The Beast in the Red Forest

(Postmark: Elizabeth, New Jersey. March 4th, 1936.)

(Return Address: none)

To:

The United Brotherhood of Steelworkers, Branch 11,

Jackson St,

Newark, New Jersey, USA

Boys, I am leaving today!

My bags are packed and I’m bound for a new life in Russia. I have a guarantee of work, housing and school for my two kids as soon as I walk off the boat. They are practically begging for skilled craftsmen over there, while here in America there are over 13 million unemployed. As you know, there are members of our New York City Chapter currently living with their families in abandoned buildings down on Wall Street. We are fighting each other for handouts at the bread lines. Last month, I sold, for the price of one dollar, all the medals I won fighting in the Argonne Forest back in the Great War.

Come to Russia, boys. That’s where the future is. I realise that leaving home is hard, and starting a new life is even harder, but I know you are as tired as I am of being chewed up and spat out and begging for what we know is ours by right. Aren’t you sick of staying up late nights and worrying if you will make the rent this month, or else be thrown out into the street?

The Soviet Trade Agency has an office in Manhattan. Each step of the way, they help those who are searching for a new beginning. Thousands of Americans are arriving in Russia every day and they are being welcomed with open arms. They don’t care if you are black or white, as long as you’re ready to work. Moscow has its own English-language schools, an English-language newspaper, and even has a baseball team!

I hope I will see you all again soon in the great new country Mr Joseph Stalin is building, with the help of men and women just like you and me.

Yours sincerely,

William H. Vasko

Western Ukraine

February 1944

Captain Gregor Hudzik remarked to himself, as his shovel chipped through the frozen ground, how many of the skeletons still had rosary beads entwined about their wrists.

South of the town of Tsuman, in western Ukraine, on a dirt road between the villages of Olyka and Dolgoshei, lay the ruins of a place called Misovichi. Its population had never been more than a few hundred. They were farmers, tanners of leather and brewers of rough alcohol, known as samahonka, which had achieved some notoriety in the region. Their unremarkable but steady way of life changed forever when, in late 1918, a soldier named Kolya Yankevitch returned to Misovichi after serving in the army of the Tsar. Soon after reaching home, Yankevitch fell ill with the Spanish influenza virus which, in the years immediately following the conflict, killed more people than the Great War itself had done. The virus spread through the town. Few were spared. The dead were buried in the woods, in mass graves dug by men and women who were themselves soon laid to rest in those same pits.

By the time the epidemic had run its course, disappearing as suddenly as it had arrived, there was no one left in the village of Misovichi.

Fearing that the disease might still be lurking in the beds of those who had perished, in their faded portraits on the walls and in the drawers of battered cutlery, the houses and their contents were left to rot. Whole shelves of books, their pages bloated with the damp and covers powdered green with mildew, remained abandoned. Floorboards buckled. Ceilings sagged and then collapsed, spilling beehives choked with honey and wooden chests containing baptismal cups, confirmation documents and wedding dresses into the rooms below. The streets and alleyways of Misovichi became rivers of wildflowers.

No one spoke of the town any more, as if the place had been washed from the memories of everyone who lived in the nearby villages of Borbin, Milostov and Klevan.

Almost everyone.

A local man named Gregor Hudzik had been thinking about the people of Misovichi, and the mass grave in the forest where they had all been laid to rest.

Hudzik was a farrier by trade. At one time, his business had made him one of the wealthier men in Borbin. He had travelled from town to town, as far away as Rovno and Lutsk, with an anvil, bellows, tongs and hammers on his cart. But there was more to being a farrier than simply shoeing horses all day long. He had to be a listener as well. People talk to a man who only comes by once a month in ways they never would if they saw him every day. Patiently, he listened to their fears and hopes and disappointments. Lovers and mistresses. Lies and betrayals. No detail was ever too small that someone did not choose to let him know. In silence, Hudzik endured their stories of self-pitying vanity, which was how he came to know that a good portion of the wealth of Misovichi lay glimmering in the jaws of its inhabitants.

By the time the war broke out in ’39, Hudzik had been shoeing horses for over twenty years. At first, he imagined that his work prospects might even improve, but one day in the summer of 1941, he was stopped on the road by a column of Red Army soldiers as they retreated from the invading German army. They moved in a rabble of barely functioning trucks, spent horses towing overloaded wagons and men shambling along barefoot, their poorly made boots having long ago fallen apart.

They promptly confiscated his wagon, his horses and all of his supplies. They even took his shoes away from him.

When Hudzik, sobbing with impotent rage, asked what he should do now with his life, the leader of the column offered to bring him along. Or else, Hudzik was told, he could take his chances with the German army, who were, by then, only a few kilometres down the road.

Realising the true nature of his predicament, Hudzik agreed. His shoes were returned to him, along with his horse and his cart, now loaded down with wounded soldiers, and he joined the retreating Red Army.

Arriving in Kiev one week later, Hudzik was formally enlisted as a farrier in the Red Army. He was given a uniform and the rank of sergeant.

At first, it had all seemed like a cruel joke to Hudzik but, in time, he came to understand that this twist of fate had probably saved his life.

Both of his horses died in the winter of that year. The first stepped on a Russian landmine when it slipped its tether one night and wandered out into a field. The second froze to death in the town of Pozhaists and was immediately hacked to pieces for food. The cart wore out in the spring of 1942. With iron-rimmed wheels yawing on their axles, it finally collapsed beneath the weight of a thousand horseshoes which Hudzik was transporting from a foundry to a supply depot.

