Wolves Eat Dogs (28 page)

“Who is that?”

“You’ll know when you know. Anyway, we stray. Just the Russian I found, we agreed.”

“His car. You towed it. Was there anything inside? Papers, maps, directions?”

“No.”

Arkady reviewed his notes. “His watch, you said it was a Rolex?”

“Yes. Oh, that was sneaky. You caught me.” Katamay held up an arm to show a gold Rolex like a bauble.

Dymtrus punched Arkady in the back of the head. He obviously did not appreciate lèse-majesté.

Katamay said, “No, no, fair is fair. He caught me. It doesn’t matter, anyway.”

“It doesn’t, does it?” Arkady said.

“Give Dymtrus back his gun. He’s embarrassed.”

“Sure.”

Arkady returned the pistol to Dymtrus, who muttered, “Gretzky.”

“Okay, there was a checkpoint pass and directions,” Katamay said.

“To where, exactly?”

“The cemetery.”

“Where are the directions now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Typewritten?”

“Hardly.” Katamay was amused.

“But the pass was signed by Captain Marchenko?”

“Maybe.”

“It’s just a form that could be snatched off a desk?”

“Pretty much.”

“You saw the pass and directions when you found the body or when you towed the car?”

“When we found the body.”

You said you found the body while you were canvassing houses about theft. The cemetery gate is fifty meters from the nearest occupied house. Why were you at the gate?”

“I don’t remember.”

“That was cute, towing the car and hiding it at Bela’s yard.”

“Right under Bela’s nose and where Marchenko couldn’t go. I hear Bela walks the whole yard every day now.” Karel’s laugh turned into a cough; every word seemed to cost him.

“You disappeared at the same time. Were you sick then?”

“A little.”

“But you still wanted money from a stolen car?”

“I thought I could leave something…to someone.”

“Who?” Arkady asked, but Katamay stopped for breath. “Leave me something. Who was the ‘squatter’ who led you to the gate?”

“Hulak,” Katamay got out.

“Boris Hulak? The body pulled out of the cooling pond?”

“That’s the only reason I’m telling you.” Karel sank out of sight against the cushions with a laugh no more than a sigh. “There’s nothing you can do about it anyway.”

As Arkady rode by the sarcophagus, he felt the monster shift within its steel plates and razor wire. But the monster wasn’t only there. It was riding a Ferris wheel here, swirling though a bloodstream there, seeping into the river, rooting in a million bones. What leitmotif for this kind of beast? An ominous cello. One note. Sustained. For fifty thousand years.

The closer Arkady got to the turnoff to Eva’s cabin, the more each passing radiation marker sounded like the stroke of an ax. He didn’t have to go back. She wouldn’t answer any questions. She was a complication. The truth was that, after such close contact with Karel Katamay, part of Arkady craved nothing more than a chance to burn his own clothes, to scrub himself with a stiff brush and ride as far away as he could.

By itself, the motorbike seemed to turn her way. He rode over the rattle of the bridge and along nodding catkins to the house among the birches, where he found her sitting in bed in her bathrobe, smoking, cradling a glass and an ashtray between her legs. She looked as if she had stared a hole through the door since he’d left.

Arkady asked, “Are we drinking?”

“We’re drinking.”

There was a sharpness in the air that said it wasn’t water.

“Do you think we drink too much?”

“It depends on the circumstances. I used to go over patient files in the evening, but since you arrived, I have been trying to understand who you are. When I get the answer, I may not want to be sober.”

“Ask me.” He tried to take the bottle, but she held on.

“No, no, you’re the Question Man. Alex says most people get over asking why by the age of ten, only you never did.”

“Was Alex here?”

“See? The problem is, I hate questions and poking into other people’s lives. I don’t see much of a future for us.”

He pulled a chair up to the bed and sat. Being with her was like watching a bird beat against a pane of glass. Anything he did could be disastrous. “Well, I had a question.”

“No questions.”

“What’s your opinion of Noah?” Arkady asked.

“From the Bible?”

“The Bible, the Flood, the ark.”

“You are a strange man.” He felt her tease around the question, searching for his angle. Eva said, “My opinion of Noah is low, my opinion of God is lower. Why on earth do you ask?”

“I was wondering ‘Why Noah?’ Was he a carpenter or a sailor?”

“A carpenter. All he had to do was float, and muck the stupid animals. It wasn’t as if he was going anywhere.”

