Excerpts

Andr was finishing up work at his Paris office. The last thing was Yekaterina Konkovas call from Moscow. ...

Andryusha, dear, ... I have a request. A friend of my best friend lives in Tel Aviv. Her name is Vera. Shes going to be in Paris next week.... Put her up for a couple of days in your bachelor apartment.
...
Andr embraced her. She didnt resist. But her lips were unresponsive and her body only obedient. He picked Vera up and stroked her breast. ... Shes like the iceberg that kissed the Titanic. Either shes in love with someone, or shes frigid.
...
Andr preferred Frenchwomen to all foreign women, includingto his slight shameRussian women. Both his jobs compelled him to travel quite a lot.
...
Late-autumn Tel Aviv received Andr with a pleasant coolness.
...
Vera came in the evening. They had supper at the Greeks and went to the hotel, where everything was repeated as in a terrible dream: the limp body, the dead lips, the tightly squeezed legs.
...
...with one slicing blow of the side of his hand ... Andr shattered the back of the old mans head. Bruskel died instantly....
...
With deep old age intensifying in his bones, Semyon Gavrilovich Comperen slept longer than usual....
On this night he jumped up in bed upon hearing the chirp of the detector....
...
...Semyon Gavrilovich stroked the trigger three times, aiming the barrel as he was used to doing and planting a bullet to the head of each target.
...
Andr listened carefully, ... not interrupting, only trying to understand the working principles ... of a regime sending killers to those whom it should be guarding.
...
The order came from Moscow. You know that full well.
...
Outside there was a wintry autumn Moscow freeze.
...
Are you a Communist?
Kravkov sniggered. A Communist? That concept was totally perverted as early as the 1930s.... I was the same kind of bureaucrat as millions of others.... In Russia the entire century there was only one topic of conversation, a conversation interspersed with shootouts and which continues: exclusively as to what the machinery of state should be likestrong or weak, stronger or weaker than society. In the course of solving that problem the Russian empire has already lost more than a hundred million citizens..., but the problem has not yet been solved. Its just that today the supporters of an omnipotent officialdom ... are called, depending on degree of approximation to totality, Communists, Nazis, Fascists, patriots, nationalists, chauvinists, racists, blacks, black-whites, or red-browns; supporters of a market system are called liberals, democrats, centrists, shitocrats, traitors, enemies of the people, or lackeys of American imperialism.
...
So find me a 452 nine-millimeter pistol. An interchangeable 7.62 TT or 7.63 Mauser barrel usually goes with it. Many of your bullet-proof vests can be penetrated with calibers like that. Ask for it with a built-in silencer. Mooch another museum rarity off thema Klin-2 submachine gun; thats the counterpart to the French police MAS-38. If they dont have that junk, either, then at least have them issue an APS Stechkinits over a hundred years old. Bum three one-time RPG-28 Flies off your GRU buddies, too. And if you luck out totally, have them give us an AVB Vintorez silencer rifle and have them toss in several F-1 fragmentation grenades to boot.
...
Just tell me ... whether I extinguished the targets or whether I need to begin all over!
...
Yes, yes, you extinguished the targets, killed them, destroyed them. If you must know, you killed and maimed a total of sixty-two people yesterday. Sixty-two! Among them women and children!
...
Vera? Hi. Howre things? Glad to hear your voice.
Im glad, too, Andrei...
Is that true?
Yes. Where are you calling from, from that Paris of yours?
No, from Moscow. Listen, Id like to see you....
See me?
Well, get together.
You ask strange questions. ... Come see me.
I have a different suggestion. I want to invite you to your [St.] Petersburg for a week or two.
...
Andr did not feel the blow, he simply found himself on the floor and the last thing he saw before losing consciousness was the tattered runner in the corridor. Coming to, he sensed in his mouth, besides the taste of blood, the presence of a special odor that penetrated the pores and like an alarm signal frightened any person entering a medical facility. They stunned me and dug around in my mouth. This information was sufficient: he had fallen into a trap, and Vera had been the bait.