What a world, Aleks thought. Your own kitchen on a plane. “I’m fine, thank you.”

The woman eyed the seat next to Aleks. Business class had individual seats, side by side, facing in opposite directions. The seats flattened into beds, and could be fashioned into dozens of positions. The seat next to Aleks was unoccupied. The woman clearly wanted to sit and chat for a while.

“My name is Jilliane,” she said, extending a hand.

Aleks smiled a disingenuous smile. He was traveling under one of his three passports. This identity was Jorgen Petterson. He introduced himself, carefully crafting his accent.

“My friends call me George,” Aleks added. When it was clear the woman was not going to leave, he gestured to the seat next to him. Before she sat down, she picked up the small pile of papers Aleks had put there. He had meant to put them back in his bag. He must have dozed off.

Jilliane arranged herself on the seat, smiled. Despite the dim light, Aleks could see her teeth were white and even. She had dimples, a flawless complexion. She glanced around the cabin, back.

“This is all quite posh, isn’t it?” she said. Aleks could smell the sweet-sour breath of alcohol.

“Yes.”

She tapped a manicured nail against her wine glass, perhaps searching for a portal into the conversation. “Do you travel to New York often, George?”

Questions, Aleks thought. He had to be vigilant. If he said he came to New York often, she may ask him other questions. “This is my first time.”

Jilliane nodded. “I remember my first time in the city. It can be a bit overwhelming. I live there now, but I grew up in Indiana.”

“I see.” Aleks was beginning to regret asking her to sit down.

Before she could respond, she pointed at the swing-out table on Aleks’s side of the partition. “What are these?”

She was referring to pair of marble eggs sitting on the table. The eggs were actual size, intricately carved to depict the ancient Russian legend of an egg inside a duck inside a hare, the fable of Koschei the Deathless. Aleks had had them carved in Kaliningrad. He had forgotten to put them back into his carry-on bag. He wished the woman had not seen them. It was a mistake.

“These are for my precious brorsdotter,” he said. “For Easter.”

Jilliane looked puzzled.

“I’m sorry,” Aleks said. “They are for my nieces. I am from a town called Karlskrona. It’s in south-eastern Sweden.”

Jilliane picked up one of the eggs, a little mystified. She put it down, getting to the point. “Do you like music, George?”

“Very much,” Aleks said. “I play a little.”

Her eyes lighted. “Really? What do you play?”

Aleks waved a dismissive hand. “My instrument is the flute. I kneel a thousand feet below Gaubert and Barrère.”

“Oh, I’ll bet you’re just as good as those guys.’’

Those guys. He remained silent.

“What about jazz?”

“I am quite a fan,” Aleks said. “Chet Baker, Charlie Parker, Oscar Peterson. There is not that much to choose from for the flute, but I have played some of Charles Lloyd’s arrangements. To no great acclaim, I’m afraid.”

Jilliane nodded. She didn’t know Charles Lloyd from Lloyd’s of London. She hesitated for a moment, looked over shoulder, back. Most of the cabin was asleep.

“Look, there’s this jazz place I go to, not too far from where I live. I think you’d like it a lot.” She took her pen out, and grabbed a cocktail napkin off his tray. “They play a lot of jazz like Kenny G.”

My God, Aleks thought. Jazz like Kenny G.

She whispered, “I’m free all weekend, George.”

She gave him her number.

LONG AFTER ALEKS had spirited the napkin away, and Jilliane had returned to her seat, he glanced at his watch. They were somewhere over the Atlantic.

He wondered what Konstantine would look like. The last time he had seen the man he had been standing over the body of a Chechen soldier, the dead man’s heart in one hand, a half-eaten pomegranate in the other. If one did not know Konstantine, it might have looked as if he was eating human flesh.

Aleks did know him, and it was entirely possible.

He settled into his seat, the thoughts of his past set aside. For now, he slept.

Five hours later he awoke from a dream, a vision of Estonia, a fantasy of sun sparkling on the river, of yellow flowers in the valley, of children running through the pines. His children.

Moments later, the jet began its slow descent to JFK International Airport.

FIVE

Abby Roman stared at the young man in disbelief.

He looked about nineteen or so, drove a tricked-out Escalade with tinted windows, spinner hubcaps, and a vanity plate that read YO DREAM. A real class act. He looked a little threatening, sitting high in the SUV, but that was just part of the white boy thug routine. Abby glanced at the girls. They were in the back seat of the Acura, still strapped in. They were both listening to audiobooks that Michael had downloaded onto their new iPods. Charlotte was lost in A Bear Called Paddington. Emily was giggling at something called Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. The windows were rolled up. They wouldn’t hear anything, if there was anything to hear.

Let it go or stand down, Abby?

She glanced at her watch. She had forty-eight hours off at the clinic, and at least sixty hours of things to do, but that had never stopped her from getting in the face of some asshole.

Not yet, anyway.

She may have grown up in Westchester County, she may have had a horse named Pablo – named after Neruda, of course, not Picasso – and studied ballet at the Broadway Dance Center, but she had spent nearly ten years in the city, all of them as an ER nurse, and there was a principle at work here

She pulled the handbrake, and got out of the car.

When the kid emerged from the Escalade he turned out to be about five-four – baggy jeans, T-shirt, backwards Mets cap. The bigger the SUV, Abby thought. He clicked the remote-control lock button on his key ring, locking the Cadillac with a toot of the horn. Just one more thing to endear him. He turned to do his pimp-roll into the market, staring at his cellphone, God’s gift in a pair of Nike Jordan Six Rings.

“Excuse me,” Abby said, at least twice as loud as necessary.

The kid glanced over, pulled the earbuds from his ears. He looked at her, then to his left and his right. She could only be talking to him. “Yeah?”

“Got a question for you.”

The kid looked her up and down now, perhaps realizing that, for a woman around thirty, she was in pretty good shape, and maybe, just maybe, he was going to hook up here. He half-smiled, raised his eyebrows in anticipation. “Sure.”

“Are you fucking crazy?”

Exit the smile. Exit most of the blood from his face. He backed up an inch. “Excuse me?”

“You did that for a parking space?”

For a moment the kid resembled not so much a deer in the headlights, but a deer that had just been run over. “Did what?”

“Endangered my life. The lives of my children.” A little dramatic, Abby realized, but so what.

The kid glanced at the Acura, at the girls. “What . . . what are you talking about?”

Abby took a deep breath, tried to calm herself. This kid was completely clueless, as expected. She put her hands on her hips. “All right,” she said. “One more question.”

Another step back. Silence.

“When was the last time you saw me?” Abby asked.

The kid did some kind of ape-math in his head. Apparently, he came up with nothing. “I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

Abby moved in, her finger out front. “Precisely my point. I was about to turn into that space and you jammed into it right in front of me. You didn’t even look. You didn’t even see me.” Abby clocked it up now, the angel of death on a tear. “You’re so caught up in your damn MP3, cellphone, text message, Jay Z gangsta-wannabe world, you can’t see anything past the end of your fucking 37th Avenue Serengeti knock-offs.”