Wolves Eat Dogs (25 page)

Eva said, “What do you know about suicide? Besides cutting down the bodies, I mean?”

“Oh, I come from a long line of suicides. Mother and father. You’d think it would be a short line, but no, they get their procreation done early, and then they kill themselves.”

“Have you…”

“Not successfully. Anyway, here we are in Chernobyl. I think we’re making effort enough. And you?”

She balked again, not ready to let him lead. “So how is your investigation going?”

“Moments of clarity. Millionaires are generally murdered for money. I’m not sure that’s the case here.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes. When I first came, I assumed that the deaths of Ivanov and Timofeyev were connected. I still think so, but in a different way. Perhaps more parallel.”

“Whatever that means. What were you doing in the village today?”

“I was at the cemetery at Roman and Maria’s, and I began wondering if any of the official fatalities from the accident came from the villages in the Zone. Whether I would recognize names on the crosses. I didn’t, but I found four unmarked graves of children.”

“Grandchildren. Of different causes supposedly unrelated to Chornobyl. What happens is the family breaks up, and no one is left to bury the dead but the grandparents, who take them home. No one keeps track. There were forty-one official deaths from the accident and half a million unofficial. An honest list would reach to the moon.”

“Then I went to the next village, where I found you. What were you doing on a motorcycle in a house? Let me guess. You take icons so they can be reported as stolen to the militia. That way scavengers and the corrupt officers they work with have no reason to bother old folks like Roman and Maria. Then you return the icons. But there were no occupied houses or icons in that village, so why were you there? Whose house was it?”

“No one’s.”

“I recognized the bike by the broken reflector and recognized you by the scarf. You should get rid of your scarves.” He leaned across the bed to kiss her neck. That she didn’t shoot him he took as a good omen.

Eva said, “Every once in a while I remember this thirteen-year-old girl parading on May Day with her idiotic smile. She’s moved out of the village to Kiev to live with her aunt and uncle so she can go to a special school for dance; their standards are rigid, but she’s been measured and weighed and has the right build. She has been selected to hold a banner that says, ‘Marching into the Radiant Future!’ She is so pleased the day is warm enough not to wear a coat. The young body is a wonder of growth, the division of cells produces virtually a new person. And on this day she
will
be a new person, because a haze comes over the sun, a breeze from Chornobyl. And so ends her days of dancing and begins her acquaintanceship with Soviet surgery.” She touched the scar. “First the thyroid and then the tumors. That’s how you know a true citizen of the Zone. We fuck without worries. I am a hollow woman; you can beat me like a drum. Still, once in a while, I remember this fatuous girl and am so ashamed of her stupidity that if I could go back in time with a gun, I would shoot her myself. When this feeling overcomes me, I go to the nearest hole or black house and hide. There are enough black houses that this is never a problem. Otherwise I have nothing to fear. Were you ambitious as a boy? What did you want to be?”

“When I was a boy, I wanted to be an astronomer and study the stars. Then someone informed me that I wasn’t seeing the actual stars, I was seeing starlight generated thousands of years before. What I thought I was seeing was long since over, which rendered the exercise rather pointless. Of course, the same can be said about my profession now. I can’t bring back the dead.”

“And the injured?”

“Everybody’s injured.”

“Is that a promise?”

“It’s the only thing I’m sure of.”

I
n the morning the rain had passed and the cabin felt like a boat safely landed. Eva was gone but had left him brown bread and jam on a cutting board. While Arkady dressed he noticed more photographs: a ballet mistress, a tabby cat, friends skiing, someone shielding their eyes on a beach. None of Alex, which, he confessed, reassured him.

As he stepped out the screen door he couldn’t help but notice how the willows, like timid girls, stood with one foot in the water and that the river, swollen with runoff, bore an earthy smell and a new full-throated voice. Arkady hadn’t slept with a woman for a while and he felt warm and alive. Blow on cold ashes, he thought, you never know.

“Hello.” Oksana Katamay slipped into view around the corner of the house. She was in her blue jogging suit and knit cap; a wig, maybe, or lunch for her brother Karel was in her backpack. She ducked her head with every step forward and pulled her hands into her sleeves. “Is everyone up?”

“Yes.”

“The lilacs smell so sweet. This is the doctor’s house?”

“Yes. What are you doing here?”

“I saw your motorbike. That’s my friend’s Vespa next to it. I borrowed it.”

“A friend’s?”

“Yes.”

Arkady saw the bike and scooter in the yard but they were hardly visible from the road. Oksana smiled and looked around in a goose-necked way.

Arkady asked, “Have you been here long?”

“A while.”

“You’re very quiet.”