As he stared at the ruin of his cart, and the tangled heap of horseshoes strewn across the road, it seemed to Hudzik that the last link to his home had finally been severed.

Taking it as a sign that he would never get back there alive, Hudzik sat down by the side of the road, put his head in his hands and wept.

This event was witnessed by a famous journalist, Vasily Semyonovich Grossman, who wrote a story about it for the Red Army newspaper, Krasnaya Zvezda. In the article, Grossman transformed the shambles of Hudzik’s wagon wreck into a symbol of the Red Army’s heroic struggle. They even took Hudzik’s picture, which showed a luckless creature, formed of mud and soot, with matted hair and staring eyes and the paths of tears like war paint daubed across his cheeks.

If it hadn’t been for that photograph, Hudzik’s grim prediction might well have come true. But in the halls of the Kremlin, his battle-weary face did not go unnoticed.

Soon afterwards, Hudzik received a medal, promotion to the rank of captain and orders of transfer to the Headquarters staff. From then on, he was no longer a driver of carts and a shoer of horses in the front line. That job passed to other men, who went on to die in great numbers, their mildewed bones lying jumbled with those of the horses who perished alongside them, unburied on the Russian steppe.

In 1943, when Russia went on the offensive, Hudzik found himself heading in the direction of his home in western Ukraine. Soon he even began to recognise places and names on the map. The closer he came, the more he began to think about what would become of him when the war ended. His horses, his wagon and his tools were all gone now, scattered across the length of Russia. Hudzik knew he would have to begin again, but to start from scratch required capital, and how on earth was he to come by wealth like that?

That was when Hudzik realised that it was time to pay a visit to the graves of Misovichi.

On a cold, clear morning in February of 1944, Hudzik’s column halted twenty kilometres east of Rovno, only an hour’s walk from Misovichi.

Knowing that it would be several hours before his absence was noticed, Hudzik slipped away, carrying his rifle and a shovel.

The mass grave was not difficult to find. It stood nestled in a grove of willow trees, only a stone’s throw from the road.

After locating the site, Hudzik propped the gun against a tree, hung his coat upon a broken branch, took up the shovel and began to dig. Under the snow was a layer of hard frozen ground about a hand’s length deep. He almost broke his shovel blade getting through it, but beneath that layer of ice-clogged dirt the ground was only crystallised with frost and cleaved away with much less effort.

The bodies lay close to the surface. No coffins had been used. Some of the skeletons wore clothing, but most were only wrapped in bed sheets. The dead had been stacked so deeply that even when the hole Hudzik had dug came up to his chest, there still seemed to be more layers below.

His first hour’s digging earned him more than twenty golden teeth, which he wiggled loose from the jaws and placed in a small leather bag around his neck normally reserved for loose tobacco. He marvelled at how much precious metal had been hammered into the mouths of those same people whose claims of poverty, when it came time to pay their bills, he had silently learned to despise.

As he stared into the dirt-filled eye sockets, twisting them from side to side while he searched for the glint of metal, the faces of those men and women he had known in Misovichi passed before his eyes with the flickering uncertainty of an old film tripping off its spool.

Steam rose from the sweat on Hudzik’s back as he cast aside ribs and shoulder blades and pelvises still scabbed with cartilage. The musty smell of the bones hung in the air around him.

Once, he stopped his digging and listened, in case anyone might be coming. But there was only the harmless droning of a plane high above the clouds. Hudzik had spent most of his life in these forests and he had always been able to sense, more than hear, when something wasn’t right. Nobody could catch him by surprise. Not in this place.

Hudzik went back to work, widening the hole in which he stood. All around him, the white sticks of bones jutted from the dirt and he chipped them away with the blade of his shovel.

Suddenly he stopped and raised his head.

Somebody was out there.

Cautiously, Hudzik set aside the shovel and glanced towards his rifle, still leaning against a tree at the edge of the grave site. He looked around, but saw no one. Neither could he hear anything out of the ordinary; just the wind in the tops of the trees and the breath rustling from his lungs. Just when Hudzik had almost convinced himself that his mind was playing tricks on him, he saw a figure coming down the middle of the road from the direction of Misovichi.

Hudzik was baffled. No one lived in Misovichi. No one even used this road any more. It crossed his mind that maybe he was looking at a ghost.

The stranger was a civilian, a short-brimmed soft cap tilted back on his head, revealing a clean-shaven face. He was dressed in a short brown canvas coat with two large patch pockets at the hip and a double row of buttons down the chest. The coat was undone and, underneath, he wore a leather belt and a holster. Slung over one shoulder was a canvas bag with leather straps whose contents, judging from the way the man carried it, appeared to be quite heavy.

Although the man was clearly young, all youth had been purged from his eyes, replaced by a long-staring blankness in which Hudzik recognised the lurking nightmares of all that this man had endured.

Probably a partisan, thought Hudzik. There were many of them in this region and it wasn’t always easy to tell which side they were fighting for.

Hudzik ducked down, anticipating that this man must be at the lead of a patrol. To his surprise, however, nobody else appeared. The man was entirely on his own and seemingly oblivious to everything around him.

What is he doing here, wondered Hudzik. People from the forest never walk in the middle of the road like that, as if afraid of the wilderness which surrounds them. They keep to the shadows at the side, knowing that the wilderness protects them. How can a man so alone be so confident? It made him nervous that he couldn’t find the answer.

