Red Moth

‘Engel!’

‘Engel!’ Churikova pointed at a man who had just emerged from the north entrance of the palace and was now heading down the steps towards the gardens.

‘Are you sure?’ Pekkala demanded. ‘You must be absolutely certain.’

‘Yes.’ There was no hesitation in her voice.

Pekkala snatched up his rifle and turned to Stefanov. ‘If we’re not at the cottage by dark, your orders are to return to the Russian lines and to send word to Comrade Stalin that the mission has been a failure.’

Stefanov nodded in reply. Then, without a word, he vanished among the trees, heading for the Pensioners’ Stable.

As Pekkala and Churikova made their way towards the Catherine Palace, the lieutenant out in front with her arms above her head as if Pekkala were escorting a prisoner, they passed between the tall, leafy hedges of the Gribok Kurtina. Beyond the Gribok, they crossed over the Chinese Bridge, its iron railings wrenched into beckoning fingers where bullets had cut through the metal.

A cool autumn breeze blew in off the still, green water of the Great Pond, smelling of weeds and decay.

On the other side of the bridge, wounded German soldiers lay in the shade of a giant oak tree. A few were talking or writing letters. Others lay wax-faced and staring at the sky. Many of the stretchers were covered with grey army blankets, showing the outlines of men who had died before the doctors could get to them. Nearby stood a large white tent with a red cross painted on the canvas. Every few minutes, medical assistants in blood-spattered white aprons appeared from the tent, picked up a stretcher and carried a soldier inside. A noise of sawing filtered through the canvas walls.

Arriving at the steps of the palace, they trod over a stream of blood, which had trickled down the main staircase, staining the grey stone as if it were the shadow of a lightning bolt. Soldiers clattered past him, heel irons sparking on the stone. Pekkala heard them speaking Finnish and remembered what Leontev had said about the presence of foreign volunteers among the German troops.

On the balcony, beside the main entrance, sat a squad of SS infantry, still in their palm-leaf-patterned camouflage smocks and black leather combat harnesses. Mauser rifles leaned against the walls beside them and their helmets lay upturned on the ground.

These soldiers all wore the same long stare of total exhaustion and, at first, they barely seemed to notice the military policeman or his prisoner. It was only when they realised that Pekkala’s prisoner was a woman that a few smiles creased their gunsmoke-blackened faces.

Having climbed the staircase, Pekkala and Churikova passed through an open door at the base of the Grand Staircase. Nailed against one bullet-pocked wall, the lids of wooden ammunition crates had been converted into direction signs.

Directly in front of him stood a marble pedestal, at the base of which lay the shattered remnants of a large sixteenth-century Venetian vase and a puddle of water that the vase had once contained.

For a moment, Pekkala could only stare in dismay at the damage all around him. Then, coming to his senses, he pushed Churikova forward. They moved on through the first and second Exhibition Halls, whose bare walls chanted back the echo of their footsteps.

Arriving at the Great Hall, Pekkala found its vast space empty except for a portable desk set just inside the front entrance. The desk looked absurdly small in this room, as did the man who sat behind it, the dull silver chevron of an army corporal stitched on to his sleeve. He appeared to be adrift there, like a man on a life raft in the middle of a flat calm sea. The corporal’s hair was neatly groomed, hair parted severely at an angle across his scalp. When he caught sight of Pekkala’s insignia, he stood, crashed his heels together and saluted. As he did so, the man’s gaze drifted to Churikova and then back to Pekkala.

Speaking in German, Pekkala told the man, ‘I am delivering this prisoner to Gustav Engel.’ He had not spoken the language in some time and, not entirely trusting that what he had said was correct, Pekkala accompanied his words with a gesture towards Churikova and then down the hallway towards the Amber Room.

Pekkala’s accent seemed to peck against the corporal as if they had been hailstones. The salute and the stiff back disappeared. ‘Another foreign volunteer!’ he remarked. ‘This army is becoming a tower of Babel. What are you? Dutch? Dane?’

‘Finn.’

The corporal acknowledged with a grunt. ‘And you are bringing her to Obersturmbannfuhrer Engel?’

Another nod.

‘What is the purpose of this?’

‘She is a woman,’ replied Pekkala. ‘What more do you need to know?’

With a muttered comment about the privileges of rank, the corporal sat back down at his desk, filled out a pass on a pad of green paper, then tore off the sheet and handed it over.

Throughout this exchange, Churikova had remained with her hands raised, staring at the floor.

As the corporal returned to his paperwork, Pekkala grasped Churikova by the arm and led her out of the room.

They passed through the Courtiers in Attendance Dining Room, which was empty except for two large mirrors, miraculously unbroken in spite of bullet craters in the plaster on either side of the frames.

Beyond that lay the dining room of Empress Maria Fyodorovna. It too had been gutted except for the ceiling mural, portraying the death of Alexander of Macedonia. Neck craned back as she walked, Churikova stared at the sprawling figures, pale arms outstretched towards the wild-eyed horses, who reared as if they meant to tear themselves from two dimensions into three.

From there, through the open doors, they moved into the Crimson and Green dining rooms, with their bands of red and emerald tinsel reaching as high as the ceiling. As in the Empress’s dining room, only the ceiling murals remained, as well as wooden floor mosaics, streaming like sunbursts from the centres of the rooms.

All around Pekkala, the ghosts of the Romanovs drifted in their finery, but as he halted outside the door to the Amber Room, these phantoms retreated back into the darkness of his mind.

Pekkala opened the door and walked in, pushing his prisoner ahead of him.