Stalin’s Ghost (ar-6) by Martin Cruz Smith

Author:Martin Cruz Smith [Smith, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: det_police

Arkady started by wandering among picnic blankets looking for Zhenya. Instead he saw his parents, who were sitting with an open hamper on a quilt weighted with bottles of champagne.

“Reporting in?” the General asked.

Arkady saluted. “Reporting in, sir.”

“Is the camp secure?”

“The camp is secure.”

“You hear that, Belov? Arkasha is going to be my new aide de camp. You’re out of a job.”

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said.

“But we’d better check, hadn’t we?” He easily swung Arkady up onto his shoulders and ran across the lawn. They called it a lawn even though it was mostly an untended meadow of wildflowers bounded on one side by the dacha-a four-room cabin and porch-and, at the lower end, birches and willows and the bright glints of a river.

His father whipped through high grass and the white heads of daisies and Arkady, even in short pants, felt like a Cossack with a saber.

“You’re getting too big.” His father let Arkady down and they were at the quilt with Arkady’s mother and Belov enjoying tea sandwiches. They had champagne, he had lemonade. The lawn was covered with the blankets and hubbub of officers and their families. None were as handsome as Arkady’s father in a tailored uniform with stars on his shoulder boards or as beautiful as his young wife, Arkady’s mother. In white lace, her black hair falling to her waist, she was wrapped in a dreamy aura.

“You know what you remind me of?” his father said to his mother. “During the war I spent a few days in a nondescript place with a beautiful legend of a lake where all the swans go. A lake that only the truly innocent can find, hence no one has seen it for hundreds of years. But you are my swan, my redeeming swan.” He leaned across the blanket to collect a kiss and then turned to Arkady.

“How old are you now, Arkasha?”

“Seven, next month.”

“Since you’re almost seven I have an early birthday gift for you.” The General gave Arkady a leather box.

His mother said, “Kyril, you’ll spoil him.”

“Well, if he’s going to be my bodyguard…”

From the smell of gun oil Arkady knew what the present was before he opened the box, but it was better than he imagined, a revolver his own size.

“You two are a pair,” said his mother.

His father said, “A lady’s gun to start with. Don’t worry; you’ll grow into bigger ones. Try it.”

Arkady aimed at a small, brown bird that trilled on a wooden post.

“A finch is God’s choir,” said his mother.

It exploded into feathers.

“Is it dead?” Arkady was shocked.

“We’ll know more in twelve hours,” his father said.

“I’m going for a walk.” His mother got to her feet. “I’ll hunt for butterflies.”

His father said, “I have to play the host, I can’t go with you.”

“Arkasha will take care of me. Without the gun.”

Arkady and his mother walked along hydrangeas bearing globes of pink blossoms. With a butterfly net for a gun, he shot American agents as they sprang from the bushes. She moved in an absentminded way, eyes down, smiling at something only she heard.

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