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laughed and splashed back.
    “You mean the other companies give gifts to the top men?” Cono said.
    Katerina cocked her head and smiled. She knew he must be joking, but he sounded so very sincere. “Well, only the top part counts in some countries.”
    “Like asparagus, then.”
    “Yes.”
    “Not like an iceberg, where what counts is below.”
    She grinned. “No.”
    “So you need a faceless man who knows some languages,” Cono said after a moment.
    “And who is free and fearless and trustworthy. Irina said those things about you. And that you are addicted to the thrill of your work.”
    “Irina is free and fearless and trustworthy.”
    “She is free, thanks to you. She will always be grateful for how you helped her.”
    “And you? Are you free?” Cono lowered himself into the water except for his head so that the sun would be blocked by Katerina, allowing him to clearly see her face. Her eyes twitched only so slightly left and right, then met Cono’s. The sun’s shielded light made a corona around her head.
    “Not free,” she said. She lowered her head, tipping the sun’s glare into Cono’s eyes, and making him squint. “Not yet.”
    Cono stood up and clapped his hands on the surface, sending a spray onto Katerina’s face. He took her hand. “Water is a great freedom. You can glide wherever you want through it, bury yourself in it, and come out alive, as long as you know which way is up.” Cono took her under and they swam beneath the surface until Katerina came up for air. Kicking like a dolphin, Cono made a complete underwater circuit of the edges of the pool before rejoining Katerina in the center.
    His head rose and he exhaled slowly. “How do you know Irina?”
    “From Almaty.”
    Cono didn’t ask more, but she went on.
    “We had the same … client. He liked to have two girls at the same time. He had favorites. But, then, after a while, he wasn’t nice.” Katerina tentatively reached upward, paused, and finally scooped her hair off her back, showing Cono a scar the length of a finger at the base of her neck. She turned slightly. On her right shoulder there was another scar—a double band of teeth marks. Cono had seen that type of mark only once before, on Irina. He had traced his fingers over it and wondered without asking.
    “And your work for the Americans?” Cono said.
    “It’s my chance to be free. I’m just a go-between, a scout. They hired me because of my client. Mr. K, Minister Kurgat, runs most of Kazakhstan.”
       
    Cono breathed deeply now as he stood on his left leg on the balcony, extending the other leg straight out in front of him, with a finger hooked around his big toe. Even the lights marking the skeleton of the amusement park were now extinguished. He finished his exercises and went to bed, where he tried to fight his restlessness by chiding himself for his sentimentality. It didn’t work.
    Xiao Li’s call came an hour later. She was whispering, her voice hard to make out.
    “Where are you?” Cono interrupted.
    “They put a bag over my head in the car. We made lots of turns. I don’t know where I am. No windows. It’s very noisy below.”
    “Xiao Li, tell me details, what you hear, any smells, any …”
    “Cono, I dream about you. I want to make love on a balcony again …”
    “Xiao Li, don’t worry. We will dance again and sing together.” Cono told her to do what the thugs said, not to fight or they would beat her, or worse, and to call him only when she found out her location. “It’s safer that way.”
    “Cono, the Beijing men wanted to kill me too,” Xiao Li whispered. “I heard them say they were worried about what my client might have told me. The dead man, he had a lot of money.” Xiao Li’s voice became shaky. “Cono, they came in … they came in and pulled him off me, then broke his neck.”
    “What did the client tell you, Xiao Li?”
    “He said China wanted to get something more than oil. He was bragging. He laughed about how