Stalin's Ghost

  “Both from the air, of the bridge, bodies sprawled around a campfire and Black Berets walking around with handguns.”

  “Nothing unusual about that,” Isakov said.

  Arkady held up the other for comparison.

  “The second photograph is of the same scene, four minutes later by the camera clock. There are two significant changes. Urman is aiming his gun at the helicopter, and all the bodies around the campfire have been rolled forward or been moved to one side. In those four minutes the most important goal for you and your men was to ward off the helicopter and get something out from under the bodies.”

  “Get what?” asked Eva.

  “Dragons.”

  “The man has lost it,” Isakov said.

  “When Kuznetsov’s wife said you took her dragons I didn’t understand what she was talking about.”

  “She was a drunk who killed her husband with a cleaver. Is that your source of information?”

  “I wasn’t thinking about Chechnya.”

  “Chechnya is over. We won.”

  “It’s not over,” Eva said.

  “Well, I’ve heard enough,” Isakov said.

  Eva asked, “Why, is there more?”

  Arkady said, “The rest of the world puts its money in banks. This part of the world puts its money into carpets and the most prized carpets have red dragons woven into the design. A classic dragon carpet is worth a small fortune in the West. You don’t want to spill blood on that and, as you said, there’s not much else worth stealing in Chechnya.”

  “The dead men were thieves?”

  “Partners. Isakov and Urman were in the rug business. They rolled out the carpet for their partners and then they rolled it up.”

  Snowflakes swam across the glossy surface of the photographs, over the coals of the campfire, across Marat Urman’s purposeful stride, around bodies sprawled on bloody sand.

  “Now I see,” Eva said.

  Isakov had an ear for nuance. “You’ve seen these photographs before?”

  “Last night.”

  “You told me you were going to the hospital. I watched you pick up the cassettes.”

  “I lied.”

  “Renko was with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  Eva gave Isakov a drawn-out, emphatic “Yes.”

  Isakov laughed. “Marat warned me. Look at Renko, look at him, the man looks disinterred.”

  Arkady said, “I feel surprisingly good, considering.”

  “You don’t care if you’re dead or alive?” Isakov asked.

  “In a way, I feel I’ve been both.”

  The Walther reappeared in Isakov’s hand.

  “Okay, let’s be grown-ups. Marat and I did trade in carpets. So what? In Chechnya, everybody did something on the side, mainly drugs and arms. I doubt that saving a precious work of art from a burning house is against the law. Dealers and collectors certainly don’t ask questions and the Chechens, if you treated them with respect, were trustworthy partners. But that day, when I got the message from a Russian Army convoy that they were a minute away from the bridge, there just wasn’t time to end the lunch, fold the carpets and make nice good-byes. Sometimes you have to make the best of a bad situation.”

  Eva laughed. When she wanted to deliver contempt she did it well. “You’re a rug merchant? Fourteen men dead for rugs?”

  “And in Moscow, murdering members of your own squad,” Arkady said.

  “Loose ends.” Isakov motioned for Arkady to be still and patted him down. “You really don’t have a gun. No gun, no case, no evidence.”

  “He has the photographs,” Eva said.

  “Prosecutor Sarkisian would tear them up. Zurin would do the same.” Isakov aimed the Walther directly at Arkady, a certain threshold crossed. “They’ll probably let me lead the investigation. You don’t have a gun? Maybe this will do. Maybe you found this old gun at the dig. Mainly, you didn’t have a plan. You saw Eva and jumped off your bike. Was it worth it just to win her back?”

  “Yes.” He realized that she was what he had come back for out of the black lake he had sunk into when he was shot.

  But part of him was thinking in a professional mode. Isakov would shoot him first, then Eva, and then wrap the gun in Arkady’s dead hand to mimic a murder-suicide, all to be carried out on the street at close range and with dispatch. The Walther was a heavy double-action pistol with a long trigger draw and a huge kick. It filled Isakov’s hand. No rush but no hesitation either. Arkady remembered Ginsberg’s admiration of Isakov’s calm under fire.

