Stalin's Ghost

by Martin Cruz Smith

  Arkady was more circumspect about what transpired at the skating pond. He had looked through Bora’s pockets and found sodden papers for Boris Antonovich Bogolovo, age thirty-four, ethnic Russian, resident of Tver, electrician, former honored sportsman. A newspaper clipping of a boxing match and a condom seemed to sum up Bora’s past triumphs and hopes for the future. Arkady noted in the report that Bora had followed him and fallen through the ice, but there was nothing to be gained by mentioning a knife when there was no knife to offer in evidence. Arkady had been unable to find it, Platonov and the cameraman Petrov never saw it, and without the knife the report might sound as if Arkady had, for no good reason, lured Bora onto thin ice and almost let him drown. Arkady had to admit to himself that he couldn’t describe the knife. He had seen something shine in Bora’s hand and felt something sharp against his throat. “The investigation is not concluded,” Arkady wrote. Finding a weapon would make a big difference.

  Arkady’s eyes rested on his closet. Bolted inside was a combination safe that held his video camera, notebooks, snitch money, a war-era Tokarev pistol and a box of bullets. He kept the gun in the office ever since he found Zhenya stripping it at home. Where Zhenya learned how to take apart and assemble a Tokarev Arkady didn’t know, although the boy claimed he had learned from watching Arkady, and it was true that Arkady took good care of a gun he never used. If he had had the gun would he have shot Bora? Was the difference between him and a killer simply a matter of remembering to carry a gun?

  Arkady turned to the file from Victor. A skilled suborner of clerks, Victor had assembled enough information to cover the desk, starting with a photocopy of the internal passport for Nikolai Sergeevich Isakov, an ethnic Russian born in Tver. Again, Tver. A Ministry physical found Isakov to be a thirty-six-year-old male; hair, brown; eyes, blue; height, 200 cm; weight, 90 k. Education: two years at the Kalinin Engineering Institute. A five-star student who dropped out of school for no reason. No degree. Military service: army, infantry, trained as a marksman with VSS sniper rifle. Two tours, no disciplinary problems, reaching the grade of warrant officer before segueing smoothly into OMON, a select police force also known as the Black Berets. The Black Berets were hostage rescuers, not negotiators. Their training included rappelling, marksmanship and the subtleties of silent hand-to-hand combat. Only one in five candidates made it through. The instructor notes on Isakov called him “at the top of his class.” A special note mentioned that Isakov’s father had been NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB.

  Starting on a far-off but converging track was Marat Urman, half Tatar with a first name from the French Revolution. The product was a combustible 35-year-old male; hair, black; eyes, black; height, 190 cm; weight, 102 k. Arrest records as a juvenile for assault and public disturbance. One year of university. Six years in the army, with repeated disciplinary issues, rising no higher than corporal. In his last year he and Isakov were at the same base and somehow the cool Nikolai Isakov and wild Marat Urman became fast friends.

  Black Beret candidate school appreciated Urman’s proclivity for aggression. Much of the training was done as duels; a candidate might fight five opponents one after the other. When Urman broke an opponent’s jaw, the instructor had noted with approval that Urman “continued to beat his foe unconscious.” He might not be officer material, but he was “an excellent battering ram.” Besides, his friend Nikolai Isakov was there to rein in Marat, in case he got out of control. In their black-and-blue fatigues, black boots and berets, the two made a formidable unit.

  They went to Chechnya together. In the first Chechen war, in the early nineties, the rebels had bloodied a Russian Army of young, poorly trained conscripts. In the second Chechen war, started in the late nineties, the Kremlin sent a spearhead of mercenaries and elite troops, which meant the Black Berets.

  Victor had copied an article from Izvestia, datelined Grozny, about a raid by Chechen rebels on a Russian field hospital. The reporter described the horror of wounded men having their throats slit in their beds and the rebels’ dash from the scene. “An estimated fifty terrorists in two stolen trucks and an armored personnel carrier headed east to a small stone bridge that crosses the Sunzha River. There their luck apparently ran out.

