Wolves Eat Dogs

17

The way to see Pripyat, like the Taj Mahal, was by moonlight. The broad avenues and stately chestnuts. The confident plan of greenery, office towers and residential blocks. The way the central plaza admired the Soviet wreath that topped the city hall. Never mind the empty sockets of the windows or the grass that grew between the pavers.

Arkady left his motorcycle in the plaza. He went to the theater where he had met Karel Katamay, feeling his way again through the flats stacked in the lobby, shining his flashlight on the stage, around the piano, up the tiers of benches. Karel Katamay and the couch were gone, leaving only a few dried drops of blood in the dust.

Arkady couldn't search a city built for fifty thousand people. However, a dying man and his couch could not have gone far, even with the Woropay brothers bearing him on a royal litter. His nosebleeds were small leaks. He was bleeding internally from the lungs, intestinal tract, cerebellum. Faced with that prospect, Pasha Ivanov had chosen the quicker alternative of a ten-story jump.

Back on the plaza, Arkady turned off the chatter of his dosimeter. He had a mental map of the city now: the hot buildings, the alleys to be taken only on the run.

Arkady called out, "Karel! We should talk." While we can, he thought.

Something slipped through the grass and disappeared like smoke in the beam of Arkady's flashlight. He swung the light around the front of offices. Where plate glass was still intact, the beam winked back. He swung the light up but decided the Woropay brothers wouldn't have tried to carry Katamay above the ground floor. Anyway, why would Karel want to be in a dark room littered with plaster, sour with squatter's piss, when outside in the balmy air he could touch the moon?

Arkady returned to the center of the plaza and kept going when he saw the amusement park. It had three rides: a Ferris wheel, bumper cars and crazy chairs. In the crazy chairs, children sat in a circle of flower petals that spun until the children were dizzy or nauseated. Half the bumper cars were on their side; the rest were still entangled in traffic. The Ferris wheel was big enough for forty gondolas. Everything was edged and pitted with corrosion; the wheel looked like it had rolled, stopped and rusted in place.

Karel Katamay lay on his couch in front of the crazy chairs. Arkady turned off his flashlight; he didn't need it. Karel was in the same hockey shirt and propped up with cushions, as before. His face was luminously pale, but his hair seemed brushed and freshly beaded. On the ground in front of the couch were plastic flowers, a plastic liter of Evian and a porcelain teacup, no doubt filched from an apartment. Also, a tank of oxygen, a breathing tube and a harness. So the Woropay brothers had made him as comfortable as possible. He did seem a prince of the netherworld.

However, Karel was dead. The eyes, red as wounds, stared through Arkady. The hockey shirt seemed voluminous, twice Karel's size. His hands lay with their palms up on either side of the white satin pillow embroidered Je ne regrette rien. One foot wore a Chinese slipper, the other was bare. There were worse ways to die than peacefully outside on a summer night, Arkady thought.

Arkady found the other slipper two meters away on the other side of the crazy-chairs fence and, honoring the professional rule of "touch nothing," left it where it was. He returned to Katamay. Purple bruises consistent with tissue breakdown and lack of clotting spotted Karel's skin. Blood smeared his chin and rouged his cheeks. When had he died? He was still warm, but he had mentioned infections, and a fever could burn in a body for an hour or more. He had probably lived on nothing but water and morphine for weeks. Actually, Arkady thought he might have lived a minute ago.

Why would a peacefully expiring man kick off a slipper? Katamay's mouth relaxed a little and let the tongue peek out. The satin pillow between his hands was spotless. Arkady broke his rule and turned the pillow over. The opposite side was soaked with blood only starting to brown. Blood from two sources, it seemed, mouth and nose, and what a brief struggle that must have been.

Arkady became aware of Dymtrus Woropay standing on the other side of the crazy chairs. Woropay held a cardboard box that looked heavy with bottles and flowers and trailed the sort of tinsel used to decorate at the holidays. Arkady also saw what the scene looked like to Dymtrus: Arkady standing over Karel Katamay with a bloody pillow.

"What the fuck are you doing?"

"I found him like this."

"What the fuck did you do?"

