Mountain of the Dead Read online

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  While everyone tried to get some shuteye, Georgy played his mandolin and sang lighthearted songs—until a middle-aged policeman with a haggard face approached him.

  Kolya woke from his doze and stood. “Good morning, officer. Can we help you?”

  Ignoring him, the policeman said to Georgy, “What are you doing?”

  “I’m warming the spirits of my comrades on this cold morning, officer,” Georgy replied pleasantly.

  “You’re disturbing the peace,” he said.

  Georgy feigned hurt. “Is my music that offensive?”

  “Article two-point-three of the Internal Order prohibits one from disturbing other passengers at a railway station.”

  Georgy looked around the now empty platform. “Specifically who am I disturbing, officer?”

  “Don’t get insolent, son. Unless you’re looking to get yourself locked up.”

  “Now, would there be a bed in that cell?”

  “I warned you,” the policeman barked, grabbing the scruff of Georgy’s jacket and shoving him away down the platform.

  Everyone was awake now. Igor leapt to his feet.

  “Where are you taking him?” he demanded.

  The policeman didn’t reply.

  Georgy shouted in a singsong voice, “Save me, my dear comrades!”

  Zolotaryov hiked his rucksack over one shoulder, Georgy’s over the other, and started after Georgy and the policeman.

  Kolya and the others grabbed their stuff and followed. They didn’t have to go far. A small police station abutted the station. The policeman still gripped Georgy by the jacket while he spoke to an older, senior officer, smoking a cigarette. The officer sized up Georgy with steely eyes that had seen too many cruel winters.

  Zolotaryov approached them confidently, introducing himself as “Sergeant Semyon Zolotaryov.” He held out his hand to the older man.

  The officer hesitated, then shook. “Sergeant?”

  “Served October ’41 to May ’46. Military engineer unit.”

  “And you’re still alive?”

  “Thankful I am.” He nodded at Georgy. “It seems my comrade has inadvertently broken one of your rules.”

  “Not my rules—”

  “No, the Party’s, of course. But I can assure you he meant no disrespect. If you would release him, I’m sure you won’t have any more trouble.”

  The senior officer took a thoughtful drag on his cigarette, then crushed it out beneath the toe of his gumshoe. To Georgy he said, “Behave yourself. If I hear you singing anywhere near this station again, you’ll be spending the day in my cell with nothing more than a piece of garlic bread for dinner.”

  Georgy’s eyes brightened, and he opened his mouth to say something, when Zolotaryov spun him about by the shoulder and shoved him toward the others.

  Semyon “Sasha” Zolotaryov (right) during World War Two

  Zolotaryov and his Cossack parents

  CHAPTER 5

  Disco and I remained seated on the leather sofa while Vasily Popov went to the foyer and spoke into the intercom. A short time later we heard the door open and conversation in Russian ensue. Vasily returned to the living room with a woman dressed in a leather jacket over a long white blouse, tight black pants, and caramel-colored suede boots.

  Disco and I stood as Vasily introduced us.

  “Olivia, this is the writer, Corey Smith, and his friend, Disco Brady.”

  “Disco?” The woman’s cobalt eyes sparkled in her fine-boned face, and I guessed her to be in her thirties, a few years younger than me. Blonde-haired, sooty-lashed, and pouty-lipped, she was attractive in a sexy-mess kind of way. “Like the music?”

  “Mais oui,” he said, swallowing her lithe hand in his. “Bonjour, Olive.” Ah-leeve.

  I took her hand next. “Nice to meet you, Olivia.”

  “The pleasure is mine, Corey.” Her voice was throaty, without a trace of a Russian accent.

  “You’re American?” I said.

  “I’m from Victoria Island in Canada originally.”

  “Olivia will be accompanying us on the trip into the mountains,” Vasily announced.

  “What?” I said, surprised.

  “I’ve never been to the Dyatlov Pass before,” she said. “I want to see it for myself.”

  “We’re not going on a walk in the park,” I said. “It’s four days in remote wilderness.”

