Victor had copied an article from Izvestia, datelined Grozny, about a raid by Chechen rebels on a Russian field hospital. The reporter described the horror of wounded men having their throats slit in their beds and the rebels’ dash from the scene. “An estimated fifty terrorists in two stolen trucks and an armored personnel carrier headed east to a small stone bridge that crosses the Sunzha River. There their luck apparently ran out.
“A squad of Black Berets from Tver, a mere six men led by Captain Nikolai Isakov, a decorated officer on his second tour of duty, had heard news of the attack over a cell phone and were waiting among the willows on the river’s eastern bank. The narrowness of the bridge forced the vehicles to cross single file, directly into the sights of Black Beret rifles. Isakov himself took out the driver of the APC with a single shot, effectively blocking the bridge. A fusillade greeted the other terrorists as they poured out of the trucks, expecting to overrun the small number of Black Beret troops in their way.
“A firefight raged up and down the banks of the picturesque mountain stream as Captain Isakov consistently exposed himself to enemy fire to rally his men. The terrorists first mounted a frontal attack and, when that failed, attempted to outflank the Russian marksmen, who would fire and change position. Eventually the Black Berets were down to their last rounds. Isakov had no ammunition left in his rifle and only two bullets in his handgun when the Chechens suddenly retreated in one truck, leaving behind the other truck, the APC and fourteen dead insurgents. Remarkably, when the smoke lifted, only one Black Beret was hit, shot in the knee. Captain Isakov said, ‘We hope we avenged the cowardly attack on our wounded men. We thought of them and did our best.’”
The name of the reporter was Aharon Ginsberg.
“The army is everything!” Arkady’s father used to say, until he was denied a field marshal’s baton, then it was “The army is shit.” Arkady wished he had such clarity of vision. For a semblance of order, Arkady reassembled the dossier as neatly as he could and slipped it in a drawer.
Before he forgot, he called the phone number he had found on Petrov’s matchbook. It was five a.m., a good time to wake and ponder the fact that there were four more hours of dark.
A voice furred with sleep answered, “Metropol Hotel. Reception.”
“Sorry, wrong number.”
Very wrong. The grand Metropol Hotel and the shaggy cameraman Pyetr Petrov didn’t add up at all.
Arkady had two mini cassettes, one he had taken from Petrov’s video camera at the Metro platform and a second from Petrov’s pocket. He slipped the first mini cassette into the video camera, connected the camera to the television, and sat back to watch.
The tape began earlier than Arkady had anticipated with the filmmaker Zelensky in Red Square. Snow had just started to fall and clouds dirty as cement bags gathered over Saint Basil’s. The format was documentary and the news, according to Zelensky, was dire. Russia had been “stabbed in the back by a conspiracy of ancient enemies, a moneyed oligarchy and foreign terrorists to undermine and humiliate the motherland.” Zelensky had cue phrases. “Idealism was gone.” The Soviet Union had collapsed, “removing the barrier between Russia and the decadent West on one side and Islamic fanaticism on the other.” Russian culture was “globalized and debased.” The camera panned from an old woman begging for coins to a banner for Bulgari. “No wonder patriots so yearn for the firm guidance of another era.” What the videotape would explore, Zelensky gravely told the camera, might be a miracle, a sighting of Stalin on the last train of the night.
Arkady watched the entire event again from a different point of view. Petrov had started recording with an establishing shot of the subway car and its passengers, mainly pensioners like the cronies Mendeleyev and Antipenko, the babushkas, literati from the Lenin Library, but also prostitutes, Zelensky and his golden niece and nephew, the delinquent schoolgirl, Platonov and Arkady, not exactly a cross section of society, but what might be realistically expected at that hour. Arkady was impressed by how little illumination a video camera needed and how the microphone picked up the rush of the train and how those factors combined made a package that seemed more authentic than the actual experience.
“Coming into Chistye Prudy station, what Stalin called Kirov Station,” Petrov whispered to the camera.
Up and down the carriage, riders shifted in anticipation. Mendeleyev and Antipenko were already half to their feet. The babushkas twisted to see sparks, blackness, the approaching light of the platform, and in an extra moment of total dark, a woman’s cry, “Stalin!”
As the doors opened everyone streamed out but Arkady, who watched Platonov, and Zelensky, who watched Arkady.
The tape cut to the platform and a crowd that had grown with the addition of passengers who had disembarked from forward cars. Stalin’s photograph rested against a platform pillar. Young Misha and Tanya lit a candle at the photo and expressed their gratitude to Stalin for saving mankind and being the beacon of his age. Veterans solemnly nodded; women dabbed their eyes. Zelensky smoothly interviewed some sweet old ladies and handed out Russian Patriot T-shirts and the party was rolling along when, from nowhere, a madman in a pea jacket kicked the candle onto the tracks, stopped the meeting by diktat, and seized the camera. Arkady didn’t look good.
At no point did the tape show the two Americans or Bora. Also, in slow motion it was the prostitute with red hair who first shouted Stalin’s name, then Mendeleyev and Antipenko.
Arkady decided that he should eat something, which remained a theory because there was no food in the desk except a rind of cheese wrapped in greasy paper. He had a cigarette instead. And tried Eva’s cell phone again. Still off. Arkady would have expected a slower night at the clinic. A snowstorm usually kept people-even the criminal set-at home.
The second videotape had obviously been shot earlier for purposes of rehearsing the boy and girl. They walked across a room, the girl carrying a feather duster in place of flowers, the boy holding a pen for a votive candle. The children couldn’t walk for giggling at the graffiti on the apartment walls: oversized sexual organs, phone numbers, “Olga Loves Petya.”
Zelensky directed from off screen. “This is not a joke. Do it over, slower, like in church. Have you ever been in church? Okay, back to your mark and go! Like that. Even slower, kids, this isn’t a race. Pay no attention to the camera. Look straight ahead and concentrate on the picture, the man’s friendly face. He’s a saint and you’re bringing him these special gifts. Stay together, stay together, stay together. That’s more like it. Petya, how did that look to you?”
The cameraman said, “They missed the mark.”
“Hear that, kids? The camera doesn’t lie. The blue tape on the floor marks where you start and where you stop. Tonight there’s going to be a lot of people. You have to block them out and the only way to do that is to practice.”
The children walked across the room again.
“Dear Comrade Stalin,” Zelensky cued.
“Dear Comrade Stalin, the children of Russia thank you…”
And again.
The boy said, “You rallied the Russian people and threw back Fascist invaders.”
The girl said, “As a beloved humanitarian you led a Russia that the peace-loving nations of the world admired and respected…”
Again and again until Zelensky clapped and said, “I love you, kids.”
It was clearly the end of the rehearsal and Arkady expected the television screen to go dark. Instead, it switched to a bedroom scene of three men and a woman. The men were Bora, Zelensky and an individual whose face was hidden by lank, long hair. It took Arkady a moment to recognize Marfa, the schoolgirl from the Metro, because her face bulged like a goose with a funnel down its throat. Zelensky had seduced her and used her in the space of a single day. So much for Arkady’s advice.