Legends

Closing his window, the Oligarkh watched the scene unfold through its tinted glass. The two paratroopers took a grip on the prisoner’s arms and lifted him into the crater and set him down on his side, curled up in a fetal position in the round hole. Then they began covering the crater with the thick planks, kicking the ends into the ground so that the tops of the planks were flush with the dirt road. When that was done they dragged a section of metal webbing over the planks. All the while nobody spoke. On the slope the workers, puffing on cigarettes, looked away or stared at their feet.

When the paratroopers finished covering the crater, they backed off to admire their handiwork. One of them waved to the driver of a truck. He climbed behind the wheel and backed up to the crater and worked the lever that elevated the flatbed to spill tarmacadam onto the road. Several workers came over and spread the macadam with long rakes until a thick glistening coating covered the wooden planks and they were no longer visible. They stepped away and the paratroopers signaled for the steamroller. Black fume billowed from its exhaust pipe as the rusty machine lumbered to the edge of the crater. When the driver seemed to hesitate, the horn of the Mercedes sounded and one of the bodyguards standing nearby pumped an arm in irritation. “It is not as if we have all day,” he shouted above the bedlam of the steamroller’s engine. The driver threw it into gear and started across the crater, packing down the tarmacadam. When he reached the other side, he backed over it again and then swung out of the cab to inspect the newly paved patch of highway. Suddenly, he tore off his improvised face mask and, bending, vomited on his shoes.

Barely making a sound, the Mercedes backed and filled and swung past the chase car and started up the dirt spur toward the sprawling wooden dacha at the edge of the village of Prigorodnaia, soon to be connected to the Moscow-Petersburg highway—and the world—by a ribbon of macadam with a freshly painted white stripe down the middle.

1997: MARTIN ODUM HAS A CHANGE OF HEART

CLAD IN A WASHED OUT WHITE JUMPSUIT AND AN OLD PITH HELMET with mosquito netting hanging from it to protect his head, Martin Odum cautiously approached the rooftop beehives from the blind side so as not to obstruct the flight path of any bees straggling back to the frames. He worked the bellows of his smoker, spewing a fine white cloud into the nearest of the two hives; the smoke alerted the colony to danger, rousing the 20,000 bees inside to gorge themselves on honey, which would calm them down. April really was the cruelest month for bees, since it was touch and go whether there would be enough honey left over from the winter to avoid starvation; if the frames inside were too light, he would have to brew up some sugar candy and insert it into the hive to see the queen and her colony through to the warm weather, when the trees in Brower Park would be in bud. Martin reached inside with a bare hand to unstick one of the frames; he had worn gloves when he handled the hives until the day Minh, his occasional mistress who worked in the Chinese restaurant on the ground floor below the pool parlor, informed him that bee stings stimulated your hormones and increased your sex drive. In the two years he had been keeping bees on a Brooklyn roof top, Martin had been stung often enough but he’d never observed the slightest effect on his hormones; on the other hand the pinpricks seemed to revive memories he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

Martin, who had dark hollows under his eyes that didn’t come from lack of sleep, pried the first frame free and gingerly brought it out into the midday sunlight to inspect the combs. Hundreds of worker bees, churring in alarm, clung to the combs, which were depleted but still had enough honey left in them to nourish the colony. He scraped burr comb from the frame and examined it for evidence of American foulbrood. Finding none, he carefully notched the frame back into the hive, then backed away and pulled off the pith helmet and swatted playfully at the handful of brood bees that were trailing after him, looking for vengeance. “Not today, friends,” Martin said with a soft laugh as he retreated into the building and slammed the roof door shut behind him.