Stalin’s Ghost (19 page)

Rapturous, passionate applause. A standing ovation. Shouts of “Isakov! Isakov!”

“What the devil was that about?” Arkady asked.

“It’s a good windup to the campaign,” Urman said. “It’s got everything.”

“Like a fruit salad. You really think Isakov has a chance?”

“He’s been a winner ever since I’ve known him. Since we joined the Black Berets. There are twelve candidates. He only needs a plurality.”

Isakov had not left the stage. He carried the girl from one side to the other while roses landed at his feet. Urman joined in the rhythmic applause.

“Why did he drop out?” Arkady asked.

“What are you talking about?”

“When you and Isakov met in OMON, he had just left the university.”

“He was bored. He was sick of books. They taught us something useful in OMON. Hit first, keep hitting.”

“Good advice. But he was a five-point student, at the top of his class, and in his last week, he threw away all that hard work. That doesn’t strike me as boredom. Something happened.”

“You never let up,” Urman said.

“It’s an innocent question. Anyway, you’re going to kill me as soon as you get the nod.”

Urman leaned close to speak confidentially. “Do you know how I kill an enemy? First I cut off his testicles—”

“You fry them and eat them and on and on. I heard all about it. But at the Sunzha Bridge, you simply shot people in the back.”

“I was in a hurry. With you I’ll take my time.” Urman reassured Arkady with a pat on the back and slipped away.

The crowd wasn’t leaving. A rhythmic clap continued and so many boys rode their fathers’ shoulders they were a second tier of enthusiasm. The sound system poured out the Soviet national anthem, the wartime version that included, “Stalin has raised us with faith in the people, inspiring them to labor and glorious deeds!” The applause doubled when Isakov returned to the stage to say informally, like a personal reminder, “The dig will tell the tale!”

Maybe, Arkady thought. Maybe Urman could make him beg for mercy, although Arkady had trained with a master.

“Skin is sensitive.”

Arkady was twelve years old. In Afghanistan. He had returned to camp covered with ant bites, each bite hot and throbbing and his face swollen.

His father sat on the cot and continued. “There have been experiments. Subjects have been hypnotized and told they were burned and blisters appeared on their skin. Other patients who were in pain were hypnotized and their pain went away. Not far away, perhaps, but enough.”

The General loosened his necktie and undid the top two buttons of his shirt. Took a sharp breath through his nose and sipped his scotch.

“The skin blushes with embarrassment, goes pale with fear, shivers in the cold. The question is, why were you riding around on a motorcycle outside the base? Outside the base is dangerous and off-limits, you know that.”

“I didn’t see any signs.”

“There have to be signs posted for you? What were you doing on the bike when you fell?”

“Just riding.”

“A little too fast, maybe? Doing some stunts?”

“Maybe.”

The General finished the glass and poured another. He lit a cigarette. Bulgarian tobacco. For Arkady, the match flame focused the pain of the bites.

“So far as the natives are concerned we are guest engineers building an airstrip under a treaty of friendship and cooperation. That’s why we’re in civilian clothes. That’s why we buy their pomegranates and grapes, because we want to cement our friendship and be even more welcome. But this is still a Soviet military base and I am still its commander. Understood?

“Yes.”

The cigarette smoke was aromatic and blue as a thunderhead.

“Were there any natives there? Did any of them see the accident?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“Two men. I was lucky they were there.”

“I’m sure.” His father blew the flame out as it reached his fingertips. “It must hurt.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re thirteen years old?”

“Twelve.”

“Twenty bites is a lot at any age. Did you cry?”

“Yes, sir.”

The General picked a flake of tobacco from his lip. “The people who live here and surround this base are tough. These people fought Alexander the Great. They’re warriors and their children are trained to be warriors and, no matter what, not to cry. Understand? Not to cry.” His father’s face turned red. Arkady didn’t think it was from embarrassment. Veins spread on the General’s forehead and neck. “I am the commander of this base. The son of the commander does not fall off his bike in front of the natives and if he does fall off and is bitten by a hundred ants he does not cry.”

Two natives had stretched languidly in the shade of a saxaul tree to smoke cigarettes and watch Arkady on his motorbike chase ground squirrels across the desert floor. The boys were brothers with similar short, swirly black beards. They wore turbans, baggy trousers, oversized shirts, sunglasses.

“They’re watching,” the General said. “The minute we look weak, we will be under siege. That’s why we surround the camp with mines and discourage the natives from coming near and why we have never let them inside to see our electronic gear, until today, when they carried in my son because of his ant stings.”

“I’m sorry,” Arkady said.

“Do you know the consequences? I could lose my command. You could have set off a mine and lost your life.”

