Red Square - Martin Cruz Smith [51]
“Being used as food wrap.”
“I knew you’d want this.” He gave Arkady an article that seemed to have been meticulously torn from the newspaper with a ruler.
Arkady stopped to read the obituary. “General of the Army Kiril Ilyich Renko, a prominent Soviet military commander …” It was a long piece and he read it in small handfuls. “… after completing the M. V. Frunze Military Academy. K. I. Renko’s active involvement in the Great Patriotic War was a brilliant page in his biography. Commander of a tank brigade, he was cut off by the first rush of the fascist invasion but joined partisan forces and mounted raids behind enemy lines … fought successfully in battles for Moscow, in the Battle of Stalingrad, the campaign in the steppes and operations around Berlin.… After the war, he was responsible for stabilizing the situation in the Ukraine and then for command of the Urals Military District.” Or to put it another way, Arkady thought, the general, now numbed to slaughter, was responsible for a mass execution of Ukrainian nationalists so bloody that he had to be exiled to the Urals. “… twice awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union and awarded four Orders of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, three Orders of the Red Banner, two Orders of Suvorov (First Class), two Orders of Kutuzov (First Class) …”
Belov had pinned a plaque of fading ribbons onto his jacket. His white crewcut was a sparse stubble, and badly shaved wattles covered his collar.
“Thanks.” Arkady put the obituary in his pocket.
“You read the letter?” Belov asked.
“Not yet.”
“Your father said it would explain everything.”
“That would be quite a letter.” It would take more than a letter, Arkady thought; it would take a heavy tome bound in black leather.
The generals marched ahead in creaky lockstep. Arkady had no desire to catch up. “Boris Sergeyevich, do you remember a Chechen named Makhmud Khasbulatov?”
“Khasbulatov?” Belov adjusted slowly to the change of subject.
“What’s interesting is that Makhmud claims he’s been in three armies: White, Red and German. According to the records, he’s eighty. In 1920, during the Civil War, he would have been ten years old.”
“It’s possible. There were plenty of children on each side, White and Red. Those were terrible times.”
“Let’s say that at the time of Hitler, Makhmud was in the Red Army.”
“Everyone served, one way or another.”
“I was wondering, in February 1944, was my father in the Chechen military district?”
“No, no, we were pushing toward Warsaw. The Chechen operation was completely rear echelon.”
“Hardly worth the time of a Hero of the Soviet Union?”
“Not worth a second of his time,” Belov said.
Wasn’t it wonderful, Arkady thought, how completely some people retired? Belov had only recently left the prosecutor’s office; now Arkady had asked him about the head of the Chechen mafia and the old sergeant had not made the connection at all, as if his mind had already retreated forty years.
They started walking again in silence. Arkady felt watched. In marble and bronze, the dead stood over their graves. A dancer whirled dreamily in white stone. An explorer paused, compass in hand. Against a bas-relief of clouds, a pilot pulled aviator goggles from his eyes. They shared a somber, communal gaze, restless and restful at the same time.
“It was a closed coffin, of course,” Belov muttered.
Arkady was distracted because moving in the opposite direction on a parallel path was another, longer procession with an empty cart, a larger battery of horns and tubas and, among the mourners, some familiar faces. Bolstering a widow on either side were General Penyagin and Rodionov, the city prosecutor, both of them with black bands on their sleeves. Arkady remembered that Penyagin’s predecessor at CID had died only days ago; presumably the woman was the dead man’s wife. The three were trailed by a slow-moving entourage of militia officers, Party officials and relatives parading fixed expressions of boredom and grief. None of them noticed Arkady.
His own cortege had turned