ell, Howdy, Bob. Come on in. What can I do for you this morning?”

Hoffstetler feels every inch the scolded child Strickland intended him to feel. Ten or twelve times he knocked on the door, while Strickland grinned, far too much time being lost. He lurches back before the strobing security screens. He’s baffled with fear, off-kilter enough that, thrusting his hand into his pocket, his index finger grazes the tip of the needle. Too close—he hisses panic into the bared teeth of his artificial smile.

“I just … wanted to make sure you … wished to go through with this.”

“These here are General Hoyt’s orders.” He lifts the topmost document, a superficial sketch of the asset perforated into butcher’s portions. “And I just initialed them. That means two hours and forty-five minutes from now, you and me act like good Americans and go gut that fish. I know how you feel. But think of it this way. The Japs, the Huns, the Chinese. They’re intelligent creatures, too, aren’t they? But we sure as hell had no problem killing them.”

Hoffstetler visualizes springing across the desk. He knew it might come to this. A graceless act, but so unlikely for a man his age that it might be all the surprise he needs. Strickland will raise an arm to defend himself, or turn his back—it doesn’t matter. The needle will pierce any part. Hoffstetler’s thighs are tensed for the vault when he notices the most minute of motions. Perhaps his eyes have become trained to detect anthropocentric detail of any size, down to the cilia of simple protocells and organelles. Just behind Strickland’s head, in the seventh monitor, the security camera’s perspective tilts upward, from a laundry van backing into a loading dock to the empty black sky above it.

Hoffstetler lets the syringe drop into his pocket. He replies that yes, of course, he’ll see Strickland at the euthanasia, but the polite sounds are muffled by the singing of his heart, “Slav’sya, Otechestvo nashe svobodnoye!” the Soviet state anthem. Mihalkov—he came through. After eighteen years of letting Hoffstetler struggle alone, the Russians have arrived to help.