welter of blood. This was deliberate, Maks’s counter to their tactic of trying to wear him

out. Fatigue was one thing, loss of blood quite another.

One of his assailants lunged forward, slipped on his own blood, and Maks hammered

him down. This created an opening, and the one with the makeshift knuckle-duster

moved in, slamming the metal into the side of Maks’s neck. Maks at once lost breath and

strength. The remaining men beat an unholy tattoo on him and were on the verge of

plowing him under when a guard emerged out of the murk to drive them methodically

back with a solid wood truncheon whose force was far more devastating than any piece

of scrap metal could be.

A shoulder separated, then cracked under the expertly wielded truncheon; another man

had the side of his skull staved in. The third, turning to flee, was struck flush on his third sacral vertebra, which shattered on impact, breaking his back.

“What are you doing?” Maks said to the guard between attempts to regain control of

his breathing. “I assumed these bastards bribed all the guards.”

“They did.” The guard grabbed Maks’s elbow. “This way,” he indicated with the

glistening end of the truncheon.

Maks’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not the way back to the cells.”

“Do you want to get out of here or not?” the guard said.

Maks nodded his conditional assent, and the two men loped across the deserted yard.

The guard kept his body pressed against the wall, and Maks followed suit. They moved at

a deliberate pace, he saw, that kept them out of the beams of the roving spotlights. He

would have wondered who this guard was, but there was no time. Besides, in the back of

his mind he’d been expecting something like this. He knew his boss, the head of the

Kazanskaya, wasn’t going to let him rot in Colony 13 for the rest of his life, if only

because he was too valuable an asset to let rot. Who could possibly replace the great

Borya Maks? Only one, perhaps: Leonid Arkadin. But Arkadin-whoever he was; no one

Maks knew had ever met him or seen his face-wouldn’t work for Kazanskaya, or any of

the families; he was a freelancer, the last of a dying breed. If he existed at all, which,

frankly, Maks doubted. He’d grown up with stories of bogeymen with all manner of

unbelievable powers-for some perverse reason Russians delighted in trying to scare their

children. But the fact was, Maks never believed in bogeymen, was never scared. He had

no reason to be scared of the specter of Leonid Arkadin, either.

By this time the guard had pulled open a door midway along the wall. They ducked in

just as a searchlight beam crawled across the stones against which, moments before, they

had been pressed.

After several turnings, he found himself in the corridor that led to the communal men’s

shower, beyond which, he knew, was one of the two entries to the wing of the prison.

How this guard meant to get them through the checkpoints was anyone’s guess, but Maks

wasted no energy trying to second-guess him. Up to now he’d known just what to do and

how to do it. Why should this be any different? The man was clearly a professional. He’d

researched the prison thoroughly, he obviously had major juice behind him: first, to have

gotten in here, second, to have the apparent run of the place. That was Maks’s boss all

over.

As they moved down the corridor toward the opening to the showers, Maks said, “Who

are you?”

“My name is unimportant,” the guard said. “Who sent me is not.”

Maks absorbed everything in the unnatural stillness of the prison night. The guard’s

Russian was flawless, but to Maks’s practiced eye he didn’t look Russian, or Georgian,

Chechen, Ukrainian, or Azerbaijani, for that matter. He was small by Maks’s standards,

but then almost everyone was small by his standards. His body was toned, though, its

responses finely honed. He possessed the preternatural stillness of properly harnessed

energy. He made no move unless he needed to and then used only the amount of energy

required, no more. Maks himself was like this, so it was easy for him to spot the subtle

signs others would miss. The guard’s eyes were pale, his expression grim, almost

detached, like a surgeon in the OR. His light hair thick on top, spiked in a style that

would have been unfamiliar to Maks had he not been an aficionado of international

magazines and foreign films. In fact, if Maks didn’t know better he’d say the guard was

American. But that was impossible. Maks’s boss didn’t employ Americans; he co-opted

them.

“So Maslov sent you,” Maks said. Dimitri Maslov was the head of Kazanskaya. “It’s

about fucking time, let me tell you. Fifteen months in this place feels like fifteen years.”

At that moment, as they came abreast of the showers, the guard, without turning fully

around, swung the truncheon into the side of Maks’s head. Maks, taken completely by

surprise, staggered onto the bare concrete floor of the shower room, which reeked of

mildew, disinfectant, and men lacking proper hygiene.

The guard came after him as nonchalantly as if he were out for the evening with a girl

on his arm. He swung the truncheon almost lazily. He struck Maks on his left biceps, just

hard enough to herd him backward toward the line of showerheads protruding from the

moist rear wall. But Maks refused to be herded, by this guard or by anyone else. As the

truncheon whistled down from the apex of its arc, he stepped forward, broke the

trajectory of the blow with his tensed forearm. Now, inside the guard’s line of defense, he could go to work in the way that suited the situation best.

The homemade knife was in his left hand. He thrust it point-first. When the guard

moved to block it, he slashed upward, ripping the edge of the blade against flesh. He’d

aimed for the underside of the guard’s wrist, the nexus of veins that, if severed, would

render the hand useless. The guard’s reflexes were as fast as his own, though, and instead

the blade scored the arm of the leather jacket. But it did not penetrate the leather as it

should have. Maks only had time to register that the jacket must be lined with Kevlar or

some other impenetrable material before the callused edge of the guard’s hand struck the

knife from his grip.

Another blow sent him reeling back. He tripped over one of the drain holes, his heel

sinking into it, and the guard smashed the sole of his boot into the side of Maks’s knee.

There was an awful sound, the grinding of bone against bone as Maks’s right leg

collapsed.

As the guard closed in he said, “It wasn’t Dimitri Maslov who sent me. It was Pyotr

Zilber.”

Maks struggled to extricate his heel, which he could no longer feel, from the drain

hole. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

The guard grabbed his shirtfront. “You killed his brother, Aleksei. One shot to the back

of the head. They found him facedown in the Moskva River.”

“It was business,” Maks said. “Just business.”

“Yes, well, this is personal,” the guard said as he drove his knee into Maks’s crotch.

Maks doubled over. When the guard bent to haul him upright, he slammed the top of

his head against the point of the guard’s chin. Blood spurted from between the guard’s

lips as his teeth cut into his tongue.

Maks used this advantage to drive his fist into the guard’s side just over his kidney.

The guard’s eyes opened wide-the only indication that he felt pain-and he kicked Maks’s

ruined knee. Maks went down and stayed down. Agony flowed in a river through him. As

he struggled to compartmentalize it, the guard kicked again. He felt his ribs give way, his cheek kissed the stinking concrete floor. He lay dazed, unable to rise.