Free City of Thieves by David Benioff Page A

He didn’t believe Kolya, of course. Who would?
    We walked alongside the frozen Fontanka Canal, the ice littered with abandoned corpses, some covered with shrouds weighted down with stones, others stripped for their warm clothes, their white faces staring up at the darkening sky. The wind was beginning to wake for the night and I watched a dead woman’s long blond hair blow across her face. She had taken pride in that hair once, washed it twice a week, brushed it out for twenty minutes before going to bed. Now it was trying to protect her, to shield her decay from the eyes of strangers.
    The giant led us to a five-story brick building, all the windows boarded over with plywood. A massive poster, two stories high, portrayed a young mother carrying her dead child from a burning building. DEATH TO THE BABY KILLERS! read the text. After fishing in his coat pocket for his key, the giant unlocked the front door and held it open for us. I grabbed Kolya’s sleeve before he could enter.
    “Why don’t you bring the eggs down here?” I asked the giant.
    “I’m still alive because I know how to run my business. And I don’t do business on the street.”
    I could feel my scrotum tightening, my timid balls creeping closer to my body. But I was born and raised in Piter, I wasn’t a fool, and I tried to keep my voice steady as I spoke.
    “I don’t do business in strangers’ apartments.”
    “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” said Kolya, smiling broadly. “No need for all the suspicion. A dozen eggs. Name your price.”
    “A thousand.”
    “A thousand rubles? For a dozen eggs?” I laughed. “Are they Fabergé?”
    The black-bearded giant, still holding the door open, glowered down at me. I stopped laughing.
    “They’re selling glasses of dirt back there for a hundred rubles,” he told me. “Which is better, an egg or a glass of dirt?”
    “Listen,” said Kolya, “you can stand here all day haggling with my little Jewish friend, or we can talk like honest men. We have three hundred. That’s all we have. Is it a deal?”
    The giant continued to stare at me. He hadn’t liked me from the start; now that he knew I was a Jew I could tell he wanted to peel the skin from my face. He held out his massive palm to Kolya, beckoning for the cash.
    “Ah, no, at this point I must side with my companion,” Kolya said, shaking his head. “First the eggs, then the money.”
    “I’m not bringing them out here. Everyone’s starving and everyone’s got a gun.”
    “You’re an awfully big man to be so afraid,” teased Kolya.
    The giant eyed Kolya with something like curiosity, as if he couldn’t quite believe he was hearing the insult. Finally, he smiled, flashing those dice-white teeth.
    “There’s a man facedown out there,” he said, gesturing with his chin to the Fontanka Canal. “Wasn’t hunger that got him, wasn’t the cold. His skull got smashed in with a brick. You want to ask me how I know?”
    “I take your point,” said Kolya, quite agreeable. He peered into the darkness of the building’s vestibule. “Well, for what it’s worth, a brick is quicker.”
    Kolya patted me on the back and stepped inside.
    Everything I knew told me to run. This man was leading us into a trap. He had practically just confessed to being a murderer. Kolya had stupidly admitted exactly how much money we had on us. It wasn’t much, but three hundred rubles and two ration cards—which the giant must have assumed we still had—were easily enough to get killed over these days.
    But what was the other choice? Head down to the Narva Gate and find some fabled old man and his chicken coop? We were risking our lives walking into the building, but if we didn’t find the eggs soon, we were dead anyway.
    I followed Kolya. The front door closed behind us. It was gloomy inside, with no electricity for the bulbs and only the last of the daylight peeking in through gaps in the plywood covering the windows. I heard the giant moving behind me and I