Stalin's Ghost

by Martin Cruz Smith

  Urman stood next to Arkady. “I think that bullet must have really addled your brain. You should be as far from here as you can get.”

  “That occurred to me, but I wanted to hear Isakov in person.”

  “So, what do you think?” Urman asked.

  “He’s going from murder to politics. Is that a step up or down? What do the Americans think?”

  “They’re happy. I told them you were harmless. Are you harmless?”

  “As a babe.”

  “Were you a babe at the Boatman last night? Are you fucking with me?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t dare fuck with you. I don’t want to swallow my tongue.”

  “Because I could take care of you now.”

  “I doubt that. No, not at a rally days before the election. Wiley is an expert. He can explain to you the negative effect murder has on a rally. In fact, I think I have a little breathing room here.” Arkady had tuned out Isakov’s speech, but he contributed a polite clap. “What a perfect day for an event like this. You are a lucky man. But what exactly are you? In Chechnya you were second in command to Isakov. You’re partners with him in the detective squad. Now you’re his campaign manager? What’s next? Footstool? Bootlick?”

  Urman half laughed, half sighed. “You’re trying to provoke me?”

  “Well, Mongols do have a history of violence, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane and all.”

  “You’ve gone mental.”

  “Maybe. A funny thing about being shot in the head is—”

  “You should be dead.”

  “That’s it, I should be.”

  “Did you get a glimpse of the other side? Did you see a tunnel and a light?”

  “I saw a grave.”

  “You know, that’s what I always figured.”

  People swarmed by. Eighty-year-old farmers in forty-year-old suits were followed at a quick march by men and boys in military camos and by babushkas at full hobble. A teenage boy rushed by with his father and grandfather. They made a heartwarming picture, three generations in camos with identical shoulder patches of a red star, a helmet and a rose.

  “An outdoor club?”

  “Diggers.”

  “Why are they called that?”

  Urman shrugged. “They dig. They dig and they love Nikolai; they’re what Wiley calls Nikolai’s base. They need someone like him.”

  “A serial killer?”

  “That is an unsubstantiated accusation by a brain-damaged man. Prosecutor Zurin will say so, Prosecutor Sarkisian will say so and so will we.”

  On stage Isakov built to a climax. “Russia’s blood sacrifice of twenty million lives stemmed the Fascist invaders. Reminders of that struggle can be found around Tver even today.”

  Overwhelming applause.

  “Why are the Americans here?” Arkady asked.

  “Nikolai has momentum. The Americans say momentum is very important in politics. They thought they were setting up a paper candidate to fuck up the opposition. They’re taking a second look at Nikolai now.”

  The real and the projected Isakovs said together, “It is our moral duty to protect Russia’s security, rationalize her economic gains, uproot corruption, identify the thieves and connivers who stole the assets of the people, ruthlessly stamp out terrorism, rebuild her defenses with apologies to no one, reject the meddling by foreign hypocrites in our internal affairs, promote traditional Russian customs and values, protect our environment and leave a better world for our children. And I will always remember that I am one of you.” He wasn’t done. A girl came out on stage bearing the obligatory bouquet and something that Isakov pinned to his jacket lapel. On the video screen the camera closed in on an emblem of the star, helmet and rose. Isakov was a Digger too.

  Rapturous, passionate applause. A standing ovation. Shouts of “Isakov! Isakov!”

  “What the devil was that about?” Arkady asked.

  “It’s a good windup to the campaign,” Urman said. “It’s got everything.”

  “Like a fruit salad. You really think Isakov has a chance?”

  “He’s been a winner ever since I’ve known him. Since we joined the Black Berets. There are twelve candidates. He only needs a plurality.”

  Isakov had not left the stage. He carried the girl from one side to the other while roses landed at his feet. Urman joined in the rhythmic applause.

  “Why did he drop out?” Arkady asked.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “When you and Isakov met in OMON, he had just left the university.”

