It didn't. The Russian woman released the gun and grabbed desperately at Peggy's fist with both of her hands, scratching vainly to dislodge the knife.

"What I was going to say," Peggy sneered, "was, 'Before you worry about taking me to a hospital, make sure the fall was an accident!' " She pushed the knife harder and Valya gurgled and slumped to her side. "That agent you killed was my autumn leaf," she added, "and this is for him."

"Don't move!" a voice shouted in Russian from the top of the staircase.

Peggy looked up at a slender, ascetic-looking man in the uniform of a spetsnaz colonel. At the end of his outstretched, very steady arm was a P-6 silent pistol. Behind him, still gasping and rubbing his throat, was the man Volko had attacked.

"I'm going to get out from under your friend," Peggy replied in Russian. She turned to her side to throw Valya off. The woman's eyes were shut and her face was white as her life poured haphazardly onto the marble floor.

The Colonel was walking down the steps behind his firearm. Peggy dumped Valya onto her back and rose, her own back to the steps.

"Arms up," the officer said to her. If he felt any remorse about Peggy's victim, she didn't hear it in his voice.

"I know the drill," Peggy said, turning wearily as she started to raise her hands.

When they were chest-high she turned suddenly, holding the snub-nosed pistol she'd picked up when she threw Valya over. There were no tourists in the way as she fired at Colonel Rossky, who stopped where he was, seven steps up, and took her salvo as if he were in a duel. He met it with fire of his own.

Peggy didn't stay where she was. Immediately after firing her short burst, she threw herself to the left, onto the ground, and rolled until she hit the banister.

After several seconds, the echoing gunfire stopped and only a pungent, rising, rapidly thinning tester of smoke remained of the exchange-- that, and the crawling red stains on the front of Colonel Rossky's uniform.

The officer's expression didn't change. His breed had been trained to suffer pain in silence. But after a moment the extended arm wavered, the P-6 fell to the floor, and then Rossky followed it, doing a delicate turn as he dropped to his back. His arms splayed, head facing down, the spetsnaz warrior slid to the landing, where he came to a stop beside Valya.