At his silent invitation two things happened. Behind him a guttural
voice asked: "Who are you?" in Polish. Distracted for the merest heartbeat
by surprise, his eyes lost focus on the tree, and in that instant a figure
dislodged itself from beneath the blossom-weighed branches and slouched,
momentarily, into the starlight. In the cheating murk the thief wasn't certain
what he saw: a discarded face looking blankly in his direction perhaps, hair
seared off. A scabby carcass, wide as a bull's. Vasiliev's vast hands.
All or nothing of this; and already the figure was retiring into hiding
beyond the tree, its wounded head brushing the branches as it went. A
drizzle of petals fluttered onto its charcoal shoulders.
"Did you hear me?" said the voice at his back. The thief didn't turn. He
went on staring at the tree, narrowing his eyes, attempting to separate
substance from illusion. But the man, whoever he was, had gone. It could
not have been the Russian, of course; reason proclaimed against it. Vasiliev
was dead, found with his face down in the filth of a sewer. His body was
probably already on its way to some far-flung outpost of the Russian
empire. He wasn't here; he couldn't be here.

Part 1 Chapter 4