They moved on to another table, manned by a comely Finn in a flowered summerfrock and icily shoes. Starlitz tried on a pair of shades from a revolvingstand. He gazed experimentally about the marketplace. Potatoes. Dill. Carrotsand onions. Buckets of strawberries. Flowers and flags. Orange fabric canopiesover wooden market tables run by Turks and gypsies. People were selling salmonstraight from the decks of funky little fishing boats.

Khoklov sighed. "Lekhi, you have no historical perspective." He plucked aDunhill from a square red pack.

One of Khoklov's two bodyguards appeared at once, alertly flicking a Zippo. "Noproper sense of culture," insisted Khoklov, breathing smoke and coughing richly.The guard tucked the lighter into his Chicago Bulls jacket and padded offsilently on his spotless Adidas.

Starlitz, who was trying to quit, hummed a smoke from Khoklov, which he wasforced to light for himself. Then he paid for the shades, peeling asalmon-colored fifty from a dense wad of Finnish marks.

Khoklov paused nostalgically by the Czarina's Obelisk, a bellicose monumentfestooned with Romanov aristo-fetish gear in cast bronze. Khoklov, whosepolitics shaded toward Pamyat rightism with a mystical pan-Slavic spin, pattedthe granite base of the Obelisk with open pleasure.

Then he gazed across the Esplanadi. "Helsinki city hall?"

Starlitz adjusted his shades. When arranging his end of the deal from a cellarin Tokyo, he hadn't quite gathered that Finland would be so relentlessly bright."That's the city hall all right."

Khoklov turned to examine the sun-spattered Baltic. "Think you could hit thatbuilding from a passing boat?"

"You mean me personally? Forget it."

"I mean someone in a hired speedboat with a shoulder-launched surplus Red Armypanzerfaust. Generically speaking."

"Anything's possible nowadays."

"At night," urged Khoklov. "A pre-dawn urban commando raid! Cleverly planned.