Wolves Eat Dogs

Bobby hung on to the sofa. 'I'm staying right here.'

'If we do start, this is a possible crime scene, and the very first thing is to get you out of here.'

'We have to talk,' Victor told Arkady.

The two men retreated to the white runway of the hall. Victor lit a cigarette and sucked on it like oxygen. 'I'm dying. I have heart problems, lung problems, liver problems. The trouble is, I'm dying too slowly. Once my pension meant something. Now I have to work until they push me into the grave. I ran the other day. I thought I heard church bells. It was my chest. They're raising the price of vodka and tobacco. I don't bother eating anymore. Fifteen brands of Italian pasta, but who can afford it? So do I really want to spend my final days playing bodyguard to a dog turd like Bobby Hoffman? Because that's all he wants us for, bodyguards. And he'll disappear, he'll disappear as soon as he shakes more money out of Timofeyev. He'll run when we need him most.'

'He could have run already.'

'He's just driving up the price.'

'You said there are good prints on the glasses. Maybe there are some more.'

'Arkady, these people are different. It's every man for himself. Ivanov is dead? Good riddance.'

'So you don't think it was suicide?' Arkady asked.

'Who knows? Who cares? Russians used to kill for women or power, real reasons. Now they kill for money.'

'The ruble wasn't really money,' Arkady said.

'But we're leaving, right?'

Bobby Hoffman sank into the sofa as they returned. He could read the verdict in their eyes. Arkady had intended to deliver the bad news and keep going, but he slowed as bands of sunlight vibrated the length of the room. A person could argue whether a white decor was timid or bold, Arkady thought, but there was no denying that Rina had done a professional job. The entire room glowed, and the chrome of the wet bar cast a shimmering reflection over the photographs of Pasha Ivanov and his constellation of famous and powerful friends. Ivanov's world was so far away from the average Russian's that the pictures could have been taken by a telescope pointed to the stars. This was the closest Arkady had gotten to NoviRus. He was, for the moment, inside the enemy camp.

When Arkady got to the sofa, Hoffman wrapped his pudgy hands around Arkady's. 'Okay, I took a disk with confidential data from Pasha's computer: shell companies, bribes, payoffs, bank accounts. It was going to be my insurance, but I'm spending it on you. I agreed to give it back when you're done. That's the deal I made with Ozhogin and Zurin, the disk for a few days of your help. Don't ask me where it is, it's safe. So you were right, I'm a venal slob. Big news. Know why I'm doing this? I couldn't go back to my place. I didn't have the strength, and I couldn't sleep, either, so I just sat here. In the middle of the night, I heard this rubbing. I thought it was mice and got a flashlight and walked around the apartment. No mice. But I still heard them. Finally I went down to the lobby to ask the receptionist. He wasn't at his desk, though. He was outside with the doorman, on their hands and knees with brushes and bleach, scrubbing blood off the sidewalk. They did it, there's not a spot left. That's what I'd been hearing from ten stories up, the scrubbing. I know it's impossible, but that's what I heard. And I thought to myself, Renko: there's a son of a bitch who'd hear the scrubbing. That's who I want.'

3

Inn the black-and-white videotape, the two Mercedeses rolled up to the street security camera, and bodyguards-large men further inflated by the armored vests they wore under their suits-deployed from the chase car to the building canopy. Only then did the lead car's driver trot around to open the curbside door.

A digital clock rolled in a corner of the tape. 2128. 2129. 2130. Finally Pasha Ivanov unfolded from the rear seat. He looked more disheveled than the dynamic Ivanov of the apartment photo gallery. Arkady had questioned the driver, who had told him that Ivanov hadn't said a word all the way from the office to the apartment, not even on a mobile phone.

Something amused Ivanov. Two dachshunds strained on their leashes to sniff his attache case. Although the tape was silent, Arkady read Ivanov's lips: Puppies? he asked the owner. When the dogs had passed, Ivanov clutched the attache to his chest and went into the building. Arkady switched to the lobby tape.

The marble lobby was so brightly lit that everyone wore halos. The doorman and receptionist wore jackets with braid over not too obvious holsters. Once the doorman activated the call button with a key, he stayed at Ivanov's side while Ivanov used a handkerchief, and when the elevator doors opened, Arkady went to the elevator tape. He had already interviewed the operator, a former Kremlin guard, white-haired but hard as a sandbag.

Arkady asked whether he and Ivanov had talked. The operator said, 'I trained on the Kremlin staircase. Big men don't make small talk.'

On the tape, Ivanov punched a code into the keypad and, as the doors opened, turned to the elevator camera. The camera's fish-bowl lens made his face disproportionately huge, eyes drowning in shadow above the handkerchief he held against his nose. Maybe he had Timofeyev's summer cold. Ivanov finally moved through the open doors, and Arkady was reminded of an actor rushing to the stage, now hesitating, now rushing again. The time on the tape was 2133.

Arkady switched tapes, back to the street camera, and forwarded to 2147. The pavement was clear, the two cars were still at the curb, the lights of traffic filtering by. At 2148 a blur from above slapped the pavement. The doors of the chase car flew open, and the guards poured out to form a defensive circle on the pavement around what could have been a heap of rags with legs. One man raced into the building, another knelt to feel Ivanov's neck, while the driver of the sedan ran around it to open a rear door. The man taking Ivanov's pulse, or lack of it, shook his head while the doorman moved into view, arms wide in disbelief. That was it, the Pasha Ivanov movie, a story with a beginning and an end but no middle.

Arkady rewound and watched frame by frame.

Ivanov's upper body dropped from the top of the screen, shoulder hitched to take the brunt of the fall.

His head folded from the force of the impact even as his legs entered the frame.

Upper and lower body collapsed into a ring of dust that exploded from the pavement.

Pasha Ivanov settled as the doors of the chase car swung open and, in slow motion, the guards swam around his body.

Arkady watched to see whether any of the security team, while they were in the car and before Ivanov came out of the sky, glanced up; then he watched for anything like the saltshaker dropping with Ivanov or shaken loose by the force of the fall. Nothing. And then he watched to see whether any of the guards picked up anything afterward. No one did. They stood on the pavement, as useful as potted plants.

The doorman on duty kept looking up. He said, 'I was in Special Forces, so I've seen parachutes that didn't deploy and bodies you scraped off the ground, but someone coming out of the sky here? And Ivanov, of all people. A good guy, I have to say, a generous guy. But what if he'd hit the doorman, did he think about that? Now a pigeon goes overhead and I duck.'

'Your name?' Arkady asked.

'Kuznetsov, Grisha.' Grisha still had the army stamp on him. Wary around officers.

'You were on duty two days ago?'

'The day shift. I wasn't here at night, when it happened, so I don't know what I can tell you.'

'Just walk me around, if you would.'

'Around what?'

'The building, front to back.'

'For a suicide? Why?'

'Details.'

'Details,' Grisha muttered as the traffic went by. He shrugged.

'Okay.'

The building was short-staffed on weekends, Grisha said, only him, the receptionist and the passenger