Quickly putting Bourbon’s fancy things into his rucksack while Khan rolled up his tarpaulin and put out the fire, Artyom saw what was going on at the other end of the hall. People who were initially animated and quickly gathering up their households were moving less and less certainly. Someone now was squatting by the fire and another was wandering towards the centre of the platform for something, and there were two people discussing something amongst themselves. Having understood what was going on, Artyom pulled on Khan’s sleeve.

‘They’re discussing it,’ Artyom warned him.

‘Alas, it’s an inherent human feature to discuss things,’ Khan answered. ‘Even if their will is suppressed and even though they are in fact hypnotized, they will still gravitate towards each other and start talking. Man is a social being, and there’s nothing you can do about it. In any other situation, I would accept any human activity as a divine concept or as the inevitable result of evolution, depending on who I was talking to. But in this situation, the fact that they’re thinking is not good. We need to interfere here, my young friend, and to direct their thoughts along the most useful path,’ he concluded, putting his enormous travelling pack on his back.

The fire was put out and the dense, almost tangible darkness squeezed them on all sides. Reaching into his pocket and getting out his flashlight, Artyom pushed on its button. Something buzzed inside the device and the lamp came to life. An uneven, flickering light splashed out from it.

‘Go on, go on, press it again, don’t be afraid,’ Khan encouraged him, ‘it can work better than that.’

When they went up to the others, the stale tunnel drafts had had time to blow through their minds so that they were less than convinced in Khan’s proposition. The strong man with the beard stepped forward.

‘Listen, brother,’ he carelessly turned to Artyom’s companion.

Without even looking at him, Artyom could feel the air around Khan electrify. It seemed that such familiarity had incensed Khan. Of all the people Artyom knew, it was Khan that he would least like to see furious. There was also the hunter, but he seemed to Artyom to be so much more cold-blooded that it was impossible to imagine him in a rage. He would probably kill people with the same expression on his face that other people have when they were washing mushrooms or making tea.

‘We’ve been discussing it and we think,’ the thickset man continued, ‘that you’re chasing snowstorms here. For me, for example, it’s completely inconvenient to go to Kitai Gorod. And those guys are against it too. Right Semenych?’ He turned for the support of the crowd. Someone in the crowd nodded in agreement, though rather timidly. ‘Most of us were going to Prospect Mir, to the Hansa, until the business in the tunnel started up. So we’re waiting here and then moving on. Nothing is left here anyway. We burned his things. And don’t try to get us thinking about the air. This isn’t pulmonary plague. And if we’re infected, then we’re already infected and there’s nothing to be done. It’s more likely that there wasn’t any infection here to start with so you can get lost, brother, with your propositions!’ The bearded man’s manner was becoming even more familiar.

Artyom was a little taken aback by this onslaught. But, stealing a look at his companion, he felt that the guy was in trouble. There was that blazing orange internal flame in Khan’s eyes and there was such savage malice and power coming from him that Artyom felt a chill, and the hair on his head began to rise, and he wanted to bare his teeth and roar.

‘Why did you kill him if there was no infection after all?’ Khan asked insinuatingly, with a deliberately soft voice.

‘It was prophylactic!’ the thickset man answered with an insolent look.

‘No, my friend, this isn’t medicine. This was a crime. What gave you the right to do it?’

‘Don’t call me friend, I’m not your dog, OK?’ the bearded man growled. ‘What right did I have? The right of the strong! Haven’t you heard of it? And you’re not exactly… We could get you and your foundling too! As a prophylactic measure! Got it?’ With a gesture already familiar to Artyom, the man pulled open his waistcoat and put his hand on his holster.

This time Khan didn’t manage to hold Artyom back and the bearded man was in the crosshairs of Artyom’s machine gun before he could even unbutton his holster. Artyom was breathing heavily and could hear his heart beating and the blood pounding in his temples, and there wasn’t a reasonable thought in his head. He knew only one thing: if the bearded man said one more thing or if his hand continued on its way to his pistol’s handle then he would immediately pull the trigger. Artyom didn’t want to die like that poor guy had: he wouldn’t let the pack tear him to pieces.

The bearded guy froze in place and didn’t make a move, with evil flashing in his dark eyes. And then something incomprehensible happened. Khan suddenly took a big step forward, looked the man in the eye and said quietly:

‘Stop it. You will obey me. Or you will die.’

The threatening gaze of the bearded man faded, and his hands were powerless, hanging down beside his body. It looked so unnatural that Artyom had no doubt that it was Khan’s words and not the machine gun that had had an effect on the man.

‘Never discuss the rights of the strong. You are too weak to do that,’ said Khan and he returned to Artyom, without even disarming the man.

The thickset man stood still, looking from side to side. People were waiting to hear what Khan was going to say next. His control over the situation had been restored.

‘We will consider the matter closed and that consensus has been reached. We leave in fifteen minutes.’ And turning to Artyom he said, ‘People, you say? No, my friend, they are beasts. They are a pack of jackals. They were preparing to tear us apart. And they would have. But they forgot one thing. They are jackals but I am a wolf. And there are some stations where I am known only by that name.’

Artyom was silent, dumbstruck by what he had seen, finally understanding who Khan reminded him of.

‘But you are a wolf cub,’ Khan added after a minute, not turning around but Artyom heard the unexpectedly warm notes in his voice.

The tunnel was absolutely empty and clean. The ground was dry, there was a pleasant breeze blowing into their faces, there wasn’t even one rat, and there were no suspicious looking side passages and gaping patches of blackness to the sides, only a few locked doors, and it seemed that one could live in this tunnel just as well as at any of the stations. But more than that, this totally unnatural calm and cleanliness not only meant they weren’t on their guard but it instantly dissipated any fear of death and disappearance. Here the legends about disappeared people started to seem like silly fabrications and Artyom already started to wonder if the wild scene with the unfortunate man who they thought had the plague had actually happened. Maybe it was just a little nightmare that had visited him while he snoozed on the tarpaulin by the wandering philosopher’s fire.

He and Khan were bringing up the rear since Khan was concerned that the men might break away from the group one by one – and then, according to him, no one would reach Kitai Gorod. Now he was quietly walking next to Artyom, calmly, as though nothing had happened, and the deep wrinkles which had cut through his face during the skirmish at Sukharevskaya, were now smooth. The storm had passed, and walking next to Artyom there was now a wise and restrained Khan and not a furious, full-grown wolf. But Artyom was sure the transformation would take only a minute.

Understanding that the next opportunity to draw aside the curtain from the metro’s mysteries had arisen, he couldn’t hold himself back.