  “Olivia is tougher than she looks,” Vasily said. “She’ll be fine. Is this a problem for you, Mr. Smith?”

  I couldn’t see how it could hurt any and said, “The more the merrier.”

  “Great!” Olivia said. “So, are we all ready?”

  “Not exactly,” Disco said. “A taxi driver stole my bag yesterday.”

  “But I saw two bags in the foyer?”

  “I bought a new one this morning. Clothes and boots too—everything but a snowsuit.”

  “No problem,” she said, “I know a mall we can stop by on the way—”

  “No, no,” Vasily cut in. He eyed Disco up and down. “You will take my old snowsuit. It will be a little small, but it will fit.”

  Disco shook his head. “Non merci—”

  “I insist. I have no more use for it.” He ducked into another room and returned carrying a Technicolored ski jacket and pants that resembled something a down-and-out Russian superhero might choose to wear.

  Disco held up his hands. “I think I’ll stop by that mall.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” Vasily snapped. “This is the best snowsuit you will ever wear.” He thrust it at Disco, who reluctantly accepted it.

  “What’s that?” I asked, pointing to a baby-blue aviation patch on the jacket’s left arm.

  “I earned that from the Moscow Aviation Institute,” he said proudly. “My first degree was in applied mathematics, but my second was in safety-and-rescue equipment engineering for aviation and space systems. I designed this suit in conjunction with the Sports Federation of the USSR. It is one of twenty-six worn by the first official Soviet expedition to successfully reach the summit of Mount Everest. I was not asked to join the team, but I have worn it in over two dozen search-and-rescue trips to the Kola Peninsula, the Polar Urals, and the Arctic. So believe me, Mr. Brady, you are in good hands.”

  ⁂

  Ten minutes later we were all crowded into Vasily Popov’s decade-old red SUV, plowing through the snowy streets of Yekaterinburg. Disco sat shotgun due to his size, while Olivia and I shared the backseat.

  I slipped the flask from my pocket and imbibed.

  Olivia cocked an eyebrow at me. “Do you have a fear of driving?” she remarked.

  “Huh?” I said.

  “Isn’t it a bit early for that?”

  “No great adventure ever started with someone drinking water.”

  Disco groaned. Olivia reached for the flask.

  “Let me smell that,” she said.

  “Get lost,” I said, swatting her hand.

  “Give it to me.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I want to see if it’s apple juice.”

  “Why would I be drinking apple juice out of a flask?”

  “Why would you be drinking booze at this time?” She snagged the flask, took a sniff. “Oh, God!” she said, making a face. “It really is booze.”

  “Are you kids done fighting back there?” Disco said. “’Cause if we gotta pull over…”

  “Corey’s drinking whiskey!”

  “He does that a lot,” Disco said.

  “It’s morning!”

  I took back the flask. Vasily said something in Russian. Olivia responded, shaking her head.

  “I know you’re talking about me,” I said.

  “Vasily says you would make a good Russian if you switched to vodka—”

  A silver hatchback swerved in front of the SUV. Vasily braked and smacked the horn.

  “Drivers here are crazy!” Disco said.

  “That’s because there’s no enforcement,�
� Olivia said. “The police don’t care. It’s like a snowy Wild West.”

  “How long have you been here?” I asked her.

  “A few years now.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “The weather sucks,” she said, “and customer service is pretty much nonexistent. Then there’s the corruption, bureaucracy, crime…”

  “I take that as a no?”

  “Bread’s cheap.”

  Vasily turned right onto a wide, traffic-clogged boulevard, and we drove in stop-go traffic for a while. Vasily switched on the radio. Disco borrowed my phone and earbuds and listened to music. I sipped whiskey under the disapproving gaze of Olivia, which I did my best to ignore.

  “So what do you do,” I said eventually.

  “I’m an artist,” she said.

  I raised my eyebrows. “Like a painter?”

  “No, a trapeze artist.”

