When the Nines Roll Over by David Benioff Page A

would drift over his body and only the dogs would know where to find him. He stared at his lap to rest his eyes from the glare. Feeling hot, he laid his rifle on the ground and shrugged out of his parka. The sun was heavy on his face and he could feel his pale cheeks beginning to burn. He listened to the countryside around him: the dogs snarling at the blackbirds; the blackbirds flapping their wings; the running water; the pine branches creaking. He sat in the snow and listened to the countryside around him.
    When he finally raised his head the old woman was gone, as he knew she would be. Her shovel was half-submerged in the stream, its handle wedged between two rocks, its metal blade glinting below water like the scale of a giant fish. The sun rose higher in the sky and the snow began to fall from the trees. Leksi stood, pulled on his parka, picked up his rifle, and started wading upstream, searching for the spot where his footprints ended.
    He hadn’t gone far when he heard a whistle. He crouched down, fumbling with the rifle, trying to get his gloved finger inside the trigger guard.
    â€œRelax, Leksi.” It was Nikolai, squatting by the trunk of a dead pine. The tree’s bare branches reached out for the blue sky. Nikolai tapped off the ash of the cigar he was smoking. He was in shirtsleeves, his rifle strapped over one shoulder.
    â€œYou followed me,” said Leksi.
    The older soldier did not reply. He squinted into the distance beyond Leksi and Leksi followed his gaze, but there was nothing to be seen. A moment later a single gunshot echoed across the valley floor. Nikolai nodded, stood up, and stretched his arms above his head. He picked a bit of loose tobacco off his tongue and then tramped through the snow to the stream. Leksi, still in his crouch, watched him come closer.
    Nikolai pulled the shovel out of the water and held it up. “Come over here, my friend.”
    Leksi heard singing behind him. He turned to find Surkhov marching toward them, singing “Here Comes the Sun,” twirling a silver chain with a black cameo on its end.
    Nikolai smiled and held out the shovel. “Come here, Aleksandr. You have work to do.”

ZOANTHROPY
    Whenever a lion was spotted prowling the avenues, the authorities contacted my father. He had a strange genius for tracking predators; he made a lifelong study of their habits; he never missed an open shot.
    There is a statue of him in Carl Schurz Park, a hulking bronze. He stands, rifle slung casually over his shoulder, one booted foot atop a dead lion’s haunches. A simple inscription is carved on the marble pedestal: MacGregor Bonner / Defender of the City . The statue’s proportions are too heroic—no Bonner ever had forearms like that—but the sculptor caught the precise angle of my father’s jawline, the flat bridge of his nose, the peacemaking eyes of a man who never missed an open shot.
    In the old days, the media cooperated with the authorities—nobody wanted to spark a panic by publishing news of big cats in the streets. That attitude is long gone, of course. Every photographer in the country remembers the New York Post ’s famous shot of the dead lion sprawled across the double yellow lines on Twenty-third Street, eyes rolled white, blood leaking from his open jaws, surrounded by grinning policemen, below the banner headline: “Bagged!” My father was the triggerman; the grinning policemen were there to keep the crowds away.
    So it’s sacrilege to admit, but I always rooted for the cats’ escape. A treasonous confession, like a matador’s son pulling for the bull, and I don’t know what soured me on my father’s business. A reverence for exiled kings, I suppose, for the fallen mighty. I wanted the lions to have a chance. I wanted them to live.
    All good stories start on Monday, my father liked to say, a line he inherited from his father, a Glasgow-born minister who served as a chaplain for