Too late for Tommy. In violet hues, a plastic door peeled away. As the plastic roof curled back, a stronger updraft made flames swirl like a passionate flower folding and unfolding.

You know, in the old days we would have gassed you, tied you and shipped you home in a crate. We don’t do things that way anymore. Now that our relations with the Germans have improved, we don’t need to,” Vice-Consul Platonov said.

“No?” Arkady asked.

“The Germans do it for us. First I remove you from these premises.” Platonov pulled a shirt off the line strung across the room, surveyed a map of Munich spread on the table, the roll and juice by the sink, and then deposited the shirt in Federov’s hands. “Renko, I know it feels like home to you, but since the consulate rents this room, we can do what we want. Right now I want to report you as a vagrant, which is what you are because I have your passport and without it you can’t register anywhere else.”

Federov unzipped Arkady’s carry-on into a yawning mouth and tossed in the shirt. “Germans deport foreign vagrants, especially Russian vagrants.”

“It’s a matter of economics,” Platonov said. “It’s bad enough, they think, taking care of East Germans.”

“If you’re thinking about political asylum, forget it.” Federov emptied the bureau drawers and bustled around the room like the energetic assistant he was. “That’s out of date. No one wants defectors from a democratic Soviet Union.”

Arkady hadn’t seen the vice-consul since his first welcome to Munich, but Platonov had not forgotten him. “What did I tell you? See the museums, buy some gifts. You could have made a year’s salary just buying here and selling when you got back. I warned you that you had no official status, and not to contact the German police. So what did you do? You not only went right to the Germans, but you also involved the consulate.”

“Have you been to a fire?” Federov sniffed a jacket.

Arkady had washed the clothes he had worn the night before, and had showered too, but he doubted that his hair or his jacket would ever be completely free of smoke.

Platonov said, “Renko, twice a week I have tea with Bavarian industrialists and bankers to convince them that we are civilized people they can do business with and safely lend millions of Deutsche marks to. Then you show up and start twisting arms and demanding protection money. Federov tells me he had a difficult time convincing a lieutenant of the Polizei that he was not part of a conspiracy to defraud German banks.”

“How would you like to be visited by the Gestapo?” Federov asked. He poured wallet, change purse, toothbrush and toothpaste into the bag. The locker key and Lufthansa ticket he confiscated and put into his pocket.

“Did he mention any bank in particular?” Arkady asked.