Standing absolutely still as the man walked by no more than twenty paces away, Hudzik felt a surge of confidence that he might indeed go unnoticed.

Then, just as the stranger drew level with Hudzik, he suddenly stopped and turned.

In that moment, Hudzik realised that the man had known about him all along. Standing up to his chest in the hole, with skulls and rib bones and the crooked dice of vertebrae strewn all around him, Hudzik knew that there could be no words to talk his way out of the trap he had made for himself. The blood seemed to drain from his heart. Once more, he glanced at his rifle, leaning against the tree.

The stranger followed his gaze.

Hudzik waited, knowing that he would never get to his weapon before the man drew his gun. All he could do was wait there helplessly, while the man decided what to do.

Slowly, without a word, the stranger turned away and continued on down the road. He soon passed out of sight.

Only when the sound of footsteps had faded from his ears did Hudzik begin to feel safe again. His shoulders slumped as he breathed out, leaning heavily upon his shovel, as if the strength had been sapped from his veins. Hudzik wondered if he should go back. Will this be enough, he asked himself, as he clenched the leather bag around his neck? Maybe just a little while longer. A little more gold. What good is it doing them now? And then I will leave them in peace and never come back. Never. Almost certainly never.

Hudzik returned to his digging and was pleased to find that the next skull he turfed up had been fitted with two golden teeth. With a grunt of satisfaction he twisted them out, the sound like a stalk of celery being snapped in half, and slipped them into the leather bag.

It was then that he heard, directly behind him, the faint rustle of somebody drawing in breath. Terrified, he froze. ‘Who’s there?’ he whispered, too afraid to look.

There was no reply, but Hudzik could still hear the breathing.

Slowly Hudzik turned, shielding his face with the blade of the shovel, and found himself looking at the stranger.

The man stood at the edge of the hole, a pistol in his hand, its barrel pointed squarely at Hudzik’s face.

‘Did you find what you were looking for?’ asked the stranger.

Slowly, Hudzik peered from behind the shovel. ‘Yes!’ he answered hoarsely, seizing on the shred of hope that he might be able to buy his way out of this predicament. ‘There’s plenty for both of us.’ In spite of his terror, he managed to bare his teeth in a smile. ‘Plenty,’ he said again.

With a dull clang, a bullet punctured the rusty metal, passed through Hudzik’s right eye and smashed through the back of his head.

For a moment, the man stared at Hudzik, lying at the bottom of the hole. Then he hauled out the body, stripped off Hudzik’s uniform and put it on himself. He rolled the paunchy white corpse back into the hole, tossed in the rifle, his own clothes and the shovel, before kicking the dirt back into the hole until no trace of the farrier remained.

Carefully, he brushed the dirt from his sleeves, retraced his footsteps out of the graveyard and kept on walking down the middle of the road.

Moscow

The Kremlin

Major Kirov stood at attention, his gaze fixed upon the blood-red wall behind the desk of Joseph Stalin.

For the past several minutes, Stalin had been ignoring the presence of the major. Instead, he carefully examined several files laid out in front of him — although whether Stalin was actually reading them or simply taking pleasure in making Kirov nervous, the major couldn’t tell.

By the time Stalin finally set aside the documents, the sweat had soaked through Kirov’s shirt.

Stalin sat back in his chair and raised his head, yellow-green eyes calmly appraising the man who stood before him. ‘Major Kirov.’

‘Comrade Stalin!’

‘Has there been any word from Pekkala?’

‘None, Comrade Stalin.’

‘How long has he been missing now? Two years, isn’t it?’

‘And three months. And five days.’

*

Pekkala had been born in Lappeenranta, Finland, at a time when it was still a Russian colony. His mother was a Laplander, from Rovaniemi in the north. At the age of eighteen, on the wishes of his father, Pekkala travelled to Petrograd in order to enlist in the Tsar’s elite Chevalier Guard. There, early in his training, he had been singled out by the Tsar for special duty as his own Special Investigator. It was a position which had never existed before and which would one day give Pekkala powers that had been considered unimaginable before the Tsar chose to create them.

In preparation for this, he was given over to the police, then to the State police — the Gendarmerie — and after that to the Tsar’s Secret Police, who were known as the Okhrana. In those long months, doors were opened to him which few men even knew existed. At the completion of his training, the Tsar gave to Pekkala the only badge of office he would ever wear — a heavy gold disc, as wide across as the length of his little finger. Across the centre was a stripe of white enamel inlay, which began at a point, widened until it took up half the disc and narrowed again to a point on the other side. Embedded in the middle of the white enamel was a large, round emerald. Together, these elements formed an unmistakable shape and it wasn’t long before Pekkala became known as the Emerald Eye. Little else was known about him by the public. His photograph could not be published or even taken. In the absence of facts, legends grew up around Pekkala, including rumours that he was not even human, but rather some demon conjured into life through the black arts of an Arctic shaman.

Throughout his years of service, Pekkala answered only to the Tsar. In that time he learned the secrets of an empire, and when that empire fell, and those who shared those secrets had taken them to their graves, Pekkala was surprised to find himself still breathing.

Captured during the Revolution, he was sent to the Siberian labour camp of Borodok, the most notorious in the entire Gulag system, located deep in the forest of Krasnagolyana.

There, they took away his name. From then on, he was known only as prisoner 4745.

