Martin Smith - Stalin’s Ghost

“My ruling on honors and commendations was regarded as a slur on the army. My files were thoroughly cleaned out and I was shown the door.”

“Did you copy them, scan them, e-mail them to anyone?”

“Renko, when I joined the army they stripped me clean, and when I left the army they stripped me clean.”

“What about Ginsberg’s office or home?”

“His office was searched and his colleagues questioned. There were no other photos and he wasn’t married.”

“You wrecked your career over this.”

“To tell the truth, at my age if you’re not at least a colonel, you’re wasting your time. Besides, the citation committee was exhausting work, lifting some to heaven and kicking some into hell. You know, I’ve told no one about all this. My mouth is dry.” The major’s smile regrouped. “When I joined up, the army gave each man a daily allotment of one hundred grams of vodka. There must be some good in it.”

“One glass.”

Agronsky clapped his hands together. “We’ll confound the doctors. Before we die we’ll shoot ourselves, like Sergeant Kuznetsov.”

The major made a beeline for the house and returned with a tray bearing a bottle of vodka, two glasses and a plate of brown bread and cheese because, as he declared, “A man who drinks without something to eat is a drunk.” He unscrewed the bottle’s cap and threw it away. An ominous beginning, Arkady thought.

The first glassful slid down, fastidiously followed by bread. Arkady tried to recall whether he had eaten anytime during the day. He asked, “Kuznetsov shot himself?”

“Not exactly. Kuznetsov was ranting and raving as he was being airlifted, yelling that Lieutenant Urman told him that for the good of the team they needed at least one casualty from OMON, not to take it personally. He shot poor Kuznetsov in the leg.”

“Urman is impulsive.”

“Of course, it has to be said that during the airlift Kuznetsov was under the influence of painkillers. In the hospital he correctly pointed to the photo of a dead rebel as the man who shot him.”

“How do you know it was correct?”

“Captain Isakov said so. A little more?”

“Just a little. What did you tell the captain?”

Vodka quivered on the brim. Agronsky begged a cigarette and a match.

“I said I could support neither a promotion for him nor medals to a death squad, because at the end of this war that is all we would be. No armies, just death squads.”

His eye on the Tahiti matchbook, Arkady asked, with too little forethought, “Did you happen to know any of the eight boys from Tver who were killed?”

“Rifleman Vladimir Agronsky. Vlad. Nineteen years old.”

The major’s face fell in on itself.

“I’m sorry,” Arkady said. “I’m very sorry.”

“Do you have a son?”

“No.”

“Then you don’t know what it’s like to lose one.” The words caught in his throat he washed down with vodka. No bread. Deep breaths. He had outpaced Arkady with the vodka and was starting to look sandblasted. “Forgive me, that was inexcusable. What were you talking about? What else?”

“The candidate is protecting his official history, cleaning up loose ends, eliminating anyone who knows what happened at the bridge, including his own men. Kuznetsov and his wife are dead. Borodin and Ginsberg are dead.”

“I’ve taken precautions.”

Arkady had noticed the gun under Agronsky’s sweater, the double-barreled rifle at the door, trees recently felled for a clear field of fire and the comfort of meth lab security on either side. The situation was strangely snug and highly delusional. The major could build a bunker and not keep out Isakov and Urman.

“Ginsberg’s photographs of Sunzha Bridge would be a great help,” Arkady said.

Agronsky said, “I wish they still existed.”

“Maybe if you looked again you’d find them.”

“Sorry, they’re gone.”

Arkady let it drop. After a last round, Arkady made his good-bye and went out and sat on the Ural. Agronsky’s neighbors, a young couple in sheepskin coats, walked by with the soft steps of the truly stoned. To the north a scrim of clouds promised a light dusting of snow. Contradict. Contradicted. Such a small difference, but Arkady had done a thousand interrogations or more. Sometimes he just knew. He killed the engine and returned to Agronsky’s door.

“My friend Renko, another…?” The major lifted an imaginary glass.

“I’m trying to stop two murderers. Ginsberg’s photographs will help.”

“So?”

“You said that Ginsberg’s pictures of the firefight zone ‘contradict’ Isakov. You should have said ‘contradicted.’ Past tense, the photographs are gone. Present tense, they still exist and you have them.”

Agronsky blinked.

“What are you, a schoolteacher? ‘Contradict.’ ‘Contradicted.’ So what? Does that give you the right to come to my house, eat my food, drink my vodka and call me a liar?”

Arkady gave Agronsky a card. “This is my address and cell phone number. Call before you come.”

“I’ll go to hell first.” Agronsky threw the card back and slammed the door.

Returning to the bike, Arkady did not feel completely sober. He had handled the major badly. He should have been tougher or more sympathetic or, if necessary, enlisted the dead son in the argument. Whatever, a golden opportunity had presented itself and he had let it slip through his fingers.

Zhenya was excited. “They’re launching a new expedition at Lake Brosno to find the monster. A casino is the sponsor.”

“Well, that sounds perfectly logical.” Didn’t the children’s shelter have any rules about late calls? Arkady wondered.

“If they find the monster they’ll capture it alive and put it in a giant tank in the casino. Is that fantastic?”

“That qualifies.”

“If we could be on the team that would be so neat. Have you been to the lake yet?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I have one or two things to do here first.” He was at the apartment changing out of Rudi’s camos and into a jacket.

“What are you doing now?”

“I’m going to Tahiti.”

“Where’s that?”

“It turns out it’s in Tver.”

“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.

The 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.