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the chance to confer with Trevor and the others. Returned to himself immediately, he loped down the
slope of the bridge and onto the sidewalk, trying to calculate the fastest route back to the Winter
Palace. He suspected the path he had taken with Vlad – the Nevsky Prospect which ran beside the
Café of the Revolutionaries and required transit over the bridge where Alexander II had met his
famous end – was not the most direct option but that was the street he knew best. It would perhaps be
faster to follow along the Neva itself, which would eventually lead to the palace. But rivers could
undulate and waver, thus limiting their usefulness for a man navigating on foot and who knows how
many of the steep bridges he would be required to cross between this spot and the palace?
Striding briskly, Davy decided to take the Nevsky Prospect. If nothing else, traveling a wellknown
street would allow his mind the time to work on excuses for Trevor and to practice his report,
late though it would be, in his head.
He was halfway there, merely a block or two shy of the Café of the Revolutionaries – he really
needed to stop thinking of it that way lest he make a slip in the presence of the Volya – when he saw
Vlad himself. He was coming up the sidewalk from the opposite direction as Davy and walking with
another man. A large and hulking beast whose brown jacket was buttoned to his throat despite the
heat and whose facial features seemed ludicrously lost in the vastness of his flesh. Small eyes, small
nose, small mouth. He looked like a snowman who was melting, Davy thought, whose coal eyes and
stony mouth were being slowly engulfed in his collapsing face.
Vlad had seen Davy too and, judging by his guilty, exasperated expression, some sort of battle
was going on in his mind. He is leaving the meeting, Davy thought, in the presence of a fellow Volya
member. And here, as luck would have it, he encounters me. He would prefer not to introduce me to
this man, but what choice does he have? We are walking right toward each other and it is too late for
either of us to pretend we have not noticed the other or to change direction. He must either introduce
me to his companion or, by neglecting to do so, know that he has incited my curiosity about the man
even more.
“Hello there,” Vlad said as they all three came to stop on the street. “Where have you been
since we parted?”
“Walking,” Davy replied, reflecting upon how sometimes the most honest of answers could also
sound the most evasive. “Admiring your beautiful city.”
“Ah,” said Vlad, looking around with some surprise, as if it had been years since he had
closely observed the streets he walked every day. “We have been in our meeting, as you know.”