The Russian opened his left palm and tapped it with the claws of his right, shouting the same word.

"Money," Rick finally said faintly. "We never figured on... He wants some bread for pulling the tooth, Ryan. What the... What fuckin' steps do we take now, Ryan?"

"Long ones! Go!"

"Against all regulations and orders of the transport department, the driver had left his wag unlocked with the engine running. He has been subsequently arrested and will be charged with offences under sections..."

Major-Commissar Gregori Zimyanin tutted and laid the typed report on his desk, looking up at Alicia Andreyinichna. "So many facts and so few of them of any interest to me."

He skipped a few lines of coded letters and numbers. The fate of the wretched wag driver was of no concern to him.

"It goes on, 'The three perps broke away and escaped in the above-mentioned wag. One seemed ill and was helped by the tall woman with the red hair, hair that I must report was the reddest it has been my privilege to see. I conducted an investigation into the crowd and could not find anyone who would admit to ever having seen hair of such a bright hue. One man, whose details are appended below, said at first that it was not the reddest hair he had ever seen. Subsequent and diligent inquiries revealed he was color-blind and thought that spring grass was also red. By the hammer and the anvil!"

For a second time the crinkled, recycled folder smacked on his desk. The woman took a nervous step backward. There were so many rumors about Gregori Zimyanin and the barbaric easterly wilderness where he had made his bubble reputation.

"Never have I seen a man who will not use ten words when he can make do with a hundred. But, despite all of... there is still much here. Again, on the southerly and westerly edge of our city. Again three strangers. This time sounding like the three that the kulak encountered. The same dark glasses. Described again and again in statement after... Red hair. And this man who has one eye, when most show a preference toward a pair." It was an attempted joke, but Alicia Andreyinichna was too frightened of him to notice. For this was a new and a different Major-Commissar Zimyanin.

There was a fire smoldering in the eyes. Twice already she had seen the way his face turned to the long sniper's rifle hung upon the office wall, as though he wanted to take it down and go rushing out after this mysterious trio.

"And he is also missing a tooth. Who is he? Who is the woman? The sickly second man? They draw so much attention to themselves rather than pay the peasant a handful of copper. The witnesses mostly say they feared them. Why do they?.. Ah, there is something here, little one."

He got up and paced across to the map, his boot heels clicking on the floor. His finger darted out and stabbed at the name of Peredelkino, hesitated, then moved again and hovered over Nikulino.

"The market was here? Yes. Pins, Alicia Andreyinichna. Little flags. Let us plot our strangers and see where they have come from and where they are going."

While the clerk bustled out to her office, the sec officer stared blankly out the window at the spring day. But his thoughts were slipping back, however absurdly, to a hunt over packed snow and ice. And some Yanks, one of whom...

The phone tinkled uncertainly and Alicia Andreyinichna picked it up. After a few words that he couldn't catch she came back.

"They've found the wag."

"Where?"

"Ramenki. There." She pointed a mile or so farther in from the outer suburbs.

"Ah, good, good. Very good. Now, the colored flags."

While she rummaged through her desk, Zimyanin gazed at the map, smiling to himself. His lips moved. "Thank you for giving me that information. It was most useful. I shall offer you a gratuity for your help, if you do not find such a thing offensive."

His secret language practice was interrupted as Alicia returned.

"Here." She handed him a dozen or so pins with little colored squares of paper attached.

He took them and looked again at the map. "Peredelkino. There. Then where the old man and his cart saw... good. Then the market and the escape in the wag. Finally where it was found dumped by them. Good."

"Is there anything else, Comrade Major-Commissar?" she asked.

"A thread or some cotton."

He waited until she reappeared, giving him a length of dark blue cotton. He tied it neatly around the most southerly flag, looped it around the next one and the next then adjusted it around the last little flag. The line wasn't straight, but it definitely showed an unmistakable progression. Zimyanin extended the remains of the thread in the same direction and nodded to the girl.

"Yes. See, Alicia Andreyinichna. Whoever they are, they are coming our way. We must prepare to greet them."

Chapter Seventeen

Back at the big house the three men waited for the others to return. In their planning discussions Ryan had suggested that if all went very well, they might possibly return within a week or so.

The same meals of smoked fish and dried meat began to get very boring after the first day, and with the rise in temperatures the food began to smell. So Jak took Doc on hunting expeditions along the trail by the side of the stream to scavenge around the edges of the small hamlet in the trees.

They went out either early in the morning or late in the evening. J.B. would watch them move off into the half light as he leaned against the empty window frame on the second floor, the slight figure of the boy, his stark white hair flowing about his narrow shoulders like living spray and Doc, stumping along after him, the ferrule of his sword-stick rapping on the stones of the path.

While they were gone, the Armorer would sometimes climb to the ruined loft and slip through the hidden door and go down the spiral staircase. He'd wander silent and alone through the chattering consoles, pausing to wonder at the supernatural strength that had enabled Krysty Wroth to devastate the lock. It had saved their lives by freeing the gateway door, but also trapped them in the middle of a hostile continent.

By the time he returned to the first floor, Jak and Doc would be on their way back from the miserable ville.

To steal from a small community was always dangerous. If too much was taken, the locals would take the trouble to hunt you down.

Jak was very clever at it. He'd returned to the house with a sack containing eggs, potatoes and other root vegetables. A few slices of meat hacked off a ham dangling in a barn helped to complement their meals.

Doc kept smiling at the boy's cunning.

"Upon my soul, he is such a rapscallion. When we took the meat and the eggs, he stole more than we have brought with us and left a clear trail to an outlying cabin, deliberately dropping a couple of eggs and a slice of ham so the owner would follow the tracks and suspect his neighbor. And we would thus escape quite free of any taint."

J.B. was pleased with that. But the arrival of Jak and Doc the following evening with a small dog in their sack didn't please him. Not at all.

"Give it to me and I'll break its neck. Quick and easy. Won't hurt it."

Doc held the shivering little animal against his chest, looking down at the damp nose and worried eyes. "I regret, my dear John Barrymore, that I would attempt to prevent you from doing that."

"What?"

"I believe that you heard me clearly."

"Stop me?"

"Yes."

J.B. shook his head. "Doc, you are one double-cute old bastard. Stop me! Fine. Keep the mongrel. But if there's a moment that the dog risks us, I'll chill it soon as look at it. Your responsibility, Doc. Yours."