'And dental hygienist.'
'Dental hygienist. Why don't you and Victor steal a page from the Woropay brothers and take a couple of hockey sticks to Obodovsky? Get him to tell you where he was when that van showed up in the alley behind Pasha's apartment house. If you don't know how, Yakov can help you. This happens to fall into his field of expertise. You must have questions.'
'I do. You said you were here last year, on instructions from Pasha Ivanov, to look into a commercial transaction involving spent nuclear fuel.'
'They're stuffed to the gills here. No working reactor, but tons of dirty fuel. Insane.'
'It didn't make business sense?'
'Right. What does this have to do with Obodovsky?'
'Who did you talk to here? What officials?' Arkady asked.
'I don't know. I don't remember.'
'That would have involved an investment of millions of dollars. You talked to the plant manager, the engineers, the ministry in Kiev?'
'People like that, yes.'
'You had to come disguised for that?'
Hoffman's eyes got smaller as he got angry. 'What are these questions? You're supposed to be on my side. The fuel deal never happened. It had nothing to do with Pasha or Timofeyev dying. Or Obodovsky, for that matter.'
'Eat, eat.' Yakov handed out camp plates of grilled fish.
Hoffman asked, 'How about Yakov and I just go back to Kiev, have Victor lead us to Obodovsky and blow his head off?'
'Coffee.' Yakov passed metal cups of something black and syrupy. 'Before it rains.'
The fish had the texture of underwater cable. Arkady sipped the coffee and, now that he had time, admired Yakov's American gun, a.45 with bluing worn to bare steel.
'Reliable?'
'For fifty years,' Yakov said.
'A little slower than a modern gun.'
'Slow can be good. Take your time and aim, is what I say.'
'Wise words.'
'Why not beat on Obodovsky?' Hoffman insisted.
'Because Anton Obodovsky is very much an outside person, and whoever arranged the delivery of cesium chloride to Pasha's apartment was inside. They didn't break in; they had the codes and somehow got around the cameras.'
'Colonel Ozhogin?'
'He certainly is inside NoviRus Security.'
'I can have him killed. He killed Timofeyev and Pasha.'
'Only, Ozhogin has never been here. You are the one who has been, and you won't tell me why. How long are you going to stay?'
'I don't know. We're enjoying ourselves, camping out, what's the rush?'
There didn't seem to be one for Hoffman. He sat on the car fender and picked his teeth with a fish bone. He looked like a man with a sudden abundance of patience.
'Thank you for the coffee.' Arkady started off the dock.
'My father was here,' Yakov said.
'Oh?' Arkady stopped.
Yakov felt in his shirt pocket and lit half of a cigarette he had saved. He spoke in an offhand way, as if a detail had come to mind. ' Chernobyl was a port town, a Jewish center. When the Reds were taking over Russia, the Ukraine was independent. So what did they do? The Ukrainians put all the Jews in Chernobyl into boats and sank them, drowned them and machine-gunned anyone who tried to swim for shore.'
'Like I told you,' Hoffman told Arkady, 'don't ask for any sympathy from Yakov.'
As soon as Arkady rode to the street above the river he called Victor, who admitted that he had lost Anton Obodovsky at a casino the night before.
'You have to buy a hundred-dollar membership before they let you in. And they really liked sticking it to a Russian. Anton games all night while I'm jerking off in front. He's up to something. I just feel sorry for Galina.'
'Galina?'
'The hygienist. Miss Universe? She seems like a sweet kid. Maybe a tad materialistic.'
'How was Anton's tooth?' Arkady asked.
'He seemed normal.'
'Where are you now?'
'Back at the cafe, in case Anton returns. It's pouring here. You know what Europeans do in the rain? They spend all day over a cup of coffee. It's very chic.'
'You sound like you're having a wonderful vacation. Go to the travel agency across from the dentist and see whether Anton bought tickets anywhere. Also, I know we checked before to see what Ivanov and Timofeyev were doing during the accident here at Chernobyl, but I want you to do it again.'
'We already know. Nothing. They were two prodigies in Moscow doing research.'
'On what, for whom?'
'Ancient history.'
'I'd appreciate it if you would do it anyway.' Through the trees Arkady could make out Hoffman and Yakov on the dock. Yakov meditated by the water and Hoffman was on a mobile phone. 'How much of this information are you passing to Bobby?'
After momentary embarrassment, Victor said, 'Lyuba called. I explained the situation to her, and then she explained the situation to me. As she says, Hoffman is paying me.'
'You're giving him everything?'
'Pretty much. But I'm giving the same to you, and I'm not charging you a kopek.'
'Bobby is using me as a hunting dog. He's going to sit around and wait until I flush something into the open.'
'You do the work and he cashes in? I think that's called capitalism.'
'One more thing. Vanko admires the way Alex Gerasimov makes money during his off-time from Chernobyl by interpreting and translating at a Moscow hotel. No shame in that. But Alex says he does nothing but academic work that pays little or nothing at all. A small discrepancy, and probably none of my business.'
'That's what I was thinking.'
Arkady caught a raindrop in his palm. 'Start by calling Moscow hotels that cater to Western businessmen-the Aerostar, Kempinski, Marriott-and work your way down. This will be expensive. Call from your hotel on Bobby's account.'
'Magic words.'
Before the rain hit, Arkady rode to the black village where Timofeyev had been found. He had visited the site twenty times before, and each time he had tried to imagine how a Russian millionaire could have arrived at the gate of a cemetery in the Zone. Arkady also tried to picture how Timofeyev's body had been discovered by Militia Officer Katamay and a local squatter. Did that description fit the scavenger hauled from the cooling pond? Now all three were gone, Timofeyev and Hulak dead and Katamay vanished. The facts made no sense. The atmospherics, on the other hand, were perfect, a spatter of raindrops from an ominous sky and an approaching fanfare of thunder, the same as Timofeyev's last day.
Arkady got off the bike in the clearing where Eva Kazka had held her outdoor medical clinic. In a way, there were two cemeteries. One was the village itself, with its punched-in windows and falling roofs. The other was the graveyard of simple crosses of metal tubing painted blue or white, some with a plaque, some with a photograph sealed in an oval frame, some decorated with bright bouquets of plastic flowers. Keep your eternal flame, Arkady thought, bring me plastic flowers.
