“I wouldn’t bother my head about the old prophecy,” Gesar continued, without looking at me. “It either went off and was never realized, or it all happened ages ago. But finding out what the boy wanted to tell us, now that really would be interesting.”

“Arina twisted me round her little finger,” I said, repenting for my sins, and not for the first time. “But even I’m not certain that there was anything on that flash stick . . .”

“Remember the unwritten law that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong—there was something there, all right . . .” Gesar sighed and closed his laptop. “Sit down, Anton. Let’s talk. I understand what’s bothering you.”

“Arina’s prophecy,” I admitted. “Or rather, her friend’s . . . What if she’s right and the prophecy does come true?”

Gesar shrugged.

“Maybe she’s right, and the prophecy will come true. Maybe it already did, despite all her cunning tricks—the Germans occupied Little Russia, the Japanese invaded Siberia, they hanged Bolsheviks . . .”

“The war will last nine years?”

“The First World War began in 1914, the Civil War in Russia ended in 1923. Can you do the sum?”

“It ended in 1922,” I protested stubbornly.

“Oh, these historians! In Yakutia, in Kamchatka and Chukotka, it was 1923!” Gesar growled. “Who are you arguing with? Were you there? I fought against Bologov’s Cossacks and their shaman in 1923! And the basmachi carried on their bloody struggle after that . . .”

“That’s not what I’m arguing about,” I said in a conciliatory tone. “If the count includes 1914 and 1922, that makes exactly nine years.”

Gesar raised his hands thoughtfully and started bending down the fingers. Then he looked at me and turned crimson.

“So what are you arguing about? It’s all happened!”

“Not all of it,” I said morosely. “ ‘A third of the people die of starvation . . .’ ”

“Famine in the Volga region, Kazakhstan, Little Russia . . . Not a third, of course, but let’s grant the Prophets the right to pile on the tragedy.”

“ ‘The world absorbs the rest of the nation . . .’ ”

“What country hasn’t been absorbed into the world nowadays?” asked Gesar, raising one eyebrow in surprise. “Globalization, Anton! Everybody has dissolved in everybody! I went into a toilet in Paris, and there were graffiti scratched on the wall in fourteen languages!”

“ ‘Moscow consumed by flames . . .’ ”

“Prophecies are always allegorical,” Gesar snapped. “The old Moscow has perished, there’s nothing left of it but the Kremlin—but the Kremlin isn’t Moscow.”

“ ‘With the loss of his heir, the tsar is deranged . . .’ ”