Stalin’s Ghost (22 page)

“Okay.” Zhenya’s interest returned to minimal.

Arkady asked, “Have they decided how to catch the monster?”

“I think they want to stun it.”

“With what, a torpedo?”

“Something, and then the monster will float to the surface.”

“What if he sinks?”

“I don’t know. How can anyone tell?”

“It’s a matter of buoyancy. The more fat the more buoyancy and mammals are fat and gassy animals. We float.”

“On the water.”

“Or under.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, there is a theory that in really deep lakes a body will sink only to a certain zone, at which point water pressure, temperature, weight and buoyancy balance out and the body hangs in the water.”

“There could be dozens of them down there just hanging around. The police could go there in a submarine and solve all sorts of crimes. That is so amazing. What do you call that zone?”

“I don’t know. It’s just a theory,” Arkady said, although he did have a name for it: Memory.

T
he mural in the bar of the Tahiti Club covered Gauguin’s Polynesian period, faithfully copying the artist’s paintings of phallic idols and natives in sarongs. Everyone wore knockoff Armani and shouted into cell phones, while on a wide television screen two heavyweights pounded each other like bell ringers.

Arkady followed a disco beat up the stairs, past the scrutiny of body builders in black tie and entered a cabaret where the speakers were so loud that the hovering layers of cigarette smoke seemed to shudder with the beat. He caught a glimpse of two pole dancers on stage before a waitress sized him up.

“You want a stool? A ringside stool down where the action is. The action, you know.”

“I’m not sure I’m ready for much action.”

“A table?”

“A booth. I’m expecting friends.”

He ordered a beer and asked whether Zelensky or Petya were around. Isakov and Urman were probably at a Russian Patriot event, but word would get back to them that he hadn’t left Tver. He couldn’t provoke Isakov and Urman if all he did was hide.

The waitress asked, “You know Vlad Zelensky? Are you a film producer?”

“A critic,” Arkady said.

Spotlights made the dancers bright and blurry. They strutted up and down the stage in platform shoes and thongs, keeping in constant motion like fish in a tank while an audience of men hung in suspended animation. When a dancer paused and sprawled on the runway, ringside aficionados tucked money in the thong. Otherwise, as a sign said, No Touching.

Arkady settled into a leather booth the color of arterial blood. The table had two menus. A food menu featured tropical cocktails, egg rolls, and sushi. A “Crazy” menu offered a lap dance in the Sportsman’s Lounge, a personal chat with a naked woman, “an intimate hour with a lovely companion in the VIP Jacuzzi or an entire evening with an anything-goes beauty (or beauties!!!) in the luxurious Peter the Great Bedroom.” The price of a royal romp was a thousand euros, cut-rate compared to Moscow clubs.

The waitress brought his Baltika. “It really ought to be the Catherine the Great Bedroom. She built the palace here and she did a lot more fucking than Peter ever did. Food?”

“Just some black bread and cheese.”

“But you’ll be drinking?”

“Naturally.”

The “Crazy” text informed Arkady that “the women of Tver are legendary for their beauty. Today, some of Russia’s top models are daughters of Tver. Their fame has grown worldwide and bachelors from the United States, Germany, Britain, and Australia, to name but a few, travel to Tver seeking the aid of Cupid.”

Tanya and a peppy little dancer were up next. The first time he had seen Tanya she was in a white evening gown strumming the harp at the Metropol. In little more than the flesh she was even more in control, with a cool smile and long strides that prompted rhythmic clapping at ringside.

Across the room Arkady saw his waitress lead Wiley and Pacheco to an opposite booth. Pacheco adjusted his tie while Wiley tried hard not to look at Tanya. They couldn’t have found the Tahiti on their own, Arkady thought and, soon enough, Marat Urman joined them. His canary yellow jacket brought style to the scene; a Tatar could wear colors that made a Russian quail. Urman blew Tanya a kiss, but her eyes tracked Arkady as he changed booths.

“Look what the cat drug in.” Pacheco made room for Arkady.

Urman said, “You can’t be serious.”

