Two hours ago, and now he was back on the job and the job was sitting with two men who seemed, at best, overimpassioned but hardly criminal.

When he’d shot Federico in the ass (and that was the one that bothered him the most, the indignity of it, Federico trying to scramble out of that car like forest prey) he’d wondered what created a situation like this—three people shooting it out on a city street near a car laden with dynamite. No god had ever designed such a scenario, even for the lowest of his animals. What created a Federico? A Tessa? Not god. Man.

I killed you, Danny thought. But I didn’t kill it.

He realized Fraina was speaking to him.

“I’m sorry?”

“I said for a writer of such impassioned polemic, you’re quite taciturn in person.”

Danny smiled. “I like to leave it all on the page.”

Fraina nodded and glanced his glass off Danny’s. “Fair enough.” He leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette. He blew out the match as a child would blow out a candle, with pursed lips and an air of purpose. “Why the Lettish Workingman’s Society?”

“I’m not sure I understand your question.”

“You’re an American,” Fraina said. “You need only to walk half a mile across the city to find Comrade Reed’s American Communist Party. And yet you chose to be among Eastern Europeans. Are you uncomfortable with your own kind?”

“No.”

Fraina tilted one palm in Danny’s direction. “Then?”

“I want to write,” Danny said. “Comrade Reed and Comrade Larkin are not known for letting newcomers break in on their paper.”

“But I am?”

“That’s the rumor,” Danny said.

“Candor,” Fraina said. “I like it. Some of them are quite good, by the way. Your musings.”

“Thank you.”

“Some are, well, a bit overwrought. Turgid, one could say.”

Danny shrugged. “I speak from the heart, Comrade Fraina.”

“The revolution needs people who speak from the head. Intelligence, precision—these are what are most valued in the party.”

Danny nodded.

“So you would like to help out with the newspaper. Yes?”

“Very much so.”

“It is not glamorous work. You’d write occasionally, yes, but you’d be expected to work the press and to stuff envelopes and type names and addresses onto those envelopes. This is something you can do?”

“Certainly,” Danny said.

Fraina pulled a piece of tobacco off his tongue and dropped it in the ashtray. “Come by the offices next Friday. We’ll see how you take to it.”

Just like that, Danny thought. Just like that.

Leaving the Oktober, he found himself behind Louis Fraina and Pyotr Glaviach as Nathan Bishop trotted across the sidewalk to open the back of the Olds Model M. Fraina stumbled and a gunshot report echoed in the empty street. Pyotr Glaviach knocked Fraina to the ground and covered his body. The smaller man’s glasses fell off the curb and into the gutter. The gunman stepped out of the building next door, one arm extended, and Danny took the lid off a trash can and knocked the pistol out of his hand and the gun went off again and Danny hit him in the forehead. Sirens rang out. They were drawing closer. Danny hit the gunman another time with the metal lid and the man fell on his ass.