Stalin’s Ghost (21 page)

The Red Diggers seemed to be both a paramilitary organization and a social club. As Arkady understood it, they pitched their tents, hiked, sang and exhumed the dead. Who could argue with an agenda like that? Separate tables were set up for sorting bones, others for food, vodka and beer. There was the good cheer of a reunion, a fair turnout for an unexpected wintertime dig. Arkady recognized one of the lesser candidates from the Russian Patriot rally. He was digging furiously.

“Wait until tomorrow, that will be a show,” the candidate told Arkady and jumped aside as Rudi came through to dump a wheelbarrow load of bones at a poster that said, “Germans Here.”

Arkady’s cell phone rang. He got an earful of static when he answered but he didn’t move for fear of losing reception entirely.

“I apologize. I can barely make you out. Could you speak loudly, please?”

“This is Sarkisian. Where the devil are you?”

Arkady said, “I’m sorry, this connection is terrible.”

“What have you been up to?”

“Would you repeat that?”

“Where are you staying?”

“We’re breaking up.”

“Damn it, Zurin told me you’d play tricks like this.”

“Sorry.” Arkady pressed
END
.

He hardly took a step before the cell phone rang again. Now the reception was loud and clear.

A deliberate voice said, “This is Agronsky. Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want it, whoever you are, I don’t care,” and hung up.

Arkady put down the shovel.

Bones would wait.

The retired Major Gennady Agronsky, a round man in a raveled sweater, surveyed the daffodils that bordered his vegetable garden.

“Fool’s gold. Beautiful but brief. This kind of deceitful weather draws them out and a frost lays them low. But good for the Diggers, I suppose.”

“Yes, it is. Major, you’re a hard man to reach.”

“I don’t answer the phone or the door. Most people get the message. Then I saw that you came on an old Cossack. What a beast! It went right to my heart.”

A white picket fence was the boundary of his domain, a trim cottage in front and in back a patio of terra-cotta pavers with rows of vegetables to come, several raw stumps, sawdust and a small cherry tree with a satiny bark. His neighbor’s yard was a junkyard.

“They plant nothing, not even cucumbers. In the summer I have pickles, tomatoes, coriander, dill, you name it. These young people, these good-for-nothings, complain there’s no work. Just pick up a hoe and put your back into it. At least you’ll eat, I say.”

Arkady noticed a pit bull pretending to be asleep on the other side of the fence. “What do they say?”

“They say, ‘Stuff it, you old fart!’ or ‘Pull your head out of your ass!’ The same with the dealer on the other side. You’re sure you wouldn’t like vodka, just a touch?”

“No, thanks.”

“That’s just as well. The doctor says if I drink I might as well shoot myself. My attitude? Everything in moderation, including vice.” Agronsky led Arkady to the patio table. “Sit.”

“Did you go to the rally for the Russian Patriots?”

“Too far to go. This is almost outside town. We have bears in the garbage.”

“I noticed a hunting rifle at your front door. Do bears call at your front door?”

“Not yet.”

The rifle was a Baikal Express with over and under barrels. Arkady thought that would discourage even a bear.

“They offered free rides to the rally.”

“I saw enough on television.”

“The candidate is someone you must know, Captain Nikolai Isakov. He is a militia detective in Moscow now, but he was a Black Beret from Tver. A man rising in the world is Nikolai Isakov.”

“You’re investigating him?”

“Just asking a few questions. For example, was Captain Isakov a competent officer?”

“What a question. More than competent; a model officer. We held him up as an example.”

“He was the hero of Sunzha Bridge, after all. As, I suppose, were all the men under his command that day at the river. All heroes and all from Tver.”

“The people of Tver are patriotic,” Agronsky said.

“Six Black Berets against fifty heavily armed rebels with an armored personnel carrier and two trucks. The outcome was what, thirteen, fourteen terrorists dead—”

“Fourteen.”

“Fourteen terrorists dead, the APC and trucks in retreat and, in return, one Black Beret wounded. Amazing. It was the sort of battle that can make an officer’s reputation and win a promotion in rank, especially at a time when there was so little good news coming out of Chechnya. Yet there wasn’t a single decoration.”

“These things happen in war. Sometimes it’s just a matter of missing paperwork or witnesses.”

“Which is why there is a citation committee to review commendations. You were the head of the committee that denied the Black Berets of Sunzha Bridge any medals or promotion. Why?”

“You expect me to remember? The committee processes hundreds of recommendations, and on a generous basis. The regular army consists of boys, conscripts, the poorest and dumbest, the ten percent who didn’t dodge the draft and the one percent true patriots. They deserve commendations. If they get shot in the ass they get a commendation. If they steal a chicken for their commanding officer they get a commendation. If they get killed their body parts go home in a sealed coffin with a commendation.”

“So why wouldn’t a real battle merit a medal or two?”

“Who knows? That was months ago.” Agronsky looked away. “It isn’t as if I were allowed to bring my files with me.”

“It was your last case. You retired a week after you submitted your verdict. After thirty years you suddenly retired.”

“Thirty years ago, things were different. We were an army then.”

“Tell me about Isakov.”

Agronsky’s eyes stopped dodging.

“The report smelled.”

“In what way?”

“Captain Isakov reported a firefight between rebels on one side of the bridge and his men on the other. The medical examination revealed that all the rebels were shot at close range, some in the back, one or two while eating. Where the rebels were supposed to have been shot there was no blood on the vegetation. The leaves weren’t shredded, they weren’t even disturbed. No doubt Isakov wanted to arrange the bodies in a more convincing manner but a helicopter was coming to the landing zone. A journalist who was on the helicopter described the scene to me.”

“That was Ginsberg?”

“Yes.”

“Were there any actual witnesses?”

“Only one, a civilian, and she was no help at all.”

“What did she say?”

“We’ll never know. She was Ukrainian. She went back to Kiev.”

“What was her name?”

“Kafka, like the crazy writer.”

Close enough, Arkady thought. He held his breath before the next question.

“Are there any photographs of the firefight scene?”

“Only Ginsberg’s.”

“From the helicopter?”

“His colleagues said he always carried a camera, in case. The pictures completely contradict the statements of Isakov and Urman.”

“Do people in Tver know about this?”

“They won’t hear it from me. Did I mention that two weeks before the incident at the bridge, rebels captured eight Black Berets and took videos of them, first alive and then dead? Their mothers couldn’t recognize those boys. They were all from Tver. Don’t ask for any sympathy for rebels in this city.”

“Then why not promote Isakov?”

“Because he was no longer a soldier; he was a killer. To me there is a difference.”

Arkady was impressed. Agronsky looked more like a retired bureaucrat than someone who would stand up to Isakov. The major’s sweater had holes and loose strands, exactly what a man of leisure would wear for gardening, although glints of chrome at the belt line betrayed the gun underneath.

“Was there a follow-up investigation?”

“I suggested one and for that I’ve been cashiered and all the evidence has been destroyed.”

“What about Ginsberg’s photographs?”

“Burned.”

“Gone?”

“Smoke.”

“No copies?” Investigations were usually awash in copies.

“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.”