So, one thing at least was obvious, which was that whomever Igor had been talking to on the phone had asked him to wheedle more information from Sokolov on how he had made his way from a gunfight in a collapsing apartment building in Xiamen to Igor’s house in Tukwila, and to probe for inconsistencies in the story—to the extent that Igor even had the intellectual equipment for such an undertaking. Perhaps the pizza stalling maneuver was solely to keep Sokolov in the house long enough for Igor to ask a series of such questions. Or perhaps a carload of men was on its way to the house right now to fetch Sokolov and subject him to a more rigorous examination. In either case, it wouldn’t look good for Sokolov to bolt out of the house, spurning the pizza, as much as announcing that he had something to hide.