Minin and Arkady waited in the courtyard while Kim went for the motorcycle. The sky was dark. Lamplight and rain intensified the blue of the church and lent the windows of the house a pastel oiliness.

Arkady wondered whether the television hypnotist was on tonight. He said, “I have a neighbor who collects my mail and puts food in my refrigerator. There was no mail and no food.”

Minin said, “Maybe she knew you were away.”

Arkady let the inadvertent admission gape for a while. The church gutters were stopped up, as usual, and the overflow fell in bright threads. He said, “She lived right below me. She always heard me walking around, and she probably heard you.”

Minin’s face played in and out of the shadow of his hat.

“Why don’t you just say you’re sorry?” Arkady asked. “She had a bad heart. Maybe you didn’t mean to scare her.”

“She interfered.”

“Pardon?”

“She overstepped. She knew she was sick, I didn’t. I take no responsibility for the consequences of her own actions.”

“You mean you’re sorry?”

Minin put the barrel of the Stechkin where the bag covered Arkady’s heart. “I mean shut up.”

“Do you feel left out?” Arkady asked more softly. “That I’m depriving you? That they’re having a revolution without us, you or me?”

Minin tried to be silent, but he shifted with the feet of an ardent spear-carrier. “I’ll be there when the action starts.”

Kim arrived on his motorcycle and followed them through the low arch of the alley. At the car, Minin jumped in on the passenger side. “I’m not going to let you slip away again. And I’m not going to ride with that lunatic anymore.”

Arkady considered compromises. If he refused to go, he wouldn’t find Albov. Also, he had pressed Minin about as far as he could. “Put the gun in your left hand,” he said.

When Minin did as he was told, the selector catch of the Stechkin was above his top knuckle. Arkady reached across and turned the catch down from automatic to safe. He said, “Keep your left hand where I can see it.”

The Zhiguli had a manual shift. Arkady rested the canvas bag by his left foot and laid the Nagant on his lap.

Kim led the way up Tverskaya in the central, official lane. Rain had chased most shoppers off the sidewalk. At Pushkin Square, a crowd carried banners in the direction of the Parliament building. Many were kids, of course, but an unusual number were Arkady’s age or older, men and women who had been children during the Khrushchev era, had been allowed the heady oxygen of that short-lived reform, but had said nothing when Soviet tanks invaded Prague, and had lived in shame ever since. That was the essence of collaboration. Silence. They wore woolen caps over thinning hair, but they had miraculously discovered their voices.