Meanwhile, the little man with the melon and the briefcase was pushing his way through the crowd, muttering countless apologies in rather poor Russian, looking this way and that with his head hunched between his shoulders. He walked past one underpass, shook his head and set off towards a different one, then stopped in front of an advertising hoarding where the crush was less fierce. Clutching his things clumsily against his chest, he took out a crumpled piece of paper and started to study it closely From the look on his face he knew perfectly well he was being followed.
The three people standing next to a wall nearby were quite okay with that: a strikingly beautiful redhead in a slinky clinging silk dress, a young man in punk clothes with a bored expression in eyes that looked surprisingly old, and a rather more mature, sleek-looking man with a camp manner and long hair.
‘It doesn’t look like him,’ the young man with the old eyes said doubtfully. ‘Not like him at all. I didn’t see him for very long, and it was a long time ago, but …’
‘Perhaps you’d like to ask Djoru, just to make sure?’ the girl asked derisively. ‘I can see it’s him.’
‘You accept responsibility?’ There was no surprise or wish to argue in the young man’s voice. He was just checking.
‘Yes,’ said the girl, keeping her eyes fixed on the little man. ‘Let’s go. We’ll take him in the underpass.’
They set out unhurriedly, walking in step. Then they separated and the girl carried on walking straight ahead, while the men went off to each side.
The little man folded up his piece of paper and set off uncertainly for the underpass.
The sudden absence of other people would have surprised a Muscovite or a frequent visitor to the capital. After all, this was the shortest and easiest route from the metro to the platform of the mainline station. But the little man took no notice. He paid no attention to the people who stopped behind him as if they’d run into an invisible barrier and walked off to the other underpasses. And there was no way he could have seen that the same thing was happening at the other end of the underpass, inside the railway station.
The sleek man came towards him, smiling. The attractive young woman and the young man with an earring and torn jeans closed in on him from behind.
The little man carried on walking.
‘Hang on, Grandpa,’ the sleek man said in a friendly voice that matched his appearance – high-pitched, affected. ‘Don’t be in such a hurry.’
The Central Asian smiled and nodded, but he didn’t stop.
The sleek man made a pass with one hand, as if he was drawing a line between himself and the little man. The air shimmered and a cold breath of wind swept through the underpass. Up on the platform children started to cry and dogs to howl.
The little man stopped, looking straight ahead with a thoughtful expression. He pursed his lips, blew, and smiled cunningly at the man standing in front of him. There was a sharp, tinkling sound, like glass breaking. The sleek man’s face contorted in pain and he took a step backwards.
‘Bravo, devona,’ said the young woman, coming to a halt behind the Central Asian. ‘But now you definitely shouldn’t be in a hurry.’
‘Oh, I need to hurry, oh yes I do,’ the little man jabbered rapidly. ‘Would you like some melon, beautiful lady?’
The young woman smiled as she studied him. She made a suggestion:
‘Why don’t you come with us? We’ll sit and eat your melon, drink some tea. We’ve been waiting for you so long, it’s not polite to go running off straight away.’
The little man’s face expressed intense thought. Then he nodded:
‘Let’s go, let’s go.’
His first step knocked the sleek man off his feet. It was as if there were an invisible shield moving along in front of the little man, a wall of raging wind: the sleek man was swept along the ground with his long hair trailing behind him, his eyes screwed up in terror, a silent scream breaking from his throat.
The young punk waved his hand through the air, sending flashes of scarlet light flying at the little man. They were blindingly bright as they left his hand, but began to fade halfway to their target, and only reached the Central Asian’s back as a barely visible glimmer.
‘Uh!’ the little man said, but he didn’t stop. He twitched his shoulder blades, as if some annoying fly had landed on his back.
‘Alisa!’ the young man called, continuing his fruitless attack, working his fingers to compact the air, drawing the scarlet fire out of it and flinging it at the little man. ‘Alisa!’
The girl leaned her head to one side as she watched the Central Asian walking away. She whispered something and ran her hand across her dress. Out of nowhere a slim, transparent prism appeared in her hand.
The little man started to walk faster, swerving left and right and holding his head down strangely. The sleek man went tumbling along in front of him, no longer even attempting to cry out. His face was ragged and bleeding, his arms and legs were limp and useless, as if he hadn’t simply slid three metres across a smooth floor, but been dragged three kilometres across the rocky steppe by a wild hurricane, or behind a galloping horse.
The girl looked at the little man through the prism.
First the Central Asian started to walk more slowly. Then he groaned and unclasped his hands – the melon smashed open with a crunch against the marble floor, the briefcase fell with a soft, heavy thud.
The man whom the girl had called devona gasped.
He slumped to the floor, shuddering as he fell. His cheeks collapsed inwards, his cheekbones protruded sharply, his hands were suddenly bony, the skin covered with a network of veins. His black hair didn’t turn grey, but it was suddenly thinner and dusted with white. The air around him began to shimmer and currents of heat streamed towards Alisa.
‘What I have not given shall henceforth be mine,’ the girl hissed. ‘All that is yours is mine.’
Her face flushed with colour as rapidly as the little man’s body dried out. Her lips smacked as she whispered strange, breathy words. The punk frowned and lowered his hand – the final scarlet ray slammed into the floor, turning the stone dark.
‘Very easy,’ he said, ‘very easy.’
‘The boss was most displeased,’ said the girl, hiding the prism away in the folds of her dress. She smiled. Her face radiated a sexual energy.
‘Easy but our Kolya was unlucky.’
The punk nodded, glancing at the long-haired man’s motionless body. There was no great sympathy in his eyes, but no hostility either.
‘That’s for sure,’ he said, walking confidently towards the little man’s desiccated corpse. He ran his hand through the air above the body, which crumbled into dust. With his next pass the young man reduced the melon to a sticky mess.
‘The briefcase,’ said the girl. ‘Check the briefcase.’
Another wave of his hand, and the worn imitation leather cracked apart and the briefcase fell open, like an oyster shell under the knife of an experienced pearl-diver. But to judge from the young man’s expression, the pearl he’d been expecting wasn’t there. Two clean changes of underwear, a pair of cheap cotton tracksuit bottoms, a white shirt, rubber sandals in a plastic bag, a polystyrene cup with dried Korean noodles, a spectacles case.