Anton Obodovsky, as Victor told it, was a bonus. Victor had been flying to Kiev two days before to meet Hoffman and only happened to see Anton on the same plane. Anton had traveled light, not even a carry-on, and on landing, Victor thought he had lost Anton for good, assuming that he would vanish into the nether regions of Kiev, where he still had a slice of some chop shops and convenience stores. He was like any businessman who maintained domiciles in two different cities, except no one knew where those domiciles were; in Anton's business, a safe night's rest required secrecy. But dentists couldn't pick up their drills and make house calls, and Victor had spied Anton crossing the square on the way to his appointment.

Victor said, "Now that you and Bobby looked at the surveillance tapes, he's convinced Obodovsky was the guy with the suitcase in the exterminator van. Anton was strong enough, he'd threatened Ivanov on the phone and he wasn't put in Butyrka until the afternoon. Motive, means and opportunity. Besides which, he's a killer. There he is."

Anton stepped out of the door and felt his jaw as if to say that all the muscles in the world were no protection from an abscessed tooth. As usual, he was in Armani black and, with his bleached hair, not a difficult man to spot. He was followed by a short, dark woman in her mid-thirties, wearing a trim, sensible jacket.

"The dentist is a woman? She's so good, he comes all the way from Moscow?"

"That's not the whole package. Wait until you see this," Victor said. Last out of the door was a tall woman in her twenties with swirls of honey-colored hair and a brief outfit in denim and silver buttons. She took a firm grip on Anton's arm. "The dental hygienist."

After the dentist had locked the door, she was joined by the dancing girl, who by every feature was her daughter. The girl gestured toward a figure on stilts farther up the square, where a public promenade of sorts had developed, drawing sketch artists and street acts. She appealed to Anton, who shrugged expansively and led the way, he and the hygienist striding ahead, the girl skipping around her mother a step behind. Arkady and Victor fell in thirty meters back, relying on that fact that Anton would not be looking for a Moscow investigator in Ukrainian camos and certainly would not expect to see Victor in an elegant suit and puffing a cigar.

Victor said, "Bobby thinks that Anton was paid by Nikolai Kuzmitch. The van came from a Kuzmitch company, so that much makes sense."

"Kuzmitch has an exterminator company? I thought he was into nickel and tin."

"Also fumigation, cable television and airlines. He buys a company a month. I think the airline and fumigation came together, one of those Asian routes."

"Well, Anton is a carjacker. He doesn't need help getting a van."

"You think the Kuzmitch van was a setup?"

"I think it's unlikely a smart man would use a vehicle that could be easily traced to him, and Kuzmitch is a very smart man.'

The stilt walker was flamboyant in a Cossack's red coat and conical hat; he blew up balloons that he twisted into animals. Anton bought a tubular blue dog for the girl. As soon as the gift was presented, the dentist gave Anton a polite good-bye handshake and pulled her daughter away. Victor and Arkady watched from a table selling CDs, and Arkady wondered whether it would be a lifelong trait of the little girl to be attracted to dangerous men. The hygienist obviously was.

"The hygienist wears a diamond pin with her name, Galina," Victor said. "She walked by with that bouncing pin and my erection nearly knocked over the table."

The dentist and daughter turned toward the metro stop while Anton and Galina continued into a brilliantly lit glass dome where an elevator carried passengers down to an underground shopping mall, a borehole of boutiques selling French fashion, Polish crystal, Spanish ceramics, Russian furs, Japanese computer games, aromatherapy. Victor and Arkady followed on the stairs.

Victor said, "Anytime I think Russia 's fucked up, I think about the Ukraine, and I feel better. While they were digging the mall, they ran into part of the Golden Gate, the ancient wall of the city, an archaeological treasure, and the city knew if it announced what it had found that work would stop. So they kept mum and buried it. They lost a little identity, but they got McDonald's. Of course, it's not as good as the McDonald's in Moscow."

A bow wave of fear preceded Anton in each store, and mall guards greeted him with such deference that Arkady considered the possibility that Anton might be a silent partner in a store or two. The beautiful Galina traded in her denim top for a mohair sweater. She and Anton slipped into the changing room at a lingerie shop while Arkady and Victor watched from a rack of cookware in the opposite store. The plate-glass transparency of the modern mall was a gift to surveillance.

"A whole day in the dentist's chair, and all Obodovsky can think of is sex. You've got to give him credit," Victor said.

Arkady thought that Anton's shopping spree had more the aspect of a public tour, a prince of the streets demanding respect. Or a dog marking his old territory.

"Anton was originally Ukrainian. I need to know from where. Let me know if he stays around. I'm going back to Chernobyl."

"Don't do it, Arkady. Fuck Timofeyev, fuck Bobby, it's not worth it. Since I got together with Lyuba again, I've been thinking: nobody misses Timofeyev. He was a millionaire, so what? He was a stack of money that blew away. No family. After Ivanov was dead, no friends. Really, I think what happened to him and Ivanov must have been a curse."

The ride back from Kiev was an obstacle course of potholes on an unlit highway and all he had looked forward to was sleep or oblivion; what he had not expected was Eva Kazka waiting at his door, as if he were late for an appointment. She drew sharply on her cigarette. Everything about her was sharp, the cutting attitude of her eyes, the edge of her mouth. She wore her usual camos and scarf.

"Your friend Timofeyev was dead white. You ask so many questions I thought you'd like to know."

"Would you like to come in?" Arkady asked.

"No, the hall is fine. You don't seem to have any neighbors."

"One. Maybe this is the low season for the Zone."

"Maybe," she said. "It's after midnight, and you're not drunk."

"I've been busy," Arkady said.

"You're out of step. You have to keep up with the people of Chornobyl. Vanko was looking for you at the café."

They were interrupted by Campbell, the British ecologist, who came out into the hall in an undershirt and drawers. He swayed and scratched. Eva had stepped aside, and he didn't appear to see her at all.

"Tovarich! Comrade!"

"People don't actually say that anymore," Arkady said. In fact, they rarely had. "In any case, good evening. How are you feeling?"

"Tip-top."

"I haven't seen you around."

"And you won't. I brought a lovely pair of nonradioactive balls here, and I will leave with the same number. Stocked for the duration. Whiskey, mainly. Pop in anytime, although I apologize in advance for the quality of Ukrainian television. Will fix that soon enough. You do speak English?"

"That's what we're speaking." Although Campbell 's Scottish burr was so thick that he was barely intelligible.

"You're so right. The joke's on me. A standing invite, any hour. We're Scots, not Brits, no formalities with us."

"You're very generous."

"Seriously. I'll be badly disappointed if you don't." Campbell seemed to count to ten before adding, "Then it's settled," and disappearing back into his room.

Eva let the air clear for a moment. "Your new friend? What did he say?"

"I think he said that whiskey was better than vodka for protection against radioactivity."