Wolves Eat Dogs

Wolves Eat Dogs is a crime novel by Martin Cruz Smith, set in Russia and Ukraine in the year 2004. It is the fifth novel to feature Investigator Arkady Renko, and the first set during the new independent era.^[1][2]

Plot

Russia has changed from a Communist to capitalist state, and Ukraine has seceded from the former Soviet Union. When Pavel "Pasha" Ivanov, one of the leading members of Russia's new billionaire class, dies in an apparent suicide, Renko investigates. Pasha fell from the balcony of his penthouse apartment, and all the signs point to his having been alone at the time. The only anomaly is a large mound of table salt in the victim's wardrobe.

Despite powerful people, including his own boss, attempting to halt Renko's investigation, he continues to question Pasha's friends and associates, some of whom hint that Pasha had some kind of dark secret in his past, and that Pasha was always very depressed around May Day.

Just before he is removed, by force, from the investigation, Arkady returns alone to Pasha's apartment and reconstructs his movements on the night he died. In the drawer of his bureau, Arkady finds a radiation dosimeter wrapped in a blood-stained handkerchief. Turning it on, he finds that the entire apartment is radioactive, the highest levels coming from the mound of salt. Arkady concludes that Pasha did commit suicide, but in the same way that a man jumps to escape a burning building.

A HazMat team re-examines the apartment and Pasha's body, and finds that the salt was mixed with a small quantity of cesium chloride, identical in appearance to table salt, and the cesium being Cesium-137, an isotope that is lethally radioactive. After confirming that his apartment was filled with radiation, Pasha swallowed a large quantity of the salt before jumping, to try and protect people entering the apartment later.

A week after Arkady's discovery, Pasha's business partner, Timofeyev, is found brutally murdered near Pripyat, Ukraine, in the "dead zone" around the site of the Chernobyl disaster. Arkady's superior, fed up with his insubordination, posts him to Ukraine to "investigate" this murder, with no assistance, and virtually no resources.

He makes the acquaintance of the colorful local community: a team of radiobiologists, various foreign scientists, and a small group of peasant squatters who refuse to leave the area despite the official evacuation.

Various odd events occur around the dead zone, including the murder of a local scavenger. Arkady also becomes the lover of Eva Kazka, a medical doctor assigned to the scientific community. Eva confides to him that she was rendered infertile, and also suffered a long series of operable cancers, as a result of exposure to radioactive fallout that blanketed Kiev while she was marching in a May Day parade, the day after the meltdown.

Eva's ex-husband, Alex Gerasimov, the leader of the radiobiology team, kidnaps Arkady and reveals himself to be the culprit, and explains his motives with relish:

Pasha and Timofeyev were the scientific colleagues, and favorite pupils, of Alex's father, Felix Gerasimov, the Soviet Union's leading authority on nuclear accidents. When the Central Committee telephoned Gerasimov to ask what to do about the meltdown, Gerasimov was too drunk to respond, so Pasha and Timofeyev took the call, pretending to be relaying Gerasimov's instructions. Based on what the Committee told them, Pasha and Timofeyev decided that it was unnecessary to evacuate Chernobyl immediately, or to cancel the May Day celebrations in Kiev. In other words, Pasha and Timofeyev were ambitious men who reacted to a crisis the way ambitious men do: by covering up for their boss, and by telling the men in charge what they want to hear - and by doing so, they allowed millions of civilians to be exposed to the fallout, including Eva. Gerasimov remained untouched by the scandal, but later committed suicide.

Alex freely admits that, while Pasha and Timofeyev were hardly the only "weasels and liars" responsible for the tragedy, they should be held accountable to some degree. He "stalked" them by planting tiny grains of cesium on their clothes and persons, tormenting them before administering fatal doses.

He even offered to stop if Pasha and Timofeyev would return to Chernobyl and admit their responsibility, but "they were too ashamed, even to save their own lives." After Pasha's death, Timofeyev tried to save himself by doing it, though Alex says he does not know who killed him.

Having killed his assistants in cold blood, Alex prepares to kill Arkady to cover his tracks, when he is shot down by the vengeful sister of one of the assistants.

Arkady reports back to Moscow that Pasha's case has been solved, though the murders of Timofeyev and Alex Gerasimov remain open. He is recalled to Moscow. Eva moves to Moscow with him, and the couple adopt an orphaned boy whom Arkady has been mentoring at a local shelter.

A few months later, they make a one-day trip back to Chernobyl to visit some of their local friends, an elderly farmer couple who have lived in the same place all their lives, and whose grandchildren died from radiation poisoning. Seeing the husband slaughter a pig in almost exactly the same manner as Timofeyev was killed, Arkady and Eva realize who killed Timofeyev, and why, but refrain from reporting it to the authorities.

Explanation of the title

There are a number of possible interpretations of the title:

• The novel emphasizes that the "dead zone" around Chernobyl is actually rich in plant- and wildlife (which have tolerance levels for radiation different than humans). In this area, wild animals such as wolves have not only flourished in the absence of human activity, but have no fear of the humans they do encounter.
• The murderer, when revealed, describes himself as a wolf, not so much for any violence or viciousness in his character, but because he considers himself a true predator: attacking his victims, and disposing of his unreliable associates, without compunction. One of these associates, on his deathbed, mentions playing "the Wolf" in a school production of "Peter and the Wolf," and fancied himself as a wolf, "until I met a real one."
• The title can also be taken as a metaphor describing the corruption surrounding Arkady; the "wolves" being large organizations or powerful men that eat the "dogs" (meaningless men like Arkady Renko), who are insignificant in society and prove to be nothing more but an obstacle that must be eradicated. As wolves hunt in packs to overpower their prey, so do businesses and large organizations in this novel.

Allusions to real-life history, persons, or places

• Most of the novel takes place in the "dead zone" around the site of the Chernobyl disaster. To "amuse" a company at dinner one night, Alex tells his own dramatic story of exactly how the meltdown occurred.
• Oddly, the novel predates by several years the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, which bears certain similarities to the attacks on Pasha Ivanov.
• Though there are several radioactive isotopes found at the site of the Chernobyl disaster, Caesium-137 is the most common (which may be why the killer chooses it to attack Pasha and Timofeyev).

References

External links

• Martin Cruz Smith official site