Wolves Eat Dogs Read Online Free PDF Page B

problems, lung problems, liver problems. The trouble is, I’m dying too slowly. Once my pension meant something. Now I have to work until they push me into the grave. I ran the other day. I thought I heard church bells. It was my chest. They’re raising the price of vodka and tobacco. I don’t bother eating anymore. Fifteen brands of Italian pasta, but who can afford it? So do I really want to spend my final days playing bodyguard to a dog turd like Bobby Hoffman? Because that’s all he wants us for, bodyguards. And he’ll disappear, he’ll disappear as soon as he shakes more money out of Timofeyev. He’ll run when we need him most.”
    “He could have run already.”
    “He’s just driving up the price.”
    “You said there are good prints on the glasses. Maybe there are some more.”
    “Arkady, these people are different. It’s every man for himself. Ivanov is dead? Good riddance.”
    “So you don’t think it was suicide?” Arkady asked.
    “Who knows? Who cares? Russians used to kill for women or power, real reasons. Now they kill for money.”
    “The ruble wasn’t really money,” Arkady said.
    “But we’re leaving, right?”
    Bobby Hoffman sank into the sofa as they returned. He could read the verdict in their eyes. Arkady had intended to deliver the bad news and keep going, but he slowed as bands of sunlight vibrated the length of the room. A person could argue whether a white decor was timid or bold, Arkady thought, but there was no denying that Rina had done a professional job. The entire room glowed, and the chrome of the wet bar cast a shimmering reflection over the photographs of Pasha Ivanov and his constellation of famous and powerful friends. Ivanov’s world was so far away from the average Russian’s that the pictures could have been taken by a telescope pointed to the stars. This was the closest Arkady had gotten to NoviRus. He was, for the moment, inside the enemy camp.
    When Arkady got to the sofa, Hoffman wrapped his pudgy hands around Arkady’s. “Okay, I took a disk with confidential data from Pasha’s computer: shell companies, bribes, payoffs, bank accounts. It was going to be my insurance, but I’m spending it on you. I agreed to give it back when you’re done. That’s the deal I made with Ozhogin and Zurin, the disk for a few days of your help. Don’t ask me where it is, it’s safe. So you were right, I’m a venal slob. Big news. Know why I’m doing this? I couldn’t go back to my place. I didn’t have the strength, and I couldn’t sleep, either, so I just sat here. In the middle of the night, I heard this rubbing. I thought it was mice and got a flashlight and walked around the apartment. No mice. But I still heard them. Finally I went down to the lobby to ask the receptionist. He wasn’t at his desk, though. He was outside with the doorman, on their hands and knees with brushes and bleach, scrubbing blood off the sidewalk. They did it, there’s not a spot left. That’s what I’d been hearing from ten stories up, the scrubbing. I know it’s impossible, but that’s what I heard. And I thought to myself, Renko: there’s a son of a bitch who’d hear the scrubbing. That’s who I want.”

3
    I n the black-and-white videotape, the two Mercedeses rolled up to the street security camera, and bodyguards—large men further inflated by the armored vests they wore under their suits—deployed from the chase car to the building canopy. Only then did the lead car’s driver trot around to open the curbside door.
    A digital clock rolled in a corner of the tape. 2128. 2129. 2130. Finally Pasha Ivanov unfolded from the rear seat. He looked more disheveled than the dynamic Ivanov of the apartment photo gallery. Arkady had questioned the driver, who had told him that Ivanov hadn’t said a word all the way from the office to the apartment, not even on a mobile phone.
    Something amused Ivanov. Two dachshunds strained on their leashes to sniff his attaché case. Although the