A Bride of Allah. Sergey Baksheev

      Dmitrovskaya Metro Station

      A beige Lada, model six, leisurely moved in the right lane of Dmitrovskoe Shosse towards the center of Moscow. Andrei Vlasov has been operating a gypsy cab for a few months now. He deliberately drove slower than the traffic flow, keeping an eye out for a pick-up. The business day was over, the traffic got denser. Annoyed drivers flashed headlights at him and made gestures aimed to show what an idiot of a rookie driver he was.

      Vlasov didn’t care about the insulting gesticulation. As soon as he picked up a passenger, he would show the lazy asses what driving in traffic looks like. They are having trouble passing him? Get a helicopter if you’ve got no patience!

      His mental exercises in pride were interrupted by a call on his cell phone. He pulled a vibrating Siemens out of his shirt pocket.

      “Hello?” he said wearily.

      “Andrei, is that you?” Mom, with her usual stupid starter question.

      “Who else would it be, Mom?”

      “Andrei, make sure to buy some bread for dinner! Rye.”

      “Okay, Mom, I will.”

      “Just don’t forget! I know you; it will just skip your mind! Buy some right now and come home. You have to eat; you don’t take care of yourself. Unless Mother reminds – ”

      “All right, I’ll go get some,” Vlasov reassured her, trying to avoid getting annoyed.

      Over the years of living with Mother, just the two of them, he got seriously tired from her nagging. Mom didn’t want to understand that he was twenty-six years old and managed his own schedule. That said, he really could forget about bread; it happened before. It would be better to buy it right away, drive home, and have dinner. The most profitable passengers would be later anyway, when the restaurants downtown start closing.

      Vlasov drove under a railroad overpass and parked the car in a narrow alley between two retail pavilions near Dmitrovskaya metro station. Getting out of the car, he habitually looked at the slightly bent front fender and broken turn signal. It was high time to get it fixed and touched up. The fall would start soon, rains and all. Corrosion would grow like spring grass on a sunlit hill. But everything takes time and money.

      The small window of a baked goods kiosk gave off a mature smell of fresh bread. A big woman working the counter adroitly stuffed a brick of rye into a plastic bag, matte and rustling, and handed it to him along with change.

      It’s got to be hard to stay fit among appetizing smells, though the skinny Andrei. His fingers, as if on their own volition, sank into the flavorful softness. Like an impatient kid, he broke off the end of the loaf; his mouth started salivating even before his teeth tore into the porous crust.

      He didn’t feel like going back to the stuffy car right away. Andrei walked into a shady spot, moved his shoulders to unstick the damp shirt from his back. The bag was dangling on his wrist; a light breeze pleasantly cooled his sweating body.

      How about some water?

      His eyes scanned the small square for a suitable kiosk. Something about the foot traffic was unpleasantly off; it gave him a weird feeling, like a speck of dust in his eye. Okay, here are three men drinking beer by a colorful store display. The bottles are sweaty, just out of a fridge, so there’s got to be water in that fridge, too.

      Andrei took a step toward the kiosk he selected, and the feeling of eye sore returned. An indistinct feeling of danger crept in. He’s been through this during the first Chechen war; everything around was still quiet, but something was already wrong.

      He tensed without realizing it; shoulders unmoving, a slight turn of the head. His gaze landed on a scared-looking strange woman erratically looking around. Now that was the reason! It was that erratic glancing that made him uncomfortable.

      The woman stopped indecisively obstructing the foot traffic. Andrei looked more closely. Dark complexion, straight longish nose, a headscarf covering the forehead, oversize knit cardigan, long, to the ground, dark skirt, hands clasped over her belly, like she was pregnant. From what God-forsaken place has she come into the capital city?

      He kept looking. The woman, with a worried expression on her face, was looking at a policeman taking his time checking identification of a swarthy man from the Caucasus. The cop finished his inspection, handed back the papers with visible displeasure, and spotted the scared woman in a headscarf in the flow of foot traffic.

      Good thing the cops were harassing the swarthy, Andrei thought. What the hell were they doing in Moscow anyway?

      The policeman, looking tired, adjusted his hat and started toward the woman. Vlasov, curious, turned to look: would the woman try to get away? She definitely had a paperwork problem. Should he gently hold her arm to help the public servant extract a bribe out of a provincial from the Caucasus?

      The woman, still indecisive, took a step back. No, honey, you aren’t getting away! Andrei smirked and quickly caught up with her. Behind his back, the policeman was clumsily navigating the foot traffic. The scared woman started looking for something inside her clothes; the nondescript cardigan opened up. Andrei suddenly noticed that the woman was young and slender. She was nowhere near forty as he first thought; a girl of barely twenty, just dressed like a villager.

      On her

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