“They twist your prick here if you have anything but dollars. Or tourist coupons. Do I look like a fucking tourist?” He dug into his pockets and came out with crumpled bills. He held up one fist: “Zlotys.” He held up the other: “Forints. Can you believe it? I followed these two from the Savoy. I thought they were Italian and they turned out to be a Hungarian and a Pole.”

“It must have been pretty dark,” Arkady said.

“When I found out I almost killed them. I should have killed them to spare them the pain of trying to live on fucking forints and zlotys.”

Rudy rolled down the window on the passenger side and called to Arkady, “Next!” To the man waiting with zlotys, he added, “This will take a while.”

Arkady got in. Rudy was well wrapped in a double-breasted suit, an open cashbox on his lap. He had thinning hair combed diagonally across his scalp, moist eyes with long lashes, a blue cast to his jowls. A garnet ring was on the hand that held a calculator. The backseat was an office of neatly arrayed file boxes, laptop computer, computer battery, and cases of software, manuals and computer disks.

“This is a thoroughly mobile bank,” Rudy said.

“An illegal bank.”

“On my disks I can hold the complete savings records of the Russian Republic. I could do a spreadsheet for you some other time.”

“Thanks. Rudy, a rolling computer center does not make for a satisfying life.”

Rudy held up a Game Boy. “Speak for yourself.”

Arkady sniffed. Hanging from the rearview mirror was something that looked like a green wick.

“It’s an air freshener,” Rudy said. “Pine scent.”

“It smells like armpit of mint. How can you breathe?”

“It smells cleaner. I know it’s me—cleanliness, germs—it’s my problem. What are you doing here?”

“Your radio’s not working. Let me see it.”

Rudy blinked. “You’re going to work on it here?”

“Here is where we want to use it. Behave as if we’re conducting a normal transaction.”

“You said this would be safe.”

“But not foolproof. Everybody’s looking.”

“Dollars? Deutsche marks? Francs?” Rudy asked.

The cashbox tray was stuffed with currencies of different nationalities and colors. There were francs that looked like delicately hand-tinted portraits, lire with fantastic numbers and Dante’s face, oversized Deutsche marks brimming with confidence and, most of all, compartments of crisp-as-grass green American dollars. At Rudy’s feet was a bulging briefcase with, Arkady assumed, much more. Tucked by the clutch there was also a package wrapped in brown paper. Rudy lifted the hundred-dollar bills from the tray to reveal a transmitter and microrecorder.

“Pretend I want to buy rubles,” Arkady said.

“Rubles?” Rudy’s finger froze over the calculator. “Why would anyone want to buy rubles?”

Arkady played the transmitter’s power switch back and forth, then fine-tuned the frequency. “You’re doing it, buying rubles for dollars or Deutsche marks.”