“Then let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you are correct. This is why you wanted a weapon? Because you think you will shoot your way in to Chernayev’s dacha? Do you know how many bodyguards this man has surrounding him at all times? And just one of you?”

Middleton shrugged, said nothing.

“And for what? You plan to kill Chernayev and hope to survive?”

“Kill him? No, of course not. I need to talk to him. Can you tell me anything about him?”

“He’s grown reclusive. He had some financial problems.”

“The richest man in the country?”

“Not any more. Wealth comes and goes like the tide, my friend . . . but he’s on the rebound now, we hear. No one knows what his good fortune is. I can’t give you first-hand knowledge . . . Tell me, what is this about?”

Middleton had a thought—Sindhu Power. Lowering his voice, he went fishing. “Because of the copper bracelet.”

A nervous smile flitted across Korovin’s face, then disappeared. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“I think you do.”

Korovin snubbed out his cigarette, then slid another one from the pack and lighted it. When he next spoke, it was through a mouthful of smoke, his voice muzzy. “The copper bracelet,” he said. “This is nothing more than what we call skazki. Folk tales. What you call old wives’ tales. Stories told by frightened old men to inflate their own importance.”

“Try me,” Middleton said.

“No. The copper bracelet is no more. That snake was killed long ago. Decades ago.”

“Amuse me.”

“It originally described some old scientific process. But then the name came to refer to a cult. A cult of madmen—fanatics, as you say—that rose from the ashes of the Second World War. You know of the Norsk Hydro plant?”

Middleton shook his head.

“This was a factory in Norway jointly owned by Norsk Hydro and I. G. Farben.”

“The giant Nazi corporation.”

“Yes. It was destroyed by the Allied forces and the Norwegian resistance movement. One of the most remarkable sabotage acts of the war.”

“What did the factory make—weapons?”

“In a way, yes. The copper-bracelet system produced heavy water. It was a revolutionary way to produce nuclear material.”

Middleton thought immediately of Felicia’s insights and her encrypted message to him. Heavy water. Sikari’s patents.

“The Nazis needed it to make an atomic weapon. But once the factory was destroyed, the Nazi atomic bomb program was ended. The story, Garrold—the skazka—is that the plant may have been destroyed, but some of the records of the technology survived. A group of Russians and Germans—successors to the Nazis, you could say—have been hoping for someone to reconstruct the science behind it.”

“Connection to Chernayev?”

“None that I’ve ever heard of.”

“Well, I need to find out. How can I reach him?”