Meanwhile, his suspicions begin to be directed towards two fellow detectives: Nikolai Isakov and Marat Urman - both OMON veterans of the Second Chechen War from the town of Tver.

After further incidents on the Metro, Zurin assigns Arkady to conduct an 'unofficial' investigation, his cover being inquiry into supposed death threats directed at Platonov - a paranoid old communist chess grandmaster.

After physically disrupting the media spectacle, Renko smiles at the thought of Zurin's reactions to his chief investigator crossing with the political elite.

A war reporter named Ginsberg gives Arkady "two truths from the same man": the official story and a far more tawdry rendition - the execution of unsuspecting business partners.

Demanding that he get half the prize money, Zhenya's father ends up shooting Arkady in the head with a defective war pistol.

Arkady later learns that the man had enslaved his son in order to use his talents at chess to win money from travelers on the Trans-Siberian Railway.

While Renko is recovering from the bullet wound, his overseer Zurin, having already vowed to get rid of him due to an altercation with a hired female killer later found to have connections to the Russian Patriots, is quick to try and shuffle Arkady off as health leave - any city of his choice.

Encountering Isakov, his American political consultants, and a melancholy Eva, he learns of "the diggers", who unearth Great Patriotic War dead either for profit or sentiment.

Seeking to make a big show of it, the diggers claim to have triumphantly dug up a mass grave of Russians massacred by the Germans.

Akrady begins to confront Isakov about his past, showing photographs by Ginsburg which Arkady had managed to recover from an army inspector.

Admitting the execution, done to cover up his illicit sales in precious local red dragon carpets, he produces a gun from his coat and is about to kill both of them.

Zhenya, meanwhile, trapped on the other side of the room, fumbles to repair an old pistol - a skill he acquired by rebuilding Arkady's gun, but fails to find the final piece.

The novel closes with Renko alone on the hospital roof taking a long, sweeping, pensive look over Lenin Square, the Volga River and the town of Tver as the snow begins to fall once again.