Stalin’s Ghost ar-6

by Martin Cruz Smith

  He asked Arkady, “How did you know about frozen boots?”

  “I don’t know. It seemed a possibility.”

  “This wasn’t the only case like that.” Big Rudi pulled his face in for a shrewd study of Arkady. “Rudi says you weren’t here in ’forty-one.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So it must have been your father. He told you about the boots.”

  “He was never here.”

  “He never said his name but I remembered him as soon as I saw you. He made a strong impression on me.”

  Arkady did not want to get into an argument with an elderly veteran. Some people worshiped the General. Stalin praised his initiative and willingness to pour blood like a river.

  “You wanted to talk about something,” Arkady said. This was his part of the bargain.

  “The counterattack was so confusing. First we were on our knees and the next we were beating Fritz to his. It was a madhouse.”

  “Fortunes were reversed.”

  “That’s right. That’s straight to the point.”

  Not exactly, Arkady thought. The old man seemed to be unburdening himself, but of what Arkady couldn’t tell. Big Rudi kept turning as he walked, as if getting his bearings, gazing at the sky one moment and the ground the next. In a distracted way, he said, “When Fritz stalled he froze. He was in his summer uniform; he wasn’t prepared for a Russian winter. His horses dropped dead. The engines of Fritz’s planes froze solid.” The old man halted. “Here! There was a farmhouse right here. Here we are.”

  “Where?” All Arkady saw was matted wheat and a few green shoots of grass.

  “Five days after the counterattack your father and I sat at the kitchen table right here facing each other. I was wounded from fighting on the front line, but I was detained and brought back because accusations had been made. Someone said I had gone over to the Germans the day before the counterattack began, when things were so grim.”

  “Had you?”

  “That’s what your father asked.”

  “And?”

  “In war, everything is upside down. One moment you’re pinned down, your comrades are dead and you shit your pants, and the next you’re running after Fritz, spraying him with a tommy gun, then another and another. You’re behind his lines, he’s behind yours. It’s all confusion.”

  More cars and vans pulled off the dirt road to let out an army carrying not weapons but portable grills. Boys marched with the somber faces of inductees to a secret rite, their camos freshly stitched with the Diggers’ emblem of the red star, rose and helmet.

  “Were there any witnesses?”

  “No. Finally, your father said he calculated there was one chance in seven that I was telling the truth and he emptied his revolver, all but the seventh bullet, spun the barrel and gave me the gun. What could I do? They were, like the General said, better odds than a firing squad. I put the pistol to my head and pulled the trigger. I missed because the action of the trigger was so stiff and the barrel kicked and all I did was burst an eardrum and burn the side of my head. I thought your father was going to fall off his chair from laughing. How he laughed. He gave me a cigarette and we had a smoke. Then he picked up the gun and spun the barrel and said to try again and keep the barrel level. So I put the pistol to my head again and pulled the trigger, determined to do as he said, but the hammer came down on the empty chamber.”

  “And then?”

  “The General was a man of his word. He had me released.”

  “That’s what you wanted to tell me?”

  “Yes, how he saved my life. With a burst eardrum I was unfit for frontline service. When you see him next, tell him I was the only one in my group to survive the war.”

  The old man was wrong on so many counts, Arkady thought. First, so far as he knew, the General had never been at the Tver front. Second, he owned a Nagant revolver, but he usually carried a Tokarev pistol, so there had been no dramatic spinning of the barrel. Third, when soldiers were executed they were often told to strip, so that their uniforms could be passed without bullet holes to the next man. That was a touch his father never would have missed. But there was no good reason to set Big Rudi straight. What would it gain him?

  True, the General did enjoy the occasional game of Russian roulette, especially toward the end. People said he must have been insane. Father and son were so estranged that Arkady claimed what the General was really suffering from was a late onset of sanity, that he finally saw the monster he was.