She smiled and nodded. She must have rolled the scooter the last fifty meters with the engine off to arrive so silently, and she obviously didn’t find anything odd about waiting for him outside another woman’s door.

“You’re not at work today?” Arkady asked.

“I’m home, sick.” She pointed at her shaved head. “They let me take time off whenever I want. There’s not much to do, anyway.”

“Can I give you some coffee, hot or cold?”

“You remembered. No, thank you.”

He looked at the scooter. “You can travel around here? What about checkpoints?”

“Well, I know where to go.”

“So does your brother Karel. That’s the problem.”

Oksana shifted uncomfortably. “I just wanted to see how you were. If you’re with the doctor, I suppose you’re okay. I was worried because of Hulak.”

“You knew Boris Hulak?”

“He and my grandfather would rant on the telephone for hours about traitors who shut down the plant. But my grandfather would never really hurt anyone.”

“That’s good to know.”

Oksana seemed relieved. If a man in a wheelchair a train ride away was not going to attack him, Arkady was happy, too.

“Look.” She pointed out a stork skimming over its mirror image on the surface of the river.

“Like you. You simply come and go.”

She shrugged and smiled. For inscrutability, the
Mona Lisa
had nothing on Oksana Katamay.

He asked, “Do you remember Anton Obodovsky? A big man in his mid-thirties. He used to box.”

Her smile spread.

Arkady tried an easier question. “Where would I find the Woropays?”

Dymtrus Woropay skated on a street of empty houses, gliding backward, sideways, forward, handling a hockey stick and rubber ball around potholes and grass. His yellow hair lifted and his eyes were intent on the rolling ball. He didn’t notice Arkady until they were a few steps apart, at which point Dymtrus pushed forward and cocked his stick, and Arkady threw the trash-bin cover he had carried behind his back. The cover cut off Dymtrus at the ankles. He went down on his face, and Arkady put a foot on the back of his neck and kept him splayed.

“I want to talk to Katamay,” Arkady said.

“Maybe you want a stick up your ass, too.”

Arkady leaned. He was afraid of the burly Dymtrus Woropay, and sometimes fear could be exorcised only one way. “Where is Katamay?”

“Get stuffed.”

“Do you enjoy breathing?” Arkady dug his heel into Woropay.

“Do you have a gun?” Woropay twisted his eyes up to see.

Arkady unclipped Woropay’s pistol, a Makarov, militia issue. “Now I do.”

“You won’t shoot.”

“Dymtrus, look around. How many witnesses do you see?”

“Fuck off.”

“I bet your brother is tired of being your brother. I think it’s time he stood on his own two feet.” Arkady pushed off the pistol’s safety and, to be convincing, put the muzzle to Dymtrus’s head.

“Wait. Fuck. Katamay who?”

“Your friend and teammate, your fellow militia officer Karel Katamay. He found the Russian at the cemetery. I want to talk to him.”

“He’s missing.”

“Not to everyone. I talked to his grandfather, and soon two thugs, you and your brother, begin playing hockey with my head.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“The Russian, pure and simple.”

“Let me up.”

“Give me a reason.” Arkady applied more weight to the decision making.

“Okay! I’ll see.”

“I want you to take me to him.”

“He’ll call you.”

“No, face-to-face.”

“I can’t breathe.”

“Face-to-face. Arrange it, or I will find you and shoot off your knee. Then we’ll see how you skate.” Arkady applied one last squeeze before getting up.

Dymtrus sat up and rubbed his neck. He had a sloped face like a shovel and small eyes. “Shit.”

Arkady gave Dymtrus his mobile-phone number and, since he felt Dymtrus tensing for a fight, threw in as an afterthought, “You’re not a bad skater.”

“How the fuck would you know?”

“I saw you practice. You prefer ice?”

“So?”

“I bet you’re wasted on the league down here.”

“So?”

“Just an observation.”

Dymtrus pushed his hair back. “So what? What do you know about ice hockey?”

“Not much. I know people.”

“Like who?”

“Wayne Gretzky.” Arkady had heard of Wayne Gretzky.

“You know him? Fuck! Do you think he’d ever come down here?”

“To Chernobyl? No. You’d have to go to Moscow.”

“He could see me there?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“But he might? I’m big and I’m fast and I’m willing to kill.”

“That’s an unbeatable combination.”

“So he might?”

“We’ll see.”

A Dymtrus with a more positive frame of mind got to his feet. “Okay, we’ll see. Could I have my gun back?”

“No. That’s my guarantee that I will meet Katamay. You get your gun back after.”

“What if I need it?”

“Stay out of trouble.”

Feeling in a better frame of mind himself, Arkady rode to the café, where he found Bobby Hoffman and Yakov working on black coffee in the absence of a kosher kitchen.

