A little phone, and yet so much information: a wireless message concerning an Ivanov tanker foundering off Spain, and a calendar of meetings, most recently with Prosecutor Zurin, of all people. In the directory were phone numbers not only for Rina, Hoffman, Timofeyev and different NoviRus heads, but also for well-known journalists and theater people, for millionaires whose names Arkady recognized from other investigations, and, most interesting, for Zurin, the mayor, senators and ministers, and the Kremlin itself. Such a phone was a plug into a power grid.

Victor copied the names into a notepad. "What a world these people live in. Here's a number that gives you the weather in Saint-Tropez. Very nice." It took two brandies for Victor to finish the list. He looked up and nodded to a truculent circle of people at the next table. In a low voice, he said, "The Medvedev brothers. I've arrested their father and mother. But I have to admit, I feel comfortable with them. They're ordinary thugs, not businessmen with investment funds."

Arkady punched "Messages."

There was one at 9:33 p.m. from a Moscow number, and the message did not sound like a businessman's: "You don't know who this is, but I'm trying to do you a favor. I'll call you again. All I'll say now is, if you stick your dick in someone else's soup, sooner or later it's going to get cut off."

"A man of few words. Familiar?" Arkady handed the phone to Victor.

The detective listened and shook his head. "A tough guy. From the South, you can hear the soft O's. But I can't hear well enough. All the people talking here. Glasses tinkling."

"If anyone can do it…"

Victor listened again, the mobile phone pressed tight to his ear, until he smiled like a man who had identified one wine from a million. "Anton. Anton Obodovsky."

Arkady knew Anton. He could imagine Anton throwing someone out a window.

The tension was too great for Victor. "Got to pee."

Arkady sat alone, nursing his beer. Another crew in jogging suits pushed into the café, as if the roads were full of surly sportsmen. Arkady's gaze kept returning to the mobile phone. It would be interesting to know whether the phone Anton had called from was within fifteen minutes of Ivanov's apartment. It was a landline number. He knew he should wait for Victor, but the detective could take half an hour just to avoid the bill.

Arkady picked up the mobile phone and pushed "Reply to Message."

Ten rings.

"Guards room."

Arkady sat up. "Guards' room? Where?"

"Butyrka. Who is this?"

By the time Victor returned, Arkady was outside in the Lada, which proved unredeemed by soap. A wind bent the advertising banners along the highway and snapped the canvas. Each car that buzzed past rocked the Lada.

Victor got behind the wheel. "I'll drive you back to your car. You paid the whole thing? What a friend!"

"You know, with the money you've saved eating with me, you could buy a new car."

"Come on, I'm worth it, getting the mobile phone and sharing my repository of knowledge. My head is a veritable Lenin Library."

Mice and all, Arkady thought. As Victor pulled onto the highway, Arkady told him about the return call to Anton, which amused the detective immensely.

"Butyrka! Now, there's an alibi."

The address on Butyrka Street was a five-story building of aluminum windows, busted shades and dead geraniums, ordinary in every way except for the line that snaked along the sidewalk: Gypsies in brilliant scarves, Chechens in black and Russians in thin leather jackets, mutually hostile as groups but alike in their forlorn bearing and the parcels that, one by one, they dutifully submitted at a steel door for the thousands of souls hidden on the other side.

Arkady showed his ID at the door and passed through a barred gate to the underbelly of the building, a tunnel where guards in military fatigues lounged with their dogs, Alsatians that constantly referred to their handlers for orders. Let this one pass. Take this one down. The far end opened onto the morning light and-totally hidden from the street-a fairy-tale fortress with red walls and towers surrounded by a whitewashed courtyard; all that was missing was a moat. Not quite a fairy tale, more a nightmare. Butyrka Prison had been built by Catherine the Great, and for over two hundred years since, every ruler of Russia, every tsar, Party secretary and president had fed it enemies of the state. A guard carrying an elongated sniper rifle watched Arkady from a turret and could have been a fusilier. The satellite dishes lining the battlements could have been heads on pikes. In Stalin's era, black vans delivered fresh victims every night to this same courtyard and these same blood-red walls, and questions about someone's health, whereabouts and fate could be answered in a single whispered word: Butyrka.

Since Butyrka was a pretrial prison, investigators were a common sight. Arkady followed a guard through a receiving hall where new arrivals, boys as pale as plucked chickens, were stripped and thrown their prison clothes. Wide eyes fixed on the hall's ancient coffin cells, barely deep enough to sit in, a good place for a monk's mortification and an excellent way to introduce the horror of being buried alive.

Arkady climbed marble stairs swaybacked from wear. Nets stretched between railings to discourage jumping and passing notes. On the second floor, light crept from low windows and gave the impression of sinking, or eyelids shutting. The guard led Arkady along a row of ancient black doors with iron patchwork, each with a panel for food and a peephole for observation.

"I'm new here. I think it's this one," the guard said. "I think."

Arkady swung a peephole tag out of the way. On the other side of the door were fifty men in a cell designed for twenty. They were sniffers, lifters, petty thieves. They slept in shifts in the murk of a caged lightbulb and a barred window. There was no circulation, no fresh air, only the stench of sweat, pearl porridge, cigarettes and shit in the single toilet. In the heat they generated, everyone stripped to the waist, young ones virginally white, veterans blue with tattoos. A tubercular cough and a whisper hung in the air. A few heads turned to the blink of the peephole, but most simply waited. A man could wait nine months in Butyrka before he saw a judge.

"No? This one?" The guard motioned Arkady to the next door.

Arkady peeked into the cell. It was the same size as the other but held a single occupant, a bodybuilder with short bleached-blond hair and a taut black T-shirt. He was exercising with elastic bands that were attached to a bunk bed bolted to the wall, and every time he curled a bicep, the bed groaned.

"This is it," Arkady said.

Anton Obodovsky was a Mafia success story. He had been a Master of Sport, a so-so boxer in the Ukraine and then muscle for the local boss. However, Anton had ambition. As soon as he had a gun, he began jacking cars, peeling drivers out of them. From there, he took orders for specific cars, organizing a team of carjackers and then stealing cars off the street in Germany and driving convoys across Poland to Moscow. Once in Moscow, he diversified, offering protection to small firms and restaurants he then took over, cannibalizing the companies and laundering money through the restaurants. The man lived like a prince. Up by eleven a.m. with a protein smoothie. An hour in the gym. A little networking on the phone and a visit to the auto-repair shops where his mechanics chopped cars. He shopped in clothing stores that wouldn't take his money, dined in restaurants for free. He dressed in Armani black, partied with the most beautiful prostitutes, one on each arm, and never paid for sex. A diamond ring in the shape of a horseshoe said he was a lucky man. At a certain level of society, he was royalty, and yet- and yet-he was dissatisfied.