Arkady said, “I have no idea.”

Rudi said, “Call him Big Rudi. He used to be bigger.”

“There’s no need for formalities between old comrades.” Rudi’s grandfather found a loose tooth, a brown molar, and plucked it from the jaw. “I never understood that. The Germans were such big strapping fellows and they had such bad teeth.”

“Where did you get it?” Arkady asked.

“Everywhere. Believe me, there’s nothing worse than fighting with a toothache. I pulled my own tooth out.” He dropped the tooth in a pocket. “Don’t fret, Rudi, I’ll pick up the shovels. Have you got my eyeglasses?”

“You lost them ten years ago.”

“They’re here somewhere.”

“Gaga,” Rudi told Arkady. “He lives in the past.”

Arkady helped the old man pick up the shovels. Among them was a homemade metal detector, with an inductor coil and a gauge. While Rudi slammed through drawers in a search of sale documents his vest rode up from a gun tucked into the back of his jeans.

The cat leapt up to a shelf of Nazi helmets, some whole and some punctured. On a work counter, a metal canister with instructions in German was the explosive end of a “potato masher” hand grenade. The foggy eyes of an ancient gas mask peeked from a cabinet. A camouflage tunic on a hook had the same shoulder emblem-star, helmet and rose-that Arkady had seen at the rally in Tver.

“Did you go to the rally today?” Arkady asked Rudi.

“For Isakov? He’s a fucking fascist.”

“He seems popular.”

“He’s still a fucking fascist.”

“I met Stalin,” Rudi’s grandfather said.

Arkady took a second to adjust to such a broad change of subject. It was possible, Arkady thought. Big Rudi was old enough.

“When?” Arkady asked.

“Today.”

“Where?”

“On the hill in back. Look out the window, he’s there now.”

Enough light was cast by the window for Arkady to see there was no Stalin and no hill, only the stubble of winter grass.

“I was too slow. He’s gone. Did he say anything?” Arkady asked.

“To go to the dig.” The old boy became excited. “Come with us tomorrow. Stalin will be there.”

“Will Isakov?”

“Maybe. It doesn’t matter,” Rudi said. “You’re not a Digger. It’s members only.”

“Why?” Arkady asked.

“One, you’d be in the way. Two, since you don’t know what you’re doing you might get hurt or hurt someone else. Three, it’s strictly against the rules. Four, no fucking way. Why do you even ask? What did you expect to see there?”

That Arkady did not know. Signs? Maybe revelations?

“The monster not only knocked down an invading Fascist plane,” Zhenya said, “it came out of Lake Brosno and chased away the invading Mongols hundreds of years ago. Now scientists have to find out if it’s the same monster or a descendant. That’s what the expedition is all about. They have a picture of it, a photograph, not a drawing. I saw it on the television.”

Arkady switched his cell phone to the other ear; when Zhenya was excited his voice tended to be shrill. Nothing had excited him more than the Lake Brosno monster.

“What did it look like?” Arkady asked.

“It was kind of blurred. It could have been a form of apatosaurus. Definitely. The scientists went out in a boat with special equipment and detected something really strange underneath the surface.”

“What did they do?”

“They dropped a grenade on it.”

“Any man of science would.” Arkady looked out the apartment window at the roofs of Tver. He saw church spires but no onion domes to lend the city grace or fantasy. On the other hand, Arkady appreciated the local monster for turning Zhenya from a virtual mute into a chatterbox. “What did the monster do then?”

“Nothing. It escaped. It would have been great if it swallowed the boat.”

“And it would have been proof.”

Zhenya said, “I’d like to see a video of that.”

“Wouldn’t we all?”

Pushkin’s statue had a top hat, iron poise, perhaps a smirk. Arkady had no such style. Every few minutes, different men would come out of the dark, pass him and the statue in a speculative fashion and continue on their way. Fifteen minutes late Rudi rode the Ural up the embankment to Pushkin’s statue, followed by another biker on Rudi’s red bike.

Rudi climbed off, removed his helmet and shook his ponytail free. For the cool of the evening he wore camos, army green, not OMON blue. “Sorry, I’m late. I had to take back roads and alleys so no one would see me on a tricycle.”

“I understand. You have a reputation to protect.”

Rudi’s fellow rider was a heavyset man upholstered in leather and chains. His name was Misha. Misha rattled impatiently while Arkady counted out money.

“The helmet?” Arkady asked.

“In the sidecar. I filled the fuel tank.”

That was more than Arkady had expected. He unsnapped the sidecar cover and found a scuffed but uncracked motorcycle helmet with a visor.

“Thanks.”

“You know my granddad.”

“Big Rudi with the pitchfork?”

“Right. He is really sure he saw Stalin. He heard there was a man in Moscow who was shot in the head. Stalin appeared and the guy got up and walked away.”

“That’s quite a story.”

Misha said, “Rudi, are we going or what?”

Rudi waved him off and told Arkady, “I gave you a new tire. A knobby, for off-the-road action.”

“That’s generous of you.” Arkady did not plan to go off the road.

“You realize you’re coming out ahead on this deal, Renko.”

“What do you want?”

“You’re so fucking suspicious.”

“That’s right.”

“Okay, my granddad wants to see you again. It would mean a lot to him and I’d personally consider us even. He’s positive he saw you here during the war.”

“I wasn’t even born.”

“Humor him. He lives in the past and he remembers old stuff better than new. Sometimes he gets mixed up. He sees you and now he’s all wound up. Big deal, you drop by the shop for a visit. A fucking hour of your precious time.”

“At the dig.”

“I can’t do that. Like I said before, you’re not a Digger.”

“I’ll talk to Big Rudi at the dig. Nowhere else.”

“I explained, it’s not allowed. You have to be a Digger.”

“Too bad,” said Arkady.

“What a son of a bitch.”

“The dig.”

Rudi and Misha got on the red bike, which came to life with a vibrato that warned the world to move aside while Rudi went in circles around Arkady.

“You know, Pushkin’s not the only one here with brass balls.”

Rudi made another turn.

“We leave for the dig at six.”

As soon as Rudi had gone Arkady checked out his new acquisition. New to him. The Ural had to be thirty years old, at least. A spare tire was secured on the back of the sidecar, which looked like a large sandal and had the major amenities: a shovel and a windshield. The machine-gun mount had been cut off. Arkady had noticed when he first saw the bike that it was stamped in various places with a star, meaning it had come off a military assembly line.

Stalin’s engineers got their hands on some German BMWs, took them apart, strengthened this, simplified that and when they put the bikes back together they were Russian. Cossacks might be a lowly transporter of potatoes now, but they had once carried heroes to Berlin.

Arkady rolled through Tver. The Ural’s engine wasn’t symphonic but it was steady, its power dedicated not to speed but to traction, and since the sidecar was connected to the bike it drove like a car. No leaning. He rode by one dark restaurant after another, from one empty square to the next, like a chess piece alone on a board. If half the city was on the crawl, he was looking under the wrong rocks. He swung back toward the embankment, gathered speed along the river and had yet to see an open enterprise apart from an all-night casino that, compared to Moscow’s, had the allure of a pachinko parlor.