Wolves Eat Dogs (22 page)

“That’s what we’re speaking.” Although Campbell’s Scottish burr was so thick that he was barely intelligible.

“You’re so right. The joke’s on me. A standing invite, any hour. We’re Scots, not Brits, no formalities with us.”

“You’re very generous.”

“Seriously. I’ll be badly disappointed if you don’t.” Campbell seemed to count to ten before adding, “Then it’s settled,” and disappearing back into his room.

Eva let the air clear for a moment. “Your new friend? What did he say?”

“I think he said that whiskey was better than vodka for protection against radioactivity.”

“You can’t help some people.”

“What do you mean, he was white?”

“It was only an impression I had because Timofeyev was clothed and refrigerated. Even so, he seemed bloodless, drained. I didn’t think about it at the time. I’ve seen wounds like his among the dead in Chechnya. Cut the major arteries of the throat, and there’s an effusion of blood. Not your dead friend, though. His shirt was clean, taking into account the mud and rain. His hair was clean, too. However, his nostrils were plugged with clotted blood.”

“He had nosebleeds.”

“This would have been more than a nosebleed.”

“A broken nose?”

“There was no bruising. Of course, the local wolf pack had tugged him this way and that, so I couldn’t be sure.”

“Throat slit and an appearance of bloodlessness, but no blood-stains on the shirt or hair, only in the nose. Everything is contradictory.”

“Yes. Also, I should apologize again for the comment about your wife. That was stupid of me. I’m afraid I’ve lost all sensitivity. It was unforgivable.”

“No, her dying was unforgivable.”

“You blame the doctors.”

“No.”

“I see. You’re the self-elected captain of the lifeboat; you think you’re responsible for everyone.” She sighed. “I’m sorry, I must be drunk. On one glass, even. I usually don’t get obnoxious quite so fast.”

“I’m afraid there’s no one left in the lifeboat, so I didn’t do a very good job.”

“I think I should be going.” She didn’t, though. “Who was the boy you were talking to on the phone? Just a friend, you said?”

“For reasons beyond my comprehension, I seem to have become responsible for an eleven-year-old boy named Zhenya who lives in a children’s shelter in Moscow. It’s a ridiculous relationship. I know nothing about him because he refuses to speak to me.”

“It’s a normal relationship. I refused to speak to my parents from the age of eleven on. Is he slow?”

“No, he’s very bright. A chess player, and I suspect he might have a mathematical mind. And courage.” Arkady remembered the times Zhenya had run away.

“Spoken like a parent.”

“No. His real father is out there, and that’s who Zhenya needs.”

“You like helping people.”

“Actually, when people get to me, they’re generally beyond help.”

“You’re laughing.”

“But it’s true.”

“No, I think you help. In Chechnya they always tried to drag the bodies back, even under fire. It was more important not to be abandoned. Did you feel abandoned when your wife died?”

“What does Chechnya have to do with my wife?”

“Did you?”

“Yes.”

“That’s how I am with Alex, except that he hasn’t died, he just changed.”

“How did we get on this subject?”

“We were being honest. Now you ask a question.”

Arkady gently tugged her scarf so that it hung free. The hallway light was poor but when he raised her chin he saw a lateral scar like a minus sign at the base of her neck. “What’s that?”

“My Chornobyl souvenir.”

He realized that his hand hadn’t moved, that it lingered on the warmth of her skin, and that she hadn’t objected.

The door downstairs opened, and a voice called up, “Renko, is that you? I have something for you. I’m coming up.”

“It’s Vanko.” Eva retied her scarf in a rush.

“I’ll show you.” Vanko started up.

“Wait, I’m coming down,” Arkady said.

Eva whispered, “I wasn’t here.”

The café was Chernobyl’s evening social club and senate, and Arkady’s stature had risen since the discovery of Boris Hulak in the cooling pond. He was afforded elbow room and a table while Vanko bought him a beer. The music was Pink Floyd, which some people thought they could dance to.

“Alex says you attract murders the way a magnet attracts iron filings.”

