Martin Smith - Stalin’s Ghost

“Maybe they should,” Isakov said. “What do I know about politics?”

“You don’t have to. You’ll be told what to do.”

“I will be informed?”

“That’s it.” Pacheco said. “It’s not a difficult job unless you make it one.”

“You’ll get plenty of advice,” said Wiley.

“And immunity, don’t forget,” Arkady said. “That has to be a plus.”

Yura finished his call. “So, you play chess?” he asked Zhenya.

Zhenya nodded.

“Why don’t we have a game while we wait? You can be white.”

“D four.”

“That’s it?”

“D four.”

Yura frowned. “Just a second. I thought you had a chessboard in your backpack.”

“Do you need one?” Zhenya asked.

Arkady took Zhenya for a stroll.

Despite the rain a good many Diggers tended portable grills. Camping was camping. In their tents crews sang wartime songs overflowing with vodka and nostalgia. A line formed at a laboratory carboy of grain alcohol decorated with slices of lemon. It was a bonding experience for fathers and sons.

“Yura was trying to be friendly,” Arkady said. “You could have played on the board.”

“It would have been a waste of time.”

“He might have surprised you. Grandmaster Platonov was here during the war playing the troops. He played anyone.”

“Like who?”

“Soldiers, officers. He said he had some good games.”

“With who?”

For Arkady Zhenya’s smirk was maddening.

“Anyone,” he ended feebly.

They bumped into Big Rudi walking with his ear cocked.

“Can you hear him coming?” he asked Arkady.

A distant cannonade rose and fell.

“I think that’s thunder,” Arkady said.

“Then where is the lightning?”

“It’s too far away to see.”

“Aha! In other words, you assume it.”

“I’m guessing,” Arkady admitted. “Wouldn’t you like to get out of the rain?”

“Granddad won’t go.” Rudi approached with a beer in hand. “He’s set in his mind. And he’s not the only one.”

Arkady looked down along the tents and saw other figures standing like sentries in the rain. He thought that between the patriotism and grain alcohol Stalin was bound to make an appearance.

There was a great bustle at the examination tent, where the presenter Lydia was suddenly illuminated by television lights. She was joined by an older woman with sharp eyes and a sardonic smile. Arkady recognized his real estate agent, Sofia Andreyeva. He remembered how she had admitted to being a doctor and warned him not to be her patient. She changed to a clean lab coat while the Diggers packed together around the tent, boys on father’s shoulders, cell phones set on video and held as high as a homecoming salute to heroes finally rescued from the grip of the earth! Let it rain. Every face was bright with zeal. Arkady joined Wiley and Pacheco at the back of the crowd. Zhenya found a chair to stand on. Urman cleared the way to the front for Isakov.

Wiley told Arkady, “At the end of most campaigns I ask myself what opportunity I missed. What could I have done that I didn’t do? But this is like breaking the bank at Monte Carlo. You should be happy too. Now that Nikolai has immunity he’s certainly going to lay off you.”

Arkady decided that Wiley was stupider than he looked.

“Can everyone hear me? Good. I am Doctor Sofia Andreyeva Poninski, pathologist emeritus at Tver Central Hospital. I was requested to attend this mass exhumation and offer an opinion as to the identity of bodies found. Not necessarily individually but as a group. I could carry out an examination in much greater detail in the morgue, but I am informed that you need a conclusion here and now. Very well.

“I examined twenty remains, more or less. I say ‘more or less’ because it is obvious many of the so-called bodies are a mix of bones from two or three or even four different skeletal remains. This, of course, is one of the hazards of amateurs’ attempting a task best left to forensic technicians. So, I can offer you only gross observations of mishandled remains.

“First, that all twenty pelvic bones I examined were male.

“Second, by the density of their bones and wear on teeth enamel, that their ages at the time of death ranged from approximately twenty to seventy years of age.

“Third, that by variations in bone density some were active and athletic, some sedentary.

“Fourth, that the skeletons as offered suffered no wounds apart from a single shot to the back of the head. It’s possible there were flesh wounds that did not involve trauma to the bones. The absence of trauma also indicates that the victims were not subjected to physical abuse. In twelve instances there are signs of charring of the cranium consistent with execution at contact or very short range, and also consistent with execution one victim at a time, rather than a writhing mass. Which indicates that the deceased were shot at one site and transported here. The location of the fatal shots-twelve degrees below the cranial equator, in other words, below and to the right of the back of the skull-was remarkably similar, suggesting the possibility that a single right-handed individual carried out the execution, although he no doubt had accomplices.

“Fifth, the victims’ teeth showed generally good care and no German amalgam fillings.

“Sixth, one skeleton wore a leg brace. I was able to remove rust from the maker’s plate, which gave an address in Warsaw. Other objects found in the accompanying soil included a silver locket, perhaps once secreted in a body cavity, that expressed romantic sentiments in Polish; a jeweler’s loupe engraved with the name of a stamp dealer in Krakow; a pillbox with a view of the Tatra Mountains, and Polish coins of the prewar era.

“In sum, not enough information is yet available for us to draw firm conclusions, but indications are that the victims were Polish nationals…”

Where there was nostalgia there was amnesia. People tended to forget that when Hitler and Stalin carved up Poland, Stalin took the precaution of executing twenty thousand Polish Army officers, police, professors, writers, doctors, anyone who might form a political or military opposition. At least half were killed in Tver. Buried beneath the trees was the cream of Polish society.

The Diggers exhibited deflation and confusion. This was not the outcome the men had expected, not the laurels for a mission accomplished, not the bonding they had planned. This was a definite fuckup. Someone had sent them to the wrong dig and Rudi Rudenko, the Black Digger, the so-called professional, had suddenly disappeared. If Big Rudi said he saw Stalin one more time someone was going to lay him out with a shovel.

Sofia Andreyeva drew herself up and asked, “Did you hear me in the back? Was it clear enough for you? The victims are Poles, killed and buried here on Stalin’s orders. Do you understand?”

The Digger crew leaders convened under an umbrella. Understand? They understood that she was a fucking, Polish whore of a doctor. They should have made sure and gotten a Russian. They also knew that it was no fun to camp in the rain. Kids sniffled in camos that had resisted rain all day and were now soaked through on a cold evening that was getting colder when a hot bath and pepper vodka was what the doctor ordered. Not this doctor. A Russian doctor. A thunderclap decided it. They were breaking camp.

In a flurry of flashlight beams the tents came down, crews rolled tarps up from the trenches, boys stuffed Wehrmacht helmets into pillow cases. Unwieldy items like metal detectors, coolers and grills were cursed as they were portered in the dark, and cursed a second time surrounded by milling vehicles attempting to reverse direction over the ruts of a one-lane dirt road. Thunder and the smoke of campfires lent an aspect of retreat under fire.