“I figured it out,” Bobby told Arkady. “If Yakov’s father was here when they sank the ferry full of Jews, and that was 1919, 1920, that makes Yakov over eighty. I didn’t know he was that old.”

“He seems to know his business.”

“He wrote the book. But you look at him and think, All this guy wants is to sit in a beach chair in Tel Aviv, take a nap and quietly expire. How are you feeling, Renko?”

Yakov raised a basilisk’s gaze. “He’s fine.”

“I’m fine,” Arkady said. Despite the accumulation of bruises, he was.

Yakov was tidy, like a pensioner dressed to feed the birds, but Bobby’s face and clothes were corrugated from lack of sleep, and his hand was swollen.

“What happened?”

“Bees.” Bobby shrugged it off. “I don’t mind bees. So what about Obodovsky, what’s he doing in Kiev?”

“Anton is doing what you’d expect someone of his stature to do when he’s visiting his hometown. He’s showing off money and a girl.”

“The dental hygienist?”

“That’s right. We’re not in Russia. Neither Victor nor I have any authority to pick him up or question him.”

Bobby whispered, “I don’t want him questioned, I want him dead. You can do that anywhere. I’m out on a very long limb here. And nothing is happening. My two Russian cops are taking tea, visiting the malls. I give you Kuzmitch, you don’t want him. You see Obodovsky, you can’t touch him. This is why you don’t get paid, because you don’t produce.”

“Coffee.” Yakov brought Arkady a cup. There was no waiter.

“And Yakov, here, he prays all night. Oils his gun and prays. You two are a pair.”

Arkady said, “Yesterday you were patient.”

“Today I’m shitting a brick.”

“Then tell me what you were doing here last year.”

“It’s none of your business.” Bobby leaned to look out the window. “Rain, radiation, leaky roofs. It’s getting to me.”

A militia car swung into the space beside Yakov’s battered Nissan, and Captain Marchenko emerged slowly, perhaps posing for a painting called
The Cossack at Dawn,
Arkady thought. A lot of things had escaped Marchenko’s notice—a slit throat, tire treads and footprints at a murder scene—but the Zone’s two newest residents had caught the captain’s eye. The captain entered the café and affected friendly surprise at the sight of Bobby and company, like a man who sees a lamb and the possibility of lamb chops. He came immediately to the table.

“Do I see visitors? Renko, please introduce me to your friends.”

Arkady looked at Bobby, asking in a silent way what name he would care to offer.

Yakov stepped in. “I am Yitschak Brodsky, and my colleague is Chaim Weitzman. Please, Mr. Weitzman speaks only Hebrew and English.”

“No Ukrainian? Not even Russian?”

“I interpret.”

“And you, Renko, do you speak Hebrew or English?”

“A little English.”

“You would,” the captain said, as if it were a black mark. “Friends of yours?”

Arkady improvised. “Weitzman is a friend of a friend. He knew I was here, but he came to see the Jewish grave.”

“And stayed overnight not one night but two, without informing the militia. I talked to Vanko.” Marchenko turned to Yakov. “May I see your passports, please?” The captain studied them closely, to underline his authority. He cleared his throat. “Excellent. You know, I often say we should make our Jewish visitors especially welcome.”

“Are there other visitors?” Arkady asked.

There was an answer—specialists in toxic sites—but Marchenko maintained a smile, and when he handed back the passports he added a business card.

“Mr. Brodsky, please take my card, which has my office phone and fax. If you call me first, I can organize much better accommodations, and perhaps a day visit for a much larger group, strictly supervised because of radiation, naturally. Late summer is good. Strawberry season.” If the captain expected an effusive response from Yakov, he didn’t get it. “Anyway, let’s hope the rain is over. Let’s hope we don’t need Noah and his ark, right? Well, gentlemen, a pleasure. Renko, you weren’t going anywhere, were you?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so.”

As the captain climbed into his car, Bobby waved and muttered, “Asshole.”

Arkady asked, “Bobby, how many passports do you have?”

“Enough.”

“Good, because the captain’s brain is like a closet light that sometimes lights and sometimes doesn’t. This time it didn’t; the next time it might, and he’ll connect Timofeyev and me and you. He’ll check on your papers or call Ozhogin. He has the colonel’s number. It might be wise to go now.”

“We’ll wait. By the way, Noah was an asshole, too.”

“Why Noah?” Arkady asked. This was a new indictment.

“He didn’t argue.”

“Noah should have argued?”

Yakov explained, “Abraham argues with God not to kill everyone in Sodom and Gomorrah. Moses pleads with God not to kill worshippers of the golden calf. But God tells Noah to build a boat because He’s going to flood the entire world, and what does Noah say? Not a word.”