“Can you come out?” Sasha asked.
She gave a brisk nod.
Now he had the time to have a cigarette and a half — and judging by the quick clicking of Verochka’s heels in the stairway, she had been getting ready in a hurry.
“Verochka, I need to pick up the Molotovs from you,” Sasha said.
Verochka quickly nodded again, as if the inevitable time that she hoped would never come had finally arrived, and now it frightened her.
“So” — her hand darted quickly into her jacket pocket — “the keys… I have the keys with me. We’ll need a torch. At least a lighter.”
The crooked shed with a broken slate roof stood in the courtyard of her building. In the shed there was a potato cellar. There, behind the jars with tomatoes and cucumbers preserved by Verochka, were two Molotov cocktails — bottles packed wi
