The cell was like a Finnish bathroom: fifteen square meters of white tile floor, blue tile walls, a bed facing a bench, a toilet in the corner. For cleanliness’ sake, on the other side of the stainless-steel bars lay a coiled hose. Arkady’s belt and shoelaces were in a box by the hose. A uniformed policeman little older than a Young Pioneer came by every ten minutes to make sure he wasn’t hanging himself by his jacket.

A pack of cigarettes arrived in mid-afternoon. Oddly enough, Arkady wasn’t smoking as much as usual, as if food had cut down the appetite of his lungs.

Dinner came on a compartmentalized plastic tray: beef in brown sauce, dumplings, carrots with dill, vanilla pudding, plastic utensils.

Ludmilla had been the voice on the other end when he called the fax number from the train station. Even if she had known Rudy, though, she didn’t know he was dead when she asked, “Where is Red Square?”

The Soviet quota of living space was five square meters, so this holding cell was a veritable suite. Also, a Soviet cell was a manuscript. Plaster walls were scribbled with personal messages and public announcements. “The Party Drinks the People’s Blood!” “Dima Will Kill the Rats Who Turned Him In!” “Dima Loves Zeta Forever!” And drawings: tigers, daggers, angels, full-bodied women, freestanding cocks, heads of Christ. But the tiles here were glazed, highly fired and unscratchable.

Aeroflot had taken off by now, he was sure. Did Lufthansa have an evening flight?

As he made a pillow of his jacket, Arkady found a wadded envelope in an inner pocket and recognized the shaky, needle-fine writing of his own name. It was the letter from his father that Belov had given him and that he had carried around for more than a week, from a Russian grave to a German cell, like a forgotten poison capsule. He crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it toward the bars. Instead of passing through, it hit one and rolled to the drain in the middle of the floor. He tossed it again, and again it bounced back and rolled to his feet.

The paper rustled. What would the parting words of General Kiril Renko be? After a lifetime of curses, what final curse? In the war between father and son, what last blow?

Arkady remembered his father’s favorite phrases. “Titcalf” when Arkady was a small boy. “Poet,” “queer,” “shitpants” and “eunuch” were heaped upon the student. “Coward,” naturally, when Arkady refused officer’s school. “Failure,” of course, from then on. What extra accolade had been saved? The dead had a certain advantage.

He hadn’t talked to his father for years. At this low point in his career, in this tiled hole, was this the right time to allow his father a posthumous stab? There was something funny about the situation. Even dead, the general still had the instincts of an executioner.