What did he know about her? She might at one time have been a Moscow putana called Rita. She could be the globetrotting Frau Benz. The only hard evidence of her existence was this tape. This time he noticed that her table was set for two. She had an almost theatrical presence. The gold necklace was Teutonic, but the angles of her face were distinctly Russian. Thick makeup—that was more Russian, too. He wished that just once she would take off her glasses. Slowly her lips formed a smile and said to Rudy Rosen, “I love you.”

Laika whined, walked toward the television set and sat again.

Arkady rewound and froze every other frame. Backward from her glasses. Retreat from her table. Turn from the diners. Embroidery of vines and bees. Sidecart of linen, utensils, water carafes. Stucco. Honeysuckle. Window with one pane that reflected the person with the camera standing before a solid wall of green. That was another question: who took the pictures? A man with distinctively broad shoulders in a sweater that was red, white and black. Marlboro colors.

He played it forward again. Motes floated in the sunlight. Bees stirred and diners came back to semilife. The woman in the glasses repeated, “I love you.”

At the Luitpold garage, an elongated Mercedes with a red car phone was parked by the attendant’s booth. Remembering the Arabs at the Hilton, Arkady climbed the ramp to the next level, chose a BMW that looked light on its feet and gave it a firm shove. The car woke at once with blinking lights and a sounding horn. He heaved into Mercedeses, Audis, Daimlers and Maseratis until the entire level reverberated with an orchestra of alarms. When he saw the attendant come racing up the ramp, he ran down the stairs.

In the booth were ticket punch, register, car tools and a long shiv for opening locked car doors. The shiv demanded patience that Arkady didn’t have time for. He took a lug wrench. As he broke the window of the Mercedes, the limousine’s alarm joined the woodwinds, but in five seconds he was walking out the garage exit with the phone.

In Moscow, he was a senior investigator of the city prosecutor’s office; here, after less than a week in the West, he was a thief. He knew he should feel guilty; instead, he felt alive. Even smart enough to turn off the phone.