The team of investigators from Moscow had not completely wasted their time. They had searched for any possible connection among Timofeyev, Ivanov and Chernobyl. After all, before finding a second vocation in business, the two men had been physicists. They had grown up in the same Moscow neighborhood and, from the playground, had become good friends, Ivanov a natural leader, Timofeyev an ardent follower and both gifted enough in science to be sent to special schools and the Institute for Extremely High Temperatures under the tutelage of its director, Academician Gerasimov himself. For them the operation of a nuclear power plant would have been as dull as driving a bus. As far as detectives had been able to ascertain, Ivanov and Timofeyev had no relatives or friends at Chernobyl. None of their teachers or fellow students came from the Chernobyl area. They had never visited Chernobyl before the accident. There was no connection to Chernobyl at all.

Who was connected to Chernobyl?

Not Colonel Georgi Jovanovich Ozhogin, the head of NoviRus Security. His file was stuffed with encomiums to his first career as a Master of Sport, and adulatory references to his second career as a "selfless agent of the Committee for State Security." The authors of the report did not detail what this selflessness involved beyond citing his efforts for "international amity and athletic competition in Turkey, Algeria and France." Age: fifty-two. Married: Sonya Andreevna Ozhogin. Children: George, fourteen, and Vanessa, twelve. Arkady had not been part of the investigation team. Had he been, he might have pursued the idea that the only person with access to all the contaminated residences was the chief of NoviRus Security. However, the colonel volunteered to be interviewed under truth serum and hypnosis and passed both tests. From that point on, the investigators tiptoed around Ozhogin.

The investigators hadn't known what to make of Rina Shevchenko. Pasha Ivanov had given his lover excellent but thoroughly fictitious papers: birth certificate, school record, union card and residency permit. At the same time, it was clear from police reports that an underage Rina had run away from a cooperative farm outside St. Petersburg, moved illegally to Moscow and survived initially as a prostitute. The investigators' dilemma was whether the protection of such a powerful benefactor extended posthumously. On the advice of lawyers retained for her by her two friends Kuzmitch and Maximov, she refused to meet with investigators a second time. Would they have asked her about her Ukrainian surname? Well, millions of Russians had a Ukrainian surname. Arkady couldn't see her walking around Ivanov's apartment broadcasting salt and cesium. What he had seen in the apartment was Rina unable to do anything other than watch a video of Pasha over and over again.

The investigators loathed Robert Aaron Hoffman. Age: thirty-seven. Nationality: U.S.A. and Israel. Occupation: business consultant. A visa photograph of Hoffman accentuated his small eyes and round jowls. According to the report, Hoffman had stolen a computer disk from the Ivanov apartment, and although the disk was retrieved, there was reason to believe that he had altered the contents to compromise the entire NoviRus computer network. Hoffman might have stolen other items from the apartment as well. However, all Arkady had seen Hoffman take was the gift of a suede jacket. And Arkady remembered Bobby's drunken vigil. Would a man who had spread toxic cesium linger at all?

On the other hand, in June of the previous year, Hoffman had taken a NoviRus jet from Moscow to Kiev 's Boryspil Airport, and a bus from Boryspil to Chernobyl to, in the opinion of the investigators, "meet fellow Jews and possibly transfer diamonds." He had returned to Moscow that night. Arkady sometimes avoided raising the subject of Jews because people who appeared quite decent and sane one moment would start ranting about Jewish cabals the next. Arkady found anti-Semitism depressing and endemic, like scabies or lice. Captain Marchenko, however, had been correct about one thing: according to the investigators Jews did sometimes visit Chernobyl 's Jewish cemetery. Bobby Hoffman, who hadn't struck Arkady as the religious sort, had come with them. He hadn't noticed any Jews in Chernobyl, so why would they visit?

Who else had the investigators turned their attention to?

The muscleman Anton Obodovsky proved a disappointment. He may have threatened Ivanov, but he was in Butyrka Prison the night of Pasha's suicide and very publicly in Moscow casinos at the time of Timofeyev's disappearance.

The elevator operator at Pasha's building, the Kremlin veteran, had access to the tenth floor, but not to Ivanov's two previous homes or Timofeyev's. A sweep of his wardrobe and apartment showed not a trace of radioactivity.

Timofeyev's household staff was under treatment for exposure to radioactive materials. They had no information to offer, and their loss of hair seemed sincere.

Day by day Moscow lost interest. After all, Ivanov was a suicide, half crazed from radiation or not. Timofeyev had been murdered, but not in Moscow, not even in Russia. In short, any homicide investigation was properly a Ukrainian responsibility, with Russian assistance limited to a single investigator. It was fair to say that there was no real investigation anymore. Arkady occasionally felt like a man underwater breathing through a reed, the reed being his mobile phone. For a while Victor ran down leads in Moscow, an example being laboratories that produced cesium chloride. Although there was no commercial use of anything so toxic, grains were used in scientific research. Victor tracked down labs and researchers until, on Zurin's orders, he stopped taking Arkady's calls. Arkady was on his own. Meanwhile, NoviRus stock plunged, and the world moved on.

Although the Chernobyl cafeteria offered borsch, buns, tomato salad, meat and potatoes, pudding, lemonade and tea, it struck Arkady that the delegation from the British Friends of the Ecology seemed unsure, less than famished, shy of their food. They also seemed intimidated by a constantly moving corps of heavily rouged waitresses who might have once been a sister trapeze act.

Alex stood and played host. "We welcome all our British Friends and, in particular, Professor Ian Campbell, who will be staying on with us for a week." He indicated a bearded, ginger-haired man who looked like he had drawn the short straw. "Professor, perhaps you'd like to say a few words?"

"Is the food locally grown?"

"Is the food locally grown?" Alex repeated. He savored the question like the blue smoke of his cigarette. "Although we are not quite ready to label it 'Product of Chernobyl,' yes, much of the food was grown and harvested in the neighboring environs." He took an extravagant inhale. " Chernobyl is not the Black Earth region of the Ukraine, famous for its wheat. We have a more sandy soil given to potatoes and beets. The greens are local, the lemons in the lemonade are not and the tea, I believe, is from China. Bon appétit."

Another question passed the length of the table before Alex could sit.

"Ah, is the food radioactive? The answer to that depends on how hungry you are. For example, this copious meal makes up in part for the low pay of the staff. They are paid in calories as well as cash. The waitresses are overage but extremely coquettish, practically a floor show in and of themselves. The food? Milk is dangerous; cheese is not, because radionuclides stay in the water and albumin. Shellfish are bad, and mushrooms are very, very bad. Did they serve mushrooms today?"

While the Friends glumly regarded their lunch, Alex sat and vigorously carved his meat. Vanko put a soup bowl next to Arkady and sat down. The researcher looked like he had been following an earthworm down a hole.