Stalin's Ghost

by Martin Cruz Smith

  “Isakov, the hero?”

  “That’s right,” Zurin said. “He and Urman were called to another case. We can’t have good men wasting their time here.”

  “Of course not. Where is this other case?”

  “A domestic dispute a couple of blocks away.”

  The platform clock read 0418, the same as Arkady’s watch. Time until the next train stood at 00, because the system wouldn’t start up again for another hour. Without a background rumble of trains the platform was an arcade of echoes, Zurin’s voice popping up here and there.

  “So, what do you want me to do?” Arkady asked.

  “Nail things down.”

  “Nail down what? Someone on a subway puts on a Stalin mask and you pull people off their train?”

  “We want to keep the lid on.”

  “On a hoax?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “Are you thinking of mass hallucination? That calls for exorcists or psychiatrists.”

  “Just ask some questions. They’re old, it’s past their bedtime.”

  “Not theirs.” Arkady nodded toward a rail-thin man chatting up the schoolgirl. She plainly had trouble resisting flattery.

  “Zelensky is the provocateur, I’m sure. Do you want to start with him?”

  “I think I’ll end with him.”

  First, Arkady walked to where the last car had stopped. A service gate and doorway stood at the platform’s end. He hoisted himself up on the gate and saw nothing but electrical cables on the other side. The door was locked. The platform conductor might have had the key and some idea of who had been waiting for the train, but, thanks to Isakov and Urman, she was gone.

  “Anything wrong?” the prosecutor asked.

  “Couldn’t be better. These were the only two sightings, last night and tonight? Nothing previous?”

  “That’s all.”

  Arkady questioned witnesses one by one, having each mark on a sketch of the subway car where they had been sitting. The pensioner Antipenko admitted that he had been reading a book and hadn’t had time to switch to his distance glasses before the train rolled into the station. Antipenko’s elderly friend Mendeleyev had slept earlier on the train, although he claimed he awoke when they pulled into the station. Neither of them felt threatened by the platform Stalin. In fact, two ancient babushkas said they recognized Stalin by his benign smile, although neither saw well enough to read the platform clock when Arkady asked them to. Another retiree wore eyeglasses so scratched, the world was a blur, and the final senior witness wasn’t sure if he’d seen Stalin or Father Frost.

  Arkady told him, “You’ve been up all night. Maybe you’re tired.”

  “They kept us here.”

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  “I know my granddaughter is worried.”

  “Didn’t the detectives call her and tell her you would be late?”

  “I couldn’t remember her number.”

  “Perhaps if you show me your papers?”

  “I lost them.”

  “I’m sure there’s something on you somewhere.” Arkady opened the old man’s overcoat and found, pinned to a jacket lapel, a tag with a name, address, and phone number. Also the soiled ribbons and hardware of a Gold Star Hero, Order of Lenin, Red Star, and Patriotic War hero, so many campaign medals that they were stitched in overlapping tiers onto the breast of his suit. This doddering ancient had once been a young soldier fighting the Wehrmacht in the rubble of Stalingrad. “Don’t worry. The prosecutor will call your granddaughter and the trains will be running soon.”

  The student, Marfa Bourdenova, changed her mind because she wasn’t clear who Stalin was. Besides, she was out past her curfew and hadn’t been allowed to call home on her mobile phone. If the girl was a little plump it was also clear what a beauty she would soon be, with an oval face, a sharp nose and chin, huge eyes and light brown hair she blew away from her cheek in exasperation. “The reception here sucks.”

  From the next bench the filmmaker Zelensky stage-whispered, “Your reception sucks because you’re in a hole, honey, you’re in a fucking hole.” He hunched forward in a scuffed leather jacket and told Arkady, “You can mess with their minds all you want, but I know what I saw. I saw Iosif Stalin standing at this platform tonight. Mustache, uniform, short right arm. Unmistakable.”

  “What color were his eyes?”

  “Yellow eyes, wolf eyes.”

  “Vladimir Zelensky?” Arkady asked to be sure. He felt Zurin creep to the other side of the pillar.

