When Pavel "Pasha" Ivanov, one of the leading members of Russia's new billionaire class, dies in an apparent suicide, Renko investigates.

A week after Arkady's discovery, Pasha's business partner Timofeyev is found murdered near Pripyat, Ukraine, in the "dead zone" around the site of the Chernobyl disaster.

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.

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 Kyiv while she was marching in a May Day parade after the accident.

Eva's ex-husband, Alex Gerasimov, the leader of the radiobiology team, kidnaps Arkady and reveals himself to be the culprit, explaining his motives with relish: Ivanov and Timofeyev were the favorite pupils of Alex's father, Felix Gerasimov, the Soviet Union's leading authority on nuclear accidents.

Based on what the Committee told them, Ivanov and Timofeyev decided that it was unnecessary to either evacuate Pripyat or to cancel the May Day celebrations in Kyiv.

Eva leaves with him, and the couple adopt an orphaned boy named Zhenya whom Arkady has been mentoring at a local shelter.