  A sense of organization was taking hold by the time Arkady and Big Rudi returned to the dig. A poster on a stake assigned squads of Diggers by color to sections of the field marked by pegs tied with matching tape; none of the sections were near the trees. A curious thing about the trees: as the day got brighter, they grew darker and more solid.

  The Red Diggers seemed to be both a paramilitary organization and a social club. As Arkady understood it, they pitched their tents, hiked, sang and exhumed the dead. Who could argue with an agenda like that? Separate tables were set up for sorting bones, others for food, vodka and beer. There was the good cheer of a reunion, a fair turnout for an unexpected wintertime dig. Arkady recognized one of the lesser candidates from the Russian Patriot rally. He was digging furiously.

  “Wait until tomorrow, that will be a show,” the candidate told Arkady and jumped aside as Rudi came through to dump a wheelbarrow load of bones at a poster that said, “Germans Here.”

  Arkady’s cell phone rang. He got an earful of static when he answered but he didn’t move for fear of losing reception entirely.

  “I apologize. I can barely make you out. Could you speak loudly, please?”

  “This is Sarkisian. Where the devil are you?”

  Arkady said, “I’m sorry, this connection is terrible.”

  “What have you been up to?”

  “Would you repeat that?”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “We’re breaking up.”

  “Damn it, Zurin told me you’d play tricks like this.”

  “Sorry.” Arkady pressed END.

  He hardly took a step before the cell phone rang again. Now the reception was loud and clear.

  A deliberate voice said, “This is Agronsky. Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want it, whoever you are, I don’t care,” and hung up.

  Arkady put down the shovel.

  Bones would wait.

  The retired Major Gennady Agronsky, a round man in a raveled sweater, surveyed the daffodils that bordered his vegetable garden.

  “Fool’s gold. Beautiful but brief. This kind of deceitful weather draws them out and a frost lays them low. But good for the Diggers, I suppose.”

  “Yes, it is. Major, you’re a hard man to reach.”

  “I don’t answer the phone or the door. Most people get the message. Then I saw that you came on an old Cossack. What a beast! It went right to my heart.”

  A white picket fence was the boundary of his domain, a trim cottage in front and in back a patio of terra-cotta pavers with rows of vegetables to come, several raw stumps, sawdust and a small cherry tree with a satiny bark. His neighbor’s yard was a junkyard.

  “They plant nothing, not even cucumbers. In the summer I have pickles, tomatoes, coriander, dill, you name it. These young people, these good-for-nothings, complain there’s no work. Just pick up a hoe and put your back into it. At least you’ll eat, I say.”

  Arkady noticed a pit bull pretending to be asleep on the other side of the fence. “What do they say?”

  “They say, ‘Stuff it, you old fart!’ or ‘Pull your head out of your ass!’ The same with the dealer on the other side. You’re sure you wouldn’t like vodka, just a touch?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “That’s just as well. The doctor says if I drink I might as well shoot myself. My attitude? Everything in moderation, including vice.” Agronsky led Arkady to the patio table. “Sit.”

  “Did you go to the rally for the Russian Patriots?”
>
  “Too far to go. This is almost outside town. We have bears in the garbage.”

  “I noticed a hunting rifle at your front door. Do bears call at your front door?”

  “Not yet.”

  The rifle was a Baikal Express with over and under barrels. Arkady thought that would discourage even a bear.

  “They offered free rides to the rally.”

  “I saw enough on television.”

  “The candidate is someone you must know, Captain Nikolai Isakov. He is a militia detective in Moscow now, but he was a Black Beret from Tver. A man rising in the world is Nikolai Isakov.”

  “You’re investigating him?”

  “Just asking a few questions. For example, was Captain Isakov a competent officer?”

  “What a question. More than competent; a model officer. We held him up as an example.”

  “He was the hero of Sunzha Bridge, after all. As, I suppose, were all the men under his command that day at the river. All heroes and all from Tver.”

  “The people of Tver are patriotic,” Agronsky said.

