“And the DMSO…”

“Is solvent. Mix with poison, put on keyboard, doorknob, rifle, whatever. One touch, right to bloodstream – tits up.”

Wilson glanced around. “When do they finish loading?”

“Tonight. When pilot get in. Very important he get balance right.”

“And this is everything?”

It seemed to Wilson that Belov hesitated before he nodded.

“What?” Wilson asked.

“Is small thing…”

“In a deal like this?”

“Yes, yes! Is small thing. I show you!”

The Russian went from pallet to pallet until he found what he was looking for. Using the crowbar, he pried up the lid on one of the boxes. “Look!” he said. “These African guys, they want Russian RPGs, but… no way, José. Impossible, even for me! So, I substitute Type Sixty-nines. Chinese made. Not bad. And cheaper.”

Wilson stared at the gunmetal-gray cylinders. “What if they don’t want them?”

“If they don’t, I take them back. Is five percent off bottom line. No problem. Customer always right.”

“Actually, it’s seven point one percent,” Wilson told him.

Belov frowned. “How you figure?”

“It’s arithmatic. You need a pencil?”

Belov looked at him for a moment. And blinked.

They came to the first in a series of checkpoints about two miles from the airport. Soldiers in olive-drab camouflage were dragging a striped wooden barrier back and forth across the two-lane road, questioning drivers, waving them on. Nearby, a concrete blockhouse stood by the side of the road, its foundations soaked in mud, its walls filigreed by gunfire. Smoke curled from a rusty stovepipe in the roof.

There were a dozen trucks and cars waiting in line, up ahead of them. Wilson felt the Escalade slow as one of Belov’s bodyguards leaned out the window, shouting angrily and waving a gun. For the first time, Wilson saw that the car’s windows were about an inch thick.

From a wooden hut on the other side of the barrier, an officer emerged. Seeing them, he straightened almost to attention, and saluted.

Belov saw that Wilson was impressed. “Fender flags.”

Wilson nodded. “I meant to ask; where are they from?”

Belov chuckled. “From here. Nowhere. They’re company flags.”

Wilson gave him a questioning look.

“Is bullshit government here,” Belov said. “Like Wild West. So Sheriff Corporation steps in. Makes law. Owns things.”

“Like what?”

“Airport. Hotel. Kentucky Fried. Mercado. Telephones. Electricity. Everything that works.”

“And you’re, what? The president?”

Belov scoffed, and shook his head. “Small fish.”

Wilson thought about it. “So where are the big fish?”

The arms dealer shrugged. “Deep water. Red Square.”

Wilson nodded, then turned his eyes to the landscape outside. The sleet was changing to snow. Flakes the size of quarters floated toward them.

“Lagos,” Belov added, seemingly to himself. Then he flashed a wolfish grin. “Geneva… Dubai.” He laughed.

“I get the picture,” Wilson told him.

“Virginia Beach…”

Tiraspol turned out to be a forlorn anachronism of the Soviet era. Whatever charms it might once have had, had long since disappeared, bulldozed into oblivion by communist urban planners. In their place stood block after block of soulicidal apartment buildings, concrete warrens ablaze with graffiti.

“So, what you think?”

“I think it looks like shit,” Wilson replied.

“Looks like? Is!” Belov chuckled.

They entered a roundabout with an enormous statue of Lenin at its center. Nearby, a couple of soldiers stood in the cold, smoking cigarettes beside a tank. They eyed the Cadillacs warily, then looked away.

“Hotel just ahead,” Belov said. “Not bad. Like fucked-up Intercon. But one night only, so… no big deal. In morning?” He answered his own question by cupping the palm of his hand, then flattening it out in what looked like a Hitlerian salute. “Flaps up.”

Wilson felt his stomach growl. “You know someplace to eat?”

“Hotel. Chinese restaurant. Not so bad.”

“I was thinking I’d get something to eat, maybe take a walk.”

Belov shook his head and chuckled. “Maybe not,” he said. “You get lost, Hakim kills me.”

“You could draw me a map.”

Belov rolled his eyes. “Map is problem.”

“Why?”

“Is crime!” Belov declared.

“What is?”

“Map! In Transniestria, having map is crime.”

“You’re kidding,” Wilson said.

“No. Map is big security issue. Anyway, you don’t have visa. So, is better you stay off streets.”

“I could get one, couldn’t I? How hard could that be?”

“Impossible!” Belov told him.

“Why?”

“Because you’re here,” Belov told him. “Without visa. So-”

“-is crime.”

Belov grinned. “Exactly. Cops ask questions. Anyway, Transniestrian visa is only good for eight hours. Day-trip for Ukrainians.”

“That’s it?”

Belov nodded. “Yes, ‘it’! Better you stay off street.” Wilson started to object, but Belov cut him off. “I know. This is pain in your ass, but…” The arms-dealer raised his hands, as if he were surrendering. “So much I can do only.” By way of ending the conversation, he donned the pink earphones, lay back in his seat and closed his eyes.

The manager was waiting for them in the lobby of the Red Star Hotel, a concrete cube with mouse-gray carpeting. Behind the front desk, a heroic haute-relief of Elena Ceau escu hung from the wall.

To Wilson’s eyes, the hotel had the ambience of a Day’s Inn, but the manager was impressive. Snapping his fingers like castanets, he summoned a posse of elderly bellboys, who hurried over to stand at attention beside each of their bags.

Greeting Belov with a warm handshake and a quiet joke in Russian, the manager waived the formalities of registration. Going over to the desk, he picked half a dozen keys from a rack on the wall, and began handing them out. One to Zero, another to Khalid. A third to Wilson.

On Belov’s advice, they avoided the elevator (which was subject to electrical outages) and followed the bellboys up the stairs to the second floor.

To Wilson’s surprise, the room was fine. Large and comfortably furnished, it had cable TV and a small desk next to the window. Atop the desk was a neatly printed card with instructions on how to access the hotel’s high-speed Internet connection for “only” thirty euros an hour.

He was about to do just that when a wave of fatigue washed over him. Sitting down on the bed, he ran a hand through his hair and thought about taking a shower. That would wake him up. But the mattress was as soft as goosedown could make it, and the hotel quiet as a stone. Lying back on the pillows, he closed his eyes, and listened. The wind was like a bellows, gusting hard, then dying. It threw bits of ice at the windows, making a ticking sound that was barely audible. And then, nothing.

When he awoke, the room was dark. But it wasn’t late. Not really. Rolling out of bed, he crossed the room to the minibar and broke the seal on the door. Inside, he found a couple of bottles of Slavutych Pyvo, which looked like beer.

And was.

Picking up the remote, Wilson snapped on the TV, then flicked through the channels until he found one in English. It was a live feed from Iraq. Half a dozen kids were kicking the shit out of a dead soldier, lying next to a burning Humvee while a mob danced in what looked like a pool of blood. In a voice-over, President Bush counseled the world that democracy was “hard work.”

Wilson snorted.

Meanwhile, images flashed upon the screen. More smoke, this time from a suicide bombing in Kabul. Men running with stretchers. Women and sirens wailing. Nervous soldiers looking on through identical pairs of polarized Oakleys, M-16s at the ready, guns pointing at heaven. Then a trauma ward. A man on the floor, looking as if he were bleeding out, a woman thrashing in pain-