Stalin’s Ghost (24 page)

“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.

“You shouldn’t take it so hard,” Big Rudi said. He had a way of appearing at Arkady’s side when least expected. “War is a meat grinder. Farmers, doctors, teachers? Ground beef. And if Fritz doesn’t shoot you, the commissar will. But I miss the camaraderie. I was smoking at your age,” he told Zhenya, who was approaching tentatively.

“Did you kill anyone?” Zhenya asked.

Arkady stuck a cigarette in Big Rudi’s mouth and lit it. The old man inhaled deeply and coughed up half a lung.

No one stopped the cameraman Grisha from using bones as stepping stones because everyone understood that television ruled. This was the Diggers’ moment in the sun. Better than the sun, the camera’s eye. Wiley was right, Arkady thought, it was a great visual.

Big Rudi said, “The collective used to have a nice field of wheat here. Nice soil, sandy, well-drained.”

“Why didn’t the collective take the trees out?”

Big Rudi shrugged. “They had to apply. Someone said no.”

“Why would anyone in Moscow care whether a collective farm in Tver cut down trees?”

“Who knows? These were the old days. An order from Moscow took into consideration forces and dangers we knew nothing about.”

Arkady watched Grisha’s advance through the trees. The cameraman kept each move smooth and slow, a step away a brown line that led to what looked like a pinecone standing up.

“Can I see what—?” Zhenya started toward the cameraman.

“No.” Arkady pulled him to the ground and shouted, “Grisha, stop! Land mine!”

Grisha tripped, aimed down, and the ground erupted. When the smoke cleared, the cameraman was soaked in blood, on all fours, blinking, experimentally searching his crotch. Isakov helped Grisha to his feet and out of the trees. Grisha could walk, but Isakov tipped the bones out of a wheelbarrow and put Grisha in. Zhenya disappeared. The Diggers called for a pullback, which became a wholesale retreat to the tents.

Arkady stayed. Now that he knew what to look for, he found more unexploded mines. The POMZ land mine was a Russian creation as successful as the AK-47 and even simpler: seventy-five grams of TNT in a cast iron cylinder crosshatched for fragmentation and mounted on a stake. A trip wire ring looped over the igniter, a cigarette-sized rod that capped the mine. A safety pin hole was provided, although the pin had been pulled long ago. He spread-eagled on the ground studying how to remove the igniter and get to the fuse.

He was tentatively wriggling the stake when he noticed a wire running the other direction. He brushed aside rotten needles and discovered another POMZ. He discovered seven mines altogether on the same trip wire circling a tree, a necklace of ancient POMZs with their safety pins pulled and rigged like a string of holiday lights; if one went off, they all would, spitting shrapnel with a lethal range of four meters.

Probably all duds.

Arkady rolled on his back to dig into his pockets, found his keys, and slid them off the key ring. As occasionally happened under stress, a loud, unwelcome tune began in his head. His brain selected Shostakovich’s “Tahiti Trot.”
Tea for two and two for tea, me for you…

Although he couldn’t straighten the entire ring he did, at the cost of a bloody finger, manage to bend a tip of wire. He rolled onto his front, held the stake steady with one hand, and with the other inserted the wire into the safety pin hole and pulled out the igniter and fuse. Didn’t even have to unscrew the fuse. The General always said they came out too easily.

Arkady was wet and covered in needles from head to toe, unintentionally camouflaged in case Urman came searching. Arkady could tell how much the detective itched to go into action. That was the exciting thing about Urman, his unpredictability. He could be affable company one moment and help you swallow your tongue the next.

Using his makeshift safety pin Arkady disarmed the next two mines in short order. The safety hole of the fourth was rusted shut and demanded exquisite pressure to force open without tripping the wire.

“Nobody near us, to see us or hear us…”

What Arkady did not understand was why the mines were set on metal stakes rather than wood. It was as if whoever rigged the POMZs had intended them to stand guard during the war, after the war, forever.