  “Six Black Berets against fifty heavily armed rebels with an armored personnel carrier and two trucks. The outcome was what, thirteen, fourteen terrorists dead-”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Fourteen terrorists dead, the APC and trucks in retreat and, in return, one Black Beret wounded. Amazing. It was the sort of battle that can make an officer’s reputation and win a promotion in rank, especially at a time when there was so little good news coming out of Chechnya. Yet there wasn’t a single decoration.”

  “These things happen in war. Sometimes it’s just a matter of missing paperwork or witnesses.”

  “Which is why there is a citation committee to review commendations. You were the head of the committee that denied the Black Berets of Sunzha Bridge any medals or promotion. Why?”

  “You expect me to remember? The committee processes hundreds of recommendations, and on a generous basis. The regular army consists of boys, conscripts, the poorest and dumbest, the ten percent who didn’t dodge the draft and the one percent true patriots. They deserve commendations. If they get shot in the ass they get a commendation. If they steal a chicken for their commanding officer they get a commendation. If they get killed their body parts go home in a sealed coffin with a commendation.”

  “So why wouldn’t a real battle merit a medal or two?”

  “Who knows? That was months ago.” Agronsky looked away. “It isn’t as if I were allowed to bring my files with me.”

  “It was your last case. You retired a week after you submitted your verdict. After thirty years you suddenly retired.”

  “Thirty years ago, things were different. We were an army then.”

  “Tell me about Isakov.”

  Agronsky’s eyes stopped dodging.

  “The report smelled.”

  “In what way?”

  “Captain Isakov reported a firefight between rebels on one side of the bridge and his men on the other. The medical examination revealed that all the rebels were shot at close range, some in the back, one or two while eating. Where the rebels were supposed to have been shot there was no blood on the vegetation. The leaves weren’t shredded, they weren’t even disturbed. No doubt Isakov wanted to arrange the bodies in a more convincing manner but a helicopter was coming to the landing zone. A journalist who was on the helicopter described the scene to me.”

  “That was Ginsberg?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were there any actual witnesses?”

  “Only one, a civilian, and she was no help at all.”

  “What did she say?”

  “We’ll never know. She was Ukrainian. She went back to Kiev.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Kafka, like the crazy writer.”

  Close enough, Arkady thought. He held his breath before the next question.

  “Are there any photographs of the firefight scene?”

  “Only Ginsberg’s.”

  “From the helicopter?”

  “His colleagues said he always carried a camera, in case. The pictures completely contradict the statements of Isakov and Urman.”

  “Do people in Tver know about this?”

  “They won’t hear it from me. Did I mention that two weeks before the incident at the bridge, rebels captured eight Black Berets and took videos of them, first alive and then dead? Their mothers couldn’t recognize those boys. They were all from Tver. Don’t ask for any sympathy for rebels in this city.”

  “Then why not promote Isakov?”

  “Because he was no longer a soldier; he was a killer. To me there is a difference.”

  Arkady was impressed. Agronsky looked more like a retired bureaucrat than someone who would stand up to Isakov. The major’s sweater had holes and loose strands, exactly what a man of leisure would wear for gardening, although glints of chrome at the belt line betrayed the gun underneath.

  “Was there a follow-up investigation?”

  “I suggested one and for that I’ve been cashiered and all the evidence has been destroyed.”

  “What about Ginsberg’s photographs?”

  “Burned.”

  “Gone?”

  “Smoke.”

  “No copies?” Investigations were usually awash in copies.

  “My ruling on honors and commendations was regarded as a slur on the army. My files were thoroughly cleaned out and I was shown the door.”

  “Did you copy them, scan them, e-mail them to anyone?”

  “Renko, when I joined the army they stripped me clean, and when I left the army they stripped me clean.”

  “What about Ginsberg’s office or home?”

  “His office was searched and his colleagues questioned. There were no other photos and he wasn’t married.”

