HAD THE CHINESE woman not spoken to him in Russian, Sokolov would not have given her a second thought. But now his curiosity had been piqued, and so he devoted a little more time to departing the destroyed office than he might have otherwise. The place had been utterly devastated, with most of the damage caused by a collapsed lath-and-plaster ceiling that Sokolov had to tromp over and wade through as he made his way to the door. Conspicuously located near the exit was a garbage bag tied in a knot, which the Russian-speaking Chinese woman had apparently meant to take with her until Sokolov had vaulted in and scared her to death. He found that it was surprisingly heavy and that it contained a number of discrete rectangular objects.