Jaak read from his notes. “The witness states that he spoke to the fucking deceased because he thought the deceased was someone who owed him money. He then left the fucking deceased’s car and was standing at a distance of approximately ten meters about five minutes later when the fucking car exploded. A man the witness knows as Kim threw a second fucking bomb into the car and then ran.”

“Kim?” Arkady asked.

“That’s what he says. He also says he burned his fucking hands trying to save the deceased.” Jaak reached into Gary’s pockets to pull out handfuls of half-burned Deutsche marks and dollars.

It was going to be a warm day. Already the dewiness of dawn was turning to beads of sweat. Arkady squinted at a sunlit banner that hung limply across the top of the western tower. NEW WORLD HOTEL! He imagined the banner filling with a breeze and the tower sailing away like a brigantine. He needed sleep. He needed Kim.

Polina knelt on the ground on the passenger side of the Audi. “More blood,” she called.

As Arkady unlocked Rudy Rosen’s apartment door, Minin pressed forward with a huge Stechkin machine pistol. Definitely not standard issue.

Arkady admired the weapon but he worried about Minin. “You could saw a room in half with that thing,” he told him. “But if someone’s here, they would have opened the door or blown it off with a shotgun. A pistol won’t help now. It just scares the ladies.” He dispensed a reassuring nod to the two street sweepers he had gathered as legal witnesses to the search. They answered with shy glimpses of steel teeth. Behind them, a pair of forensic technicians pulled on rubber gloves.

Search the home of someone you don’t know and you’re an investigator, Arkady thought. Search the home of someone you do know and you’re a voyeur. Odd. He had watched Rudy Rosen for a month but never been inside his apartment before.

Upholstered front door with peephole. Living/dining room, kitchen, bedroom with TV and VCR, another bedroom turned into an office, bathroom with whirlpool. Bookcases with hardbound collections of culture (Gogol, Dostoyevsky), bios of Brezhnev and Moshe Dayan, stamp albums and back issues of Israel Trade, Soviet Trade, Business Week and Playboy. At once the forensic technicians began a survey, Minin one step behind them to make sure nothing disappeared.

“Don’t touch a thing, please,” Arkady told the street sweepers, who stood reverentially in the middle of the room as if they had stepped into the Winter Palace.