me inside. Then I could immobilize him, and take things from there. Not ideal, but possible.”
“The restaurant?”
“Again, possible. I could walk in, shoot the Pakhan in the face, do a couple of the bodyguards before they can react, and fuck off fast. But big, popular restaurants like Zarina are bad news. They’re crowded, they’re well lit and there’s CCTV. It would be messy, and there would be a lot of witnesses.”
“Witnesses would definitely be bad news.”
“Exactly. We’ve got to find a solution that doesn’t involve killing the bodyguards or any of the other soldiers. Dasha will never be able to keep the gang’s trust and loyalty if they know she’s been responsible for the death of their colleagues. Basically, we’ve got to get the Pakhan alone, and eliminate him without anyone seeing.”
“He’s alone in the banya, we know that. And defenseless.”
“And how do you suggest that I, or we, get into the bathhouse? On the days he goes it’s men only.”
“There must be a way.”
Oxana frowns. “I spent hours in there on one of the women’s days. I know the layout of the entire place. I checked out cupboards, ceiling cavities, ventilation ducts, everything like that, and there’s literally nowhere to hide. The place is well over a hundred years old, built in Tsarist times, with mosaics and classical statues. And there are customers everywhere.”
“Naked guys with towels around their waists.”
“Well, women on the day I was there. But yeah.”
“So no guns.”
“It’s next to impossible to conceal a gun in a bathhouse.”
“Tell me the routine again.”
“Why?”
“Oxana, please, just tell me.”
“OK. You go in through the street entrance, pay your money at the ticket desk, and go into a big changing room with lockers, where you leave your clothes and collect your towel. Then you go through to the steam rooms. These have fireboxes in them, like giant ovens with hot rocks inside, and wooden benches round the walls where you sit. There’s a bucket, which you fill from a tap and pour into the firebox through a hole. This produces the steam which raises the heat.”
“Like a sauna?”
“Same. Except everything’s bigger. And it’s more sociable than a European sauna, where everyone just sits in silence. Then there’s a kind of cooling-off room with steel pillars and marble slabs where you can get a massage, and people smack each other with birch twigs, which is supposed to be good for the circulation.” Oxana folds her arms. “Eve, you know all this, I’ve described it to you before.”
“I know you have. Tell me again. I’m just trying to figure something out.”
“OK, there’s also a room with a small plunge pool.”
“Hot or cold?”
“Cold. You go there from the steam room.”
“How big is it?”
“It’s just for one person. About a meter and a half deep.”
“What else does the place offer?”
“There’s a tea room with a samovar. You can get cakes and blinis and stuff.”
“Good quality?”
“Pretty good.”
“What did you have?”
“A slice of Napoleon cake.”
“Just one slice?”
“OK, two.”
“So you wouldn’t mind necessarily going back there? And taking me?”
“No. But since we’re never going to get in there on a men’s day, I don’t see the point.”
“Bear with me, OK? I’ve got an idea.”
“I’m listening.”
So I tell her. Afterward she sits there for a minute, unmoving. Then she walks slowly but agitatedly to the window, making fluttering gestures with her fingers.
“What do you think?”
She turns round. “It could work. If Dasha can get us everything we need, it could definitely work.”
“But?”
“But it would take both of us. You’d have to be part of it. So…”
“So?”
“Are you ready to do it? Killing’s a one-way door. There’s no going back.”
“I’m ready.”
She stares at me for a heartbeat, and nods. “OK.”
“Oxana?”
“Yes?”
“Try not to be such a bitch. We could be a good team.”
“Fine. Run that bath.”
With the plan finalized, and the arrangements made, Oxana and I suddenly have time on our hands. We go for long walks together, especially in Kupchino, the outlying district from which Dasha’s gang gets its name. It’s a tough place, a wilderness of deteriorating concrete housing blocks intersected by motorway viaducts and frozen canals. Cut off from the city by an industrial sprawl to the north, the windy streets resemble an abandoned moon colony, but with little sign of a police presence or CCTV cameras we feel safe here. This is Dasha’s fiefdom, and when the monolithic gray outlines of the housing blocks soften in the rose-pink twilight at the end of the day, it’s almost beautiful.
Much of our walking is done in silence. Sometimes