'Katamay is the officer who found Timofeyevs body and then disappeared?'
'Yes.'
'He does a lot around here.'
'He knows his way around. He's a local boy.'
'And he's still missing?'
'Yes. It's not necessarily a crime. If he quits, he quits. Though we would like the uniform and gun.'
'I looked at his file. He had disciplinary problems. Did you ask him about Timofeyev's wallet and watch?'
'Naturally. He denied it, and the matter was dropped. You have to meet his grandfather to understand.'
'Is he from around here?'
'From a Pripyat family. Look, Renko, we're not detectives, and this is not the normal world. This is the Zone. We are as forgotten as any police can be. The country is collapsing, so we work for half pay, and everyone steals to make ends meet. What's missing? What's not missing? Medicine, morphine, a tank of oxygen, gone. We were given night-vision goggles from the army? Disappeared. I was with Bela when we discovered Timofeyev's BMW, and I remember his look, as if he would kill me for that car. If that's the truck graveyard manager, what kind of officers do you think I'm going to have? I know what he's doing, I see the sparks at night. Everyone else is suffering, and he's making his fortune, but I'm not allowed to conduct the sort of raid I would like, because he has a 'roof,' understand, he's protected from above.'
'I didn't mean to criticize.'
'Fire away. Like my wife says, anyone intelligent steals. The thieves understand. Most of the time they just pay off the guards at the checkpoints; this morning was an exception. Usually they slip from one black village to the next, and if we get too close, they just dive into a hot spot we can't go into. I'm not going to risk the lives of my men, even the worst of them, and there are maybe a thousand hot spots, a thousand black holes for thieves to dive into and come out who knows where. If you know anyone else who is willing to come here, ask them.' While they talked, the afternoon had turned to dusk. Marchenko lit a cigarette and smiled like the happy captain of a sinking ship. 'Invite all your friends to Chornobyl.'
Since the ecologists and British Friends had been absent from the cafeteria, Arkady had eaten a quiet dinner and gone to bed with case notes when a phone call came from Olga Andreevna at the children's shelter in Moscow. 'I am sorry to report that we have had problems with Zhenya since you left. Behavioral problems and refusal to eat or communicate with other children or with staff. Twice we caught him leaving the shelter at night- so dangerous for a boy his age. I cannot help but associate this increase in social dysfunction with your absence, and I must ask when you plan to return.'
'I wish I could say. I don't know.' Arkady reached automatically for a cigarette to help him think.
'Some estimate would be helpful. The situation here is deteriorating.'
'Has my friend Victor visited Zhenya?'
'Apparently they went to a beer garden. Your friend Victor fell asleep, and the militia returned Zhenya to the shelter. When are you coming back?'
'I am working. I am not on vacation.'
'Can you come next weekend?'
'No.'
'The weekend after?'
'No. I'm not around the corner, and I'm not his father or an uncle. I am not responsible for Zhenya.'
'Talk to him. Wait.'
There was silence on the other end of the line. Arkady asked, 'Zhenya, are you there? Is anyone there?'
Olga Andreevna came on. 'Go ahead, he's here.'
'Talk about what?'
'Your work. What it's like where you are. Whatever comes to mind.'
All that came to Arkady's mind was an image of Zhenya grimly clutching his chess set and book of fairy tales.
'Zhenya, this is Investigator Renko. This is Arkady. I hope you are well.' This sounds like a form letter, Arkady thought. 'It seems you've been giving the good people at the shelter problems. Please don't do that. Have you been playing chess?'
Silence.
'The man you played chess with in the car said you were very good.'
Maybe there was a boy at the other end, Arkady thought. Maybe the telephone was dangling down a well.
'I'm in the Ukraine, a long drive from Moscow, but I will be back in a while, and I won't know where to find you if you run away from the shelter.'
Talk about what else, a man with his throat cut? Arkady searched. 'It's like Russia here, but wilder, overgrown. Not many people, but real elk and wild boar. I haven't seen any wolves, but maybe I'll hear them. People say that's a sound you don't forget. It makes you think of wolf packs chasing sleds across the snow, doesn't it? My parents and I used to drive to a dacha. I didn't play chess like you.' Arkady remembered the disassembled pistol in his hands and wondered how he'd gotten on this topic. 'It was dark when we arrived. There were other dachas, but the people in them had been warned away. When we pulled up to the house, the younger officers who had gone ahead would greet my father by baying like wolves. He would lead them like a conductor. He tried to teach me, but I was never any good.'
7
Chernobyl Ecological Station Three was a run-down garden nursery. A filmy light penetrated a plastic roof that had been torn and patched and torn again. Rows of potted plants sat on tables, suffering the music of a radio hanging on a post. Ukrainian hip-hop. Bent over a microscope, Vanko shifted with the beat.
Alex explained to Arkady, 'Actually, the most important instrument for an ecologist is a shovel. Vanko is very good with a shovel.'
'What are you digging for?'
'The usual villains: cesium, plutonium, strontium. We sample soil and groundwater, test which mushroom soaks up more radionuclides, check the DNA of mammals. We study the mutation rate of
Eden was a five-by-five-meter plot of melons sprawled lazily on the ground, red tomatoes fat on the vine and sunflowers blazing in the morning sun. Beet greens grew down one row and cabbage down another, a veritable borsch on the hoof. In the corners were orange crates propped on sticks.
Alex had a gardener's pride. 'The old topsoil had to be scraped away. This new soil is sandy, but I think it's doing well.'
'Is that the old soil?' Arkady pointed to an isolated bin of dark earth fifty meters off. The bin was half covered by a tarpaulin and surrounded by warning signs.
'Our particularly dirty dirt. It's worse than finding a needle in a haystack. A speck of cesium is too small to see without a microscope, so we dig everything up. Ah, another visitor.'
One of the orange crates had fallen. As Alex lifted the trap, a ball of quills tipped in white rolled out, a pointed nose appeared and two beady eyes squinted up.
'Hedgehogs are serious sleepers, Renko. Even trapped, they don't like to be awakened quite so rudely.'
The hedgehog got to its feet, twitched its nose and, with sudden attention, dug up a worm. An elastic tug-of- war ended in a compromise; the hedgehog ate half the worm while half escaped. More alert, the hedgehog considered going one way, then another.
'All he can think of is a new nest with soft, cool rotting leaves. Let me show you something.' Alex reached down with a gloved hand, picked up the hedgehog and set it in front of Arkady.
