"We have to talk."

"This is outrageous." Bugai set the cup on a stack of papers and picked up his telephone. In his robe the vice consul was the picture of an affronted mandarin.» You're out of bounds. You can't just break into people's offices. I'm calling the guards. They will sit on you until they put you on the plane."

"I think they'll sit on both of us and put us both on the plane because I may be out of bounds, but you, my dear Bugai, have far too much money in the Bank for Creative Investment in Panama."

Arkady had once seen a militiaman, shot, take ten slow jerky steps before he sat and rolled over. That was the way Bugai moved as he set down the phone, bumped against the desk and dropped into his chair. He clutched his heart.

"Don't die on me yet," Arkady said.

"There's a good explanation."

"But you don't have it." Arkady moved the chair so that he was within arm's reach of Bugai. He said more softly, "Please don't make things worse by trying to lie. Right now I'm more interested in information than your hide, but that can change."

"They told me there would be bank security."

"You're a Russian and you thought there would be security in a bank?"

"But this was Panama."

"Bugai, concentrate. At this moment the affair is between you and me. Where it goes from here depends on your cooperation. I'm going to ask a few basic questions just to see how honest you're going to be."

"That you already know the answers to?"

"That doesn't matter. It's your cooperation that counts."

"It could have been a loan."

"Would pain help you concentrate?"

"No."

"We don't want to resort to that. Who wrote the checks deposited in your account?"

"John O'Brien."

"In return for?"

"For what we knew about AzuPanama."

"For what Sergei Pribluda knew about AzuPanama."

"That's correct."

"Which was?"

"All I know was that he was getting closer."

"To finding out AzuPanama was a fraudulent sugar broker created by the Cubans to renegotiate their contract with Russia?"

"In so many words."

"They were concerned."

"Yes."

"O'Brien and ..."

"The Ministry of Sugar, AzuPanama, WaOs."

"So Pribluda had to be stopped."

"Yes. But there were many ways to stop him. Include him, pay him, get him working on something else. I said I would have nothing to do with violence. O'Brien agreed, he said violence only attracts more attention."

"Except Pribluda's dead."

"He had a heart attack. Anyone can have a heart attack, not just me. O'Brien swears no one touched him."

Arkady walked around Bugai and the desk, viewing the vice consul from different angles. Despite the air-conditioning Bugai sweat through his robe at the armpits and lapels.

"Have you ever been to Angola?"

"No."

"Africa?"

"No. No one wants those postings, believe me."

"Worse than Cuba?"

"No comparison."

"Tell me about the Havana Yacht Club."

"What?"

"Just tell me what you know."

Bugai frowned.» In Miramar there's a building that used to be the Havana Yacht Club." He relaxed enough to dab his face with a handkerchief.» Quite a place."

"That's all you know?"

"That's all I can think of. One story."

"What's that?"

"Well, before the Revolution the old dictator Batista applied for membership in the club. He was complete ruler of Cuba, held the power of life or death and all that entails. It didn't matter, the Havana Yacht Club turned him down. That was the beginning of the end for Batista, they say. The end of his power. The Havana Yacht Club."

"Who told you that story?"

"John O'Brien." Bugai had a chance to look around his desk.» Why is my intercom on? I thought this was just between you and me."

Arkady motioned Bugai to follow. They walked out of his office and across a floor of empty desks to Olga Petrovna, who sat in a small workstation that she had tried to make pleasant with decals and pictures of her granddaughter. A voice-activated tape recorder sat by her intercom, and behind her stood a thickset man with the sort of face a person could grind knives on. Olga Petrovna, as it turned out, had missed Pribluda more rather than less as days went by, and the mere suggestion from Arkady when he had found her at breakfast that another Russian had betrayed Pribluda's work was reason enough for her to introduce Arkady to the chief of embassy guards and set up her tape recorder.

"We were talking in private," Bugai said.

Arkady admitted, "I wasn't being entirely truthful. If I made any other mistakes, Olga Petrovna was making notes."

She had been. Pribluda's plump pigeon finished with a flourish and lifted to Bugai a gaze that would have done Stalin proud.

There were black angels bearing wreaths above the Teatro Garcia Lorca. A black bat that roosted on the Bacardi Building. Then there was the little black jinetera sitting on top of Daysi's pink casita, which was not much more than a water tower with a coat of paint.

For hiding out it wasn't such a bad place, nothing but chimney pots and pigeons all around. Since the water tank had been removed, water had to be hauled up by pail, but what Ofelia saw of the tower interior was surprisingly roomy, tiles on the floor, a bed adorned with paper flowers. Teresa had carried a chair and an illustrated romance up a ladder to the roof. Her knees looked scuffed and her curly mass of hair was misshapen, lumped to one side.

As Ofelia came up the ladder Teresa squinted down.» You have the swimsuit?"

"I'll show you."

"Don't I know you from the marina? The Malecon?"

Ofelia waited until she reached the roof before she lifted her glasses.» The Casa de Amor."

The scales fell from Teresa's eyes. She looked Ofelia up and down and tabulated the slim shoes, white rubbery pants, white top, wide Armani dark glasses. She herself was in the same bedraggled outfit she had been wearing when Ofelia arrested her.» Puta, look at you. I don't think you dress like that on a detective's salary, no, no, no. I'm not blind. I know competition when I see it. That's why you're always after me."

Ofelia's first impulse was to say, "Stupida, there are a thousand girls just like you in Havana." She looked down to roofs that spread to the sea, clotheslines bright as paper cutouts. Sparrows scattered by a peregrine. The pursuit swirled around the capital dome and to the trees of the Prado. Winter was hawk season in Havana. Instead she said, "Sorry."

"Fuck your 'sorry.' There's no QVC swimsuit, is there?"

"No."

"This is funny. I lost my German. I lost my money. You put me on a list of whores. I can't go back to Ciego de Avila because my family is depending on me to stay here and send them money, otherwise I would be in a fucking school, like you say. And now that you have fucked with my life you're ajinetera, too? That's funny."

"You're not on the list."

"I'm not on the list?"

"Not on the list. I only said that to scare you."

"Because we're competition."

"You're a smart girl."

"Fuck off." Teresa's nose ran, making a wet smear of her upper lip.

"Teresa-"

"Leave me alone. Go the fuck away."

Ofelia couldn't go away. Luna had gone insane at the sight of Arkady at the Centra Russo-Cubano, but the sergeant had only stuffed her in the car trunk when cutting her throat would have been as easy. Why?

"Sit down."

"Fuck away."

"Sit down." Ofelia pressed Teresa down onto the chair and moved behind her.» Stay there."

Teresa's eyes rolled back to follow.» What are you doing?"

"Be still." Ofelia reached into her bag for her new brush and comb and pulled back the black excelsior of Teresa's hair.» Just sit."

Waves, curls and spit curls close to the scalp and tight as springs would have daunted Ofelia if Muriel's hair weren't almost as thick. One pull wouldn't do, she had to firmly feather the hair out, work it loose, put some shape back into it.