“What are you doing?” Zhenya asked.

Arkady was startled enough to make the trip wire tremble: he had not heard the boy coming.

“Rendering these mines a little less dangerous.”

“Huh. You mean, disarming them.”

“Yes.”

“Then that’s what you should say. ‘I’m disarming these mines.’ That’s simple.” Zhenya shifted the weight of his backpack. Damp ringlets stuck to his brow. “You’re making such a deal out of it. They’re all duds according to Nikolai and Marat. Nikolai and Marat would know better than you.”

“What about the cameraman Grisha?”

“Scratches. The mine didn’t have any real charge left. Marat says Grisha will still be able to scratch his balls.”

“Marat said that to you?”

“Yeah. I’m looking for him.”

Arkady considered the prospect of Zhenya wandering around land mines and skeletons. Or worse, being near if Arkady tripped a wire.

“I think Marat was looking for you around the pathology tent.”

“I was just there,” Zhenya said. “That’s a long walk.”

“Get a lighter backpack.”

“I bet Marat could disarm mines like these in his sleep.”

“You could be right.”

“I’m bored.”

“I’m busy,” Arkady said with a look that matched.

Zhenya’s cheeks went red, the most color Arkady had ever seen in them.

Arkady found a tripwire to follow, but when he crawled forward he felt something scratch his stomach. He rolled away from a mine set as a booby trap deep and on its own. After waiting sixty years, the bomb detonated with the soft pop of a champagne cork.

A dud.

When Arkady looked up, Zhenya was gone, except for his laugh.

A
steady drizzle could not dampen the spirits of the camp. Although digging was canceled for the rest of the day, no one was leaving because every crew had brought vodka and beer, sausage and bread, fatback and cheese. Besides, twenty remains had successfully been brought in for examination, enough for the pathologist to, once she was done, declare all the victims Russian.

In the visitors tent Arkady listened to Wiley praise Isakov.

“An officer who carries home his wounded men? This is exactly the image people respond to. That tape is being edited in the studio as we speak. It’s still only four in the afternoon. If the pathologist gets her act together, you’ll make two news cycles as the lead story.”

“What if the bodies aren’t Russian?” Isakov asked.

“They found Russian helmets.”

“What if they aren’t?”

Wiley glanced at Lydia, who was occupied signing autographs for admirers at the front of the tent. The cameraman named Yura was on a cell phone to Grisha’s wife.

“If they’re German?” Wiley dropped his voice. “Admittedly, it won’t be nearly as good, but the rescue of Grisha will still sell you.”

“Is that what I want to be, sold?”

“With all your heart and soul,” Pacheco said. “You crossed that river the day we were hired.”

“Nothing like this was mentioned then.”

“Nikolai, you’re suffering preelection nerves. Relax. This dig is going to put you over the top.”

“They’re right,” Urman said.

“We’re just lucky we brought two cameramen.” Pacheco raised a glass of brandy. “To Grisha.”

“Anyway,” Wiley said, “you needed something like this. Your numbers were starting to flatten out.”

“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.

Yura backed up the television truck to the pathology tent. Lydia dove in and shook her hair. A Mercedes eased its way to Wiley and Pacheco.

“That’s it? You’re quitting?” Arkady asked.

Wiley said, “The son of a bitch said he was afraid of this. He knew something.”

“Who?”

“Detective Nikolai Isakov, our candidate. He said he’d been waiting years for this.”

“This what?”

“Something about his father. Believe me, it no longer matters.”

Pacheco said, “No one is going to put on the air what we just saw. A Russian atrocity? They’d hang us by our heels first.”

“Say good-bye to Nikolai for us,” Wiley said.

“We had fun,” said Pacheco. “If Stalin shows up, say hello for me.”

Zhenya’s wet hair was plastered to his forehead because he refused to pull up his hood no matter what Arkady said. Together, they helped Sofia Andreyeva put a skeleton in a body bag. She was laughing and crying at the same time.

