go back to playing doctor for two-headed babies in Ukraine. Do you understand? Just say yes.”
“Completely.” Arkady watched Eva pull the sheet tight around herself.
“And that’s why you will answer every time I call and why you will handle this investigation exactly as I say. Do you agree?”
Eva said, “Whatever it is, say no.”
Arkady said, “What investigation? You told the reporter there wouldn’t be one.”
“What else could I say? That we were going to conduct a ghost hunt in the middle of Moscow? There will be an investigation but it will be confidential.”
“Don’t you think people will wonder why I’m asking questions if I’m not on a case?”
“You will have a case. You will investigate the claims of a citizen who says he has received threats against his life.”
“Then he wants a bodyguard, not me.”
Zurin said, “We don’t take it seriously. He’s reported death threats for twenty years. He’s paranoid. He also happens to be an expert on Stalin. You’ll be doing an investigation within an investigation. In fact, I’ve arranged it so you start tonight. The expert has agreed to meet you at the Park Kultury Metro and take the last train of the night for Chistye Prudy station. You will ride in the last car, since that seems to be where the sighting was.”
“Who is this expert?” Arkady asked, but Zurin had hung up.
“You weren’t going to do this,” Eva said.
Arkady filled her glass and then his.
“Well, you changed your mind and now I’ve changed my mind. Cheers.”
Eva left her glass where it was. “I have to go to work. The last thing I need is to tend sick children with vodka on my breath. You are ‘familiar with Stalin issues’? What did Zurin mean by that?”
“My father knew Stalin.”
“They were friends?”
“That’s hard to say. Stalin had most of his friends shot. Let me drive you to the clinic.”
“No. I’ll walk. I can use the fresh air.” Eva was on a different tack. “Did Stalin ever visit this apartment?”
“Yes.”
“I’m standing where Stalin stood?” She looked down at her bare feet.
“Not here in the bedroom, but in the rest of the apartment, I suppose so.”
“Because I always like to absorb the atmosphere and now I feel that I have really come to Moscow.”
“That’s the historian in you.”
“It’s certainly not the romantic.”
Ah, that was it, Arkady thought, Stalin was to blame.
For the workers who burned with ambition, for soldiers slack-jawed from hash, for those too old and too poor to wave down a car, for revelers going home with a split lip and broken glass in their hair, for lovers who held hands even wearing gloves, and for the souls who had simply lost track of time, the illuminated red
Eva knew he had been less than forthcoming about part of his conversation with Zurin. Now they had both lied. What should he have said? If he had told her that the prosecutor was using her as leverage, she would have packed and been gone in a day. Even if she had promised not to, he would have come home to find the apartment empty.
Something was moving along the banked snow of the sidewalk. It made progress and then stopped and rested against the bank. A faint snowfall sparkled. The approaching something developed an overcoat and the sort of tufted knit cap a Laplander might wear for herding reindeer, and closer, a prow of a nose, woolly brows, and blood-raddled eyes. Grandmaster Platonov.
“Investigator Renko! Look at these fucking boots.” He pointed to the felt
“They’re on the wrong feet.”
“I know they’re on the wrong feet. I’m not a cretin. There was no place to sit down and switch them.”
“Are you my Stalin expert?”
“Are you my protection?” Platonov’s glare folded into resignation. “I guess we’re both fucked.”
5
The Moscow Metro is the underground palace of the people.” Platonov limped, one boot on and one off, as he pointed at the walls. “Milk white limestone from the Crimea. Now that the riffraff is gone, you can see it properly.”
With its arches and tunnels, the hall of the Park Kultury station looked more like a monastery than a palace. A cleaning woman shuffled on towels across a wet section of the floor at about the same speed Platonov was moving.
Arkady asked, “Are you sure you’re up to this?”
“To meeting a phony Stalin? This is an idiotic prank. Did you find Zhenya?”
“No.”
“You won’t, not until he’s ready.” Platonov stepped onto the down escalator, sat to finish switching boots, stood to put his cap in one pocket and, from another pocket pulled a white silk scarf he flung around his neck. Fumes of liberally applied cologne finished the effect of a bon vivant, a man about town.
Ahead, a man with a violin case hurried down the steps. Behind, an old man in what had once been an elegant astrakhan cap gallantly carried a handbag for his wife while she pursed her lips and rouged her cheeks.
“Nervous?” Arkady asked.
“No,” Platonov said too quickly, and repeated, “no.” With his heroic beak, he could have been a Roman senator or King Lear cast out by ungrateful daughters so they could play chess. “Why should I be nervous? I take this subway line every day. It was dug by volunteers during the most difficult times of the thirties and the war. You can’t imagine it now, but we were idealists then. Everyone, male and female, the young cadre of the Party, vied to dig the Metro.”
“Not to mention brigades of forced labor.”
“Some convicts redeemed themselves through labor, that’s true.”
“Which reminds me, has anybody notified the Communists that Stalin is back? I think the Pope would be informed if Saint Peter were seen in the streets of Rome.”
“As a courtesy, Prosecutor Zurin, knowing the Party’s interest and concern, did inform us. I’ve been delegated to make a report.”
“So, besides teaching and playing chess, you are also a Party bureaucrat?”
“I told you at the chess club that I was well-connected.”
“Yes, I’m sure.” Any sane man would have run from the assignment, Arkady thought. “And you chose me?”
“I thought I detected a glimmer of intelligence.” Platonov sighed. “I may have been wrong.”
The train had collected the dregs of the evening: an inebriated officer of the Frontier Guard who leered at four prostitutes shivering in skimpy jackets and high-heeled boots. Arkady and Platonov took one end of the bench, the pensioners Antipenko and Mendeleyev took the other end. The violinist dropped into a corner seat, set his violin case across his knees, and opened a book. He had a round face and a wispy beard a la Che. Arkady didn’t expect many passengers in the last carriage; the Metro was famous for its safety, but the later the hour the more people gravitated toward the front of the train.
As the doors closed, Zelensky, the filmmaker, rushed in and took a seat near the far end, where he emanated
