Stalin's Ghost: An Arkady Renko Novel [Paperback]

Starred Review. Moscow-based Senior Investigator Arkady Renko, in his outstanding sixth outing (after Wolves Eat Dogs), investigates a murder-for-hire scheme that leads him to suspect two fellow police detectives, Nikolai Isakov and Marat Urman, both former members of Russia's elite Black Berets, who served in Chechnya. Isakov, a war hero, is now running for public office. Renko must also look into reports that the ghost of Stalin has begun appearing on subway platforms and why several bodies of Black Berets who served in Chechnya with Isakov have turned up in the morgue. Despite repeated threats to his life, Renko stubbornly perseveres, seeking justice in a land that has no official notion of that concept. Smith eschews vertiginous twists and surprises, concentrating instead on Renko as he slowly and patiently builds his case until the pieces fall together and he has again, if not exactly triumphed, at least survived. This masterful suspense novel casts a searing light on contemporary Russia. 250,000 first printing. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

*Starred Review* At the end of Wolves Eat Dogs (2005), it looked like Arkady Renko, the browbeaten Russian cop perpetually caught in the backdraft of history, had emerged from grayed-out Chernobyl with an uncontaminated shred of hope--a new relationship, perhaps even a reason for living. By the time we pick up the story, however, Renko is back in Moscow, the relationship is splintering, the teenager he had unofficially adopted is living on the streets, and his career is once again on the scrap heap. So it's only natural that the odd man out would land the case nobody wants: investigating the purported sightings of Joseph Stalin's ghost at a Moscow subway station. It's clear that the Stalin scam is being used by reactionaries as a way of fanning the "good old days" movement, but raining on the parade of a bunch of aging WWII vets reliving old glory has lose-lose all over it. Then Renko catches the scent of a bigger story behind Stalin's ghost--war crimes committed by the reactionaries' golden-boy politician--and follows it to remote Tver, where Smith unveils another of his unforgettable set pieces: the search for and exhumation of Russian soldiers massacred on the eastern front. From Gorky Park (1981) onward, this series has always been about the perils of digging: whether it's bodies under the snow or radioactive facts that the powerful want to keep hidden, the treasures that Renko seeks always contain the seeds of his own destruction. But somehow digging his own grave is what keeps Renko alive--and keeps us reading. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Investigator Arkady Renko, the pariah of the Moscow prosecutor's office, has been assigned the thankless job of investigating a new phenomenon: late-night subway riders report seeing the ghost of Joseph Stalin on the platform of the Chistye Prudy Metro station. The illusion seems part political hocus-pocus and also part wishful thinking, for among many Russians Stalin is again popular; the bloody dictator can boast a two-to-one approval rating. Decidedly better than that of Renko, whose lover, Eva, has left him for Detective Nikolai Isakov, a charismatic veteran of the civil war in Chechnya, a hero of the far right and, Renko suspects, a killer for hire. The cases entwine, and Renko's quests become a personal inquiry fueled by jealousy.

The investigation leads to the fields of Tver outside of Moscow, where once a million soldiers fought. There, amidst the detritus, Renko must confront the ghost of his own father, a favorite general of Stalin's. In these barren fields, patriots and shady entrepreneurs -- the Red Diggers and Black Diggers -- collect the bones, weapons and personal effects of slain World War II soldiers, and find that even among the dead there are surprises.

Martin Cruz-Smith's novels include Stalin's Ghost, Gorky Park, Rose, December 6, Polar Star and Stallion Gate. A two-time winner of the Hammett Prize from the International Association of Crime Writers and a recipient of Britain's Golden Dagger Award, he lives in California.

Chapter One

It was two in the morning, an hour that was both early and late. Two A.M. was a world to itself.

Zoya Filotova wore her black hair severely trimmed as if to defiantly display the bruise below her eye. She was about forty, Arkady thought, stylishly sinewy in a red leather pantsuit and a golden cross that was purely ornamental. She sat on one side of the booth, Arkady and Victor on the other, and although Zoya had ordered a brandy she had yet to touch it. She had long red fingernails and as she turned a cigarette pack over and over Arkady was put in mind of a crab inspecting dinner. The café was a chrome affair above a car wash on the beltway. No car washes tonight, not with snow falling, and the few cars that made it to the café were SUVs with four-wheel drive. The exceptions were Arkady's Zhiguli and Victor's Lada crouching in a corner of the lot.