Dymtrus dropped the box and let the bottles explode. He swung himself directly over the fence on the other side and bulled through the crazy seats. Arkady put the pillow between Katamay's hands and moved away.

Dymtrus snapped the gate chain. He knelt by the couch, touched the dead man's face, picked up the pillow.

"No! No!" He got to his feet and bellowed, "Taras!" His voice went around the plaza. "Taras!"

Arkady ran.

He ran for his motorbike, but another figure closed fast from the side, parting the grass with his arms, striding from paver to paver: Taras Woropay on skates. Arkady jumped on the bike and started it. He told himself that if he reached the highway, he would be safe. Dymtrus threw something shiny. A shopping cart. Arkady outraced it and was back on the plaza, headed for the road, when his rear tire popped and took Arkady to the ground. He rolled free and looked back at Taras on one knee with a gun. A good shot.

Arkady was on foot. When he was a boy and his father took him hunting, the general would shout, "Run, rabbit!," because shooting a standing rabbit was so little fun. "Wave," he'd tell Arkady. "Damn it, wave." Arkady would wave, the rabbit would bolt and the old man would drill it.

Dymtrus followed Arkady into the school, by the hanging chalkboard. Arkady tripped in the dark over gas masks on the lobby floor. They flopped out of the crate like rubber fish. He moved by memory as much as sight, heading for the kitchen in the back of the building. White tiles lined the kitchen walls. A dough bowl the size of a wheelbarrow stood on its legs. All the oven doors were open or broken off. The back door, however, had been boarded up in the last week. We should have rehearsed, the comic in him said. He looked out a window at chairs set on the ground for staff to use while smoking. He considered breaking the window with a loose oven door, until he saw Dymtrus waiting behind a birch. Arkady returned to the lobby and looked out the front window. Skates off, Taras was stepping up to the door.

Arkady went up the stairs two at a time, kicking bottles and debris aside. Taras was inside, at the bottom of the stairwell. Arkady knocked a loose bookcase down toward him. Copybooks fluttered down. Taras didn't have to shout to his brother where Arkady was. Anyone could hear.

Second floor. The music room. A piano leaning like a drunk against a loose keyboard. The tub-thumping sound of a drum accidentally kicked. All the notes a xylophone could make when stumbled into. A one-man band. Heavier feet on the stairs. Dymtrus. The next room was a flood of books, desks, children's benches. The door frame next to Arkady's head split open before he heard the shot. He javelined a bench down the hall and knew he had caught someone when he heard a curse. The last room was a nap center of dolls asleep on white beds. Arkady gathered a mattress around himself and dove through the glass of the window.

He landed on his back between seesaws, rolled to the trees and crawled under a thorn bush, feeling a prick or two, also aware of blood running down the back of his neck and into his camos, but there was no time to take inventory. In the moonlight he saw the brothers scanning trees from the broken window. He thought he might get away. He would have at least the time it would take them to go the length of the hall, down the stairs and out the front while he went the opposite direction. But they were athletes. Dymtrus stepped up on the sill and jumped. He hit the mattress and rolled off. Taras followed suit, and they were close enough for Arkady to hear their breathing. Close enough to smell a mixture of vodka and cologne.

They signaled to each other and separated. Arkady couldn't see where to, although he suspected they would go only a short distance and double back right to where he was. If he did get to the far woods, he could head west to the wild Carpathian Mountains or east to Moscow. The sky was the limit.

The woods were so loud. The electric shriek of crickets and cicadas. The invisible luffing of trees in the breeze. A man could just sink into the sound. Dead, he would.

A rock, a brick, something hit the wall of the school. Immediately, Taras, one arm hung low, hurt, ran forward and around the side of the school. One on one, Arkady took his chance. He emerged and moved to the quarter that Taras had deserted.

He had been suckered. Dymtrus was waiting behind a big enough tree this time, but Arkady tripped in brambles, and the shot that should have taken off his shoulder was high. By the time Dymtrus had advanced to see, Arkady was on his feet again, weaving downhill between trees.

Arkady had no plan. He wasn't headed to any particular road or checkpoint, he was only running. Since the Zone was uninhabited, apart from the staff in Chernobyl and the old folks in their black villages, he had a lot of running to do. He heard Taras's shouts catching up. The brothers were behind him, one on either side. One problem was that moonlight was not real light. Branches materialized to slap his face. Roots insidiously spread. Radiation markers seemed to multiply.

