasha said.

“Seven,” Maya repeated.

“Why was the ghost girl naked?”

Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov asked the question as he and Emil Karpo walked down the long corridor on the first floor of the General Semyon Timoshenko apartment and office complex of Devochka.

“There was no ghost girl,” said Karpo. “Whoever wrote that false report and put it in the files of Security Chief Fyodor Rostnikov made it up.”

“Why?”

“I do not know,” said Karpo.

Porfiry Petrovich’s artificial leg made a slight clickity-clack sound on the polished concrete floor.

They moved slowly, their footsteps echoing.

Once, before they reached the cafeteria where they were to meet with Old Boris, a door opened. A woman, a bag in her hand and her hair tied in some kind of papered ringlets, stepped out, saw the two detectives, let her eyes rest for an instant on the gaunt detective clad in funereal black, and quickly ducked back through the door.

“He, or she, typed the report, including that colorful detail, and then, when we figured out that the entry was false, placed the typewriter on Fedya’s bed. Why?”

“To make him appear guilty when we found it,” said Karpo.

“He found it and told us immediately,” said Rostnikov. “If making him look guilty was their goal, they accomplished quite the opposite.”

They were almost there. Porfiry Petrovich could smell the food. If he was not wrong, it was cabbage soup. The food in Devochka was, he had discovered, surprisingly good. He glanced up at Karpo at his side.

“You think I am making this all too complex?” Rostnikov asked.

“You have historically demonstrated an intuitive ability in such situations.”

“Thank you,” said Rostnikov. “And you?”

“I have no intuition. I rely on reason alone and distrust reason only slightly less than I trust intuition. One can believe that he is acting with perfect reason only to be deluded by his own fallibility.”

“And so I ask you to apply reason to the crucial question of why the ghost girl was naked.”

“Crucial?”

They were now immediately outside of the broad wooden door to the cafeteria.

Definitely cabbage, thought Rostnikov. He hoped they also had the small Georgian crackers that went so well with cooked cabbage.

“Yes,” said Rostnikov. “The answer to the question of the naked ghost girl will tell us who our killer is.”

He pushed through the door. Karpo followed.

Definitely cabbage.

There were six people talking, laughing, and smoking at a rear table in the cafeteria, which could hold perhaps three hundred people. It had originally been built to feed the workers and their families, but gradually the people of Devochka turned more and more to cooking and eating in the privacy of their own apartments. The irony, which did not escape Rostnikov, and which had been shared by Fyodor, was that the budget for the cafeteria had remained the same for almost fifty years. The cooking staff was obliged, lest they lose their funding, to spend their allotment on nearly gourmet-level food.

They moved immediately to the immaculately clean cafeteria line where they were the only ones waiting. The manager of the cafeteria himself gave both men an extra large serving of the cabbage dish.

“And so tonight we go into the mine,” said Rostnikov.

Karpo nodded. He looked at the food piled on his plate and thought it a waste that should not be tolerated.

He had learned, however, that since the fall of the Communist state and ideology to which he had devoted his life, waste and corruption were rampant. He no longer thought that crime could be eliminated in the march toward a near-perfect state. No, the best that could be achieved was to hold the corrupt and the criminal at bay, to work without stop to keep the wall between lawful and lawless from falling under the sheer pressure of individual greed, gluttony, sloth, and occasional madness.

They sat. They ate slowly. They were well ahead of the dinner hour though they had been told that, even when that hour came, the cafeteria would not be overwhelmed.

“What have you noted about my reaction to the mine that might be relevant to our investigation?” asked Rostnikov, taking a large forkful of cabbage and meat. “This is very good.”

“You have avoided going into the mine though you have had ample opportunity. And now, since we have but one day remaining till the deadline given by Director Yaklovev, you seem to have little choice but to descend if you feel it must be done.”

“And why have I avoided the mine?” asked Rostnikov.

Karpo hesitated.

“I do not know.”

“I think you do, Emil Karpo.”

“You are afraid.”

Rostnikov pointed his fork at his associate to punctuate the accuracy of his observation.

“Tunnels,” Rostnikov said. “I have nightmares about them. I do not ride the Metro unless it is absolutely essential.”

“I have observed.”

“And the contemplation of what we will soon be doing makes me more than a bit uncomfortable.”

The contemplation, thought Karpo, did not appear to affect the appetite of Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov.

Karpo was about to say, “I am sorry,” but Rostnikov anticipated and held up the versatile fork to stop him.

“I tell you this not because I feel the need to cleanse my soul or mind, but to prepare you for what must be done should I literally or figuratively stumble in the lower depths.”

Karpo knew better than to suggest that he go alone. Rostnikov would not forgo his responsibility.

With that, Boris entered the cafeteria, looked around, and squinted at the two detectives before he saw them and moved to join them.

It was evident to both detectives, and not for the first time, that their guide into the earth had very far from perfect vision.

The pause was long. In the not great distance cars and trucks rambled, and the familiar construction sounds of discarded wood and rusted metal rattled down a chute and clanged onto the bed of a truck.

A lone car, an old Lada, came obliviously down the narrow street and stopped as a clutch of men on the left and another on the right stepped off of the narrow curb. The car came to a sudden stop. The driver, a man with many chins, pushed his head out of the window, displayed his angry pink face, and opened his mouth to shout. Then he saw the guns and the faces and registered the fact that he was being completely ignored.