“Tanya looks good,” Arkady said.

“She looks magnificent,” Pacheco corrected him. “Milky skin, a dancer’s body, fabulous tits.”

“Her nose looks good,” Arkady said.

The music started, a throbbing bass that made the room reverberate, and the dancers climbed the poles.

“
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
. I love this song,” Pacheco said.

Arkady said, “Somehow I think they missed the point.”

“It’s the beat that matters,” Pacheco said. “Got any good Mongolian love songs? Like to your favorite horse?”

Urman said, “You should take off your wedding ring.”

“Why?”

“It promotes impotence. It’s a Slavic tradition to wear a wedding ring no more than four hours a day for reasons of health. Ask Renko.”

“Is that true?” Wiley asked.

“Some men believe it. Some believe they shouldn’t wear a ring at all.”

“It’s scientific fact,” Urman said. “The ring is like a closed circuit and the finger is an electric conductor.”

Pacheco said, “Well, the Slavic dick is a more delicate instrument than I would have thought.”

“Where is Isakov?” Arkady asked.

Wiley said, “A visit to an erotic club is not an appropriate image for a candidate of reform.”

“Does he have momentum?” Arkady asked. “I understand that’s important.”

Wiley was happy to avert his gaze from the stage and take refuge in politics. “Momentum is all he’s got. He’s got no genuine party machine behind him, so one misstep and his campaign is over.”

“But he does have momentum,” Urman said.

“He was only chosen to steal votes from the opposition,” Wiley said. “Nobody expected his candidacy to come alive.”

“He has a chance,” Urman insisted.

“If he finishes with a bang.”

“In the States pole dancing is the new workout,” said Pacheco. “Honest.”

Tanya was sex wrapped around a pole, with a slow head-down slither that seemed to swallow brass. The other dancer swung around her pole like a dynamo, which seemed quaintly Soviet.

“Tanya had classical training for the ballet, but she grew too big for the men to catch.” Urman turned to Arkady. “Well, you’ve wrestled her, you know.”

Pacheco’s ears perked up. “Wrestled? That sounds interesting.”

“We had a special moment,” Arkady said.

“We need a bang.” Wiley concentrated on the table top. “A long-shot campaign has to end with a visceral, explosive climax.”

“Like what?” Arkady asked.

Wiley looked up. “There’s a statue of the Virgin Mary in Tver. The people here swear she cries. They sincerely believe they see it.”

“You’re going to have the Virgin appear at the dig?”

“Do you have Diet Coke?” Wiley asked the waitress.

Pacheco said, “She plays the harp and she strips. This is a talented young lady.”

“If not the Virgin, who?” Arkady asked. “Anyone in mind?”

“People see what they want to see,” Wiley said. The smaller dancer peeked at Wiley from between her legs. She had short dark hair and a beauty mark. Her name was Julia; she was twenty-three, spiritually advanced, looking for a man with his feet on the ground. Arkady knew because he had seen her photograph and description in the Cupid album of marriageable women.

“Renko can’t do anything,” Urman reassured Pacheco. “He’s hiding from the prosecutor here and disowned by the prosecutor in Moscow. Besides, he’s a dead man.”

“You mean, he will soon be a dead man?”

“No, I mean he’s dead now. He got shot in the head. If that’s not dead, what is?”

“I’ve noticed that Isakov never actually says Stalin’s name,” Arkady said.

“Why should he?” Wiley said. “Right now all anyone knows about Nikolai Isakov is that he’s a good-looking war hero. Everything stays vague and generally patriotic. Once he actually uses Stalin’s name, Stalin is an issue, which has some negatives. Our job is to connect Isakov and Stalin without saying so out loud.”

“How do you do that?”

“Visuals.”

“At the new dig? As I understand it, a mass grave of Russian soldiers has been discovered. That’s a strong visual, isn’t it? Any chance that a patriot named Isakov will be there, shovel in hand, when the television cameras arrive?”

Pacheco said, “The son of a bitch doesn’t sound that dead to me.”

