"Timur Borisovich Ravenbakh, 61, businessman…" Rather young-looking for his age. And if he met Timur Borisovich, the strong-willed youngster Andrei Ivanovich Komarenko would have lowered his eyes. Even the face was familiar, either from TV, or somewhere else…

I set the file aside. Then my hand started to sweat. A chilly tremor ran down my back.

No, it wasn't from TV, or rather, not only from TV, that I remembered that face…

It couldn't be.

"It can't be!" I said, repeating my thought out loud. I poured myself some cognac and tossed it down. I looked at Timur Borisovich's face-a calm, intelligent, slightly Eastern face.

It couldn't be.

I opened the file and started reading. Born in Tashkent. Father… unknown. Mother… died at the very end of the war, when little Timur was not even five. Raised in a children's home. Graduated from a junior technical college and then a construction institute. Made his career through Komsomol connections. Somehow managed to avoid joining the Party. Founded one of the first construction cooperatives in the USSR, which actually did far more business trading in imported paving stones and plumbing fixtures than constructing buildings. Moved to Moscow… founded a firm… engaged in politics… was never… never a member of… was never employed as… a wife, a divorce, a second wife…

I'd found the human client.

And the most terrible thing about it was that I'd found the renegade Other at the same time.

And that discovery was so unexpected, it felt as if the universe had collapsed around me.

"How could you!" I said reproachfully. "How could you… boss…"

Because if you made Timur Borisovich ten or fifteen years younger, he would have been a dead ringer for Gesar, or Boris Ignatievich as he was known to the world, who sixty years ago had lived in that region… Tashkent, Samarkand, and other parts of Central Asia…

What astonished me most of all was not my boss's transgression. Gesar a criminal? The idea was so incredible, it didn't even provoke any response.

I was shaken by how easily the boss had been caught out.

So sixty years earlier a child had been born to Gesar in distant Uzbekistan. Then Gesar had been offered a job in Moscow. But the child's mother, an ordinary human being, had died in the turmoil of war. And the little human being, whose father was a Great Magician, had ended up in a children's home…

All sorts of things happen. Gesar might not even have known that Timur existed. Or he could have known, but for some reason or other not have played any part in his life. But then the old man had felt a tug at his heartstrings, and he'd met with his son, who was already old, and he'd made a rash promise…

And that was certainly amazing!

Gesar had been scheming for hundreds, thousands of years. Every single word he spoke was carefully weighed. And then he pulled a stroke like this?

Incredible.

But a fact.

You didn't have to be an expert in physiognomy to recognize Timur Borisovich and Boris Ignatievich as close relatives. Even if I didn't say anything, the Dark Ones would make the same discovery. Or the Inquisition would. They'd put the screws on the elderly businessman… but, no, why bother with the screws? We weren't vicious racketeers. We were Others. Witezslav would look into his eyes, or Zabulon would click his fingers, and Timur Borisovich would spill out the whole story as if he were at confession.

And what would happen to Gesar?

I thought about it. Well… if he admitted that he did send the letter… then there hadn't been any evil intent on his part… and in general he had the right to reveal himself to a human being.

I spent a little while running through the points of the Treaty in my mind, the amendments and refinements, the precedents and exceptions, the references and footnotes…

The result was pretty amusing.

Gesar would be punished, but not very severely. The maximum penalty would be an official rebuke from the European Office of the Night Watch. And something menacing, but almost meaningless, from the Inquisition. Gesar wouldn't even lose his job.

Only…

I imagined what merriment there would be in the Day Watch. How Zabulon would grin. How sincerely Dark Ones would start to inquire after Gesar's family affairs and send greetings to his little human son.

Of course, after living the number of years that Gesar had, anyone would grow a thick skin and learn how to shrug off ridicule.

But I wouldn't have liked to be in his place right then.

And then our guys wouldn't go easy on the irony either. No, no one would actually reproach Gesar with committing a blunder. Or badmouth him behind his back either.

But there would be smirks. And bemused head-shaking. And whispers-"the Great One's getting old after all, getting old…"

I didn't have any puppyish adoration or admiration left for Gesar. Our views differed on so many things. And there were some things I still couldn't forgive him for…

But to pull a dumb stunt like this.

"What on earth were you thinking of, Great One?" I said. I put all the files back in the open safe and poured myself another glass of cognac.

Could I help Gesar?

How?

Get to Timur Borisovich first?

And then what? Cast a spell of silence on him? They'd remove it; someone would be found who could.

What if I forced the businessman to leave Russia? To go on the run, as if all the city's criminal groups and agencies of law enforcement were after him?

It would serve him right. Let him spend the rest of his life hunting seals or knocking coconuts off palm trees! So he wanted to be the Empress of the Sea…

I picked up the phone and entered the number of our office's exchange. Entered the additional digits, and was put straight through to the IT lab.

"Yes?" the phone asked in Tolik's voice.

"Tolik, run a check on someone for me. Quick."

"Tell me the name and I'll run it," Tolik answered, unsurprised at my request.

I listed everything I'd found out about Timur Borisovich.

"Ha! So what else do you need apart from that?" Tolya asked in surprise. "Which side he sleeps on, or the last time he visited the dentist?"

"Where he is right now," I said dourly.

Tolik laughed, but I heard the brisk rattle of a keyboard at the other end of the line.

"He has a cell phone," I said just in case.

"Don't teach your grandmother… He even has two cells… And they're both… they're… Right, just a moment, I'll superimpose the map…"

I waited.

"At the Assol residential complex. And not even the CIA could tell you more precisely than that-the positioning isn't accurate enough."

"I owe you a bottle," I said, and hung up. Jumped to my feet. But then… what was the rush? I was sitting in front of the observation services monitor, wasn't I?

I didn't have to search for long.

Timur Borisovich was just getting into the elevator, followed by a couple of guys with stony faces. Two bodyguards. Or a bodyguard and a driver who doubled up as a second bodyguard.

I switched off the monitor and jumped to my feet, then dashed out into the corridor just in time to run into the head of security.

"Got what you wanted?" he asked, beaming.

"Uh huh," I said, nodding on the run.

"Need any help?" the head of security shouted after me eagerly.

I just shook my head.