Wolves Eat Dogs

by the heels. Hadn't Arkady seen the Chernobyl militia in action? What kind of investigation did he expect? Fortunately, there were two witnesses.

'They were trying to kill you and I saved your life. Isn't that what happened?'

They carried the Woropays over the shoulder, fireman-style. Alex led the way with Dymtrus while Arkady, one eye swollen shut and his sense of balance badly out of kilter for being gunwhipped, staggered under Taras. Going uphill was slow work, slipping on needles with every step.

Alex said, 'You're lucky I heard the shot. I thought it was a poacher in the middle of the city. You know how I am about poachers.'

'I know.'

'Then I heard another shot behind the school and followed the shouting. The Woropays make a lot of noise.'

'Yes.'

'You're not hurt?'

'I'm fine.'

Alex paused to look back. 'We'll take these two up to the school, and then I'll get the truck.'

Arkady tripped on a root and went to one knee like a waiter with too much on his tray. He couldn't shift shoulders because he could see out of only one eye. He pushed himself up and asked, 'Did you see Katamay?'

'Yes. You know what makes a full moon extraordinary? You feel like an animal, like an animal sees.' Despite Dymtrus's weight, with guns stuck fore and aft in his belt, Alex slowed his pace just to accommodate Arkady. 'We don't deserve a full moon. We make everything smaller. Everything big we cut down. First-growth trees, big cats, adult fish, wild rivers. That's what's wonderful about the Zone. Keep us out for fifty thousand years, and this place may grow into something.'

'You saw Karel?' Arkady repeated.

'He didn't look good.'

Arkady climbed a step at a time, and Alex began talking the way an adult would on a long, cold walk with a boy who was sniveling and slow, by distracting him with stories and things the boy would like to hear.

'Pasha Ivanov and Lev Timofeyev were my father's favorites, always in and out of our apartment. His best researchers, best instructors and, when he was too drunk to function, his best protection. There's always a good impulse behind the worst disasters, don't you find? And I swear, when I began working at NoviRus, it was purely for the extra money. I had no great plan of retribution.'

Retribution? Was that what Alex had said? Arkady's head was still ringing, and it took all his concentration to continue moving as Alex bent a tree limb out of his way.

'My friend Yegor called from Moscow. Yes, I worked part-time for NoviRus Security as an interpreter in the accident section, which usually meant twenty-four hours of reading in a small, windowless room. Maybe Colonel Ozhogin's office was on the fifteenth floor, but we were in the bowels of the building.'

'The belly of the beast.'

'Exactly. Since your're underground, it always seems like night. Very space-age, with tinted glass for walls. I began wandering the halls and discovered that the technicians monitoring all those security screens were even more bored than I was. They're kids; I was the only one over thirty. Imagine sitting in the dark and staring at a bank of screens for hours on end. For what? Martians? Chechens? Bank robbers with stockings pulled over their heads? One day I went by an empty chair, and on the screen was a palace gate swinging open for a couple of Mercedeses. The cars moved to another screen, and there was Pasha Ivanov after so many years, Mr. NoviRus himself, getting out of a car with a beautiful woman on his arm. It's his palace. I hadn't seen him since Chernobyl. On the screens I could follow him up the grand staircase and into the lobby. Here, I told myself, was a man who had everything.

'I wondered, what do you give a man who has everything? We were working with cesium chloride at the institute. Remember how social Ivanov was? At Christmas he threw a party for about a thousand people at his palace, collecting gifts for some charity. Very democratic: staff, friends, millionaires, children, wandering in every room because Ivanov liked to show off, the way New Russians do. I brought some grains of cesium chloride and a dosimeter in a lead box wrapped as a present, and lead-lined gloves and tongs in the back of my belt. I found his bathroom and left one grain out for him to step on and track around, and the present on the toilet seat with a card inviting him to Chernobyl to atone. I waited months, and all Ivanov did was send Hoffman, his fat American friend, to hide among the Hasidim. Can you believe it? Ivanov delegated a prayer for the dead, and Hoffman didn't even perform.'

Arkady was not performing well, either. Taras was deadweight that took any opportunity-the brush of a limb, a faltering step-to slide off Arkady's shoulder. Arkady stumbled, but he followed Alex's voice. Alex stopped every few steps to make sure of it. He laid out the story like a trail of tasty crumbs along a forest path. 'Ivanov moved to a mansion in the city with a guardhouse. But all the bodyguards in the world won't help if your dog comes back from his run in the park with a grain or two in his hair, which he distributes around the house. I started a campaign against Timofeyev, too, but he was a secondary character. He was no Pasha Ivanov. Of course, after Ivanov was dead, Timofeyev was willing to come here, but before, the two of them had to behave as if nothing was happening, nothing to report to the militia or even NoviRus Security, where, incidentally, I flourished. I was every technician's big brother. I helped them study their correspondence courses for business degrees so they could become New Russians themselves. I found the code clerk a doctor he could take his sexual dysfunction to while I covered for him. Really, the plan took shape by itself. See, there's the school already, at the top of the hill.'

To Arkady, the school was as distant as a cloud in the sky. He was impressed that he had come so far. Taras, dead or not, kept trying different ways to slither out of Arkady's arm. Alex steadied Arkady over a log, and Arkady wondered whether he could get close enough to grab one of the guns tucked in Alex's waistband, but Alex was on the march with Dymtrus again, setting an example, jollying Arkady along, keeping him entertained.

'Want to hear about the fumigator van? That was fun. Saturday mornings the tech for Ivanov's building was always hungover. I covered and saw the same images the receptionist saw in the lobby, and as soon as the van rolled into the service alley, I called on the security line and told him to read a list of the previous month's guests to me. This is not computerized. The receptionist has to physically turn away from the street, get the binder from a bottom drawer, find the day and decipher his own handwriting, with no view of the screens. I know all this because I have been watching him on the lobby monitor for weeks. The fumigator has codes for touchpads at the back door, the service elevator and Ivanov's floor, and I've promised him twelve minutes of distraction. In the middle of this, the tech comes back to replace me. I shake my head. He waits while I go on talking to the receptionist, because I'm waiting for the fumigator to get out. I can see why people turn to a life of crime; the adrenaline is incredible. I give the tech two aspirin, and he leaves for water. At the same moment the fumigator comes into the alley, faster now because he's no longer pulling a suitcase full of salt, loads the van and drives off. I thank the receptionist, hang up and then watch. He puts down the binder, looks up at the camera, checks his screens, rewinds the street and alley tapes. He sees the van and he calls in the doorman, who disappears toward the back. I feel like I'm in the lobby. We wait, the receptionist and I. The doorman returns, shaking his head, and hops in the elevator. On the monitors I can see him going from floor to floor knocking on doors, while the receptionist acts super calm, with half an eye on the camera, until the doorman returns. No problem, nothing to worry about, everything's under control. Almost there, Renko.'

Arkady grunted to hold up his side of the conversation. Carrying a body through a dense wood was like passing a jack through the tines of a comb. 'Karel,' he said.

'Karel was the fumigator, and he did a good job. Unfortunately, he got sloppy and must have picked up a grain or two of cesium. I tried a million times to explain radioactivity to Karel, and I don't think I ever got through.'

'Why would he do it?'

'I was his friend. The Woropays', too. I listened to them, to their crazy ambitions. They were just boys from the Zone, they were never going to be New Russians. We were each in our different ways getting even.'

'For what?'

'Everything.'

Arkady was too exhausted to plumb that. 'Not everything. Tell me one thing.'

'Eva.'

'What about her?'