Aretha Franklin sang,
“R-E-S-…”

Tanya slid off the runway, ignored her ringside regulars and climbed onto Arkady’s lap, where she breathed heavily and stamped him with sweat and powder. She kissed him as if they were lovers reunited and when he tried to ease her off she clung to his neck.

“Where is this hole I hear about? Is it the size of a bottle cap?”

She pressed herself against his face while she felt his scalp. All that remained of his operation were drain scars, but she found them. If Arkady had humiliated her, she would humiliate him. On stage Julia spun at half speed.

Pacheco reached across the table and gathered Tanya’s golden hair in his hand. “Darling, if money is your object, you are humping the wrong man. My friend here is as poor as a church mouse, whereas I am slipping a hundred-dollar bill in your G-string. Am I getting your attention?”

“I told you this was a bad idea,” Wiley said.

Tanya held on.

Pacheco said, “I like you and I am a great admirer of the harp, but you have to let go of my friend’s head.”

Tanya turned enough to say, “Make it two hundred.”

“Damn, this is a fine woman. Two hundred it is.”

Pacheco gave Tanya a chivalrous boost back onto the runway. Patrons applauded her return.

“Would you like some sushi?” Urman said.

“No.” Wiley threw money on the table. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.”

Outside, the Americans piled into a black Pathfinder and waited while Urman followed Arkady to the other end of the parking lot. Arkady had come in the Zhiguli because he had intended to be seen.

Pacheco hit the horn.

“I would love to kill that cowboy,” Urman said. “Threatening to drag Tanya by the hair? What kind of behavior is that? I appreciate the fact that you restrained yourself.”

“No problem.”

“Look, do us all a favor. Leave Tver. Go away and we can forget our paths ever crossed. Or did she call already?”

“Who?”

“Eva. She was going to tell you she was coming back.”

“But she isn’t, really?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

“But she is going to call?”

“You think I’m just trying to fuck up your mind?” Urman had a soft laugh. “Frankly, I wish you would take her with you. I’m sick of the radioactive bitch.”

Arkady was taking a long route to the apartment, looking for any car following him, when he saw Isakov on Sovietskaya Street. It was two a.m., the hour between sweet dreams and black despair, a time to pace the floor, not the sidewalk. Arkady went around the block, turned off his headlamps and coasted to the corner.

A light snow melted on the ground. Isakov could have continued down Sovietskaya and taken shelter in the portico of the Drama Theater, instead he walked back and forth along a wrought iron fence. He wore a poncho with the hood back and by the dampness of his hair he had been outside for some time. Arkady thought Isakov might be waiting for someone, but he showed no signs of looking up and down the street.

The buildings behind the fence were obscured by trees, but they seemed to be typical pre-revolutionary mansion turned municipal office. Walls maybe yellow, white trim. The gate had a guard post, but the night guard had been replaced by closed circuit surveillance cameras. Nothing special, except that it was the same gate that Sofia Andreyeva had spit at.

The cell phone rang. Arkady snatched it up. Across the street, in his own world, Isakov didn’t appear to hear.

On the phone Eva said, “I want to see you.”

He had imagined there would be conversation, explanation, expressions of regret.

Instead, when she came through the door of the apartment, he removed her jacket and pressed her against the wall and found the hook of her skirt, a voluminous Gypsy affair, while she unbuckled his belt. In a moment he was in her, past the cool skin to the heat within. Eva’s eyes were huge, as if she were in a car that was rolling over and over in slow motion.

“Take off your blouse.”

Just the way she lifted the blouse over her head was graceful, Arkady thought. Her Chernobyl scars melted and every line of her was perfect. He pulled her to the floor. She managed to pull out the lamp plug and in the dark she hung onto the cord as if it were a lifeline. The back of her head hit the floor with every thrust, and when his anger was spent she kept him inside until he was hard again, so that the second time he could be gentle.

A
rkady said, “I think Napoleon slept here. This bed is about his size.”

“It’s perfect,” said Eva. “I slept like a cat.”

He was always struck by her smoothness. In comparison, he was wood, bark and all.

“How is your head?” she asked.

