Just as he was doing now, he had always lived in the present. The past was dead, immutable; the future unknowable. One could plan, one could scheme, but in the end, nobody really knew. You placed your bets and hoped for the best. But the present, that was something else. You were always in the moment, always the master of your own fate. When he fled Dresden with Father Otto, when he survived in the woods on nothing but jerky and water, when he encountered the Russians and made up his mind to survive—then he had been master of his own fate. In the moment there was nothing to the future; each decision you made was sovereign, each step irrevocable. That was how you triumphed. Take this moment. At this moment he was walking the streets of Baku. In half an hour or so, provided he kept putting one foot in front of another—something that was completely within his power to control—he would be back at the residence and greeting Mlle. Derrida and Miss Harrington.
