Stalin’s Ghost (2 page)

“It’s been four days. He left with his chess set. I thought he was going to a match. This is the longest he’s been gone.”

“That’s right and every minute has infinite possibilities. You can’t control them all, Arkasha. Zhenya likes to take chances. He likes to hang out with homeless boys at Three Stations. You are not responsible. Sometimes I think your urge to do good is a form of narcissism.”

“A strange accusation coming from a doctor.”

He pictured her in her lab coat sitting in the dark of a clinic office, feet resting on a coffee table, watching the snow. At the apartment she could sit for hours, a sphinx with cigarettes. Or wander out with a small tape recorder and a pocketful of cassettes and interview invisible people, as she called them, people who only came out at night. She didn’t watch television.

“Zurin called,” she said. “He wants you to call him. Don’t do it.”

“Why not?”

“Because he hates you. He would only call you if he could do you harm.”

“Zurin is the prosecutor. I am his investigator. I can’t totally ignore him.”

“Yes, you can.”

This was an argument they had had before. Arkady knew his lines by heart, and to repeat them by phone struck him as unnecessary misery. Besides, she was right. He could quit the prosecutor’s office and join a private security firm. Or—he had a law degree from Moscow University, after all—become a lawyer with a leather briefcase and business card. Or wear a paper hat and serve hamburgers at McDonald’s. There weren’t a great many other careers open to a senior investigator, although they were all better than being a dead investigator, Arkady supposed. He didn’t believe Zurin would stab him in the back, although the prosecutor might show someone else where the knife drawer was. Anyway, the conversation had not gone as planned.

Arkady heard a rustle, as if she were rising from a chair. He said, “Maybe he’s stuck somewhere until the Metro starts running. I’ll try the chess club and Three Stations.”

“Maybe I’m stuck somewhere. Arkady, why did I come to Moscow?”

“Because I asked you to.”

“Oh. I’m losing my memory. Snow has wiped out so much. It’s like amnesia. Maybe Moscow will be buried completely.”

“Like Atlantis?”

“Exactly like Atlantis. And people will not be able to believe that such a place ever existed.”

There was a long pause. The phone crackled.

Arkady said, “Was Zhenya with homeless boys? Did he sound excited? Scared?”

“Arkady, maybe you haven’t noticed. We’re all scared.”

“Of what?”

This might be a good time to bring up Isakov, he thought. With the distance of a telephone cord. He didn’t want to sound like an accuser, he just needed to know. He didn’t even need to know, as long as it was over.

There was a silence. No, not silence. She had hung up.

As the M-1 became Lenin Prospect it entered a realm of empty, half-lit shopping malls, auto showrooms and the sulfurous blaze of all-night casinos: Sportsman’s Paradise, Golden Khan, Sinbad’s. Arkady played with the name Cupid, which on the lips of Zoya had sounded more hard-core than cherubic. All the time he looked right and left, slowing to scan each shadowy figure walking by the road.

The cell phone rang, but it wasn’t Eva. It was Zurin.

“Renko, where the devil have you been?”

“Out for a drive.”

“What sort of idiot goes out on a night like this?”

“It appears we are both out, Leonid Petrovich.”

“Didn’t you get my message?”

“Say that again.”

“Did you get…Never mind. Where are you now?”

“Going home. I’m not on duty.”

Zurin said, “An investigator is always on duty. Where are you?”

“On the M-1.” Actually, at this point, Arkady was well into town.

“I’m at the Chistye Prudy Metro station. Get here as fast as you can.”

“Stalin again?”

“Just get here.”

Even if Arkady had wanted to race to Zurin’s side his way was slowed when traffic was narrowed to a single lane in front of the Supreme Court. Trucks and portable generators were drawn up in disorder on the curb and street. Four white tents glowed on the sidewalk. Round-the-clock construction was not unusual in the ambitious new Moscow; however, this project looked especially haphazard. Traffic police vigorously waved cars through, but Arkady tucked his car between trucks. A uniformed militia colonel seemed belligerently in charge. He dispatched an officer to chase Arkady, but the man proved to be a veteran sergeant named Gleb whom Arkady knew.

