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his whimsy of the morning.
    â€œSpeshnev, it’s with great pleasure I have come all this way to announce your rehabilitation! Speshnev, so hard have I fought for justice in your case, so fiercely have I waged a campaign! I never forgot you, Speshnev, when all the others did. It is to me, Pushkin, that you should genuflect in thanks. I, Pushkin, give you your life back!”
    â€œDoes this mean—unlimited access to cockroaches?”
    â€œAbsolutely. Now listen. There is a county, Speshnev, that has long been oppressed. Its trajectory is toward chaos, crime, filth, degradation. It is owned lock, stock and barrel by American criminal and business interests, who use it as their whorehouse, shitter, and sugar factory.”
    â€œActually, it sounds delightful.”
    â€œIt is. Quite. The señoritas! Muchas bonitas! ”
    â€œI take it this is a Latin country?”
    â€œThe island paradise known as Cuba.”
    â€œExcellent señoritas.”
    â€œAs there were in Spain. Same stock, actually, though with a tinge of negro blood for that extra paprika in bed.”
    â€œIn my mind, I’m there already.”
    â€œSpeshnev, there is a boy. We have him spotted. He is clever, committed, ambitious, unbearably courageous. He could be the leader.”
    â€œI see.”
    â€œYou will study the documents on the train back to Moscow with me. But you already see where this is going.”
    â€œI see where I am going.”
    â€œThis boy. He must be seduced, smoothed, trained, aimed, disciplined, taught to expect success. As he is currently situated, well, it’s that Latin temperament. Romantic, unrealistic, too quick to act, too slow to think. He needs a mentor, a senior fellow of wisdom and experience. Speshnev, with your magic ways, your charm, your ruthlessness, I think this is a task for you. It was made to order. It is your redemption, your future, your rehabilitation.”
    â€œSo I’m to help the regime that imprisoned me twice. Eagerly, willingly, aggressively?”
    â€œOf course. There’s only a paradox if you build it yourself. You can have a model contradiction in which we punish you unjustly, almost to the point of death, certainly to the point of misery, then we demand heroic service of you. A lesser man might find a source of resentment somewhere in the equation. It takes a great man to make the contradiction irrelevant on the strength of his will alone. Speshnev, I won’t even ask you. Because of course I know the answer.”
    â€œThere’s really not an alternative, is there? Not after tea and showers and American tobacco. Who could say no?”
    â€œNo one, little 4715. No one.”

Chapter 4
    The deer hovered between shadow and light. It was almost not there. The boy blinked, to make certain again that he had it fixed. There was a magical quality to it: the way it seemed to disappear, lose its lines among the blend of darkness and illumination, then to materialize, then again vanish.
    He felt his heart pound. He was eight. He had worked his father’s deer camp for three years now and had seen them many times before, in the trees, or thrashing in fury as they were hit, just a second of rebellion against the steel message of the bullet, shot above the shoulder, or gutted skinless and hanging to bleed out from a rack. Nothing about it frightened him, except that he himself had not killed a deer yet. But he was ready.
    He had hunted squirrel with a Remington single-shot .22 until he hit what he aimed at every time. He had learned stillness. He had learned to sink to nothingness, until only the animal in him breathed, but only barely, yet at the same time he saw and heard so clearly.
    Now, cradled in his arms was a 94 Winchester, the .30–30, which he had just grown strong enough to shoot. He was eager, he was ready, the hunter’s bloodsong pounded in his ears.
    â€œLet him come out into the light, Bob Lee,” his father