“Alex says the nicest things.”

“He’ll be by. He’s looking for Eva.”

Arkady did not say that he had just left her. Interesting, he thought. Our first collusion. “You said you had something for me?”

“For the Jews.” Vanko opened up a backpack and handed Arkady a videotape, unlabeled except for a price of fifty dollars.

“How did you come up with that price?”

“It’s a valuable keepsake. We could sell this to your American friend and share the profit. What do you think?”

“A videotape of a tomb? This is the gravesite we saw yesterday? You really
have
made a business out of it.”

“I can be a guide, too. I know where everything is. I was here during the accident, you know, just a boy.”

“Considering the exposure you had then, isn’t the Zone the last place you should be?”

“The Zone is the last place for anyone to be. Anyway, we rotate, as many days off as on.”

“What do people do in their free time?”

“I don’t do much. Alex makes good money; he says he works in the belly of the beast. That’s what he calls Moscow. Eva works in a clinic in Kiev.” Vanko nudged the tape closer to Arkady. “What do you think?”

Arkady turned the cassette over. “A Jewish tomb? I haven’t noticed many Jews here.”

“Because of the Germans and the war. Although many people suffered from the Germans during the war, not just Jews. You always hear about the Jews.”

Arkady nodded. “The genocide and all.”

“Yes.”

“But you seem to be the unofficial welcoming party for visiting Jews.”

“I try to help. I found accommodations for your friend and his driver in a decontaminated house.”

“Sounds charming.” Arkady knew that this was against Zone regulations; he also knew that dollars worked miracles. “So do you have a tape player? I can’t sell the tape to the American unless I know what’s on it.”

“Mine is broken. Some of the militia had personal machines in their rooms, but they got stolen. But no problem, this can be organized. Hold on to the tape.”

“You can count on Vanko.” Alex pulled a chair up to the table. “He can organize anything. And congratulations to you, Senior Investigator. Another dead body, I understand. You bring out the murder in people. I suppose in your line of endeavor that is a talent. Where is Eva?”

Vanko shrugged and Arkady said he didn’t know, even as he asked himself why he had now lied twice about her.

“You’re sure you haven’t seen her?” Alex asked Arkady.

“I just returned from Kiev.”

“That’s right,” Vanko said. “His bike was warm.”

“Maybe we should issue a missing-persons bulletin for her,” Alex said. “What do you think, Renko?”

“Why are you worried?”

“A husband worries.”

“You’re divorced.”

“That doesn’t matter, not if you still care. Vanko, can you get us a round of beers?”

“Sure.” Vanko, happy to attend, pushed his way through dancers toward the crowd at the counter.

Arkady didn’t want to talk about Eva with Alex. He said, “So, your father was a famous physicist, and you were a physicist. Why did you change to ecology?”

“You keep asking.”

“It’s an interesting switch.”

“No, what’s interesting is that there are two hundred nuclear power plants and ten thousand nuclear warheads around the world and all in the hands of incompetents.”

“That’s a sweeping statement.”

“It only takes one. I think we can count on it.” Alex lowered his voice to a confidential level. “The thing is, Renko, that Eva and I are not really divorced. On paper, yes. However, in my heart, no. And of course it’s so much worse if you’ve been married. That kind of intimacy never ends.”

“A former husband doesn’t have claims.”

“Outside the Zone, maybe. The Zone is different, more intimate. You’re an educated man: do you know what smell is?”

“A sense.”

“More than that. Smell is the essence, the attachment of free molecules of the thing itself. If we could really see each other, we would see clouds of loose molecules and atoms. We’re dripping with them. Every person you meet, you exchange some with. That’s why lovers reek of each other, because they’ve joined so completely that they’re virtually the same person. No court, no piece of paper can ever separate you.” Alex took Arkady’s hand in his and began to squeeze. Alex’s hand was broad and strong from setting traps. “Who knows how many thousands of molecules we’re exchanging right now?”

“This is something you learned in ecology?”