“How do you know?”

“God would have given him directions.”

“You’re right.” If Timofeyev had driven from Moscow to the Ukraine, to a small village he had never seen before, he would have needed directions. “Do you think the ark could have settled here?”

“Why not? It’s a nice place,” Eva said. “Full of murdered Poles, Jews, Reds and Whites, not to mention the victims starved to death by Stalin or hung by the Germans, but still nice. The best milk, best apples, best pears. We used to spend the summer on the river, in boats or on the beach. We fished. The Pripyat was famous for pike in those days. I would lie down on a towel on the beach and watch fluffy clouds and dream of dancing and traveling to foreign countries where I would meet a famous pianist, a passionate genius, and marry him and have six or seven children. We would live in London, but we would always spend our summers here. I’ll let you guess: what part of that have I not accomplished?”

“Is this a trick question?”

“Definitely not. A trick question is, how long will you be here? When will you suddenly disappear? People do that. They’re here for a week or two, and poof, they’re gone, taking with them their fascinating tales of living with the exotic natives of the Zone.”

“Let’s dance.” Arkady took the glass.

“Are you a good dancer?”

“Awful, but I remember you dancing with Alex.”

“You were dancing with Vanko, after all.”

“It wasn’t the same thing.”

“Slow?”

“Please.”

“I didn’t think you were coming back.”

“But I did.”

She slipped out of bed over to a cassette player. “A waltz at midnight. This is romantic. You’re surprising. You can cut wheat like a farmer, you can dance.”

“I surprise myself.”

“A midnight waltz in Chornobyl, that’s kicking death in the teeth.”

“Exactly.”

He took her in his arms and executed a practice dip. She was incredibly light for being so much trouble.

Arkady’s mobile phone rang.

“Ignore it,” Eva said.

“I’ll just see who it is.”

He assumed the caller was Victor or Olga Andreevna, but it was Zurin the prosecutor, calling from Moscow.

“Good news, Renko. Sorry to ring you in the middle of the night. We’re bringing you home.”

It took Arkady a moment to absorb the news. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re coming back to Moscow. We’ve booked you on the six
A.M.
Aeroflot. There’ll be a ticket waiting for you at the airport counter. How do you feel about that?”

“I’m not done.”

“It’s not a failure, not a bit. You’ve been working hard, I’m sure. However, we’ve decided to wrap up things at Chernobyl, at least on the Russian side. I thought you’d be delighted.”

Arkady turned with the phone away from Eva. “There is no Ukrainian side to this investigation.”

“So be it. This matter should have been shouldered by the Ukrainians from the start. They can’t always depend on us to wipe up their spilled milk.”

“The victim was Russian.”

“Killed in the Ukraine. If he’d been killed in France or Germany, would we have investigated? Of course not. Why should the Ukraine be any different?”

“Because it is.”

“They wanted to be independent, now they are. There’s also a manpower issue. I can’t have a senior investigator staying indefinitely in Chernobyl. At a risk to his health, let me add.”

“I need more time,” Arkady said.

“Which will become more time and more time. No, it’s been decided. Get to the airport, catch the early flight and I’ll expect to see you in my office by noon tomorrow.”

“What about Timofeyev?”

“Unfortunately, he died at the wrong place.”

“And Ivanov?”

“Wrong way. We’re not reopening a suicide.”

“I’m not finished.”

“One last thing. Before you come into the office, take a shower and burn your clothes,” Zurin said and hung up.

Eva refilled two glasses like a good barmaid. “Marching orders? And where are you going from here? You must be going someplace.”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t look so sad. You can’t be stuck here forever. Someone must be getting killed in Moscow.”

“I’m sure.”

“How long can you sleep with a radioactive woman? I’d say the odds against that are not very good.”

“You’re not radioactive.”

“Don’t quibble with me, I’m the doctor. I simply need to understand the situation. The prognosis. It sounds as if you’re leaving soon.”

“That’s not up to me.”

“Oh, it isn’t? I had taken you for a different kind of man.”

“What kind?”

“Imaginary.” Eva delivered a smile. “I’m sorry, that’s unfair. You were enjoying yourself so much, and I was enjoying you. ‘Never pop a bubble’ is a good rule. But you should be happy to go. Out of exile, back among the living.”

“That’s what I’m told.” He felt his mind race in ten directions.

