He’d been a remittance man too, back in the thirties, and the most maniacal, systemless chess player in Central Asia. His tastes ran low enough to include even blindfold chess, which Russian sensibilities find unutterably gross. Tchitcherine sat down at the board each time more upset than the last, trying to be amiable, to jolly the madman into some kind of rational play. Most often he’d lose. But it was either Mravenko or the Semirechie winter.

“Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

Mravenko laughed. “Does anybody? Molotov isn’t telling Vishinsky. But they know things about you. Remember the Kirghiz Light? Sure you do. Well, they found out about that. I didn’t tell them, but they got to somebody.”

“It’s ancient history. Why bring it up now?”

“You’re regarded as ‘useful,’” Mravenko said.

They looked at each other, then, for a long time. It was a death sentence. Usefulness out here ends as quickly as a communiqué. Mravenko was afraid, and not entirely for Tchitcherine, either.

“What will you do, Mravenko?”

“Try not to be very useful. They’re not perfect, though.” Both men knew this was meant to be comfort, and isn’t working too well. “They don’t really know what makes you useful. They go on statistics. I don’t think you were supposed to survive the War. When you did, they had to look at you more closely.”

“Maybe I’ll survive this, too.” And that was when he got the idea of flying to Moscow. But just about then word came in that Weissmann’s battery couldn’t be traced any further than the Heath. And the renewed hope of meeting Enzian stopped him from going—the seductive hope that’s leading him further each day from any chance of continuing on past the other side of that meeting. He never supposed he would. The real question is: will they get him before he gets Enzian? All he needs is a little more time… his only hope is if they’re looking for Enzian too, or the S-Gerät, and using him the same way he thinks he’s using Slothrop….

The horizon is still clear: has been all day. Cypress-shaped junipers stand in the rust and hazy distances, still as monuments. The first purple flowers are showing on the heather. It is not the busy peace of late summer, but the peace of a burial ground. Among the prehistoric German tribes, that’s what this country was: the territory of the dead.