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saw a large print with a distinctive loop crossed by a scar identical with prints on the bottles. On a jar he found the same, carefully dusted print.
    "He was right-handed?" Osorio asked.
    "Yes."
    "From the angles you can see, when he held the jar, the prints on the jar are his right thumb and index fingers and the prints on the glass are his left thumb and index finger. They're over all the rooms, doors, mirrors, everywhere. So you see, your Russian friend was a Cuban fisherman."
    "The body, how long was it dead?"
    "According to Dr. Bias, maybe two weeks."
    "No one's been here in the meantime?"
    "I asked the neighbors. No."
    "That must be a hungry turtle."
    Arkady returned to the front room, out of habit memorizing the apartment layout as he went: balcony, sitting room, laundry room, office, bathroom, bedroom. Inside the refrigerator were yogurt, greens, eggplant, pickled mushrooms, boiled tongue and a half-dozen boxes of color 35-mm film. He fed dillweed to the turtle and glanced at the black doll that filled the corner chair.» I have to admit these are new aspects to the man I knew. Did you find his car?"
    "No."
    "Do you know the make?"
    "Lada." She shook her head a little for emphasis.» It doesn't matter. Your flight is in four hours. The body is being prepared for the plane. You will accompany it. Agreed?"
    "I suppose I will."
    Osorio frowned, as if she glimpsed a nuance in the answer.
    On the ride back she asked, "Tell me, out of curiosity, as an investigator are you any good?"
    "Not particularly."
    "Why not?"
    "Various reasons. I used to have a fair rate of success, as your captain puts it. But that was when murders in Moscow were amateur affairs with steel pipes and vodka bottles. Now they're professional work with heavy artil lery. Also, militia work never paid well but it paid. Now, since the militia has not seen its salary in six months, men don't work with the same zeal. And there's the problem that if you do make progress on a contract homicide, the man who ordered the murder takes the prosecutor to lunch and offers him a condominium in Yalta and the case is dropped, so my success ratio is no longer something to be proud of. And, no doubt, my skills are not what they used to be."
    "You had so many questions."
    "Habit." Going through the motions, Arkady thought, as if his body were a suit that shuffled to the scene of the crime, any crime, anywhere. He was more irritated with himself than with her. Why had he started snooping? Enough! Osorio was right. He felt her eyes on him. Only for a moment, though. Because they were crossing a power blackout she had to proceed on some streets as carefully as steering a boat in the dark. In Arkady's mind, the syringe beckoned, the needle of a compass.
    When they halted for goats wandering over the road the headlights illuminated a wall on which was written "Venceremos!" Arkady tried to say it silently but Osorio caught him.
    Venceremos!' means   'We will win!'   In spite of America and Russia , we will win!"
    "In spite of history, geography, the law of gravity?"
    "In spite of everything! You don't have signs like that in Moscow anymore, do you?"
    "We have signs. Now they say Nike and Absolut."
    He got a glance from Osorio no worse than the flame of a blowtorch. When they reached the embassy apart ment the detective told him that a driver would gather him in two hours for the airport.» And you will have your friend to travel with."
    "Let's hope it really is the colonel." Osorio was stung worse than he'd intended.» A live Russian, a dead Russian, it's hard to tell the difference." "You're right."
    Arkady went up alone. A rumba played either in the house or out of the house, he could no longer tell where, all he knew was that constant music made him exhausted.
    Unlocking the door, he lit a cigarette, careful not to drop embers on his sleeve. It was a cashmere coat Irina had given him as a wedding present, a soft black wreath of a coat that, she said, made him look like a