All or nothing of this; and already the figure was retiring into hiding beyond the 
tree, its wounded head brushing the branches as it went. A drizzle of petals fluttered 
onto its charcoal shoulders.
    "Did you hear me?" said the voice at his back. The thief didn't turn. He went on 
staring at the tree, narrowing his eyes, attempting to separate substance from illusion. 
But the man, whoever he was, had gone. It could not have been the Russian, of course; 
reason proclaimed against it. Vasiliev was dead, found with his face down in the filth of 
a sewer. His body was probably already on its way to some far-flung outpost of the 
Russian empire. He wasn't here; he couldn't be here. But the thief felt an urgent need to 
pursue the stranger nevertheless, just to tap his shoulder, to have him turn round, to 
look into his face and verify that it was not Konstantin. Too late already; the 
questioner behind him had taken fierce hold of his arm, and was demanding an answer. The 
branches of the tree had stopped shaking, the petals had stopped falling, the man was 
away.
    Sighing, the thief turned to his interrogator.
    The figure in front of him was smiling a welcome. It was a woman, despite the rasp of 
the voice, dressed in oversized trousers, tied with a rope, but otherwise naked. Her head 
was shaved; her toenails lacquered. All this he took in with senses heightened from the 
shock of the tree, and from the pleasure of her nudity. The sheened globes of her breasts 
were perfect. He felt his fists opening, the palms tingling to touch them. But perhaps 
his appraisal of the body was too frank. He glanced back up at her face to see if she was 
still smiling. She was; but his gaze lingered on her face this time, and he realized that 
what he'd taken to be a smile was a permanent fixture. Her lips had been sliced off, 
exposing gums and teeth. There were ghastly scars on her cheeks, the remains of wounds 
that had severed the tendons and induced a rictus that teased her mouth open. Her look 
appalled him.
    "You want . . . ?" she began.
    Want? he thought, his eyes flicking back to the breasts. Her casual nudity aroused 
him, despite the mutilation of her face. He was disgusted with the idea of taking her-to 
kiss that lipless mouth was more than orgasm was worth-and yet if she offered he'd 
accept, and damn the disgust.
    "You want . . . ?" she began again, in that slurred hybrid of a voice, neither male 
nor female. It was difficult for her to shape and expel words without the aid of lips. 
She got the rest of the question out, however. "You want the cards?" He'd missed the 
point entirely. She had no interest in him, sexual or otherwise. She was simply a 
messenger. Mamoulian was here. Within spitting distance, probably. Perhaps watching him 
even now.
    But the confusion of emotions in him blurred the elation he should have felt at this 
moment. Instead of triumph, he grappled with a headful of contrary images: blossom, 
breasts, darkness; the burned man's face, turning too briefly toward him; lust, fear; a 
single star appearing from a flank of cloud. Hardly thinking of what he was saying, he 
replied: "Yes. I want the cards." She nodded, turned away from him, and started past the 
tree, its branches still rocking where the man who was not Vasiliev had touched them, and 
crossed the square. He followed. It was possible to forget this go-between's face while 
looking at the grace of her barefooted steps. She didn't seem to care what she trod on. 
Not once did she falter, despite the glass, brick and shrapnel underfoot.
    She led him across to the remains of a large house on the opposite side of the 
square. Its ravaged exterior, once impressive, still stood; there was even a doorway in 
it, though no door. Through it, the light of a bonfire flickered. Rubble from the 
interior spilled through the doorway and blocked the lower half, obliging both woman and 
thief to duck down and scramble up into the house itself. In the gloom the sleeve of his 
coat snagged on something; the cloth tore. She didn't turn to see if he was hurt, though 
he cursed audibly. She simply led on over the mounds of brick and fallen roof timbers 
while he stumbled after her, feeling ridiculously clumsy. By the light of the bonfire he 
could see the size of the interior; this had once been a fine house. There was little 
time for study, however. The woman was past the fire now, and climbing toward a 
staircase. He followed, sweating. The fire spat; he glanced around at it, and glimpsed 
somebody on the far side, keeping out of sight behind the flames. Even as he watched, the 
fire keeper threw more tinder down, and a constellation of livid specks was thrown up 
against the sky.
    The woman was climbing the stairs. He hurried after her, his shadow-thrown by the 
fire-huge on the wall. She was at the top of the stairs when he was halfway up, and now 
she was slipping through a second doorway and gone. He followed on as quickly as he 
could, and turned through the doorway after her.
    The firelight only found its way fitfully into the room he'd stepped into, and he 
could scarcely make anything out at first.
    "Close the door," somebody asked. It took him a few beats to realize that the request 
was being made of him. He half-turned, fumbled for the handle, found that there was none, 
and pushed the door closed on aching hinges.
    That done, he looked back into the room. The woman was standing two or three yards in 
front of him, her perpetually amused face looking at him, the smile a gray sickle.
    "Your coat," she said, and stretched out her hands to help him shoulder it off. Once 
done, she stepped out of his eyeline, and the object of his long search came into view.
    It was not Mamoulian, however, that took his eye at first. It was the carved wooden 
altar piece set against the wall behind him, a Gothic masterwork which blazed, even in 
the gloom, with gold and scarlet and blue. Spoils of war, the thief thought; so that's 
what the bastard does with his fortune. Now he looked at the figure in front of the 
triptych. A single wick, immersed in oil, guttered smokily on the table at which he sat. 
The illumination it threw up on to the card-player's face was bright but unstable.
    "So, Pilgrim," the man said, "you found me. Finally." "You found me, surely," the 
thief replied; it had been as Vasiliev had predicted.
    "You fancy a game or two, I hear. Is that right?" "Why not?" He tried to sound as 
nonchalant as possible, though his heart was beating a double tattoo in his chest. Coming 
into the card-player's presence, he felt pitifully unprepared. Sweat glued his hair to 
his forehead; there was brick dust on his hands and muck under his nails: I must look, he 
squirmed, like the thief I am.
    By contrast, Mamoulian was a picture of propriety. There was nothing in the sober 
clothes-the black tie, the gray suit-that suggested a profiteer: he appeared, this 
legend, like a stockbroker. His face, like his dress, was unrepentantly plain, its taut 
and finely etched skin waxen by the charmless oil flame. He looked sixty or thereabouts, 
cheeks slightly hollowed, nose large, aristocratic; brow wide and high. His hair had 
receded to the back of his skull; what remained was feathery and white. But there was 
neither frailty nor fatigue in his posture. He sat upright in his chair, and his agile 
hands fanned and gathered a pack of cards with loving familiarity. Only his eyes belonged 
to the thief's dream of him. No stockbroker ever had such naked eyes. Such glacial, 
unforgiving eyes.
    "I hoped you'd come, Pilgrim. Sooner or later," he said. His English was without 
inflection.
    "Am I late?" the thief asked, half-joking.
    Mamoulian laid the cards down. He seemed to take the inquiry quite seriously. "We'll