As soon as Pekkala arrived at the camp to begin his thirty-year sentence for Crimes Against the State, the camp commandant sent him into the wilderness as a tree marker for the Gulag’s logging crews, fearing that other inmates might learn his true identity. The average life of a tree-marker from Borodok was six months. Working alone, with no chance of escape and far from any human contact, these men died from exposure, starvation and loneliness. Those who became lost, or who fell and broke a leg, were usually eaten by wolves. Tree-marking was the only assignment at Borodok said to be worse than a death sentence.

Everyone assumed he would be dead before the end of winter, but nine years later, Prisoner 4745 had lasted longer than any other marker in the entire Gulag system.

Provisions were left for him three times a year at the end of a logging road. Paraffin. Cans of meat. Nails. For the rest, Pekkala had to fend for himself.

He was a tall man, broad-shouldered, with a straight nose and strong, white teeth. His eyes were greenish-brown, the pupils marked by a strange silvery quality, which people noticed only when he was looking directly at them. Streaks of premature grey ran through his long, dark hair and his beard grew thickly over windburned cheeks.

He moved through the woods with the help of a large stick, whose gnarled head bristled with square-topped horseshoe nails. The only other thing he carried was a bucket of red paint for marking the trees which were to be cut. Instead of using a brush, Pekkala stirred his fingers in the scarlet paint and daubed his print upon the trunks. These ghostly handprints were, for most of the other convicts, the only trace of him they ever saw.

Only rarely was he seen by those logging crews who came to cut the timber. What they observed was a creature barely recognisable as a man. With the crust of red paint that covered his prison clothes and the long hair maned about his face, he resembled a beast stripped of its flesh and left to die which had somehow managed to survive. Wild rumours surrounded him — that he was an eater of human flesh, that he wore a breastplate made from the bones of those who had disappeared in the forest, that he wore scalps laced together as a cap.

They called him the Man with Bloody Hands. No one except the commandant of Borodok knew where this prisoner had come from or who he had been before he arrived. Those same men who feared to cross his path had no idea this was Pekkala, whose name they’d once invoked just as their ancestors had called upon the gods.

In the forest of Krasnagolyana, Pekkala had tried to forget the world he left behind.

But the world he left behind had not forgotten him.

On the orders of Stalin himself, Pekkala was brought back to Moscow to serve as an Investigator for the Bureau of Special Operations. Since that time, the Emerald Eye had maintained an uneasy truce with the man who had once condemned him to death, but after his last mission, which took him deep behind the German lines, Pekkala had disappeared and was now presumed to have been killed.

*

‘But you, Major Kirov, are convinced he’s still alive.’

‘Yes, Comrade Stalin,’ he replied, ‘until I see evidence that convinces me otherwise.’

‘The fact that his personal effects were removed from a body on a battlefield has done nothing to persuade you. Some might consider that as ample proof that Pekkala is no longer with us.’

Those effects consisted of the Inspector’s identity book, as well as his brass-handled Webley revolver, which had been a gift from Tsar Nicholas II. They had been recovered by a Soviet Rifleman named Stefanov, the last survivor of an anti-aircraft crew which had been whittled down to almost nothing by the fighting around Leningrad. After wandering for days in German-occupied territory, he had at last reached the safety of the Soviet lines, only to be ordered to accompany Pekkala as a guide back to Tsarskoye Selo, site of the Tsar’s summer residence and the very battleground from which he had recently escaped.

The purpose of Pekkala’s mission had been to determine the whereabouts of the priceless inlaid panels of the Amber Room, the greatest treasure of the Romanovs, last seen hanging on the walls of the Catherine Palace.

Initial attempts by palace curators to remove the panels and transport them to safety east of the Ural mountains had met with failure. The glue which held the amber fragments in place was over two centuries old and had become too fragile to be moved. In desperation, since the German army’s advance threatened to overrun Tsarskoye Selo at any moment, the curators resorted to hiding the panels under layers of wallpaper and muslin cloth. Their gamble that the Germans might believe the amber had already been evacuated was reinforced by a broadcast made on Soviet State Radio, whose signal was constantly monitored by the Germans, that the amber was now safely in Siberia.

But locating the panels was only a part of Stalin’s orders.

If the amber had indeed been discovered, Pekkala had been instructed to destroy the contents of the room with explosives, rather than allow the panels to be transported back to Germany.

According to Rifleman Stefanov, by the time they reached Tsarskoye Selo, the panels had not only been discovered but were already being loaded into a truck for transport to the rail junction at Wilno. From there, Pekkala learned, the amber was due to be transported to city of Königsberg, where Hitler had decreed that it should remain until such time as the panels could be installed as part of the permanent collection in a vast art museum he had planned for the Austrian city of Linz.

Hoping to intercept the truck before it reached the railhead, the two men travelled all night through the forest of Murom and rigged a dynamite charge at a bridge on the edge of the forest.

At dawn, two vehicles appeared, one of them an armoured car, which was destroyed in the ambush.

Rifleman Stefanov had described to Major Kirov how he and Pekkala then came under fire from several German soldiers travelling as armed escorts for the convoy. None of the soldiers survived the gunfight which followed and Pekkala ordered Stefanov to head back towards the Russian lines while he himself prepared to destroy the panels.

After reaching the shelter of a wooded slope, Stefanov stopped to wait for Pekkala to catch up. That was when, he reported to Kirov, he saw a huge explosion from the place where the truck had been stopped. After some time had passed, and Pekkala did not appear, Stefanov became worried and returned to the site of the explosion.

What he found was a man lying dead in the road, his body consumed by the explosion. From the charred remains, Stefanov retrieved Pekkala’s personal effects and presented them to Kirov upon his arrival in Moscow.

