"Then it's your turn," Alex told Eva.

"All right." She ran her hands through her hair as if that combed it, fixed her eyes on Alex and began:

We're all drunkards here and harlots:

How wretched we are together…

The poetry was coarse and blunt, Akhmatova's words, familiar to Arkady, familiar to any literate man or woman over the age of thirty, before the new poetry of "Billions Served" and "Snickers for Energy!"

I have put on a narrow skirt

to show my lines are trim.

The windows are tightly sealed,

What brews? Thunder or sleet?

How well I know your look,

Your eyes like a cautious cat.

She swung her own gaze from Alex to Arkady and hesitated so long that Alex took over the last line:

O heavy heart, how long

before the tolling bell?

But that one dancing there,

will surely rot in hell!

Alex pulled Eva's face to his and collected a deep kiss until she pulled away and slapped him hard enough to make even Arkady smart. She stood and plunged out the door. It was like a Russian party, Arkady thought. People got drunk, recklessly confessed their love, spilled their festering dislike, had hysterics, marched out, were dragged back in and revived with brandy. It wasn't a French salon.

Arkady's mobile phone rang. It was Olga Andreevna, from the children's shelter in Moscow.

"Investigator Renko, you have to come back."

"A second, please." Arkady gestured apologies to Maria and went outside. Eva was nowhere in sight, although her car hadn't left.

Olga Andreevna asked, "Investigator, what are you still doing in the Ukraine?

"I am assigned here. I am working on a case."

"You should be here. Zhenya needs you."

"I don't think so. I can't think of anyone he needs less."

"He goes and stands by the street, waiting for you and looking for your car."

"Maybe he's waiting for the bus."

"Last week he was gone for two days. We found him sleeping in the park. Talk to him."

She put Zhenya on the line before Arkady could get off. At least he assumed Zhenya was on; all Arkady heard at his end was silence.

"Hello, Zhenya. How are you doing? I hear you've been causing people at the shelter some anxiety. Please don't do that." Arkady paused in case Zhenya wanted to offer any response. "So I suppose that's all, Zhenya."

He was in no mood and no condition to have another one-sided conversation with the garden gnome. He leaned back to take a breath of cool air and watched clouds cover the moon, slipping the house in and out of shadow. He heard the cow shuffle in her stall and a twig snap and wondered whether it was a night for wolves to be abroad.

"Still there?" Arkady asked. There was no answer; there never was an answer. "I met Baba Yaga. In fact, I'm outside her house right now. I can't say whether her fence is made of bones, but she definitely has steel teeth." Arkady heard, or thought he heard, a focusing of attention at the other end. "I haven't seen her dog or cat yet, but she does have an invisible cow, who has to be invisible because of the wolves. Maybe the wolves wandered in from a different story, but they're here. And a sea serpent. In her pond she has a sea serpent as big as a whale, with long whiskers. I saw the sea serpent swallow a man whole." There was unmistakable rustling on the other end now. Arkady tried to remember other details of the fairy tale. "The house is very strange. It is absolutely on chicken legs. Right now the house is slowly turning. I'll lower my voice in case it hears me. I didn't see her magic comb, the one that can turn into a forest, but I did see an orchard of poisonous fruit. All the houses around are burned and full of ghosts. I will call in two more days. In the meantime, it's important that you stay at the shelter and study and maybe make a friend in case we need help. I have to go now, before they see that I'm missing. Let me say a word to the director."

There was a passing of the phone, and Olga Andreevna came back on. "What did you tell him? He seems much better."

"I told him that he is a citizen of a proud new Russia and should behave like one."

"I'm sure. Well, whatever you said, it worked. Are you coming to Moscow now? Your work there surely must be done."

"Not quite yet. I'll call in two days."

"The Ukraine is sucking us dry."

"Good night, Olga Andreevna."

As Arkady put the mobile phone away, Eva stepped out of the orchard, silently applauding. "Your son?" she asked.

"No."

"A nephew?"

"No, just a boy."

She shifted like a cat getting comfortable. "Baba Yaga! Quite a story. You are an entertainer after all."

"I thought you were going."

"Not quite yet. So you're not with anybody now? A woman?"

"No. And you, are you and Alex married, separated or divorced?"

"Divorced. It's that obvious?"

"I thought I detected something."

"The residue of an ancient disaster, the crater of a bomb, is what you detect." The window light on her was watery, the stamp of linen making her eyes darker. "I still love him. Not the way you loved your wife. I can tell you had one of those great faithful romances. We didn't. We were more… melodramatic, let's say. Neither of us was undamaged goods. You can't be in the Zone without a little damage. How much longer do you plan to stay?"

"I have no idea. I think the prosecutor would like to leave me here forever."

"Until you're damaged?"

"At least."

What was disturbing about Eva Kazka was her combination of ferocity and, as she said, damage. She had been to Chernobyl and Chechnya? Maybe disaster was her milieu. Her smile suggested that she was giving him a second chance to say something interesting or profound, but Arkady thought of nothing. He had spent his imagination on Baba Yaga.

The door opened. Alex leaned out to say, "My turn."

"Our new friend Arkady may not know all the facts. Facts are important. Facts should not be swept aside."

"You're drunk," Eva said.

"It goes without saying. Arkady, do you enjoy comedy?"

"If it's funny."

"Guaranteed. This is Russian stand-up comedy," Alex said. "Comedy with samogon."

Maria opened a new bottle, releasing the sickeningly sweet smell of fermented sugar, and toddled from guest to guest refilling glasses.

"April twenty-sixth, 1986. The setting: the control room of Reactor Four. The actors: a night shift of fifteen technicians and engineers conducting an experiment-to see whether the reactor can restart itself if all external power for the machinery is cut off. The experiment has been performed before with safety systems on. This time they want to be more realistic. To defeat the safety system of a nuclear reactor, however, is no simple matter. It involves application. You have to disconnect the emergency core cooling system and close and lock the gate valves." Alex walked rapidly back and forth, attending to imaginary switches. "Turn off the automatic control, block the steam control, disable the pre-sets, switch off design protection and neutralize the emergency generators. Then start pulling graphite rods from the core by remote control. This is like riding a tiger, this is fun. There are a hundred and twenty rods in all, a minimum of thirty to be inserted at all times, because this was a Soviet reactor, a military model that was a little unstable at low efficiency, a fact that was, unfortunately, a state secret. Alas, the power plunged."

"When does this start to become funny?" Eva asked.

"It's already funny. It just gets funnier. Imagine the confusion of the technicians. The reactor efficiency is dropping through the floor, and the core is flooding with radioactive xenon and iodine and combustible hydrogen. And somehow they have lost count- they have lost count!-and pulled all but eighteen control rods from the core, twelve below the limit. All the same, there is one last disastrous step to take. They can replace the rods, turn on the safety systems and shut down the reactor. They have not yet turned off the turbine valves and started the actual experiment. They have not pushed the final button."