Paco encouraged the harassed guard happily. "You're doing fine. You've had us out for more than two hours. We started with twenty-five in this group and still have twenty-one. Par for the course. What happens to a tourist who wanders absently around in the Kremlin and turns up in the head man's office?"
The guide smiled wanly. "And over here we have the thrones of the Empress Elizabeth and Czar Paul."
Unobtrusively, Hank dropped toward the tail of the group. He spent a long time peering at two silver panthers, gifts of the first Queen Elizabeth of England to Boris Godunov. The Progressive Tours assembly passed on into the next room.
A guard standing next to the case said, "Mr. Kuran?"
Without looking up, Hand nodded.
"Follow me, slowly."
No one from the Progressive Tours group was in sight. Hank wandered after the guard, looking into display cases as he went. Finally the other turned a corner into an empty and comparatively narrow corridor. He stopped and waited for the American.
"You're Kuran?" he asked anxiously in Russian.
"That's right."
"You're not afraid?"