"You bought your way in."

"It's legal."

"If your past is clean. You changed your name, you changed your hair, and I'm sure you changed your record. Anything else?"

"There was a Levinson. He ran out on them."

"And you came to the rescue?"

"Yes. Two years ago. I was already her patient. But Rebecca wants nothing to do with the Mafia. We're married, and I only get to see her and the girl maybe once a month because I couldn't let anyone find out, most of all, my former colleagues."

"And the hygienist?"

"Her? I had to have a cover to be around the office. Anyway, I'm sure she's having a good time in Morocco. A nice kid."

"That's what Victor said."

"I saw Victor. I dragged him around Kiev. He's looking better."

"The call you made from Butyrka Prison to Pasha Ivanov, what was that about?"

"It was a warning, or it would have been a warning if he'd ever returned the call."

"Warning Pasha about what?"

"Things."

"You'll have to do better than that."

"Come on."

"Let me help you. Karel Katamay. He's dead, by the way."

"I saw on the news." Anton backed into a lipstick display like a fighter who'd decided to absorb punishment. "Okay, I knew Karel from Pripyat, from when he was a kid. I knew what he went through. I remember the evacuation and how people treated everyone from Pripyat as if we had the plague. I was lucky I was a boxer; no one made much fun of me. It was tough for Karel. I'd hear from him a lot when he was little, then nothing for the last few years until suddenly he calls up, says he's in Moscow and needs to borrow a van. A fumigator van. He never asked a favor before."

"Did he say why?"

"He said, a stunt. A joke on a friend."

"And you got him the van?"

"What, do you think I'm crazy? I'm going to put the future of my family in jeopardy to steal a van for a kid I haven't seen for years? When I said no, that's when he told me he came to Moscow to take care of Pasha Ivanov. Trying to impress me, saying we'd get even. I told him there was no way of getting even with Ivanov, ever. What's done is done. Then I put myself away into Butyrka until the thing blew over. I called Ivanov but he never called back. I tried."

"And now you're going to run?"

"I'm not running. There comes a point when you've had enough. You just want to live somewhere normal, with laws."

"With your criminal background, how do you think you can get out?"

"Like this. Walk out the door. Get on a plane. Start over."

"What about the heads you broke and the people you ruined? Do you think you can leave them behind?"

Anton gathered his hands into fists. The lipstick display began to tremble. Arkady glanced at the waiting hall and saw Dr. Levinson and the girl standing with their assembled bags, their eyes on the tickets in his hand. He could almost see the floor open up beneath them.

"No," Anton said. "Rebecca says I take them all with me. The ones I hurt, they all go with me. I never forget."

"She's going to redeem you?"

"Maybe."

"Renko!" Zurin waved with great agitation from across the hall. "Damn it, Renko!"

For the first time Arkady saw Anton's eyes truly open, as if there were an interior never seen before. Anton opened his hands and let them hang. Arkady felt the entire hall go still.

"Renko, stay there!" Zurin ordered.

"Gate B10," Arkady read from Anton's boarding pass. He handed back the tickets and papers. "I'd go to the gate now if I were you." When Anton started to say something, Arkady gave him a push. "Don't look back."

Anton joined the mother and daughter; framed by them, he did look more human. Arkady watched them gather their carry-ons and join a general migration toward the gates. Anton put on sunglasses in spite of the gloomy lighting. The girl waved.

"Renko, will you stay in one place?" Zurin arrived with a stamp of his foot. "Who was that man?"

"Someone I thought I knew."

"Did you?"

"As it turned out, not a bit."

They returned to the pub. Zurin lit a cigar and read the newspaper. Arkady tried but couldn't sit still enough, not when there were so many people, so many possibilities, so much life rushing by.

They paid a visit in December. Eva decided that one day's exposure was permissible, although Zhenya went with all the enthusiasm of a hostage. At least Arkady had the boy wear a new jacket, which was victory enough.

A light snow had fallen, giving the village a crisp jacket of white. Brambles were transformed into snowy flowers. Every tumbledown cabin was traced in white, and every abandoned chair held a cushion of snow. The entire population had turned out: Klara the Viking, Olga with her foggy spectacles, Nina on her crutch and, of course, Roman and Maria, to distribute a welcome of bread and salt and samogon. Vanko had come from Chernobyl. Even the cow lifted her head from her stall to see what the noise was about.

Maria stuffed everyone into the cabin for warm borsch and more samogon. The men ate standing up. Windows steamed and cheeks got red. Zhenya studied the oven, with its shelf for sleeping, and it occurred to Arkady that the boy had never seen a peasant cabin except in fairy tales. He turned to Arkady and mouthed, "Baba Yaga." The room was exactly as Arkady remembered: the same woodland tapestries and red-and-white embroidered cloths, the family icon high in its corner and, on the wall, photographs, the coexisting moments of a young Roman and Maria, of their daughter with her husband and little girl, of the same granddaughter on a Cuban beach.

Eva was the center of attention because Maria and her friends wanted to know what Moscow was like. Although she made light of it, Arkady knew that for Eva the move to Moscow was not always a happy situation. She'd gotten away from the Zone and found work at a clinic, but many days she felt she was occupying Irina's place or was a shell of a woman pretending to be whole. But other days were good, and some were very good.

Under the influence of the samogon, Vanko confided that since Alex Gerasimov's death, funding from Russia for ecological research had slowed to a trickle. A research team from Texas was moving in, however, and they would probably need someone local. Perhaps the British Friends of the Ecology would like to contribute. He hoped so.

Maria laughed at everything Eva said. In her bright scarves, Maria looked like a twice-wrapped present, and her steel teeth gleamed. An almost childish glee seemed to have infected all the old villagers, an excitement that bubbled over in spite of their politeness.

Roman shyly pulled Arkady aside to say, "None of our families have visited for almost a year. Not even to the cemetery, if you can imagine."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"I understand. They're busy people, and they're far away. I hope you don't mind if I take advantage of your visit, but I don't know when I will have three men here again. It takes at least three men. That's why I invited Vanko. Don't worry, I have old clothes for you to wear."

"That's fine with me."

"Good!" Roman refilled their glasses.

Arkady backtracked. "Three men to what?"

Maria couldn't hold it in any longer. "Kill the pig!"

Snow was falling again in soft handfuls.

Roman came out of the barn in boots and a rubber apron. Vanko had tied one of the pig's legs across its chest to keep it off balance, but Sumo was strong and agile, and it understood in a moment that the same people who had been its benefactors for a year were going to slaughter it. Dragging Vanko in its wake, the pig squealed its outrage and terror, plunging one direction and then another while Roman hung a double pulley and rope over the barn door.