  I stared at her. “What are you talking about?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like a circus trapeze artist?”

  “Are there any other kinds?”

  I laughed.

  “What?” she said.

  “You’re having me on. You ran away with the circus?”

  “You don’t run away with them. They hire you, like any other business.”

  “I always wanted to join the circus, sha,” Disco said from the front. “A fire breather, or a lion tamer, me. Nothing to do with heights but. I hate heights.”

  “I also do some gymnastics,” Olivia told him. “And recently I’ve joined a Chinese pole team.”

  “No juggling,” I quipped, still not sure if she was being serious with me.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “You’re really in the circus? Do they still exist?”

  “They’re flourishing, especially the one-rings. Look at Cirque du Soleil.”

  We passed a Burger King. A poster in one of the windows depicted three snowmen about to dig into three giant chargrilled burgers, which made me realize I should have had a bigger breakfast, given I wasn’t going to be eating a real meal for the next four days. Ignoring the rumblings in my stomach, I said, “So this is why you’re in Russia? You’re on some sort of Russian circus tour?”

  “I came here with my Canadian troupe a few summers ago. After one of our shows a Russian oligarch who owns two Moscow circuses asked me to work for him.”

  “He headhunted you?”

  “He gave me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

  “Your own unicycle?”

  “You know, Corey, you’re a bit of a dick.”

  “You tell him, sha,” Disco said.

  “Do you have a Russian boyfriend?” I asked her.

  “Used to. But before you make some sarcastic remark, please don’t. He broke up with me in September. I’m still grieving.”

  I frowned. “He didn’t die, did he?” An image of Denise I didn’t care for blossomed in my mind, and I swept it aside.

  “I told you,” she said, “he broke up with me.”

  “It’s just that ‘grieving’—it’s an odd word choice.”

  “What do you want me to say? I’m still hurting?”

  “How about ‘I haven’t gotten over him yet.’”

  “Let me guess, Corey. You’re single.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because I can’t imagine anyone who could put up with you.”

  ⁂

  North of Yekaterinburg, endless ranks of snow-carpeted evergreens flanked the margins of the Federal Highway, with only high-voltage towers or a lonesome billboard to break the monotony. Olivia and I fell silent, and I ended up thinking a lot about Denise. She had put up with me. Of course I wasn’t a drunk when she was alive, nor such an asshole either. I missed that guy sometimes, the old me. Actually, I missed him a lot. Every day he seemed to be receding farther and farther into memory, becoming a little less defined, harder to identify, and I figured someday I wouldn’t remember him at all.

  Denise and I had met a little over two years ago, in early October. Disco had invited me to the screening of his latest movie. I’d been to one of his screenings before and hated the experience, hated entering the theater via the red carpet when nobody knew who I was, hated feeling obligated to laugh at every joke on the big screen, even though in Disco’s slapstick comedies they either hit or miss, hated hanging around afterward like a loose thread while he took selfies with fans and signed autographs. Needless to say, I declined this second invite. However, I stopped by his house later in the evening to attend the small after-party.

  It was a pleasant summer evening. The bougainvillea in his front yard blazed with color, while a monstrous jacaranda dripped with purple blossoms. Denise was there when I arrived. Disco introduced us, though we exchanged little save for our names. I spent most of my time after that moving around his modest Spanish-inspired Mar Vista home, chatting to a few people I knew, but keeping a discrete eye on Denise. When I spotted her alone in the courtyard smoking a cigarette, I joined her.

  “Velvety,” I said. “The leaves.”

  She glanced up from the plant she was examining. The child of Japanese parents who emigrated to the States in the late seventies, she had tan skin, cinnamon eyes, and straight jet-black hair. That night she’d been wearing a figure-hugging white dress and multiple diamond earrings that ran from her lobes to helices. “They’re amazing, so soft,” she replied. “Do you know what it’s called?”

  “Buddha belly.”

  She laughed, the ice cubes in her drinking clinking. “Really?”

  “Because of its bottle-shaped stem.”

