Borya pushed through a door labeled RUSSISCH DAMPFBADEN and Arkady followed, plunging into an aromatic cloud. The bench on his side was empty. He sat, put his hand out and touched a limestone rim. A fountain. The only light rose as a smoky glow from four glass floor tiles around the fountain’s base. He couldn’t see Borya on the other side.

A sauna was an oven that slowly baked the sweat out; a Russian bath was so saturated by moist steam that perspiration bloomed in an instant. The scent of cypress helped open the pores. Sweat flowed down Arkady’s forehead, ran over his chest, accumulated between his toes, filled every crevice of his body; he felt like one great conduit of sweat. He thought about Rita and the first time he had seen her in Rudy’s car. The way she had looked at him now was the way she had looked at him then.

“Ali?” Makhmud’s voice came out of the corner.

Arkady was already moving toward the door when Borya hit him. His head bounced off the wall and he toppled off the bench and to the floor.

He didn’t so much lose consciousness as pass through a brief eclipse. Then his eyes were open and he half-crawled, half-swam off the floor and perched unsteadily on the edge of the bench. Aside from his poor balance and a compression problem in his ears he was in one piece. The question that victims of concussions always asked was, what happened? A second ago he had been in the Russian bath with Borya and Makhmud. Now he seemed to be alone.

The steam was pink. To Arkady that meant his head was cut and blood was running into his eyes. He found a knot on his scalp, but no cut. He wiped his face with a towel. The bath was still a cube of rose-colored steam.

Arkady looked down. The glass tiles on the floor were red. As he maneuvered around the fountain he saw a red foot dangling from the opposite bench. The foot led to a body that he pulled toward the light.

Makhmud seemed to be eating a towel. So many puncture marks bled from his neck and chest that he looked as if he had been the target of an automatic weapon, but the taped grip of a knife stuck out of his withered stomach. Arkady remembered that he had worn a towel tied prudishly around his waist. Borya had carried his towel in his hand. Arkady felt his wrist. The chain and key were gone.

There was a knock on the door. When Arkady didn’t answer, the door opened and Ali stepped halfway in. Steam rushed out. He looked fat and strong and his hair hung in ringlets around his eyes. “Granddad, don’t you think you’ve been in here long enough?”