‘Comrade Stalin,’ said Kirov, ‘that corpse was too badly burned to be identified. There’s a chance that it might not have been the Inspector.’

‘Surely, if that were true,’ argued Stalin, ‘then Pekkala would have surfaced by now. And yet, in spite of your best efforts to locate him, the man is nowhere to be found.’

‘I might have had more success,’ Kirov replied frustratedly, ‘but for the fact that every case to which I’ve been assigned since he disappeared has kept me here in Moscow, the one place I’m certain he is not!’

‘What makes you sure of that?’

‘Why would he come back here, when doing so would put his life in danger?’

‘In danger from whom?’ demanded Stalin.

Kirov hesitated. ‘From you, Comrade Stalin.’

For a while, Stalin did not reply.

Kirov’s words seemed to sink into the red carpet, into the red velvet curtains, into the hollow walls, behind which hidden passages snaked from room to room inside the Kremlin.

In the long silence, Kirov felt an invisible noose tightening, the bunched fist of the knot pressing against the back of his skull.

Finally, Stalin spoke. ‘Why would you say such a thing, Major Kirov? Pekkala carried out his orders, even if he himself was unable to return to Moscow. Such conduct might be deserving of a medal, if I could ever have persuaded him to accept it.’

‘But you have left out one thing, Comrade Stalin.’

‘And what is that?’

‘In the radio broadcast which reported that the panels had been safely removed to Siberia, you also declared the Amber Room to be an irreplaceable State treasure.’

‘True,’ Stalin admitted quietly, ‘but what of it?’

‘As you are surely aware,’ explained Kirov, ‘such a decree meant that the Amber Room was not allowed to be destroyed under any circumstances. And having made such a declaration, Comrade Stalin. .’

It was Stalin who finished the sentence. ‘I would not want the world to know that I was also responsible for its destruction.’

Kirov knew he’d gone too far to turn back now. ‘Pekkala was to be sacrificed. He must have known that from the moment you gave him the order.’

To Kirov’s surprise, however, Stalin did not explode into a fit of rage, as he usually did when confronted. Instead, he only drummed his fingers on the desk, while searching for the words that might make sense of such a contradiction. ‘What you are saying may well have been the case when I sent Pekkala on the mission back in 1941. But things have changed since then. We no longer stand on the brink of destruction. After the defeat of the German 6th Army at Stalingrad, the tide began to turn. Since then, the Allies have taken North Africa and are making their way up through Italy. Soon, their forces will begin an advance through northern Europe. It is only a matter of time before the German army is crushed between the pincers of our advancing forces. What happened to the Amber Room has now been eclipsed by the victories of the Red Army. But what happened to Pekkala has not. It is he who has proved to be irreplaceable, not the amber which I sent him to destroy. Since he went away, I have watched cases grow cold, and criminals slip away into the darkness, because only Pekkala could have caught them. Nevertheless,’ Stalin leaned forward, sliding his hands across the desk, ‘the fact that we have seen no trace of Pekkala since he disappeared obliges any reasonable man to conclude that he has finally vanished for good.’

‘Then you are calling off the search?’

‘On the contrary,’ replied Stalin. ‘I never claimed to be a reasonable man.’

‘Then what are your orders, Comrade Stalin?’

‘Find Pekkala! Scour the earth if you have to! Bring me that shape-shifting troll! From this point on, until the Inspector is standing here in front of me or else his bones are heaped upon this desk, you are excused from all other assignments.’

Kirov smashed his heels together in salute, then made his way towards the outer room, where Stalin’s secretary Poskrebychev was busily stamping documents with a facsimile of his master’s signature.

‘Major!’ exclaimed Poskrebychev, as Kirov entered the room.

Lost in thought as to how he could possibly accomplish Stalin’s orders, Kirov only nodded and moved on. He had just reached the end of the hall, and was about to descend the staircase which would take him eventually to the exit where he had parked his car, when he heard someone calling his name.

It was Poskrebychev again.

The stout little man, with his wispy garland of hair clinging to an otherwise bald head, was shuffling urgently towards Kirov in his slipper-leather shoes, which he wore as he moved noiselessly around his office, in order not to disturb Comrade Stalin.

‘Wait!’ said Poskrebychev, as he came to a halt in front of Kirov, sweat beading on his forehead even after such a mild exertion. ‘I must have a word with you, Major.’

Kirov looked at him questioningly. He had never seen Poskrebychev outside of his office before. It was almost as if the secretary could not survive in any other atmosphere, like a goldfish scooped out of its bowl.

Hesitantly, Poskrebychev took another step towards Kirov, until the two men stood uncomfortably close. Slowly, Poskrebychev reached out and clasped the flap of Kirov’s chest pocket. As if hypnotised by the texture of the cloth, he began to smooth the material between his thumb and first two fingers.

‘What’s wrong with you, Poskrebychev?’ Kirov blurted out, pushing him away.

Poskrebychev glanced nervously around, as if worried that someone else might be listening. But the hall was otherwise empty and the doors nearest to them were closed. Behind them, the sound of clattering typewriters would have drowned out even a loud conversation in the hall. In spite of this, Poskrebychev now moved even closer, causing Kirov to lean precariously backwards. ‘You should pay a visit to Linsky,’ he whispered.

‘Linsky? You mean Pekkala’s old tailor?’

Poskrebychev nodded gravely. ‘Linsky can help you, Major, just as he helped Pekkala.’