He glimpsed a Woropay closer every time he dared look. How could they be so fast? The ground pitched forward, and they were herding him through deeper and deeper bracken. His feet grew heavy, clutched by mud, and he saw ahead a trail of silver water.

It was a small swamp ringed by armless, rotting trees, reeds, the plop of frogs. In the center, the hump of a beaver dam and, topping that, a diamond-shaped marker.

Arkady moved back to firmer ground. He found no stones. A branch he picked up turned to dust. Weaponless, he met the charge of Taras, threw him over his hip, and stood to face Dymtrus. Dymtrus fought like an ice-hockey player: grab with one hand and pound with the other. Arkady took the hand, twisted and locked it behind Dymtrus's back, then ran him into a tree. He kicked Taras in the head when he returned. He hit Dymtrus below the belt. But Dymtrus clutched Arkady's knees as he dropped, and Arkady couldn't put enough force behind a punch into Taras's head. Dymtrus climbed up Arkady. Taras hit back with the gun. Dymtrus held Arkady's arms so Taras could swing the gun at a steadier target. The next conscious moment, Arkady was being turned over on the ground. Shooting him was too easy; they could have done that when they first caught up.

Dymtrus said, "I brought the pillow."

He pulled the pillow out of his tunic and sat on Arkady's chest while Taras knelt and held on to Arkady's arms. Dymtrus breathed hard through the saliva that draped from his mouth. The blood on the pillow was still damp.

Arkady's eyes sought the moon, a treetop, anything else.

Dymtrus said, "You'll go like Karel went. Then we'll put you in the water, and no one will find you for a thousand fucking years."

"Fifty thousand." Alex Gerasimov came out of the trees. "More like fifty thousand years."

In Alex's hand was a gun. He shot Dymtrus in the back, and the big man collapsed as dead as a slaughtered steer while his brother sat back on his heels in surprise. Taras brushed the hair from his eyes and had started to form a question when Alex shot him. A cigarette burn through the heart. Taras looked down at it and kept falling until he spread out on the ground.

Alex picked up the pillow. "Je ne regrette rien. Absolutely," he said and flung the pillow into the water almost to the diamond marker.

They carried the bodies back.

Alex said the swamp and hillside were too hot; the militia would either leave the Woropays or drag them out by the heels. Hadn't Arkady seen the Chernobyl militia in action? What kind of investigation did he expect? Fortunately, there were two witnesses.

"They were trying to kill you and I saved your life. Isn't that what happened?"

They carried the Woropays over the shoulder, fireman-style. Alex led the way with Dymtrus while Arkady, one eye swollen shut and his sense of balance badly out of kilter for being gunwhipped, staggered under Taras. Going uphill was slow work, slipping on needles with every step.

Alex said, "You're lucky I heard the shot. I thought it was a poacher in the middle of the city. You know how I am about poachers."

"I know."

"Then I heard another shot behind the school and followed the shouting. The Woropays make a lot of noise."

"Yes."

"You're not hurt?"

"I'm fine."

Alex paused to look back. "We'll take these two up to the school, and then I'll get the truck."

Arkady tripped on a root and went to one knee like a waiter with too much on his tray. He couldn't shift shoulders because he could see out of only one eye. He pushed himself up and asked, "Did you see Katamay?"

"Yes. You know what makes a full moon extraordinary? You feel like an animal, like an animal sees." Despite Dymtrus's weight, with guns stuck fore and aft in his belt, Alex slowed his pace just to accommodate Arkady. "We don't deserve a full moon. We make everything smaller. Everything big we cut down. First-growth trees, big cats, adult fish, wild rivers. That's what's wonderful about the Zone. Keep us out for fifty thousand years, and this place may grow into something."

"You saw Karel?" Arkady repeated.

"He didn't look good."

Arkady climbed a step at a time, and Alex began talking the way an adult would on a long, cold walk with a boy who was sniveling and slow, by distracting him with stories and things the boy would like to hear.