  “Call me Vlad, please.” As if it were a favor.

  Zelensky stood in the umbra of fame. Ten years before he had been a young director of rough-and-ready crime films, until he sniffed cocaine himself and performed the magic trick of disappearing up his nostril. His smile said the boy was back and the frizz of his hair suggested ideas on the simmer.

  “So, Vlad, what did you say when you saw him?”

  Zelensky laughed. “Something on the order of ‘Fuck your mother!’ What anyone would say.”

  As Arkady remembered, Zelensky got by on porn, grinding out films that required nothing more than two willing bodies and a bed. Films where everyone, including the director, used pseudonyms.

  “Did Stalin say anything?”

  “No.”

  “How long was he visible?”

  “Two seconds, maybe three.”

  “Could it have been somebody wearing a mask?”

  “No.”

  “You are a filmmaker?”

  “An independent filmmaker.”

  “Could someone have rigged a film or a videotape?”

  “Set it up and broken it down? Not fast enough.” Zelensky winked in the girl’s direction.

  “He stood where?”

  On the sketch Zelensky marked the platform directly opposite the last car.

  “Then?”

  “He walked away. Vanished.”

  “Walked or disappeared?”

  “Disappeared.”

  “What did he do with the flag?”

  “What flag?”

  “You told the detectives that Stalin had a flag.”

  “I guess it disappeared too.” Zelensky lifted his head. “But I saw Stalin.”

  “And said, ‘Fuck your mother!’ Why the Chistye Prudy Metro? Of all the stations for Stalin to show up at, why here?”

  “It’s obvious. You went to the university?”

  “Yes.”

  “You look it. Well, I’ll tell you something I bet you don’t know. When the Germans bombed Moscow, when this was called Kirov Station, this was where Stalin came, deep underground. He slept on a cot on the platform and the General Staff slept in subway cars. They didn’t have a fancy war room like Churchill or Roosevelt. They put plywood up for walls and every time a train came through, maps and papers would fly around, but they put together a strategy that saved Moscow. This place should be like Lourdes, with people on their knees, plaster Stalins for sale, crutches on the wall. Can’t you see it?”

  “I’m not an artist like you. I remember One Plus One. That was an interesting film.”

  “The serial killer. That was a long time ago.”

  “What films have I missed?”

  “How-to films.”

  “Woodworking? Plumbing?”

  “How to fuck.”

  Arkady heard Zurin groan. The schoolgirl Marfa Bourdenova blushed but didn’t move away.

  “Do you have a business card?”

  Zelensky gave him one that read Cine Zelensky on new, crisply cut pasteboard suitable for a comeback. The address given was on fashionable Tverskaya, even if the phone prefix was for the less elegant south end of Moscow.

  The clock over the tunnel read 0450. Arkady stood and thanked all the witnesses, warning them that it was snowing outside. “You’re all free to leave or wait for the first train.”

  Zelensky didn’t wait. He bounced to his feet, spread his arms like the winner of a match and shouted, “He’s back! He’s back!
” all the way to the escalator. He clapped as he rode up, followed by the Bourdenova girl, who was already fumbling for her phone.

  Zurin said, “Why didn’t you warn them not to talk to people outside the station?”

  “Did some riders have cell phones?”

  “Some.”

  “Did you collect them?”

  “No.”

  “They have had nothing else to do but spread the word.”

  Arkady almost felt for Zurin. Through coup and countercoup, Party rule and brief democracy, fall of the ruble and rise of millionaires, the prosecutor had always bobbed to the surface. And here he was in the subway, shooting spittle in his confusion and rage. “It’s a hoax or it didn’t happen. But why would anyone perpetrate such a hoax? And why would the bastards do it in my district? How am I expected to stop someone from posing as Stalin? Should we shut down the Metro while detectives search on their hands and knees for the footprints of a ghost? I’ll look ridiculous. It could be Chechens.”

  That was desperate, Arkady thought. He looked toward the tunnel. The time was 0456. “You don’t need me for this.”

