I tried to pick my daughter up. But she was clearly far more interested in the cartoons on TV, a squeaky “La-la-la, la-la, la-la-la” coming from the sitting room. She had done her duty as a daughter: Daddy had been met when he came back from work and nothing interesting had been discovered in his hands or his pockets.
So little Nadya deftly slipped out of my arms and made a dash for the TV.
I took off my shoes, tossed the Autopilot magazine that I had bought on the way home onto the shoe stand, and walked through into the sitting room, patting my daughter on the head along the way. Nadya waved her arms about-I was blocking her view of the screen, on which a blue moose with only one antler was hurtling downhill on skis.
Svetlana glanced out of the kitchen and looked at me intently. She said, “Hmm!” and disappeared again.
Abandoning any attempts to fulfill my paternal functions until better times, I walked into the kitchen. Svetlana was making soup. I’ve never been able to understand why women spend so much time at the stove. What takes so long to do there? Toss the meat or the chicken into the water, switch on the burner, and it boils itself. An hour later drop in the macaroni or potatoes, add a few vegetables-and your food’s ready. Well, you mustn’t forget to salt it-that’s the most difficult part.
“Will you pack your own suitcase?” Svetlana asked without turning around.
“Did Gesar call?”
“No.”
“Did you look into the future?”
“I promised you I wouldn’t do that without permission…” Svetlana paused for a moment because I had gone up to her from behind and kissed her on the neck. “Or unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
“Then why did you ask about the suitcase?”
“Anton, if you come home from work during the day, then I go to bed alone in the evening. They’re either sending you out on watch or away somewhere on an assignment. But you were on watch two days ago, and the city’s calm at the moment…”
Nadya laughed in the sitting room. I glanced in through the door: The moose on skis was hurtling wide-eyed straight toward a line of small and obviously young animals, who were walking along the edge of a precipice. Oh, it was going to be a real disaster!
“Sveta, are you sure Nadya should be watching cartoons like that?”
“She watches the news,” Svetlana replied calmly. “Don’t avoid the issue. What’s happened?”
“I’m going to Samarkand.”
“Your assignments do take you to some interesting places,” Svetlana said. She scooped up a spoonful of soup, blew on it, and tasted it. “Not enough salt… What’s happened out there?”
“Nothing. Nothing yet.”
“The poor Uzbeks. Once you get there, something’s bound to happen.”
“Gesar held a meeting today. With the Higher Ones and the first-level…”
I told Svetlana briefly about everything we had discussed. To my surprise, there was no reaction to the idea that from now on Nadya would be guarded in secret by two Light and two Dark Magicians. Or rather, the reaction was exactly what Olga had forecast it would be.
“Well, good for Gesar! I was thinking about ringing him myself…to ask for protection.”
“You’re serious? You’ll allow it?”
Svetlana looked at me and nodded. Then she added, “While I’m with her, Nadya’s in no danger. Believe me, I’ll make mincemeat of any three Higher Ones. But it’s best to take precautions. When’s your flight?”
“In five hours. From Sheremetievo.”
“Semyon will get you there in an hour. So you still have two hours left. You can have something to eat, then we’ll pack your things. How long are you going to be there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then how much underwear and how many pairs of socks shall I put in?” Svetlana asked reasonably. “I can’t imagine you washing anything while you’re away.”
“I’ll buy new ones and throw the old ones away. Gesar promised to give me heaps of money.”
“I wonder how much ‘heaps’ is for him,” Svetlana replied doubtfully. “I’ll pack five pair of underwear. Sit down at the table, I’m serving the soup.”
“Daddy!” Nadya called from the sitting room.
“What, my little daughter?” I answered.
“Daddy, will Uncle Afandi give me the beads for a present?”
Svetlana and I looked at each other, then walked quickly into the sitting room. Our daughter was still watching the cartoons. The screen showed a group of different-colored animals gathered around a campfire.
“What uncle do you mean, Nadya?”
“Uncle Afandi,” said our daughter again, without looking away from the screen.
“Who’s Afandi?” Svetlana asked patiently.
“What beads?” I asked.
“The man Daddy’s going to see,” Nadya told us, with that how-stupid-you-grown-ups-are! intonation. “And the beads are blue. They’re beautiful.”
“How do you know who Daddy’s going to see?” asked Svetlana, continuing the interrogation.
“You were just talking about it,” Nadya replied calmly.
“No, we weren’t,” I objected. “We were talking about me going on an assignment to Uzbekistan. That’s a beautiful country in the East. Gesar used to live there once. Do you remember Uncle Gesar? But we didn’t say anything about an Afandi.”
“I must have misheard, then,” Nadya replied. “There isn’t any uncle.”
Svetlana shook her head and looked at me reproachfully. I shrugged: OK, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have butted in. Mommy would have got a lot more out of her.
“But the beads are real anyway,” Nadya suddenly added inconsistently. “You bring them, all right?”
There was no point in asking any more about Uncle Afandi. Nadya had had “fits” of clairvoyance ever since she was three, if not two. But she was absolutely unaware that she was prophesying, and as soon as you started asking “How do you know that?” she clammed up.
“My fault,” I confessed. “Sorry, Sveta.”
We went back to the kitchen. Svetlana poured me some soup without saying a word, sliced the bread, and handed me a spoon. It sometimes seems to me that she plays the role of a perfectly ordinary wife with emphatic irony. But after all, it was her choice. Gesar would be absolutely delighted if Svetlana came back to the Watch.
“Rustam has had a lot of names…is that what Gesar said?” Svetlana asked thoughtfully.
“Uh-huh,” I said, slurping my soup.
“We can assume that now he’s called Afandi.”
“Anything’s possible.” I wasn’t exactly counting on it, but in my situation I couldn’t afford to ignore even the slimmest lead. “I’ll ask around.”
“It’s good that Alisher will be with you,” Svetlana observed. “You let him do the talking as often as possible. The East is a subtle business.”
“Now, there’s an original thought…,” I said sourly. “Sorry. I’ve been hearing wise thoughts about the East all day long today. The rivers of eloquence have already flooded the lake of my awareness, O Turkish delight of my heart!”
“Daddy, bring back some Turks and some delight!” my daughter called out immediately.
I didn’t meet Alisher often at work. He preferred working in the field-he was always out on patrol and usually only appeared in the office in the morning, with his eyes red from lack of sleep. I once heard that he was having an affair with some girl from the accounts department, and I knew he was a seventh-level Other, but apart from that I knew very little about him. He was naturally reserved, and I don’t like to force my friendship on anyone.
However, Semyon seemed to be on friendlier terms with him. When I went down and got into the car, Semyon was just finishing telling a joke. As I sat beside him, he was leaning back over his seat and saying, “All right, Daddy, let’s go the long way around. Bring me a little scarlet flower, please!”
Alisher laughed first and then held his hand out to me.
“Hi, Anton.”
“Hi, Alisher.” I shook his hand and passed my bag back to him. “Dump it on the backseat, I don’t want to bother with the trunk.”