Wolves Eat Dogs

as a friend, your first friend in the Zone, is anything going on between you and Eva?'

'No.'

'That's good. We don't want to get territorial, do we?'

'No.'

'Because all you came to the Zone for was your investigation. Stay focused on that.' Alex let go. Arkady's hand looked like wadded clay, the blood driven out, and he resisted the temptation to flex it to see what worked. 'Go ahead, did you have any questions?'

'I understand that for safety's sake, you only do research in the Zone every other month. What do you do during your month in Moscow?'

'That kind of question: good.'

'What do you do?'

'I visit various ecological institutes, pull together research I did here, lecture, write.'

'Is that lucrative?'

'Obviously you have never written for a scientific journal. It's for the honor.'

Alex described amusingly a scientific conference on the tapeworm where hungry scientists stayed near the canapes, and he and Arkady went on talking in a normal fashion about everyday subjects-films, money, Moscow- but on another, silent level Arkady had the feeling that he had been knocked down and straddled.

On his way back to the dormitory, Arkady heard the muffled flight of a nightjar scooping up moths. He had retreated from the cafe when he became aware that Alex was watching for Eva's arrival and realized that Alex was waiting only to see how she and Arkady would act, to look for social uneasiness, to discover the telltale clues a former husband couldn't miss. The clinging molecules and atoms. The streetlamp had gone out since Arkady had crossed under it with Vanko. The only light at the dormitory was a weak bulb at the front step, and where trees crowded out the moon, the street disappeared in the dark. Arkady didn't mind darkness. The problem was that he didn't feel alone. Not another bird or a cat slinking for cover but something else glided by him, first on one side and then the other. When he stopped, it circled him. When he walked, it kept pace. Then it stopped, and he felt ridiculous even as his neck grew cool.

'Alex? Vanko?'

There was no answer but the sifting of leaves overhead, until he heard a laugh in the dark. Arkady clutched Vanko's videotape under his arm and started to trot. The dormitory light was a mere fifty meters off. He wasn't afraid; he was just a man taking midnight exercise. Something flew by, scooped up his leg in midstride and planted him on his back. Something from the other side speared him in the stomach and knocked the air out of him. Oxygen floated over him just out of reach, and his chest made the sound of a dry pump. The best he could do was roll to the side as a blade dug into the street by his ear, which earned him a slap on the head from the other direction. The gliding sound went on. Face on the pavement, he sucked his first breath and saw, silhouetted against the distant light of the cafe, a figure in camos on inline skates and carrying a hockey stick. It rolled forward, stick poised for a winning goal. Arkady tried to get to his feet and immediately went down on a numb leg, his reward a blow across the back. Facedown again, he noticed that what made them such excellent shots were night-vision goggles strapped to their heads. Since he was going nowhere, they circled, darting in and out, letting him twist one way and then the other. When he kicked back, they slashed his legs. When he tried to grab a stick, they feinted and hit him from the other side. The last thing he was prepared for was a man stepping in between with a flashlight that he shone directly into the eyes of the nearest skater. While the skater blindly staggered back, the man put a large gun under the skater's chin and directed the light on it so that the second skater could see the relationship of gun barrel to head.

A voice croaked, 'Fascists! I will shoot, and your friend will blow up like a grapefruit. Get back, go home or I'll shoot both of you goyischer boot shit. Go on, go!'

It was Yakov, and although he was half the size of the skater in his grasp, Yakov gave him a kick to send him on his way to the other skater. They huddled for a moment, but the click of the gun hammer being cocked discouraged them, and they rolled off into the shadows on the far side of the street.

Arkady got to his feet and located, in order, his head, shins and the videotape.

'If you're standing, you're okay,' Yakov said.

'What are you doing here?'

'Following you.'

'Thank you.'

'Forget it. Let me see again.' Yakov played the flashlight beam around Arkady's head. 'You look fine.'

Yakov is now the arbiter of damage? Arkady thought. This was trouble.

12

Yakov set up a camp stove on the dock of the Chernobyl Yacht Club and made a breakfast of smoked fish and black coffee for Hoffman and Arkady. The gunman cooked in shirtsleeves, his shoulder holster showing, and he seemed to take pleasure in the vista of rusted ships heaped against a gray sky.

Hoffman beat his chest like Tarzan. 'This is like going down the Zambezi River. Like The African Queen. Except all the cannibals here are blond, blue-eyed Ukrainians.'

'You're not prejudiced?' Arkady asked.

'Just saying that the house your pal Vanko got us was as cold and dark as a cave. Forget kosher kitchen.'

'Is the house radioactive?'

'Not particularly. I know, I know, in Chernobyl that's four-star accommodations.'

Arkady looked Hoffman over. The red stubble on the American's jowls was filling in. 'You stopped shaving?'

'They want Hasidim, I'll give them Hasidim. You, on the other hand, look like you've been fucked by a bear.'

'Yakov says I'll be fine.' Arkady had checked himself when he woke. He was crosshatched with bruises from his shins to his ribs, and his head throbbed every time he turned it.

Hoffman was amused. 'With Yakov, unless broken bones are sticking through the skin, you're fine. Don't ask for any sympathy from him.'

'He's fine,' Yakov said. He picked crust off the pan to throw in the water. Fish rose to take it in gulps. 'He's a mensch.'

'Which means?' Arkady asked.

'Schmuck,' Hoffman said. 'Get close to people, help them, trust them, it just makes you vulnerable. Do you know who jumped you?

'I'm pretty sure they were two brothers named Woropay. Militia. Yakov scared them off.'

'Yakov can do that.'

Yakov squatted by the stove and-except for the cannon hanging from his shoulder-resembled any pensioner at peace with the slow-moving water, the array of wrecks going nowhere, the mounting thunderheads. Arkady couldn't tell how much Yakov understood or cared to understand. Sometimes he responded in Ukrainian, sometimes Hebrew, sometimes nothing, like an ancient radio with a varying signal.

Hoffman said, 'Yakov did the right thing by letting the creeps go. Ukrainians are not going to take the word of a Russian and a Jew over two of their own police. Besides, I don't want Yakov tied up. I'm paying him to protect me, not you. If they really start digging around, they've got warrants out for Yakov that go back to the Crimean War. You notice he wears a yarmulke. He puts the goyim on notice enough.'

'Have you been here before?' Arkady asked, but Yakov busied himself turning the fish, which was smoked, grilled and charred. What more could be done to it? Arkady wondered.

'So you saw our friend Victor in Kiev yesterday,' Hoffman said.

'Didn't he look prosperous?'

'Transformed.'

'Better, let's leave it at that. The main thing is, the two of you saw that ape Obodovsky with his dentist.'