Wolves Eat Dogs

building a week after his father blew his head off. But the son lived. Is he crazy or strong?'

'Good question.'

'Where's Bobby?' Victor asked. 'His phones off. What's going on up there? Do I hear soccer?'

Only Victor would rightly interpret a riot as a soccer match, Arkady thought.

'Kind of. Get a home number for the dentist, just to hear her voice. And if Zurin calls…'

'Yes?'

'You haven't talked to me in weeks.'

'I wish.'

Arkady closed the mobile phone and rewound the video to the point where police buses rolled into view. The phone rang. The caller ID showed a local number.

'Arkady?' It was Eva.

There was a pause while British fans threw seat cushions, bottles, coins.

'Eva, I think I misunderstood your relationship with Alex.'

'Arkady…'

Thugs, stripped to Union Jack tattoos, dragged down local fans and stomped them with boots.

Eva said, 'Alex said you went to Moscow.'

'So?'

Once down, a victim could be kicked in any number of vital spots. Some hooligans, British or Russian, were virtuosos with steel-toed boots. Meanwhile, the police ducked from the rain of hard objects.

'I thought you'd left.'

'You were wrong.'

A crowd surged onto the field, broke through the police line and rocked a bus.

'I hear shouts. Where are you, Arkady?'

'I can't tell you.'

'You don't trust me?'

He let the question stand. The bus driver had locked the doors but trapped himself inside. The bus windows burst into crystal.

Eva asked, 'What can I do?'

Rioters put their shoulders to the bus and rocked it from side to side. The lights were on. Running back and forth, the driver looked like a moth in a swinging lamp.

'If you want to help,' Arkady said, 'you can tell me what Alex does in Moscow in his off-time. You're close to him.'

'Is that what you want to talk about?'

'Can you help or not? What does a radioecologist do in Moscow to earn money?'

Police formed a wedge in an effort to rescue the bus. However, a number of hooligans had appropriated helmets and batons and put up a stiff resistance. One policeman, taken hostage, spun comically between blows.

'Can you help or not?' Arkady repeated.

Oopah! The bus went over with a cheer. Figures swarmed it, kicking in the windshield and dragging the driver out.

'Please don't,' she said.

'Can you help or not?'

Too late, a water cannon arrived to clear the field. As the jet drove the crowd back, the stampede in the exits gained the strength of desperation. A second wave of bodies rushed the camera and sucked it under.

'No? Too bad.' Arkady ended the call.

The next images were taped later, of police picking over clothes on the field and the empty stands, photographing the scene, maneuvering a tractor crane to lift the toppled bus back on its wheels. An ambulance stood by in case anyone was underneath. There was a special, mutual pain to the conversation, he thought. Hurting her, of course. Also-by ending the call and demonstrating who was in control-denying himself the chance to listen. This way he could enjoy the deep satisfaction of twisting the knife in two people at the same time. It was the sort of pain a man could suck on forever. The bus lurched onto its wheels. No bodies. The final shot was of the score: 0-0. As if nothing had happened at all.

Great minds compartmentalized. Arkady put on Vanko's tape and fast-forwarded, then rewound. The question, he decided, was why the camera had found Bobby, among all the Hasidim. On repeated viewings, it was a little more obvious, and not as a matter of editing. If Vanko had edited, he would have excised the clumsy shot of his run to the tomb. And the virtual close-up of Bobby at the prayer was not hidden well enough. Toward the end of the tape, at the leave-taking of the buses, Arkady could almost feel the camera search for Bobby. He went frame by frame until he saw a reflection in the bus's folded glass door of Vanko handing out business cards. If Vanko hadn't been taping, who had? When had the handover taken place? Before the Kaddish? Or even earlier, before the visit to the tomb?

Arkady heard a car brake hard in the dormitory parking lot and bodies rush into the downstairs hall. A rapid conversation included the bewildered tones of the housekeeper. A moment later, heavy feet ran up the stairs and stopped next door, at the room Arkady had occupied. A key jiggled and they were in. It sounded like they tossed the mattress and drawers, then collected again in the hall.

Arkady slid a chain bolt into the doorplate a moment before someone rapped on the other side.

'Renko? Renko, if you're in there, open up.' It was Ozhogin, which gave Arkady the perverse satisfaction of knowing he had been right. At the same time, the door seemed flimsy. Arkady moved back. He heard the housekeeper waddle up the hall and mention the Scotsman, maybe adding a gesture of drinking. She scratched the door and called Campbell's name. A fist knocked less politely.

'Renko,' Ozhogin said, 'you should have filled out the form. We would have found some kind of job for you. Now it's come to this.'

The housekeeper tried the wrong key and apologized. A key was a formality; Arkady knew how simple it was to pop the lock. Anyway, she had the key; it was only a matter of finding her glasses.

'Here we are,' she said.

Arkady became aware of someone behind him. Campbell had wandered in from the bathroom in his undershirt and drawers, wet as a duck. The professor punched Vanko's tape out of the machine, replaced it with one marked Liverpool-Chelsea and raised the volume. On his way back to the bathroom, he picked up a bottle that was not completely empty. When the door suddenly opened the length of the chain he paused to shout through the space, 'Shut yer fookin' gobs!'

Arkady didn't know how well Ozhogin spoke English but he seemed to get the message. There was a long moment while the colonel decided whether to break in on the drunken Scot. The moment passed. Arkady heard Ozhogin and his men retreat down the hall, confer, then move with dispatch down the stairs and out to their car. Doors slammed and they drove away.

Hours slipped around the window shade. Arkady knew he should sleep; he also knew that as soon as he closed his eyes he would be back on the ground outside Eva's cabin.

Arkady called the children's shelter and asked for Zhenya. Olga Andreevna came on the line. 'Are you finally here in Moscow?' she asked.

'No.'

'You're impossible. But at least you called him this time, and that's an improvement. His group is in music class now, although Zhenya doesn't actually sing. Wait.'

Arkady sat with the phone for ten minutes.

The director came back on and said, 'Here he is.' Zhenya, naturally, said nothing.

'Do you like music?' Arkady asked. 'Any special group? Have you been playing chess? Eating well?' Arkady remembered films of pioneers of flight, the unsuccessful ones with man-made wings who ran and flapped, ran and flapped, and never got off the ground. That was like trying to talk to Zhenya.

'My case here is winding up soon. I'll be back, and if you like, we can go to a soccer game. Or Gorky Park.' If Arkady had not met Zhenya, he would have no good reason to believe the boy actually existed. Just for a test, he said, 'Baba Yaga has a wolf.'