Alex squeezed harder; his hand was a vise with five fingers. “From nature. Smell, taste, touch. You have pictures in your mind of her with another man. You know every inch of her body, inside and out. Every single feature. The combination of experience and imagination is what drives you crazy. Because you’ve slept with her, you even know what gives her pleasure. You hear her. To picture someone physically with her is too much. A wolf wouldn’t put up with it. Would you say you are a wolf or a dog?”

Arkady pulled his hand into a fist for self-protection. “I’d say I’m a hedgehog.”

“See, that’s exactly the sort of answer Eva would enjoy. I know the kind of man she’s attracted to. I knew when she said she disliked you.”

“It was that obvious?”

“You even look alike, the same dark hair and soulful pallor, like brother and sister.”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

“I’m just saying that even if the opportunity presents itself, for Eva’s sake you shouldn’t take advantage. I ask as a friend, your first friend in the Zone, is anything going on between you and Eva?”

“No.”

“That’s good. We don’t want to get territorial, do we?”

“No.”

“Because all you came to the Zone for was your investigation. Stay focused on that.” Alex let go. Arkady’s hand looked like wadded clay, the blood driven out, and he resisted the temptation to flex it to see what worked. “Go ahead, did you have any questions?”

“I understand that for safety’s sake, you only do research in the Zone every other month. What do you do during your month in Moscow?”

“That kind of question: good.”

“What do you do?”

“I visit various ecological institutes, pull together research I did here, lecture, write.”

“Is that lucrative?”

“Obviously you have never written for a scientific journal. It’s for the honor.”

Alex described amusingly a scientific conference on the tape-worm where hungry scientists stayed near the canapés, and he and Arkady went on talking in a normal fashion about everyday subjects—films, money, Moscow—but on another, silent level Arkady had the feeling that he had been knocked down and straddled.

On his way back to the dormitory, Arkady heard the muffled flight of a nightjar scooping up moths. He had retreated from the café when he became aware that Alex was watching for Eva’s arrival and realized that Alex was waiting only to see how she and Arkady would act, to look for social uneasiness, to discover the telltale clues a former husband couldn’t miss. The clinging molecules and atoms.

The streetlamp had gone out since Arkady had crossed under it with Vanko. The only light at the dormitory was a weak bulb at the front step, and where trees crowded out the moon, the street disappeared in the dark. Arkady didn’t mind darkness. The problem was that he didn’t feel alone. Not another bird or a cat slinking for cover but something else glided by him, first on one side and then the other. When he stopped, it circled him. When he walked, it kept pace. Then it stopped, and he felt ridiculous even as his neck grew cool.

“Alex? Vanko?”

There was no answer but the sifting of leaves overhead, until he heard a laugh in the dark. Arkady clutched Vanko’s videotape under his arm and started to trot. The dormitory light was a mere fifty meters off. He wasn’t afraid; he was just a man taking midnight exercise. Something flew by, scooped up his leg in midstride and planted him on his back. Something from the other side speared him in the stomach and knocked the air out of him. Oxygen floated over him just out of reach, and his chest made the sound of a dry pump. The best he could do was roll to the side as a blade dug into the street by his ear, which earned him a slap on the head from the other direction. The gliding sound went on. Face on the pavement, he sucked his first breath and saw, silhouetted against the distant light of the café, a figure in camos on inline skates and carrying a hockey stick. It rolled forward, stick poised for a winning goal. Arkady tried to get to his feet and immediately went down on a numb leg, his reward a blow across the back. Facedown again, he noticed that what made them such excellent shots were night-vision goggles strapped to their heads. Since he was going nowhere, they circled, darting in and out, letting him twist one way and then the other. When he kicked back, they slashed his legs. When he tried to grab a stick, they feinted and hit him from the other side. The last thing he was prepared for was a man stepping in between with a flashlight that he shone directly into the eyes of the nearest skater. While the skater blindly staggered back, the man put a large gun under the skater’s chin and directed the light on it so that the second skater could see the relationship of gun barrel to head.