Wolves Eat Dogs (32 page)

"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."

Arkady went into his own room and packed, if for no other reason than to give the impression that he was leaving and following orders. His life—case notes and clothing—fit into a small suitcase and duffel bag with room to spare. There were flights all day to Moscow. He had options. He could change from camos, bungee-cord the suitcase and bag to the rear fender of the motorcycle and look like any other office worker making an early commute to the city. If he raced, he might still catch a plane and get to the prosecutor's office by noon. Where would Zurin assign him next? Was there a position for a senior investigator out on the permafrost? The people of the Arctic Circle were said to be full of life. He was ready for a laugh.

He noticed, at the top of his file, the employment application for NoviRus. He was surprised to find he still had it. He scanned the opportunities. Banking? Brokerage? Security or combat skills? It did nothing for his confidence to realize he had not one marketable talent. Certainly not communication skills. He wished he could start the night over again, beginning with Zurin's call, and clarify to Eva what he was doing. Not going, only helping a criminal flee the Zone. Was that better?

Bela was already up, having a daybreak coffee in front of CNN, when Arkady arrived.

"I always like to hear the weather in Thailand. I picture listening to the soft rain as Thai girls walk up and down my back, kneading it with their little toes."

"Not Russian girls in boots?"

"A different picture altogether. Not necessarily a bad one. I judge no one. In fact, I always liked those Soviet statues of women with powerful biceps and tiny tits."

"You've been here too long, Bela."

"I take time off. I see the doctor. I walk around the whole yard every day. That's a 10K walk."