The larger guard pulled Max back by the tail of his jacket.

Beno said, “We were looking for Borya too, but if Renko took care of him, then we can concentrate on you. We’ll start by asking about four cousins of mine who died at your apartment in Berlin.”

“Renko, what is he talking about?” Max asked.

“Then we’ll talk about Makhmud and Ali. We’ll make a night of it,” Beno said.

“Arkady,” Max appealed.

“But since it is going to get dangerous here in about an hour,” Beno said, “we’ll do our talking someplace else.”

Max wrested free of his jacket and ran diagonally down the steps. On the bottom one he slid on wax, crashed through the line of veterans, regained his feet and fought his way through the circle of worshipers around the priest. The larger Chechen raced after him. Beno waved calmly to a group in the crowd and pointed in Max’s direction. In his white shirt he was easy to follow.

Beno regarded Arkady. “Are you staying? It’s going to be bloody here.”

“I have friends here.”

“Get them out.” Beno slipped his cap back on and adjusted the holes over his eyes. He took one step down. “If you don’t … good luck.” Then he plunged, a dark figure, into the crowd.

Arkady climbed the rest of the way to the jostling lights at the top of the steps, arriving just as a spokesman emerged from the door protected by guards carrying bulletproof shields. Ringed by cameras, the spokesman was outside just long enough to announce that snipers had been seen on the roofs of nearby buildings. He ducked back inside, but the journalists stayed in clear sight to check notes.

Irina had appeared with the spokesman and remained. “You came,” she said.

“I said I would.”

Her eyes were set deep with exhaustion and brilliant with exhilaration at the same time. “Stas is inside on the second floor. He’s on the phone to Munich. They still haven’t cut the wires. He’s broadcasting right now.”

Arkady said, “You should be with him.”

“Do you want me to?”

“No, I want you with me.”

As more tracers fanned across the sky, the bullhorn insisted futilely on an absolute blackout. Cigarettes reappeared, along with gas masks—a perfect Russian blackout, Arkady thought. As the sound of patrol boats approached on the river, the lights of a convoy appeared on the far bank. The women on the outer line had started to sing, and parts of the crowd picked up the song and swayed, so that in the dark they looked like the surface of a sea or a plain of grass in a wind.

“Let’s wait with them,” Irina said.