“So if it’s personal . . .” She doesn’t quite mention Lester Traipse, but a crinkled, almost-kind look, the sort of expression Stalin liked to beam at you in his publicity shots, has crept into Misha’s eyes.

“Isn’t only Lester. Please. Ice has this coming, you know it, we all know it. But better you don’t have full history.”

Deimos-and-Phobos gamer machismo, legitimate avenging angels, what? Maybe it is about more than Lester tonight, but isn’t Lester enough? whatever he saw that he shouldn’t’ve, the visitation that meant his end rising spooky and vaporous above the spreadsheets of secret cash flow, was something that couldn’t be allowed out among civilians. . . .

“OK, but how about a little history?”

The fellows exchange a mischievous look. Anasha can do funny things to a man. Even to two men.

“You heard about HALO jump.” Misha sez. “Igor tells story to everybody.”

“Especially cute women.” sez Grisha.

“Was not HALO jump, however. Was HAHO jump.”

“That’s . . . laughing all the way down, no wait, High Altitude . . .”

“High Opening. Chutes open, maybe 27,000 feet, you and your unit can fly 30, 40 miles, all stacked up in sky, lowest guy carries GLONASS receiver—”

“Like Russian GPS. One night Igor is on insertion job, everything gets fucked up, praporschik freaks out from no oxygen, wind spreads everybody over half Caucasus, GLONASS quits working. Igor gets down OK, but now he’s all by himself. No idea where or if base camp is set up. Uses compass and map to try and find rest of his unit. Days later, smells something. Little village, totally like massacred. Young, old, dogs, everybody.”

“Torched. That’s when Igor has soul crisis.”

“He doesn’t only get out of Spetsnaz—when he has enough money, he sets up his own private reparation plan.”

“Sending money to the Chechens?” wonders Maxine, “this isn’t considered treason?”

“It’s a lot of money, and by then Igor is well protected. He even thinks abut converting to Islam, but there’s too many problems. War ends, second war starts, some of people he’s been helping are now guerrillas. Situation has grown complicated. There are Chechens and there are Chechens.”

“Some good guys, some not so good.”

Names of resistance organizations that Maxine can’t keep straight. But now, well, not exactly a lightbulb—more like the glowing end of an El Producto—goes on over her head.

“So the money Lester was diverting from Ice—”

“Was going to bad guys, by way of Wahhabist bullshit front. Igor knew how to reach money before it would get all mixed up in Emirates account. He expedites matters for Lester, takes little commission. Everything dzhef, till somebody finds out.”

“Ice?”

“Whoever is running Ice? You tell us.”

“And Lester . . .” Maxine realizes she has blurted.

“Lester was like little hedgehog in fog. Only trying to find his friends.”

“Poor Lester.”

What, now it’s all gonna go saline, here?

“Exit 18,” Misha announces instead, exhaling smoke, eyes gleaming, “Poughkeepsie.” And not a moment too soon.

The train station’s just over the bridge. Waiting in the parking lot is Yuri, a cheerful athletic type leaning against a Hummer bearing stigmata from a long history of hard road, behind it a sizable trailer with a generator for the pulse weapon. From RV generators she’s seen, Maxine estimates 10, 15,000 watts. “Ten-percent power” may be a figure of speech.

They’re in time to catch the 10:59 to New York. “So long, boys,” Maxine waves, “go safe, can’t say I really approve, I know if my own kids ever got hold of a vircator . . .”

“Here, don’t forget this,” discreetly handing her back the Beretta.

“You realize you’ve just made Tallis and me accessories to some criminal, probably even terrorist, act.”

The padonki exchange a hopeful glance. “You think so?”

“First of all, it’s federal, hashslingrz is an arm of U.S. security—”

“They don’t want to hear about this right now,” Tallis dragging her down the platform. “Fuckin dweebs.”

The boys wave out the windows as they pull away. “Do svidanya Maksi! Poka, byelokurva!”