  The prosecutor shifted close enough. “Oddly enough, I do. Zelensky acts as if this was a miracle. I tell you that miracles only happen on orders from above. Ask yourself, where are the agents of state security in all this? Where is the KGB?”

  “FSB now.”

  “The same can of worms. Usually, they’re everywhere. Suddenly, they’re not. I’m not being critical, not a bit, but I know when someone pulls down my drawers and fucks me from behind.”

  “Wearing a mask in the subway is not a crime and without a crime there’s no investigation.”

  “That’s where you come in.”

  “I don’t have time for this.” Arkady wanted to be at Komsomol Square when the Metro began running.

  “Most of our witnesses are elderly people. They have to be treated with sensitivity. Isn’t that what you are, our sensitive investigator?”

  “There was no crime, and they’re useless as witnesses.”

  Antipenko and Mendeleyev sat side by side, like the stones of a slumping wall.

  “Who knows? They might open up. A little sympathy goes a long way with people that age. Also, there’s your name.”

  “My name?”

  “Your father’s. He knew Stalin. He was one of Stalin’s favorites. Not many can say that.”

  And why not? Arkady thought. General Kyril Renko was a talented butcher, not a sensitive soul at all. Even given that all successful commanders were butchers—“None more passionately loved by the troops than Napoleon,” as the General used to say—even given that bloody standard, Kyril Renko stood out. A car, a long Packard with soldiers on the running boards, would come for the General to take him to the Kremlin. Either to the Kremlin or the Lubyanka, it wasn’t clear which until the car turned left or right at the Bolshoi, left to a cell at the Lubyanka or right to the Kremlin’s Spassky Gate. Other generals fouled their pants on the way. General Renko accepted the choice of fates as a fact of life. He would remind Arkady that his own swift rise through the ranks had been made possible by the execution by Stalin of a thousand Russian officers on the eve of the war. How could Stalin not appreciate a general like that?

  Arkady asked, “What about the detectives who were on the scene?”

  “Urman and Isakov? You said yourself there is no question of criminality. This is a matter we may not even want on the books. What is more appropriate is a humane, informal inquiry by a veteran like you.”

  “You want me to find Stalin’s ghost?”

  “In a nutshell.”

  3

  A heavyset man in underclothes sat at the kitchen table, his head resting on his forearm, a cleaver standing in the back of his neck. One forensic technician videotaped the scene while another peeled the dead man’s hand from a water glass. Vodka was still in it, Isakov told Arkady. A tech poured half the dead man’s glass into a vial to test later for rat poison, which would show premeditation. Crusted dishes, pickle bottles and glittering empties of vodka were piled in a corner to make room on the drain board for open packages of sugar and yeast, and in the sink for a pressure cooker, rubber hoses and plastic tubing. Alcohol formed at the end of a tube, hung and dripped into a jar. Otherwise, the kitchen was decorated with a mounted wolf head and bushy tail, a tapestry with a hunting motif and a photograph of the dead man and a woman as two people younger and happier. The refrigerator hummed, speckled with blood. Snow fidgeted with a loose windowpane. For the moment no one smoked, despite the flatulent stink of death. According to a cuckoo clock it was 4:55.

  Arkady waited at the door with Nikolai Isakov and Marat Urman. Arkady had imagined Isakov so many times that the real man was smaller than expected. He wasn’t particularly handsome, but his blue eyes suggested coolness under fire and his forehead bore interesting scars. His leather jacket was scuffed from wear and his voice was almost whispery. Arkady’s father had always said that the ability to command was innate; men would either follow you or not. Whatever the quality was, Isakov had it. His partner Urman was a Tatar built round and hard, with the broad smile of a successful pillager. A raspberry red leather jacket and a gold tooth revealed a taste for flash.

  “It seems to be a case of cabin fever,” Isakov said. “The wife says they hadn’t left the house since it started snowing.”

  “Started like a honeymoon.” Urman grinned.

  Isakov said, “It appears that they could drink vodka faster than they could make it.”

