locked. The platform conductor might have had the key and some idea of who had been waiting for the train, but, thanks to Isakov and Urman, she was gone.
“Anything wrong?” the prosecutor asked.
“Couldn’t be better. These were the only two sightings, last night and tonight? Nothing previous?”
“That’s all.”
Arkady questioned witnesses one by one, having each mark on a sketch of the subway car where they had been sitting. The pensioner Antipenko admitted that he had been reading a book and hadn’t had time to switch to his distance glasses before the train rolled into the station. Antipenko’s elderly friend Mendeleyev had slept earlier on the train, although he claimed he awoke when they pulled into the station. Neither of them felt threatened by the platform Stalin. In fact, two ancient babushkas said they recognized Stalin by his benign smile, although neither saw well enough to read the platform clock when Arkady asked them to. Another retiree wore eyeglasses so scratched, the world was a blur, and the final senior witness wasn’t sure if he’d seen Stalin or Father Frost.
Arkady told him, “You’ve been up all night. Maybe you’re tired.”
“They kept us here.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“I know my granddaughter is worried.”
“Didn’t the detectives call her and tell her you would be late?”
“I couldn’t remember her number.”
“Perhaps if you show me your papers?”
“I lost them.”
“I’m sure there’s something on you somewhere.” Arkady opened the old man’s overcoat and found, pinned to a jacket lapel, a tag with a name, address, and phone number. Also the soiled ribbons and hardware of a Gold Star Hero, Order of Lenin, Red Star, and Patriotic War hero, so many campaign medals that they were stitched in overlapping tiers onto the breast of his suit. This doddering ancient had once been a young soldier fighting the Wehrmacht in the rubble of Stalingrad. “Don’t worry. The prosecutor will call your granddaughter and the trains will be running soon.”
The student, Marfa Bourdenova, changed her mind because she wasn’t clear who Stalin was. Besides, she was out past her curfew and hadn’t been allowed to call home on her mobile phone. If the girl was a little plump it was also clear what a beauty she would soon be, with an oval face, a sharp nose and chin, huge eyes and light brown hair she blew away from her cheek in exasperation. “The reception here sucks.”
From the next bench the filmmaker Zelensky stage-whispered, “Your reception sucks because you’re in a hole, honey, you’re in a fucking hole.” He hunched forward in a scuffed leather jacket and told Arkady, “You can mess with their minds all you want, but I know what I saw. I saw Iosif Stalin standing at this platform tonight. Mustache, uniform, short right arm. Unmistakable.”
“What color were his eyes?”
“Yellow eyes, wolf eyes.”
“Vladimir Zelensky?” Arkady asked to be sure. He felt Zurin creep to the other side of the pillar.
“Call me Vlad, please.” As if it were a favor.
Zelensky stood in the umbra of fame. Ten years before he had been a young director of rough-and-ready crime films, until he sniffed cocaine himself and performed the magic trick of disappearing up his nostril. His smile said the boy was back and the frizz of his hair suggested ideas on the simmer.
“So, Vlad, what did you say when you saw him?”
Zelensky laughed. “Something on the order of ‘Fuck your mother!’ What anyone would say.”
As Arkady remembered, Zelensky got by on porn, grinding out films that required nothing more than two willing bodies and a bed. Films where everyone, including the director, used pseudonyms.
“Did Stalin say anything?”
“No.”
“How long was he visible?”
“Two seconds, maybe three.”
“Could it have been somebody wearing a mask?”
“No.”
“You are a filmmaker?”
“An independent filmmaker.”
“Could someone have rigged a film or a videotape?”
“Set it up and broken it down? Not fast enough.” Zelensky winked in the girl’s direction.
“He stood where?”
On the sketch Zelensky marked the platform directly opposite the last car.
“Then?”
“He walked away. Vanished.”
“Walked or disappeared?”
“Disappeared.”
“What did he do with the flag?”
“What flag?”
“You told the detectives that Stalin had a flag.”
“I guess it disappeared too.” Zelensky lifted his head. “But I saw Stalin.”
“And said, ‘Fuck your mother!’ Why the Chistye Prudy Metro? Of all the stations for Stalin to show up at, why here?”
“It’s obvious. You went to the university?”
“Yes.”
“You look it. Well, I’ll tell you something I bet you don’t know. When the Germans bombed Moscow, when this was called Kirov Station, this was where Stalin came, deep underground. He slept on a cot on the platform and the General Staff slept in subway cars. They didn’t have a fancy war room like Churchill or Roosevelt. They put plywood up for walls and every time a train came through, maps and papers would fly around, but they put together a strategy that saved Moscow. This place should be like Lourdes, with people on their knees, plaster Stalins for sale, crutches on the wall. Can’t you see it?”
“I’m not an artist like you. I remember
“The serial killer. That was a long time ago.”
“What films have I missed?”
“How-to films.”
“Woodworking? Plumbing?”
“How to fuck.”
Arkady heard Zurin groan. The schoolgirl Marfa Bourdenova blushed but didn’t move away.
“Do you have a business card?”
Zelensky gave him one that read Cine Zelensky on new, crisply cut pasteboard suitable for a comeback. The address given was on fashionable Tverskaya, even if the phone prefix was for the less 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.”
