Watching the cyclist weave away, Marcus realized another strange thing. “How come there are no jokers?”

“In cities,” Olena said, eyes scanning the crowd, “they are not welcome.”

A mother shouldered past them, crying baby clutched to her chest and an older child dragged behind her. The child, seeing Marcus, went wild-eyed and began crying. Olena caught the woman by the arm and spoke a rapid barrage of Russian words that meant nothing to Marcus. The woman tried to pull away, but Olena pleaded. Reluctantly, the woman answered, speaking even faster than Olena. She yanked her arm away and strode off, her baby crying all the louder.

“What did she say?” Marcus asked.

“Nothing that makes sense,” Olena said. “She said the police are killing people. That Allah has turned his hand and—”

A car slammed into a lamppost beside them. The driver’s head smashed against the windshield, cracking it and leaving the driver bloody and unconscious.

“Jesus!” Marcus cried. “What’s going on?”

Olena finished her sentence, “—we are to be tested.” She looked at Marcus for the first time since they’d entered the chaos. “Marcus, you look horrible. You’re paling. I didn’t know you could, but … You’ve lost too much blood.”

“Don’t start talking about the hospital again.”

She exhaled. “We need to find someplace where they will help you. Away from here. We need to find it fast.” She glanced around, lips pressed together in thought. Her gaze settled on a truck that had just pulled onto the street. “I’ll be right back.”

“What? Where you going?” Marcus asked.

Pulling the Glock from her belt, Olena stepped into the street, heading toward the truck.

Just how in the hell, Detective Francis Xavier Black asked himself, did he come to find himself in an elevator on the fourth floor of a Kazakh hospital while a cold breeze brushed his skinny ass exposed by his hospital gown?

Because someone stuck a gun in your face, and suggested you’d like to investigate the screaming.

The someone in question was one of the three thugs employed by the Russian crime boss Baba Yaga. Of course when you say “crime boss” the image of a wizened eighty-something-year-old woman with impossibly red hair didn’t spring to mind. But once he’d looked in Baba Yaga’s cold grey eyes Franny had no doubt about her ruthlessness or her resolve. She’d have her goons gun him down like a dog if he didn’t comply.

Franny had been staring at his image in the bathroom mirror noting that his eyes seemed more bloodshot than blue, that he had two days’ growth of dark beard and his black hair formed greasy spikes. He was wondering when he’d be allowed to take a shower when a guy “no taller than a lamppost, and no wider than a beer truck” had dragged him out of the room. The fact the gorilla was wearing a two-thousand-dollar suit was offset by the fact he clearly wasn’t a big fan of showers. The man’s B.O. was like a wave proceeding them down the hall.