Martin Smith - Stalin’s Ghost

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 grace. 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.”