"Pasha Ivanov and Lev Timofeyev were my father's favorites, always in and out of our apartment. His best researchers, best instructors and, when he was too drunk to function, his best protection. There's always a good impulse behind the worst disasters, don't you find? And I swear, when I began working at NoviRus, it was purely for the extra money. I had no great plan of retribution."

Retribution? Was that what Alex had said? Arkady's head was still ringing, and it took all his concentration to continue moving as Alex bent a tree limb out of his way.

"My friend Yegor called from Moscow. Yes, I worked part-time for NoviRus Security as an interpreter in the accident section, which usually meant twenty-four hours of reading in a small, windowless room. Maybe Colonel Ozhogin's office was on the fifteenth floor, but we were in the bowels of the building."

"The belly of the beast."

"Exactly. Since your're underground, it always seems like night. Very space-age, with tinted glass for walls. I began wandering the halls and discovered that the technicians monitoring all those security screens were even more bored than I was. They're kids; I was the only one over thirty. Imagine sitting in the dark and staring at a bank of screens for hours on end. For what? Martians? Chechens? Bank robbers with stockings pulled over their heads? One day I went by an empty chair, and on the screen was a palace gate swinging open for a couple of Mercedeses. The cars moved to another screen, and there was Pasha Ivanov after so many years, Mr. NoviRus himself, getting out of a car with a beautiful woman on his arm. It's his palace. I hadn't seen him since Chernobyl. On the screens I could follow him up the grand staircase and into the lobby. Here, I told myself, was a man who had everything.

"I wondered, what do you give a man who has everything? We were working with cesium chloride at the institute. Remember how social Ivanov was? At Christmas he threw a party for about a thousand people at his palace, collecting gifts for some charity. Very democratic: staff, friends, millionaires, children, wandering in every room because Ivanov liked to show off, the way New Russians do. I brought some grains of cesium chloride and a dosimeter in a lead box wrapped as a present, and lead-lined gloves and tongs in the back of my belt. I found his bathroom and left one grain out for him to step on and track around, and the present on the toilet seat with a card inviting him to Chernobyl to atone. I waited months, and all Ivanov did was send Hoffman, his fat American friend, to hide among the Hasidim. Can you believe it? Ivanov delegated a prayer for the dead, and Hoffman didn't even perform."

Arkady was not performing well, either. Taras was deadweight that took any opportunity-the brush of a limb, a faltering step-to slide off Arkady's shoulder. Arkady stumbled, but he followed Alex's voice. Alex stopped every few steps to make sure of it. He laid out the story like a trail of tasty crumbs along a forest path. "Ivanov moved to a mansion in the city with a guardhouse. But all the bodyguards in the world won't help if your dog comes back from his run in the park with a grain or two in his hair, which he distributes around the house. I started a campaign against Timofeyev, too, but he was a secondary character. He was no Pasha Ivanov. Of course, after Ivanov was dead, Timofeyev was willing to come here, but before, the two of them had to behave as if nothing was happening, nothing to report to the militia or even NoviRus Security, where, incidentally, I flourished. I was every technician's big brother. I helped them study their correspondence courses for business degrees so they could become New Russians themselves. I found the code clerk a doctor he could take his sexual dysfunction to while I covered for him. Really, the plan took shape by itself. See, there's the school already, at the top of the hill."

To Arkady, the school was as distant as a cloud in the sky. He was impressed that he had come so far. Taras, dead or not, kept trying different ways to slither out of Arkady's arm. Alex steadied Arkady over a log, and Arkady wondered whether he could get close enough to grab one of the guns tucked in Alex's waistband, but Alex was on the march with Dymtrus again, setting an example, jollying Arkady along, keeping him entertained.

