At first, his role was as simple as it was clearly defined: He’d provide the space in his

buildings to expand Kuzin’s brothel empire. This Arkadin did with his usual efficiency.

Nothing could have been simpler, and for several months as the rubles rolled in he

congratulated himself on making a lucrative business deal. Plus, his association with

Kuzin brought him a boatload of perks, from free drinks at the local pubs to free sessions

with Kuzin’s ever-expanding ring of teenage girls.

But it was this very thing-the young prostitutes-that became Arkadin’s slippery slope

into hell’s lowest level. When he stayed away from the brothels, or made his cursory

weekly checkups to ensure the apartments weren’t being trashed, it was easy to turn a

blind eye on what was really going on. He was mostly too busy counting his money.

However, on those occasions when he availed himself of a freebie or two, it was

impossible not to notice how young the girls were, how afraid they were, how bruised

their thin arms were, how hollow their eyes, and, all too often, how drugged up most of

them were. It was like Zombie Nation in there.

All of this might have passed Arkadin by with a minimum of speculation had he not

developed a liking for one of them. Yelena was a girl with wide lips, skin as pale as

snow, and eyes that burned like a coal fire. She had a quick smile and, unlike some of the

other girls, she wasn’t prone to bursting into tears for no apparent reason. She laughed at his jokes, she lay with him afterward, her face buried in his chest. He liked the feel of her in his arms. Her warmth seeped into him like fine vodka, and he grew used to how she

found just the right position so that the curves of her body meshed perfectly with his. He

could fall asleep in her arms, which for him was something of a miracle. He couldn’t

remember when he’d last slept through the night.

About this time, Kuzin called him into a meeting, told him he was doing so well he

wanted to increase his partnership stake with Arkadin.

“Of course, I’ll need you to play a more active role,” Kuzin said in his semi-intelligible

voice. “Business is so good that what I need most now is more girls. That’s where you

come in.”

Kuzin made Arkadin the head of a crew whose sole purpose was to solicit teenage girls

from the populace of Nizhny Tagil. This Arkadin did with his usual frightening

efficiency. His visits to Yelena’s bed were as plentiful but not as idyllic. She had grown

afraid, she told him, of the disappearances of some of the girls. One day she saw them;

the next they had vanished as if they’d never existed. No one spoke of them, no one

answered her questions when she asked where they’d gone. In the main, Arkadin

dismissed her fears-after all, the girls were young, weren’t they leaving all the time? But Yelena was certain the girls’ disappearances had nothing to do with them and everything

to do with Stas Kuzin. No matter what he said, her fears did not subside until he promised

to protect her, to make sure nothing happened to her.

After six months Kuzin took him aside.

“You’re doing a great job.” A mixture of vodka and cocaine slurred Kuzin’s voice

even further. “But I need more.”

They were in one of the brothels, which to Arkadin’s practiced eye looked oddly

underpopulated. “Where are all the girls?” he asked.

Kuzin waved an arm. “Gone, run away, who the fuck knows where? These bitches get

a bit of money in their pocket, they’re off like rabbits.”

Ever the pragmatist, Arkadin said, “I’ll take my crew and go find them.”

“A waste of time.” Kuzin’s little head bobbled on his shoulders. “Just find me more.”

“It’s getting difficult,” Arkadin pointed out. “Some of the girls are scared; they don’t

want to come with us.”

“Take them anyway.”

Arkadin frowned. “I don’t follow you.”

“Okay, moron, I’ll lay it out for you. Take your fucking crew in the fucking van and

snatch the bitches off the street.”

“You’re talking about kidnapping.”

Kuzin laughed. “Fuck me, he gets it!”

“What about the cops.”

Kuzin laughed even harder. “The cops are in my pocket. And even if they weren’t,

d’you think they get paid to work? They don’t give a rat’s ass.”

For the next three weeks Arkadin and his crew worked the night shift, delivering girls

to the brothel, whether or not they wanted to come. These girls were sullen, often

belligerent, until Kuzin took them into a back room, where none of them ever wanted to

go a second time. Kuzin didn’t mess with their faces, as that would be bad for business;

only their arms and legs were bruised.

Arkadin watched this controlled violence as if through the wrong end of a telescope.

He knew it was happening, but he pretended it had nothing to do with him. He continued

to count his money, which was now piling up at a more rapid clip. It was his money and

Yelena that kept him warm at night. Each time he was with her, he checked her arms and

legs for bruises. When he made her promise not to take drugs, she laughed, “Leonid

Danilovich, who has money for drugs?”

He smiled at this, knowing what she meant. In fact, she had more money than all the

other girls in the brothel combined. He knew this because he was the one who gave it to

her.

“Get yourself a new dress, a new pair of shoes,” he’d tell her, but frugal girl that she

was, she’d merely smile and kiss him on the cheek with great affection. She was right, he

realized, not to do anything to call attention to herself.

One night, not long after, Kuzin accosted him as he was leaving Yelena’s room.

“I have an urgent problem and I need your help,” the freak said.

Arkadin went with him out of the apartment building. A large van was waiting on the

street, its engine running. Kuzin climbed into the back, and Arkadin followed. Two of the

brothel girls were being guarded by Kuzin’s pair of personal ghouls.

“They tried to escape,” Kuzin said. “We just caught them.”

“They need to be taught a lesson,” Arkadin said, because he assumed that was what his

partner wanted him to say.

“Too fucking late for that.” Kuzin signaled to the driver, and the van took off.

Arkadin settled back on the seat, wondering where they were going. He kept his mouth

shut, knowing that if he asked questions now he’d look like a fool. Thirty minutes later

the van slowed, turned off onto an unpaved road. For the next several minutes they

jounced along a rutted track that must have been very narrow because branches kept

scraping against the sides of the van.

At length, they stopped, the doors opened, and everyone clambered out. The night was

very dark, illuminated only by the headlights of the van, but in the distance the fire of the smelters was like blood in the sky or, rather, on the undersides of the belching miasma

churned out by hundreds of smokestacks. No one saw the sky in Nizhny Tagil, and when

it snowed the flakes turned gray or even sometimes black as they passed through the

industrial murk.

Arkadin followed along with Kuzin as the two ghouls pushed the girls through the

thick, weedy underbrush. The resiny scent of pine perfumed the air so strongly, it almost

masked the appalling stench of decomposition.

A hundred yards in the ghouls pulled back on the collars of the girls’s coats, reining

them in. Kuzin took out his gun and shot one of the girls in the back of the head. She

pitched forward into a bed of dead leaves. The other girl screamed, squirming within the

ghoul’s grasp, desperate to run.

Then Kuzin turned to Arkadin, placed the gun in his hand. “When you pull the