A gecko had darted in Arkady’s way. He had twisted the handlebars without thinking, and as the back end of the bike caught up with the front he flew over the machine and plowed face first into the gritty mound of an ant colony.

“Do you know what made Stalin great?” his father asked. “Stalin was great because, during the war, when the Germans took his son Yakov prisoner and proposed an exchange, Stalin refused, even though he knew that saying no was a death sentence for his son.” The General drew on his cigarette to make it flare. In spite of the ant bites Arkady felt a chill. “Tobacco burns at nine hundred degrees centigrade. The skin knows it. So I will give you a choice, your skin or theirs.”

“Whose?”

“The men who brought you, your native friends. They’re still here.”

“My skin.”

“Wrong answer.” From his shirt pocket his father gave Arkady two snapshots, one of each brother, bareheaded and stripped to the waist, lying in a bloody heap. “They wouldn’t have felt a thing.”

T
he sun was setting and the village was a picture of civilization going to sleep: a handful of cottages, half of them abandoned, a power line and the dome of a church. A woman shuffled under a yoke of water buckets. A smoke-colored cat followed. When the old woman shooed it, the cat nipped across the road and slipped between piles of metal and rubber belts, through stacks of fenders and tires. Arkady kept pace in the Zhiguli until the cat squeezed under the closed doors of a garage.

Arkady’s day had been spent searching for the right car, something with a Tver license plate and so drab it deflected attention. He had looked at Volgas, Ladas, Nivas of every color and variety of dents and for one reason or another each car was wrong.

Knocking on the door to no effect, Arkady let himself into the garage and immediately blinked from the light of an acetylene torch. A figure in a leather vest and welding mask was welding what could have been a fuel tank amid the pulleys and chains, vises and clamps of a workshop. Anonymous items under different tarps shifted in the glare. The cat jumped up to a shelf of motorcycle helmets and batted at sparks.

“Rudenko?” Arkady had to shout. “Rudi Rudenko?”

The welder turned down the flame and flipped up his mask. “Yeah, what?”

“This is the Rudenko repair shop?”

“So?”

“Do you have any used cars?”

“No. This is a motorcycle shop. Shut the door on your way out. Thank you. Have a shitty day.”

Arkady started for the door. He paused. On the way from Tver he had watched the rearview mirror in case he was followed and he could give a brief description of each car that had drawn close. Until his encounter with the motorcycle pack he had ignored bikes, virtually wiped them from his vision. Small motorbikes especially were as incidental as mosquitoes.

“You’re still here?” Rudenko said.

“Do you have any motorcycles to sell?”

“You want a car, then you want a bike. How about a fucking cat? I have one of those.”

“Do you have any bikes?”

“I don’t see you on one of my bikes. That would be like seeing an old man climbing on a beautiful woman. I’m busy.”

“I can wait.”

“There’s no waiting room.”

“I’ll wait in the car.”

“That car?” The welder looked through the door.

He turned off the torch and removed his mask, freeing a ponytail of red hair. Arkady’s spirits sank. Rudi was tall and angular with a beefsteak face and a sickly mustache. He was the biker who had welcomed Arkady to Tver with a hearty “Fuck Moscow.”

Arkady said, “Sometimes people bring in bikes for repair and never return. Do you have a bike like that?”

Rudi picked up a shovel and held it like an ax. “Let me fix your car first.”

“I simply want a bike.” The last thing Arkady wanted was a brawl with someone bigger and uglier.

“It’s okay!” Rudi suddenly shouted past Arkady, who found an old man coming at him from behind with a pitchfork. The old man must have shrunk because his clothes looked strapped on. “It’s okay, Granddad! Thanks!”

“Is it Fritz?” the old man asked.

“No, it’s not Fritz.”

“Watch for tanks.”

“Got my eyes peeled, Granddad.”

“Well, they’ll be back.” The old man shook the pitchfork as he retreated.

“We’ll be ready this time.”

“For what?” Arkady asked.

“Germans,” Rudi said. “If the Germans come again, he’s prepared. Where were we?”

“I came for a bike,” Arkady reminded him.

Rudi glanced in the direction his grandfather had gone.

“Just stand still.” Rudi put the shovel aside and patted Arkady down and found his ID. “A senior investigator from Moscow. Are you investigating me?”

“No.”

“How did you even know my name?”

“You’re in the telephone book.”

“Oh, okay, no harm done.”

Arkady appreciated that. Rudi had the arms of a man who lifted heavy bikes. On his right shoulder was a round BMW tattoo and on his left shoulder a Maserati trident. No tattoos of girls or guns, and no OMON tiger heads.

The grandfather returned to the door in a jacket with war medals. He gave Arkady a salute and said, “Rudenko reporting in.”

