They signaled to each other and separated. Arkady couldn't see where to, although he suspected they would go only a short distance and double back right to where he was. If he did get to the far woods, he could head west to the wild Carpathian Mountains or east to Moscow. The sky was the limit.

The woods were so loud. The electric shriek of crickets and cicadas. The invisible luffing of trees in the breeze. A man could just sink into the sound. Dead, he would.

A rock, a brick, something hit the wall of the school. Immediately, Taras, one arm hung low, hurt, ran forward and around the side of the school. One on one, Arkady took his chance. He emerged and moved to the quarter that Taras had deserted.

He had been suckered. Dymtrus was waiting behind a big enough tree this time, but Arkady tripped in brambles, and the shot that should have taken off his shoulder was high. By the time Dymtrus had advanced to see, Arkady was on his feet again, weaving downhill between trees.

Arkady had no plan. He wasn't headed to any particular road or checkpoint, he was only running. Since the Zone was uninhabited, apart from the staff in Chernobyl and the old folks in their black villages, he had a lot of running to do. He heard Taras's shouts catching up. The brothers were behind him, one on either side. One problem was that moonlight was not real light. Branches materialized to slap his face. Roots insidiously spread. Radiation markers seemed to multiply.

He glimpsed a Woropay closer every time he dared look. How could they be so fast? The ground pitched forward, and they were herding him through deeper and deeper bracken. His feet grew heavy, clutched by mud, and he saw ahead a trail of silver water.

It was a small swamp ringed by armless, rotting trees, reeds, the plop of frogs. In the center, the hump of a beaver dam and, topping that, a diamond-shaped marker.

Arkady moved back to firmer ground. He found no stones. A branch he picked up turned to dust. Weaponless, he met the charge of Taras, threw him over his hip, and stood to face Dymtrus. Dymtrus fought like an ice-hockey player: grab with one hand and pound with the other. Arkady took the hand, twisted and locked it behind Dymtrus's back, then ran him into a tree. He kicked Taras in the head when he returned. He hit Dymtrus below the belt. But Dymtrus clutched Arkady's knees as he dropped, and Arkady couldn't put enough force behind a punch into Taras's head. Dymtrus climbed up Arkady. Taras hit back with the gun. Dymtrus held Arkady's arms so Taras could swing the gun at a steadier target. The next conscious moment, Arkady was being turned over on the ground. Shooting him was too easy; they could have done that when they first caught up.

Dymtrus said, "I brought the pillow."

He pulled the pillow out of his tunic and sat on Arkady's chest while Taras knelt and held on to Arkady's arms. Dymtrus breathed hard through the saliva that draped from his mouth. The blood on the pillow was still damp.

Arkady's eyes sought the moon, a treetop, anything else.

Dymtrus said, "You'll go like Karel went. Then we'll put you in the water, and no one will find you for a thousand fucking years."

"Fifty thousand." Alex Gerasimov came out of the trees. "More like fifty thousand years."

In Alex's hand was a gun. He shot Dymtrus in the back, and the big man collapsed as dead as a slaughtered steer while his brother sat back on his heels in surprise. Taras brushed the hair from his eyes and had started to form a question when Alex shot him. A cigarette burn through the heart. Taras looked down at it and kept falling until he spread out on the ground.

Alex picked up the pillow. "Je ne regrette rien. Absolutely," he said and flung the pillow into the water almost to the diamond marker.

They carried the bodies back.

Alex said the swamp and hillside were too hot; the militia would either leave the Woropays or drag them out by the heels. Hadn't Arkady seen the Chernobyl militia in action? What kind of investigation did he expect? Fortunately, there were two witnesses.

"They were trying to kill you and I saved your life. Isn't that what happened?"

They carried the Woropays over the shoulder, fireman-style. Alex led the way with Dymtrus while Arkady, one eye swollen shut and his sense of balance badly out of kilter for being gunwhipped, staggered under Taras. Going uphill was slow work, slipping on needles with every step.

Alex said, "You're lucky I heard the shot. I thought it was a poacher in the middle of the city. You know how I am about poachers."

"I know."

"Then I heard another shot behind the school and followed the shouting. The Woropays make a lot of noise."

"Yes."

"You're not hurt?"

"I'm fine."

Alex paused to look back. "We'll take these two up to the school, and then I'll get the truck."

Arkady tripped on a root and went to one knee like a waiter with too much on his tray. He couldn't shift shoulders because he could see out of only one eye. He pushed himself up and asked, "Did you see Katamay?"

"Yes. You know what makes a full moon extraordinary? You feel like an animal, like an animal sees." Despite Dymtrus's weight, with guns stuck fore and aft in his belt, Alex slowed his pace just to accommodate Arkady. "We don't deserve a full moon. We make everything smaller. Everything big we cut down. First-growth trees, big cats, adult fish, wild rivers. That's what's wonderful about the Zone. Keep us out for fifty thousand years, and this place may grow into something."

"You saw Karel?" Arkady repeated.

"He didn't look good."

Arkady climbed a step at a time, and Alex began talking the way an adult would on a long, cold walk with a boy who was sniveling and slow, by distracting him with stories and things the boy would like to hear.

"Pasha Ivanov and Lev Timofeyev were my father's favorites, always in and out of our apartment. His best researchers, best instructors and, when he was too drunk to function, his best protection. There's always a good impulse behind the worst disasters, don't you find? And I swear, when I began working at NoviRus, it was purely for the extra money. I had no great plan of retribution."

Retribution? Was that what Alex had said? Arkady's head was still ringing, and it took all his concentration to continue moving as Alex bent a tree limb out of his way.

"My friend Yegor called from Moscow. Yes, I worked part-time for NoviRus Security as an interpreter in the accident section, which usually meant twenty-four hours of reading in a small, windowless room. Maybe Colonel Ozhogin's office was on the fifteenth floor, but we were in the bowels of the building."

"The belly of the beast."

"Exactly. Since your're underground, it always seems like night. Very space-age, with tinted glass for walls. I began wandering the halls and discovered that the technicians monitoring all those security screens were even more bored than I was. They're kids; I was the only one over thirty. Imagine sitting in the dark and staring at a bank of screens for hours on end. For what? Martians? Chechens? Bank robbers with stockings pulled over their heads? One day I went by an empty chair, and on the screen was a palace gate swinging open for a couple of Mercedeses. The cars moved to another screen, and there was Pasha Ivanov after so many years, Mr. NoviRus himself, getting out of a car with a beautiful woman on his arm. It's his palace. I hadn't seen him since Chernobyl. On the screens I could follow him up the grand staircase and into the lobby. Here, I told myself, was a man who had everything.

"I wondered, what do you give a man who has everything? We were working with cesium chloride at the institute. Remember how social Ivanov was? At Christmas he threw a party for about a thousand people at his palace, collecting gifts for some charity. Very democratic: staff, friends, millionaires, children, wandering in every room because Ivanov liked to show off, the way New Russians do. I brought some grains of cesium chloride and a dosimeter in a lead box wrapped as a present, and lead-lined gloves and tongs in the back of my belt. I found his bathroom and left one grain out for him to step on and track around, and the present on the toilet seat with a card inviting him to Chernobyl to atone. I waited months, and all Ivanov did was send Hoffman, his fat American friend, to hide among the Hasidim. Can you believe it? Ivanov delegated a prayer for the dead, and Hoffman didn't even perform."