Two natives had stretched languidly in the shade of a saxaul tree to smoke cigarettes and watch Arkady on his motorbike chase ground squirrels across the desert floor. The boys were brothers with similar short, swirly black beards. They wore turbans, baggy trousers, oversized shirts, sunglasses.

“They’re watching,” the General said. “The minute we look weak, we will be under siege. That’s why we surround the camp with mines and discourage the natives from coming near and why we have never let them inside to see our electronic gear, until today, when they carried in my son because of his ant stings.”

“I’m sorry,” Arkady said.

“Do you know the consequences? I could lose my command. You could have set off a mine and lost your life.”

A gecko had darted in Arkady’s way. He had twisted the handlebars without thinking, and as the back end of the bike caught up with the front he flew over the machine and plowed face first into the gritty mound of an ant colony.

“Do you know what made Stalin great?” his father asked. “Stalin was great because, during the war, when the Germans took his son Yakov prisoner and proposed an exchange, Stalin refused, even though he knew that saying no was a death sentence for his son.” The General drew on his cigarette to make it flare. In spite of the ant bites Arkady felt a chill. “Tobacco burns at nine hundred degrees centigrade. The skin knows it. So I will give you a choice, your skin or theirs.”

“Whose?”

“The men who brought you, your native friends. They’re still here.”

“My skin.”

“Wrong answer.” From his shirt pocket his father gave Arkady two snapshots, one of each brother, bareheaded and stripped to the waist, lying in a bloody heap. “They wouldn’t have felt a thing.”

19

The sun was setting and the village was a picture of civilization going to sleep: a handful of cottages, half of them abandoned, a power line and the dome of a church. A woman shuffled under a yoke of water buckets. A smoke-colored cat followed. When the old woman shooed it, the cat nipped across the road and slipped between piles of metal and rubber belts, through stacks of fenders and tires. Arkady kept pace in the Zhiguli until the cat squeezed under the closed doors of a garage.

Arkady’s day had been spent searching for the right car, something with a Tver license plate and so drab it deflected attention. He had looked at Volgas, Ladas, Nivas of every color and variety of dents and for one reason or another each car was wrong.

Knocking on the door to no effect, Arkady let himself into the garage and immediately blinked from the light of an acetylene torch. A figure in a leather vest and welding mask was welding what could have been a fuel tank amid the pulleys and chains, vises and clamps of a workshop. Anonymous items under different tarps shifted in the glare. The cat jumped up to a shelf of motorcycle helmets and batted at sparks.

“Rudenko?” Arkady had to shout. “Rudi Rudenko?”

The welder turned down the flame and flipped up his mask. “Yeah, what?”

“This is the Rudenko repair shop?”

“So?”

“Do you have any used cars?”

“No. This is a motorcycle shop. Shut the door on your way out. Thank you. Have a shitty day.”

Arkady started for the door. He paused. On the way from Tver he had watched the rearview mirror in case he was followed and he could give a brief description of each car that had drawn close. Until his encounter with the motorcycle pack he had ignored bikes, virtually wiped them from his vision. Small motorbikes especially were as incidental as mosquitoes.

“You’re still here?” Rudenko said.

“Do you have any motorcycles to sell?”

“You want a car, then you want a bike. How about a fucking cat? I have one of those.”

“Do you have any bikes?”

“I don’t see you on one of my bikes. That would be like seeing an old man climbing on a beautiful woman. I’m busy.”

“I can wait.”

“There’s no waiting room.”

“I’ll wait in the car.”

“That car?” The welder looked through the door.

He turned off the torch and removed his mask, freeing a ponytail of red hair. Arkady’s spirits sank. Rudi was tall and angular with a beefsteak face and a sickly mustache. He was the biker who had welcomed Arkady to Tver with a hearty “Fuck Moscow.”

Arkady said, “Sometimes people bring in bikes for repair and never return. Do you have a bike like that?”

Rudi picked up a shovel and held it like an ax. “Let me fix your car first.”

“I simply want a bike.” The last thing Arkady wanted was a brawl with someone bigger and uglier.

“It’s okay!” Rudi suddenly shouted past Arkady, who found an old man coming at him from behind with a pitchfork. The old man must have shrunk because his clothes looked strapped on. “It’s okay, Granddad! Thanks!”

“Is it Fritz?” the old man asked.

“No, it’s not Fritz.”

“Watch for tanks.”

“Got my eyes peeled, Granddad.”

“Well, they’ll be back.” The old man shook the pitchfork as he retreated.

“We’ll be ready this time.”

“For what?” Arkady asked.

“Germans,” Rudi said. “If the Germans come again, he’s prepared. Where were we?”

“I came for a bike,” Arkady reminded him.

Rudi glanced in the direction his grandfather had gone.

“Just stand still.” Rudi put the shovel aside and patted Arkady down and found his ID. “A senior investigator from Moscow. Are you investigating me?”

“No.”

“How did you even know my name?”

“You’re in the telephone book.”

“Oh, okay, no harm done.”

Arkady appreciated that. Rudi had the arms of a man who lifted heavy bikes. On his right shoulder was a round BMW tattoo and on his left shoulder a Maserati trident. No tattoos of girls or guns, and no OMON tiger heads.

The grandfather returned to the door in a jacket with war medals. He gave Arkady a salute and said, “Rudenko reporting in.”

When Arkady returned the salute Rudi said, “Don’t encourage him. He thinks he knows you.”

“From where?”

“I don’t know. Sometime in his past. Ignore him. You really want a bike?”

“Yes.”

“I have three.” Rudi pulled tarps off a flame red Kawasaki, a tiger-striped Yamaha, and a sidecar Ural the color of mud.

“Beauties. The Japanese bikes, I mean. Two hundred on a straightaway, screaming like a jet.”

“And the Ural?”

“You want to go fast in a Ural? Drive it off a cliff.”

It was a fact that the Ural was not a racehorse. It was the mule of motor travel, its sidecar used to haul trussed chickens or a farmer’s wife. People called it a Cossack for its lack of charm.

“It has a Tver license?”

“Yes, see for yourself,” Rudi said. “Two thousand euros for either customized Japanese bike, two hundred for the fucking Ural.”

“It needs a new front tire.”

“I have a retread somewhere.” Rudi waved vaguely toward the pile of tires outside. “You’re a real risk taker, I can see that.”

“Would you throw in a helmet with a face shield?”

“No problem.” Rudi rooted around a trash can and fished out a helmet with a crack down the center. “Slightly used.”

“Can you deliver it tonight? Say, ten?”

“To get rid of it? Anywhere. I suggest Pushkin’s statue on the embankment. At night the gays move in and the militia moves out.” Rudi was suddenly alarmed. “Watch out, Granddad. No, no. Don’t come in.”

Carrying a paper bag, the old man stumbled against a corner stack of shovels and rods that fell with a clamor on the floor.

“Granddad, why do you always do that?”

“You look familiar,” the old man told Arkady. “Were you here in ’forty-one?”

“I wasn’t born yet in ’forty-one.”

“Would you know if this is Fritz?” The old man opened the bag and took out a skull with a hole in the back.

“All Germans are Fritz to my grandfather,” Rudi said.