“One of the Jokertown cops was with her. He felt her pulse and confirmed it. She’s dead, Olena. Go with your dad if you want, but don’t say it’s because of her.”

Olena was silent for a moment, and then said, “That changes everything.”

A few minutes—and increasingly annoyed shouts—later, Marcus and Olena rejoined the gangsters.

“There’s a change of plans,” Olena said.

“No change of plans,” Vasel said. The coin danced on his fingers.

“Baba Yaga is dead,” she went on. “Marcus killed her. Police confirmed it.”

The coin stopped, pinched between two fingers. “I’ve heard nothing of this.”

“Not Kazakh police. American. One of those that brought down the casino. She’s dead, Papa. That means everything is changed. When we talked you asked me questions. Had I been in Baba Yaga’s office? Could I describe how to get to it? There’s something in there that you want. Something that you know looters won’t even notice. Marcus and I know the place from the inside. We can get whatever it is you want. In exchange, you let us go. Me and him together.” She crossed her arms. “See? Change of plans.”

At least Secretary-General Jayewardene agreed with her. He flatly refused to allow Lohengrin to leave the city for East Timor, or to send any of the Committee aces there at all. That made Klaus petulant. “That scheiss korinthenkacker would rather have me sit on my ass at a desk than be out there where I can actually be doing something worthwhile,” he complained to Barbara as they undressed in their apartment late that night.

“I know,” she told him soothingly. She could see the scars on his body: so many of them. Too many. She bit her lower lip as she slipped on her nightgown. The truth was that Jayewardene had nixed the East Timor mission at Barbara’s insistence, but that was nothing she wanted to admit to Klaus. She and Jayewardene had had a long discussion after she and Klaus had met with Michelle about East Timor, about Talas, about Klaus. “I understand how you feel, love, but I’m sure Jayewardene has good reasons. The situation in Talas…”

Klaus gave a derisive huff at that. “We’ll wait too long on that, as well,” he said. He stared at her with his single eye. “You agree with him?”

She shrugged, sitting on the edge of the bed. “I think that Talas is potentially something important, yes. I don’t necessarily agree with him that we should be waiting another day for more information.”

Klaus sniffed again. “There,” he said, “I agree with you.” The faint trace of a smile touched his lips, then vanished again. He reached for the light on a nightstand next to the bed and switched it off. In the darkness, she felt the bed move as he slid under the covers. “Are we good?” Are ve gut? “You and I, I mean.”