There was no room to turn around. He backed up, trying to look over his shoulder. The car veered to his right and scraped a rear fender against a lamppost before successfully fading back the way it had come.

No one in the two groups now facing each other looked in the direction of the retreating car and the scratch of metal on metal.

“This is not going to be easy, is it?” called out Kolokov, stepping ahead of his three men, James Harumbaki behind him.

He was looking for someone to bargain with. No one emerged from among the six black men in front of him.

“Come. Come. Come,” Kolokov said, pacing now. “The police will be coming and we will have to start shooting and you will not get our prisoner, who will be shot, and we will not get our diamonds and no one will be happy except Pau Montez, the bald man behind me, who likes shooting people and who has expressed a particular interest in shooting our hostage.”

“Laurence,” James Harumbaki called out hoarsely.

Kolokov spun around to look at his prisoner. The Russian smiled.

A small, plump young man stepped forward into the street. He stood no more than five paces from Kolokov who turned back to face him. The Russian noted that the young man did not appear to be in the least bit frightened.

“Die or trade?” asked Kolokov.

Laurence adjusted his glasses and said nothing. He held up a cardboard box the size and shape of a large book. Kolokov held out a hand and Laurence took four more steps to hand the box to him.

From inside the doorway in which they had been standing, Akardy Zelach said, “When the shooting starts, who do we shoot?”

“If shooting is to be done,” said Iosef Rostnikov, “there will be no need for our help in doing it. What is our assignment?”

“Diamonds,” said Zelach.

“Diamonds,” Iosef agreed.

Back in the street, Kolokov removed the lid from the box and reached in to pull out a small, almost round stone with a milky luster. He held it up as if he knew what he was looking at and motioned over his shoulder. Alek stepped forward. Kolokov handed him the stone. The man held it up and he too pretended that he knew what he was looking at. Then he nodded.

“We now carefully conclude our business,” said Kolokov, backing away and putting the lid back on the box. “And no one dies.”

The bald man pushed the stumbling James Harumbaki forward.

Kolokov handed the box to the bald man and held up his hands in a sign that this confrontation was over.

But it was not.

Before he even joined the line of black men, James Harumbaki, between swollen and torn lips, said, “Kill them.”

The Africans fired first, but the Russians were quick to respond. Weapons were whipped out from under coats. Others were simply lifted and fired. It was not the bang-bang sound of television and movies, but a steady bap-bap-bap. There were no screams.

Iosef and Zelach watched as men flung their arms out, casting clattering weapons in the street. There was a pause, and then more firing. Neither side had moved forward or sought cover. Then James Harambuki’s voice called out hoarsely as he pointed at Vladimir Kolokov,

“Do not kill him.”

Two of the Russians behind Kolokov lay dead in the street. The bald man was also dead, but he sat with his back against the wall of a building. His eyes were open and he seemed to be smiling. Kolokov knelt, his right arm torn, bloody, nearly severed. He was blinking furiously.

James Harumbaki took a gun from the hand of Laurence and stepped in front of Kolokov, who spit blood and with his remaining good arm fumbled for a cigarette in his shirt pocket. He could not manage it, gave up, and looked at James Harumbaki, who looked down at him.

“I came very close,” said Kolokov.

“No, you did not,” said James Harumbaki. “Those are not real diamonds. I have a question. Answer, and you live if help comes to you in time.”

“Ask,” said Kolokov.

“Who told you that we had diamonds? Who told you where to find us when you took me and the two others you tortured and killed? Lie and you die. Tell the truth and you live.”

Kolokov started an instinctive shrug but the pain was unbearable.

He was now surrounded by black faces looking down at him.

“A woman,” Kolokov said. “I never met her. I think she was English. She called me, told me where you would be, that you would have diamonds, money.”

“Where do I find this English woman?” asked James.

Kolokov shook his head.

“I do not know. I do not know her name.”

The woman, whoever she was, had wanted to disrupt James Harumbaki’s link in the chain from Siberia to Kiev, had wanted to destroy his operation and have him and his men killed. English. Gerald St. James was English, but why would he want to destroy his own operation?

“I believe you,” said James Harumbaki, looking over his shoulder with his one, partially functioning eye.

Two Africans lay dead. A third was being tended to by Biko and another man.

James Harumbaki turned back to the kneeling Russian, who smiled through his pain and said, “We had some good chess matches.”

“No, we did not,” said James Harumbaki. “You may well be the worst chess player it has been my very bad fortune to face across a board.”

And with that he held the gun up and put it to the head of Kolokov.

“You said you would not kill me.”

“I am not,” said James Harumbaki. “You are being killed by the ghosts of two good men who you tortured to death three days ago.”

There were sirens now. Both directions. The police were coming.

“Three days? Was it only three days?” Kolokov asked as the bullet tore into his forehead.

The meeting with General Frankovich could not have gone better. Yaklovev had arrived armed with a report on the successful breakup of the diamond smuggling network that stretched from Siberia to Moscow to Kiev, and probably well beyond. He also had some audio tapes and a thick file discretely marked “Frankovich” which he placed next to himself at the conference table, where he sat next to the General. The directors of three other departments and a Kremlin representative were also at the table.

Yaklovev reported, was congratulated by the Kremlin representative and informed that the Office of Special Investigations had done an outstanding job. The Kremlin representative added that President Putin himself was going to send a letter of commendation to Yaklovev.

Throughout the meeting, General Frankovich said not one word.