Martin Smith: Stalin’s Ghost

“More personal.”

“As in…?” He didn’t like where this was going.

Zoya finally picked up her brandy and sipped. “Don’t kidnappers sometimes send a finger or an ear?”

There was another silence in the booth until Arkady said, “That’s for kidnapping.”

“That wouldn’t work anyway,” she agreed. “I might not recognize his ear or his finger. They all look pretty much alike. No, something more particular.”

“What did you have in mind?”

She swirled her glass. “He has a pretty large nose.”

Victor said, “I am not cutting off anybody’s nose.”

“If he’s already dead? It would be like carving a chicken.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Then I have another idea.”

Victor put up his hand. “No.”

“Wait.” Zoya unfolded a piece of paper with a photograph of a drawing of a tiger fighting off a pack of wolves. The photo was murky, taken in poor light, and the drawing itself had an indistinct quality. “I thought of this.”

“He has a picture?”

“He has a tattoo,” Arkady said.

“That’s right.” Zoya Filotova was pleased. “I photographed the tattoo a few nights ago while he was in a drunken stupor. It’s his own design.”

A sheet covered one corner of the tattoo but what Arkady could see was impressive enough. The tiger stood majestically on its hind legs, one paw swiping the air as the wolves snarled and cringed. A pine forest and mountain stream framed the battle. On the white arm of a birch were the letters T, V, E, R.

Victor asked, “What does that mean?”

“He’s from Tver,” Zoya said.

“There are no tigers in Tver,” Victor said. “No mountains either. It’s a flat, hopeless dump on the Volga.”

Arkady thought that was a little harsh, but people who made it to Moscow from places like Tver usually shed their hometown identity as fast as they could. They didn’t have it inked on them forever.

“Okay,” Victor said. “Now we can definitively ID him. How do you propose we bring the proof to you? Do you expect us to lug a body around?”

Zoya finished her brandy and said, “I need only the tattoo.”

Arkady hated Victor’s Lada. The windows did not completely close and the rear bumper was roped on. Snow blew in through floorboard holes and swayed the pine scent freshener that hung from the rearview mirror.

“Cold,” Victor said.

“You could have let the car warm up.” Arkady unbuttoned his shirt.

“It will, eventually. No, I’m talking about her. I felt my testicles turn to icicles and drop, one by one.”

“She wants proof, the same as us.” Arkady peeled adhesive tape from his stomach to free a microphone and miniature recorder. He pushed Rewind and Play, listened to a sample, turned off the recorder, ejected the cassette, and placed it in an envelope, on which he wrote, “Subject Z. K. Filotova, Senior Investigator A. K. Renko, Detective V. D. Orlov,” date and place.

Victor asked, “What do we have?”

“Not much. You answered the phone on another officer’s desk and a woman asked about doing in her husband. She assumed you were Detective Urman. You played along and set up a meeting. You could arrest her now for conspiracy but you’d have nothing on the detective and no idea who gave her his phone number. She’s holding out. You could squeeze her harder if she pays for what she thinks is a finished assassination, then you’d have her for attempted murder and she might be willing to talk. Tell me about Detective Urman. It was his phone you answered?”

“Yes. Marat Urman. Thirty-five years old, single. He was in Chechnya with his buddy Isakov. Nikolai Isakov, the war hero.”

“ Detective Isakov?” Arkady said.

Victor waited a beat. “I thought you’d like that. The file’s in back.”

Arkady covered his confusion by fishing a ribbon-bound folder out of the dirty clothes and empty bottles on the back seat.

“Is this a car or a laundry chute?”

“You should read the newspaper articles. Urman and Isakov were with the Black Berets, and they killed a lot of Chechens. We fucked up in the first Chechen war. The second time we sent in people with, as they say, the proper skills. Read the articles.”

“Would Isakov know what Urman was doing?”

“I don’t know.” Victor screwed up his face with thought. “The Black Berets make their own rules.” He kept his eyes on Arkady while he lit a cigarette. “Have you ever met Isakov?”

“Not face to face.”

“Just wondering.” Victor snuffed the match between two fingers.

“Why did you pick up Urman’s phone?”

“I was waiting for a snitch to call. He’d called Urman’s number by mistake before; it’s one digit off. These guys on the street, in the wintertime they drink antifreeze. You’ve got to catch them while they’re able to talk. Anyway, it might be a good mistake, don’t you think?”

Arkady watched a group leave the cafe and head for an SUV. They were heavyset, silent men until one of them built up speed and slid on the ice that covered the parking lot. He spread his arms and moved as if his shoes were skates. A second man chased him and then all the rest joined in, clowning on one leg, executing spins. The lot rang with their laughs, for their own impromptu performance, until one went down. Silent again, the others shuffled around, helped him to the car and drove off.

Victor said, “I’m no prude.”

“I never took you for one.”

“We’re underpaid and no one knows better than me what a person has to do to live. There’s a break-in and the detective steals what the robber missed. A traffic cop milks drivers for bribes. Murder, though, that’s over the line.” Victor paused to reflect. “Shostakovich was like us.”

“In what conceivable way?”

“Shostakovich, when he was young and hard up for money, played the piano for silent movies. That’s you and me. Two great mentalities wasted on shit. I’ve wasted my life. No wife, no kids, no money. Nothing but a liver you could wring the vodka from. It’s depressing. I envy you. You have something to fight for, a family.”

Arkady took a deep breath. “Of sorts.”

“Do you think we should warn the husband, the guy with the tattoo?”

“Not yet. Unless he’s a good actor, he’d tip her off.” Arkady got out of the car and immediately began stamping his feet to stay warm. Through the open door he asked, “Have you let anyone else in on this? The station commander? Internal Affairs?”

“And paint a target on my head? Just you.”

“So now we’re both targets.”

Victor shrugged. “Misery likes company.”

Arkady’s headlights concentrated on a hypnotic reel of tire tracks in the snow. He was so exhausted he was merely coasting. He didn’t mind; he could have circled Moscow forever, like a cosmonaut.

He thought of the conversations men in space had with their loved ones at home and called the apartment on his cell phone.

“Zhenya? Zhenya, are you there? If you are, pick up.”

Which was useless. Zhenya was twelve years old but had the skills of a veteran runaway and could be gone for days. There were no messages either, except something angry and garbled from the prosecutor.

Instead, Arkady called Eva at the clinic.

“Yes?”

“Zhenya is still not back. At least he didn’t answer the phone or leave a message.”

“Some people hate the phone,” she said. She sounded equally exhausted, four hours left on a sixteen-hour shift. “Working in an emergency clinic has made me a firm believer that no news is good news.”

“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.”