When Arkady returned the salute Rudi said, “Don’t encourage him. He thinks he knows you.”

“From where?”

“I don’t know. Sometime in his past. Ignore him. You really want a bike?”

“Yes.”

“I have three.” Rudi pulled tarps off a flame red Kawasaki, a tiger-striped Yamaha, and a sidecar Ural the color of mud.

“Beauties. The Japanese bikes, I mean. Two hundred on a straightaway, screaming like a jet.”

“And the Ural?”

“You want to go fast in a Ural? Drive it off a cliff.”

It was a fact that the Ural was not a racehorse. It was the mule of motor travel, its sidecar used to haul trussed chickens or a farmer’s wife. People called it a Cossack for its lack of charm.

“It has a Tver license?”

“Yes, see for yourself,” Rudi said. “Two thousand euros for either customized Japanese bike, two hundred for the fucking Ural.”

“It needs a new front tire.”

“I have a retread somewhere.” Rudi waved vaguely toward the pile of tires outside. “You’re a real risk taker, I can see that.”

“Would you throw in a helmet with a face shield?”

“No problem.” Rudi rooted around a trash can and fished out a helmet with a crack down the center. “Slightly used.”

“Can you deliver it tonight? Say, ten?”

“To get rid of it? Anywhere. I suggest Pushkin’s statue on the embankment. At night the gays move in and the militia moves out.” Rudi was suddenly alarmed. “Watch out, Granddad. No, no. Don’t come in.”

Carrying a paper bag, the old man stumbled against a corner stack of shovels and rods that fell with a clamor on the floor.

“Granddad, why do you always do that?”

“You look familiar,” the old man told Arkady. “Were you here in ’forty-one?”

“I wasn’t born yet in ’forty-one.”

“Would you know if this is Fritz?” The old man opened the bag and took out a skull with a hole in the back.

“All Germans are Fritz to my grandfather,” Rudi said.

Arkady said, “I have no idea.”

Rudi said, “Call him Big Rudi. He used to be bigger.”

“There’s no need for formalities between old comrades.” Rudi’s grandfather found a loose tooth, a brown molar, and plucked it from the jaw. “I never understood that. The Germans were such big strapping fellows and they had such bad teeth.”

“Where did you get it?” Arkady asked.

“Everywhere. Believe me, there’s nothing worse than fighting with a toothache. I pulled my own tooth out.” He dropped the tooth in a pocket. “Don’t fret, Rudi, I’ll pick up the shovels. Have you got my eyeglasses?”

“You lost them ten years ago.”

“They’re here somewhere.”

“Gaga,” Rudi told Arkady. “He lives in the past.”

Arkady helped the old man pick up the shovels. Among them was a homemade metal detector, with an inductor coil and a gauge. While Rudi slammed through drawers in a search of sale documents his vest rode up from a gun tucked into the back of his jeans.

The cat leapt up to a shelf of Nazi helmets, some whole and some punctured. On a work counter, a metal canister with instructions in German was the explosive end of a “potato masher” hand grenade. The foggy eyes of an ancient gas mask peeked from a cabinet. A camouflage tunic on a hook had the same shoulder emblem—star, helmet and rose—that Arkady had seen at the rally in Tver.

“Did you go to the rally today?” Arkady asked Rudi.

“For Isakov? He’s a fucking fascist.”

“He seems popular.”

“He’s still a fucking fascist.”

“I met Stalin,” Rudi’s grandfather said.

Arkady took a second to adjust to such a broad change of subject. It was possible, Arkady thought. Big Rudi was old enough.

“When?” Arkady asked.

“Today.”

“Where?”

“On the hill in back. Look out the window, he’s there now.”

Enough light was cast by the window for Arkady to see there was no Stalin and no hill, only the stubble of winter grass.

“I was too slow. He’s gone. Did he say anything?” Arkady asked.

“To go to the dig.” The old boy became excited. “Come with us tomorrow. Stalin will be there.”

“Will Isakov?”

“Maybe. It doesn’t matter,” Rudi said. “You’re not a Digger. It’s members only.”

“Why?” Arkady asked.

“One, you’d be in the way. Two, since you don’t know what you’re doing you might get hurt or hurt someone else. Three, it’s strictly against the rules. Four, no fucking way. Why do you even ask? What did you expect to see there?”

That Arkady did not know. Signs? Maybe revelations?

“The monster not only knocked down an invading Fascist plane,” Zhenya said, “it came out of Lake Brosno and chased away the invading Mongols hundreds of years ago. Now scientists have to find out if it’s the same monster or a descendant. That’s what the expedition is all about. They have a picture of it, a photograph, not a drawing. I saw it on the television.”

Arkady switched his cell phone to the other ear; when Zhenya was excited his voice tended to be shrill. Nothing had excited him more than the Lake Brosno monster.

