Arkady was used to utilitarian bathhouses, to pale Russian torsos and the smell of alcohol working its way out as sweat. This was different. A veranda with a tropical forest of plastic plants opened onto a circular indoor swimming pool surrounded by marble steps. Swimming, floating, stretched across chaise longues were naked bodies so pink they looked as if they had just rolled in snow. Male, female, boys and girls. The scene would have been hedonistic if it hadn’t been so serious. They looked as fit as Olympians and as stiff as mummies, some with the embellishment of a towel, some not. A man with a goatee and a belly of gray hair walked up the steps as gravely as a senator. Chechens were easy to find. Two of them leaned on the balustrade watching a woman swim slowly back and forth in bathing cap and goggles, nothing else. Although Chechens would never allow their wives to go naked in public, they had no objection if Germans wanted to.

Toddlers with hair as fair as goose down ran out of a dining area, their shrieks echoing off the copper baffles above the pool. Arkady heard the bang of dominoes being slapped on a dining table. Probably more Chechens there.

Borya took Arkady the other way, past two smaller sitting pools and through the wooden door of a dry sauna. Inside was the senatorial German. They climbed benches to the warmest air. The German paid them no attention. He sat by a wall thermometer and rubbed sweat like soap over his body. Every few seconds he checked the temperature. Sweating seemed to take all his concentration. The metal beads of Arkady’s chain were already hot. The sauna was well insulated. He could hear no pool sounds at all.

“Where’s Makhmud?”

“Somewhere here,” Borya said.

“Where’s Ali?” If Makhmud was nearby, so was his favorite bodyguard.

Borya put a finger to his mouth. He could have been a sculpture except for the dew of sweat starting to appear on his temple, upper lip, the hollow where his neck sank into the armature of muscle that was his chest. He whispered, “Dry heat takes too long. Let’s try the Russian bath.”

He climbed down and Arkady followed. Outside, the Chechens at the balustrade watched the swimmer dry herself by the near edge of the pool. She wasn’t young, but from the back she had a hard, athletic body to be proud of and she turned toweling down into an elaborate process. She pulled off her cap, releasing thick blond hair that she swung round to rake fiercely with her fingers, then brush back wet from a face that was broad, Slavic, not the least German, with eyes that were so bold and diffident they summed up and dismissed both the Chechens and Arkady at the same time. It was Rita Benz.