  Was anyone awake at the security monitors, Arkady wondered? In the BMW? He heard far-off machinery, but where was the white van of the militia? Weren’t bakers abroad at this hour, on their way to their ovens? Sovietskaya Street was as still as a tomb.

  “No gun, no prosecutor, no case, no evidence.” Isakov did not stand back to shoot Arkady; he tucked the barrel up under Arkady’s jaw at can’t-miss range. “And then your lover left. No wonder you’re depressed.”

  “No wonder you’re depressed,” Isakov’s voice repeated from Eva’s coat pocket.

  She took the tape recorder from her coat, popped the machine open and held up a cassette. Isakov watched in disbelief as she threw it over the fence. The cassette happened to be white and disappeared on the snowy lawn. The bright lights of a motion detector flashed on and off.

  Isakov kept the gun tight on Arkady. “Go get it.”

  “There’s a camera at the gate.”

  “I don’t care if you go over, under or through.” Isakov let Arkady go and gave him a push. “Get it.”

  “Or what? I don’t think that tape is going to be easy to find. You’ll never have time to find it once you fire that old cannon, and you have to find it because it’s a full confession. In chess that’s called a pin.”

  A grinding sound announced the approach of snowplows scraping the street. The trucks traveled slowly but majestically in a blaze of light that Arkady and Eva walked next to. From the motorcycle they saw Isakov still in front of the gate, immobilized.

  26

  Riding to the apartment, Arkady was exhilarated and exhausted, as if he and Eva had crossed a wasteland of betrayal and misunderstanding, and survived. He knew that later they would talk about it and words would diminish the experience, but for the moment they rode the motorcycle in a happy stupor.

  Only once she spoke over the noise of the bike, “I have a gift for you.” She took a cassette from inside her coat. “The real tape.”

  “You are a wonderful woman.”

  “No, I am a terrible woman, but that’s what you’re stuck with.” Waiting for the elevator doors to close they spoke of trivialities, preserving the bubble of the moment.

  “Are you still an investigator?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Good. We can take a trip to someplace with a sunny beach and palm trees.”

  As the elevator doors began to close a cat with spiky fur came on board, arched its back in surprise, and ran off.

  “And Zhenya?” Arkady said.

  “We should take Zhenya with us,” Eva said.

  Why not, Arkady thought? To golden sand, blue water and a regular drubbing on a chessboard. If that wasn’t a holiday, he didn’t know what was. Eva removed her scarf and snapped off the snow as they stumbled out of the elevator on Arkady’s floor. Being happy was like being drunk. He didn’t have the usual ballast.

  At the apartment door he asked, “Would you like to see a dragon?”

  “Let’s just get Zhenya and go,” she whispered.

  Eva entered first. As she turned on the light Bora stepped out of the bathroom. Arkady recognized the same dagger that he had failed to find on the ice at Chistye Prudy. It was double edged and sharp as a razor and Arkady grabbed it only to have his palm sliced open. Bora turned and drove the knife into Eva’s side and carried her backwards over the body of Sofia Andreyeva. Sofia Andreyeva’s throat had been slit, her face white under garish mascara a
nd rouge. The walls and posters were speckled with signs of struggle. Zhenya was barricaded behind a coffee table in a corner of the room, a long knife in one hand. On the table lay a partially assembled Tokarev awaiting its recoil spring and bushing.

  Bora wore rubber gloves and an easy-to-wash training suit. He asked Arkady, “Are you laughing now?”

  As he drew the knife out of her, Eva sank to the floor trying to catch her breath.

  In the corner Zhenya fumbled the spring and it rolled off the table. It was unfair, Arkady thought. They had been so clever, Eva most of all.

  Bora had the confident approach of a butcher, ready to open the belly but willing to start carving an arm or a leg. In films this was where the hero wrapped a cloak around one arm as a shield, Arkady thought. No cloaks seemed to be available. Instead, Arkady tripped on the carpet and went down. At once Bora was on top of him, pressing the bruised side of Arkady’s head against the floor.

  Bora’s breath was hot and damp. “There’s a weight room in your courtyard. I was coming out and who do I see pulling off a motorcycle helmet but the man from Chistye Prudy? Remember the fun you had on the ice there? You laughed at the wrong man.”

