He settled back on the bench, eyes tracing the sidewalks. It wasn’t their Good Friday, but knowing his brother, Zivon would attend a Mass today anyway. If he was in Paris, as he surely was, then he’d be in this neighborhood, the one they’d agreed to meet up in. He’d have found a cheap little room, and a neighbor would have invited him to join him at the local parish. Zivon, always happy for a little more religious activity, would have accepted.

Evgeni had never understood it. How could his brother not see how archaic religion was? How it tried to force outdated traditions onto a humanity that had outgrown it? He’d never understood it, but he appreciated it now. It made Zivon predictable, and that was exactly what he needed in order to find him.

His eyes passed over the parishioners aimed for the church to the street corner beyond. His next stop—if he didn’t find Zivon here at the Church of St-Gervais-et-St-Protais—would be the bookshop a few streets over. It would have been Evgeni’s first stop, had it not been farther from the métro. But he’d come upon the church first, and the bench had beckoned, and his ribs had been screaming, so . . . If Zivon had left him a note there, then another half hour would not change its presence. And if he could just find his brother directly, that would be better.

Find your brother. He hadn’t needed the instruction from Nadya to know that was the most important thing he could do, now that he was out of hospital. Find Zivon. Hope he had possession of Evgeni’s belongings, including the photograph the Prussian had pressed to his hand at the water stop. Keep his brother from doing anything stupid.

Why hadn’t Zivon just left on his own? Why had he stopped first to locate Evgeni and convince him to flee as well? A breeze blew, and he turned his face into it, but it couldn’t wipe away the frustration. Zivon could never just trust him, leave him to his own devices. He always had to play the big brother, telling Evgeni where to go, what to do, how to think.

Never listening. Never entertaining the notion that he could be wrong.

But it didn’t matter, did it?

The church door swung outward, a black-frocked priest pushing the massive wooden slab wide in invitation. It was a lovely spring day; it seemed he’d decided to prop it open. And just in time too. When the father looked up, it was with a hand lifted in greeting to a couple walking his way.