Stalin’s Ghost by Martin Cruz Smith

there been threatening phone calls, ominous notes, stones through the windows?”
    “I told you before.”
    “Remind me.”
    “They threaten on the phone, I hang up. They send a poison pen letter, I throw it away. No stones yet.”
    “The next note, don’t open it. Handle it by the corners and call me. Can you give me any names?”
    “Not yet, but all you have to do is find out who is trying to have the chess club shut down. They’ll probably turn it into a spa or worse. What we need are the names of the developers. Not the public names, but the silent partners in City Hall and the Kremlin. I don’t have the means to do that. You do. I was afraid that the prosecutor was fobbing off some incompetent, but I’m pleased to say that after tonight I have great faith in you. Boundless faith. Not that I don’t have my own ruses. We’ll have a little exhibition soon and get some publicity.”
    “At the chess club?”
    “At that dump? No. At the Writers’ Union. In fact, we’re off to see the sponsor right now.”
    “At this hour?”
    “A friend of the game.”
    Arkady’s cell phone rang. It was Victor.
    “What the devil were you doing picking a fight with Urman? He and Isakov cover a domestic homicide and you run their pricks through a wringer.”
    “Are you all right?”
    “Well, I’m at the morgue. I got here on my own, if that’s a good sign.”
    “Just don’t fall asleep.” Around a morgue, Victor might look deposited. “Why are you there?”
    “Remember Zoya, the wife who wants her husband dead? Who dialed Urman’s phone? She keeps calling me demanding progress, so I’m using my imagination.”
    “Wait for me. Don’t do anything until I get there.” Arkady hung up. He desperately wanted to get into dry shoes and socks but Victor’s imagination was a frightening thing.
    “Stalin loved the snow,” Platonov said. Both men pondered that information while wipers swept the flakes on the windshield. “In the Kremlin they had snowball fights. Like boys. Beria, Molotov and Mikoyan on one side, Khrushchev, Bulganin, Malenkov on the other and Stalin as referee. Grown men in hats throwing snowballs. Stalin egging them on.”
    “I’m trying to picture that.”
    “I know that some innocents died because of Stalin, but he made the Soviet Union respected by the world. Russian history is Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Stalin and since then, pipsqueaks. I know you feel the same because I saw you rescue Stalin from those so-called Russian Patriots. This corner will do.”
    Platonov heaved himself out under a streetlamp. Arkady leaned across to say that Stalin killed not “some,” which sounded incidental, but in cold blood sent millions of Russians to their death. However, Platonov was enveloped by a redheaded woman in a fur coat and high heels. She was a well-maintained sixty or seventy years old, a whirlwind of lipstick and rouge. A foaming bottle of champagne swung from her hand.
    “Magda, you’ll catch your death.”
    “Ilya, Ilyusha, my Ilyushka. I’ve been waiting.”
    “I had business.”
    “My genius, dance with me.”
    “Upstairs, we’ll dance.” To Arkady, Platonov said, “Pick me up at noon.”
    “This is the sponsor?” Arkady asked.
    “Better make it two o’clock,” Platonov said.
    She peered at the car. “You came with a friend?”
    “A comrade,” Platonov said. “One of the best.”
    Arkady had intended to set the record straight. Instead, he drove off as fast as possible.

6
    W hen Arkady arrived, Victor had the morgue’s body drawers open to a biker with long matted hair, an old man as green as verdigris and a young man fresh from a gymnastics accident.
    “I’ve been here too long. They’re starting to look like family.”
    Arkady lit a cigarette but the reek of death was overwhelming. Cigarette butts littered the red concrete floor under a sign that said No Smoking. Walls were white tiles, although the hall to the autopsy room was uphill and dark, awaiting new