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over the slick tracks, and he thought of the years—years of labor, years of detection and painstaking investigation—and he felt the weight of accumulated disappointments. There had been scorn too; humiliation, embarrassment, a skeptical disregard of his work. Do I make myself plain ?
    â€œHow often do you encounter a Mrs. Blum?” Katya asked.
    â€œNever,” he said.
    â€œWell then?”
    Andreyev went to the window, peered out into the darkness, the rush of reflected light from the carriages that struck the snowbanks alongside the tracks. “I don’t think Domareski would do anything to harm her,” he said.
    Katya was silent for a while. A restless hand went up to her hair; fingers patted the short, tight locks. How unattractive she is, Andreyev thought, glancing at her, glimpsing her half-open mouth, the small teeth. He was conscious of how close to her he stood; he stepped away from the window, turning his back to her.
    â€œNo,” he said. “I think he wants to let off steam.”
    â€œAnd that’s all?”
    â€œThat’s all,” he answered, struck by uncertainty now, remembering Domareski’s strange assurance in the corridor—that strength, single-mindedness. An honorable man, Andreyev thought, in a world of deceit. An honorable man made to perform against his principles: was there a more dangerous creature than that?
    5.
    The Politician, Sememko, had a private car at the back of the train. It was guarded, more for reasons of paranoia than any fear of a breach in security, by two agents of the KGB; both were bored men who stood in the corridor and watched night fall through the snow. Neither looked remotely interested in the wilderness outside. They leaned against the walls, whistled, touched their automatic pistols, and sometimes exchanged quick phrases, jokes about the cold, prospects of Moscow, brief arguments over the merits of soccer teams—Moscow Dynamo compared to Lokomotiv, for example. They were men who had become accustomed to waiting, who had learned how to whittle their time away in tedious places. The red-haired one pressed his face to the dark glass and hummed a phrase from a tune he had recently heard on “The Voice of America” over a confiscated radio. The other, a lean man with thick spectacles, was walking around in small circles, observing the marks left by his shoes, trying to fit new footprints into old ones; he gave the impression of a novice tightrope artist who did not exactly trust his eyesight.
    The red-haired one peered out into the blackness and asked, “Do you think they’re screwing?”
    Removing his spectacles, rubbing the lenses with a small rag, the other said, “I wouldn’t touch her with your proverbial ten-foot pole. Would you?”
    The red-haired man shrugged. “It would pass some of the time,” he said. “You could always pull a bag over her head.”
    â€œYou couldn’t exactly pull a bag over her body, could you?”
    Both were silent for a while, both thinking about the thin woman who had gone, not twenty minutes before, into Sememko’s car. The lean man replaced his glasses and laughed, making a masturbatory gesture with his right hand. “It would be better than that,” he said.
    â€œI wouldn’t bet on it,” the red-haired one said.
    Silence. Both men were still for a while, as if they were listening for the sound of sexual activity from behind the closed door of Sememko’s car. But there was only the rhythmic ticking of the wheels on the track and sometimes the sound of the wind wailing around the train.
    And then the door was opened; the woman stood there in a square of bright yellow light. Both men stood attentively upright, looking at her.
    She moved past them, stopped, and then turned to face them. She said, “I believe Comrade Sememko wants to see you.”
    6.
    Domareski was alone in the empty dining car. It was late now and