  “He was bored. He was sick of books. They taught us something useful in OMON. Hit first, keep hitting.”

  “Good advice. But he was a five-point student, at the top of his class, and in his last week, he threw away all that hard work. That doesn’t strike me as boredom. Something happened.”

  “You never let up,” Urman said.

  “It’s an innocent question. Anyway, you’re going to kill me as soon as you get the nod.”

  Urman leaned close to speak confidentially. “Do you know how I kill an enemy? First I cut off his testicles—”

  “You fry them and eat them and on and on. I heard all about it. But at the Sunzha Bridge, you simply shot people in the back.”

  “I was in a hurry. With you I’ll take my time.” Urman reassured Arkady with a pat on the back and slipped away.

  The crowd wasn’t leaving. A rhythmic clap continued and so many boys rode their fathers’ shoulders they were a second tier of enthusiasm. The sound system poured out the Soviet national anthem, the wartime version that included, “Stalin has raised us with faith in the people, inspiring them to labor and glorious deeds!” The applause doubled when Isakov returned to the stage to say informally, like a personal reminder, “The dig will tell the tale!”

  Maybe, Arkady thought. Maybe Urman could make him beg for mercy, although Arkady had trained with a master.

  “Skin is sensitive.”

  Arkady was twelve years old. In Afghanistan. He had returned to camp covered with ant bites, each bite hot and throbbing and his face swollen.

  His father sat on the cot and continued. “There have been experiments. Subjects have been hypnotized and told they were burned and blisters appeared on their skin. Other patients who were in pain were hypnotized and their pain went away. Not far away, perhaps, but enough.”

  The General loosened his necktie and undid the top two buttons of his shirt. Took a sharp breath through his nose and sipped his scotch.

  “The skin blushes with embarrassment, goes pale with fear, shivers in the cold. The question is, why were you riding around on a motorcycle outside the base? Outside the base is dangerous and off-limits, you know that.”

  “I didn’t see any signs.”

  “There have to be signs posted for you? What were you doing on the bike when you fell?”

  “Just riding.”

  “A little too fast, maybe? Doing some stunts?”

  “Maybe.”

  The General finished the glass and poured another. He lit a cigarette. Bulgarian tobacco. For Arkady, the match flame focused the pain of the bites.

  “So far as the natives are concerned we are guest engineers building an airstrip under a treaty of friendship and cooperation. That’s why we’re in civilian clothes. That’s why we buy their pomegranates and grapes, because we want to cement our friendship and be even more welcome. But this is still a Soviet military base and I am still its commander. Understood?

  “Yes.”

  The cigarette smoke was aromatic and blue as a thunderhead.

  “Were there any natives there? Did any of them see the accident?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  “Two men. I was lucky they were there.”

  “I’m sure.” His father blew the flame out as it reached his fingertips. “It must hurt.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re thirteen years old?”

  “Twelve.”

  “Twenty bites is a lot at
any age. Did you cry?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The General picked a flake of tobacco from his lip. “The people who live here and surround this base are tough. These people fought Alexander the Great. They’re warriors and their children are trained to be warriors and, no matter what, not to cry. Understand? Not to cry.” His father’s face turned red. Arkady didn’t think it was from embarrassment. Veins spread on the General’s forehead and neck. “I am the commander of this base. The son of the commander does not fall off his bike in front of the natives and if he does fall off and is bitten by a hundred ants he does not cry.”

  Two natives had stretched languidly in the shade of a saxaul tree to smoke cigarettes and watch Arkady on his motorbike chase ground squirrels across the desert floor. The boys were brothers with similar short, swirly black beards. They wore turbans, baggy trousers, oversized shirts, sunglasses.

  “They’re watching,” the General said. “The minute we look weak, we will be under siege. That’s why we surround the camp with mines and discourage the natives from coming near and why we have never let them inside to see our electronic gear, until today, when they carried in my son because of his ant stings.”

  “I’m sorry,” Arkady said.

