“Stalin’s favorite general” was what his father had been called. When they were surrounded and without food and ammunition, other generals would dare surrender their men alive. General Renko never surrendered; he wouldn’t have surrendered if he’d had nothing but dead to command. Anyway, the Germans never caught him. He broke back through the lines to join the defense of Moscow, and a famous photograph showed him and Stalin himself, like two devils defending hell, studying a subway map to plot the shifting of troops from station to station.

The round Kuznetsov took his turn and balanced on the lip of the grave. “Today, when every effort is made to libel our army’s glorious duty …”

Their voices had the hollow tremor of busted cellos. Arkady would have felt sorry for them if he didn’t remember how they would troop into the dacha, like so many lesser shadows of his father, for the midnight dinners and drunken songs that ended in the army roar “Arrrrrrrraaaaaaaaagh!!!”

Arkady wasn’t sure why he had come. Perhaps for the sake of Belov, who had faithfully maintained the hope of a reunion between father and son. Perhaps for his mother. She would have to lie side by side with her own murderer. He stepped forward to brush dirt off the white marker.

“Soviet power, built on the holy altar of twenty million dead …” Kuznetsov droned on.

No, not metamorphosed into beetles, Arkady thought. That was too kind, too Kafkaesque. More like hoary, three-legged dogs, senile but rabid, baying at a pit.

Gul wavered, his green tunic weighted with medals and hanging from his bones. He removed his hat, revealing hair the color of ashes. “I recall my last encounter with K. I. Renko a very short time ago.” Gul laid his hand on the coffin of dark wood with brass handles, slim as a skiff. “We remembered comrades in arms whose sacrifices burn like an eternal flame in our hearts. We talked of the present period of doubt and self-mortification so different from our own iron resolve. I give you now the words the general gave me then. ‘Those who would shovel dirt on the Party. Those who forget the Jewish historical sins. Those who would distort our revolutionary history, debase and vulgarize our people. To them I say, my banner was and is and always will be red!’ ”

“Well, that’s about as much as I can take,” Arkady told Belov and started back down the path.

“There’s more.” Belov caught up.

“That’s why I’m going.” Gul was still ranting on.

“We were hoping you would say a few words now that he’s dead.”

“Boris Sergeyevich, if I had been the investigator of my mother’s death, I would have arrested my father. I gladly would have killed him.”

“Arkasha—”

“Just the idea that this monster died quietly in his bed will haunt me for the rest of my life.”