“Secretly, aren’t you a wee bit happy, a little relieved to have the decision taken out of your hands? I’m happy for you, if that helps.”

“It doesn’t.”

“Just as well, because I don’t think we really made the ideal couple. You obviously hate histrionics, and I am completely histrionic. Not to mention damaged goods. When, exactly, are you going?”

“I have to go now.”

“Oh.” Her smile began to sink. “That was fast. Hardly more than a one-night stand.” She drank half her glass in a swallow and set it down. “Not samogon. We will always have our samogon party. Well, they say short farewells are the best.”

“I will be back in a day. Two at the most.”

“Don’t even—” She pulled her robe tight and picked up the gun when he approached. Shining streaks ran down her face. “The Zone is an exclusive club, a very exclusive club, and you have just been voted out. So get out.”

A
rkady found Bobby Hoffman sitting with a lantern in a backyard that was wild with roses and thorny canes that reached into the dark. Someone had once put beehives in the garden, and a colony still thrived; a dozen had been lured out by Bobby’s light, in spite of the hour. Bobby let a bee crawl over the back of one hand to another and around his fingers like a coin trick. Other bees wandered on his hat.

“My father kept hives on Long Island. It was his hobby. Sometimes he wore a beekeeper’s mask, but usually not. In cold winters he’d drive the hives down to Florida. I loved that drive. Cold cigar in the corner of his mouth. He never lit up around the bees. The neighbors would complain, ‘Mr. Hoffman, what if they sting?’ My father would say, ‘You like flowers, you like apples, you like peaches? Then you put up with the fucking bees.’ One year, just to make his point, he sent me around the neighborhood to collect money from people, depending on how many flowers and fruit trees they had, like we should get a cut. I made some change, too. When I was thirteen, I was bar-mitzvahed, and he took me to the Copa. A club. Everyone knew him: big guy, big voice. He had one of the chorus girls sit on my lap, and he gave her a pin in the shape of a bee with diamond eyes. He did everything to the hilt. If he liked you, you were in. If he didn’t, forget it. One of our drives down south, a couple of crackers saw our license plate and asked if I was a New York Jewboy. He beat them half to death. Motel manager had to pull him off. That was loyalty. The first time I met Pasha, I said, ‘Jesus, it’s the old man.’ ”

“We’ve got to go,” Arkady said.

“The old man was tight with the Irish. They thought he was Irish because he could drink and sing and fight. Women? They were like bees. My mother would say, ‘So you’ve been with your shiksa ho’ahs?’ She was very religious. The funny thing is, he was just as strict about me going to a yeshiva. He’d say, ‘Bobby, what makes the Jews special is that we don’t just worship God, we have a contract with Him in writing. It’s the Torah. Figure out the fine print in that, and you can figure out the fine print in anything.’ ”

“Tell him again,” Yakov said. He was watching the street.

Arkady said, “I got a call from Prosecutor Zurin ordering me back to Moscow. He was happy to keep me here on ice forever, so there’s only one reason I can think of for him to pull me out in such a rush: Colonel Ozhogin is on his way.”

“Remember the nice police?” said Yakov.

“Captain Marchenko at the café?” Arkady reminded Bobby. “The one who wanted your business? I think that little lightbulb in his head went on. I think he called Ozhogin, and to judge by the urgency in Zurin’s voice, Ozhogin is commandeering a company jet to come and get you. Not to arrest you; they would have kept me here for that.”

“He wants to give Bobby a beating?” Yakov asked. “We could let him have Bobby for ten minutes. A little pain…”

Bobby laughed gently, so as not to disturb the bees browsing on his hat. “He’s not flying in from Moscow just for ten minutes of ‘Pound the Jew.’ ”

Arkady said, “It won’t just be punishment—there’s also the threat to NoviRus as long as you’re around.”

Bobby shrugged, and it struck Arkady that, day by day, Bobby had been getting more inert.

“This is just guesswork on your part,” Bobby said. “You have no proof that the colonel is coming.”

“Do you want to wait and find out? If I’m wrong, you leave the Zone a day early. If I’m right and you stay, you won’t last the day.”

Bobby shrugged.

Arkady asked, “What happened to the old elusive Bobby Hoffman?”

“He got tired.”

Yakov asked, “What happened to your father?”