“What did it look like?” Arkady asked.

“It was kind of blurred. It could have been a form of apatosaurus. Definitely. The scientists went out in a boat with special equipment and detected something really strange underneath the surface.”

“What did they do?”

“They dropped a grenade on it.”

“Any man of science would.” Arkady looked out the apartment window at the roofs of Tver. He saw church spires but no onion domes to lend the city grace or fantasy. On the other hand, Arkady appreciated the local monster for turning Zhenya from a virtual mute into a chatterbox. “What did the monster do then?”

“Nothing. It escaped. It would have been great if it swallowed the boat.”

“And it would have been proof.”

Zhenya said, “I’d like to see a video of that.”

“Wouldn’t we all?”

Pushkin’s statue had a top hat, iron poise, perhaps a smirk. Arkady had no such style. Every few minutes, different men would come out of the dark, pass him and the statue in a speculative fashion and continue on their way. Fifteen minutes late Rudi rode the Ural up the embankment to Pushkin’s statue, followed by another biker on Rudi’s red bike.

Rudi climbed off, removed his helmet and shook his ponytail free. For the cool of the evening he wore camos, army green, not OMON blue. “Sorry, I’m late. I had to take back roads and alleys so no one would see me on a tricycle.”

“I understand. You have a reputation to protect.”

Rudi’s fellow rider was a heavyset man upholstered in leather and chains. His name was Misha. Misha rattled impatiently while Arkady counted out money.

“The helmet?” Arkady asked.

“In the sidecar. I filled the fuel tank.”

That was more than Arkady had expected. He unsnapped the sidecar cover and found a scuffed but uncracked motorcycle helmet with a visor.

“Thanks.”

“You know my granddad.”

“Big Rudi with the pitchfork?”

“Right. He is really sure he saw Stalin. He heard there was a man in Moscow who was shot in the head. Stalin appeared and the guy got up and walked away.”

“That’s quite a story.”

Misha said, “Rudi, are we going or what?”

Rudi waved him off and told Arkady, “I gave you a new tire. A knobby, for off-the-road action.”

“That’s generous of you.” Arkady did not plan to go off the road.

“You realize you’re coming out ahead on this deal, Renko.”

“What do you want?”

“You’re so fucking suspicious.”

“That’s right.”

“Okay, my granddad wants to see you again. It would mean a lot to him and I’d personally consider us even. He’s positive he saw you here during the war.”

“I wasn’t even born.”

“Humor him. He lives in the past and he remembers old stuff better than new. Sometimes he gets mixed up. He sees you and now he’s all wound up. Big deal, you drop by the shop for a visit. A fucking hour of your precious time.”

“At the dig.”

“I can’t do that. Like I said before, you’re not a Digger.”

“I’ll talk to Big Rudi at the dig. Nowhere else.”

“I explained, it’s not allowed. You have to be a Digger.”

“Too bad,” said Arkady.

“What a son of a bitch.”

“The dig.”

Rudi and Misha got on the red bike, which came to life with a vibrato that warned the world to move aside while Rudi went in circles around Arkady.

“You know, Pushkin’s not the only one here with brass balls.”

Rudi made another turn.

“We leave for the dig at six.”

As soon as Rudi had gone Arkady checked out his new acquisition. New to him. The Ural had to be thirty years old, at least. A spare tire was secured on the back of the sidecar, which looked like a large sandal and had the major amenities: a shovel and a windshield. The machine-gun mount had been cut off. Arkady had noticed when he first saw the bike that it was stamped in various places with a star, meaning it had come off a military assembly line.

Stalin’s engineers got their hands on some German BMWs, took them apart, strengthened this, simplified that and when they put the bikes back together they were Russian. Cossacks might be a lowly transporter of potatoes now, but they had once carried heroes to Berlin.

Arkady rolled through Tver. The Ural’s engine wasn’t symphonic but it was steady, its power dedicated not to speed but to traction, and since the sidecar was connected to the bike it drove like a car. No leaning. He rode by one dark restaurant after another, from one empty square to the next, like a chess piece alone on a board. If half the city was on the crawl, he was looking under the wrong rocks. He swung back toward the embankment, gathered speed along the river and had yet to see an open enterprise apart from an all-night casino that, compared to Moscow’s, had the allure of a pachinko parlor.

He was stopped at a traffic light when a Porsche convertible rolled alongside. Urman was at the wheel, looking more like a detective from Miami than one from Moscow. He was too occupied with smoothing his wind-whipped hair to give Arkady more than a glance; he might not have seen the bike at all. When the light turned green the Porsche took off like a rocket. Six blocks further on, Urman was entering a hotel as Arkady rode by.