Wolves Eat Dogs (33 page)

"Let's walk," Arkady said.

The scale of the yard was best appreciated on foot. As it broke the horizon the sun turned shadowy canyons into the neat ranks of a necropolis. The endless rows of poisoned vehicles evoked the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who had dug, bulldozed and loaded radioactive debris. The trucks were here. Where were the men? Arkady wondered. No one had kept track.

"Two passengers," Arkady said. "You take them out like your usual customers."

"But they're not regular customers. Things out of the ordinary make me nervous."

"Selling radioactive auto parts is ordinary?"

"Mildly
radioactive."

"Get out while you're ahead."

"I could. I should be reaping the benefits of my labor, not living in a graveyard. The situation with Captain Marchenko has become intolerable, the bastard's always trying to get me dismissed."

"Does he ever stop your van?"

"He wouldn't dare. I have more friends upstairs than he docs, because I'm generous and spread the money around. When you think about it, I have a good thing going here. I'm the only one in the Zone with a good thing going. I'm sitting pretty."

"You're sitting in the middle of a radioactive dump."

Bela shrugged. "Why should I jeopardize that for two men I don't know?"

"For five hundred dollars that you don't have to spread around."

"Five hundred? If you called a taxi from Kiev, he'd charge you for both ways, two people, luggage. A hundred dollars, easy. And then he couldn't get past the checkpoint."

"What are you moving today?"

"An engine block. I got a van specially outfitted, with jump seats for the customers."

"Then they'll just be two customers riding along, as usual."

"But I sense desperation. Desperation means risk, and risk means money. A thousand each."

"Five hundred for both. You're going anyway. The real question is why you would come back."

Bela spread his arms. His chains and medals jingled. "Look around. I've got thousands of auto parts to sell."

"Because you're losing your hair. Look in a mirror."

Bela touched his hairline. "What a joker. You had me for a second."

Arkady shrugged. "And the virility is normal?"

"Yes!"

"Five hundred for transportation for two to Kiev, for a service that you usually provide for free. Half to start and half on arrival, to start immediately."

"Immediately? We're pulling the engine now, but it's not ready." Bela glanced in the wing mirror of a car.

"Any dryness of the mouth?"

"It's the dust, the wind always kicking it up."

"You'd know better than I. It's just that everyone rotates time here except you. I don't want to see you holding on to a sack of money with one hand and an IV tube with the other."

"Don't lecture me. I was here for years before you showed up, my friend." Bela slapped dust off his sleeves.

"My point exactly."

"Change of subject!"

They turned the corner onto an avenue of heavy trucks. Halfway down the row was a shower of sparks.

"Fifteen hundred." Bela touched his hair again.

"I hate haggling," Arkady said. "Why don't we do this? Clean your hairbrush and brush your hair. We'll start at five thousand. No, we'll start at ten thousand, and for every new hair in the brush, we deduct a thousand."

"I wouldn't have any money left."

"And we haven't mentioned yet that you're illegally selling state goods."

"They're radioactive."

"Bela, that's not a mitigating factor."

"What do you care? They're Ukrainian goods. You're Russian."

"I'll shut you down."

"I trusted you."

"Nothing personal."

"Five hundred."

"Done."

To prevent the removal of the hotter engines, the hoods of some trucks had been welded shut. Bela's welder, in a mask and greasy coveralls, was cutting one open with an acetylene torch. A lifting sling and a crane stood by to pull the engine out; then the welder would seal the hood again. It was a perfect system. Arkady checked his dosimeter. The count was twice normal. Well, what was normal?

Feeling high from a successful negotiation and the euphoria of a sleepless night, Arkady detoured. Instead of returning directly to the dormitory, he went to Eva's cabin to explain to her that while he had to report to Moscow, he could return in a day or two on his own. Even if he wasn't allowed back in the Zone, they could meet in Kiev. She was difficult. He was difficult. They could be difficult together. They could try to "forge the glorious future," as the banners used to say. Or fight and break up, like everyone else. He imagined the entire conversation in advance.

As Arkady rode the motorcycle up to the cabin, he saw Alex's Toyota truck parked at the garage, and as he walked to the screen door of the house, he heard a scuffle within. There was something about the sound that prevented him from rushing in immediately. No one was in the front room; no one played the piano or sorted through the papers on the desk. He heard no real conversation: instead, a groan and a noise like shuffling feet.

Arkady moved to the bedroom window, and there, through the lilacs, he had a view of Alex and Eva. They stood together. Her bathrobe was open, and he was pressing her against a bureau, his pants down, his buttocks flexing in and out. She clung limp as a rag doll, arms around his neck, as he pounded his flesh into hers, covered her mouth with his. Was this the magical dance floor from the night before? Arkady wondered. A change of partners, obviously. As Alex pulled Eva's head back by her hair to kiss her she saw Arkady at the window. She freed a hand to motion him to leave. The bureau, jostled, spilled brushes, pictures, perfume bottles. Alex saw Arkady in the bureau mirror and more vigorously lifted her with his strokes. As she rocked, Eva listlessly watched Arkady. He waited for some signal from her, but she closed her eyes and laid her head on Alex's shoulder.

Arkady backtracked to the bike, staggering as if he'd lost his sense of balance. It was a little early in the day to cope with this. Apparently, Eva hadn't expected him back. All the same, it was, he felt, a little sudden. And it seemed to spell farewell. He felt a rage take over, although he wasn't sure at whom. This was, he understood, why domestic quarrels ended so badly.

Alex came out of the cabin's screen door, tucking his shirt in, buckling his belt, the man of the house encountering an unexpected visitor. "Alas, poor Renko, I knew him well. Sorry you caught us like that. I know it's painful."

