Martin Smith - Three Stations

Arkady recognized the pilgrim as Aza Baron, formerly Baranovsky, who spent six years in prison for fraud. Upon release, he ran the same scams but called it a hedge fund and became wealthy enough to have his conviction expunged. Voila! A new name, a new history, a new man. Baron was not the only rags-to-riches story. Arkady spied an Olympic official who, as a youth, beat a rival to death with a cricket bat. Another man's shaved head bore the nicks of a grenade attack, reminders that climbing the ladder of success involved a certain amount of ducking.

A long display case held wristwatches that told time, date, depth, split seconds and time for medication. Up to $120,000. A cello played by Rostropovich. A giant commode employed by Peter the Great.

Security men in Armani black filtered through the crowd. Arkady wondered how to even begin. He imagined tapping Baron on the shoulder and saying, "Excuse me. I am investigating the death of a cheap prostitute and, for all your money, you seemed a likely candidate to ask." Followed by immediate ejection.

A woman on the runway announced, "Fifteen minutes before closing the fair for the night. Thanks to you and your demand for only the best, luxury helps the needy, especially all those innocent girls. Fifteen minutes."

Arkady posed as a man trying to decide between an armored Bentley at $250,000, a Harley-Davidson cruiser studded with diamonds at $300,000 or a Bugatti Veyron as black as a storm cloud at $1.5 million. Security men were definitely coming in Arkady's direction. Someone had checked his name against the VIP list after all. Arkady thought he could live with the social disgrace. He was only angry at himself for failing to show Olga's photo to a single soul.

"What on earth are you doing here?"

It was Anya Rudikova, Arkady's neighbor from the apartment across the hall. A leather satchel hung off her shoulder and a camera around her neck.

To Arkady she was the sort of self-dramatizing journalist who was almost as famous as the people she wrote about. Arkady had seen her on television flushing out a covey of the rich and politically connected. She attacked them and wooed them in equal measure.

"Browsing," Arkady said.

"Do you see anything here that you like?"

"Something that fits my budget. I'm leaning to the Bugatti. One thousand horsepower. Of course, at top speed, you run out of gas in twelve minutes and in fifteen minutes the tires catch fire. That could be exciting."

She pointed toward the mezzanine. "I've been watching you from up there. You have 'police' written all over you."

"And what are you doing here? I thought you were a serious journalist."

"I'm a writer. A writer covers all sorts of stories and this is the social event of the year."

"If you say so." At least the enforcers of Security were backing off. It also explained why Anya was in a black pantsuit and carried a notebook and pen. She should have brought stilts; she was a head shorter than anyone else.

She studied him in turn. "You don't care much for high fashion, do you?"

"I don't know enough about fashion to have an opinion. That's like asking a dog about flying."

"But everyone has a style. A man answers the door wearing little more than a gun? That's a definite fashion statement."

As Arkady remembered, he had been merely shirtless, maybe barefoot when he answered her knock. The odd thing was that he rarely carried a gun. He didn't know why he had picked it up that time, except that he must have heard a scuffle in the hall. Anya had not been frightened then and wasn't now; she seemed to be a small person who enjoyed keeping larger people off balance. "You didn't say how you feel about the rich."

"How rich?" Arkady asked.

"Millionaires. I don't mean small-time millionaires. I mean at least two hundred or three hundred million or more. Or billionaires."

"There are actual billionaires here tonight? That makes me feel less like a dog and more like a speck on the windshield."

"How did you get in?"

"By invitation," Arkady said.

"Invited by whom?"

"I don't know. That's the question."

Something was happening onstage. Anya stood on tiptoe.

"I can't see a thing. Come on." She started up the stairs.

The mezzanine was done up as the diamond mine of the dwarfs in Disney's Snow White, which had been huge in Russia, except that here the gems were bottle glass and there was only one dwarf and he was drunk, still wearing a rubber mask and passed out on the floor. Dopey.

Anya motioned Arkady to sit and they joined a man on a cell phone at a front table. A steely bodyguard sat behind and scanned the crowd. Since when did Russians mousse their hair? Arkady felt increasingly inept and unkempt.

"Vaksberg," the man at the table identified himself, and immediately turned his attention back to an argument on the phone. He seemed patient and soft-spoken. He had an expensive tan and a black goatee and was known to the public more fully as Alexander "Sasha" Vaksberg, the Prince of Darkness.

He snapped his phone shut.

"A year ago we had over a hundred billionaires in Moscow. Today there are less than thirty. So it's the best of times, the worst of times and sometimes it's just the shits. It turns out we don't know how to run capitalism. That's to be expected. As it happens, nobody knows how to run capitalism. That was a bad surprise. Cigarette?"

Vaksberg pushed across the table a slim pack that said Dunhill Personal Blend for Alexander Vaksberg.

"Vanity cigarettes. I never saw that before." Arkady lit one. "Excellent."

Anya said, "Don't be rude. Sasha arranged this event for homeless children out of his own pocket. Have something to eat. I hear the charlotte russe is delicious."

"After you."

"She wishes," Sasha Vaksberg said. "Our Anyushka is allergic to dairy. Milk is the killer. Show him."

Anya allowed Arkady a glimpse of an emergency wristband on her left arm. What struck Arkady was that Sasha Vaksberg, one of the country's wealthiest men and the evening's host, was being virtually ignored by his peers. Instead he was with a journalist and a policeman, which was a bit of a comedown.

She said, "The scraps will go, of course, to homeless millionaires."

Vaksberg said, "Perhaps so. Someone has to point out to the blockheads in the Kremlin that we have an angry mob; only this mob is made up of the rich. Peasants are hard to rouse, but the rich have expectations."

"Are you talking about violence in the streets?"

"No, no. Violence in the boardroom."

"You two should get along. Investigator Renko always expects the worst," Anya said. "He sleeps with a gun."

"Do you really?" asked Vaksberg.

"No, I'd probably shoot myself."

"But you carry one when you're on duty?"

"On special occasions. There's almost always another way out."

"So you're a negotiator, not a shooter. That's kind of Russian roulette, isn't it? Have you ever guessed wrong?"

"Once or twice."

"You and Anya are a pair. She writes for a fashion journal of mine. Last week the editor asked for a diet piece and she did an article called 'How to Cook Supermodels.'"

"How did the models like it?"

"They loved it. It was about them."

The tennis player returned to the stage and hit a gong. The fair was over. The party was about to begin.

First the floor had to be cleared, which could have been awkward without a curtain to hide the pushing and pulling of display cases. Few guests noticed, however, because a spotlight directed their attention to a dancer in a loose harlequin costume and pointed cap sitting high on a ceiling catwalk, arms and legs dangling, like a puppet placed on a shelf. He moved jerkily, pantomimed a mad passion and, after sobbing from a broken heart, jumped to his fate. Instead of plunging, however, he soared on a single, nearly invisible wire. He seemed to be a creature of the air. It was part illusion. His every move was choreographed with an eye to angles, acceleration and centrifugal force. Shadowy figures on the floor were counterweights, operating in concert to keep the ropes taut so that the flier could freely swing like a pendulum or turn a somersault or fly straight up into a grand jete.