  “Do you know the consequences? I could lose my command. You could have set off a mine and lost your life.”

  A gecko had darted in Arkady’s way. He had twisted the handlebars without thinking, and as the back end of the bike caught up with the front he flew over the machine and plowed face first into the gritty mound of an ant colony.

  “Do you know what made Stalin great?” his father asked. “Stalin was great because, during the war, when the Germans took his son Yakov prisoner and proposed an exchange, Stalin refused, even though he knew that saying no was a death sentence for his son.” The General drew on his cigarette to make it flare. In spite of the ant bites Arkady felt a chill. “Tobacco burns at nine hundred degrees centigrade. The skin knows it. So I will give you a choice, your skin or theirs.”

  “Whose?”

  “The men who brought you, your native friends. They’re still here.”

  “My skin.”

  “Wrong answer.” From his shirt pocket his father gave Arkady two snapshots, one of each brother, bareheaded and stripped to the waist, lying in a bloody heap. “They wouldn’t have felt a thing.”

  19

  The sun was setting and the village was a picture of civilization going to sleep: a handful of cottages, half of them abandoned, a power line and the dome of a church. A woman shuffled under a yoke of water buckets. A smoke-colored cat followed. When the old woman shooed it, the cat nipped across the road and slipped between piles of metal and rubber belts, through stacks of fenders and tires. Arkady kept pace in the Zhiguli until the cat squeezed under the closed doors of a garage.

  Arkady’s day had been spent searching for the right car, something with a Tver license plate and so drab it deflected attention. He had looked at Volgas, Ladas, Nivas of every color and variety of dents and for one reason or another each car was wrong.

  Knocking on the door to no effect, Arkady let himself into the garage and immediately blinked from the light of an acetylene torch. A figure in a leather vest and welding mask was welding what could have been a fuel tank amid the pulleys and chains, vises and clamps of a workshop. Anonymous items under different tarps shifted in the glare. The cat jumped up to a shelf of motorcycle helmets and batted at sparks.

  “Rudenko?” Arkady had to shout. “Rudi Rudenko?”

  The welder turned down the flame and flipped up his mask. “Yeah, what?”

  “This is the Rudenko repair shop?”

  “So?”

  “Do you have any used cars?”

  “No. This is a motorcycle shop. Shut the door on your way out. Thank you. Have a shitty day.”

  Arkady started for the door. He paused. On the way from Tver he had watched the rearview mirror in case he was followed and he could give a brief description of each car that had drawn close. Until his encounter with the motorcycle pack he had ignored bikes, virtually wiped them from his vision. Small motorbikes especially were as incidental as mosquitoes.

  “You’re still here?” Rudenko said.

  “Do you have any motorcycles to sell?”

  “You want a car, then you want a bike. How about a fucking cat? I have one of those.”

  “Do you have any bikes?”

  “I don’t see you on one of my bikes. That would be like seeing an old man climbing on a beautiful woman. I’m busy.”

  “I can wait.”

  “There’s no waiting room.”

  “I’ll wait in the car.”

  “That car?” The welder looked through the door.

  He turned off the torch and removed his mask, freeing a ponytail of red hair. Arkady’s spirits sank. Rudi was tall and angular with a beefsteak face and a sickly mustache. He was the biker who had welcomed Arkady to Tver with a hearty “Fuck Moscow.”

  Arkady said, “Sometimes people bring in bikes for repair and never return. Do you have a bike like that?”

  Rudi picked up a shovel and held it like an ax. “Let me fix your car first.”

  “I simply want a bike.” The last thing Arkady wanted was a brawl with someone bigger and uglier.

  “It’s okay!” Rudi suddenly shouted past Arkady, who found an old man coming at him from behind with a pitchfork. The old man must have shrunk because his clothes looked strapped on. “It’s okay, Granddad! Thanks!”

  “Is it Fritz?” the old man asked.

  “No, it’s not Fritz.”