Victor sipped a Chivas, just maintaining. Drinks were expensive and Victor had the patience of a camel. Arkady had a modest glass of water; he was a pale man with dark hair and the stillness of a professional observer. Thirty-six hours without sleep had made him more still than usual.

Zoya said, "My heart hurts more than my face."

"A broken heart?" Victor suggested as if it were his specialty.

"My face is ruined."

"No, you're still a beautiful woman. Show my friend what else your husband did."

The drivers and bodyguards who occupied stools along the bar were contemplative, cradling their drinks, sucking their cigarettes, keeping their balance. A couple of bosses compared Florida tans and snapshots of Sleeping Beauty. Zoya brushed the crucifix out of the way so she could unzip the top of her pantsuit and show Arkady a bruise that ran like a grape stain on the smooth plane of her breast.

"Your husband did this?" Arkady asked.

She zipped up and nodded.

"You'll be safe soon," Victor reassured her. "Animals like that should not be walking the street."

"Before we married he was wonderful. I have to say even now that Alexander was a wonderful lover."

"That's natural," Victor said. "You try to remember the good times. How long have you been married?"

"Three months."

Would the snow ever end? Arkady wondered. A Pathfinder rolled up to a gas pump. The mafia was getting conservative; now that they had seized and established their separate territories they were defenders of the status quo. Their children would be bankers and their children would be poets, something like that. Count on it, in fifty years, a golden age of poetry.

Arkady rejoined the conversation. "Are you sure you want to do this? People change their minds."

"Not me."

"Maybe your husband will change his ways."

"Not him." She smiled with an extra twist. "He's a brute. Now I don't dare go to my own apartment, it's too dangerous."

"You've come to the right place," Victor said and solemnized the moment with a sip. Cars droned by, each at a different pitch.

Arkady said, "We'll need phone numbers, addresses, keys. His routine, habits, where he hangs out. I understand you and your husband have a business near the Arbat."

"On the Arbat. Actually, it's my business."

"What sort?"

"Matchmaking. International matchmaking."

"What is the company's name?"

"Cupid."

"Really?" That was interesting, Arkady thought. A quarrel in Cupid's bower? "How long have you had this business?"

"Ten years." Her tongue rested for a moment on her teeth as if she were going to say more and changed her mind.

"You and your husband both work there?"

"All he does is stand around and smoke cigarettes and drink with his mates. I do the work, he takes the money and when I try to stop him, he hits me. I warned him, this was the last time."

Victor said, "So now you want him..."

"Dead and buried."

"Dead and buried?" Victor grinned. He liked a woman with zeal.

"And never found."

Arkady said, "What I need to know is how you knew to go to the police to have your husband killed."

"Isn't that how it's done?"

Arkady ceded her the point. "But who told you? Who gave you the phone number? It makes us nervous when an innocent citizen, such as yourself, knows how to reach us. Did you get our number from a friend or did a skywriter spell out Killers for Hire?"

Zoya shrugged. "A man left a message on my phone and said if I had a problem to call this number. I called and your friend answered."

"Did you recognize the voice on the message?"

"No. I think it was a kind soul who took pity on me."

"How did that kind soul get your phone number?" Victor asked.

"We advertise. We give our number."

"Did you save the message?"

"No, why would I want anything like that on my machine? Anyway, what does it matter? I can give you each two hundred dollars."

"How do we know this isn't a trap?" Arkady asked. "This phone thing bothers me. This could be a case of entrapment."

Zoya had a throaty, smoker's laugh. "How do I know you won't simply keep the money? Or worse, tell my husband?"

Victor said, "Any enterprise demands a certain amount of trust on both sides. To begin with, the price is five thousand dollars, half before and half after."

"I can get someone on the street to do it for fifty."

"You get what you pay for," Victor said. "With us, your husband's total disappearance is guaranteed and we'll handle the investigation ourselves."

"It's up to you," Arkady emphasized. "Your decision."

"How will you do it?"

Victor said, "The less you know about that the better."

Arkady felt he had a front row seat to the snow, to the way it tumbled in foamy waves over parked cars. If Zoya Filotova could afford an SUV, she could pay five thousand dollars to eliminate her husband.

"He's very strong," she said.

