Platonov took air in gasps. Arkady pulled him by the sleeve back in the direction they had originally been headed; it was like helping a camel through the snow. The two turns had cost time and distance. Finally, Platonov could go no further and hung onto an oil barrel in which shovels were deposited.

Bora approached through hanging flakes. Something bright hung from his hand. Left far behind, the cameraman shouted at him to stop. Bora took quicker, more purposeful strides.

“You laughed,” he told Arkady.

“When?”

“In the Metro. For that I will carve out your eyes and fuck you in the face.”

Bora drew his arm back. He was in midstride when he plunged through the snow and vanished. Snowflakes seesawed in his place. Arkady brushed snow aside and saw a hand pressed against the underside of ice.

The cameraman caught up, his beard frosted from his breath. He was just a boy, soft and heavy with red flannel cheeks.

“I tried to warn him,” the cameraman said.

“The name should have been a hint,” Arkady said.

The wartime Kirov Station had been renamed Chistye Prudy for the “clear pond” that cooled the park in the summertime and provided skating in the winter. Soft spots were posted with Danger-Thin Ice! signs that were perfectly visible in the daytime. The pool was shallow and the hole Bora had plunged through was just out of reach, but by a freakish chance he was on his back under more solid ice and faced the wrong direction. He couldn’t get his feet under him and, with such poor leverage, could only use his fists, knees and head. Arkady had only expected Bora to get soaked in icy water. This was a bonus.

“Your name?” Arkady asked the cameraman.

“Petrov. Don’t you think we should-”

“Your flashlight and papers, please?”

“But-”

“Flashlight and papers.”

Arkady matched the cameraman to the ID photo of a clean-shaven Pyetr Semyonovich Petrov; age: twenty-two; residence: Olympic Village, Moscow; ethnicity: Russian through and through. Petrov was a pack rat. Arkady delved deeper into the holder and came up with a business card for Cinema Zelensky, membership in Mensa, video club cards, a second mini cassette, a matchbook from a “gentlemen’s club” called Tahiti and a condom. A telephone number was scribbled inside the matchbook. Arkady pocketed the matchbook and tape and gave the ID back.

Bora squeezed his face against the ice. He was moving less.

Arkady put his arm around the cameraman. “Pyetr, may I call you Petya?”

“Yes.”

“Petya, I am going to ask you a question and I want you to answer as if your life depended on it. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“Be honest. When passengers on the Metro think they see Stalin, what are they really seeing? What is the trick?”

“There’s no trick.”

“No special effects?”

“No.”

“Then how do people see him?”

“They just do.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Arkady took a snow shovel from the oil barrel, raised it high, walked onto the ice and chopped at the ice over Bora’s head. The blade skipped and sang. No other effect. Petya aimed the flashlight at Bora’s eyes. They had the flat stare of a fish on ice. A second chop. A third. Bora didn’t flinch. Arkady wondered whether he might have waited a little too long. Platonov gaped from the edge of the pond. Arkady swung the shovel and the first cracks showed as prisms in the flashlight’s beam. Swung again and as the ice split Arkady sank halfway to his knees in water, no worse than stepping into a tube of ice cubes. He worked from the head down until he got a hold under Bora’s arms and hauled him out onto land. Bora was white and rubbery. Arkady turned him face down, straddled him and pushed on his back. With all of his weight, he pushed and relaxed while his own teeth chattered. Pushed and relaxed and chattered. When Arkady had come to Chistye Prudy as a kid, he was always watched by Sergeant Belov, who taught Arkady to catch snow on his tongue. The sergeant would tell Arkady, this delicious one has your name on it. Here’s another. And another. When Arkady skated, he chased snowflakes like a greedy swallow.

Bora gagged. He doubled up as pool water spewed from his mouth. Caught a deep breath draped with saliva. Retched again, wringing himself out. Sodden and freezing, he shivered not in any ordinary way but violently, as if he were in the grip of an invisible hand. He twisted his eyes up toward Arkady.

“It’s a miracle,” Petya said.

“Back from the dead,” said Platonov. He hovered, blocking half the light.

Bora turned onto his back and laid a knife against Arkady’s throat. He had returned from the dead with a trump card. The blade scraped a hair Arkady had missed when shaving.

“Thank you…and now…I fuck you,” Bora said.

But the cold overwhelmed him. His shivering grew uncontrollable and hard enough to break bones. His teeth chattered like a runaway machine and his arms wrapped straitjacket-style tight around his body.

“Find the knife,” Arkady told the boy with the flashlight.

“What knife?”

Arkady got to his feet and took the flashlight. “Bora’s.”

“I didn’t see one,” Platonov said.

“He had a knife.” Arkady nudged Bora over not with a kick, but firmly. No knife. Arkady played the beam in and around the water where Bora had fallen through, where he had freed Bora from the ice and finally, trying to reverse time, on Bora’s tracks across the snow.

“A magnificent night,” Platonov declared. “A night like this you can only find in Moscow. This is the most fun I’ve had for years. And that you had your car parked here by the pond? Brilliant! Thinking two moves ahead!” He slapped the Zhiguli’s dashboard with satisfaction. The lamps of the Boulevard Ring rolled by; Platonov still hadn’t said where he wanted to go.

Arkady said, “Make up your mind. My feet are wet and numb.”

“Want me to drive?”

“No, thanks.” He had seen Platonov walk.

“You know who I saw tonight? I saw your father the General. I saw him in you. The apple does not fall far from the tree. Although I’m sorry you let that hooligan go.”

“You didn’t see his knife.”

“Neither did the boy with the flashlight. I take your word for it.”

“That’s what I mean. All you could testify to is that Bora fell through the ice.”

“Anyway, you taught him a lesson. He’ll be frozen solid for a day or two.”

“He’ll be back.”

“Then you’ll finish him off, I’m confident. It is a shame about the knife. You think it will turn up in the pond?”

“Tomorrow, next week.”

“Maybe when the ice melts. Can you hold a man in prison until the snow melts? I like the sound of it.”

“I’m sure you do.”

Platonov said, “You know, I met your father during the war on the Kalinin Front.”

“Did you play chess?”

Platonov smiled. “As a matter of fact, I was playing simultaneous games to entertain the troops when he sat down and took a board. He was very young for a general and so covered in mud I couldn’t see his rank. It was extraordinary. Most amateurs trip over their knights. Your father had an instinctive understanding of the special mayhem caused by that piece.”

“Who won?”

“Well, I won. The point is he played a serious game.”

“I don’t think my father was ever on the Kalinin Front.”

“That’s where I saw him. He was cheated.”

“Out of what?”

“You know what.”

Snow had stifled the usual twenty-four-hour assault of construction crews across the city. The drive along the Boulevard Ring’s white-trimmed trees felt like passage through a more intimate town.

“There were atrocities on either side,” Platonov went on. “The main thing is that your father was a successful commander. Especially in the beginning of the war, when all seemed lost, he was superhuman. If anyone deserved a field marshal’s baton it was him. In my opinion he was smeared by hypocrites.”