"I didn't know you would be here."

"I thought you were gone. Anyway, why not? She's still my wife."

"Did you rape her?"

"No."

"Was there resistance?"

"No. Since you ask." Alex looked back at the cabin as Eva appeared through the haze of the screen door. "It was very good. Felt like home."

Arkady walked to the cabin door. As he reached the front step Eva belted the screen door and backed up to the middle of the little parlor clutching her robe tight. "She'll get over it," Alex said. "Eva is tougher than she looks."

Arkady rattled the door. He considered ripping it out, but she shook her head and said in a hoarse voice, "This is none of your business."

"You're upsetting her," Alex said.

"Are you bruised?" Arkady asked.

Eva said, "No."

"I need to talk to you."

"Go away, please!" Eva said.

"I need to—"

This was exactly the sort of scene that police the world over hated. Two men starting to wrestle on the ground, a motorcycle kicked over, a woman sobbing inside the house. The gun in Alex's hand was the next escalation. He pushed it against Arkady's temple and said, "We had an understanding, you and I. You came here for an investigation. Fine, investigate. Any questions you want. But leave Eva alone. I take care of Eva. She needs someone reliable who will be here tomorrow and the day after. Go back to Moscow now, and no one's the worse."

"I was lonely," Eva said. She came to the screen. "I phoned Alex and asked him over. It was my idea."

"All of it?"

But she retreated from sight.

"Is that good enough for you?" asked Alex. "So, you're finished here, right? We can be friends again. We'll run into each other on the street in Moscow, remember our drunken samogon party and pretend to wish each other well. Agreed?"

Alex was first to his feet. He tucked the gun, a 9mm, into the back of his belt. Arkady rose more slowly.

"One question."

"The investigator is back on the case. Excellent."

"Who did they call?"

"Who called who?"

"At the samogon party, you did a hilarious impersonation of the control-room technicians, how they blew up the reactor and had to report to Moscow. Who in Moscow did they call?"

"You're serious? What does it matter?"

"Who?"

"It was a chain. The minister of energy, the director of power-plant construction, the minister of health, Gorbachev, the Politburo."

"And who did
they
call? Someone respected, with firsthand experience in nuclear disasters. I think they called Felix Gerasimov. They called your father."

"That's a guess."

"It can be checked."

Alex seemed to consider a wide range of responses. With self-control, he picked up Arkady's motorcycle and dusted off the saddle. "A good trip home, Renko. Be careful."

A thought struck Arkady. "You said you had an understanding with me. Do you have an understanding with Eva?"

Alex smiled, caught out. "I said I wouldn't hurt you."

16

Bela tucked Bobby and Yakov into jump seats behind a washed and brushed Kamaz V8 in a wooden cradle and security straps.

"Not hidden but not seen," Bela said. "It's going to go down like cream. I've done this a hundred times. As soon as we get going, I'll turn on the air conditioner. I guarantee a good time."

Yakov kept one hand on the gun inside his jacket and smiled like a grandpa. Bobby held onto his laptop.

Arkady glanced at Bela's CDs. "Your Tom Jones collection?"

"It's a long drive."

Bobby rallied enough to say, "Renko, you remind me of a dog I once had. With one eye, three legs, no tail. Answered to the name Lucky. That's you. You never know when to stop."

"Probably not." Arkady wasn't sure it was a compliment.

"Ozhogin is really coming?"

"I think so."

Yakov nodded. Wonderful, Arkady thought, the paranoids agree.

Bobby said, "One thing, Renko. Tell me you're staying because you know who killed Pasha. Tell me you're close."

Arkady let his fingers lie: he held his thumb and forefinger a centimeter apart and slid the van door shut.

"Where are you?" Zurin demanded. "I expected you here in this office an hour ago."

"I'm sorry. That flight was overbooked," Arkady said.

"To Moscow?"

"Yes."

"Where are you right now? I hear shouts."

"On the plane." Arkady was in Campbell's dormitory room. The professor himself was curled up in the bottom of the shower stall, and a tape of a soccer game between Liverpool and Arsenal was on the television.

"What flight number?" the prosecutor asked. "When are you landing in Moscow?"

"Can Colonel Ozhogin meet me?"

"No."

"How do you know? You haven't asked him."

"I'm sure he's busy. When are you landing?"

"They're telling us to turn off our mobile phones."

"How could you—"

Arkady ended the call. That was the problem with long leashes, he thought. You couldn't tell whether the dog was at the other end or not.

He hoped he had done one thing right and gotten Bobby and Yakov safely out of Chernobyl. It wasn't like rescuing babes from a fire, but Arkady was willing to celebrate small accomplishments. Yakov's expression at the end might have been the ghost of a smile.

He cleared Campbell's desk enough to write a list of what he knew about Timofeyev: the pivotal relationship with Pasha lvanov, their paired careers, their similar poor health and poisoning, the letter that Timofeyev had mentioned at Pasha's charity party, the discovery of Timofeyev's body in the Zone by what Militia Officer Karel Katamay had reported as a local squatter. Everything parallel to Ivanov except his death; that was different. The only person as ill as they were, in the same extraordinary fashion, was Karel Katamay. Katamay was the key, and he was a wraith in the woods. Or hidden in Pripyat near the theater, at least during the day, while the Woropay brothers were on duty.

Arkady's task was to avoid Ozhogin. The colonel would consider him the most likely lead to Bobby, and Arkady suspected that he enjoyed gathering information. Arkady had taken the precaution of hiding his motorbike in back of a woodpile behind the dormitory. Of course, Ozhogin's arrival might be a figment of Arkady's imagination, and the urgency in Zurin's commands merely revealed excitement at having Arkady near.