That fall had, in Fyodor's view, led directly to the loss of his subsidized apartment in the Nevsky Prospekt, which in turn compelled him to take his present job with Security Services, Inc., one of the new companies springing up like weeds all across the new nation, half of which were fronts for what Bobbie Batista had taken to calling the Russian Mafia.

Kiril loved Bobbie Batista. He loved CNN, and the ten-second clips of pictures showing him life in the West. One day he hoped to travel there, and perhaps convey his respects to Ms. Batista in person.

Just past the Gostiny Dvor Department Store Fyodor swerved the truck around a shabby orange barricade with

"Detour!" marked in large, hand-painted letters. Kiril didn't flinch.

Nobody obeyed street signs in the city. They had a nasty habit of having been set there by thieves who had the intention of separating you from your vehicle and putting it up for sale in pieces in the city marketplace a kilometer away.

Fyodor spoke Kiril's thoughts out loud. "Lousy thieves. Stalin would have known how to deal with them."

Kiril was more tolerant. What could you expect? The only people who had any knowledge of a free market were the crooks who had been running the ubiquitous and extremely profitable black market since before Lenin was elected. It was natural that the crooks would step in to fill the gaps in supply and demand, in production and distribution.

He, Kiril, was content to wear a stiff blue uniform and ride shotgun, like John Wayne in Stagecoach, to earn enough to buy black bread and sausages and the occasional bottle of vodka. It was also enough to pay for his own bedroom in a shared flat, to which more often than not he could entice a girl to share his bed. His bed was his most prized possession; a four-poster relic of a more gracious (Fyodor would say degenerate) age, with a marvelously carved headboard and box springs, and a mattress and linens he had cheerfully beggared himself to buy.

Which reminded him of the little cashier in the black sedan in front of them. She was pretty, with smooth skin, velvety brown eyes and little breasts like apples pushing up the front of her suit jacket. It had been cold outside the bank that morning as they stood waiting for the branch manager to unlock the door. The little cashier had had no coat on, and the rough wool fabric over her breasts had peaked where her nipples had hardened. He would have liked to have slipped a hand beneath that jacket to see if those breasts were as firm as they looked. She had caught his appreciative glance and her smooth skin had flushed a delicate pink, the color of the dawn sky above, but she hadn't looked angry and she hadn't looked away.