Declare

Seem reckless and belligerent, Hale thought. "The Russians...kidnapped one of your angels," he said, "in 1883, didn't they? Took it back to Moscow, moored it with drogue stones, anchors, in the Lubyanka basement and at the Soviet borders. I would think his fellows-" He remembered the thing he had seen in Berlin, and corrected himself: "Her fellows, would look unkindly on that."

Mammalian's face was expressionless. "If we-when we succeed, on the mountain, this time-" He raised a hand hesitantly. "You needn't fear that there will be injustice."

Hale quickly looked over his shoulder, as if impatient for his vodka-for Mammalian, hungover himself, had given away more than he had meant to, and there was no advantage for Hale in seeming to have noticed.

But Hale was certain now that Mammalian's loyalty here was to the djinn themselves, and not to the Rabkrin. And Hale wondered if Mammalian had even been a devout Communist during the Rabkrin attempt in 1948.

In fact the waiter was now striding back toward their table, carrying a tray; and neither of the seated men spoke as the two glasses and the coffee cup were set down on the glass tabletop. But as the young man was stepping away Hale called, "Another vodka here, please! And a cold Almaza beer with it to put out the fire." He bolted the glass of vodka in two hard swallows.

The waiter nodded without looking back.

"You will be useless before noon, at this rate!" exclaimed Mammalian in dismay. "And Charles Garner drinks arak!">Philby puffed out his cheeks. "Well, that's not really my line of territory. What was the vow?"

"I told the Virgin: 'If you will intercede with your Son to get me out of Russia alive, I vow that on my-'" Elena frowned. "I wanted to give it time, selfishly wait until my youth was safely gone, I think-I said, 'I vow that on my fortieth birthday at high noon I will light a candle for you right here in Moscow, at St. Basil's Cathedral in Red Square, in the heart of your enemy's kingdom, the way you put your heel on the serpent's head.' And I promised her that I would-"

After several seconds Philby shook his head and raised his eyebrows. "What's the harm of being honest now, here? On your deathbed?"

"Oh God," Elena sighed. "I promised her that I would be a chaste wife from then on. I didn't want to embark on it too soon, there was a young man-gone now-"

"Chaste," said Philby impatiently, "do go on. I don't need to hear about your tiresome young men. Whom were you going to be married to, in your old age?" Philby himself was then thirty-six.

"I vowed that I would not marry until then, and that-that I would consider marrying-I was delirious-that I would take whomsoever she might elect to show me, after I had lit the candle. You see? I was humbly placing the selection in her hands. I think I imagined Prince Myshkin." The gun was wobbling in her grip, and she told herself that she must soon return it to its position against her forehead. "If there is a man there, in the cathedral when you light the candle...give him my regrets."

Philby nodded. "I can do that much-no prayers. When would be your fortieth birthday?"

"April the twenty-second-in 1964."

"My calendar is free on that day, as it happens." Philby stared at her in evident perplexity. "You're about to-kill yourself, but you still believe all this business?"

"I wouldn't kill myself if I didn't believe this business." She shivered. "Sin has real weight."

"What, your men dying on Mount Ararat last night?" When she didn't answer he shook his head and laughed, clearly not yet satisfied with her situation. "You know, I've never understood...faith. 'Do the stars answer? in the night have ye found comfort? or by day have ye seen gods? What hope, what light, falls from the farthest starriest way on you that pray?'" She had realized that he was quoting something, and now he waved deprecatingly and said, "Swinburne."

"Yes," she said. When he raised his eyebrows, she went on, miserably, "Yes, the stars answer. God answers."

Philby opened his mouth, then frowned and closed it; he appeared to shiver, and when he finally spoke, it was more quietly. "What d-does H-H-He say, ch-child?"

Elena blinked tears out of her eyes. "He says, 'Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee, save Me, save only Me?'" She sniffed. "Francis Thompson."

"I n-know it," he said. "'Yet I was sore adread lest, having Him, I must have naught beside.'" Philby seemed agitated. "Tell mmmm-tell me!-when you g-go to your s-sacrament, of C-C-Confession!-do you really have a f-firm purpose of am-amendment?"

"Yes. It might not seem possible later, but-yes. 'To sin no more.'"

"And in b-baptism you were freed of the-w-weight of ss-sin? The b-black drop in the h-human heart?"

"Yes, I was."

"I-" He sighed and shook his head. "But for m-me that would be g-going b-back to point zz-zero! At my age-at m-my age! It's not for m-me, my dear. Too much tie-time invested." He slapped his open palms on the thighs of his trousers and stood up. "But sss-suicide is n-not for you-'the Everlasting hath fix'd his canon 'gainst self-slaughter,' you n-know. Is this doubt, do you d-doubt that your ggg-your God, will f-forgive you, as p-promised? Or is it p-plain shame? 'I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself.' O santisima Elena!-are you s-simply ashamed to approach H-H-Him as...just one m-more sinner, as b-bad as the rest of us? You w-w-won't play, if you c-can't wear the halo?" He laughed gently. "You're n-not the-that egotistical, surely?" He took a step toward her across the threadbare carpet. "Test your m-monstrous villainy, my dear. Either sh-shoot me, or give me the g-gun." He walked toward her with his palm out.

Elena's hand twitched, as if to fire the gun at him or turn it on herself while she still could, but when his palm was below hers she opened her trembling fingers and let the gun fall.

Quickly he popped out the magazine, and he tugged the slide back and forth several times, ejecting the round that had been in the chamber. Finally he dry-fired the gun at the ceiling, and when it had clicked harmlessly he tossed it clattering onto the floor.

In her suddenly renewed drunkenness it seemed echoingly loud.

Elena covered her face with her hands, and all at once she was sobbing at the appalling prospect of living until tomorrow, and the day after that-and she only realized that he had sat down beside her when the mattress tilted under her.

In the morning he had been gone, but he had left a note on the bedside table under her retrieved gun, signed with a hasty pen-drawing of three interlocked, leaping fish. The note had been brief: On second thought, I don't think He'll forgive you. I've reloaded your SIG. (Through the roof of the mouth is better, by the bye.)