"It's the bankers who are the real thieves. People bring the money to you, you fuck them and no one lays a hand on you. I make a hundred thousand dollars, but bankers and politicians make millions. I'm a worm compared to them."

"You're doing pretty well," Arkady said. The cell had a television, tape player, CDs. A Pizza Hut box lay under the bottom bunk. The top bunk was stacked with car magazines, travel brochures, motivational tapes. "How long have you been here?"

"Three nights. I wish we had satellite. The walls of this place are so thick, the reception is shit."

"Life is tough."

Anton looked Arkady up and down. "Look at your raincoat. Have you been polishing your car with that? You should hit the stores with me sometime. It makes me feel bad that I'm better dressed inside prison than you are out."

"I can't afford to shop with you."

"On me. I can be a generous guy. Everything you see here, I pay for. Everything is legal. They allow you anything but alcohol, cigarettes or mobile phones." Anton had a restless, sharklike quality that made him pace. A man could get a stiff neck just having a conversation with him, Arkady thought.

"What's the worst deprivation?"

"I don't drink or smoke, so for me it's phones." No one consumed phones like the Mafia; they used stolen mobile phones to avoid being tapped, and a careful man like Anton changed phones once a week. "You get dependent. It's kind of a curse."

"It's led to the demise of the written word. You look in the pink."

"I work out. No drugs, no steroids, no hormones."

"Cigarette?"

"No, thanks. I just told you, I keep myself strong and pure. I am a slave to nothing. It's pitiful to see a man like you smoke."

"I'm weak."

"Renko, you've got to take care of yourself. Or other people. Think of the secondary smoke."

"All right." Arkady put away the pack. He hated to see Anton get worked up. There were actually three Antons. There was the violent Anton, who would snap your neck as easily as shake your hand; there was Anton the rational businessman; and there was the Anton whose eyes took an evasive course when anything personal was discussed. Most of all, Arkady didn't like to see the first Anton get excited.

Anton said, "I just think at your age, you shouldn't abuse your body."

"At my age?"

"Look, go fuck yourself, for all I care."

"That's more like it."

A smile crept onto Anton's lips. "See, I can talk to you. We communicate."

Arkady and Anton did communicate. Both understood that Anton's prize cell was available only because of a belated effort to bring Butyrka's ancient chamber of horrors up to modern European prison standards, and both understood that such a cell would obviously go to the highest bidder. Both also understood that while the Mafia ruled the streets, a subcaste of tattooed, geriatric criminals still ruled the prison yards. If Anton were stuck in an ordinary cell, he would be a shark in a tank with a thousand piranhas.

Anton couldn't sit still without twitching a pec here, a deltoid there. "You're a good guy, Renko. We may not see eye to eye, but you always treat a person with respect. You speak English?"

"Yes."

Anton picked up a copy of Architectural Digest horn the bunk and flipped to a picture of a western lodge set against a mountain range. " Colorado. Beautiful nature and, as an investment, relatively inexpensive. What do you think?"

"Can you ride a horse?"

"Is that necessary?"

"I think so."

"I can learn. I'll give you the money. Cash. You go and negotiate, pay whatever you think is fair. It could be a beautiful partnership. You have an honest face."

"I appreciate the offer. Did you hear that Pasha Ivanov is dead?"

"I saw the news on television. He jumped, right? Ten stories, what a way to go."

"Did you know him?"

"Me know Ivanov? That's like knowing God."

"You left a message on his mobile phone three nights ago about cutting off his dick. That sounds like you knew him fairly well. It might even sound like a threat."

"I'm not allowed a phone here, so how could I call?"

"You bribed a guard and called from the guards' room."

Anton got to his feet and threw punches as if hitting a heavy bag. "Well, like they say, there's a crow in every flock." He stopped and shook out his arms. "Anyway, if I called Pasha Ivanov, what about?"

"Business. Somebody has been jacking NoviRus Oil trucks and draining the tanks. It's happening in your part of Moscow -in your soup, so to speak."

Anton circled again, throwing jabs, crosses, uppercuts. He backed, covered up, seemed to dodge a punch and then moved forward, rolling his shoulders and snapping jabs while the cell got smaller and smaller. Anton may not have been a champion, but when he was in motion, he took up a lot of room. Finally he dropped his fists and blew air. "He has this prick in charge of security, a former colonel from the KGB. They caught one of my boys with one of their trucks and broke his legs. That's overreaction. It put me in a difficult situation. If I didn't retaliate, my boys would break my legs. But I don't want a war. I'm sick of that. Instead, I wanted to go straight to the top, and also make a point about the colonel's bullshit security by calling Ivanov on his personal phone. I said what I said. It was an opening line; maybe a little crude, but it was meant to begin a dialogue. I have body shops, tanning salons, a restaurant. I'm a respectable businessman. I would have loved to work with Pasha Ivanov, to learn at his knee."

"What was the favor? What did you have to offer him?"

"Protection."

"Naturally."

"Anyway, I never got through and never saw him face-to-face. It seems to me, when Pasha died I was right here, and that phone call proves it."

"Pretty lucky."

"I live right." Anton was modest.

"What did they pick you up for?"

"Possession of firearms."

"That's all?"

A firearms charge was nothing. Since Anton always had a lawyer, judge and bail money standing by, there was no good reason for him to spend an hour in jail, unless he was waiting for some bumbling investigator to come along and officially mark how innocent Anton Obodovsky was. Arkady didn't want to provoke the dangerous side of Anton, but he also didn't like being used.

Anton grabbed some travel brochures off the bunk. "Hey, as soon as I'm out, I'm going on holiday. Where would you suggest? Cyprus? Turkey? I don't drink or do drugs, and that leaves out a lot of places. I want a tan, but I burn easily. What do you think?"

"You want creature comforts? Quiet? Gourmet food?"

"Yeah."

"A staff that caters to your every whim?"

"Right!"

"Why not stay in Butyrka?"

Zhenya stared like a manacled prisoner at what most people would have called an escape to the country. The population of Moscow was pouring into the low hills that couched the city, to rustic dachas and crowded beaches and giant discount stores, and though the highway was designed with four lanes, drivers improvised and squeezed out six.

Arkady wasn't clear on what good cause benefited from Pasha Ivanov's Blue Sky Charity picnic, but he did not want to miss the millionaires Nikolai Kuzmitch and Leonid Maximov. Such dear friends were sure to appear. After all, they had vacationed with Pasha in Saint-Tropez when a limpet mine was discovered on his Jet Ski. Tomorrow they would be scattered to the four winds on their corporate jets, behind their ranks of lawyers. Hence, Arkady's use of Zhenya as a disguise. Arkady tried to shrug off his guilt by telling himself that Zhenya could use the sun.

"Maybe there'll be swimming. I brought you a swimsuit just in case," Arkady said, indicating a gift-wrapped box at the boy's feet. Up till now Zhenya had ignored it. Now he began crushing it with his heels. Arkady usually kept a pistol in the glove compartment. He'd had the foresight to remove the magazine; he patted himself on the back for that. "Or maybe you're a dry-land kind of man."