"Want to hear about the fumigator van? That was fun. Saturday mornings the tech for Ivanov's building was always hungover. I covered and saw the same images the receptionist saw in the lobby, and as soon as the van rolled into the service alley, I called on the security line and told him to read a list of the previous month's guests to me. This is not computerized. The receptionist has to physically turn away from the street, get the binder from a bottom drawer, find the day and decipher his own handwriting, with no view of the screens. I know all this because I have been watching him on the lobby monitor for weeks. The fumigator has codes for touchpads at the back door, the service elevator and Ivanov's floor, and I've promised him twelve minutes of distraction. In the middle of this, the tech comes back to replace me. I shake my head. He waits while I go on talking to the receptionist, because I'm waiting for the fumigator to get out. I can see why people turn to a life of crime; the adrenaline is incredible. I give the tech two aspirin, and he leaves for water. At the same moment the fumigator comes into the alley, faster now because he's no longer pulling a suitcase full of salt, loads the van and drives off. I thank the receptionist, hang up and then watch. He puts down the binder, looks up at the camera, checks his screens, rewinds the street and alley tapes. He sees the van and he calls in the doorman, who disappears toward the back. I feel like I'm in the lobby. We wait, the receptionist and I. The doorman returns, shaking his head, and hops in the elevator. On the monitors I can see him going from floor to floor knocking on doors, while the receptionist acts super calm, with half an eye on the camera, until the doorman returns. No problem, nothing to worry about, everything's under control. Almost there, Renko."

Arkady grunted to hold up his side of the conversation. Carrying a body through a dense wood was like passing a jack through the tines of a comb. "Karel," he said.

"Karel was the fumigator, and he did a good job. Unfortunately, he got sloppy and must have picked up a grain or two of cesium. I tried a million times to explain radioactivity to Karel, and I don't think I ever got through."

"Why would he do it?"

"I was his friend. The Woropays', too. I listened to them, to their crazy ambitions. They were just boys from the Zone, they were never going to be New Russians. We were each in our different ways getting even."

"For what?"

"Everything."

Arkady was too exhausted to plumb that. "Not everything. Tell me one thing."

"Eva."

"What about her?"

"You know." With his finger Alex drew a scar across his neck.

The thorn bush behind the school reached for Taras, and Alex held back branches so Arkady could climb the last steps to the seesaw and chairs. When Arkady caught a ghostly reflection of himself in a window, he looked away before he turned completely into Yakov.

"Don't drop him," Alex said.

"Why not? You were going to get your truck."

"No. We'll carry them back to Karel."

"Back to Karel?" To the other end of the plaza? Arkady thought.

"We're practically there," Alex said. "The climb is over. Easy from here on."

That was it, then, Arkady thought. That's why he was alive instead of dead by the swamp, so Alex could make one trip instead of three. Ever the earnest assistant, Arkady had helped by bringing two of the bodies, Taras and himself. This way there were no tire treads on the ground or blood in the truck. A gun appeared in Alex's hand. Usually the distance from the school to the fun fair was a few minutes' walk. Even at his pace, Arkady wondered, how long could he draw it out?

"You first." Alex prodded Arkady to get him moving again, this time in front.

As Arkady stumbled forward he remembered a quote by someone about a walk to the gallows focusing the mind. That wasn't true. He thought of favorite music, Irina's laugh, his mother staying in bed to read Anna Karenina one more time, pansies on a grave. He thought of how Eva had called and called again, when all he'd had to do was answer.

"Why?" Arkady asked. "What did Pasha Ivanov and Timofeyev do to justify the deaths of five people, so far? What could Pasha and Timofeyev have done that made you so insane?"

"Finally, an interesting question. The night of the accident at Chernobyl, what did Pasha and Timofeyev do? Well, you wouldn't think they could do anything; they were just two junior professors at an institute in Moscow. But they would sit up all night and drink with the old man. That's what they were doing when the call came from the Party Central Committee. The Party wanted him to go to Chernobyl to assess the situation, because he was the famous Academician Felix Gerasimov, who had more experience in nuclear disasters than anyone else, the world's number one expert. Since he was too drunk to talk, he gave the phone to Pasha."

"Where were you?"

"I was at Moscow University, sleeping soundly in my room." Recollection did slow Alex down.

"How do you know all this?"

"My father didn't write a suicide note when he died, but he sent me a letter. He said the Central Committee had wanted his advice on whether to evacuate people. Pasha acted as if he was just relaying answers from my father."

Ahead, Arkady saw Karel on the couch in front of the crazy chairs ride. His sister, Oksana, bent over him; she wore the same jogging suit. Arkady recognized her by the blue shine of her shaved head. Walking one step behind, Alex had yet to notice her.