“What’s going on?”

“We’re not to tell.”

“That sounds interesting,” Arkady said. He liked Gleb because the sergeant could whistle like a nightingale and had the gap teeth of an honest man.

“Well, seeing as how you’re an investigator…”

“Seeing that…,” Arkady agreed.

“Okay.” Gleb dropped his voice. “They were doing renovations to extend the basement cafeteria. A bunch of Turkish workers were digging. They got a little surprise.”

Excavation work had torn up part of the sidewalk. Arkady joined the onlookers on the precarious edge, where klieg lamps aimed an incandescent light at a power shovel in a hole two stories deep and about twenty meters square. Besides militia, the crowd on the sidewalk included firemen and police, city officials and agents of state security who looked rousted from their beds.

In the hole an organized crew of men in coveralls and hard hats worked on the ground and up on scaffolding with picks and trowels, plastic bags, surgical masks and latex gloves. One man dislodged what looked like a brown ball, which he placed in a canvas bucket that he lowered by rope to the ground. He returned to his trowel and painstakingly freed a rib cage with arms attached. As Arkady’s eyes adjusted he saw that one entire face of the excavation was layered with human remains outlined by the snow, a cross section of soil with skulls for stones and femurs for sticks. Some were clothed, some weren’t. The smell was of sweet compost.

The canvas bucket was passed fire brigade style across the pit and pulled by rope up to a tent where other shadowy bodies were laid out on tables. The colonel went from tent to tent and barked at the men sorting bones to work faster. In between orders, he kept an eye on Arkady.

Sergeant Gleb said, “They want all the bodies out by morning. They don’t want people to see.”

“How many so far?”

“It’s a mass grave, who can say?”

“How old?”

“From the clothes, they say the forties or fifties. Holes in the back of the head. In the basement of the Supreme Court yet. March you right downstairs and
boom!
That’s how they used to do it. That was some court.”

The colonel joined them. He was in full winter regalia with a blue fur hat. Arkady wondered, not for the first time, what animal had blue fur.

The colonel said loudly, “There will be an investigation of these bodies to see whether criminal charges should be brought.”

Heads turned along the line, many amused.

“Say that again,” Arkady asked the colonel.

“What I said was, I can assure everyone that there will be an investigation of the dead to see whether criminal charges will be brought.”

“Congratulations.” Arkady put his arm around the colonel’s shoulders and whispered, “That is the best joke I’ve heard all day.”

The colonel’s face turned a mottled red and he ducked out of Arkady’s grip. Ah, well, another enemy made, Arkady thought.

Gleb asked, “What if the grave runs under the entire court?”

“That’s always the problem, isn’t it? Once you start digging, when to stop?”

A
rkady took his time. His relationship with Zurin had deteriorated to a game like badminton, in which each player took mighty swings that feebly propelled loathing back and forth. So instead of racing to Chistye Prudy Metro station, Arkady stopped in a lane of brick buildings hung with banners that filled and emptied in the wind. Arkady couldn’t see all the banners, but saw enough to learn that “Studio Apartments–Concierge Services–Cable” would soon be erected on the site. “Interested Parties Should Subscribe Now.”

He kicked his way through snow down a flight of stairs and knocked on a basement door. There was no answer but the door was unlocked and he pushed his way into a black space with no more than a seam of street light along the top of the basement windows, about as hospitable as an Ice Age cave. He found a light switch and an overhead rack of fluorescent tubes flickered to life.

Grandmaster Ilya Platonov sat sprawled face down on a table, asleep between chessboards. Arkady thought the fact that Platonov had found that much room was remarkable since chess sets and game clocks covered every surface: antique, inlaid and computerized boards, men lined up like armies summoned and forgotten. Books and magazines on chess crammed the bookcases. Photographs of the Russian greats—Alekhine, Kasparov, Karpov, Tal—hung on the walls along with signs that said, “Members Are Requested Not to Take Boards to the W.C.” and “No Video Games!” The air reeked of cigarettes, genius and musty clothes.