“Did you see them run? Poof, the mighty encampment is gone. Stuffed into their cars with someone, I hope, feeling nauseous. What a shame. They came to glorify the past and the past serves up the wrong victim. Some days I curse God for letting me live so long, but today it was worth it. Everybody has a fantasy. Professor Golovanov dreams of a beautiful Frenchman. I dream of a Polish boy, a medical student.”

The rain fell heavier. Arkady was on the verge of shouting just to be heard.

“Do you have a ride back to the city?”

“I borrowed a car, thank you. I’m just going to sit here for a while with my compatriots. I have a camp chair. I have cigarettes. I even…” She allowed him a glimpse of a silver flask. “In case of a chill.”

“The road will be mud soon, don’t wait too long.”

“It will turn to snow. I much prefer snow; it has panache.”

“Where is Isakov?”

“I don’t know. His friend headed back to the fir trees for more bodies. He claims that there are Russian remains and that you didn’t dig deep enough or in the right place.”

Zhenya said, “I bet he’s right. Marat’s a soldier; he should know. I don’t see why we couldn’t help.”

Arkady said, “Stumbling around explosives in the dark is not a good idea.”

“If you’re afraid to get into the dig yourself, you could hold a flashlight for someone else. I have a flashlight in my backpack.”

“You’ve come prepared for anything.”

“Someone has to.”

“No. We’re going home. We’re going to Moscow tonight.”

It felt to Arkady as if it had been night for days. Nothing had worked out as expected. Instead of winning Eva he had lost her. And in Tver there was no way he could escape Marat and Isakov.

Zhenya said, “I’m going to Lake Brosno with Nikolai and then we’re going to Swan Lake.”

“Swan Lake? Like the ballet?”

Sofia Andreyeva said, “It’s a local myth, a haven that does not exist for swans that do not exist.”

“Swans, monsters, weeping virgins. And dragons.”

“I’m sorry, no dragons,” Sofia Andreyeva said.

“You said there were dragons when I took the apartment.”

“So you take your shoes off, yes. You walk on an old dragon softly.”

It took Arkady a moment. “It’s a rug.”

A shadow moved across the campground, levitating over paper wrappers and empty bottles left in the Diggers’ hasty departure. Closer, the figure became a black and shiny ghost that billowed and snapped in the rain. Arkady watched for Stalin’s bristling mustache, greatcoat, yellow eyes. Instead it was Big Rudi in a plastic bag with holes for his head and arms and his cap jammed on his head. Rudi followed with the sort of box flashlight a mechanic might set on a fender. The beam was off.

“Granddad is still looking for Stalin. He’s in his own world.”

Sofia Andreyeva allowed Big Rudi a sip of brandy using the cap of her flask as a cup. “I don’t want to see him in the morning on a slab.”

“Any vodka?” Big Rudi inquired.

“I think he’s back in our world.” She said to Rudi, “I noticed you when I was describing the remains. You stood out.”

“Thank you.” Rudi was flattered.

“You are a Black Digger, a professional.”

“Yes.”

“You dig to make money.”

“I’m a businessman, yes.”

“I wonder how much money would you demand to go into those trees tonight?”

“You couldn’t give me enough.”

“Why not?” Arkady asked. “Don’t you think the mines are harmless?”

“Every year a ‘harmless’ mine blows off someone’s leg.”

“But a professional like you would see the mine.”

“Maybe.”

Arkady looked to see Zhenya’s reaction, but the boy was gone. A flap at the back of the tent was untied.

“May I borrow your flashlight for a moment?”

Arkady stepped out into the rain, turned on the beam and did a 360-degree sweep of trenches, smoldering campfires, beer cans, mound of skulls, piles of soil. Zhenya was on the field at the edge of the beam’s reach, halfway to the trees. He had his hood up and in his black anorak he would have been invisible except for the reflective trim on his backpack. The reflection got weaker and weaker.