  “You wrecked your career over this.”

  “To tell the truth, at my age if you’re not at least a colonel, you’re wasting your time. Besides, the citation committee was exhausting work, lifting some to heaven and kicking some into hell. You know, I’ve told no one about all this. My mouth is dry.” The major’s smile regrouped. “When I joined up, the army gave each man a daily allotment of one hundred grams of vodka. There must be some good in it.”

  “One glass.”

  Agronsky clapped his hands together. “We’ll confound the doctors. Before we die we’ll shoot ourselves, like Sergeant Kuznetsov.”

  The major made a beeline for the house and returned with a tray bearing a bottle of vodka, two glasses and a plate of brown bread and cheese because, as he declared, “A man who drinks without something to eat is a drunk.” He unscrewed the bottle’s cap and threw it away. An ominous beginning, Arkady thought.

  The first glassful slid down, fastidiously followed by bread. Arkady tried to recall whether he had eaten anytime during the day. He asked, “Kuznetsov shot himself?”

  “Not exactly. Kuznetsov was ranting and raving as he was being airlifted, yelling that Lieutenant Urman told him that for the good of the team they needed at least one casualty from OMON, not to take it personally. He shot poor Kuznetsov in the leg.”

  “Urman is impulsive.”

  “Of course, it has to be said that during the airlift Kuznetsov was under the influence of painkillers. In the hospital he correctly pointed to the photo of a dead rebel as the man who shot him.”

  “How do you know it was correct?”

  “Captain Isakov said so. A little more?”

  “Just a little. What did you tell the captain?”

  Vodka quivered on the brim. Agronsky begged a cigarette and a match.

  “I said I could support neither a promotion for him nor medals to a death squad, because at the end of this war that is all we would be. No armies, just death squads.”

  His eye on the Tahiti matchbook, Arkady asked, with too little forethought, “Did you happen to know any of the eight boys from Tver who were killed?”

  “Rifleman Vladimir Agronsky. Vlad. Ninete
en years old.”

  The major’s face fell in on itself.

  “I’m sorry,” Arkady said. “I’m very sorry.”

  “Do you have a son?”

  “No.”

  “Then you don’t know what it’s like to lose one.” The words caught in his throat he washed down with vodka. No bread. Deep breaths. He had outpaced Arkady with the vodka and was starting to look sandblasted. “Forgive me, that was inexcusable. What were you talking about? What else?”

  “The candidate is protecting his official history, cleaning up loose ends, eliminating anyone who knows what happened at the bridge, including his own men. Kuznetsov and his wife are dead. Borodin and Ginsberg are dead.”

  “I’ve taken precautions.”

  Arkady had noticed the gun under Agronsky’s sweater, the double-barreled rifle at the door, trees recently felled for a clear field of fire and the comfort of meth lab security on either side. The situation was strangely snug and highly delusional. The major could build a bunker and not keep out Isakov and Urman.

  “Ginsberg’s photographs of Sunzha Bridge would be a great help,” Arkady said.

  Agronsky said, “I wish they still existed.”

  “Maybe if you looked again you’d find them.”

  “Sorry, they’re gone.”

  Arkady let it drop. After a last round, Arkady made his good-bye and went out and sat on the Ural. Agronsky’s neighbors, a young couple in sheepskin coats, walked by with the soft steps of the truly stoned. To the north a scrim of clouds promised a light dusting of snow. Contradict. Contradicted. Such a small difference, but Arkady had done a thousand interrogations or more. Sometimes he just knew. He killed the engine and returned to Agronsky’s door.

  “My friend Renko, another…?” The major lifted an imaginary glass.

  “I’m trying to stop two murderers. Ginsberg’s photographs will help.”

  “So?”

  “You said that Ginsberg’s pictures of the firefight zone ‘contradict’ Isakov. You should have said ‘contradicted.’ Past tense, the photographs are gone. Present tense, they still exist and you have them.”