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When's he back?' I asked.

Sometime tomorrow.' She shrugged and I had a fine view of her plunging cleavage.

I have to go back to Moscow tomorrow evening,' I said. To pick up my car. They've sent the part I was waiting for. I'm catching the overnight train.'

When you're there, maybe you can find some aspirin,' she said. There's none in any of the local pharmacies.'

Anything else?'

Well, we could always use some lightbulbs, live or dead. Even the duds are getting hard to find.'

It was an old dodge: people would swap the duds with functioning bulbs at their place of work.

I'm not so sure about that,' I joked. They used to call that wreckinga__ under Article 69.'

What it is to have a cop around the house,' she laughed. All right. I'll watch breakfast television and see what the latest shortages are. But really, with Porfiry away so much, it is nice to have you here. There are so many robberies around here these days.'

Maybe if the corridors weren't so dark,' I said pointedly, muggers would get less of a chance. But with people taking the lightbulbs.'

We talked for a while longer until finally Katerina said goodnight and I was at last able to unfold the sofa bed. This wasn't particularly comfortable but I slept well enough, which was more than Grushko could have said. The next morning, on my return to the Big House, I could see that he hadn't been to bed at all. Not long after returning home Grushko had received a call from Sasha informing him that a militiaman on duty at the Moskow Hotel had spotted Pyotr Mogilnikov in the lobby.

16

Two stops on the metro west of the city centre and overlooking the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, the Moskow Hotel has the shape and character of a communal-sized nuclear bomb-shelter. With nothing to distinguish the place architecturally, it is chiefly remarkable for the number of hard-currency prostitutes hanging around the doorway and the lobby, as well as for the Finnish drinking parties that arrive on the ferry from Helsinki every weekend. The prostitutes and the drunken Finns often end up together and it is commonly held that they deserve each other.

Grushko regarded the Moskow and its attendant dollar-hungry girls with obvious distaste. Like many men with grownup daughters, albeit one who earlier that same evening had announced her intention to emigrate to America, Gruskho had been shocked at a recent survey conducted among teenage Russian girls that revealed that being a hard-currency prostitute was regarded as one of the most attractive professions open to a girl.

Grushko and Sasha shoved their way past the vixen-pack waiting patiently between the hotel's double doors and entered the huge lobby, looking around for the militiaman who had summoned them. They spotted him crossing the marble floor, half-saluting as he came towards them, his thick, sinewy neck bulging over the blue collar of his uniform's shirt.

Your suspect was in the restaurant when I phoned,' explained the militiaman, who was a sergeant. But now he's gone into the amusement arcade. One of my lads is keeping an eye on him. I'd have arrested him myself, but I thought I should speak to you first.'

The three of them started towards an open flight of stairs that led up to the huge dining-hall and, beyond, the slot-machines.

What had sounded like the band at a circus was now revealed as the cabaret orchestra. On a brightly lit stage a troupe of dancing girls, wearing only G-strings under short Circassian-style red shirts, were going through their paces with all the artistic grace of a detachment of soldiers guarding Lenin's tomb. Waiters hurried to ignore their troublesome, often paralytically drunk customers, while pimps shifted between tables, finding clients and recovering percentages from prostitutes before returning to the Vegas-style amusement arcade.

To Grushko's tired eyes, it seemed a millennially decadent sight and he would not have been much surprised to have seen a hand appear in the smoky air to write the words of some prophecy on the strobe-lit wall. What bothered him most was the sight of so much food, with much of it going to waste, disregarded or rejected by those who had ordered it with hardly a second thought for whether they were actually hungry or not, while outside in the city at large the shops were empty and people queued hours to buy a loaf of bread.

Look at this swamp,' he muttered. God knows we need the hard currency, but we shouldn't have to sell our souls for it.'

This way, sir,' said Sasha.

The amusement arcade was full of people, most of them Russian, and all of them frantically feeding tokens into machines as if they too had seen the writing on the wall. They came from all over the old Soviet Union. There were agricultural engineers from Kharkov, steel workers from Magnitogorsk, timber merchants from Novosibirsk, miners from Irkutsk and teachers from Habarovsk: Siberians, Ukrainians, Tazaks, Armenians and Uzbeks Intourist travellers paying their first and only visit to the cultural and historical capital, pilgrims come to see the treasures of the Hermitage and the tombs of the tsars. But mostly they came to peer through Peter's grimy window on the West and to grab a two-week ersatz version of it for themselves.

The militia sergeant accompanying Grushko and Sasha caught his colleague's eye, followed it to a bank of fruit machines, and then drew Grushko's attention to a man sitting on a stool who was pumping coins into the slot from a paper cup that was resting in his lap. He was wearing jeans, a blue track-suit top and he had a pale, sharp-looking face. A cigarette hung like a referee's whistle on the man's grey and pendulous lower lip. It was Pyotr Mogilnikov.

As Grushko started forward he saw the second man. Or rather he saw the light catch on the knife that the man was holding close to his thigh. His was a darker-looking face with heavy brows, a long broad nose and a full Stalin-style moustache. The man advanced steadily on Mogilnikov's back and as the knife began its deadly ascent, Grushko drew his gun.

Drop that feather,' he yelled.

The man with the knife turned and saw the huge Makarov automatic in Grushko's hand. Mogilnikov turned on his stool and saw the Georgian with the knife at the very same moment that the machine he had been feeding so assiduously hit the jackpot. It was just enough distraction to enable Mogilnikov to make his getaway. He shoved the Georgian backwards and bolted towards the restaurant. Seeing the shower of descending coins deserted by their winner, other gamblers struggled to get their hands on the payout and, in the ensuing melee, the Georgian made for the back door. Grushko did not dare to fire. It was not that he worried about missing the Georgian, so much as he knew a .45 calibre bullet might pass straight through the man's body and hit an innocent bystander. Sasha had already chased after Mogilnikov and that left Grushko struggling to get through the crowd of gamblers and then the back door in pursuit of the man with the knife.

Arriving outside he glanced north along the side of the river, and then across the bridge. There was no sign of the Georgian and so he started to run round the front of the hotel. Still holding the big gun in his hand, he jogged carefully through the taxi rank, checking between the cars as he came and scanning the other side of the square and the gate of the monastery. At the corner of Nevsky Prospekt he stopped and, still seeing no sign of the Georgian, he began to retrace his steps. There was only the Metro station left to try.

Grushko came through the heavy glass doors and stopped by a busker who was collecting up the few roubles and copecks he had found in his guitar case.

Did you see a man run in here just now?' he said.

The busker caught sight of the gun in Grushko's hand and for several seconds he was too scared to do anything but open and close his mouth soundlessly.

What sort of man?' he finally stammered.

Grushko shook his head impatiently, vaulted the barrier and then jogged to the top of the huge and empty escalators. A wind stirred his hair and cooled his face pleasantly as he stopped there to decide his next move. With no one coming up, he doubted that a train could have come and gone. If the Georgian had gone into the Metro, he was probably still down there.