"Pasha asked if the reactor core had been exposed. The Committee said no, because that's what the control room told them. Pasha asked if the reactor was shut down. Yes, according to Chernobyl. Well, he said, it sounded like more smoke than fire. Don't sound any alarms, just distribute iodine tablets to children and advise the locals that they might want to stay inside for a day while the fire is extinguished and investigated. What about Kiev, the Committee asked? Even more important to keep the lid on, Pasha said. Confiscate dosimeters. 'Be merciless for the common good.' Pasha and Lev were ambitious guys. They just told the Committee and my father what they wanted to believe. That was how Soviet science worked, remember? So the evacuation of Pripyat was delayed a day and the warning to Kiev delayed six days so that a million children, including our Eva, could march on an undisturbed, radioactive May Day. Pasha and my father can't take all the credit-there were plenty of other weasels and liars-but they should take some."

"Your father was operating with faulty information. Was there an investigation?"

"A whitewash. After all, he was Felix Gerasimov. I woke up in the morning to go to class and there he was in my room, sober, as drawn as a ghost, with an iodine pill for me. He knew. Every May Day from then on was a drinking bout. Sixteen anniversaries. Finally he wrote the letter, sealed it, took it to the post office himself, returned home to his pistol and BANG!"

Oksana's head whipped around. Arkady wondered what he and Alex looked like as they approached in the moonlight-perhaps a single extraordinarily ugly creature with two heads, a trunk and a tail. Arkady motioned for her to get away.

"Surprised?" Alex asked.

"Not really. As a motive for murder, money is overrated. Shame is stronger."

"That's the best part. Pasha and Timofeyev couldn't go anywhere for protection, because then they would have had to reveal the whole story. They were too ashamed to save their own lives, can you imagine that?"

"It happens all the time."

Oksana slipped around the couch, and only because Arkady had seen her he heard her lightly running off. Maybe fifty more paces to Karel, who waited on the couch, the crazy chairs tilted behind him. Arkady resisted the temptation to run because he doubted he could escape an inchworm in his condition.

Alex said, "I wrote them. All I ever asked of Ivanov and Timofeyev was for them to come to the Zone and declare their share of responsibility personally, face-to-face."

"Timofeyev came. Look what happened to him."

"I didn't say there wouldn't be consequences. Fair's fair."

"As you often told Karel."

"As I often did."

At a shuffling gait, they arrived at the fun fair. Karel stretched languidly from one end of the sofa to the other. His eyes were closed, and the blood had been wiped from his chin and cheek; his beaded hair was arrayed more neatly, and each foot now bore a Chinese slipper. An older sister would do that sort of thing. Arkady thought Alex might notice, but he was too pleased with himself. A gondola creaked on the Ferris wheel overhead. Misery to be a Ferris wheel that never moved. Arkady had never seen a moon so large. A shadow of the wheel fell over the plaza.

Arkady laid Taras on the ground.

Alex simply let Dymtrus roll off his shoulder. The big militiaman hit the ground, his head striking like a coconut cracked open.

Arkady asked, "Who shot Hulak?"

"Who knows. He had an arrangement with the Woropays on where and what to steal. I assume they killed him." Alex rolled Dymtrus, who had a back wound, onto his face; he placed Taras, with an entry wound through the chest, on his back; waved the pistol to show Arkady where to stand until he achieved the geometry he wanted: a triangle of dead men-Karel, Dymtrus and Taras- with Arkady in the middle. "I think this will be a pretty convincing picture of the dangers of drinking samogon while bearing arms. Don't worry; I'll supply the guns and the samogon."

"So you didn't save me from the Woropays."

"No, I'm afraid not. You never got past here, but you put up a terrific struggle, if that makes you feel any better."

"All that's lacking is the pillow you smothered Karel with."

"Je ne regrette rien? You know, I'd barely covered his face. He gave a few kicks and was gone. I'd say, considering the shape he was in, what I did was a mercy."

Alex took two steps back from Arkady, into the shadow of the wheel, and raised the gun. Not too far, not too close.

Arkady's mobile phone rang.

"Let it ring," Alex said. "One thing at a time."

