She looked off toward the dark and reconsidered. Uzbekistan is a long way off, Arkady thought. Her legs looked thin and cold. She said, “Never mind. I’ll take care of it myself.”

Peter said, “If someone stole your car, you should report it to the police.”

She studied him and the BMW, with its extra aerial and spotlight. “No.”

“What’s Tima short for?” Arkady asked.

“Fatima.” Immediately she added, “I never said my name was Tima.”

“Did he take the car two nights ago?”

She crossed her arms. “Have you been watching me?”

“Do you come from Samarkand or Tashkent?”

“Tashkent. How do you know so much? I’m not talking to you.”

“How long ago tonight did he take the car?”

She set her face and starting walking again, wobbling on her heels. Uzbeks had once been the Golden Horde of Tamerlane that had swept from Mongolia to Moscow. This was the end, stumbling on the autobahn.

They drove into the Red Square parking lot and cruised through. There was no red Bronco. A contingent of businessmen were trooping loudly from vans into the sex club.

“Slumming,” Peter said. “The Stuttgart set. They’ll only touch the beer here and then they’ll go home and fuck their wives silly.” He shot a little gravel at them as he swung by.

Back on the road, Peter was calmer, as if he had reached some internal decision. Arkady relaxed, too, more in tune with the speed.

The city spread as it approached, not like wildfire, more like a battlefield of moths.

A red Bronco sat in front of Benz’s flat. The apartment was dark. They drove by twice, parked on the next block and returned on foot.

Peter stayed in the shadow of a tree while Arkady walked up the steps and pushed the button to the flat. No voice came over the intercom. No window lit upstairs.

Peter joined him. “He’s gone.”

“The car is here.”

“Maybe he went for a walk.”

“A midnight walk?”

Peter said, “He’s an Ossie, how many cars can he have? Renko, let’s act like detectives and see what we can find.”

He gave Arkady a flashlight, led him to the Bronco and opened the tweezers of a combination knife. The chrome on the front bumper was untouched, but its rubber guard sparkled in the flashlight’s beam. Peter squatted and teased from the rubber what looked like threads of glass.

“One reason it’s almost impossible to reprocess a Trabi is that the fiberglass body breaks up into such sharp splinters.” He dropped pieces into a paper envelope. “Dead or alive, a Trabi is very difficult to handle.”