off the walls, dirty window's, entrance doors standing wide open, washing hanging on lines in the courtyards. The phrase 'frame-and-panel housing construction' surfaced from somewhere in the depths of my memory. Its bleak bureaucratic tone made it the perfect description of these buildings that had been meant to be 'temporary' but had already stood for more than half a century.
The Night Watch office occupied a small, dilapidated single-storey building that was surrounded by a small garden. I thought a building like that looked just perfect for a small kindergarten, filled with swarthy, dark-haired little kids.
But all the children here had grown up long ago. I walked round a Peugeot parked by the fence, opened the gate, went past the flower beds in which withering flowers were struggling to survive, and shuddered as I read the old Soviet bureaucratic-style sign on the door.
At first I thought I must have gone crazy. Then I thought I must be looking through the Twilight. But no, the inscription was absolutely real, written in yellow letters on a black background and covered with a cracked sheet of glass. One corner of the glass had fallen off, and the final letter of the word 'watch' was tattered and faded.
The same text was written alongside in Uzbek, and I learned that 'Night Watch' translated as 'Tungi Nazoraf.
I pushed the door ?it wasn't locked, of course ?and walked straight into a large room. As usual in the East, there was no entrance hall. And that was right: why would they need a hallway here? The weather was never cold in Samarkand.
The furnishings were very simple, reminiscent in part of a small militia station and in part of an old office from Soviet times. There was a coat rack and several cupboards full of papers by the door. Three young Uzbek men and a plump middle-aged Russian woman were drinking tea at an office desk. There was a large electric samovar, decorated in the traditional Khokhloma folk style, boiling on the desk. Well, how about that - a samovar! The last time I'd seen one in Russia had been at the Izmailovo flea market, with all the matryoshka dolls, caps with earflaps and other goods for the foreign tourists. There were several other desks with no one sitting at them. An ancient computer with a massive monitor was clat tering away on the farthest desk ?its cooling fan ought to have been changed ages ago...
'Assalom aleikhum' I said, feeling like a total idiot who was trying to look intelligent. Why on earth hadn't Geser taught me Uzbek?
'Aleikhum assalom,' the woman replied. She was swarthy-skinned, with black hair ?quite clearly Slav in origin, but with that remarkable change in appearance that happens without any magic at all to a European who spends a long time in the East or is born and lives there. She was even dressed like an Uzbek woman, in a long, brightly coloured dress. She looked at me curiously ?I sensed the skilful but weak touch of a probing spell. I didn't shield myself, and she gathered her information with no difficulty. Her expres sion immediately changed. She got up from the desk and said:
'Boys, we have a distinguished visitor...'
'I'm here entirely unofficially!' I said, raising my hands in the air.
But the fuss had already begun. They greeted me and intro duced themselves: Murat, sixth level; Timur, fifth level; Nodir, fourth level. I thought they looked their real age, about twenty to thirty. According to Geser, there were five Others in the Samarkand watch... and according to Alisher, the members of the Watch in Tashkent were younger. How much younger could they be? Did they take on children from school?
'Valentina Ilinichna, Other. Fourth level.'
'Anton Gorodetsky, Other, Higher,' I said in turn.
'I run the office,' the woman went on. She was the last to shake my hand and in general she behaved like the most junior member of the Watch. But I estimated her age as at least a hundred and fifty, and her Power was greater than the men's.
Another peculiarity of the East?
But a second later any doubt about who was in charge here was dispelled.
'Right, boys, get the table set out quick, 'Valentina commanded. 'Murat, you take the car, run round the route quickly and call into the market.'
And so saying, she handed Murat the key to the huge old safe, from which the young guy took out a tattered wad of banknotes, trying his best to do inconspicuously.
'Please, there's no need!' I implored them.