Alex mimicked hesitation.

"Let's pause and consider what is at stake. There is a monthly bonus. There is a May Day bonus. If they run the test successfully they will likely win promotions and awards. On the other hand, if they shut down the reactor, there would certainly be embarrassing questions asked and consequences felt. There it is, bonuses versus disaster. So, like good Soviets, they marched forward, hands over their balls."

Alex pushed the button.

"In a second the reactor coolant began to boil. The reactor hall started to pound. An engineer hit the panic switch for the control rods, but the rod channels in the reactor melted, the rods jammed, and superheated hydrogen blew off the roof, carrying reactor core, graphite and burning tar into the sky. A black fireball stood over the building, and a blue beam of ionized light shot from the open core. Fifty tons of radioactive fuel flew up, equal to fifty Hiroshima bombs. But the farce continued. Cool heads in the control room refused to believe that they had done anything wrong. They sent a man down to check the core. He returned, his skin black from radiation, like a man who had seen the sun, to report that there was no core. Since this was not an acceptable report, they sacrificed a second man, who returned in the same fatal condition. Now, of course, the men in the control room faced their greatest test of all: the call to Moscow."

Alex picked up his glass of samogon.

"And what did our heroes say when Moscow asked, 'How is the reactor core?' They answered, 'The core is fine, not to worry, the core is completely intact.' Moscow is relieved. That's the punch line. 'Don't worry.' And here is my toast: 'To the Zone! Sooner or later, it will be everywhere!' Nobody's drinking?"

Roman and Maria sat numb and deflated, feet hanging free of the floor. Vanko looked away. Eva pressed her fist to her mouth, then stood and applied the fist to Alex, not slapping him as she had before but hitting him solidly in the chest until Arkady pulled her away. For a moment no one moved, like marionettes gone limp, until Eva bolted again for the door. This time Arkady heard her car start.

Alex's glass spilled. He refilled and raised it a second time. "Well, it seemed hilarious to me."

As a rule, fresh bodies hang facedown underwater, with their arms and legs dangling in a shallow dive. This one was suspended against the bars of the inlet that fed water from the cooling pond to the smaller holding ponds of the station. Emergency water was still needed; the reactors were full of fuel, and in some ways they weren't so much dead as in hibernation.

Two men with gaffs were trying to pull the body closer without falling in themselves. Captain Marchenko watched from the wall of the pond with a group of useless but curious militia officers, the Woropay brothers in front. Eva Kazka stood by her car, as far from the proceedings as possible. Arkady noticed that she looked, if possible, wilder and more unkempt than usual. Probably she had just gone home and dropped, in a samogon stupor. She seemed to be drawing the same conclusion about him.

As Marchenko joined Arkady, a shadow broke the surface of the water to display a slick gray head with rubbery lips, then slid back toward the bottom to stir with even larger catfish in the murk.

The captain said, "Taking into account the bad weather yesterday and the dimensions of the cooling pond, I think you'll agree that it was wise to wait before looking for a body. The way the ponds circulate, everything ends up here at the inlet. Now it's right in our hands."

"And now it's ten in the morning a day later."

"A fisherman falls off his boat and drowns, it really doesn't matter whether you find him one day or the next."

"Like the tree that falls in the forest, does it make a noise?"

"Lots of trees fall in the forest. They're called accidental deaths."

Arkady asked, "Is Dr. Kazka the only doctor available?"

"We can't pull the station doctors. All Dr. Kazka has to do is sign a death certificate."

"You couldn't call for a pathologist?"

"They say Kazka was in Chechnya. If that's the case, she's seen plenty of dead bodies."

Eva Kazka tapped out a cigarette. Arkady had never seen such a nervous individual.

"By the way, I meant to ask you, Captain, did you ever find out whose icon we saw stolen the other day?"

"Yes. It belonged to an old couple named Panasenko. Returnees. The militia keeps a record. I understand it was a beautiful icon."

"Yes."

So a thief on a motorcycle had stolen the icon of Roman and Maria Panasenko's, a crime officially recorded, and yet the icon had returned to its corner perch in the Panasenko cabin. Which was, to Arkady, the opposite of a tree falling without a sound.

From the inlet Arkady had a view of half-completed cooling towers that resembled, with the brush that flourished under and around them, temples half-built. The towers had been meant for the planned Reactors Five and Six. Now power went the other direction, at a trickle, to keep lightbulbs and gauges alive.

An ironic cheer went up when the body was finally grappled. As it was lifted, water drained from its pants and sleeves.

"Don't you have a tarp or plastic to lay the body on?" Arkady asked Marchenko.

"This is not a murder investigation in Moscow. This is a dead drunk in Chornobyl. There's a difference." Marchenko cocked his head. "Don't be shy, take a look."

The captain's men moved truculently out of Arkady's way; the Woropays snickered at the recorder in Arkady's hand.

"Speak up," Marchenko said. "We can all learn."

"Pulled from the water at the inlet of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant at 1015 hours on July 15, a male apparently in his sixties, two meters tall, dressed in a leather jacket, blue work pants and construction boots." An ugly man, in fact, his thick features bleached by immersion, brown teeth badly sorted, clothes sodden as a wet sheet. "Extremities are rigid, exhibiting rigor mortis. No wedding ring." Arms and legs yearned for the sky, fingers open. "Hair brown." Arkady peeled an eyelid back. "Eyes brown. Left eye dilated. Fully clothed, the body presents no tattoos, moles or other identifying marks. No immediately evident abrasions or contusions. We'll continue at the autopsy."

"No autopsy," Marchenko said.

"We know him," Dymtrus Woropay said.

Taras said, "He's Boris Hulak. He scavenges and fishes. He squats in apartments in Pripyat, always moving around."

"Do you have latex gloves?" Arkady asked.

Marchenko said, "Afraid of getting your hands wet?"

At a nod from the captain, the Woropays unzipped the dead man's jacket and dug out his booklet of identification papers.

Marchenko read them: "Boris Petrovich Hulak, born 1949, residence Kiev, occupation machinist. With his picture." The same ugly face with a living glower. This was the Plumber, Arkady was sure of it. Marchenko threw the ID at Arkady. "That's all you need to know. A social parasite fell off his boat and drowned."

"We'll check his lungs for water," Arkady said.

"He was fishing."

"Where's the rod?"

"He caught a catfish. He had consumed an entire bottle of vodka, he was standing in his boat, a catfish bigger than him pulled the rod out of his hands, and he lost his balance and fell in. No autopsy."

"Maybe the bottle was empty to begin with. We can't assume he was drunk."

"Yes, we can. He was a well-known drunk, he was alone, he fished, he fell in." From his tunic Marchenko pulled the hunting knife he had shown Arkady before, the boar knife. "You want an autopsy? Here's your autopsy." He drove the knife into Boris Hulak's stomach, spewing the sweet gas of digested alcohol. The samogon in Arkady's own stomach rose to his throat. "That's drunk."