  “At the end they were fighting over the last drop of alcohol in the house. Both so drunk they can barely stand. He starts hitting her…”

  “Apparently one thing led to another.”

  “She slices him between the sixth and seventh vertebrae and right through the spinal cord. Instantaneous!”

  The cleaver had been dusted with gray powder and the ghostly print of a palm and fingers was wrapped around the handle.

  “Does he have a name?” Arkady asked.

  “Kuznetsov,” said Isakov. Selecting a professional tone, he commiserated with Arkady. “So you got stuck with Stalin’s ghost.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Chasing a phantom through the Metro? Urman and I prefer ordinary cases with real bodies.”

  “Well, I envy you.” Which hardly told the whole story, but Arkady thought he was controlling his bitterness fairly well. He stole a glance at the clock: 4:56. His watch said 5:05. “I had a question about the phantom, as you put it. I was wondering, did either of you search the subway platform?”

  “No.”

  “Open any maintenance gates or doors?”

  “No.”

  “Why did you let the platform conductor leave the station?” It came out more brusquely than Arkady had intended.

  “That’s more than one question. Because the conductor didn’t see anything.” Isakov was patient. “People who weren’t crazy, we let go.”

  “What else, besides seeing Stalin, did they say or do that was crazy?”

  Urman said, “Seeing Stalin, that’s crazy enough.”

  “Did you get the number of the car?”

  “Number?”

  “Every car in the Metro has a four-digit number. I’d like to see that car. Did you get the name of the driver of the train?”

  Isakov was categorical. “We were ordered to ride the last car, whatever its number was, and observe. We were not told what to watch for or at which station or to get the driver’s name. When we pulled into the Chistye Prudy stop we saw nothing and heard nothing unusual until people started to shout. I don’t know who shouted first. As instructed, we separated the positive witnesses from the rest of the passengers and held them until we were called out on this case.”

  The forensic team announced that they were finished with the kitchen and moving to the bathroom, where shiny surfaces beckoned.

  Arkady waited until the techs had passed before saying, “Your report was a little sketchy.”


  “The prosecutor didn’t want an official report,” Isakov said.

  Urman was puzzled. “Why all the fucking questions? We’re on the same side, aren’t we?”

  Don’t complicate things, Arkady told himself. This wasn’t his case. Get out of the apartment.

  A whimper sounded from another room.

  “Who is that?”

  “It’s the wife.”

  “She’s here?”

  “In the bedroom. Take a look, but watch where you step.”

  Arkady went down a hall littered with newspapers, pizza boxes and KFC tubs to a bedroom where the squalor was deep enough it seemed to float. A redheaded woman in a housedress was handcuffed to the bed. She rose out of an alcoholic stupor, legs and arms spread, hands in plastic bags. An array of blood spots covered the front of her dress. Arkady pushed up her sleeves. Her flesh was slack but by a comparison of forearms she was right-handed.

  “How do you feel?”

  “They took the dragon.”

  “They took what?”

  “It’s our dragon.”

  “You have a dragon?”

  The mental effort was too much and she sank back into incoherence.

  He returned to the kitchen.

  “Someone took her dragon.”

  “We heard it was elephants,” Urman said.

  “Why is she still here?”

  Isakov said, “Waiting for an ambulance. She already confessed. We hoped she could reenact the crime for the video camera.”

  “She should be seen by a doctor and in a cell. Save the housedress. How long have you two been detectives in Moscow?”

  “A year.” Urman had lost his good humor.

  “You moved over to detective level direct from the Black Berets? From Hostage Rescue to Criminal Investigation?”

  “Maybe they bent the rules for Captain Isakov,” Urman said. “Why the fuss? We have a murder and a confession. It’s two plus two, right?”

  “With one swing. She must have had a steady hand,” Arkady said.

  “Just lucky, I guess.”

  “Do you mind?” Arkady stepped behind the dead man for a different perspective. One arm still stretched out for the glass. Without touching, Arkady studied the wrist for bruising from, say, being clamped down by a stronger man while a blow was struck.