Martin Smith - Stalin’s Ghost

Petya said, “By the way, watch out for Bora. First you almost drown him dead and then you spray his older brother and almost blind him.”

“The boxer with sore knuckles? Interesting family.”

Arkady disengaged and watched for Eva. She had come to him and all he’d had to do was be an agreeable lover and keep his questions to himself and he and Eva would be in Moscow now. People said that good marriages were built on honesty. Arkady suspected that as many solid relationships were based on a lie shouldered by two.

After the top layer of needles and earth was declared safe other Diggers moved in with wheelbarrows and shovels. Arkady completed his circuit and found that Zhenya had moved beside Isakov, who rested his hand lightly on the boy’s shoulder. Zhenya was honored, as any lad would be, although Arkady heard Wiley ask Pacheco, “Is this the most photogenic kid we could find?”

A shout from the trees indicated that a body had been found. Lydia and a camera followed as the remains were carried on a litter to the examination tent, which was outdoor theater. Onlookers jockeyed for position to observe a pathologist in a lab coat and surgical mask separate bones, boots and a pot-shaped helmet. She turned the skull and untangled a metal disk-a Wehrmacht ID-on a chain.

“German!” the doctor declared, and expressions of satisfaction went around the crowd.

Marat Urman arrived and Isakov passed him possession of Zhenya, who basked in their attention. The three of them made their way to Arkady.

Isakov said, “Zhenya wants to go to Lake Brosno and look for sea serpents. I told him that as soon as the election is over Marat and I will take him. We might plug the beast and mount it.”

“Arkady doesn’t carry a gun,” Zhenya said. “I remind him but he always forgets.”

Urman said, “That’s because he’s a member of the hole-in-the-head club. Anything you say goes right through.”

Zhenya snickered although his face was red with embarrassment.

The topsoil around the trees yielded a few rusty cartridges, food tins and mess kits. Word came back, however, that when metal detectors were set for a lower level they got more response. Arkady was surprised since execution victims were usually stripped of arms, helmets, watches and rings before they were shot and afterwards of gold fillings. What else would cause a metal detector to spike?

Lydia was a shade paler when she returned with her camera crew from the examination tent, but she was game. “Nikolai Isakov and Marat Urman, as detectives and former OMON officers, people here are talking about the possibility of finding a mass grave at this site. How is this sort of atrocity carried out?”

Isakov said, “Victims are either forced to dig their own grave and then machine-gunned, or killed somewhere else and brought to a grave. If we find Russian prisoners of war, they were probably killed here by German guards afraid of being overwhelmed by the counteroffensive.”

Urman added, “You can tell the difference because a machine gun chews up a body, bones and all. If you’re going to transport dead bodies you want as little mess as possible, so you just pop them in the back of the head. Sometimes you have to pop them twice.”

It was a reflective moment. A digger raised high a CD player and the wartime anthem rang out across the dig:

Arise, the great country,

Arise for the final struggle,

With the dark fascist force,

With the accursed horde.

Everyone sang. Zhenya sang with Isakov and Urman. Arkady was sure that when the song was over Big Rudi would point to a shadow or a stirring bough and see Stalin. Before the song ended, however, a voice called from the pines, “A helmet! A Russian helmet!”

“Show time,” Pacheco said.

The first helmet was joined by more helmets, bottles, boots, razors, all stained, broken or disintegrating Russian junk. No weapons. Bodies, though, there were. As the day warmed, snow became a soft rain that revealed a cranium here, a kneecap there.

“A two-point bump,” Wiley told Pacheco. “If Uncle Joe shows, ten.”

The plan was for no retrieval until every red flag was investigated, but the promise of so many Russian heroes waiting to be found was too much. Red Diggers were neither military nor pathologists; when one got a wheelbarrow and started toward the trees he was followed by another and another.

“In an upwelling of patriotism, the people mobilize,” Lydia told a camera. “Ignoring red danger flags they are rushing to exhume lost martyrs of the Patriotic War.”

Zhenya said, “Let’s go with them.”

“No one investigated the flags,” Arkady said. “They didn’t investigate a single one.”

Wiley said, “The flags are theater. Decoration. Any ammunition here is sixty years old. It’s not going to do anything.”

“Can my crew and I get closer?” Lydia asked. “I feel the viewers would want to get closer.”

“You’d better have this.” Rudi ripped open his vest and handed it to Lydia.

“I can’t take it from you.”

“Why not?” Rudi said. “I’m not going there.”

Pacheco told her, “A little advice. Any time, anywhere you have an excuse to wear body armor on television, you grab it.”

“Ready, Captain?” Urman said. “Don’t let me down.”

Isakov gathered himself together. “Right.”

A party of five-Isakov, Urman, Lydia and her two cameramen-trudged toward the trees, following wheelbarrow tracks in the muck. Although Isakov was in the lead, Arkady thought there had been a moment when the bold commander seemed to have cold feet and Urman had to prod him into action.

Something odd was happening ahead. Diggers who had arrived at the trees in such a hurry spread around the periphery instead of going in.

Zhenya told Arkady, “You’re not my father, you can’t tell me what to do.”

Arkady heard and didn’t hear. He was intrigued by Isakov’s hesitation.

Wiley said, “The people here must have wondered why there were suddenly pine trees planted in the middle of a productive field.”

“They steered their tractors around it until it became invisible,” said Pacheco. “You don’t see what you don’t want to see.”

Arkady watched Isakov lead the way to the edge of the trees. All five stopped and crossed themselves.

Zhenya bolted. Backpack and all, he was across the tape and into the field before Arkady had a chance to stop him. Zhenya didn’t stay on the wheelbarrow paths but took a mocking, looping route, swinging his backpack as if he’d just been let out of school. All Arkady could do was follow.

As he tramped across the field he reassessed Zhenya and how the boy had shifted his allegiance to Isakov and Urman without batting an eye. Snakes were slower at leaving the nest.

Arkady reached the pines and joined the Diggers staying motionless and mute on the periphery of the stand. A wheelbarrow that trespassed accentuated the unnatural, regularly spaced columns of trees and rain that escaped the upper canopy fell into silence and a thin blanket of needles. There was no birdsong, no squirrel chatter.

Bodies must have been thrown in sideways, head first, feet first, one on top of the other; Arkady couldn’t estimate how many, only that they all appeared part of a violent struggle. A head lifted here, a knee there. Over the years nature’s parade of scavengers and microorganisms had stripped the flesh and the remains were not only skeletonized but an interlocking puzzle. Did this skull go on that neck? Did these two hands make a match? When the merest tug pulled the tip from the finger, the finger from the hand, the hand off the arm, where to even begin? The distance between the trees was an unnaturally uniform five meters, but stepping on clear ground meant crushing remains underneath, so Diggers put together composite bodies of whatever they could reach.