After briefly opening his mouth, Polya had gone back to playing dead, more from habit than anything.

He was no longer afraid of this man.

Perhaps having stood in the shadow of Isaev so recently had burned out the conduits in him that carried fear. Perhaps, by that contrast, Utrov's pretensions at power of presence were revealed for the flimsy sham they were.

What was there to fear?

If the captain's words were an odd sort of threat - Look, I'm stupid, mad, or suicidal enough to condemn the both of us - it would have been potentially much more effective if it weren't directed at a man Polya had personally offered to service not three days previous.

That didn't make him any happier when Utrov said, "The German said I was thrown in the guest quarters. Something like that. There was an 'ach' in there somewhere."

Krauss probably wanted Molokov's former quarters left undisturbed for as long as he could manage it. He had seemed understandably sentimental. Also, they were probably haunted.

Utrov grinned, a little more maniacally than was, in Polya's opinion, strictly neccesary.

"Does that make us neighbors?" he said.

Well, it wasn't as though Rakitin didn't already have reasons to avoid that hallway as much as possible.

Nika had the best notion, he thought, in simply ignoring the man. No time like the present to start.

"I thought I'd go out to the firing range for a while," Polya said. "I'm not very good, but I think I can get better with practice."

As it often turned out, his brain was slower than his mouth.

"What about you?"

He heard it slip out and managed not to wince.