41

In the train on the way back, Maxine must’ve fallen asleep. She dreams she’s still in the ZiL. The landscape out the windows has frozen to deep Russian midwinter, snowfields under a piece of moon, illumination from the olden days of sleigh travel. A snow-inundated village, a church spire, a gas station shut for the night. Crossfade to Brothers Karamazov, Doctor Zhivago and others, covering their winter distances like this, frictionless, faster than anything else, suddenly you can get more than one errand done per trip, a breakthrough in romantic technology. Somewhere between Lake Heatsink and Albany, across the dark wilderness, a fleet of black SUVs now with only their fog lights lit, on the way to intercept. Maxine falls into an exitless loop, the dream as she surfaces turning into a spreadsheet she can’t follow. She wakes up around Spuyten Duyvil to Tallis’s sleeping face, closer to her own than you’d expect, as if sometime in sleep their faces had been even closer.

They roll into Grand Central about 1:00 A.M., hungry. “Guess the Oyster Bar is closed.”

“Maybe the apartment is safe by now,” Tallis offers, not believing it herself, “come on back, we’ll find something.”

What they find, actually, is a good reason to leave again. Soon as they step out of the elevator they can hear Elvis-movie music. “Uh-oh,” Tallis looking for her keys. Before she can find them, the door is flung open and a less-than-towering presence starts in with the emotions. Behind him on a screen Shelley Fabares is dancing around holding a sign announcing I’M EVIL.

“What’s this?” Maxine knows what it is, she chased him across half Manhattan not so long ago.

“This is Chazz, who isn’t even supposed to know about this place.”

“Love will find a way,” Chazz replies, jive-assingly.

“You’re here because we broke the spy camera.”

“You kiddin, I hate them things, darlin, if I’d known, I would’ve broke it myself.”

“Go back, Chazz, tell your pimp it’s no sale.”

“Please just give me a minute, Sugar, I confess at first it was all strictly business, but—”

“Don’t call me ‘Sugar’.”

“Nutrasweet! I’m pleading here.”

Ah, the big, or actually midsize, lug. Tallis stalks on headshaking into the kitchen.

“Chazz, hi,” Maxine waving as if from a distance, “nice to meet you finally, read your rap sheet, fascinating stuff, tell me, how’d a Title 18 Hall of Famer end up in the fiber business?”

“All ’at old misbehavior, ma’am? try and rise above it ’stead of judgin me, maybe you’ll notice a pattern?”

“Let’s see, strong background in sales.”

Nodding amiably, “You try and hit ’em when they’re too disoriented to think. Last year when the tech bubble popped? Darklinear started hirin big time. Made a man feel like some kind of a draft pick.”

“At the same time, Chazz,” Tallis, switched briefly to her Doormat setting, fetching beers, dips, snacks in bags, “my ex-husband-to-be wasn’t paying your employer that much just to keep little me busy.”

“He really is just buyin fiber’s all it is, totally a fatpipe person, payin top dollar, tryin to nail down as many miles of cable as he can get, outside plant, premises, first it was just in the Northeast, now it’s anywhere out in the U.S.—”

“Tidy consultation fees,” Maxine imagines.

“There you go. And it’s legal too, maybe even more than some of the stuff . . .” pausing to downshift.

“Oh, go ahead, Chazz, you were never shy about the contempt you felt for me, Gabe, the business we’re in.”

“Real and make-believe’s all I ever meant, my artificial sweetener, I’m just a logistics- and infrastructure-type fella. Fiber’s real, you pull it through conduit, you hang it, you bury it and splice it. It weighs somethin. Your husband’s rich, maybe even smart, but he’s like all you people, livin in this dream, up in the clouds, floatin in the bubble, think ’at’s real, think again. It’s only gonna be there long as the power’s on. What happens when the grid goes dark? Generator fuel runs out and they shoot down the satellites, bomb the operation centers, and you’re all back down on planet Earth again. All that jabberin about nothin, all ’at shit music, all ’em links, down, down and gone.”