Bora’s breath was hot and damp. “There’s a weight room in your courtyard. I was coming out and who do I see pulling off a motorcycle helmet but the man from Chistye Prudy? Remember the fun you had on the ice there? You laughed at the wrong man.”

Bora was all muscle, while Arkady got winded climbing stadium steps. Also, he had only one good hand to fend off Bora. Everything was wrong. The red ring around Sofia Andreyeva’s neck. Zhenya’s despair as the pistol’s recoil spring sprang and rolled out of reach. Eva’s hoarse efforts to breathe.

Bora leveraged more weight onto the knife.

“Are you laughing?” Bora introduced the knife to Arkady’s ear, tickling the fine hairs of the whorl.

Slowly, reluctantly, Arkady’s arm gave way. He remembered a dream in which he had failed everybody. He didn’t recall the details but the sense was the same.

A chessboard bounced off Bora’s head. He looked up and Zhenya fired.

There wouldn’t be a second shot, because the boy pulled the trigger without the recoil spring.

There didn’t need to be a second shot. Bora was spread out on the floor, a black hole the size of a cigarette burn in his head.

With wind and snow constantly shifting, it was hard to tell whether the ambulance was making forward progress.

Arkady and Zhenya rode with Eva and a paramedic, a girl with a check list. Eva was strapped into a litter, blankets up to her chin, an oxygen mask cupping her face and wires connecting her to a rack of monitors. On a jump seat, Zhenya hugged his knees.

“She’s taking shallow breaths,” Arkady said.

The paramedic assured Arkady that while stab victims could die from shock and loss of blood in a matter of seconds, at twenty minutes after being attacked Eva was still conscious, her eyes focused on Arkady and she had hardly bled at all. Arkady tried to seem confident, but the experience was like being in a plunging elevator. He saw the floors go by, but couldn’t get off.

Eva lifted the oxygen mask. “I’m cold.”

He pulled Eva’s blanket back and tore her dress for a better look at the wound, a slit edged in purple between the ribs. There was no external bleeding from the cut unless he applied pressure, then wine-dark blood seeped out.

Waiting.

Arkady and Zhenya sat on a bench outside the scrub room, trying to catch a glimpse of Eva whenever the door opened to the OR she had been rolled into. Arkady measured the hall in footsteps again and again. He stared at the Do Not Smoke and No Cell Phones signs on a wall. At one end of the hall an Emergency Only door accessed the roof; outside, snow was covering the deck and pushing along cigarette butts and empty packs. He flipped through commercial brochures on a table without really reading, “What to do in Tver,” “Sovietskaya’s Luxury Row” or “How to Win at Roulette.” Felt himself petrify. Zhenya hid in Eva’s coat, two legs sticking out, until Arkady put his arm around him and thanked him for saving everybody. They would all be dead if it hadn’t been for Zhenya.

“I think you’re the bravest boy I ever met. The best one ever.”

Zhenya’s crying under the coat sounded like the tearing of wood.

Elena Ilyichnina came out in purple scrubs dark with sweat and spoke to Arkady in a soft, special tone that offered no false hope at all. “We drained a considerable amount of blood. Doctor Kazka presented little external bleeding, but internally she was drowning. There are so many organs for a knife to hit-the lungs, liver, spleen, diaphragm and, of course, the heart-depending on the reach of the blade. A complete laparoscopy and repair could go on for hours. I suggest you go to the emergency room and have your hand properly looked at.”

Arkady could picture the emergency room and its nocturnal population of drunks and meth-heads vying for attention. Everything but vampires.

“We’ll stay.”

“Of course. How silly of me to suggest medical attention.”

Arkady didn’t see why she was so brusque. “Could you please tell me where I can use a cell phone?”

“Not on this floor. Our instruments don’t like them.”

“Where, then?”

“Outside.” She caught him eyeing the Emergency Only door. “Don’t even imagine it.”

Sick of gazing at the floor, Arkady returned to the brochures on the table. They were glossy foldouts that offered apartments, manicures, intimate restaurants, the chance to meet foreign men. One said, ‘Sarkisian Carpets. A fine Persian, Turkish, Oriental carpet is a beautiful investment! Dragon carpets, especially, only gain in value. In the auction houses of Paris and London dragon carpets are valued at $100,000 and more!” In the accompanying photo a well dressed man with white hair pointed to a red dragon skulking in the intricate design of a carpet. Arkady inked in the man’s hair with a pen and the family resemblance to Prosecutor Sarkisian was complete.

Victor and Platonov arrived from Moscow with cardboard cups of tea.

“Your doctor called me. I called Platonov.”

Platonov said, “You and Zhenya didn’t think your friends were going to desert you, did you?”

“Do you have a relationship with Elena Ilyichnina?” Arkady asked Victor.

“Sort of. We sat up together when you were in the hospital. We shared the vigil.”

“You were drunk.”

“A detail. Drink your tea.”

The tea looked weak and felt cold. Arkady took a sip and almost spat up.

“A touch of ethanol.” Victor shrugged. “There’s tea and there’s tea.”

“It’s vile.”

“You’re welcome.” He offered Arkady a pistol and an extra clip.

Arkady declined. “I don’t think Elena Ilyichnina called you so we could have a gunfight in her hospital.”

“We would be famous. We would be terrorists on the evening news.”

Zhenya and Platonov played blindfold chess, exactly what the boy needed to keep his mind occupied. A catalogue for women’s lingerie had Victor totally absorbed.

Arkady nodded off and in a dream went for cigarettes. He found a machine in the basement next to the cafeteria, which was closed, and an exhibit of schoolchildren’s art. There were a good many princesses and figure skaters, ice hockey players and Black Berets.

He got confused on the way back, missed a turn and took the wrong elevator to a different part of the hospital. Now he was hotter, sweatier and it was the middle of the day. He heard the drone of outboard engines, dipping oars, the plop of fish, the lassitude of an aluminum boat adrift. Midges hatched from the water, dragonflies feasted on the midges, swallows snatched dragonflies on the wing and horseflies fed on Platonov. He wore an Afrika Korps-style cap to protect his neck and every five minutes went into a spasm of swatting that rocked the boat.

“Bloodsuckers! This is probably why the creature stays in its murky depths.”

Platonov dropped the oars back in the water and managed a stroke. He did the rowing because placing his bulk at the bow or stern made the boat unsteady. Zhenya sat up front in a T-shirt and shorts searching through a box of fireworks. He had attained a light tan and even filled out a little. A camera hung on a strap around his neck.

“We only have one more bomb,” Zhenya said.

“How are we with sandwiches?” Platonov asked.

Arkady looked in the hamper. “We have plenty. Some of them are a little wet.”

“There’s no such thing,” Platonov said, “as a sandwich that is only a little wet.”

Zhenya scanned the water through the camera. “Did you know that some dead bodies don’t sink or float, they just hang in the water?”

“Sounds delightful.” Platonov dipped his cap in the water and set it back on his head, luxuriating in the cool runoff.

“Tell me the plan again,” Arkady said.