  “A squad of Black Berets from Tver, a mere six men led by Captain Nikolai Isakov, a decorated officer on his second tour of duty, had heard news of the attack over a cell phone and were waiting among the willows on the river’s eastern bank. The narrowness of the bridge forced the vehicles to cross single file, directly into the sights of Black Beret rifles. Isakov himself took out the driver of the APC with a single shot, effectively blocking the bridge. A fusillade greeted the other terrorists as they poured out of the trucks, expecting to overrun the small number of Black Beret troops in their way.

  “A firefight raged up and down the banks of the picturesque mountain stream as Captain Isakov consistently exposed himself to enemy fire to rally his men. The terrorists first mounted a frontal attack and, when that failed, attempted to outflank the Russian marksmen, who would fire and change position. Eventually the Black Berets were down to their last rounds. Isakov had no ammunition left in his rifle and only two bullets in his handgun when the Chechens suddenly retreated in one truck, leaving behind the other truck, the APC and fourteen dead insurgents. Remarkably, when the smoke lifted, only one Black Beret was hit, shot in the knee. Captain Isakov said, ‘We hope we avenged the cowardly attack on our wounded men. We thought of them and did our best.’”

  The name of the reporter was Aharon Ginsberg.

  “The army is everything!” Arkady’s father used to say, until he was denied a field marshal’s baton, then it was “The army is shit.” Arkady wished he had such clarity of vision. For a semblance of order, Arkady reassembled the dossier as neatly as he could and slipped it in a drawer.

  Before he forgot, he called the phone number he had found on Petrov’s matchbook. It was five a.m., a good time to wake and ponder the fact that there were four more hours of dark.

  A voice furred with sleep answered, “Metropol Hotel. Reception.”

  “Sorry, wrong number.”

  Very wrong. The grand Metropol Hotel and the shaggy cameraman Pyetr Petrov didn’t add up at all.

  Arkady had two mini cassettes, one he had taken from Petrov’s video camera at the Metro platform and a second from Petrov’s pocket. He slipped the first mini cassette into the video camera, connected the camera to the television, and sat back to watch.

  The tape began earlier than Arkady had anticipated with the filmmaker Zelensky in Red Square. Snow had just started to fall and clouds dirty as cement bags gathered over Saint Basil’s. The format was documentary and the news, according to Zelensky, was dire. Russia had been “stabbed in the back by a conspiracy of ancient enemies, a moneyed oligarchy and foreign terrorists to undermine and humiliate the motherland.” Zelensky had cue phrases. “Idealism was gone.” The Soviet Union had collapsed, “removing the barrier between Russia and the decadent West on one side and Islamic fanaticism on the other.” Russian culture was “globalized and debased.” The camera panned from an old woman begging for coins to a banner for Bulgari. “No wonder patriots so yearn for the firm guidance of another era.” What the videotape would explore, Zelensky gravely told the camera, might be a miracle, a sighting of Stalin on the last train of the night.

  Arkady watched the entire event again from a different point of view. Petrov had started recording with an establishing shot of the subway car and its passengers, mainly pensioners like the cronies Mendeleyev and Antipenko, the babushkas, literati from the Lenin Library, but also prostitutes, Zelensky and his golden niece and nephew, the delinquent schoolgirl, Platonov and Arkady, not exactly a cross section of society, but what might be realistically expected at that hour. Arkady was impressed by how little illumination a video camera needed and how the microphone picked up the rush of the train and how those factors combined made a package that seemed more authentic than the actual experience.

&nb
sp; “Coming into Chistye Prudy station, what Stalin called Kirov Station,” Petrov whispered to the camera.

  Up and down the carriage, riders shifted in anticipation. Mendeleyev and Antipenko were already half to their feet. The babushkas twisted to see sparks, blackness, the approaching light of the platform, and in an extra moment of total dark, a woman’s cry, “Stalin!”

  As the doors opened everyone streamed out but Arkady, who watched Platonov, and Zelensky, who watched Arkady.

  The tape cut to the platform and a crowd that had grown with the addition of passengers who had disembarked from forward cars. Stalin’s photograph rested against a platform pillar. Young Misha and Tanya lit a candle at the photo and expressed their gratitude to Stalin for saving mankind and being the beacon of his age. Veterans solemnly nodded; women dabbed their eyes. Zelensky smoothly interviewed some sweet old ladies and handed out Russian Patriot T-shirts and the party was rolling along when, from nowhere, a madman in a pea jacket kicked the candle onto the tracks, stopped the meeting by diktat, and seized the camera. Arkady didn’t look good.

  At no point did the tape show the two Americans or Bora. Also, in slow motion it was the prostitute with red hair who first shouted Stalin’s name, then Mendeleyev and Antipenko.

  Arkady decided that he should eat something, which remained a theory because there was no food in the desk except a rind of cheese wrapped in greasy paper. He had a cigarette instead. And tried Eva’s cell phone again. Still off. Arkady would have expected a slower night at the clinic. A snowstorm usually kept people—even the criminal set—at home.

  The second videotape had obviously been shot earlier for purposes of rehearsing the boy and girl. They walked across a room, the girl carrying a feather duster in place of flowers, the boy holding a pen for a votive candle. The children couldn’t walk for giggling at the graffiti on the apartment walls: oversized sexual organs, phone numbers, “Olga Loves Petya.”

  Zelensky directed from off screen. “This is not a joke. Do it over, slower, like in church. Have you ever been in church? Okay, back to your mark and go! Like that. Even slower, kids, this isn’t a race. Pay no attention to the camera. Look straight ahead and concentrate on the picture, the man’s friendly face. He’s a saint and you’re bringing him these special gifts. Stay together, stay together, stay together. That’s more like it. Petya, how did that look to you?”

  The cameraman said, “They missed the mark.”

  “Hear that, kids? The camera doesn’t lie. The blue tape on the floor marks where you start and where you stop. Tonight there’s going to be a lot of people. You have to block them out and the only way to do that is to practice.”

  The children walked across the room again.

  “Dear Comrade Stalin,” Zelensky cued.

  “Dear Comrade Stalin, the children of Russia thank you…”

  And again.

  The boy said, “You rallied the Russian people and threw back Fascist invaders.”

  The girl said, “As a beloved humanitarian you led a Russia that the peace-loving nations of the world admired and respected…”

  Again and again until Zelensky clapped and said, “I love you, kids.”

  It was clearly the end of the rehearsal and Arkady expected the television screen to go dark. Instead, it switched to a bedroom scene of three men and a woman. The men were Bora, Zelensky and an individual whose face was hidden by lank, long hair. It took Arkady a moment to recognize Marfa, the schoolgirl from the Metro, because her face bulged like a goose with a funnel down its throat. Zelensky had seduced her and used her in the space of a single day. So much for Arkady’s advice.

  Petrov was conserving cassettes, recording new material over old. Arkady jabbed Fast Forward and the tape speeded to a race of men running around the girl, taking turns, on and off, on and off.

  When Arkady found Marfa crying he returned to Play. She sat on the edge of the bed, naked, her face turned away from the camera as she wailed. The way she twisted emphasized the baby fat on her waist.

  “She sounds like a bagpipe,” Bora said off camera.

  A hand came into view and pointed to her tattoo. “A butterfly. How did I miss that before? Cute.”

  Zelensky said, “Marfa, you were great.”

  “You were great,” Bora said.

  “You were great,” the third man said. “You were born to fuck.”

  “This is a private tape,” Zelensky assured her. “No one’s going to see it. I had to find out how good you were and you were a pro.”

  Marfa went on sobbing.

  Zelensky said, “Remember, you told me you were a big girl and I took you at your word.”

  The third man said, “Vlad makes porn, that’s all he does. What did you expect?”

  “That’s not all I do,” Zelensky said.

  “Really? Name something else.”

  “I have other projects, other movies. You’ll see.”

  “Right. It seems to me that as a film director you have one piece of direction. ‘Suck faster.’”

  “Sasha, go fuck yourself.”

  “No. Thanks to your little friend I’m set for the day.”

  “Get the fuck out.”

  “I’m getting out in a new Mercedes.”

  “Heil Hitler!” Zelensky shouted as a door opened and closed. “Bourgeois prick.”

  The camera remained on Marfa. Run, Arkady thought. Get out while you can.

  She stifled a sob. “What other movies?”

  By the time Arkady finished viewing the tapes it was seven in the morning. He locked the dossier and tapes in his safe and dragged himself to his car on the off chance Eva or Zhenya had returned to the apartment and ignored his phone calls; although it was rude, some people did that sort of thing.

  But no apartment could have been emptier. There were no new notes, no messages on the machine. His footsteps sounded clumsy and intrusive and he couldn’t help but think of Eva moving lightly in bare feet. The mattress on the bedroom floor looked more temporary than ever.

  An acrid smell drew Arkady to the window. Down on the street the road crew was boiling tar to fill the same pothole as the day before. The women shoveled while the man, the chief, waved cars by. A blue plastic tarp was set up as a shelter, a sign that the crew was settling in.

  Eva’s clothes hung in the closet, which suggested that she was coming back to pack, at the very least. Her tapes were still in a box, fifty or more audiotapes stacked chronologically beside the recorder. He fed one into the recorder and pushed Play.

  The heavy breathing of exercise.

  “Arkasha, catch up.”

  His voice from a distance. “I have a better suggestion. You stop.”

  “I’m recording you. I am compiling evidence that on cross-country skis the senior investigator couldn’t catch a snowman.”

  He listened to a winter day, a trail that wound through birches and voices ringing in the cold.

  “Eva, I am carrying brandy, bread, sausage and cheese, pickles and fish, the full weight of luxury, while you carry nothing but a seductive smile. Perhaps you would like me to carry you, as well.”

  He heard laughter and an accelerating slap of skis.

  Another tape caught the arm-in-arm quality of a stroll. “Between the two of us, Adam was innocent.” His voice.

  “Seriously?” Hers.

  “He had no choice. Between keeping Eve happy and displeasing the Lord, the creator of the universe, any sane man would have made the same decision.”

  “I should hope so.”

  Nothing profound, the throwaway lines of life.

  A third tape had only the drone and counterdrone of motorboats and the shouts of water-skiers treading water, for some reason a happy memory. Eva was a light sleeper and Arkady would find her in the middle of the night sitting up with a cigarette and vodka, concentrating on the tapes as if they were her proof of a new life.

  He put the tapes and recorder back the way he had found them, stretched out on the mattress and closed his
eyes. For just ten minutes. Just to keep going.

  Snow pecked at the window. When the wind was stiff the window stirred in its sash. The grinding of plows seemed everywhere.

  Arkady was on a frozen lake. Between the fringe of trees and gray clouds was a stillness and a pleasant nip in the air, and the length of the lake were dark dots, fishermen at their holes. The gear for ice fishing was simple: an auger, a hook, a line, a box to sit on and vodka to drink.

  There was no better fishing companion than Sergeant Belov. He was insulated by layers of clothing, a fur hat and felt boots, but his red hands were bare, the better to jiggle the lure just so and feel any tug on the hook. The temperature could drop to minus ten, minus twenty, Belov never wore gloves. His prize, smelts the size of silver coins, lay frozen on the ice. “Zakuski size!” Belov said. “Appetizers!” When his hands and cheeks started to freeze he chased the chill with vodka.

  The sergeant was usually full of good stories about tanks and trucks falling through the ice, or an entire company of troops who drifted away on ice floes never to be seen again. This time Belov was so silent that Arkady wandered off on a private dare toward the middle of the lake.

  Only one fisherman had drilled his hole so far out. Arkady told himself that a word of conversation with the man would cap his achievement, although when Arkady looked back the sky was darker and all the other fishermen, including Belov, had picked up and gone. A spiderweb of cracks spread across the ice, but since the fisherman ahead seemed so busy and content Arkady pressed on.