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made her laugh, if he had only been there.
    A young man standing at the fringe of the crowd took a cigarette from the pack in his rolled-up tee shirt sleeve. He put the cigarette behind his ear and rerolled the pack in his sleeve. He did not take the cigarette from his ear to light it. He left it there and continued staring at the smoldering building. The man was thin, with stringy black hair. He wore faded jeans and heeled boots like an American cowboy.
    When the militia car with the woman inside drove off, followed by another militia car with the bicycle sticking out of its trunk, the young man walked slowly away from the scene. He went south on a side street of dilapidated, low buildings toward the sweet smell of jet fuel blowing his way from the airport. He turned in to an alley toward the airport. Within a grove of young chestnut trees planted along the airport fence, the man got into a tan Zhiguli station wagon parked in the shade of a mature chestnut tree, which must have been there prior to the planting of the grove. The shade had kept the car relatively cool in the late summer heat.

    A young woman sat in the passenger seat of the Zhiguli. She was knitting something blue and green, but she put the knitting aside when the young man got in. She had red hair cut short and wore heavy makeup, her lips bright red, her eyelids charcoal gray. The woman turned and looked at the man but did not smile or acknowledge him in any other way.
    Once inside the car, the man started the engine and turned the air-circulating fan on high. He pulled a pair of rubber gloves from his rear pocket, separated them, and handed them to the woman. The woman picked up a Russian Orthodox Bible from the floor of the car and inserted the gloves individually into the Bible, folding them and slowly closing the Bible as if each marked a passage she meditated on. Then she returned the Bible to the floor. When the woman spoke, her voice sounded young. A girl hidden beneath heavy makeup.
    “I saw the smoke,” she said in Ukrainian.
    The young man’s voice also sounded younger than he looked. “Two birds with one stone, as they say in America.” He turned toward the woman and grinned. “Before we return to Ukraine’s asshole, we will go somewhere to fuck.”
    The young woman looked down, her head bowed as if in prayer. When she nodded, the young man retrieved a red baseball cap from beneath the front seat, put the cap on backwards, and drove out from the shade of the chestnut tree.

CHAPTER
THREE
    Following the American Gypsy’s suggestion, the Ukrainian Gypsy named Janos traveled at night on deserted roads, moving from one camp to another while most slept and others, with murder or vengeance in mind, searched cities. Janos was alone in his caravan. Violins accompanied his journey, the caravan rocking and swaying as its diesel-fed horses propelled it across the mountains. Although diesel fuel was costly, his caravan was a small and efficient five-cylinder camper van. By using his handheld GPS, he was able to stay off main highways.
    The mountains lit by a waning moon resembled the lower jaw of a monster. With Gypsy violins playing on the caravan’s CD player, he could have been anywhere in the world. Perhaps the Alps in Austria or the Rockies in America. But these mountains were toothless, without snowcapped peaks. And when the rapid tempo of a czardas ended and he reached across to the caravan’s dashboard to eject the CD, a news station from Uzhgorod blasted from the speakers, reminding him he was in Ukraine on the western slope of the Carpathians.
    It was three in the morning, and Uzhgorod FM was the only powerful station on the air. He retrieved another CD from the console, inserted it, waited a few seconds, and felt a sense of nostalgia and satisfaction when the lilting violin of Sandor Lakatos coming over the front and rear speakers filled the caravan from stem to stern.
    This was the second year in a row Janos Nagy, ex-Kiev militiaman, now