Zhenya said, “We set off a bomb, really a big firecracker. The monster is curious, comes over and I take its picture.”

“Good plan.”

“It will be on the cover of every scientific review,” Platonov said.

A dragonfly began to flash around the boat, make figure eights and loops so close to Platonov that he lost his balance. As the boat jerked, he and Zhenya stayed in. Arkady plunged into the water and sank. He was comfortable under the surface, drifting in the shadow of the boat when a larger shadow crossed his line of vision. A sturgeon hundreds of year old, with barnacles and armored ribs, swam by trailing a white veil from its jaws. The giant fish was a metallic gray and each eye was as large as a platter. Arkady followed the veil down to the dark bottom of the lake, where he found Eva trapped by a massive rock he could not budge. Arkady looked up at the boat and saw Zhenya throw something in the water. The bomb! A huge bubble erupted, creating a shock wave that littered the surface of the lake with fish and, below, dislodged the boulder. Arkady took Eva’s hand and they rose effortlessly until Victor shook him awake.

“She’s coming out.”

Eva emerged from the OR a deflated version of herself, drenched with sweat, anaesthetized and deaf to the rattle of the drip stand rolling at her side. Then the doors of the Recovery Unit closed behind her.

“Doctor Kazka had a difficult time,” Elena Ilyichnina said. She herself looked all in, with shadows under her eyes and the indentation of a surgical mask running like a seam across her face. “The blade moved in an arc after penetration, so we had a number of sites to attend to. One lung was scraped and the diaphragm was perforated. However, there was no damage to the heart. Usually, I would insist on admitting her here for observation, but I understand your special need to return to Moscow and have organized an ambulance. You can make a financial arrangement with the driver.”

“But she’s out of danger,” Arkady said.

“Not as long as she’s with you,” Elena Ilyichnina observed, regarding the purple side of his face. “You’re taking good care of my delicate handiwork? Being careful when you cross the street?”

“I try.”

“You know, we are supposed to report any violent crimes to the militia. I’d like to report a man who had a miracle and threw it away,” Elena Ilyichnina said and marched through the door to Recovery, leaving Arkady with the sense that his head was on a pole.

Victor said “Our ‘special need?’ Our need is to get out of this piss pot of a town. Towns like this, you could be anywhere. Russia has towns like Tver all over, like a thousand ugly daughters. It doesn’t matter how big they are, they’re the same. Same dreary buildings, same empty squares, even the same statues, because we no longer notice how ugly they are. What do you think, gentlemen?”

“I think you’ve had enough tea,” Arkady said.

“We have to get Zhenya somewhere safe.” Platonov was suddenly a mother hen.

Arkady said, “Go to the ambulance bay. Work out something with the driver.”

“You’re not coming?” Victor said.

Arkady watched the last of the nurses leave the scrub room. “Give me five minutes.”

Arkady went out the emergency door to the fifth floor deck and climbed a metal stairway to the roof.

He found himself on a shadowy island surrounded by a faint wash of floodlights and populated by ventilation ducts hooded with snow. The spiral bonnets of a vent spun like a dervish. Fans hummed. A duct with a vane shifted nervously with the wind. High ground, perfect for cell phones.

He called Moscow.

The eleventh ring was answered with “Who the devil is this?”

“Prosecutor Zurin, this is Renko.”

“Christ.”

“I’m coming back. There are two dead bodies in my apartment in Tver. One older female with her throat slit, a very nice woman named Sofia Andreyeva Poninski, and her assailant, Bora Bogolovo, whom I shot and killed.” He gave Zurin the address.

“Wait, wait. Why are you calling me? You work in Tver in Prosecutor Sarkisian’s office.”

“Sarkisian was involved with Bogolovo. Also with Moscow detectives Isakov and Urman in murder, war crimes and receiving stolen goods. I have Isakov’s confession on tape.”

“Christ.”

“It’s shocking. Who knows where this may lead?”

“What are you insinuating?”

“Only that this investigation can’t be left to Tver. It must be led by an outside prosecutor whose reputation is above reproach. I left you a key above the apartment door.”

“You son of a bitch, are you taping this conversation? Where are you?”

Arkady clicked off. That was enough for a start.

He felt refreshed by the call. He rested his arms against the parapet, took a deep breath and let a shudder of relief roll through him.

From the hospital roof he took in the black course of the Volga and the sinuous light of traffic along the river road. Lenin Square was a pool of light, but away from the center streetlamps were softly overwhelmed. As snow fell the city sank and rose. There was a rhythm to the snow as surely as there were waves at sea, and the illusion, as snow fell, that Tver was rising.

“Not so bad,” said Arkady.

Snow settled. Snow settled on a hero at a gate on Sovietskaya Street, immobilized, still thinking of his next move. Snow settled on bones that had come out of hiding. It settled on Tanya and Russian brides. It settled on Sofia Andreyeva’s panache.

He thought the doctor had it wrong about a miracle. The real miracle was that the people of Tver would wake to find their city transformed into someplace pure and white.

As for ghosts, they filled the streets.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I THANK Ellen Irish Branco, Luisa Cruz Smith, Don Sanders and Annie Lamott for reading Stalin’s Ghost over and over, and Sam Smith for sharing the research at the Moscow Metro Museum.

I also want to acknowledge Doctors Nelson Branco, Michael Weiner, Ken Sack and Wayne Gauger for answers to medical matters and George Young for firearms. In Russia, I was aided by Nina Rubashova, matchmaker; Carl Schreck, reporter; Colonel Alexander Yakovlev, detective; Lyuba Vinogradova, interpreter; Andrew Nurnberg, accomplice; and the Red Diggers of Tver.

First and last, of course, I thank Em.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Martin Cruz Smith’s novels include 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.