  “Watch for tanks.”

  “Got my eyes peeled, Granddad.”

  “Well, they’ll be back.” The old man shook the pitchfork as he retreated.

  “We’ll be ready this time.”

  “For what?” Arkady asked.

  “Germans,” Rudi said. “If the Germans come again, he’s prepared. Where were we?”

  “I came for a bike,” Arkady reminded him.

  Rudi glanced in the direction his grandfather had gone.

  “Just stand still.” Rudi put the shovel aside and patted Arkady down and found his ID. “A senior investigator from Moscow. Are you investigating me?”

  “No.”

  “How did you even know my name?”

  “You’re in the telephone book.”

  “Oh, okay, no harm done.”

  Arkady appreciated that. Rudi had the arms of a man who lifted heavy bikes. On his right shoulder was a round BMW tattoo and on his left shoulder a Maserati trident. No tattoos of girls or guns, and no OMON tiger heads.

  The grandfather returned to the door in a jacket with war medals. He gave Arkady a salute and said, “Rudenko reporting in.”

  When Arkady returned the salute Rudi said, “Don’t encourage him. He thinks he knows you.”

  “From where?”

  “I don’t know. Sometime in his past. Ignore him. You really want a bike?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have three.” Rudi pulled tarps off a flame red Kawasaki, a tiger-striped Yamaha, and a sidecar Ural the color of mud.

  “Beauties. The Japanese bikes, I mean. Two hundred on a straightaway, screaming like a jet.”

  “And the Ural?”

  “You want to go fast in a Ural? Drive it off a cliff.”

  It was a fact that the Ural was not a racehorse. It was the mule of motor travel, its sidecar used to haul trussed chickens or a farmer’s wife. People called it a Cossack for its lack of charm.

  “It has a Tver license?”

  “Yes, see for yourself,” Rudi said. “Two thousand euros for either customized Japanese bike, two hundred for the fucking Ural.”

  “It needs a new front tire.”

  “I have a retread somewhere.” Rudi waved vaguely toward the pile of tires outside. “You’re a real risk taker, I can see that.”

  “Would you throw in a helmet with a face shield?”

  “No problem.” Rudi
rooted around a trash can and fished out a helmet with a crack down the center. “Slightly used.”

  “Can you deliver it tonight? Say, ten?”

  “To get rid of it? Anywhere. I suggest Pushkin’s statue on the embankment. At night the gays move in and the militia moves out.” Rudi was suddenly alarmed. “Watch out, Granddad. No, no. Don’t come in.”

  Carrying a paper bag, the old man stumbled against a corner stack of shovels and rods that fell with a clamor on the floor.

  “Granddad, why do you always do that?”

  “You look familiar,” the old man told Arkady. “Were you here in ’forty-one?”

  “I wasn’t born yet in ’forty-one.”

  “Would you know if this is Fritz?” The old man opened the bag and took out a skull with a hole in the back.

  “All Germans are Fritz to my grandfather,” Rudi said.

  Arkady said, “I have no idea.”

  Rudi said, “Call him Big Rudi. He used to be bigger.”

  “There’s no need for formalities between old comrades.” Rudi’s grandfather found a loose tooth, a brown molar, and plucked it from the jaw. “I never understood that. The Germans were such big strapping fellows and they had such bad teeth.”

  “Where did you get it?” Arkady asked.

  “Everywhere. Believe me, there’s nothing worse than fighting with a toothache. I pulled my own tooth out.” He dropped the tooth in a pocket. “Don’t fret, Rudi, I’ll pick up the shovels. Have you got my eyeglasses?”

  “You lost them ten years ago.”

  “They’re here somewhere.”

  “Gaga,” Rudi told Arkady. “He lives in the past.”

  Arkady helped the old man pick up the shovels. Among them was a homemade metal detector, with an inductor coil and a gauge. While Rudi slammed through drawers in a search of sale documents his vest rode up from a gun tucked into the back of his jeans.