Stalin’s Ghost Read Online Free PDF Page A

elegant south end of Moscow.
    The clock over the tunnel read 0450. Arkady stood and thanked all the witnesses, warning them that it was snowing outside. “You’re all free to leave or wait for the first train.”
    Zelensky didn’t wait. He bounced to his feet, spread his arms like the winner of a match and shouted, “He’s back! He’s back!” all the way to the escalator. He clapped as he rode up, followed by the Bourdenova girl, who was already fumbling for her phone.
    Zurin said, “Why didn’t you warn them not to talk to people outside the station?”
    “Did some riders have cell phones?”
    “Some.”
    “Did you collect them?”
    “No.”
    “They have had nothing else to do but spread the word.”
    Arkady almost felt for Zurin. Through coup and countercoup, Party rule and brief democracy, fall of the ruble and rise of millionaires, the prosecutor had always bobbed to the surface. And here he was in the subway, shooting spittle in his confusion and rage. “It’s a hoax or it didn’t happen. But why would anyone perpetrate such a hoax? And why would the bastards do it in my district? How am I expected to stop someone from posing as Stalin? Should we shut down the Metro while detectives search on their hands and knees for the footprints of a ghost? I’ll look ridiculous. It could be Chechens.”
    That was desperate, Arkady thought. He looked toward the tunnel. The time was 0456. “You don’t need me for this.”
    The prosecutor shifted close enough. “Oddly enough, I do. Zelensky acts as if this was a miracle. I tell you that miracles only happen on orders from above. Ask yourself, where are the agents of state security in all this? Where is the KGB?”
    “FSB now.”
    “The same can of worms. Usually, they’re everywhere. Suddenly, they’re not. I’m not being critical, not a bit, but I know when someone pulls down my drawers and fucks me from behind.”
    “Wearing a mask in the subway is not a crime and without a crime there’s no investigation.”
    “That’s where you come in.”
    “I don’t have time for this.” Arkady wanted to be at Komsomol Square when the Metro began running.
    “Most of our witnesses are elderly people. They have to be treated with sensitivity. Isn’t that what you are, our sensitive investigator?”
    “There was no crime, and they’re useless as witnesses.”
    Antipenko and Mendeleyev sat side by side, like the stones of a slumping wall.
    “Who knows? They might open up. A little sympathy goes a long way with people that age. Also, there’s your name.”
    “My name?”
    “Your father’s. He knew Stalin. He was one of Stalin’s favorites. Not many can say that.”
    And why not? Arkady thought. General Kyril Renko was a talented butcher, not a sensitive soul at all. Even given that all successful commanders were butchers—“None more passionately loved by the troops than Napoleon,” as the General used to say—even given that bloody standard, Kyril Renko stood out. A car, a long Packard with soldiers on the running boards, would come for the General to take him to the Kremlin. Either to the Kremlin or the Lubyanka, it wasn’t clear which until the car turned left or right at the Bolshoi, left to a cell at the Lubyanka or right to the Kremlin’s Spassky Gate. Other generals fouled their pants on the way. General Renko accepted the choice of fates as a fact of life. He would remind Arkady that his own swift rise through the ranks had been made possible by the execution by Stalin of a thousand Russian officers on the eve of the war. How could Stalin not appreciate a general like that?
    Arkady asked, “What about the detectives who were on the scene?”
    “Urman and Isakov? You said yourself there is no question of criminality. This is a matter we may not even want on the books. What is more appropriate is a humane, informal inquiry by a veteran like you.”
    “You want me to find Stalin’s ghost?”
    “In a nutshell.”

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    A heavyset man in