Taking out my phone, I swore under my breath—water had gotten into my cell phone, and it was no longer working. I took it apart and left it to dry on the windowsill. I decided that if drying it didn't help, I'd try inserting the SIM card into the phone I'd borrowed from the first dead person I encountered.
The clock showed first half past six, then seven in the evening, but I wasn't called to dinner. So I busied myself cleaning my weapon, then continued studying the army map. It was while I was doing this that Galina Gromova found me, knocking on the door and inviting me to a celebratory dinner.
Everything looked beautiful. A room decorated with balloons, a long table covered with clean tablecloths and flowers, porcelain salad bowls, large platters of roast meat, a variety of pickles, mu
