Ryan knew.

One of the reasons he'd lived as long as he had in the Deathlands, on the sharp edge, was that he never ignored a hair-prickling feeling.

He moved a few steps ahead, collecting Rick with one hand, bumping into Krysty, brushing aside the angry mumbles from the people in the line.

"Think they got an ace on the line at us," he whispered. "'Out. Fast."

Zimyanin tapped his gloved fingers gently against the edge of the desk, his voice deceptively soft as he talked to the quivering official in charge of the museum.

"One minute, you say?"

"No more, Comrade Major-Commissar. I promise you of that."

Zimyanin nodded. "And your people are sure? Sure of these three?"

"Oh, yes. Yes indeed. Yes, there is no doubt of it, Comrade Major-Commissar."

"My own patrols were on the streets. Threw up blocks. But no sign. Perhaps they are still in here? No?"

"No, Comrade Major-Commissar. We closed it immediately and it has been searched from top to bottom and from bottom to top and from side to side and from..." His voice faded and died as he realized he'd run out of options.

"I believe you, Comrade."

The official was more terrified than he'd ever been of this bald man with the long mustache and eyes like chips of river ice who strutted in his office, his voice caressing like a silken whip. The room seemed too small, the air too thick and choking. The man wanted desperately to go to the rest room, but didn't dare to mention it.

Zimyanin ticked off the points. "Tough-seeming outlander. One eye. Tall woman with very red hair. A third man. Nobody noticed much about him. One woman said she thought he nearly fell over, and two of the visitors said they thought they heard the outlanders talking in..." he glanced down at his notes, "...ah, yes. Talking in a strange way. And they've vanished like smoke. Such a shame your communication system worked so slowly and so badly, Comrade. Such a great shame."

"Indeed, yes, Comrade Major-Commissar. I shall make sure it's improved."

"No."

"No?"

"No."

"But it is not good and you..." The words again drifted into stillness. The pressure on the official's bladder was becoming intolerable.

"You have good furs, Comrade?"

Was this a trick question? "I think so, Comrade Major-Commissar," he replied cautiously.

"Good. The winters out on the Kamchatka Peninsula are cold, Comrade. The summers are also cold. But the winters... ah, they are verycold."

"Why would... you don't surely?.."

"It's bleak work scraping frozen shit out of the middens of the mutie camps, Comrade."

"But..."

Zimyanin rarely indulged himself in anything approaching a joke, but he was feeling good, certain now that his intuition had been correct. There wereAmericans in the ville. He would find them and capture them.

"Yes, Comrade, the middens. But you must look to the bright future."

"The future? Bright, Comrade Major-Commissar?"

"Yes. After ten years of good behavior they will allow you to use a brush."

It was only as the sec officer walked from the room that the official realized he had pissed himself.

"Close isn't the word, Ryan." The freezie panted, doubled over against a tumbled brick wall, fighting for breath.

"Then what is the word?" Ryan replied. "Don't see your problem, Rick. We got away with six or seven seconds to spare. Roadblocks came down and we were at least ten yards up the highway from them."

"How'd they get on the trail, lover?" Krysty asked, pushing back an errant fiery curl from over her right eye.

"I don't..." Ryan rubbed his finger along the side of his nose. "I just saw, when we were outside the main entrance... I could have sworn on heart's blood that I saw that Russkie again."

"Who?"

"His name was Zimyanin, Gregori Zimyanin. Mean-eyed son of a bitch. Met him once. I'll tell you about it, Rick. Put you in the picture. If it was him, then it could mean trouble. He knows me, and he was some kind of sec officer. Best hide up till dark. Make us some plans. Then move at night."

Chapter Twenty-Two

"Bald-headed cretin!"

"True, dear Comrade Sister Anya. I can't deny it."

"Pock-faced imbecile!"

"No doubt at all, Comrade Sister Anya. Your vision is as sharp as ever."

"And stop agreeing with me!" Her voice was so shrill that Gregori Zimyanin feared that the window panes in their apartment would shatter.

"Whatever you say, Comrade Sister..."

The cheap mug his wife held, crudely painted with the words A Happy Memory of Leningrad, shattered against the wall a few inches from his head, splinters showering him. He winced away from his wife's raging fury.

"That was a gift from old Uncle Fyodor," he protested. "He would be so upset to think that we didn't treasure his kind present to us."

"Fuck Uncle Fyodor!" she screamed.

"If you wish me to, Comrade Sister Anya, though I think the old man might vigorously resist my advances."

For a wonderful moment he thought that his wife was going to fall stricken to the threadbare carpet. A vein throbbed at her temple, and she actually slapped herself on the forehead in her anger.

With a valiant effort of will Anya controlled herself. She stood staring him down, hands on her heavy, peasant's hips, eyes narrowed deep in the sweating slabs of her face.

"Gregori Zimyanin."

"Good." He gently clapped the tips of his fingers together. "After barely six weeks you have mastered my name."

"Six of the worst weeks of any woman's life. They have worn me to a shadow."

Despite the cold anger that surged through his body, Zimyanin couldn't help smiling at his wife's words.

"A shadow. A shadow that weighs the same as a loaded sec wag, wouldn't you say, Comrade Sister Anya? Huh?"

"My mother warned me."

"Ah, yes, your mother. The prize sow of Terechevo! You should have heeded her warnings, my dear wife, should you not?"

Anya Zimyanin owned a polished .32-caliber blaster, thrown together in one of the small industrial units around the back of the Museum of the Peoples' Struggle. And he'd even taught her how to use it. His own 9 mm Makarov was in its holster, which hung on the back of the door. But he had a slim-bladed skinning knife sheathed at the small of his back.

The woman made an obscene gesture to her husband, using the little finger of her left hand, curving it as an indication of what she thought of his sexual prowess.

He replied in kind, carefully placing the tips of his middle fingers together as well as the tips of his thumbs, creating a large circle.

"Like a tunnel, dear Comrade Sister," he mocked.

"Better than a peeled shrimp, Comrade Brother Gregori."

It was stalemate, a Kiev Standoff as they called it in Russia.

He shook his head and turned away, intending to take a shower — if there was any warm water in their heater — when his wife delivered her parting salvo.

"You're a failure, husband, a failure and a shit-stinking coward." He turned to face her, eyes blank and emotionless. Anya took a clumsy, stumbling step away from him, holding up a hand to ward off a blow that hadn't even been threatened.

"Slut," he whispered, his voice so quiet it barely disturbed the dusty air of the apartment. "Slattern. Whore. Bitch. There are many things that your tongue can slide to that I can ignore. But not coward. No, not that, dear Anya."

"I did not... Please, husband..." Her mouth was working in terror, her face becoming distorted with her own fear. Anya had been pleased enough when the sec officer had appeared in her social circle, less than two months earlier, with a reputation for bravery against undesirable social elements in the far, far east. Despite his slightly odd appearance, he had a definite charisma, an aura of something different in the safe world of Moscow petty officialdom. She had set out to bed him and then wed him.