Arkady stomped the snow from his shoes and Platonov’s arm compulsively shot out and hit the game clock.

“In your sleep. That’s impressive,” Arkady said.

Platonov opened his eyes as he sat up. Arkady guessed his age at about eighty. He still had a commanding nose and a pugnacious gaze once he rubbed the sand from his eyes.

“In my sleep, I would still beat you.” Platonov felt his pockets for a wake-up cigarette. Arkady gave him one. “If you played your best game, maybe a draw.”

“I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m looking for Zhenya.”

“Zhenya, that little shit. I say that most affectionately. A frustrating boy.” Platonov hobbled to a desk and began searching loose papers. “I want to show you the results of the last junior tournament, in which he was a complete mediocrity. Then, the same day, he defeats the adult champion, but for money. For money your little Zhenya is a different player altogether. This is a club for people who love chess, not a casino.”

“I understand.” Arkady noticed a “contributions” jar half full of coins.

Platonov abandoned his search. “The main thing is, Zhenya is ruining his game. No patience. He surprises opponents now because he’s just a boy and then he swoops in for the kill. When he encounters the next level of players they will wear him down.”

“Have you seen Zhenya in the last twenty-four hours?”

“No. The day before, yes. I threw him out for gambling once again. He’s welcome back if it’s to play and learn. Have you ever played him?”

“There’s no point. I’m no competition.”

Platonov scratched his chin. “You’re in the prosecutor’s office, aren’t you? Well, intelligence isn’t everything.”

“Thank God,” Arkady said.

“Chess demands discipline and analysis to reach the top. And in chess if you aren’t at the top, where are you?” Platonov spread his arms. “Teaching idiots basic openings. Left, right, left, right! That’s why Zhenya is such a waste.” In his passion the grandmaster backed into the wall and knocked a framed photograph to the floor. Arkady picked the photograph up. Although the glass was a whirl of shards he saw a young Platonov with a vigorous head of hair accepting a bouquet and congratulations from a round man in a bad suit. Khrushchev, the Party Secretary from years ago. Behind the two men stood children in costume as chess pieces: knights, rooks, kings and queens. Khrushchev’s eyes sank into his grin. Platonov gently took the picture away. “Ancient history. Leningrad, nineteen sixty-two. I swept the field. That was when world chess was Soviet chess and this club, this undersea wreck was the center of the chess world.”

“Soon to be apartments.”

“Ah, you saw the banner outside? Apartments with all the modern conveniences. We will be demolished and replaced by a marble palace for thieves and whores, the social parasites we used to put in jail. Does the state care?” Platonov rehung the photo, cracks and all. “The state used to believe in culture, not real estate. The state—”

“You’re still a Party member?”

“I am a Communist and proud of it. I remember when millionaires were shot on principle. Maybe a millionaire can be an honest man, maybe pigs can whistle. If not for me, they’d already have their apartment house, but I have petitioned the city, the state senate and the president himself to bring this architectural obscenity to a halt. I am costing them millions of dollars. That’s why they want me out of the way.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why they want to kill me.” Platonov smiled. “I outfoxed them. I stayed here. I never would have made it home safely.”

“Who did you outfox?”

“Them.”

It struck Arkady that the conversation was taking a strange turn. He spied an electric samovar on a side table. “Would you like some tea?”

“You mean, has the old man been drinking? Does he need to sober up? Is he crazy? No.” Platonov dismissed the cup. “I’m ten moves ahead of you, ten moves.”

“Like leaving the front door unlocked and falling asleep?”

Platonov forgave himself with a shrug. “You agree then that I should take precautions?”

Arkady glanced at his watch. Zurin had called him half an hour ago. “For a start, have you informed the militia that you feel your life is in danger?”

“A hundred times. They send an idiot along, he steals what he can and then goes.”

“Have you been attacked? Been threatened by mail or over the phone?”

“No. That’s what all the idiots ask.”

Arkady took that as his cue. “I have to go.”

