"You can't help some people."

"What do you mean, he was white?"

"It was only an impression I had because Timofeyev was clothed and refrigerated. Even so, he seemed bloodless, drained. I didn't think about it at the time. I've seen wounds like his among the dead in Chechnya. Cut the major arteries of the throat, and there's an effusion of blood. Not your dead friend, though. His shirt was clean, taking into account the mud and rain. His hair was clean, too. However, his nostrils were plugged with clotted blood."

"He had nosebleeds."

"This would have been more than a nosebleed."

"A broken nose?"

"There was no bruising. Of course, the local wolf pack had tugged him this way and that, so I couldn't be sure."

"Throat slit and an appearance of bloodlessness, but no bloodstains on the shirt or hair, only in the nose. Everything is contradictory."

"Yes. Also, I should apologize again for the comment about your wife. That was stupid of me. I'm afraid I've lost all sensitivity. It was unforgivable."

"No, her dying was unforgivable."

"You blame the doctors."

"No."

"I see. You're the self-elected captain of the lifeboat; you think you're responsible for everyone." She sighed. "I'm sorry, I must be drunk. On one glass, even. I usually don't get obnoxious quite so fast."

"I'm afraid there's no one left in the lifeboat, so I didn't do a very good job."

"I think I should be going." She didn't, though. "Who was the boy you were talking to on the phone? Just a friend, you said?"

"For reasons beyond my comprehension, I seem to have become responsible for an eleven-year-old boy named Zhenya who lives in a children's shelter in Moscow. It's a ridiculous relationship. I know nothing about him because he refuses to speak to me."

"It's a normal relationship. I refused to speak to my parents from the age of eleven on. Is he slow?"

"No, he's very bright. A chess player, and I suspect he might have a mathematical mind. And courage." Arkady remembered the times Zhenya had run away.

"Spoken like a parent."

"No. His real father is out there, and that's who Zhenya needs."

"You like helping people."

"Actually, when people get to me, they're generally beyond help."

"You're laughing."

"But it's true."

"No, I think you help. In Chechnya they always tried to drag the bodies back, even under fire. It was more important not to be abandoned. Did you feel abandoned when your wife died?"

"What does Chechnya have to do with my wife?"

"Did you?"

"Yes."

"That's how I am with Alex, except that he hasn't died, he just changed."

"How did we get on this subject?"

"We were being honest. Now you ask a question."

Arkady gently tugged her scarf so that it hung free. The hallway light was poor but when he raised her chin he saw a lateral scar like a minus sign at the base of her neck. "What's that?"

"My Chornobyl souvenir."

He realized that his hand hadn't moved, that it lingered on the warmth of her skin, and that she hadn't objected.

The door downstairs opened, and a voice called up, "Renko, is that you? I have something for you. I'm coming up."

"It's Vanko." Eva retied her scarf in a rush.

"I'll show you." Vanko started up.

"Wait, I'm coming down," Arkady said.

Eva whispered, "I wasn't here."

The café was Chernobyl 's evening social club and senate, and Arkady's stature had risen since the discovery of Boris Hulak in the cooling pond. He was afforded elbow room and a table while Vanko bought him a beer. The music was Pink Floyd, which some people thought they could dance to.

"Alex says you attract murders the way a magnet attracts iron filings."

"Alex says the nicest things."

"He'll be by. He's looking for Eva."

Arkady did not say that he had just left her. Interesting, he thought. Our first collusion. "You said you had something for me?"

"For the Jews." Vanko opened up a backpack and handed Arkady a videotape, unlabeled except for a price of fifty dollars.

"How did you come up with that price?"

"It's a valuable keepsake. We could sell this to your American friend and share the profit. What do you think?"

"A videotape of a tomb? This is the gravesite we saw yesterday? You really have made a business out of it."

"I can be a guide, too. I know where everything is. I was here during the accident, you know, just a boy."

"Considering the exposure you had then, isn't the Zone the last place you should be?"

"The Zone is the last place for anyone to be. Anyway, we rotate, as many days off as on."

"What do people do in their free time?"

"I don't do much. Alex makes good money; he says he works in the belly of the beast. That's what he calls Moscow. Eva works in a clinic in Kiev." Vanko nudged the tape closer to Arkady. "What do you think?"

Arkady turned the cassette over. "A Jewish tomb? I haven't noticed many Jews here."

"Because of the Germans and the war. Although many people suffered from the Germans during the war, not just Jews. You always hear about the Jews."

Arkady nodded. "The genocide and all."

"Yes."

"But you seem to be the unofficial welcoming party for visiting Jews."

"I try to help. I found accommodations for your friend and his driver in a decontaminated house."

"Sounds charming." Arkady knew that this was against Zone regulations; he also knew that dollars worked miracles. "So do you have a tape player? I can't sell the tape to the American unless I know what's on it."

"Mine is broken. Some of the militia had personal machines in their rooms, but they got stolen. But no problem, this can be organized. Hold on to the tape."

"You can count on Vanko." Alex pulled a chair up to the table. "He can organize anything. And congratulations to you, Senior Investigator. Another dead body, I understand. You bring out the murder in people. I suppose in your line of endeavor that is a talent. Where is Eva?"

Vanko shrugged and Arkady said he didn't know, even as he asked himself why he had now lied twice about her.

"You're sure you haven't seen her?" Alex asked Arkady.

"I just returned from Kiev."

"That's right," Vanko said. "His bike was warm."

"Maybe we should issue a missing-persons bulletin for her," Alex said. "What do you think, Renko?"

"Why are you worried?"

"A husband worries."

"You're divorced."

"That doesn't matter, not if you still care. Vanko, can you get us a round of beers?"

"Sure." Vanko, happy to attend, pushed his way through dancers toward the crowd at the counter.

Arkady didn't want to talk about Eva with Alex. He said, "So, your father was a famous physicist, and you were a physicist. Why did you change to ecology?"

"You keep asking."

"It's an interesting switch."

"No, what's interesting is that there are two hundred nuclear power plants and ten thousand nuclear warheads around the world and all in the hands of incompetents."

"That's a sweeping statement."

"It only takes one. I think we can count on it." Alex lowered his voice to a confidential level. "The thing is, Renko, that Eva and I are not really divorced. On paper, yes. However, in my heart, no. And of course it's so much worse if you've been married. That kind of intimacy never ends."

"A former husband doesn't have claims."

"Outside the Zone, maybe. The Zone is different, more intimate. You're an educated man: do you know what smell is?"

"A sense."

"More than that. Smell is the essence, the attachment of free molecules of the thing itself. If we could really see each other, we would see clouds of loose molecules and atoms. We're dripping with them. Every person you meet, you exchange some with. That's why lovers reek of each other, because they've joined so completely that they're virtually the same person. No court, no piece of paper can ever separate you." Alex took Arkady's hand in his and began to squeeze. Alex's hand was broad and strong from setting traps. "Who knows how many thousands of molecules we're exchanging right now: