Stalin's Ghost

by Martin Cruz Smith

  Arkady headed for the yard behind his building. The parking area consisted of three rows of metal sheds smacked up side by side and so narrow that a driver had to squirm to emerge. Cutoff plastic bottles shielded padlocks from snow and ashes had been thrown on the ground for walking but the lamp that usually lit the yard was dark. Arkady hesitated beside a playground set of monkey bars sheathed in ice. He stayed still; the stiffness of his neck worked for him and the burns on his neck kept him warm. No blinding headlights rose. Merely, a dot like a moth’s eye swirled in a car: a cigarette brought to the mouth, inhaled and released. The driver had parked at the far end of the row opposite Arkady’s shed. Had Arkady driven in as usual he never would have spotted it.

  Arkady backtracked from the yard and went to the front of the building, pausing at the corner. He did not feel up to a physical confrontation or even conversation. All he saw under the streetlamps was an early-morning road crew morosely assembled around a heavy roller sunk in the same pothole they had been working on for a week.

  Arkady took the elevator two stories above his own floor and waited for any movement below before descending the stairs. Finally his neck hurt enough for him not to care whether vipers were waiting on the other side of the door and he went in.

  He left the lights off. The first thing he did was go to the kitchen and make an ice bag with ice cubes and a dish towel and chew a handful of painkillers for the throat. Still in the dark he checked the closet by feel whether Eva’s suitcase and tapes were still there. They weren’t and he wondered whether she had heard about him and Tanya. News that bad traveled fast.

  His last hope was the tiny blinking light of the answering machine. There was a message. Three messages.

  “This is Ginsberg. I’m at Mayakovsky Square, in the sidewalk café, a little early because I finished the pizza trial story faster than I thought. And now I need a drink. In fact, what I really need to do is take a pee. I could step between cars and no one would be the wiser. (A nervous cough.) I’m sorry to use your home phone, but the card you gave me got messed up and I don’t have the number of your cell. Look, Renko, I don’t think it’s such a great idea, the two of us getting together. This is all about a woman, isn’t it? That’s what people say. It doesn’t sound as if it has much to do with Chechnya. It sounds personal. So I’m going to pass on this.”

  The second call, received five minutes later, was a hang-up from the same number.

  The third was from the same number ten minutes later but it was not a hang-up.

  Ginsberg said, “It’s me again. Did you know that when Mayakovsky shot himself he left a cautionary note about suicide. He wrote, ‘I do not recommend it to others.’ So, Renko, you should be happy. I apologize for my spell of cowardice and, although I would not recommend it to anyone, I will help you. Not face to face. Phone only.” Ginsberg went silent for a moment and Arkady was afraid the message machine would disconnect but it kept turning. “I don’t have to find any old notebooks. Of course, I know who was with Isakov and Urman the day of the so-called Battle at Sunzha Bridge. I saw them all from the helicopter and I checked the roster again when we returned to the base. I’ll take those names to the grave.” Arkady heard Ginsberg light another cigarette. “The roster of heroes: Captain Nikolai Isakov, Lieutenant Marat Urman, Sergeant Igor Borodin, Corporal Ilya Kuznetsov, Lieutenant Alexander Filotov, Corporal Boris Bogolovo. All OMON officers from Tver and all on their second or third tour in Chechnya. Six Black Berets either beat off an assault by forty or fifty heavily armed terrorists or slaughtered a dozen rebels in the camp. As I said before, you choose. Either is possible. I’ve seen Isakov in action. With bullets flying he’s the calmest man I’ve ever seen and his men would follow him anywhere. Especially Urman. They make an unusual team. Isakov’s philosophy is, ‘Immobilize your enemy and he is yours.’ Marat’s is, ‘Cut off his balls, fry his balls, make him watch.’ We were friends then. Now I’m jumping at shadows.” It was a long message, as if the journalist was calling in a story while he could. “Isakov said I was his mirror. He said I was made the way I was so that I wouldn’t be wasted in the army, that I could watch and report the truth. When he waved off the helicopter I put my camera down because I thought, ‘He doesn’t want a mirror anymore. He doesn’t want to see himself.’ I still don’t understand. Given the worst possibility, that at Isakov’s order his men murdered rebels he had allowed to stay in the camp, I ask myself why the Chechens were there to begin with. Anyway, Fate has a way of settling scores, right? Insh’Allah—,” Ginsberg was saying as the tape ran out.

  Kuznetsov and his wife were dead and Ginsberg hadn’t jumped at shadows high enough. Arkady gingerly touched his neck. People didn’t have to go to Chechnya to be killed; they could do it right here in Moscow.

  Arkady’s cell phone rang. He answered and Victor said, “Are you in a drunk tank with inebriates and addicts puking on your shoes?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I am. They picked me up outside the Gondolier. Police arresting police, what is the world coming to? I’m the one who suffers the hangovers, isn’t that enough? Children ask me, ‘Why do you drink?’”

  “I can imagine.”

  “You sound awful.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Anyway, I tell the children I drink because when I’m sober I see that life is not a primrose path, no, life is shit. Well, a road with bumps.”

  “Potholes.” Arkady edged closer to the window. The women of the road crew had harnessed themselves to the roller handle and were slowly pulling the roller free of the pothole while the foreman urged them on. He looked like he wouldn’t refuse the loan of a whip.

  “So I was at the Gondolier when who comes in but Detectives Isakov and Urman, along with some politicians handing out free T-shirts that say ‘I am a Russian Patriot.’ I got one.”

  “Eva?” Despite the ice against his neck Arkady’s voice was a croak.

  “She wasn’t there. But can you picture it, politicians in our bar? You know what this means? Isakov’s picture will be everywhere and our little plot with Zoya Filotova is over, after all we did.”

  “We didn’t do much.”

  “Some did more than others.”

  Arkady let that enigmatic statement die; he was good for maybe four more words.

  “You think Eva will come home?” Victor asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And Zhenya?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hope springs eternal?”

  “It’s pathetic.”

  As Arkady turned off the phone an ice cube squirted out of the dish towel and pinged the windowpane. The foreman on the street looked up. One of the women stumbled. Coins and keys spilled from her jacket and the roller began rolling back into the hole, dragging the women behind, but the foreman only stood and watched the window.

  Arkady’s intention had been to stumble to the mattress and collapse, but it occurred to him that Eva had not left her key to the apartment. Eva tended to approach life in an all-or-nothing way. She may have taken the suitcase, but if she had been actually leaving for good she would have locked the door from the outside and slid the key under the door. He found himself on his knees searching the parquet with a penlight. What could have happened, he told himself, was that Isakov came for the suitcase and kept the key so he could get back in when he wanted, a possibility that Arkady was willing to call good news.

  The little beam swept the floor like hope at the bottom of a well.

  12

  A mid the car lots and body shops that stretched along Leningrad Prospect the Casino of the Golden Khan was a fantasy of Oriental domes and minarets. Outside crouched the Russian winter. Inside spread a hush of luxury, of columns carved from malachite around a pool for golden koi and murals of a dreamlike Xanadu. A gilded statue of a Mongol archer presided over a gaming hall with tables for blackjack, poker and American roulette. Only members and their guests made it through the security check at the door and membership cost fifty thousand dollars. That
way the club didn’t have to run a credit check.

  Because the Golden Khan was more than a casino. It was a social club for millionaires. More business was done informally in the intimate lobbies and bars of the Golden Khan than in any office, and nothing impressed a client as much as dinner at the Khan; the casino’s restaurant featured steak tartare, naturally, and the most expensive wine list in Moscow, keeping in mind the mafia chief who sent back a bottle because it wasn’t expensive enough. A walk-in humidor stored cigars in mahogany drawers with the millionaire’s name etched in brass. A Russian banya and a Siamese spa refreshed the exhausted millionaire and sent him back to the tables. Escorts, Russian and Chinese, were available for a millionaire’s company or solace or good luck. Waitresses wafted by in harem pants carrying drinks. In the Xanadu tradition, the club had originally boasted an indoor menagerie of falcons, peacocks and a rare Tasmanian devil. The devil proved to look like a large rat that shrieked hideously and continually in competition with the peacocks until it dropped dead of exhaustion, while the peacocks were succeeded by parrots that said in a variety of voices, “Hit me!”

  On occasion, as a civic gesture, the Golden Khan televised a beauty contest for the victims of a terrorist attack, a lingerie show for wounded soldiers or a chess tournament to benefit homeless kids. Admittedly, chess was a castaway. No one had time to play chess anymore, although every Russian knew how to play chess, agreed it was a measure of the intellect and assumed it was a special Russian talent. So, on what the management expected to be a slow winter morning—the millionaires tucked in their Swedish bed-sheets or SUVs—the general public was allowed into an area of the hall where mahogany blackjack tables with blue felt and padded armrests were temporarily replaced by folding tables, chessboards and game clocks. Parrots sidestepped on their perches. Security men in black suits set up a barrier of brass stands and golden ropes as players and supporters filtered in: veterans full of craftiness, a team of university students who were serenely confident, teenage girls with evasive eyes and a prodigy toting his booster seat. Each was a local legend, the winner of wars fought in dormitories and city parks. They had until ten to check in under a banner that declared “Blitz for Moscow Youth!” The event would have been a perfect challenge for Zhenya, but Platonov had checked the list of entrants and failed to find any sign that the boy had risen to the bait. Even so, it might lure him out as a spectator.

  Arkady and Platonov stayed out of sight with the show’s producer in a van parked outside and watched on monitors as the presenter rehearsed her marks. She was petite as a gymnast and so excited she looked like a sparkler waiting to be lit.

  The producer had the short ponytail of a part-time artist. He said, “A month ago she was runner-up for Miss Moscow; now she’s a presenter. We’re breaking her in by taping a somewhat inconsequential event. Chess? Give me a break.” Madonna sang from his pants and he pulled out a cell phone. “Excuse me.”

  The van’s interior was cold and close, dimly lit by the glow of the screens and full of the sharp edges of audio, video and transmission gear. For the occasion Platonov had found a bow tie. Arkady wore, under his pea jacket and turtleneck, gauze swathed in salve; he was learning how many times a day a man had to turn his head. Walking to the car had been difficult. Driving was torture. Speaking was nearly impossible. Arkady had said hello when he boarded the van; otherwise he was mute.

  After an animated conversation on the phone the producer began madly throwing switches at a console and said, “There’s been a change. The soccer game is canceled due to weather and we have to fill in. We’re going live in two minutes. You may have noticed there’s not enough room here to swing your dick. So you don’t touch anything—and maintain silence except to pass along any information about chess if I need it. If I need it I will hold up my right hand. Otherwise, act like your friend here, the one with nothing to say.” He pulled on a headset and tipped back for a better view of the presenter. “Lydia, Yura, Grisha, I have some news for you. We have to start early. We’re going live.”

  On the screen Arkady saw the presenter’s personal candlepower rise as she got the word. The two cameramen with her finished mounting an overhead camera over the number one table before they picked up their handhelds. In the van the producer launched three conversations at the same time, choreographing the cameras and cueing her. At five, four, three, two, one, Lydia appeared next to a roulette table to welcome viewers to “a special benefit live at the exclusive Casino of the Golden Khan, the world-famous home of high-stakes gaming.”

  A plastic shade on the van’s rear window was open a crack. Arkady squinted through it at a parking lot that was a maze of ruts in old snow. It was weird, the geometry of reality, he thought. How it changed depending on where you stood.

  Platonov muttered in Arkady’s ear, “Chess is not gaming. Cretins! Besides, this tournament is not even chess. We used to play in real chess halls with real rules. It’s blitz. It’s not even blitz, it’s television.”

  On screen the presenter asked herself, “For those who don’t follow chess closely, you may ask yourself what exactly is blitz?”

  “In a regular…,” the producer said.

  She said, “In a regular game of chess a player has two hours to make forty moves. In blitz he has five minutes. For this tournament, for motivation, in case of a tie the winner will be determined by the flip of a coin. The pace, as you can imagine, is rapid and exciting.”

  “Like a mugging,” Platonov said.

  The producer said, “Knockout…”

  She said, “The competition will be a knockout system. Who plays white will be determined, again, by a flip of a coin, actually a casino chip. White or black, if you lose, you’re out. We have sixteen competitors, players of all ages who have survived preliminary rounds.”

  Platonov stared at the monitor. “I recognize some. Whack-offs, dilettantes, anarchists.”

  The producer shot Platonov a warning scowl.

  The presenter said, “Our tournament champion will win a thousand dollars and the Casino of the Golden Khan will donate to children’s shelters across the city a thousand dollars.”

  A thousand? That much was swept up in loose chips every night, Arkady thought.

  “And there is a special bonus. The tournament champion will play a game with legendary Grandmaster”—she stopped to hear the producer’s feed—“Ilya Platonov. Are we ready?”

  Platonov spied a different question in Arkady’s eyes and said, “They’re giving me five hundred. An honorarium. They say I can talk about the chess club.”

  Arkady doubted it. They’d trot Platonov in and out like a dancing bear.

  She unhooked a golden rope. “Find your tables, please.”

  In the van the producer punched in music to scurry by as the players milled around and found their assigned tables. One camera scanned a player with shaky hands that had shaved him badly, a girl chewing on her hair, a fresh-cheeked university student Buddhalike at his board. The other camera focused on supporters: an anxious mother who pressed a handkerchief to her mouth, a girlfriend with chess books stacked on her knees and on the back row, fresh from the drunk tank, Victor. Fifteen players were in their seats. One was missing.

  “We seem to be short one player.” The presenter found a place card at an empty seat. “E. Lysenko. Is there an E. Lysenko here?”

  Arkady was jolted. E. Lysenko was Zhenya. Was he there?

  The opponent was a stickler for the rules. He folded his arms and informed her, “You’ll have to give me a bye.”

  “We’ll have to give him a bye,” the producer said into his microphone. “Start the games. Come on, Lydia! We need action.”

  “It looks as if we will have to give you a bye,” she said at her end. “So, you go through the first round and you didn’t have to lift a finger.”

  In the van Arkady said, “It’s not ten o’clock yet. There are five minutes to go. You’re starting early.”

  The producer waved him off.

 
“It’s not ten,” Arkady said.

  The producer told Platonov, “I liked your friend more as a dummy. Get him out of here.”

  Arkady pulled the microphone off the producer’s head and spoke to the presenter directly. “Wait! Give him a chance.”

  “He’s here,” she said.

  In an anorak with the hood halfway up, Evgeny Lysenko, called Zhenya, looked like a sentry posted at a miserable border. At twelve years old he was short and slight and his natural gait was a reluctant shuffle. His hair was drab, his features ordinary. He habitually looked down to avoid attention and Arkady realized that Zhenya must have been among the spectators the entire time, waiting in the shadow of his hood until the last second before claiming his seat.

  “How did his name get on the list?” Platonov asked.

  “Sorry.” Arkady gave the headset back. His throat burned.

  “Get fucked,” said the producer.

  The opponent won the flip and chose white. He observed to Zhenya, “No time to clean your fingernails?”

  Zhenya’s nails had black moons from his living in railroad cars around Three Stations. He stared at them as his opponent opened with his king pawn. Zhenya went on studying the dirt that lined his hands. The opponent waited. Every second was precious in blitz. Other boards jumped with moves and the slap of time buttons.

  The producer told Arkady, “After all that, your boy froze.”

  A minute passed. Players at the nearer tables stole glances at Zhenya, who left the white pawn alone and unchallenged in the center of the board. Early moves were the easiest, but Zhenya looked transfixed. Two minutes passed. The time clock was digital, with two LCD faces set in tough plastic for the occasional toss by an unhappy loser. The camera zoomed in. It was difficult to tell in all the motion on other boards who was winning or losing, but Zhenya’s board and clock made it immediately plain who was falling further and further behind. His opponent didn’t know how to set his expression. At first he was pleased to see Zhenya, by all appearances, at a loss. As the seconds passed he felt more and more uneasy, as if forced to dance alone. Someone was being humiliated; he could no longer say who. He said nothing to Zhenya; speaking over the board after play began was against the rules. Zhenya stood and the opponent half stood, expecting the boy to quit. Instead, Zhenya took off his anorak and hung it over the back of the chair to settle in for longer analysis.