  “You know your plants.”

  “A hobby of mine. Disco told me you’re in PR?”

  “You and Disco were talking about me?”

  “Just after he introduced us and you walked off.”

  “I walked off?”

  “Pretty promptly.”

  She removed the cutlass toothpick from her drink and plucked one of skewered olives from it with her lips. “Why didn’t you come after me?”

  “I—” I shook my head.

  “A writer at a loss for words?”

  I’d never excelled at flirting. I’m not bad looking, but I don’t stand out in the glitzy LA crowds I often find myself in.

  “I’d just arrived,” I said.

  “It’s taken you a while to find me. You arrived, what, two hours ago? It’s almost two in the morning.”

  “So how do you know Disco?”

  “Who doesn’t know him? But I’m curious how you know him? Not to sound rude, but you’re like one of four white guys here tonight.”

  “I’m usually the minority around Disco and his friends.”

  “Which is why they all call you Whitey?”

  “Sometimes Whitey Lord. Lord’s my last name.”

  “So you’ve known Disco for a long time?”

  “He was still doing commercials when we met.”

  “He thinks pretty highly of you.”

  “Funny, he never says anything nice to my face.”

  “Before you came, he was building you up.”

  “Don’t believe everything he says.”

  “He said you’re a famous author, you’re single, and you’re looking for a girlfriend.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Is it true?”

  I shrugged. “Two out of three, at most.”

  “Which means you’re either a famous author and single and don’t want a girlfriend, which makes you a player. Or you’re a famous author and looking for a girlfriend, even though you’re not single, which makes you a slime ball. Or you’re not a famous author. You’re simply single and looking for a girlfriend.”

  “Which makes me?”

  “Fairly ordinary. But I happen to know you are a famous author. Disco has all your books on a bookcase. I’ve seen the blurbs on the back covers by other famous authors I recognize, which makes you famous by comparison. So which is it, are you a player, or a slime bal
l?”

  “I don’t think anybody’s ever attacked me with a syllogism before.”

  “Answer the question.”

  I shrugged. “I guess I’m a player. But that doesn’t mean I don’t ever want a girlfriend. I’m just not looking.”

  A tipsy brunette entered the courtyard, champagne glass cinched helter-skelter in her hand, and began yapping to Denise about one of their friends who couldn’t leave the party she was at to join them. Denise told her to hold on a minute and said to me, “I’m going to the Clippers game tomorrow. If you want to come, call me, I can get another ticket. Disco has my number.” She went to her impatient friend, adding over her shoulder: “By the way, I’m not looking either, just so you know.”

  ⁂

  An hour later we stopped in a mining town for gas. The people we encountered all seemed steely-eyed, taciturn, and unsmiling. The clerk in the BG station kiosk cast what I can only call the evil eye at Disco and me when she overheard us speaking English. Apparently decades-old Cold War prejudices had not thawed in this remote, frozen part of the country.

  At a little past five p.m., nearly seven hours after leaving Vasily Popov’s apartment, we arrived in the ramshackle town of Ivdel. Scant light remained in the short day, and in the twilight gloom I couldn’t make out much more than the silhouettes of destitute log cabins and crooked timber telephone poles.

  “Have you been here before?” I asked Vasily as he turned onto what might have been the main street.

  He nodded. “Two years ago. I interviewed a former prison guard who’d participated in the Dyatlov search operation.”

  “A prison, out here?” Disco said.

  “In Joseph Stalin’s time, and for decades afterward, nearly a hundred forced-labor camps existed in the area.”

  I said, “Lev Ivanov initially considered escaped prisoners to be responsible for the deaths of the nine hikers.”

  Disco said, “And?”

  “If you had just escaped from prison, Mr. Brady,” Vasily said, “would you make north for uninhabited wilderness in subzero temperatures without basic survival equipment or food?”

  “Maybe they got lost?”

  “Maybe. But upon discovering a well-provisioned tent, they would surely take skis, warm clothes, and money—none of which was missing.”