“Prison killed him. The feds tossed him in just to make him name his associates. He was a stand-up individual, and he named no one, so they kept handing him more years. Six years in, he got diabetes and bad circulation. But decent medical treatment? Not a chance. They started whittling him down, one leg and then the other. They took a big man like my father and turned him into a dwarf. His last words to me were ‘Don’t ever let them put you inside, or I will come back from the grave to beat the living shit out of you.’ When I think of him, I remember how he was before they put him inside, and whenever I see a bee, I know what the old man would be thinking: Where’s this little guy going? To an apple blossom? A pear tree? Or is he just buzzing around in the sun?”

“But not just waiting to be stepped on,” Arkady said.

Bobby blinked. “Touché.”

“Time to go, Bobby.”

“In more ways than one?” A wan smile, but awake.

“The dormitory. It’s a short walk and it’s dark.”

“We’re not taking the car?”

“No. I don’t think your car can get through a checkpoint now.”

“Why are you doing this? What’s in this for you?”

“A little help.”

“A quid pro quo. Something for you, too.”

“That’s right. There’s something I want you to see.”

Bobby nodded. He gently blew the bee off his fingers, got to his feet and shook the bees from his jacket, removed his hat and, with soft puffs, blew the bees off the brim.

Arkady led Bobby and Yakov to the room next to his, heard the vague tumult of a cheering stadium and knocked.

When no one answered Arkady used the phone card Victor had given him and popped the latch. Professor Campbell sat in a chair, his eyes shut and his head tucked into his chest, as stiff as a mummy, an empty bottle at his feet. Empties on the desk reflected the dim light of the television, where a soccer match surged back and forth, and the home crowd swayed and sang its fight song.

Arkady listened to Campbell’s breath, which was deep and smelled nearly combustible.

“Dead or drunk?” Bobby asked.

“He looks fine,” Yakov said.

Bobby settled into a chair next to Campbell to watch the game. It was a tape of two British teams playing a trench-warfare style of soccer devoid of Latin frills. Arkady doubted very much that Bobby Hoffman was a soccer fan; it was more as if he knew what was coming. Arkady ejected the game.

“Got any baseball?” Bobby asked.

“I have this.” Arkady fed Vanko’s tape into the player and pushed Play.

Chernobyl, day, exterior: the crossroad of the café, commissary and dormitory established in a handheld shot. For atmosphere, a monument to firefighters, a statue of Lenin pushing out his chest, trees dressed in the bright green of early spring. A telephoto shot of an approaching bus that sinuously dipped up and down and spread into a long line of buses as they neared. Jump to buses parked in the dormitory lot and hundreds of bearded men, at first sight identical in black suits and hats, disembarking and milling around. At second sight all ages, including boys with side curls. And a separate bus of women wearing head scarves. A pair of militia with the sullen expression of the dispossessed. A close-up of Captain Marchenko shaking hands and welcoming a man whose expression was hidden in his beard.

“This was taped last year by Vanko,” Arkady said.

A disorganized march—carrying a murmur in Hebrew and English—filled the road and spilled over onto the sidewalk, trying not to get too far ahead of patriarchs with beards that spread like unraveling silk. They had come from New York and Israel, Yakov said, that was where Chernobyl’s Jews were now. A brief rinse cycle as Vanko ran ahead with his camera on. Cut to the bunker of the rabbi’s tomb. Rabbi Nahum of Chernobyl, Yakov said. A great man, the sort who saw God everywhere. The visitors watched an elder arthritically remove his shoes, then enter. Yakov said that one grave in the tomb was for Rabbi Nahum, the other for his grandson, also a rabbi. Arkady remembered how tight the space was in the tomb, yet it appeared to swallow man after man, each shoeless and with an expression of walking on air. A pan of the ecstatic crowd, and there he was on the fringe, Bobby Hoffman in his suit and hat, but no beard to obscure his expression of agony.

Arkady asked himself whether any rabbi, dead or alive, could meet the expectations of the people waiting their turn to enter. Many carried letters, and he knew what they asked: health for the ill, ease for the dying, safety from the suicide bomber. Arkady set the tape on slow motion to catch Bobby, about to take his turn, dropping out of line. For everyone else, there was a curious relaxation, as if they were all playing on grandfather’s lap. Men sang and danced, hands on the shoulders of the man in front, and snaked back and forth across the street. Bobby stayed apart and moved only to shun the camera. When people unwrapped sandwiches and ate, Bobby disappeared. Vanko cut to more dancing, continuous visits to the tomb, then finally a prayer said by a long line of men facing the river.

