"Just a few questions. How was the dead man dressed?"

"He was rich. Expensive gear."

"Nice shoes?"

"Beautiful shoes."

"Well cared for?"

"Beautifully."

"Not muddy?"

"No."

"His shirt was damp. Was it clean or dirty?"

"A few leaves, I think."

"So he had been turned over?"

"What do you mean?"

"A man who drops dead to the ground doesn't roll around much."

"Maybe he wasn't dead yet."

"More likely someone turned him over to relieve him of his money and threw away the ID later. Did you find anything else on the body? Directions, matches, keys?"

"Nothing."

"No car keys? He left them in the car?"

"I don't know."

"You didn't notice that his throat had been cut?"

"It was under his collar, and there wasn't that much blood. Anyway, wolves had been messing with him."

"Moved him? Torn him up?"

"Didn't move him. Yanked on his nose and face a bit, enough to get an eye."

Lovely picture, Arkady thought. "Do wolves go for eyes?"

"They'll eat anything."

"You saw their tracks?" Huge.

"Did you see a car or any tire tracks?"

"No."

"Where were the people in the village, the Panasenkos and their neighbors?"

"I don't know."

"People in black villages don't get a great deal of entertainment. They're pretty nosy about visitors."

"I don't know."

"Why were you there that day?"

Dymtrus said, "That's enough. He's got a million questions."

"It's all right, Dyma," Katamay said. "On the captain's orders, we were taking a count of villagers in the Zone, and items of value."

"Like icons?"

"Yes."

"Would you like to stop for a minute and drink something?"

"Yes." Katamay sipped French water and laughed into his handkerchief. In case he spits up blood, Arkady thought. "I still can't get over Wayne Gretzky. Tell the truth, do you know Gretzky?"

"No," Arkady whispered, "no more than you know a squatter named Seva missing a little finger."

"How could you tell?"

"The bizarre detail. Keep lies simple."

"Yeah?"

"It's always worked for me. Give me your hands."

The Woropays shifted anxiously, but Katamay put out his hands, palms up. Arkady turned them over to look at purpled fingernails. He motioned Katamay to lean forward, and held up the lantern to observe tendrils of bleeding capillaries in the whites of Katamay's eyes.

"So tell me the truth," said Katamay. "Am I fucked or am I fucked?"

"Cesium?"

"Fucked as they come."

"Is there a treatment?"

"You can take Prussian blue; it picks up cesium as it passes through the body. But it has to be administered early. It wasn't. There's no point going to the hospital now."

"What happened? How did you get exposed?"

"Ah, that's a different story."

"Maybe not. Three men suffered from cesium poisoning: your Russian, his business partner and you. You don't think they're related?"

"I don't know. It depends how you look at it. History moves in funny ways, right? We've gone through evolution, now we're going through de-evolution. Everything is breaking down. No borders, no boundaries. No limits, no treaties. Suicide bombers, kids with guns. AIDS, Ebola, mad cow. It's all breaking down, and I'm breaking down with it. I'm bleeding internally. No platelets. No stomach lining. Infected. The reason I agreed to see you was to say that my family had nothing to do with this. Dymtrus and Taras had nothing to do with any of this, either." Katamay stopped for a spasm of wet coughs. The Woropays were solicitous as nurses, wiping blood from his lips. He raised his head and smiled. "Much better than a hospital. I had my theater debut here in Peter and the Wolf. I played the wolf. I thought I was a wolf until I met a real one."

"Who is that?"

"You'll know when you know. Anyway, we stray. Just the Russian I found, we agreed."

"His car. You towed it. Was there anything inside? Papers, maps, directions?"

"No."

Arkady reviewed his notes. "His watch, you said it was a Rolex?"

"Yes. Oh, that was sneaky. You caught me." Katamay held up an arm to show a gold Rolex like a bauble.

Dymtrus punched Arkady in the back of the head. He obviously did not appreciate lèse-majesté.

Katamay said, "No, no, fair is fair. He caught me. It doesn't matter, anyway."

"It doesn't, does it?" Arkady said.

"Give Dymtrus back his gun. He's embarrassed."

"Sure."

Arkady returned the pistol to Dymtrus, who muttered, "Gretzky."

"Okay, there was a checkpoint pass and directions," Katamay said.

"To where, exactly?"

"The cemetery."

"Where are the directions now?"

"I don't know."

"Typewritten?"

"Hardly." Katamay was amused.

"But the pass was signed by Captain Marchenko?"

"Maybe."

"It's just a form that could be snatched off a desk?"

"Pretty much."

"You saw the pass and directions when you found the body or when you towed the car?"

"When we found the body."

You said you found the body while you were canvassing houses about theft. The cemetery gate is fifty meters from the nearest occupied house. Why were you at the gate?"

"I don't remember."

"That was cute, towing the car and hiding it at Bela's yard."

"Right under Bela's nose and where Marchenko couldn't go. I hear Bela walks the whole yard every day now." Karel's laugh turned into a cough; every word seemed to cost him.

"You disappeared at the same time. Were you sick then?"

"A little."

"But you still wanted money from a stolen car?"

"I thought I could leave something… to someone."

"Who?" Arkady asked, but Katamay stopped for breath. "Leave me something. Who was the 'squatter' who led you to the gate?"

"Hulak," Katamay got out.

"Boris Hulak? The body pulled out of the cooling pond?"

"That's the only reason I'm telling you." Karel sank out of sight against the cushions with a laugh no more than a sigh. "There's nothing you can do about it anyway."

As Arkady rode by the sarcophagus, he felt the monster shift within its steel plates and razor wire. But the monster wasn't only there. It was riding a Ferris wheel here, swirling though a bloodstream there, seeping into the river, rooting in a million bones. What leitmotif for this kind of beast? An ominous cello. One note. Sustained. For fifty thousand years.

The closer Arkady got to the turnoff to Eva's cabin, the more each passing radiation marker sounded like the stroke of an ax. He didn't have to go back. She wouldn't answer any questions. She was a complication. The truth was that, after such close contact with Karel Katamay, part of Arkady craved nothing more than a chance to burn his own clothes, to scrub himself with a stiff brush and ride as far away as he could.

By itself, the motorbike seemed to turn her way. He rode over the rattle of the bridge and along nodding catkins to the house among the birches, where he found her sitting in bed in her bathrobe, smoking, cradling a glass and an ashtray between her legs. She looked as if she had stared a hole through the door since he'd left.

Arkady asked, "Are we drinking?"

"We're drinking."

There was a sharpness in the air that said it wasn't water.

"Do you think we drink too much?"

"It depends on the circumstances. I used to go over patient files in the evening, but since you arrived, I have been trying to understand who you are. When I get the answer, I may not want to be sober."

"Ask me." He tried to take the bottle, but she held on.

"No, no, you're the Question Man. Alex says most people get over asking why by the age of ten, only you never did."

"Was Alex here?"

"See? The problem is, I hate questions and poking into other people's lives. I don't see much of a future for us."