Emil Karpo did not dislike movies. But neither did he like them. He followed the young woman who had left the vast auditorium of 2,500 seats moments before.

Lenin had said that film had a function, a crucial propagandistic function.

Movies were supposed to have brought enlightenment, reinforcement of revolutionary ideas, and idealism. Generally, Karpo considered both movies and television pointless narcotics. Lenin had praised film, and Karpo had taken it as an act of faith, which he called reason, that Lenin knew what he was talking about. Perhaps at one time films did have some seductive power that could be used to ease the people into the Revolution, but that was long ago. Perhaps the words of Lenin had great power to convince those who wished to truly believe, but that was not so long ago. Now statues of Lenin were being toppled in provincial towns. The slowly growing truth of the dream was being ignored, and on twenty-foot-high screens in the darkness Hungarians and Americans were showing their teeth and selling illusions.

However, in this case, the darkness and relative quiet of the theater was a distinct improvement over the basement den, the Billy Joel, where the young woman he was following had just spent two hours in smoke-filled and drug-dimmed purple light, listening to some band called Pe 'r'ets-Pepper-scream and blast something called heavy metal on their electronic instruments.

Emil Karpo had not dared enter. He was at least twenty years older than the youngest patron in the Billy Joel, and he knew that there was no way he could sit inconspicuously. Emil Karpo was a tall, corpselike figure with vaguely Oriental features. His hair was dark and thinning, his cheekbones high, his skin tight and pale, and his face expressionless. All of Emil Karpo's clothing was black, even his T-shirts and several turtlenecks. He was known among criminals and police alike as the Tartar or the Vampire. He knew this and did not mind. He also knew from the faces of those he encountered that they sensed a cold, silent fury that he in fact did not feel.