‘Yes, I’m well acquainted with Pekkala’s choice of clothing and, trust me, Poskrebychev, he is the one who needs help in that department. So you see, even if I did want a new uniform, which I don’t, I can assure you that I wouldn’t go to Linsky!’ As Kirov spoke, he pressed the pocket flap back into place, as if worried that his wallet might be missing.

‘It’s just a little friendly advice.’ Poskrebychev smiled patiently. ‘Even the smallest detail should not be overlooked.’

He’s gone mad, Kirov thought to himself, as he watched Poskrebychev return to his office, slippered feet whispering across the polished stone. The man is completely insane.

(Postmark: Nizhni-Novgorod, October 14th, 1936.)

Passed by Censor, District Office 7 NKVD

Ford Motor Plant

Worker’s Residence Block 3, ‘Liberty House’

Nizhni-Novgorod, Soviet Union

To:

The United Brotherhood of Steelworkers, Branch 11,

Jackson St,

Newark, New Jersey, USA

Boys, you ought to see this place!

I am now working at the Ford Motor plant, just like the one in Rouge River back home, and run by an American who used to work there — Mr Victor Herman. The only difference is that here in Russia, I don’t have to worry all the time about being fired, or having the shift bosses give me the high hat and knowing I have no choice but to take it. I have a house, just like they promised, as well as hot water and a roof that doesn’t leak. My wife is happy in our new, rent-free home and my daughter and my son both go to the local school, where they speak English. We even have our own newspaper now. It’s called the Moscow News.

It’s everything I hoped it would be and then some. I work hard but I get paid on time and if I get sick, there are doctors who will treat me for free. On the weekends, we play ball or else there are clubs for us, where we can play cards and relax.

In case you think that all the good jobs have been snapped up already, I’m here to tell you that there are still plenty of spots to be filled. This whole country is on the move. They are building bridges, planes, railways, houses, everything you can think of, and they need skilled workers like yourselves. So come on over! Don’t wait another day. Armtorg, the Russian company that operates out of New York, can help get you all the emigration papers you need, or else there’s Intourist, who can get you over here on a tourist visa. Trust me, though, once you’ve set foot in the Soviet Union, you won’t want to go back.

Your new friends are waiting for you.

And so is your old pal,

Bill Vasko

After driving back across the city, Kirov climbed the five flights of stairs to his office. With movements made unconscious by years of repetition, he unlocked the door, strode across the room and slumped into his battered chair by the stove.

The silence seemed to close in around him as he stared at Pekkala’s empty desk.

Stalin’s orders had done nothing to raise Kirov’s confidence. His stubborn belief that Pekkala might still be alive had lately begun to seem less like faith and more like pure delusion. Surely, he thought, if Pekkala was out there somewhere, he would have found a way to let me know. Why can’t I accept that he is truly gone?

The answer lay in a single detail, to which Kirov had been clinging since the day he heard that Pekkala was dead. It wasn’t what Rifleman Stefanov had found on the burned corpse. It was what he hadn’t found — the emerald eye.

Kirov felt certain that, even if Pekkala had been forced to leave behind all of his other belongings, he would never have parted with the eye. The gold badge had been the Inspector’s most prized possession; the symbol of everything he had accomplished since the Tsar first pinned it to his coat.

When questioned about it, the Rifleman had insisted that no such badge was on the body, leading Kirov to suspect that Pekkala might have faked his own death and gone into hiding.

Since the day Kirov had set eyes on the crumbled remains of Pekkala’s identity book, and the heat-buckled ruin of the Webley, the question of the missing badge had swung back and forth inside his brain with the relentless ticking of a metronome. But Kirov was no closer to answering it now than he had been at the beginning.

If it hadn’t been for Elizaveta, he would long since have gone out of his mind.

*

Kirov had first met Elizaveta Kapanina just before Pekkala departed on his last mission. She worked as a clerk in the Records Department at NKVD headquarters. Their office was located on the fourth floor, and required such a trudge to get there that most people simply left their requests for documents with the secretary on the ground floor and stopped back the following day to collect the files which had been brought down for them. But those flights of stairs were not the only reason people stayed clear of the fourth floor. The director of the Records Department, Comrade Sergeant Gatkina, was a woman of such legendary ferocity that, for many years, Kirov had heeded the advice of his NKVD colleagues and kept clear of the fourth floor.

But the day had come when Pekkala had insisted that certain documents be found immediately. With no choice but to ask for them directly, Kirov made the trek to the fourth floor. He had no idea what this Sergeant Gatkina looked like, but by the time he reached the metal grille at the entrance, behind which the thousands upon thousands of NKVD files slept in dusty silence, Kirov had conjured something nightmarish into the forefront of his mind.

Cautiously, he rested the weight of his hand upon a little button protruding from a bell set on the counter. But he lowered his palm so slowly that the bell hardly made a sound at all. To remedy this on the second attempt, Kirov struck it smartly with his fist. The bell gave a jarring clang and jumped from the counter as if the force of his blow had brought it to life. The bell tumbled to the floor, clanging even louder than before. Before Kirov could stop it, the bell had rolled across the narrow corridor and down a flight of stairs to the third floor landing, ringing all the while with a demented clatter that seemed to echo throughout the entire headquarters building.

By the time Kirov had retrieved the bell, a figure was waiting at the grille.

