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success?”
    “Exactly, man. I’m a hit maker.”
    Khoklov considered this. “I don’t trust the Turks. I don’t like Moslems, and I never have, and I never, ever will.”
    Starlitz nodded helpfully. “I don’t trust anybody either. That’s why I’ve got a job here for you, Pulat Romanevich. Distrust. That’s your angle, flyboy.”
    “So it’s a security job?” Khoklov winced. “Lekhi, I can’t do any muscle work. I have one lung left.”
    “So did Doc Holliday. This is not about muscle. It’s about nerve.”
    “Who is this Doctor Holliday? Is he a cancer specialist?”
    Starlitz shook his head. “Look, I know you’re not the guy you once were, when you were flying hashish out of Kabul for the nomenklatura. But I’m not asking you for any supersonic airstrikes here. This is a very simple gig. It’s all about seven girls who sing and dance. I just need a street-smart guy who can watch my back, while I’m taking these Turks for some cash. And I’m taking the Turks for a reasonable cut of the gross. So it’s not something that the Turks need or want to get all upset about.”
    Khoklov thought it over. “There’s a lot of money in this?”
    “Enough. And it’s tax free. I need you to do two things for me, ace. Use your instincts, and look like you’re willing to kill some people. I know that you have instincts. And you
are
willing to kill some people, so this should all work out just dandy.”
    Viktor now returned with a large white carton, neatlywrapped in waterproof duct tape. It had a bar-coded tracking tag and a paste-on address label in Cyrillic, Turkish, and Arabic.
    “You got a pocketknife?” Starlitz asked Khoklov.
    Viktor groped down the leg of his enormous jeans and produced an eight-inch steel pigsticker with its handle wrapped in string. With clumsy enthusiasm he chopped and slashed his way through the watertight wrappings.
    Inside the wrapping was a flip-top Soviet ammo case. The metal case was lavishly stuffed with finely shredded Cyrillic newspaper. Viktor dug in with abandon, gleefully scattering packing-trash across the beach. He finally produced a large glass bulb.
    “You know vacuum tubes, kid?” Starlitz said.
    “Sure,” nodded Viktor. “I used to deejay at ‘Fish Fabrique’ in Petersburg. I know all about tube amps and tube mikes.”
    “Swell. So are those babies true-blue, sixties-vintage, Soviet ‘Svetlana Five eighty-ones’?”
    Viktor shrugged. “It’s too dark to read the labels.”
    “They’re military vacuum tubes, all right,” Khoklov assured him earnestly. “Straight from the tracking computers in Magnitogorsk. They sell everything out of the missile sites now, the chips, the connectors, they sell everything they can steal. They cannibalized all the ballistic routers.” Khoklov coughed. “If we want to nuke New York, we’ll ship the warheads over in a rental truck.”
    Viktor looked up. “I count nine of them. We said ten, but nine is close enough. So where’s our money?”
    “Not so fast, Vik. I gotta make sure all this rough handling hasn’t fucked up those delicate diodes and triodes. Where you guys staying?”
    The two Russians exchanged glances. “You could call it a beach house,” Khoklov offered feebly.
    “If you’re on the G-7 payroll, you’ll be in the Meridien Casino in Girne.”
    “We could live in a five-star casino,” Khoklov said. Viktor shrugged and slapped the case shut.
    “Consider yourselves hired.” Starlitz looked at them.“Now listen. There’s one crucial G-7 rule. I take that back. For you two guys there’s
two
crucial rules. Number one is that the whole enterprise shuts down before New Year’s Day 2000. Absolutely, no exceptions. Rule number two is no hard liquor before seven P.M. You guys got any problem with those rules?”
    “Yes,” said Viktor.
    “No,” said Khoklov. “He meant no.”
    “You guys got a car?”
    “We hitchhiked,” Viktor said artlessly.
    Starlitz loosened his tie and scratched his