The Russians tumbled into the apartment, quickly got to their feet again, and looked around for any sign of the woman. Vujnovich pointed Bogatinoff toward the kitchen while he stepped down the narrow hallway to the closed bedroom door.

Goldman was getting her bearings. The bedroom was bare and Spartan with little more than a large water bed and a dresser piled high with clothes. The closet against the near wall wouldn’t offer any protection. That’s the first place they would look and they would have her cornered with no room to fight back.

Then she spotted the sliding glass door that led outside, onto a small patio. She stepped that way and looked out.

The tiny patio jutted out from the wall. There was an old, rusted portable grill there. Otherwise it was empty. It had a small, waist-high wall around it with a couple of dead potted plants sitting on it. Then there was nothing more than thirty-nine floors’ worth of air between her and the early-evening traffic way down below on First Avenue.

There was no place else to go. Maybe she could hide out there until help came. She was determined not to face the cold-blooded Russians again if she could help it.

She slid the glass door open and stepped out onto the tiny platform. A chill wind blew in off the river, cutting through her flimsy dress. She could see down onto the United Nations complex and up First Avenue to the north. She slid the door shut behind her and huddled against the cement wall, out of sight, clutching the feeble little paring knife in her hand. She prayed she wouldn’t have to defend herself with such a poor weapon.

The bedroom door flew open, its hinges separating from the jamb, the latch flying all the way across the room to slam hard into the sliding glass door.

Josef Bogatinoff fell into the room. His momentum was stopped when he crashed into the water bed frame with his shins. He rubbed them and angrily kicked the frame. Nicholas Vujnovich followed behind the other big Russian. He held his Glock out and ready. They looked around the empty room.

“Where is the bitch?” Vujnovich growled. “She had to run in here to have locked the door behind her. She has to be here someplace.”

He tore open the closet door. Nothing in there but identical blue suits and starched white shirts. He ripped them off their hangers until he was satisfied no one could be crouching behind them.

Bogatinoff tapped him on the shoulder and pointed at the sliding glass door with the barrel of his pistol. Vujnovich nodded and signaled for Bogatinoff to stand ready while he opened it.

He yanked the door open so Bogatinoff could spring out onto the patio.