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were the Sicilians of the Soviet mafias.
        Royal purple was reserved for Moscow's own Baumanskaya mafia, from the neighbourhood between Lefortovo Prison and the Church of the Epiphany. Their business base was the Rizhsky Market.
        Finally, there was brown for the boys from Kazan, more a swarm of ambitious hit-and-run artists than an organized mafia. They raided restaurants on the Arbat, moved drugs and ran teenage prostitutes on the streets.
        Rudy Rosen had been banker for them all. Just following Rudy in his Audi had helped Arkady draw this brighter, darker Moscow. Six mornings a week - Monday to Saturday - Rudy had followed a set routine. A morning drive to a bathhouse run by Borya on the north side of town, then a trip with Borya to pick up pastries at Izmailovo Park and meet the Lyubers. Late-morning coffee at the National Hotel with Rudy's Baumanskaya contact. Even lunch at the Uzbekistan with his enemy, Makhmud. The circuit of a modern Moscow businessman, always trailed by Kim on the motorcycle like a cat's tail.
        The night outside was still white. Arkady wasn't sleepy or hungry. He felt like the perfect new Soviet man, designed for a land with no food or rest. He got up and left the office. Enough.
     
    There was grillwork at each landing of the stairwell to catch 'divers', prisoners trying to escape. Maybe not only prisoners, Arkady thought on the way down.
        In the courtyard, the Zhiguli was parked next to a blue dog van. Two dogs with bristling backs were chained to the van's front bumper. Ostensibly Arkady had two official cars, but petrol coupons enough for only one because the oil wells of Siberia were being drained by Germany, Japan, even fraternal Cuba, leaving a thin trickle for domestic consumption. From his second car he'd also had to cannibalize the distributor and battery to keep the first one running, because to send the Zhiguli to the shop was equivalent to sending it on a trip around the world, where it would be stripped on the docks of Calcutta and Port Said. Petrol was bad enough. Petrol was the reason defenders of the state slipped from car to car with siphon tube and can. Also the reason dogs were leashed to bumpers.
        Arkady got in through the passenger side and slid over to the wheel. The dogs shot the length of their chains and tried to claw through his door. He prayed and turned the key. Ah, at least a tenth of a tank of petrol. There was a God.
        Two right turns put him in Gorky Street's gamut of shop windows, still lit. What wa's for sale? A scene of sand and palm trees surrounded a pedestal surmounted by a jar of guava jam. At the next shop, mannequins fought over a bolt of chintz. Food shops displayed smoked fish as iridescent as oil slicks.
        At Pushkin Square, a crowd spilled into the street. A year before there had been exhilaration and tolerance between competing loud-hailers. A dozen different flags had waved: Lithuanian, Armenian, the tsarist red, white and blue of the Democratic Front. Now all were driven from the field except for two flags, the Front's and, on the opposite side of the steps, the red banner of the Committee for Russian Salvation. Each standard had its thousand adherents trying to outshout the other group. In between there were skirmishes, the occasional body down and being kicked or dragged away. The militia had discreetly withdrawn to the edges of the square and to the metro stairs. Tourists watched from the safety of McDonalds.
        Cars were stopped, but Arkady manoeuvred up an alley into a courtyard of plane trees, a quiet backwater to the lights and horns on the avenue outside. A playground's chairs and a table were set into the ground, waiting for a bear's tea party. At the far end, he drove up a street narrowed by lorries straddling the pavement. They were heavy, with massive military wheels, the backs covered by canvas. Curious, Arkady honked. A hand drew aside a flap, revealing Special Troops in grey gear