  Bora was all muscle, while Arkady got winded climbing stadium steps. Also, he had only one good hand to fend off Bora. Everything was wrong. The red ring around Sofia Andreyeva’s neck. Zhenya’s despair as the pistol’s recoil spring sprang and rolled out of reach. Eva’s hoarse efforts to breathe.

  Bora leveraged more weight onto the knife.

  “Are you laughing?” Bora introduced the knife to Arkady’s ear, tickling the fine hairs of the whorl.

  Slowly, reluctantly, Arkady’s arm gave way. He remembered a dream in which he had failed everybody. He didn’t recall the details but the sense was the same.

  A chessboard bounced off Bora’s head. He looked up and Zhenya fired.

  There wouldn’t be a second shot, because the boy pulled the trigger without the recoil spring.

  There didn’t need to be a second shot. Bora was spread out on the floor, a black hole the size of a cigarette burn in his head.

  With wind and snow constantly shifting, it was hard to tell whether the ambulance was making forward progress.

  Arkady and Zhenya rode with Eva and a paramedic, a girl with a check list. Eva was strapped into a litter, blankets up to her chin, an oxygen mask cupping her face and wires connecting her to a rack of monitors. On a jump seat, Zhenya hugged his knees.

  “She’s taking shallow breaths,” Arkady said.

  The paramedic assured Arkady that while stab victims could die from shock and loss of blood in a matter of seconds, at twenty minutes after being attacked Eva was still conscious, her eyes focused on Arkady and she had hardly bled at all. Arkady tried to seem confident, but the experience was like being in a plunging elevator. He saw the floors go by, but couldn’t get off.

  Eva lifted the oxygen mask. “I’m cold.”

  He pulled Eva’s blanket back and tore her dress for a better look at the wound, a slit edged in purple between the ribs. There was no external bleeding from the cut unless he applied pressure, then wine-dark blood seeped out.

  Waiting.

  Arkady and Zhenya sat on a bench outside the scrub room, trying to catch a glimpse of Eva whenever the door opened to the OR she had been rolled into. Arkady measured the hall in footsteps again and again. He stared at the Do Not Smoke and No Cell Phones signs on a wall. At one end of the hall an Emergency Only door accessed the roof; outside, snow was covering the deck and pushing along cigarette butts and empty packs. He flipped through commercial brochures on a table without really reading, “What to do in Tver,” “Sovietskaya’s Luxury Row” or “How to Win at Roulette.” Felt himself petrify. Zhenya hid in Eva’s coat, two legs sticking out, until Arkady put his arm around him and thanked him for saving everybody. They would all be dead if it hadn’t been for Zhenya.

  “I think you’re the bravest boy I ever met. The best one ever.”

  Zhenya’s crying under the coat sounded like the tearing of wood.

  Elena Ilyichnina came out in purple scrubs dark with sweat and spoke to Arkady in a soft, special tone that offered no false hope at all. “We drained a considerable amount of blood. Doctor Kazka presented little external bleeding, but internally she was drowning. There are so many organs for a knife to hit—the lungs, liver, spleen, diaphragm and, of course, the heart—depending on the reach of the blade. A complete laparoscopy and repair could go on for hours. I suggest you go to the emergency room and have your hand properly looked at.”

  Arkady could picture the emergency room and its nocturnal population of drunks and meth-heads vying for attention. Everything but vampires.

  “We’ll stay.”

  “Of course. How silly of me to suggest medical attention.”

  Arkady didn’t see why she was so brusque. “Could you please tell me where I can use a cell phone?”

  “Not on this floor. Our instruments don’t like them.”

  “Where, then?”

  “Outside.” She caught him eyeing the Emergency Only door. “Don’t even imagine it.”

  Sick of gazing at the floor, Arkady returned to the brochures on the table. They were glossy foldouts that offered apartments, manicures, intimate restaurants, the chance to meet foreign men. One said, ‘Sarkisian Carpets. A fine Persian, Turkish, Oriental carpet is a beautiful investment! Dragon carpets, especially, only gain in value. In the auction houses of Paris and London dragon carpets are valued at $100,000 and more!” In the accompanying photo a well dressed man with white hair pointed to a red dragon skulking in the intricate design of a carpet. Arkady inked in the man’s hair with a pen and the family resemblance to Prosecutor Sarkisian was complete.

