Dinner was ready. Grigory lumbered up and extracted a pepperoni pizza from the microwave. He cut the slices into small bites, savoring each forkful. His movements were oddly dainty, in sharp contrast to his size — and his surroundings. Leaky pipes had discolored the kitchen’s walls and loosened the plaster from the ceiling. The rest of the apartment wasn’t much better. The electricity cut out sporadically, always when Grigory had just settled in to watch television. At least the heat worked, but too well. From November through April, he kept the windows open, and still he sweated.
Worst of all was his next-door neighbor Mikhail, a worthless drunk who divided his time between watching pornography and battering his wife. One particularly ugly night a year earlier, Grigory had knocked on Mikhail’s door and threatened to call the police. A half-hour later, he heard Mikhail outside his door, shouting, “Out, you fat coward!” The ranting continued until Grigory made the mistake of opening up. When he did, Mikhail pulled him into the hallway and jammed a pistol under his chin.
“If you ever interfere with me again, you elephant—” Mikhail shoved Grigory down and launched a glob of spit at his face. As Grigory curled on the concrete floor, Mikhail kicked him, his steel-tipped boots leaving bruises that didn’t fade for weeks.
But Mikhail wasn’t a problem anymore, Grigory thought. No. His new friends had taken care of Mikhail. Grigory shivered, suddenly cold despite the overheated apartment, and poured himself another glass of peach brandy. Very soon he would need to make his decision. Though it was really no decision at all. He tossed the brandy down the sink. He would need to be sober tonight.
FOR THIS LIFE Grigory had trained in operations research for six years at Ural State University in Ekaterinburg. He hadn’t been at the top of his class. Those men went to energy companies like Gazprom. The middling students, like Grigory, weren’t so lucky. They became engineers for Rosatom, the ministry that controlled Russia’s nuclear weapons plants and storage depots. Grigory worked at the weapons depot at Mayak as a manager in the PC&A unit, responsible for the protection, control, and accounting of nuclear material. He lived in Ozersk, the “closed city”—protected by checkpoints and a barbed-wire fence — that surrounded Mayak.
Grigory didn’t have many friends. But for most of his life he’d been close to his cousin Tajid. Like Grigory, Tajid lived in Ozersk and worked at Mayak, as a security guard. On the long cold nights when the very walls of his apartment mocked his loneliness, Grigory often found his way to Tajid’s. He always took a bottle of Stolichnaya and a fresh orange for Tajid’s wife by way of apology for the intrusion. He and Tajid sat in Tajid’s kitchen and drank until Grigory staggered home.
But over the last three years, Grigory had become less welcome at his cousin’s apartment. Tajid had fallen in with a bunch of Kazakhs. They claimed to be taxi drivers, but they hardly worked, from what Grigory could see. They spent their time drinking coffee and reading the Quran. Tajid and Grigory had both been born Muslim, but they’d never practiced the religion growing up. In their youth, the Communists had frowned on organized religion. Today, the Russian government still discouraged Islam, though it wasn’t illegal. Employees at Mayak were warned against becoming overly involved with “foreign religious groups,” which everyone knew was code for Islamic fundamentalists.
“What do you want with those peasants?” Grigory asked his cousin one winter night. “They aren’t even Russian.”
“They follow the true path, cousin. Come, see for yourself.”
“Look at me. You think I have any reason to believe in God?” Grigory laughed. “A drink, cousin?”
“I told you I don’t drink anymore.”
“Suit yourself.” Grigory threw back a shot of vodka.
The next time Grigory showed up at Tajid’s apartment, Tajid wasn’t alone. One of the Muslims was there, too. Tajid looked at the bottle of vodka Grigory held. “Give me that,” he said, his voice low and angry.
Grigory handed the bottle over and watched in horror as Tajid tossed it out his window.
“Never bring alcohol to my home again.”
“Cousin—”
“Go. Now. You bring me disrepute.”
Grigory hadn’t known what to say. Tajid was his oldest friend. His only friend, really, aside from the old men at the city chess club, who were as lonely as he.
He’d left Tajid alone for a few months. Then, finally, he’d worked up the courage to return to his cousin’s apartment — this time carrying no vodka, only a bag of dates. When he knocked on the door Tajid hugged him, surprising him.
“I was just thinking of you, cousin.”
Over a cup of strong sweet coffee, he’d told Grigory why.
At first, Grigory had believed, wanted to believe, that Tajid was joking. But after Tajid insisted he was serious a second time, and a third, Grigory had stopped arguing.
“It’s impossible,” he’d said to deflect his nervousness. “Can’t be done.”
“Of course it can,” Tajid said. “You’ve said so yourself many times.”
Indeed, Grigory and his cousin had often talked about the problems at Mayak. Rosatom had dramatically improved the defenses of its nuclear plants since the 1990s, when guards didn’t show up and warheads were stored in warehouses protected only by cheap padlocks. But weaknesses remained, especially in the hours after new warheads arrived. Having finished the dangerous work of moving warheads, convoy commanders were eager to sign over their shipments and leave. Sometimes too eager.
“I don’t want to be involved in this.”
“But my friends already know about you. Your job at the plant.”
“Tajid.” Grigory felt a sinking sensation in his belly, a hopeless feeling that would become uncomfortably familiar. “What do they know?”
“Only your name and your job.”
“My name?”
“My cousin, you can do this.”
“Even if I could find a way—” Grigory broke off, hardly able to believe he was even pretending to consider the suggestion. “How do you know the men proposing this aren’t agents of the FSB”—the Russian Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB—“or the GUMO?”
“My sheikh vouches for them.”
“That might be enough for you, Tajid, but I need more.”
“Your neighbor Mikhail, does he still bother you?”
“Today and every day. Worthless scum. Why do you ask?”
“We’ll talk soon, cousin.”
A WEEK LATER, Grigory came home to find his apartment unusually quiet. He soon realized why. No porn actresses were screeching in fake pleasure next door.
Mikhail’s body was found the next day, dumped on a back road outside Chelyabinsk. He’d been shot between the eyes. Worse, he’d been stabbed over and over, his ears and tongue cut off, or so the rumors went. Grigory heard the news and poured himself a glass of vodka, waiting for the phone to ring. He didn’t have to wait long.
“You heard what happened to your neighbor?”
Grigory was silent.
“When can we meet?” Tajid said.
“Whenever you like.”
“An hour, then. At the Moscow”—a rundown cafe on the edge of Ozersk.
Tajid hung up and Grigory threw back his vodka. The drink warmed his belly but his mind was still cold. Tajid’s men had proved in the most emphatic way possible that they weren’t police agents. They’d also sent Grigory a lesson in what might happen to him if he didn’t cooperate. Two doves with one arrow.
TAJID SAT IN A CORNER of the Moscow with another man, a light-skinned Arab, small, clean-shaven, and neatly dressed, his only distinctive feature his almond-shaped brown eyes. He wore a black leather jacket and a thin gold bracelet. In all, he looked more like a junior member of the
