What were the chances of anyone following him? Not great, considering the difficulty of trailing someone in an urban setting. According to Soviet technique, to carry out surveillance of a cautious mobile target demanded five to ten vehicles and thirty to a hundred people. Arkady didn’t know personally because he’d never had more than enough manpower and cars to follow someone around a room.

At the station stop, he returned to the same waiting hall where he had been an hour before. Some call boxes were in the open, but upstairs he found telephone cabinets and books for different cities on a stainless-steel counter. In Moscow, phone books were so rare they were kept in safes, but these weren’t even chained.

The books were confusing because of the sameness and strangeness of German names, full of consonants in death throes, and the variety of advertisements that filled more than half the pages. Under “Benz,” the only Boris had an address on Königinstrasse. There was no listing for any business called TransKom.

The phone cabinet had a rounded clear-plastic door. Arkady decided he knew just enough German to talk to an operator. He thought she said she had no number for TransKom. Then he called Boris Benz.

A woman answered, “Ja?”

Arkady said, “Herr Benz?”

“Nein.” She laughed.

“Herr Benz ist im Haus?”

“Nein. Herr Benz ist in Ferien.”

“Ferien?” On vacation?

“Er wird zwei Wochen lang nicht in München sein.”

Away for two weeks? Arkady asked, “Wo ist Herr Benz?”

“Spanien.”

“Spanien?” Two weeks in Spain? The news was just getting worse.

“Spanien, Portugal, Marokko.”

“Nein Russland?”

“Nein, er macht Ferien in der Sonne.”

“Kann ich sprechen mit TransKom?”

“TransKom?” The name seemed new to her. “Ich kenne TransKom nicht.”

“Sie ist Frau Benz?”

“Nein, die Reinmachefrau.” The housecleaner.

“Danke.”

“Wiedersehen.”

As Arkady hung up he thought that this was about as basic as a conversation could get without drawing pictures. So he had talked to a housemaid who said Boris Benz would be away on summer vacation for the next two weeks and who had never heard of TransKom. The only real information was that Benz had gone south for the Mediterranean sun. Apparently Germans did this. By the time he returned to Munich, Arkady would probably be back in Moscow. From the cassette, he pulled Rudy’s fax and dialed the transmitting number shown on the top of the page.

“Hello,” a woman answered in Russian.

Arkady said, “I’m calling about Rudy.”

After a pause, “Rudy who?”

“Rosen.”

“I don’t know any Rudy Rosen.” There was something slovenly about the voice, as if she wouldn’t take a cigarette from her mouth.

“He said you were interested in Red Square,” Arkady said.

“We’re all interested in Red Square. So what?”

“I thought you wanted to know where it was.”

“What is this, a joke?”