There were about twenty people in this latest group, strolling slowly in their threes and fours along the Arabat. Just down from him a dark-haired, fortyish woman in an elegant gray wool coat had stopped to bargain with a man who was selling antique dolls. A fur collar hugged her neck just below the ears, framing her face as if it were a winter halo. From her coat and the cut of her hair, Petrushinsky decided she was German. He found himself admiring her flawless complexion and the clean features of her face. When she smiled he fell in love with her just for an instant, his mind lost for that moment in a memory of a town near East Berlin.

Then he felt himself begin to hack. He could not stop it. In seconds he was coughing violently, his hands over his mouth. The endless cigarettes caused him to do this. And the vodka. And the cold. As he coughed he felt the woman’s eyes on him. Turning, he saw that she was fighting back revulsion as she looked at his bluing face and his reddened, bark-hard hands. And in that instant he hated her.

I could have had you, he thought. Not too many years ago you would have been begging me to take you.

Four well-dressed men had stopped before him as he coughed. They elbowed each other, speaking quietly as they examined the buttons and medals in his tray. Their scrubbed faces and perfectly cut topcoats told him immediately that they were Americans. Three of them were older—from their slate-gray hair and etched faces perhaps in their fifties, but it was always so difficult to tell with Americans. The other one, a cherubic, animated man who smoked a pipe like an Englishman and seemed to be their escort, was considerably younger.

Petrushinsky could tell that they were speaking English, although he could not make any sense from their words. The younger man was pointing at him with an implied familiarity, and the three older men were now staring with fresh interest. Finally the younger man switched to Russian, speaking directly to Petrushinsky.

“We saw the tattoo on your hand when you were coughing,” said the younger man. He had an accent so perfect that he might have been an academe. “I told my guests that you must have been a member of an elite airborne unit.”

Involuntarily, Petrushinsky glanced down at the parachute that was tattooed on the back of his right hand, remembering for a moment the proud night that the tattoo gun had burned its image into him. Then he gazed back up at the four men who stood before him. Their eyes were bright, as if now viewing him with some vicarious camaraderie. From somewhere deep inside his spirit, a pride burst forth. We were as good as you, thought Petrushinsky. Maybe we were better than you.