‘I understand,’ the chief nodded. ‘Well, you go to the third tent now, Anton lives there. He is commander of the next shift. Tell him you were sent by me.’

It was noisy in the tent with the painted number ‘3.’ Two little lads about ten years of age, played on the floor with the cartridge cases of automatic weapons. Alongside them sat a young girl, who was looking at her brothers with eyes wide with curiosity, but who had not decided to participate in the game. A neat middle-aged, woman in an apron was slicing some kind of food for dinner. It was comfortable here, a delicious domestic smell hung in the air.

‘Anton has gone out, have a seat and wait,’ the woman offered, smiling cordially.

The boys had begun to gaze at them watchfully, then one of them approached Artyom.

‘Do you have any cartridge cases?’ he asked, looking at him sullenly.

‘Oleg, stop your begging at once!’ the woman said sternly, not stopping what she was preparing.

To Artyom’s surprise, Melnik put his hand into the pocket of his trousers, fumbled about and withdrew several unusual oblong cartridge cases, clearly not from a Kalashnikov. Jamming them into his fist and jingling them like a rattle, the stalker extended the treasure to the child. His eyes immediately lit up, but he didn’t have the courage to take the gift.

‘Take them, take them!’ The stalker winked at him and dumped the cartridge cases into the child’s outstretched palm.

‘Now I’ll win! Look, how big! It’ll be Spetsnaz!’ the boy yelled happily.

Watching, Artyom had seen that the cartridge cases with which they played had been laid out in equal rows and, apparently, represented tin soldiers. Even he himself had played like that once, only he had been lucky: he still had real little tin soldiers, though from various collections.

As a battle unfolded on the floor, the father of the children entered the tent. He was a short, thin man with wet dark-blond hair. Seeing the strangers, he nodded at them in silence and, not uttering a word, stared intently at Melnik.

‘Papa, Papa, did you bring us some more cartridge cases? Oleg now has more, they gave him some long ones!’ the second boy nagged, plucking at the father’s trouser leg.

‘From the authorities,’ the stalker explained. ‘We are going on duty with you into the tunnels. Like reinforcements.’

‘More reinforcements are out of the question,’ muttered the boss of the tent, but the lines of his face had become smooth. ‘My name is Anton. We’ll just have a bite to eat and go. Have a seat.’ He pointed at the stuffed sacks that served as chairs in this home.

Despite the guests’ resistance, both partook of a smoking bowl with tubers unfamiliar to Artyom. He looked at the stalker questioningly, but the stalker confidently stabbed a piece on his fork, put it into his mouth and began to chew. Something resembling satisfaction was reflected in his poker face, and this imparted bravery to Artyom. The tubers were totally unlike mushrooms to the taste, they were sweet and a little fatty, and he ate his fill of them in only a few minutes. At first Artyom wanted to ask what they were eating, but then he thought that it would be better for him not to know. They were tasty and OK. Some places they consider rats’ brains a delicacy…

‘Pop, can I go with you, on duty?’ having eaten half his portion and spreading the rest along the edges of his plate, the child to whom the stalker had given the cartridge case asked.

‘No, Oleg,’ the host answered, frowning.

‘Olezhenka! What’s this about duty? Just what are you thinking? They don’t take little boys there!’ wailed the woman, taking her son by the hand.

‘Mom, what do you mean, little boy?’ Oleg said, examining the guests uncomfortably and trying to speak with a deep voice.

‘Don’t even think about it! Do you want to drive me to hysterics?’ The mother had raised her voice.

‘Well, fine, fine,’ the child mumbled.

But as soon as the woman had gone to the other end of the tent to fetch something else for the table, he tugged his father by the sleeve and loudly whispered:

‘But you took me the last time…’

‘The conversation is finished!’ the host said sternly.

‘It doesn’t matter…’ Oleg muttered his final words to himself under his breath so that they couldn’t be heard clearly.

Having finished eating, Anton stood up from the table, unlocked a metal box standing on the floor, and took an old army AK-47 out of it and said:

‘Shall we go? It’s a short shift today, I’ll be back in six hours,’ he reported to his wife.

Both Melnik and Artyom stood immediately. Little Oleg looked in desperation at his father and fidgeted uneasily in his seat, but decided to say nothing.

At the dark tunnel orifice sat a pair of guards on the edge of the platform, legs hanging downward and a third blocked the passages and peered into the darkness. There was stencilling on the wall. ‘The Arbatskaya Confederation. Welcome!’ The letters were half-erased, and it was immediately clear that it hadn’t been repainted for a very long time. The guards conversed in a whisper and even hushed one another if one of them suddenly raised his voice.

Besides the stalker and Artyom, two more local men accompanied Anton. Both of them were sombre and not talkative, they looked at the guests malevolently, and Artyom never caught what their names were.

Having exchanged some short phrases with the people protecting the entrance to the tunnel, they stepped down to the paths and slowly moved forward. The tunnel’s round arches were perfectly conventional here, the floor and walls appeared untouched by time.

And yet the unpleasant feeling about which the peddlers had spoken had begun to envelop Artyom as soon as he took his first steps.

A dark, inexplicable fear crept out from the depths to greet him. It was quiet on the line. Some human voices were heard in the distance: mostly likely there was a patrol located there, too.

It was one of the strangest posts that Artyom had seen.

Several men sat around on bags filled with sand. In the middle stood a cast-iron stove and, some distance further away, a pail of fuel oil. Only the tongues of flame penetrating the slits in the stove and the light of the flickering wick of an oil lamp suspended from the ceiling illuminated the faces of the patrol members. The lamp swung a little from the stale tunnel air, and therefore, it seemed that the shadows of the people sitting motionless were living their own private lives. The lookout members were sitting with their backs to the tunnel. The air was irritating their eyes.

Protecting their eyes from the blinding rays of the flashlights of the replacements with their hands, the lookouts gathered themselves up to go home.

‘Well, how was it?’ Anton asked of them, ladling out a scoop of fuel oil.

‘How can it be here?’ the senior shift member grinned gloomily. ‘Like always. Empty. Quiet. Quiet…’ He snuffed and, having hunched up, began walking towards the station.

While those remaining moved their bags closer to the stove and planted themselves, Melnik turned to Anton: ‘Well, shall we continue on and take a look at what’s there?’

‘There’s nothing to see there, it’s just blocked, I’ve already seen it a hundred times. Look, if you want, it’s about fifteen metres from here.’ Anton pointed over his shoulder in the direction of Park Pobedy.

The tunnel was half destroyed before the blockage. The floor was covered with rock and dirt fragments, the ceiling had sagged in some places and the walls were crumbling and had converged. The warped opening of an entrance to unknown office facilities at the side had grown black, and at the very end of this appendix the rusty rails had been thrust into a pile covered with concrete blocks, mixed with cobblestones and soil. The metal utility line pipes that also stretched along the walls were immersed in this earthen layer.