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enough for Durell to reach for the knife in its sheath at the nape of his neck.
    The moon over the edge of the rimrock cast the fat man’s head and shoulders in bright amber light, while the rest of him was swathed in ebony shadow, invisible against the darkness below. It was as if he had been cut in half. As Jones raised his JP-12, the muzzle moved upward into the light, Durell’s knife flickered and sped to its mark. The girl screamed. Anderson started a warning sound in his throat that never fully came out. The knife chunked into Jones’s right shoulder. The man’s gun began to stutter, set on automatic, sending slugs wildly against the moon. At the same moment, Durell crouched low and dived for Anderson, who had made the mistake of standing too close. He felt the man’s gun slam frantically against his head as he smashed into the Russian’s middle. Anderson went backward, lost his footing, yelled, and lost his balance on the lip of the ledge. He went down, grabbing and pulling Durell with him. At that moment, he heard a belated scream from Jones and glimpsed the man with the knife embedded in his shoulder; Jones fell into the dry riverbed in a series of insane cartwheels. Durell and Anderson went down, too, locked together in a desperate grip. He had no time to think about the girl.
    The dizzying fall was checked by shattering bumps and crashes as they hit rock and scrub on the way down. Durell felt something smash into his left leg, slam against the side of his head, crush against his back. The breath was knocked out of him. The fall seemed endless. Then everything exploded in one last brain-shattering jolt and he lay still, not fully conscious. The sky reeled overhead. There was a roaring in his ears. He told himself to get up. He could not get up. He forced himself to roll on one side and his hand came down on something hard, metallic, unlike rock. It was Anderson’s automatic. He closed his fingers on it, felt a small tug against him, pulled harder, got his hand firmly on the grip. Pebbles rolled and clattered down around him. He got to his knees. The sky wavered again. The darkness seemed absolute here at the bottom of the ravine. Something small scrabbled away from him at the edge of the rough river bottom. He could not see what it was.
    A large and dark object loomed to his right. He slid toward it, his left leg acting strangely, not in complete control. He hoped nothing had been broken. When he was behind the boulder, he paused and sat with his back against the cool rock and drew several long, deliberate breaths. He could not see Anderson or Jones or the girl, but he thought he heard the girl calling in anxious tones down from the top of the ravine. He could not be sure. His ears rang. But after a long minute, he began to feel better.
    There were boulders of all sizes and shapes strewn around him. As his eyes adjusted, he saw that he and Anderson, in their desperate grips on each other, had rolled to the dry riverbed, where eons of storm washes had flung gravel and rolled heavy stones in tumultuous heaps here and there. He looked again for Anderson, but could not see the Russian.
    The girl was coming down the narrow goat track toward the ruined heaps of foundation stones in the ancient, deserted village. She carried Durell’s gun in her hand. He watched her until she passed below the edge of moonlight and merged into the darker shadows down here. Something moved about twenty yards ahead, toward the ruins. Pebbles rattled.
    “Leonid? Anya?”
    It was Anderson’s whisper. Durell sat still, gathering his strength, and checked the Russian automatic. It was loaded, but the safety was still on. Anderson—-or whatever his Russian name really was—had had no intention of shooting him. He had meant to leave that business to Jones-Kokin, who enjoyed slow executions. He slipped the safety catch off and made sure there was a cartridge in the chamber. He kept the gun on single-fire rather than automatic. Then he