"Your friend is a spy and you are a murderer," Luna laid into Renko.» This is intolerable!"

Without dislodging it, Ofelia examined the knife in the cabinet. The weapon was of Brazilian manufacture, spring-loaded with an ivory handle and silver butt, the blade double-edged and sharp as a razor. Driven into the wood was a black thread.

Arcos said, "I. told the embassy, Renko is like any other visitor, he enjoys no diplomatic protection. This apartment is like any Cuban apartment, it does not enjoy extraterritorial protection. This is a Cuban matter, completely up to us."

"Good," said Renko.» It was a Cuban that tried to kill me."

"Don't be difficult. Since the facts of this matter are so cloudy and you are alive and no harm done, you should consider yourself lucky if you are allowed to leave Havana."

"You mean leave Havana alive. Well, I missed tonight's flight."

"There will be another in a week. In the meantime, we will continue to investigate."

The Russian asked Ofelia, "Would you consider this an investigation?"

She hesitated because she had found in the lapel of his black coat a narrow cut in the wrong place for a buttonhole. Her pause incensed Arcos.

"This is my investigation, run as I see fit, considering many factors, such as whether you surprised Rufo, stabbed him with the needle and, when he was dead, placed it in his hand. It could still have your prints."

"Do you think so?"

"Rigor mortis has not set in. We'll look."

Before Ofelia could stop him, the captain knelt and tried to bend Rufo's fingers off the syringe. Rufo held tight, the way dead men sometimes did. Luna shook his head and smiled.

Renko told Ofelia, "Inform the captain it's a death spasm, not rigor mortis, but now he'll have to wait for the rigor to come and go. Depending on how much he wants to wrestle with Rufo, of course."

Which only made Arcos pull harder.

She took Renko back to Pribluda's flat on the Malecon for lack of a better place for him to stay. He didn't have the money for a hotel, the embassy's apartment was now a crime scene, and until he officially identified Pribluda he would only be staying in the flat of an absent friend.

For a minute she and Renko stood on the balcony to watch a solitary car sweep along the boulevard and waves lap against the breast of the seawall. Out on the water lamplights spilled from fishing boats and neumdticos.

"You've been on the ocean before?" Ofelia asked.

"The Bering Sea. It's not the same thing."

"You don't have to be sorry for me," she said abruptly.» The captain knows what he's doing."

Which sounded hollow even to her, but Renko relented, "You're right." He was wrapped in his black coat, like a shipwrecked man happy with the only article he'd rescued. She felt a conspiracy of sorts between the two of them because he hadn't mentioned to Arcos and Luna the earlier visit to Pribluda's flat.

"The captain doesn't usually investigate homicides, does he?"

"No."

"I remember newsreels of Castro's first trip to Russia. He was a dashing revolutionary hunting bear in a beret and green fatigues while our Kremlin Politburo stumbled through the snow after him like a pack of fat, old, love-smitten tarts. It was a romance meant to last forever. It's hard to believe that Russians are now hunted in Havana."

"I think you are in a confused state. Your friend dies and now you are attacked. This could give you a very distorted view of Cuban life."

"It could."

"And be upsetting."

"Certainly distracting."

She didn't know what he could mean by that.

"There were no other witnesses?"

"No."

"You answered the door and Rufo attacked you without warning."

"That's right."

"With two weapons?"

"Yes."

"That sounds implausible."

"That's because you're a good detective. But do you know what I've found?"

"What have you found?"

"I have found from my own experience that-in the absence of other witnesses-a simple, resolutely maintained lie is wonderfully difficult to break."

Chapter Four

As soon as Arkady was alone in Pribluda's flat he went to the office and opened the computer, which immediately demanded the password. An access code that combined up to twelve letters and numbers was virtually unbreakable, but a code also had to be remembered, and this was where the humans Arkady knew tended to use their birthday or address. Arkady tried the names of the colonel's wife, son, saint (although Pribluda was an atheist, he had always enjoyed a bottle on his saint's name day), favorite writers (Sholokhov and Gorky), favorite teams (Dynamo and Central Army). Arkady tried 06111968 for the date of Pribluda's Party membership, a chemical C12H22011 for sugar, a homesick 55-45-37-37 for the coordinates (latitude and longitude, minutes and seconds) of Moscow. He tried words written and transposed into numbers (even though the correct order of the Russian alphabet was a matter of controversy heading into the twenty-first century). The computer fan would buzz for a moment, then purr along. He tried until he traded the glow of the machine for the dark of the balcony, where he took solace in the steady sweep of the lighthouse beam and the deep insomnia of the night.

Arkady discovered he fostered a killer's calculation hat even if his story was implausible, the truth was no more plausible. He was also a little bemused by his own reaction to the attack. He had defended himself instinctively, the way a man about to dive resists being pushed.

He had no idea why he had been attacked except that it had to do with his friend Pribluda. Not that Pribluda was a friend in the ordinary sense. They shared no tastes, interests, politics. In fact, truth be told, Pribluda was in many ways a terrible man.

Arkady could imagine him now bringing out the vodka and saying, "Renko, old pal, you're fucked. You are in a crazy country, in a foreign land where you know nothing, including the language." Pribluda would hunch forward to touch glasses and grin that ghastly smile of his. He had the habit of loosening a button, a collar, a cuff with each glassful, as if drinking was serious work.» All you can be sure of is that you know nothing. No one will help you because of your brown eyes. Everyone who steps forward as a friend will be an enemy. Everyone who offers to help is hiding a knife behind his back. Cheers!" The colonel would make a grand gesture of throwing the vodka's cap into the sea. That was his idea of panache.» Do you appreciate logic?"

"I love logic," Arkady might say.

"This is logic: Rufo had no reason to kill you. Rufo tried to kill you. Ergo, someone sent Rufo. Ergo, that someone will send someone else."

"A nice thought. Was that a present to take home?"

Arkady would nod in the direction of the man-sized doll brooding in the corner. The way its shadow shifted when the breeze pushed the lamp was a bit unnerving.» Charming." He fished from his coat a piece of note-paper on which he had written Rufo's address and the house key he had lifted off the body before Luna arrived.

"What I think you should do," Pribluda would steamroll on, "is lock yourself with a gun and oranges, bread and water in a room at the embassy, maybe a bucket for personal needs, and don't open the door until you go to the airport."

In his mind, Arkady asked, "Spending a week in Havana hiding in a room, wouldn't that be a little perverse?"

"No. Killing Rufo when you were going to kill yourself, that's perverse."

Arkady went down the hall to the office and returned with a map of the city that he spread under a lamp.

"You're leaving?" Pribluda was always horrified when Arkady quit before the bottom of the bottle.

Arkady searched for a street called Esperanza and wrote down Rufo's address on a piece of paper. He thought, I'm not just going to sit and wait. I also have your car key. If you want to help, tell me where the car is. Or give me your code.