ll hopes fade…”

“When spring … while the spring…”

“As the spring recedes. As the spring recedes. Is this Chekhov? Is this Dostoyevsky? Nyet. It is a sentence simple enough for a glupyy rebenok. This whole enterprise, it is bear claws, digging into my flesh!”

Hoffstetler is never calm when called to see Mihalkov. Now, though, he is frenetic, unable to restrain body or tongue. Today’s cab driver had complained of him kicking the back of the seat, and while waiting in the industrial park, he’d pounded his shoe heels into his concrete block enough to carve out twin caves. His mood isn’t lightened by the Bison, an oaf intelligent enough to pilot a Chrysler all around Baltimore but unable to memorize a remedial code phrase. Hours were being wasted at a time when there weren’t seconds to spare.

The violinists, called to duty on the Black Sea’s day off, are crusty eyed in disheveled suits. They raise untuned instruments when they see Hoffstetler, but he elbows past before they can hit the first note of Russian cliché. The effulgent blue of the lobster tank makes a brown murk of the booths below; the murkiest shape is Mihalkov himself in his usual seat. Hoffstetler bolts that way, striking a two-top with his hip. It smarts, and he sees in his mind the creature’s ripped sutures.

“This foolishness must end! Hours I spend waiting in the park or being driven around by your pet beast!”

“Dobroye utro,” Mihalkov says. “Such energy so early.”

“Early? Do you not understand?” Hoffstetler hurries through a triumphal arch and stands over Mihalkov, his hands in fists. “Every minute I am not at Occam is a minute those savages might kill it!”

“The loudness, pozhaluysta.” Mihalkov rubs his eyes. “I am with headache. Last night, Bob, I overindulged.”

“Dmitri!” Hoffstetler’s spittle disturbs Mihalkov’s black tea. “Call me Dmitri, mudak!”

It speaks well of Hoffstetler’s proficiency as an informant, he will think later, that he had never, before that moment, had to experience the full abilities of a man trained by the KGB. Mihalkov, eyes cast down with the misdirection of a headache, snatches Hoffstetler by the wrist and yanks downward, as if closing blinds. Hoffstetler is driven to his knees. His chin lands on the tabletop and he bites down on his tongue. Mihalkov twists Hoffstetler’s arm behind his back and pulls upward. Hoffstetler’s chin grinds into the table. The musicians, directly in Hoffstetler’s eyeline, snap shut their jaws, nod out a rhythm, and start playing.

“Look at the lobsters.” Mihalkov tidies his mouth with a napkin. “Go on, Dmitri.”

Pivoting on his chin hurts. Blood from either his chin or tongue dampens the table. He looks up with his eyes. The tank looms, a tsunami caught behind glass. Even under duress, Hoffstetler can see what Mihalkov means. Usually the crustaceans are torpid, shrugging along the tank’s bottom like barnacles. Today they are agitated, antenna swaying and claws pinching as they flex legs and carapace to scrabble up the walls, claws clacking against glass.

“They are like you, are they not?” Mihalkov asks. “They should relax. Accept their fate. And yet, left alone, they get big ideas. Climbing, escape. But it is wasted energy. They do not know the size of the world beyond their tank.”

Mihalkov picks up a fork. Hoffstetler’s eyes go to it. It’s clean, silver, lustrous in the low light. Mihalkov presses the points against Hoffstetler’s shoulder.

“A little twist and the arms come right off. Like butter.” He drags the fork to the nape of Hoffstetler’s neck. “The tail also. Very simple. Twist and pull, and off it comes.” The fork moves again, the tines ticking across his shirt until they rest against his biceps. “The legs are easy. Wine bottle, pepper mill—roll the arms flat and the meat, it just squirts out.” He licks his lips as if tasting the melted butter. “I can teach you how to do it,

Dmitri. It is a good thing to know, how to take an animal apart.”

He releases his hold and Hoffstetler slumps to the floor, cradling his wrenched arm. Though his eyesight is blurred by tears, he sees Mihalkov gesture and feels the Bison’s huge hands lifting him into the air and depositing him in the booth. The comfort of the seat is somehow grotesque; writhing on the floor made more sense. He fumbles for a napkin, holds it against his chin. There is blood, but not a lot. Leo Mihalkov knows what he’s doing.

“My superiors have told me that extraction is impossible.” Mihalkov drowns two spoonfuls of sugar in his tea. “I made your case. A convincing one, I thought. The Soviet Union, I told them, does not lead the United States in many categories. But in space, we lead! The Occam asset, it would solidify this.” He sips, shrugs. “But what does a brute like me know about such things? I am what you said: a pet beast. All of us, Dmitri, are the pet beast to someone.”

Hoffstetler crumples the bloody napkin in his fist and gasps through panting.

“So it dies, then? We just let it die?”

Mihalkov smiles. “Russia does not leave its countrymen without recourse.”

He wipes his hands clean and lifts from the seat cushion a box. It is small, black, made of industrial plastic. He undoes the box’s fasteners and opens it to reveal three objects nestled into slotted protective foam. Mihalkov extracts the first item. Hoffstetler is familiar with many a gadget, but this is something new. It is the size of a baseball and constructed from a curled knuckle of metal pipe like a homemade grenade, except that the soldering is professional and the wiring held in place with tidy epoxy putty. A small green light, yet unlit, is taped next to a red button.

“We call this a popper,” Mihalkov says. “It is one of the Israelis’ new toys. Secure it within ten feet of Occam’s central fuses, depress the button, and five minutes later it will release a surge strong enough to disable all electricity. Lights, cameras, everything. It is highly effective. But I warn you, Dmitri, the damage is temporary. The fuses are replaced, and the power will return. I do not expect you to have more than ten minutes to complete your task.”

“My task,” Hoffstetler repeats.

Mihalkov nestles the popper back into the foam and, with the gentleness of a farmer scooping up a baby chick, withdraws the second item. This Hoffstetler recognizes, for he has wielded so many in so many regretful ways. It is a fully assembled syringe. Mihalkov removes the final item, a small glass vial filled with a silver liquid. He holds these items with more care than he held the popper and gives Hoffstetler a sympathetic smile.

“If the Americans are exterminating the asset, as you say, then there is but one course of action. You must get to it first. Inject it with this solution. It will kill the asset. More important, it will eat away the asset’s insides. When it is through, there will be nothing left to study but bones. Perhaps a little handful of scales.”

Hoffstetler laughs, a snort that spatters the table in spit, blood, and tears.

“If we can’t have it, neither can they. Is that the idea?”

“Mutually assured destruction,” Mihalkov says. “You know the concept.”

Hoffstetler braces one hand against the table and covers his face with the other.

“It didn’t want to hurt anyone,” he sobs. “It went centuries without hurting anyone. We did this to it. We dragged it up here. We tortured it. What’s next, Leo? What species do we wipe out next? Is it us? I hope it is. We deserve it.”

He feels Mihalkov’s hand settle atop his, pat it gently.

“You told me it understands pain like we do.” Mihalkov’s voice is soft. “Then be better than the Americans. Be better than all of us. Go ahead, listen to your author Mr. Huxley. Think of the creature’s feelings. Deliver it from its suffering. When you are finished, we wait, four or five days, just for appearances. Then I will take you, myself, to the embassy and put you on a ship to Minsk. Picture it, Dmitri. The blue skies like nothing they have here. The sun like the Christmas star through the snowy trees. So much has changed since you’ve seen it. You will see it again. You will see it with your family. Concentrate on that. All of it, it is nearly at the end.”