“Ether? Wonderful, the choice of the nineteenth century.”

“Elena Ilyichnina, this is not what I trained for.”

“You are all doing an excellent job. We want to be sure everything is nice and clean. We will have to remove the clot before we secure the bleeding point. I stand corrected, bleeding points. Valentina, step in or step out.”

“I’ll stay.”

“You do it, then. Delicately. You’re not drilling for oil.”

“I don’t understand. When he was prepped there was gunpowder in his hair. He was shot at point-blank range, but the bullet only penetrated the skull?”

“Evidently he is a hard nut to crack.”

“Did you see the ligature marks on his neck? I understand that strangulation can sometimes be a sexual game.”

“How do you know these things, Tina?”

“Only saying, he’s been hung by the neck and shot in the head and he’s still alive. He’s a lucky man.”

A silence.

“We will see. It depends on what you call lucky.”

Snipping and the ping of monitors.

“Good. Drill, please. Remember, the brain has no nerve endings; it feels no pain. Suction, please, and for the forehead a smaller bit on the drill.”

“The forehead?”

“To monitor pressure on the brain. Not pretty, but accessible.”

“Are you sure he doesn’t understand?”

“Let’s hope not. He would be very discouraged.”

Arkady started by wandering among picnic blankets looking for Zhenya. Instead he saw his parents, who were sitting with an open hamper on a quilt weighted with bottles of champagne.

“Reporting in?” the General asked.

Arkady saluted. “Reporting in, sir.”

“Is the camp secure?”

“The camp is secure.”

“You hear that, Belov? Arkasha is going to be my new aide de camp. You’re out of a job.”

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said.

“But we’d better check, hadn’t we?” He easily swung Arkady up onto his shoulders and ran across the lawn. They called it a lawn even though it was mostly an untended meadow of wildflowers bounded on one side by the dacha-a four-room cabin and porch-and, at the lower end, birches and willows and the bright glints of a river.

His father whipped through high grass and the white heads of daisies and Arkady, even in short pants, felt like a Cossack with a saber.

“You’re getting too big.” His father let Arkady down and they were at the quilt with Arkady’s mother and Belov enjoying tea sandwiches. They had champagne, he had lemonade. The lawn was covered with the blankets and hubbub of officers and their families. None were as handsome as Arkady’s father in a tailored uniform with stars on his shoulder boards or as beautiful as his young wife, Arkady’s mother. In white lace, her black hair falling to her waist, she was wrapped in a dreamy aura.

“You know what you remind me of?” his father said to his mother. “During the war I spent a few days in a nondescript place with a beautiful legend of a lake where all the swans go. A lake that only the truly innocent can find, hence no one has seen it for hundreds of years. But you are my swan, my redeeming swan.” He leaned across the blanket to collect a kiss and then turned to Arkady.

“How old are you now, Arkasha?”

“Seven, next month.”

“Since you’re almost seven I have an early birthday gift for you.” The General gave Arkady a leather box.

His mother said, “Kyril, you’ll spoil him.”

“Well, if he’s going to be my bodyguard…”

From the smell of gun oil Arkady knew what the present was before he opened the box, but it was better than he imagined, a revolver his own size.

“You two are a pair,” said his mother.

His father said, “A lady’s gun to start with. Don’t worry; you’ll grow into bigger ones. Try it.”

Arkady aimed at a small, brown bird that trilled on a wooden post.

“A finch is God’s choir,” said his mother.

It exploded into feathers.

“Is it dead?” Arkady was shocked.

“We’ll know more in twelve hours,” his father said.

“I’m going for a walk.” His mother got to her feet. “I’ll hunt for butterflies.”

His father said, “I have to play the host, I can’t go with you.”

“Arkasha will take care of me. Without the gun.”

Arkady and his mother walked along hydrangeas bearing globes of pink blossoms. With a butterfly net for a gun, he shot American agents as they sprang from the bushes. She moved in an absentminded way, eyes down, smiling at something only she heard.

When they reached the river she said, “Let’s gather stones.”

1822. ICP: 18 mm Hg. BP: 160/80. HR: 75.

“What does that mean?”

“May I have the patient’s chart back? BP is blood pressure, HR is heart rate, and ICP is pressure inside the skull. Normal ICP is up to fifteen millimeters of mercury. Damage starts at twenty and fatal starts at twenty-five. Are you a family member?”

“A colleague. I was there when he was shot. I thought he was dead.”

“The bullet penetrated the skull but not the covering of the brain. I don’t know why.”

“Ballistics says the gun was old enough to be from the war and so were the bullets in it. Gunpowder degrades. A round that old might barely clear the barrel. When I heard this I thought Renko would be walking out in a day or two. Then I get here and-”

“You can’t smoke here.”

“Sorry. I get here and he’s on a ventilator, a drip in his arm and tubes running out every side of his head.”

“His brain is bleeding and swelling.”

“Is he going to live?”

“We’ll know more in twelve hours.”

“You’re not going to look at him for twelve hours?”

“He is constantly monitored and observed. He’s lucky to be alive. We’re at half staff because of the weather. When he came in I had to organize a group of interns.”

“Interns?”

“Getting a tube down such a contused windpipe was no simple feat. You can’t drink here either. Put the bottle away. Detective, first let us deliver him to you alive, then you can blow smoke in his face or put him on a vodka drip, whatever you want. Am I clear? Do we understand each other?”

“Okay.”

“Has the family been notified?”

“There’s a woman who’s not his wife and a boy who’s not his son. The boy was at the scene. Is my friend hearing all this?”

“Yes and no. He’s in an induced coma to preserve brain function. Words are mere sounds.”

“Can I talk to him?”

“Keep it positive.”

“Arkady, about Zhenya. The little prick took off after you were shot. Nobody’s seen him since. Here’s the kicker: the shooter’s last name was Lysenko. Same as Zhenya.”

“Can you think of something more positive? I assume this assailant Lysenko has been detained.”

“He took three in the chest and two in the head. That sounds positive to me.”

Arkady moved upstream as he hunted so that when he nudged stones with his toes the sediment he raised flowed away. Although the surface of the water was slick with light his shadow unveiled a multitude of guppies dashing back and forth over a bed of rounded stones striped red or blue, green or black.

“Do you prefer hunting butterflies or stones?” his mother asked.

“Rabbits.”

“You used to hate hunting rabbits.”

“I changed my mind.”

“Well, today it’s stones. See, I already have a net full.”

She waded barefoot like Arkady, gathering her frilly dress in one hand and carrying the butterfly net with the other. From time to time she stopped to receive messages. Not from Arkady, but from people only she heard. The tumbling of water covered her conversation.

“What do they say?” he asked.

“Who?”

“The people you talk to.”

She gave him a confidential smile. “They say that the human brain floats in a sea of cerebral fluids.”

“What else do they say?”

“Not to be afraid.”