“Improved.”

“But you haven’t seen Stalin?”

“No.”

“Or his ghost?”

“No.”

“You don’t believe in ghosts.”

“Not flying through the air, but waiting.”

“Waiting for what?” Eva asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe political consultants.” He reached to the floor and refilled two glasses of the professor’s Bordeaux. “Today is the last day of the campaign. Is Isakov confident?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, but I don’t want to talk about him. This is good wine.”

“French. Everything here is French. In fact, even our situation is extraordinarily French. Until someone dies, then it’s Russian. Pushkin had over a hundred lovers and then died in a duel defending his wife’s honor. She was a flirt. Is that irony or justice?”

Eva said, “We had a seminar on Pushkin at the hospital.”

“Poetry in the workplace. Excellent.”

“They said that the bullet that killed him penetrated Pushkin’s right pelvic bone and traversed his abdomen.”

“I think he would have preferred one through the heart.” He set down his glass and pulled her close to draw in the scent of her neck. “Have you ever noticed that when one lover leaves the bed, the other rolls into that space?”

“Is that true?”

“Absolutely true.” Something struck him. “Are you aware that Isakov gets up in the middle of the night to pace up and down Sovietskaya Street?”

Eva took a moment to adjust to the change in subject. Her voice flattened a little. “I didn’t know he did. Marat mentioned once when we were driving on Sovietskaya that Nikolai’s father used to work there.”

“Where was ‘there’?”

“I didn’t notice. You don’t like Nikolai.”

“All I know for certain about Nikolai Isakov is that he’s a poor detective.”

“He’s a different man here. You don’t see the real Nikolai in Moscow or Tver; his natural setting is a battlefield. Do you want to know how we met?”

Arkady didn’t want to know.

“Sure.”

“The Russians were shelling a Chechen village of absolutely no military value. All the village men were in the mountains and only women and children were left, but I think the Russian artillery had a daily quota of houses to destroy. I was picking hot shrapnel out of a baby when Nikolai and Marat arrived with their squad. It was a situation I always dreaded, caught giving aid to the enemy. I half expected to be shot. Instead, Nikolai shared his medical supplies and when the Russians began shelling the village again Nikolai got on the radio and told them to stop. The colonel in charge of the guns said orders were orders. Nikolai asked his name so he could personally punch his teeth in and the shelling stopped at once. All I can tell you, Arkasha, is that Nikolai and I met under strange circumstances. Perhaps we were both at our best. We were people who couldn’t exist in the real world. Anyway, this was all before I met you. It has nothing to do with you. Don’t get involved with Nikolai.”

Something rustled at the front door. Arkady rose from the bed, pulled on pants and looked through the peephole. No one was in the hall but on the apartment floor was a string-tied envelope. He turned on a lamp.

“What is it?” Eva sat up.

He opened the envelope and drew out two glossy photographs. Major Agronsky had delivered and fled.

“Pictures.”

“Of what? Let me see.”

He brought them to the daybed. The first photo was taken from about a hundred meters in the air and included a stream and a stone bridge with a van on one side and an armored personnel carrier on the other. By the APC was a campfire. The picture was grainy and enlarged to the max, but Arkady counted half a dozen bodies slumped around the fire. The Chechens were in sweaters, sheepskin vests, woolen caps, running shoes, boots. Skewers of meat, flatbread and bowls of pilaf were scattered with them. Six more bodies were facedown on the road.

The Black Berets had grown beards and wore a mix of Russian and rebel gear, but their characters shone through. Urman held a Kalashnikov and a skewer of kabobs, Borodin and Filotov waved off the helicopter, Kuznetsov lay wounded and Bora kicked bodies, his pistol ready for a coup de grâce. Treetops bowed in the wash of the rotors. In a corner the camera conveniently tagged the time at 13:43. The second photo, tagged 13:47, was virtually identical. The bodies around the campfire were arranged a little differently. There was food enough for a welcome, but not for a feast. The van was gone. Urman had dropped the skewer and aimed his rifle at the helicopter.

“The Sunzha Bridge.”

