She took a brave position inside the door and other folkloric singers followed. As they flowed into the room, Arkady went in the opposite direction, squeezing past skirts and ribbons, dodging thorns.

In a Polish secondhand shop west of the train station, Arkady found a manual typewriter with spindly type bars, shabby plastic case and Cyrillic characters. He turned it over. On the base was a stenciled military number.

“Red Army,” the shop owner said. “They’re getting out of East Germany and what the bastards don’t want to take, they sell. They’d sell the tanks if they could.”

“May I try it?”

“Go ahead.” The shop owner was already moving to greet a better dressed, more likely customer.

From his jacket Arkady took folded stationery and rolled a page into the machine. The paper was from Federov’s desk. At the top was the embossed letterhead of the Soviet consulate, complete with hammer and sickle set in golden sheaves of grain. Arkady had considered trying to write in German, but he didn’t trust his grasp of barbed Gothic letters. Besides, for a certain roundness of style, only Russian would do.

He wrote:

Dear Herr Schiller,

This note is to introduce A. K. Renko, a senior investigator from the Moscow prosecutor’s office. Renko has been assigned to inquire into questions concerning a proposed joint venture between certain Soviet entities and the German firm “TransKom Services,” in particular the statements of its representative, Herr Boris Benz. Since the activities of TransKom and Benz may reflect badly on both the Soviet government and the Bayern-Franconia Bank, I hope we share a mutual interest in resolving this matter as rapidly and quietly as possible.

With every good wish,

A. A. Federov.

The close sounded grandly Federovian to Arkady. He pulled the sheet out and signed it with a flourish.

“So it works?” the shop owner called.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Arkady said.

“I can give you a good price. An excellent price.”

Arkady shook his head. The truth was, he couldn’t afford anything. “Do you have many buyers for a Russian typewriter?”

The owner had to laugh.

The lights were still out in the Benz flat. At nine P.M. Arkady gave up. With a little planning, half his route back lay through parks: Englischer Garten, Finanzgarten, Hofgarten, Botanischer Garten. He wondered if this was the solace of rabbits—the whispered tread of paths, the soft arms of trees, the balm of shadows. From time to time, he stopped in the dark to listen. A student would wander by, nose in a book, hurrying to the light of the next lamp. Or a jogger at a serious, slow-motion pace. He heard no footsteps that abruptly stopped. It was as if when he had left Moscow he had stepped off the edge of the world. He had disappeared. He was in free-fall. Who needed to follow?