By chance dropping his line of vision onto Makar’s wrist, Sashka saw three small round bluish scars on the outside of the palm. Clearly tracks of cigarette butts put out against the skin. “Who did this to you?” asked Sashka.

Makar looked at his hand. He clenched and unclenched his fist. The bluish burns were filled with blood and became violet. “None of your business!” he said sharply and, after hiding his hand behind his back, moved to the window.

“He did it himself,” Cyril whispered to Sashka.

“Why himself?”

“Side by side and regular. If it were someone else, he would fidget. Likely, he punished himself for something. Who knows!” Cyril said cautiously.

Freda herself was going to find out about the new humanities-theatrical college, which she by chance had heard about on the radio. Moreover, she had heard it in such a way that she understood neither the name nor the precise address, but only to get on the route D minibus from the Planernaya subway station. And on the whole, it turned out Freda flew into Moscow only the day before yesterday, settled at her coach’s former wife’s, and after a day and a half, had time to go around to seven institutes and three universities.

“On the whole, everything here is vague. Nothing in common,” Danny summed up.

The minibus kept going for a long time. Calm Kievan Lena even managed to snooze, moreover, of the two nearby shoulders, on Vlad Ganich’s. It was unrealistic to sleep on Cyril’s shoulder, because every three seconds he leaped up to meet someone. Vlad did not shake off Lena’s head, but it was noticeable that he was suffering and perceived her as a contaminated object threatening his suit.

Makar leaned out the window with distrust. “Just in case! Seems we’re driving up!” he reported.

The minibus slowed down. They had turned from the highway long ago. Monotonous concrete fences occasionally with graffiti stretched out. Reaching the end of the last one, Route D unwillingly rolled onto a broken unpaved road. To the right was a field. To the left was a colourful show of Moscow groves of different sizes, often small birches and maples covered with caps turning yellow and almost supported by nothing. The minibus went along slowly, swaying on the way. After about fifteen minutes, it stopped at some gates. The gates opened. They again set off, drove for about twenty metres, and finally stopped.

Sashka pulled the door and carefully got out. He took a step, expecting the elastic force to catch him and throw him back into the minibus. The bus was standing on an asphalt area surrounded by lilac bushes. Before them was an ordinary two-storey building. Two structures and a gallery connecting them. Low stairs, wide porch, and black double doors. Next to them was a blue doorplate, on which crawled cockroaches of indistinguishable letters.

“What’s written there? Can anyone see?” asked Sashka.

“It says HDive,” someone beside him answered. Sashka turned. Standing next to him was the person by the name of Rina, squinting in the sun.

“You can see the letters from here? What eyesight!”

“Well no, I can’t. I read them earlier,” she admitted with a sigh.

“How?”

“Well, on the whole, I came from here. I was ordered to meet, accompany, and explain nothing. That kind of thing,” Rina shrugged her shoulders slightly, and Sashka understood that she did not particularly like this task. Sashka belatedly realized that she sat more quietly than everybody in the minibus and did not panic.

“So it’s you who dragged us here? I’ll strangle you!” Makar began to yell and rushed at Rina.

Sashka caught him in a chokehold and discovered at the same time that everyone had already got out of the minibus. “Stop!” he ordered and asked Rina, “What next? Where are we going now?”

Rina looked first at the sun, and then at her phone, checking if the sun was slower than the clock on her phone. “Well, come on! They’re waiting for us!” she said and, having turned around, made her way to HDive. Exchanging glances, the rest followed her.

“Only not me! I’m not going!” Freda said and, after passing everyone, went first.

Alice stepped with pleasure on the heads of the yellow flowers shooting out between the flagstones. If somewhere there were no flowers, she specially made a zigzag in order to crush some flowers elsewhere. “If this decoy also counts, then ten of us,” she stated.

“Well, so wha?” Makar was puzzled.

“No wha!” Alice mimicked and tinkled the death dog tags with a challenge.

END OF AUGUST – BEGINNING OF SEPTEMBER

The chubby middle-aged person waiting for Guy on board the Gomorrah was so cheerful and efficient that Guy, dressed in a stretched sweater and canvas pants, momentarily wanted to confine himself in a pinstriped suit and be shaved. “Oh, Guy!” he said, leaping up. “No, no! I know that you’re monstrously busy! Several minutes for me will be enough!”

Guy, not looking, sat down. He knew that Nekalaev would manage to move a chair. Moreover, not only for him but also for the stout Till. Thirty paces from the elevator, five steps, and Till was already gasping for breath.

“Your call surprised me,” said Guy. “And the foolish mysteriousness irritates me. Why did you decide that I’m sure to buy from you what you’re offering? And, by the way, what is it exactly?”

The cheerful person started to smile soothingly and lifted his hands, showing that all the answers would be given in their time. Then he took out a hard rectangular business card and tapped the table with it.

“I’m… hmm… a little of everything. Broker? Antique dealer? Bibliophile? Now and then the most interesting people die. Writers, artists, academicians. The heirs remain. Quite often not particularly competent.”

“I find this hard to believe,” Guy remarked absent-mindedly. “They cannot but know what their ancestor killed his whole life for.”

Chubby began to nod hurriedly. “Goes without saying! It’s well known to them that there’s quite a lot in grandpa’s and father’s library. But that’s all they know! Almost no one suspects that 95 percent of collected works in luxurious bindings have very little value, but some tiny unpretentious little book is priceless. The first limited edition Akhmatova8 collection with her autograph, or a well-preserved bundle of Satyricon,9 or something similar. I politely buy dozens of beautiful books, paying three times their value for them, and out of courtesy I take the tiny booklet in an overall pile of all sorts of unnecessary things.”

“In other words, your task is to find this five percent and get it for nothing, after leaving the rest to the fool of an heir?” Till, wheezing, spelt it out. The round face of his collocutor strayed somewhere between the sun and a pancake.

“Each business has its special quirks. Can’t teach them. Can only learn them. In the spring, a decrepit old lady on Ostozhenka passed away, the widow of an artist of battle scenes. Her niece couldn’t wait to get rid of the junk. She was simply happy when I bought from her two trunks of all sorts of old stuff.”

“Soiled palettes? Drying tubes of paint?” Guy asked.

The cheerful person started to laugh with exaggerated energy. He had a habit of overstating the worth of mediocre jokes like that of book collections. “Not quite. The artist drew historical paintings, and for that, reliable historical things were necessary. Weapons, cloth, goblets. The entire second trunk turned out to be crammed with ancient horse harness. Bridles, belts, stirrups, adornment.”