Vanga stared at the old man.
“You read my mind. I thought you didn’t believe in such things.”
“I didn’t read your mind,” said Tikon Tayumvat. “It was the logical thing to think under the circumstances.”
And the logical thing to think now, thought Andrei Vanga, is that I wish you were dead.
“I soon will be,” said the old man, still looking out the window. “But there is a very real chance that you will go first.”
“Try again,” Nadia Spectorski said, sitting across from Zelach in her laboratory, a stack of photographs, facedown, in front of her. “Or, rather, don’t try, just close your eyes and tell me what you see.”
“I would prefer to keep my eyes open,” he said.
“Then open. Do you see anything?”
“You. This room. No more.”
She picked up a photograph and looked at it. It was a white telephone on a black table.
“What am I looking at?”
“A photograph.”
“Of what?”
“I don’t know.”
She adjusted her glasses and Zelach did the same. He would not survive a battle of wits with this woman. I am, he told himself, going to become a test mouse or a monkey doing tricks. No, Porfiry Petrovich will save me from this. He must save me.
“You are supposed to cooperate,” she said evenly.
“I am,” said Zelach, slouching in the chair as best he could.
“Then what is …”
She stopped. It was she who saw two quick, very quick, almost subliminal images. The first was of Andrei Vanga sitting next to Emil Karpo. Vanga was definitely frightened. The second was of her sitting in the office of the director, behind the desk, talking to … someone.
“Are you all right?” asked Zelach.
“Yes,” she said.
“You saw something?”
“Yes. Did you see it?”
“No. Dr. Spectorski, I do not want to do this.”
She sat back, took off her glasses, rubbed her forehead with one finger, and closed her eyes.
“Then,” she said, “it will end.”
When she opened her eyes, Zelach was looking at her in a way few men had done in the past.
“End?” asked Zelach.
“My-if you don’t want to proceed, you should not have to do so. I think you are a good man who doesn’t want to or have to be turned into a research phenomenon.”
“Why have you changed your mind?”
“I don’t know,” she said, removing her glasses and placing them on the table. “May I ask you a question?”
“What?”
“Would you … I’ve never done anything like this before … would you go out for some coffee and cake with me? I will pay. If you say no, I will understand.”
“I say yes,” said Akardy Zelach. “And can we not talk about … this?” he asked, looking around the room and at the photographs.
“We will talk of other things,” she said with a smile.
Zelach thought she had a most wonderful smile.
Valery Grachev existed no longer. There was only Kon. He had changed his mind after talking to the old man from whom he bought the shirts. He would only truly become a king if he were to survive to claim victory. An attack doomed to defeat had its compensations, but it did not create a king.
The bus, green and slow, made many stops. Each stop was painful. A sudden jerk and stoy, “stop.” And it also hurt when the bus moved again. The bullet, he was sure, was still inside him. He was sure he could feel it. He could certainly imagine it, a small distortion of metal making its way through his blood, finding and jabbing into a pulsing organ.
The bus was not crowded, but it was far from empty. He had moved to the rear, covered his bleeding wound as well as he could, and gripped the top of the empty seat in front of him.
When he finally got off the bus, arms folded in front of him as if he had a chill, he staggered. Soon, he feared, fevered hallucinations would come. They would have to wait. The bus door closed and he knew the driver and the passengers on this side were looking at this young drunk as he moved down the street.
Will yourself to keep moving, he told himself. Your will can carry you through. Your will power. It can be done. You cannot quit before the game is ended.
He couldn’t go home. He couldn’t go to work. He did not have enough money left to buy bandages or a fresh jacket or shirt to cover his wound. And he certainly could not go to a hospital. He went the only place he could.
“You want to buy a bicycle?” the shopkeeper said.
“Yes,” said Valery Grachev.
“I think you’re sick,” said the man, one hand on the wheel of the upside-down bicycle in front of him. “I think you have a fever and should go to the hospital.”
“You want to sell a bicycle?”
“Yes, but I don’t think you can drive one.”
“That is the concern of Kon, not yours.”
“Kon?”
“Yes, will you sell me a bicycle, now?”
The shopkeeper had a weak heart and no stomach for trouble. “How much can you afford?”
Kon shook his head and smiled.
“Price is no concern,” he said. “Something simple, no gears.”
The man moved down the aisle and selected a bicycle from the many lined up on both sides.
“This?” he asked, pointing to a bicycle.
“Fine, perfect. I’ll take it.”
“It will cost you …”
“I don’t care. I told you, Kon doesn’t care.”
The shopkeeper shrugged. “You need to know so you can pay me,” he said.
“I have no money with me. When I return, I’ll pay you double whatever you ask.”
“I don’t think …”
“You do not have to think. Kon is thinking. I’ve been renting that closet from you for months. You have overcharged me. Have I ever missed a payment? Ever?”
“No, but …”
“I’m taking the bicycle. I have no time to argue.”
“Take it. You’ll pay today?”
“And for the rest of my life,” said Valery Grachev.
The shopkeeper returned to his work. The man was drunk, in a fever, or crazy, or all of these, but he was surely trouble. He heard the man go to the closet, open it, make some noise. Then the man moved slowly to the bicycle, pulled it out of the line, and wheeled it past the shopkeeper. There was now a very large and clearly very heavy backpack strapped over the shoulders of the man who was now calling himself Kon.
The shopkeeper watched as the man struggled to get on the bicycle, the pack on his back heavy and awkward. Finally, he succeeded and managed to drive away down the street.
Fortunately, the bike he had given his customer was one he had been trying to get rid of for two years. It was fortunate because the shopkeeper had a feeling that he would not be seeing this young man again.
A man fitting the description of the one who had shot at Sasha and killed Yuri Kriskov had been reported to a policeman on the embankment of the Moscow River, across from the Kremlin. The policeman had been directing traffic when a man and woman approached him and said that a bleeding man was weaving back and forth on his bicycle and talking to himself. The policeman had nodded professionally, checked the traffic, and moved to the police phone station across the street to call in the report and then go back to directing traffic. The policeman thought little of the report, but he had learned that he should cover his back if he were to survive and possibly some day escape dodging maniacs in red cars. He had reported. He was done.
The report had been taken by a desk clerk who had just received a copy of the description of a Valery Grachev. Grachev, the report said, was dangerous, armed, and probably wounded. The clerk, like the policeman directing traffic, did not wish to lose his job should anything come of this coincidence, should it be but a coincidence, which was likely. The clerk had a wife, a grown daughter, and a gambling habit that required his small but steady salary. He picked up the phone and called the sighting of the wounded bicyclist in to Petrovka, suggesting that it be passed on immediately to the officers investigating the man named Grachev.