"No, he'll just be heavy," Victor assured her.

Zoya counted out a stack of much-handled American bills, to which she added a photograph of a man in a bathrobe at the beach. Alexander Filotov was alarmingly large, with long, wet hair and he was showing the camera a beer can he had apparently crushed with one hand.

"How will I know he's dead?" Zoya asked.

Victor said, "We'll give you proof. We take a picture."

"I've read about this. Sometimes so-called killers use makeup and catsup and pretend the 'victim' is dead. I want something more solid."

There was a pause.

"More solid?" asked Victor.

"Something personal," Zoya said.

Arkady and Victor looked at each other. This was not in the script.

"A wristwatch?" Arkady suggested.

"More personal."

"As in...?" He didn't like where this was going.

Zoya finally picked up her brandy and sipped. "Don't kidnappers sometimes send a finger or an ear?"

There was another silence in the booth until Arkady said, "That's for kidnapping."

"That wouldn't work anyway," she agreed. "I might not recognize his ear or his finger. They all look pretty much alike. No, something more particular."

"What did you have in mind?"

She swirled her glass. "He has a pretty large nose."

Victor said, "I am not cutting off anybody's nose."

"If he's already dead? It would be like carving a chicken."

"It doesn't matter."

"Then I have another idea."

Victor put up his hand. "No."

"Wait." Zoya unfolded a piece of paper with a photograph of a drawing of a tiger fighting off a pack of wolves. The photo was murky, taken in poor light, and the drawing itself had an indistinct quality. "I thought of this."

"He has a picture?"

"He has a tattoo," Arkady said.

"That's right." Zoya Filotova was pleased. "I photographed the tattoo a few nights ago while he was in a drunken stupor. It's his own design."

A sheet covered one corner of the tattoo but what Arkady could see was impressive enough. The tiger stood majestically on its hind legs, one paw swiping the air as the wolves snarled and cringed. A pine forest and mountain stream framed the battle. On the white arm of a birch were the letters T, V, E, R.

Victor asked, "What does that mean?"

"He's from Tver," Zoya said.

"There are no tigers in Tver," Victor said. "No mountains either. It's a flat, hopeless dump on the Volga."

Arkady thought that was a little harsh, but people who made it to Moscow from places like Tver usually shed their hometown identity as fast as they could. They didn't have it inked on them forever.

"Okay," Victor said. "Now we can definitively ID him. How do you propose we bring the proof to you? Do you expect us to lug a body around?"

Zoya finished her brandy and said, "I need only the tattoo."

Arkady hated Victor's Lada. The windows did not completely close and the rear bumper was roped on. Snow blew in through floorboard holes and swayed the pine scent freshener that hung from the rearview mirror.

"Cold," Victor said.

"You could have let the car warm up." Arkady unbuttoned his shirt.

"It will, eventually. No, I'm talking about her. I felt my testicles turn to icicles and drop, one by one."

"She wants proof, the same as us." Arkady peeled adhesive tape from his stomach to free a microphone and miniature recorder. He pushed Rewind and Play, listened to a sample, turned off the recorder, ejected the cassette, and placed it in an envelope, on which he wrote, "Subject Z. K. Filotova, Senior Investigator A. K. Renko, Detective V. D. Orlov," date and place.

Victor asked, "What do we have?"

"Not much. You answered the phone on another officer's desk and a woman asked about doing in her husband. She assumed you were Detective Urman. You played along and set up a meeting. You could arrest her now for conspiracy but you'd have nothing on the detective and no idea who gave her his phone number. She's holding out. You could squeeze her harder if she pays for what she thinks is a finished assassination, then you'd have her for attempted murder and she might be willing to talk. Tell me about Detective Urman. It was his phone you answered?"

"...

Moscow investigator Arkady Renko fights demons, some imagined and some real. In this outing he must investigate recent sightings of Stalin, which coincide with a political campaign that backs his nemesis. As Renko digs deeper into the case, an ugly episode in his countrys past comes to the fore, pitting truth against patriotism. In addition, a teen chess prodigy he cares for must determine his allegiances. Furthermore, his lovers fate is intertwined with his rivals. Ron McLartys voice varies enough to distinguish character traits, but his forte is his deliberate pacing. McLarty gives Renko a sense of calm rationality through all of his travails. M.B. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.