“Wait.” For his age, Platonov maneuvered around the game tables with surprising speed. “Any other suggestions?”

“My professional advice?”

“Yes.”

“If millionaires want to raze this building to erect a palace for lowlifes and whores, do what they say. Take their money and move.”

Platonov sucked up his chest. “As a boy, I fought on the Kalinin Front. I do not retreat.”

“A wonderful sentiment for a headstone.”

“Get out! Out! Out!” Platonov opened the door and pushed Arkady through. “Enough defeatism. Your whole generation. No wonder this country is in the shit can.”

Arkady climbed the stairs to his car. Although he didn’t think Platonov was in any real danger, he drove only a block before returning on foot. Staying away from streetlamps, he slipped from doorway to doorway until he was satisfied they were clear of anything but shadows and then lingered another minute just in case, perhaps because the wind had dropped and he liked the way the snow had gone weightless, floating like light on water.

No militia guarded the Chistye Prudy Metro station. Arkady tapped at the door and was let in by a cleaning lady who led him across a half-lit hall of somber granite and around turnstiles to a set of three ancient escalators that clacked as they descended. Maybe they weren’t so old, only used; the Moscow underground was the busiest in the world and to be virtually the only one in it made him aware how large the station was and how deep the hole.

His mind returned to the excavation outside the Supreme Court. There they were, eminent judges with the modest ambition of upgrading their basement cafeteria, adding perhaps an espresso bar, and, instead, they had unearthed the horror of the past. Stick your shovel into the ground in Moscow and you took your chances.

“The people on the train must be crazy. He’s been dead for fifty years. It’s a disgrace,” the cleaning woman said with the firmness of a palace guard. She wore an orange vest she smoothed and straightened. The outside world might be scribbled with graffiti and reek of piss, but it was generally agreed that the last bastion of decency in Moscow was the underground, discounting the gropers, drunks and thieves among your fellow passengers. “More than fifty years.”

“You saw nothing tonight?”

“Well, I saw that soldier.”

“Who?”

“I don’t remember his name, but I saw him on television. It’ll come to me.”

“You saw a soldier but not Stalin.”

“On television. Why can’t they leave poor Stalin alone? It’s a disgrace.”

“Which part?”

“All of it.”

“I think you’re right. I think there’ll be disgrace enough for everyone.”

“You took your time.” Zurin was waiting at the bottom, cashmere coat worn impresario-style on his shoulders and a froth of anxiety in the corners of his mouth.

“Another sighting?” Arkady asked.

“What else?”

“You could have started without me. You didn’t have to wait.”

“But we do. This is a situation of some delicacy.” Zurin said the sighting had taken place, as before, on the last car of the last train of the night; even to the same minute—0132—testimony to Metro punctuality. This time two plainclothes officers had been stationed on the car in case. As soon as they noticed signs of a disturbance they radioed the driver not to leave the platform until all thirty-three passengers of the last car were off. The detectives had taken preliminary statements. Zurin handed Arkady a spiral notebook open to a list of names, addresses, telephone numbers. I. Rozanov, 34, male, a plumber, “saw nothing.” A. Anilov, 18, male, soldier, “maybe saw something.” M. Bourdenova, 17, female, student, “recognized him from a history course.”

R. Golushkovich, 19, male, soldier, “was asleep.” V. Golushkovich, 20, male, soldier, “was drunk.”

A. Antipenko, 74, male, retired, “witnessed Comrade Stalin on the platform.”

F. Mendeleyev, 83, male, retired, “witnessed Comrade Stalin wave from the platform.”

M. Peshkova, 33, female, schoolteacher, “saw nothing.” P. Peneyev, 40, male, schoolteacher, “saw nothing.” V. Zelensky, 32, male, filmmaker, “witnessed Stalin in front of Soviet flag.”

And so on. Of the thirty-three passengers, eight saw Stalin. Those eight had been detained and the rest released. The platform conductor, a G. Petrova, had seen nothing out of the ordinary and was also allowed to go. The notes were signed by Detectives Isakov and Urman.

“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.”