11
Vadim Trishin was not much older than his son Petr, Yuri Shumakov noted. He had entered the army at eighteen. There was an openness, an almost naive brashness that gave you a warm feeling about him.
"I got out and came home when they insisted I become a Ukrainian soldier," he explained as he sat in the weary wooden chair beside Yuri's cluttered desk. He was dressed neatly in a business suit that looked like it had just come off the rack.
Yuri leaned back and propped one foot on a half-open drawer. "What do you do now, Mr. Trishin?"
"Please, call me Vadim. Last year an American company opened a joint venture in Brest to make vacuum cleaners. I went into their training program. Now I'm a salesman."
"A salesman… like a clerk in a store?"
Vadim grinned. "The Americans say a salesman is someone friendly and helpful. Not like our store clerks. They gave the applicants an odd.test. At a reception they had us circulate around, make as many friends as possible in fifteen minutes."
"How did you do?"
"When they came to me, I called off the names of fifteen people I had met. They couldn't believe it. I had learned some memory tricks from an uncle several years ago. Using mnemonics, word association. Recalling those names was a snap."
He would probably make a super salesman, Shumakov reflected. "Well, I wish you lots of luck," he said. "How long were you in my brother's outfit?"
"About a year and a half, I guess. I wasn't much of a soldier, but he promoted me to private first class. I thought a lot of him." Trishin took an envelope from inside his jacket, opened it and spread a few photographs across a corner of the desk. "These are some I made of the Captain."
Yuri studied the images of the stalwart young officer in battle dress. In one he stood outside a metal building that was marked by a large banner that read "No Smoking! Munition Storage Facility."
"Is this the building that exploded?" he asked, pointing to the picture.
Vadim sobered for the first time. "That's it."
"Was Anatoli very strict about the 'no smoking?' Things like that?"
"Absolutely. Some of the guys were a little thick-headed. He pounded it into them at every turn. Nobody would have dared bring a cigarette inside the barbed wire perimeter. He even had the telephone and the radio checked for possible sparks."
"Then what do you think caused the explosion?"
Vadim's expression was one of obvious distress. "I'd really prefer to forget it."
That took Yuri by surprise. In the past, he was the one who had attempted to suppress memories of that terrible event. But after his talk with Larisa last night, he had made up his mind to go after the answers he thought he deserved. "I'm sure it must have been quite traumatic."
"I used to have nightmares. I was a guard at the gate. Even that far away, the blast flattened me. Luckily, my partner manned a machinegun in a nearby foxhole. He got my gas mask on just in time." He dragged the memories out slowly, painfully.
"Your gas mask?"
"They had chemical weapons stored in the building. A nerve agent, for one."
"That probably accounts for some of their reluctance to give out any information." Yuri looked back at the photographs. Larisa was partially right. Anatoli appeared to be smiling, though it was an odd, contemplative sort of smile. "I fought the army for months trying to learn what happened. Never got any satisfaction."
"I'm not surprised. They were touchy over the C/B weapon contamination."
"All they would ever tell me was it's still under investigation. As far as I know, the investigation was never finished."
"I think you're right."
Yuri looked up. "Why do you say that?"
"I ran into an officer from the battalion about a year ago. He told me with all the turmoil at the time, so many leaving the service… you know, people transferred everywhere, officers dismissed, not knowing what country was in charge. They finally just closed the investigation. Sent the files to the defense headquarters in Kiev."
Buried somewhere in a vault like the scattered remains of Anatoli and his luckless soldiers, Yuri thought. Nobody would ever know the truth. Nobody would ever bear the blame.
"I've half a notion to demand that they re-open it," he said bitterly.
Trishin frowned. He spoke in a hesitant voice. "It might be best for the Captain to just let it lie."
"Why?"
"Are you familiar with the other investigation?"
"What other investigation?"
The young man pondered for a moment, then said, "A few months before that exercise, an inventory showed a number of weapons were missing from our unit. Some self-serving bastard started a rumor that Captain Shumakov had been selling the stuff. Anybody who knew him knew it was ridiculous. But there was an investigation that got right nasty. Two sergeants were eventually convicted for the theft. They couldn't find anything the Captain had done wrong, but it really hurt that he'd been accused. One of the senior sergeants told me about it. Captain Shumakov was afraid it would affect his future chances for promotion."
Yuri shook his head sadly. "I knew something was bothering him the last time he came home. He just shrugged it off when I asked if he had a problem."
"I don't know how much that entered into the investigation of the explosion, but I can imagine if it was re-opened, your brother's name could get blackened in the process."
Later that day, Yuri was summoned to the prosecutor's office. Large and airy, it was a stark contrast to that of a mere chief investigator. Sergei Perchik's office commanded a panoramic view of the city. The beige carpet was so thick it gave Yuri the feeling of walking on air. Everything looked solid and substantial, from the ornate picture frames to the sturdy wood furniture. The reason was simple. The Minsk prosecutor was a powerful man. He controlled investigations, arrests and prosecutions and had the final say on sentencing. He supervised paroles and release of prisoners and exercised oversight of governmental bodies. The prosecutor's power had been only slightly curtailed since the Communist Party was removed as his primary patron.
A small, heavy-set man with a fringe of gray hair, Perchik sat in a large chair behind a walnut desk. Except for the absence of a crown, he reminded Yuri of the little king in a book he had read as a child. Perchik was a skilled attorney, but he had won this job through being a skilled politician. Like thousands of other citizens of Belarus, he was an ethnic Russian, born in Moscow. He had been sent to Minsk as part of a team of investigators for the Party Central Committee in the early years of the Brezhnev era. With the demise of communism, he had changed his stripes. Yuri had heard that Perchik might even be a candidate for Chairman in the future.
As Chief Investigator Shumakov approached, Perchik donned a contrived smile and said, "Come in, Yuri Danilovich. Have a seat. How are the boys, Petr and Aleksei?"
Like all skilled prosecutors, Perchik was something of a psychological chameleon. He could change moods in an instant. But Yuri was caught off guard by this sudden improvement in the prosecutor's attitude toward him. "Petr is almost ready for university," he replied guardedly, "but he dreams mostly of being a star center forward, like his uncle Grigori."
Perchik nodded. "And what of Aleksei? Does he dream perhaps of becoming a lawyer, a public prosecutor?"
Yuri was tempted to laugh. Instead, he merely smiled. "I don't think so. He's still too busy just being a boy."
Aleksei was a collector of stray dogs and cats. If anything, he would be a public defender. He would have been absolutely appalled at the city prosecutor's courtroom demeanor, where he could become the Devil's own brother, spearing his victims with questions delivered like barbed pitchforks.