Eva said, “I thought we were past this.”

“I had some questions.”

“You have an obsession about Nikolai.”

“I want to know what happened.”

“Why? This was war. Are you going to investigate everything that happened in Chechnya? I’m in your bed, but you’re in love with questions.”

Arkady wanted to drop the subject but was drawn by an irresistible gravitational pull. “So I won’t have any more questions, tell me from your point of view what happened. Forget the official report. What happened at the bridge?”

“You know, Nikolai wasn’t even at the bridge. My motorcycle broke down and he drove me on my rounds of the villages, mainly because you never knew where the Russian checkpoints were or how nasty and drunk the men would be. If they thought you were with the rebels they would rape you and kill you. There were times that would have happened without Nikolai’s protection. That’s why neither of us is in the photographs.”

“Isakov deserted his post to serve as your personal driver?”

“I suppose you could put it that way.”

“Did you recognize any of the rebels?”

“They were in bags when we returned to the bridge.”

“You never saw them before?”

“No. I said they were in bags.”

“Then the man in charge at the bridge was Marat Urman? He led the fight?”

“I suppose so.”

“All this time Nikolai Isakov has been taking the credit for Urman’s deeds?”

“Taking responsibility in case there were problems.”

“Why should there be problems?”

“I don’t know.”

“If the Chechens were attacking, why were the bodies in the road shot in the back? Why were the others eating? Where are their weapons?”

“I don’t know.”

“Didn’t Isakov unzip the bags to look at the bodies?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did Urman resent losing the credit?”

“Marat worships Nikolai.”

“Everyone in the squad went along with that story?”

“Everyone worshipped Nikolai.”

“What about you?”

“Yes,” she said.

Arkady felt his heart race with hers. Well, they were working at something both perverse and difficult, the killing of love. That could raise a sweat.

“But this was all before I met you,” Eva said. “If you want to we can get in your car and go. We can do it now, while it’s dark. Take the car and go to Moscow.”

“I can’t,” Arkady said. “I can’t miss Stalin.”

“Are you insane?”

“No, I’m getting closer. I have a feeling this time I might see him.”

“Seriously?”

“He knew my father.”

“Why are you suddenly so mean?”

“Eva, I have a reliable witness who places Isakov at the bridge with bodies on the ground immediately after the fight. In fact, he’s so reliable he’s dead.”

Eva got out of bed and collected her clothes without looking in Arkady’s direction.

“I have to go.”

“I’ll see you at the dig.”

“I won’t be there.”

“Why not? It’s the big event.”

“I’m leaving you and Nikolai.”

“Why both? Choose one.”

“I don’t have to choose, since one of you will kill the other. I don’t want to be here for that. I don’t want to be the prize.”

His father said, “I loved her but your mother was a bitch. She came from a stuck-up family. Intelligentsia.” He said the word as if it were a species of insect. “Musicians and writers. You and I, we live in the real world, right?”

“Yes sir.” Arkady, fourteen, blindfolded with his own Young Pioneers scarf, was assembling a pistol. It was a game his father had invented. As Arkady raced the clock the General would try to distract him, because noise and confusion were an ordinary part of battle. Or move pieces around the table so that Arkady had to relocate them by feel.

“She was very young and wanted to know about women, so I told her in detail. I afforded her a view of sex that was more animal than her fainthearted friends were used to. One evening was devoted to Pushkin. It was a salon. Everyone brought in their favorite verse. Very artsy. I brought Pushkin’s diary. It had all the women he shagged in intimate detail. The man could write. You agree?”

“Yes sir.”

“You like that gun?”

“Yes sir.”

The gun, a Tokarev, came together in Arkady’s hands. He held the slide upside down, inserted the barrel into the recoil spring assembly, one end of the spring hanging loose, cradled the frame into the slide, turned the gun right side up and he was nearly done.