Kirov could only make out the face of a woman, but he felt certain this must be the fearsome-tempered Sergeant Gatkina. As he drew closer, however, Kirov realised that if the person who smiled at him through the black iron bars was indeed Sergeant Gatkina, then the rumours about her equally fearsome appearance were surely untrue. She was slight, with freckled cheeks, a round chin and dark, inquisitive eyes.

‘Comrade Gatkina?’ he asked nervously.

‘Oh, that’s not me,’ replied the woman, ‘but would you like me to fetch her?’

‘No!’ blurted Kirov. ‘That’s all right. Thank you. I’m here to pick up a document.’ He rummaged in his pocket for the scrap of paper on which Pekkala had written the file number. Clumsily, he poked the crumpled document under the bars.

‘People don’t usually come up here,’ remarked the woman, as she tried to decipher Pekkala’s writing.

‘Really?’ Kirov did his best to look surprised. ‘I can’t imagine why.’

‘What happened to the bell?’ asked the woman. ‘It’s missing.’

‘I have it right here.’ Hastily, Kirov put it back on the counter.

‘That is Sergeant Gatkina’s bell,’ whispered the woman.

‘She has her own bell?’

‘Yes.’ The woman nodded.

For the next few moments, the two of them stared at the miniature silver dome, as if the dents might suddenly flow together, like mercury, and become smooth once again.

It was the clerk who finally broke the silence. ‘I’ll just fetch your documents, Major,’ she said, as she spun on her heel and vanished into the paper labyrinth of the Records Office.

While he waited, Kirov paced back and forth between two closed doors at either end of the landing. He began to wonder how it was that he had never seen this woman before, in the canteen or the lobby or on the stairs. She must be new, thought Kirov. I would have remembered that face. And he began to calculate how he might find his way back here more often and how it might be possible to learn her name and to lure her out from behind those prison-like bars.

A few minutes later, a figure appeared at the grille.

‘That was quick!’ said Kirov cheerfully.

‘What happened to my bell?’ said a gravelly voice.

Kirov’s guts lurched as he focused in on a solid and putty-faced matron, with a thatch of grey hair densely bristling her scalp. The collar of her tunic was tightly fastened, and the skin of her neck overflowed it like the top of a Kulich Easter cake. Wedged between her knuckles was a hand-rolled machorka cigarette, whose acrid smoke enveloped her so thickly that the woman’s whole arm appeared to be smouldering. So this is Gatkina, he thought.

‘My bell,’ repeated the woman.

‘It fell down,’ Kirov struggled to explain. ‘I picked it up. There’s no harm done.’ To reinforce this statement, he stepped over to the counter and gave the bell a cheerful whack but instead of a deafening ring, it responded only with a dull clunk of metal on metal.

‘Why are you here?’ demanded Sergeant Gatkina. She seemed to be questioning his very existence.

At that moment, one of the side doors opened and the dark-eyed girl appeared. ‘I have your document, Major!’

‘Thank you!’ muttered Kirov, as he hurriedly plucked the dull grey envelope from her hand.

‘Is something wrong?’ she asked.

It was Gatkina who answered, her voice rumbling like a furnace. ‘He has ruined the bell.’

‘Comrade Sergeant!’ gasped the young woman. ‘I did not see you there.’

‘Evidently.’ Gatkina replied contemptuously. She fitted her lips around her cigarette, and the tip burned poppy red as she inhaled.

‘I must go,’ Kirov announced to no one in particular.

The young woman smiled faintly. ‘Just bring it back when you’re done, Major. .’

‘Kirov. Major Kirov.’

This was the moment when he had planned to ask her name, and where she was from and whether, by chance, she might join him for a glass of tea after work. But the smooth and seamless flow of questions was interrupted before it had even begun by Comrade Sergeant Gatkina, who proceeded to stub out her cigarette upon the counter top, using short, sharp, stabbing motions, as if breaking the neck of a small animal. This was accompanied by a loud, whistling exhalation of smoke through her nostrils.

‘When you come back,’ whispered the young woman.

Kirov leaned towards her. ‘Yes?’

‘Make sure you bring another bell.’

Kirov did return, and it was not until this second visit that he learned the name of the dark-eyed woman. And he had been going back ever since, slogging up those stairs to the fourth floor. Sometimes it was on official business, but usually not. That pretence had long since been set aside.

It took him an annoyingly long time to find another bell exactly like the one he had destroyed, but he did track one down eventually. And when he handed the replacement to Sergeant Gatkina, she placed it on her outstretched palm and stared at it for so long that Kirov felt certain he must have missed some crucial detail of its construction. Setting it on the counter, Gatkina struck it with her clenched fist and before the sound had died away, she hit it again. And again. A smile spread on her face as she pummelled the new bell, deafening everyone in the room. Satisfied at last, she ceased her attack and allowed the noise to fade away into the stuffy air. The ceremony concluded with the old bell being presented to Major Kirov as a memento of his clumsiness.

By this sign, Kirov came to understand that his presence would be tolerated from now on, not only by Sergeant Gatkina but also by the other inhabitant of the Records Office, Corporal Fada Korolenko, whose small head perched upon her pear-shaped body in a way that reminded Kirov of a Matryoshka doll.

Together, Kirov and these women formed a tiny and eccentric club, whose meetings took place within a small, windowless space used to hold buckets of sand for use in the event of fire. Placed along the walls, these buckets formed a border around the room, their grey sand spiked with Sergeant Gatkina’s cigarette butts. In the middle of the room, Kirov and the ladies perched on old wooden file boxes, drinking tea out of the dark green enamel mugs which were standard issue in every Soviet government building, every school, hospital and train station café in the country.

