Jaak slowed. The tanker didn’t pass, but a second later, the Audi slid by. Rudy Rosen, the driver—a round man with soft hands fixed to the wheel—was a private banker to the mafias, a would-be Rothschild who catered to Moscow’s most primitive capitalists. His passenger was female, with the wild look achieved by Russian features on a diet, somewhere between sensual and ravenous, with short, stylishly cut blond hair brushed back to the collar of her black leather jacket. As the Audi passed, she turned and sized up the investigators’ car, a two-door Zhiguli 8, as a piece of trash. In her thirties, Arkady thought. She had dark eyes, and a wide mouth and puffy lips, parted slightly as if starving. As the Audi swung in front, it was followed by the sound of an outboard engine and the appearance of a Suzuki that inserted itself between the two cars. The motorcycle rider wore a black dome helmet, black leather jacket and black high-tops that sparkled with reflectors. Jaak eased off. The biker was Kim, Rudy’s protection.

Arkady ducked and listened to the headset again. “Still dead.”

“He’s leading us to the market. There are some people there, if they recognize you, you’re dead.” Jaak laughed. “Of course then we’ll know we’re in the right place.”

“Good point.” God forbid anyone should exercise sanity, Arkady thought. Anyway, if anyone recognizes me it means I’m still alive.

All the traffic squeezed off the same exit ramp. Jaak tried to follow the Audi, but a line of “rockers”—bikers—swarmed in between. Swastikas and czarist eagles decorated their backs, all wreathed in the rising smoke of exhaust pipes stripped of mufflers.

At the end of the ramp, construction barriers had been pushed to one side. The car bounced as if they were crossing a potato field, and yet Arkady saw silhouettes that loomed high against the faint northern sky. A Moskvitch went by, its windows crammed with swaying rugs. The roof of an ancient Renault wore a living-room suite. Ahead, brake lights spread into a pool of red.

The rockers drew their bikes into a circle, announcing their stop with a chorus of roars. Cars and trucks spaced themselves roughly on a knoll here, in a trough there. Jaak killed the Zhiguli in first; the car had no neutral or parking gear. He emerged from the car with the smile of a crocodile who has found monkeys at play. Arkady got out wearing a padded jacket and cloth cap. He had black eyes and an expression of bemusement, as if he had recently returned from a long stay in a deep hole to observe changes on the surface, which wasn’t far from the truth.

This was the new Moscow.