As Yakov sang along, his croak of a voice became sonorous:
“Y’hay sh’may raho m’vorah, l’olam ulolmay olmayo.”
He translated: “Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted, extolled and honored, adored and lauded be the name of the Holy One, blessed be he.” He added, “Kaddish, the prayer for the dead.”

The camera glimpsed Bobby with his lips sealed. Then the buses reloaded and formed their convoy and started the drive back to Kiev. In the room, Bobby’s head dropped into his hands.

“Why did you come last year, Bobby?” Arkady asked. “You didn’t visit the grave or sing or dance or pray. You told me that you came to look into processing reactor fuel, and you certainly didn’t do that. You arrived on the bus, and you left on the bus, but you didn’t do anything, so why were you here?”

Bobby looked up, his eyes hot and wet. “Pasha asked me.”

“To visit the tomb?” Arkady said.

“No. All he wanted was that I prayed, that I said the Kaddish. I told him I didn’t do that stuff. Pasha said, ‘Go, you’ll do it.’ He insisted so much I couldn’t say no. But I got here and it didn’t matter. I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t pray for my father. He died in prison, but he wanted a Kaddish, from me especially, only I was already on the run over some stock swap. Unimportant. The thing is, I blew it. And what the hell kind of deal did God give my father, anyway? Half his life in jail, a disease that took half his body, my mother for a wife and me for a son. So I signed off on all this stuff. I just don’t do it.”

“What did you tell Pasha when you got back to Moscow?”

“I lied. The only favor he ever asked of me, and I let him down. And he knew it.”

“Why did he choose you?”

“Who else would he? I was his guy. Besides, I told him once I was a yeshiva kid. Me, Bobby Hoffman. Can you believe it?”

Before Bobby went completely down the emotional drain, Arkady wanted to get the facts straight. “The men facing the river were saying Kaddish for Jews killed in the pogrom eighty years ago?” A listless nod. “And that’s what Pasha Ivanov sent you from Moscow to join?”

“It had to be Chernobyl.”

“To say a prayer for victims of the pogrom here.” That, at least, seemed understood.

Bobby had to laugh. “You don’t get it. Pasha wanted a Kaddish for Chernobyl, for victims of the accident.”

“Why?”

“He wouldn’t say. I asked. And after I went back to Moscow, he never mentioned it again. Months went by, and apparently no harm done, and then Pasha dives out a window and Timofeyev comes here to get his throat cut.”

Well, there had been a few signs of trouble brewing, Arkady thought. Isolation, paranoia, nosebleeds.

Bobby said, “Somehow I can’t help but believe that if I had only prayed when Pasha asked, he and Timofeyev would be alive today.”

“Was someone watching you?” Arkady asked.

“Who would watch?”

“The camera watched.”

“Do you think it would have made any difference?” Bobby asked.

“I don’t know.”

Out of mercy, Arkady switched tapes and stepped into the hall with Yakov.

“Clever,” Yakov said. The eye under the crushed brow shone in the light of the moon.

“Not really. I think Bobby has been trying to tell us this since he arrived. That’s probably why he came.”

“Now that he has, do you have a way to take us out?”

“I have an individual in mind.”

“Trustworthy?”

Arkady weighed Bela’s character. “Reliable but greedy. How much money do you have?”

“Whatever he wants, if we get to Kiev. On us now, maybe two hundred fifty dollars.”

“Not much.”

“It’s what we have left.”

Not enough, Arkady thought. “That will have to do, then. Keep Bobby as quiet as possible and take off his shoes. And keep the television on; as long as the housekeeper thinks the Englishman’s here, she won’t go in.”

“You know Ozhogin?”

“A little. He’ll watch your car and the house first. Then he’ll strike into the field. He’s more a spy than military; he likes to operate alone. He might bring two or three men. All he’ll want from Marchenko is to keep the checkpoints closed. When you leave, I’ll follow you out.”

“No, I operate alone, too.”

“You don’t know Colonel Ozhogin.”

“I’ve known a hundred Ozhogins.” Yakov took a deep breath. Outside, the taller trees were starting to separate from the night. The first birdsong rang out. “Such a day. Rabbi Nahum said no man was beyond redemption. He said redemption was established before the creation of the world itself, that’s how important redemption is. No one can take it away.”