Stalin's Ghost by Martin Cruz Smith

Author:Martin Cruz Smith
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Renko, Police Procedural, Detective and Mystery Stories, Police, Mystery & Detective, Moscow, Police - Russia (Federation) - Moscow, Arkady, Tverʹ (Russia), Elections, Fiction, Moscow (Russia), Mystery Fiction, Arkady (Fictitious character), Thrillers, Large Type Books, Russia (Federation), General, Espionage
ISBN: 9780743276726
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2007-06-12T03:35:57+00:00

14

Arkady was in a ward with eight beds, each with a curtain for privacy, a night table without a light and a call button that was disconnected. On the other hand, Elena Ilyichnina came every morning to check his incisions. She was a big woman with beautiful eyes and in her lab coat and high white toque she looked like a master baker.

“Don’t talk. Your airway is still raw. Nod or shake your head or write on the pad. Are they giving you enough water? Chicken broth? Good.” She smiled sweetly, but Arkady had seen her terrorize the nursing staff with threats of what she would do if any patient of hers was left unattended. “You’re healing nicely.”

He pointed to his forehead.

“So you have a little hole in your head. Don’t be a baby. In three months no one will be able to tell. You have much bigger holes in the back of your head, believe me. Also a little titanium. When your hair grows back no one will know. Look at the bright side. Practically no brain death, and because the trauma was a bullet, not a tumor, the recovery should be straightforward.”

Arkady wrote, “Headache.”

“Two days after brain surgery, what a surprise. It’ll go away. In the meantime, don’t sit up too fast. There is a risk of seizure; in your case, very small. We’ll give you something for the pain. The main thing now is no sneezing. Then you’ll know about a headache.”

Arkady wrote, “Mirror.”

“No, not a good idea.”

He underlined “Mirror.”

“You’re not a princess in a fairy tale. How to put this kindly? You’re a man with a hole in his head, a black bruise around his neck, and no hair. You will not like what you see. I know your type. You’re the dedicated investigator who goes right back to work. Bullets bounce off you.” She held up a box of tissues. “What shape is this? Write it down.”

Arkady went blank.

“It’s a square,” she said.

She put the tissue box down and pulled an orange from her lab coat.

“What shape is this?”

It was familiar to him, but he couldn’t put a name to it.

“What color is it?” she asked.

The word was on the tip of his tongue.

“The area of the brain that the bullet impacted processes visual information, that is, shapes and colors. If your brain cells are only damaged they can gradually repair themselves.”

Arkady looked at the patient in the next bed, an accident victim with a leg in traction. He had a something-shaped cast and he was sipping something-colored juice through a something. The words were right there, behind a pane of glass.

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

He wrote, “Going to casino.”

“You have no memory of the man who shot you?”

He shook his head. He recalled arriving at the casino and getting into the television van with...Who was it? What kind of brain was this? He started to get out of bed and was stopped by nausea and dizziness. Elena Ilyichnina caught him and helped him fall back against his pillow.

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