  Victor and Platonov arrived from Moscow with cardboard cups of tea.

  “Your doctor called me. I called Platonov.”

  Platonov said, “You and Zhenya didn’t think your friends were going to desert you, did you?”

  “Do you have a relationship with Elena Ilyichnina?” Arkady asked Victor.

  “Sort of. We sat up together when you were in the hospital. We shared the vigil.”

  “You were drunk.”

  “A detail. Drink your tea.”

  The tea looked weak and felt cold. Arkady took a sip and almost spat up.

  “A touch of ethanol.” Victor shrugged. “There’s tea and there’s tea.”

  “It’s vile.”

  “You’re welcome.” He offered Arkady a pistol and an extra clip.

  Arkady declined. “I don’t think Elena Ilyichnina called you so we could have a gunfight in her hospital.”

  “We would be famous. We would be terrorists on the evening news.”

  Zhenya and Platonov played blindfold chess, exactly what the boy needed to keep his mind occupied. A catalogue for women’s lingerie had Victor totally absorbed.

  Arkady nodded off and in a dream went for cigarettes. He found a machine in the basement next to the cafeteria, which was closed, and an exhibit of schoolchildren’s art. There were a good many princesses and figure skaters, ice hockey players and Black Berets.

  He got confused on the way back, missed a turn and took the wrong elevator to a different part of the hospital. Now he was hotter, sweatier and it was the middle of the day. He heard the drone of outboard engines, dipping oars, the plop of fish, the lassitude of an aluminum boat adrift. Midges hatched from the water, dragonflies feasted on the midges, swallows snatched dragonflies on the wing and horseflies fed on Platonov. He wore an Afrika Korps–style cap to protect his neck and every five minutes went into a spasm of swatting that rocked the boat.

  “Bloodsuckers! This is probably why the creature stays in its murky depths.”

  Platonov dropped the oars back in the water and managed a stroke. He did the rowing because placing his bulk at the bow or stern made the boat unsteady. Zhenya sat up front in a T-shirt and shorts searching through a box of fireworks. He had attained a light tan and even fi
lled out a little. A camera hung on a strap around his neck.

  “We only have one more bomb,” Zhenya said.

  “How are we with sandwiches?” Platonov asked.

  Arkady looked in the hamper. “We have plenty. Some of them are a little wet.”

  “There’s no such thing,” Platonov said, “as a sandwich that is only a little wet.”

  Zhenya scanned the water through the camera. “Did you know that some dead bodies don’t sink or float, they just hang in the water?”

  “Sounds delightful.” Platonov dipped his cap in the water and set it back on his head, luxuriating in the cool runoff.

  “Tell me the plan again,” Arkady said.

  Zhenya said, “We set off a bomb, really a big firecracker. The monster is curious, comes over and I take its picture.”

  “Good plan.”

  “It will be on the cover of every scientific review,” Platonov said.

  A dragonfly began to flash around the boat, make figure eights and loops so close to Platonov that he lost his balance. As the boat jerked, he and Zhenya stayed in. Arkady plunged into the water and sank. He was comfortable under the surface, drifting in the shadow of the boat when a larger shadow crossed his line of vision. A sturgeon hundreds of year old, with barnacles and armored ribs, swam by trailing a white veil from its jaws. The giant fish was a metallic gray and each eye was as large as a platter. Arkady followed the veil down to the dark bottom of the lake, where he found Eva trapped by a massive rock he could not budge. Arkady looked up at the boat and saw Zhenya throw something in the water. The bomb! A huge bubble erupted, creating a shock wave that littered the surface of the lake with fish and, below, dislodged the boulder. Arkady took Eva’s hand and they rose effortlessly until Victor shook him awake.

  “She’s coming out.”

  Eva emerged from the OR a deflated version of herself, drenched with sweat, anaesthetized and deaf to the rattle of the drip stand rolling at her side. Then the doors of the Recovery Unit closed behind her.