The phone rang and rang. When the message came on the caller hung up and immediately hit Redial. It could only be Zhenya, Arkady thought. No normal person would have such maddening persistence. The phone rang until Alex removed it from Arkady's pocket and crushed it underfoot.

That settled, the entire city silent, every window an anxious eye, Alex stepped back and raised the gun again. Oksana crept into Arkady's view at the end of the crazy chairs.

Arkady said, "Would you mind stepping out of the shadow?"

"You want to see me when I kill you?" Alex asked.

"If you don't mind."

Alex moved forward into the silvery light.

Arkady waited and gave Alex no reason to turn. There was a moment's perplexity on Alex's face as he seemed to wonder why Arkady was such an easy victim.

Then Alex twitched. He was dead standing, he was dead dropping, he was dead sprawled on the ground, and Oksana's shot had not been much louder than the snap of a twig. As she stepped out from the crazy chairs, she freed her arm from a sling she'd used to steady her rifle, similar to the single-shot bolt-action rifles that Arkady had seen at the Katamay apartment in Slavutych.

"I'm so sorry. I left my rifle with my bike. I barely got back in time," she said.

"But you did."

"This beast killed my little brother." She kicked Alex.

"He's dead." Arkady tried to steer her away.

"He was the devil. I heard every word." She got one good spit in before Arkady calmed her down and mopped up Alex's face. There wasn't a visible mark on him. His eyes were clear, his mouth set in a knowing smirk, his irises and muscle tone just starting to go slack. Arkady had to press his finger into Alex's ear to find the bullet's borehole and a dot of blood.

"Will they arrest me?" Oksana asked.

"Does anyone else know that you supply skins for your grandfather to mount?"

"No, he'd be embarrassed. You knew?"

"I assumed the skins were from Karel until I saw his condition. Then I knew they were from you."

"Can they trace the bullet?"

"A sophisticated lab could, but there are a lot of swamps around here. Tell me about Hulak." Arkady could barely stand, but he had a feeling that Oksana was a rarely seen moth, that he could talk to her now or never.

"He told my grandfather he was going to get your money and give you a taste of the cooling pond."

"You waited in a boat?"

"I fish there sometimes."

"And shot Hulak."

"He had a gun."

"You shot Hulak."

"He was dragging my grandfather into things."

"And you protect your family?"

Oksana frowned; her baldness exaggerated every expression. No, she didn't like that question. She made room for herself on the couch and rested Karel's head in her lap.

Arkady asked, "Do you know how your brother got so sick?"

"A saltshaker. He told me he was adding cesium to a saltshaker when he dropped a grain. Maybe two. He wore gloves, and nothing should have happened, but later, he ate a sandwich and…" Her face twisted. "Do you mind if I sit here for a while?"

"Please."

"Karel and I used to sit like this a lot."

She reached over her brother's shoulder to smooth the folds of his hockey shirt, place his hands together, primp his braids. Oksana became more and more absorbed, and gradually Arkady understood there were not going to be any more answers.

"I have to go," Arkady said.

"Can I stay?"

"The city is yours."

Arkady drove Alex's truck down the river road, down to the docks and the scuttled fleet, over the bridge and the hiss of the weir. His motorcycle was in the back of the truck. There was no other way to get there in time. For what, he didn't know, but he felt enormous urgency. Along the housing blocks, virtually empty, always virtually empty, and the twin track of a car path through a field of swaying ferns, to a garage half hidden by trees and a bank of lilacs.

He turned off the engine. The white truck seemed to fill the yard. The cabin was silent and had about it an air of darkness and grief. Wind softly heaved the trees, and the screen door slammed.

Eva was in her bathrobe, her eyes blurred, but she held her gun steadily with both hands. She stumbled across the ground in bare feet, but the sights stayed fixed on him. She said, "I told you if you came back, I'd shoot you."

"It's me." He started to open the door and get out of the truck.

"Don't get out, Alex." She kept moving forward.

"It's all right." Arkady swung the door open and stepped down so she could see him more clearly. He was ashamed, but he wasn't going away. Besides, he was exhausted. This was as far as he could go. She stepped closer until she could not miss before she distinguished him apart from the truck. He knew he didn't look good. In fact, the way he looked would have scared most people off. She began to shake. She shook like a woman in icy water until he carried her inside.