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little insurance, to make sure you don’t change your mind about being my helper,” Timur said. “She’ll be at a good hotel, good service.” He bent down to pick up the fallen shoe and gave it to Cono. Cono was dazzled by the sharpness of the spike he held in his hand. In the fraction of a second in which he glimpsed Timur’s face and measured the distance of the men around him, Cono swung the point of the heel into the neck of the tall guard he’d recognized, the thug who had brutalized Xiao Li’s friends. Cono’s own awareness of his action, the idea of it, appeared in his mind only after it was done. He had pulled out the stiletto before the others could see the sweep of his arm, and they had noticed no more than a quick change in his posture. The man crumpled to the asphalt, clutching his neck, blood seeping out in a dark stream. Only Timur took a step backward from Cono and pulled the gun from his armpit. The others quickly crouched against the cars, looking for snipers as their injured comrade lost consciousness.
    “I’ll keep the shoe until I see her again,” Cono said. “And if she’s touched by anyone, they’ll go down like the toad who swallowed this.” Cono rotated the shoe so the dagger-like heel was pointing up.
    “Cinderella will be safe as long as you do your job,” Timur said, putting his gun away. He screamed at his men in a mixture of Kazak and Russian, and the car holding Xiao Li sped off. Cono got into the other car with Timur and two of his men. As the Mercedes accelerated, Cono’s head was thrown back against the seat.
    “Not so fast, slow it down,” Timur barked to the driver. To his right Cono saw the raised eyes of the shashlik cook shaking his head. The bloodied thin-faced man was left for others to pick up.
    Cono mentally replayed the scene in the Cactus, and the earlier one in the park. Timur’s discomfort, his agitation, had been obvious, but his duplicity—Cono couldn’t fathom how he’d missed that. Feelings of guilt and incompetence made the small shoe in his hand seem heavy. Cono wiped the shoe’s heel on the carpeted floor of the car. He’d been blind to the truth on Timur’s face, but his reflexes were intact. He wondered, in fact, if his reflexes were leaving his thoughts behind. And yet the attack couldn’t be just a reflex—he had struck the brute he recognized, no one else. Maybe the thinking had been done long before, and the reaction was already primed. What other thoughts had already taken hold without his awareness, and had already primed a reflexive trigger?
    And Timur? He could have shot Cono right there, because he knew the blow came from Cono, with his strange quickness—Timur had experienced it first-hand more than once. There must be desperation in Timur’s need for Cono. And maybe Timur, too, was happy to see the thin-faced man taken down, for different reasons.
    They pulled into the shimmering driveway of the Hotel Tsarina. Cono and Timur got out and stood next to the car.
    “Don’t worry about your little china doll,” Timur said. “Do you really think I would return her to you compromised?” He shook his head with a laugh. “I know you better than that, brother. You would hunt me down and find a way to make me pay. No.” He shook his head again. “She’ll be well taken care of. You have my word.
    “But I need your help. And I need to make sure you stay here to give it to me. You got me into this stinking mess. If the premier or Minister Kurgat thinks I was at the Svezda to work my own deal with Beijing … you can see where that might lead.”
    Cono remained silent.
    “Hey,” Timur said, clapping him on the shoulder. “I had the hotel bump out an American so you could have your favorite room, with the view. Want me to call a companion for you? Help you forget your friend?”
    “Another time, brother. I’m a working man. Working for you.”
    “Suit yourself.” Timur climbed into the idling Mercedes. “We’ll get started in