His father said, “I knew a man who swore by the Walther. Now here was an expert. He worked at night in a special room insulated for sound with a felt-lined door. His assistants would bring in a prisoner and he would shoot the prisoner in the back of the head. No conversation or nonsense about last words. All night, every night, one at a time, one hundred executions, two hundred executions, whatever the quota was. The workload was intense and halfway through the night the room was an abattoir. To keep him working, he was given a bottle of vodka. Every night, vodka and blood. The point is, the Walther never misfired, not once.” The General kicked the table. The recoil spring and barrel bushing flew off the table and under the couch he was sitting on. Arkady heard the spring roll over the parquet floor and felt his father’s boots in the way.

“Excuse me,” Arkady said.

His father didn’t move. “‘Excuse me’? Is that what you plan to say when you meet the enemy? One minute left. You’re running out of time.”

The punishment for running out of time varied from a cold stare to standing with arms outstretched, a gun in each hand. The guns were loaded and Arkady occasionally thought his father was trying to goad him into rage.

Arkady dove under the couch, found the spring and felt for the bushing to hold the spring in. It was at his fingertips, but every time he touched the bushing it moved. From the other direction his father was too much in the way.

“I met this expert on guns because I got the dirty work, the assignments no one else would carry out. Stalin himself would take me aside and say there was an error here or there that demanded correction, something that the fewer knew about the better and that he would remember me when batons were handed out. I thought I was the elephant in the parade. It turned out I was the man who followed the elephant with a shovel and a pail full of shit. Ten seconds. Haven’t you got that damn gun together yet?”

Arkady extended his reach with the gun to haul in the bushing. He backed out from the sofa, inserted the spring, rotated the bushing into place, slapped the magazine home in the grip and whipped off his blindfold.

“Done!”

“Well, are you? That’s the question. Give it.”

The General took the gun, put it to his temple and squeezed the trigger. The hammer didn’t move.

“It’s on half cock.” Arkady took the gun and thumbed the hammer back a notch. He returned the gun to his father. “Now it’s on full cock.”

In his father’s eyes was desolation.

“I have homework,” Arkady dismissed himself.

It was the last time they played that game.

Victor said, “A New Russian goes into an expensive boutique and asks the clerk what to get his wife for her birthday. Cost is no problem. He’s already given her a Mercedes, diamonds from Bulgari, a full-length sable coat.”

Arkady asked, “How long is this joke?” It was six a.m. by his watch. A little early for a call.

“Not long. The clerk says, ‘There’s nothing left to buy. Do something personal, something intimate. Give her a written certificate good for two hours of wild sex, fulfilling any fantasy or desire.’ The New Russian says, ‘Yeah!’ It sounds like a win-win to him. He pays a calligrapher a thousand dollars for an inscribed certificate worth two hours of sex, all fantasies fulfilled, no questions asked.”

“God, please strike Victor dead.”

“Patience. A certificate for two hours of wild sex. Her birthday comes. He gives her pearls, a new Mercedes, a Fabergé egg as usual and finally an envelope with the certificate inside. She takes it out, reads it, her face turns red. A smile breaks out. She clutches the certificate to her breast and says, ‘Thank you, thank you, Boris. This is the most wonderful present I ever got. I love you, I love you!’ She grabs her car keys. ‘See you in two hours!’”

Black as a pit. Arkady stood in the dim illumination from the street, putting himself in a classic dilemma. Look for cigarettes where they most likely were or search where the light was best. A few snowflakes melted on the asphalt.

Victor said, “So, who is the ‘two hours’ in Tver?”

“Your ability to reduce everything to sex is astonishing.”

“It’s the best system I’ve come across.”

A bonanza. Arkady found a pack in his jacket, though no matches.

Victor said, “Zurin called and asked where you were. A prosecutor from Tver, a cretin named Sarkisian, called and asked why you didn’t check in at the office. It’s given me a chance to hone my antisocial skills.”

“Why are you up at this hour?” Arkady remembered seeing matches in the kitchen.

“I’m on a stakeout.”

“You called me to stay awake on a stakeout?” Arkady felt for matches on the kitchen counters and table.

“I want to tuck this guy in. He had company before but he’s alone now. I just wish he would open the refrigerator door, take a piss, strike a match, anything I can report.”