Running into Elizaveta that day had been one of the luckiest moments of his life. With her, he sometimes even managed to forget the gaping hole in his life which had been caused by Pekkala’s disappearance.

But Kirov always remembered by the time he returned to his office, and he would find himself as he was now, staring across the room at Pekkala’s empty desk. It almost seemed to Kirov as if the Inspector was actually there, silhouetted in some grey and shadowed form. Kirov steadfastly refused to believe in ghosts, but he could not deny the prickling sensation that sometimes he was not alone. This left him with the distinct feeling that he was being haunted by a man who might not even be dead.

In spite of his stubborn convictions, as far as Kirov was concerned, if anyone had figured out how to transform himself into a wandering spirit, it would be Pekkala, for the simple reason that he had never been completely of this world in the first place.

Evidence of this was the Inspector’s utter disregard for even the most basic creature comforts. Although Pekkala had a bed, he usually slept on the floor. His meals, when he remembered to eat them, were always taken at the dingy, sour-smelling café Tilsit, where customers sat at long, bare wooden tables, surrounded by a haze of tobacco smoke. Seemingly impervious to temperature, he wore the same clothing every day of the year, no matter what the weather was outside: corduroy trousers, a deep-pocketed waistcoat and a thigh-length double-breasted wool coat made from material so heavy that it would have been better put to use in the manufacture of curtains or carpets.

Kirov had abandoned any hope of unravelling the mystery of why the Inspector lived the way he did.

And if Stalin is right, thought Kirov, as he strode across to the window and looked out over the rooftops of the city, I must now devote my energy to solving the riddle of his death.

Catching sight of his own reflection in the glass, Kirov thought back to his bizarre encounter with Poskrebychev in the hallway of the Kremlin. Until Poskrebychev mentioned it, he hadn’t even considered buying a new tunic. But now, as Kirov surveyed his shabby appearance in the glass, he realised that the man had a point.

The cuffs of Kirov’s tunic were frayed and stained. Both elbows had been patched and the inside of his collar, polished by sweat, had turned from olive brown to a slick, gun-metal grey. Washing did little to help, except to shrink the cloth and fade what was left of its original colour.

Given the shortage of materials since the German invasion back in June of 1941, the idea of requisitioning a new uniform had simply been out of the question. As a result, the clothes he wore now were more than two years old and he had used them almost every day. But now that war aid was flowing in from the United States — everything from tanks to clothing to cans of blotchy pink meat commonly referred to as ‘The Second Front’ — the stranglehold on such items was slowly beginning to loosen and tailors like Linsky could find the raw materials to carry on their trades.

Kirov had previously convinced himself that he could perhaps get another year out of his present set of clothes. But if a man like Poskrebychev can notice the defects, he thought, then maybe it is time, after all.

And although Kirov hated to admit it, Linsky was a good tailor. It wasn’t his fault that Pekkala ordered him to make garments that were as much of a throwback to a bygone age as the Inspector himself seemed to be. Kirov took great pleasure in reminding Pekkala that Linsky was best known as a man who made clothes used for dressing corpses laid out at funerals. It only made sense that a man like Linsky should have ended up as tailor to the Emerald Eye, especially since Pekkala’s own family had been undertakers back in Finland.

Kirov’s good-natured mockery hid the fact that he was extremely self-conscious about his own appearance. He was tall, with a shallow chest and embarrassingly thin calves. His uniform cap made his ears stick out and his waist was so thin that he couldn’t get his thick brown gun belt, its buckle emblazoned with a hammer and sickle, to stay where it should across his stomach. Most shameful of all to Kirov was his thin neck, which, in his own opinion, jutted from the mandarin collar of his tunic like the stem of some pale, potted plant. Since joining NKVD, he had only ever worn issue clothing. His natural frugality prevented him from actually paying for a uniform when he could get one for free, even if the issue clothes never quite fitted as they should.

Maybe it’s time I listened to Poskrebychev, thought Kirov, as he climbed out of his chair. After all, I can’t report to Comrade Stalin in clothes fit only for the battlefield. The thought occurred to him suddenly that it might have been Stalin himself who raised the objection, and Poskrebychev was just delivering the message. The idea made him queasy, as Stalin was not slow in punishing those who failed to heed his advice. Now there was no question in his mind. It was time for a new set of clothes. Kirov only hoped that, if by some miracle the Inspector was still alive, he never learned about this trip to Linsky.

Jangling the car keys in his hand, Kirov trampled down the stairs towards the street, bound on a mission to Linsky’s.

(Postmark: Nizhni-Novgorod, June 14th, 1937.)

Ford Motor Plant

Workers’ Residence Block 3, ‘Liberty House’

Nizhni-Novgorod, Soviet Union

Boys, I am writing in haste. Whichever one of you opens this letter, I hope you will read it to the others. The truth is, I may need your help. My situation has changed recently. It’s too much to go into right now, but the upshot of it is that I am sending my family back to America. I expect it will only be temporary, but they are going to need a place to stay and since my wife’s family is spread out all over the Midwest, I figure it would be better for her and the kids to stay in a neighbourhood where she has friends like you. She’s going to need a place to stay. You know Betty. She doesn’t need much, and she’ll be glad to earn her keep in whatever way she can. I wouldn’t ask this of you if it wasn’t real important. But I am asking you now. I expect she will be home again in a couple of months at the outside. Depending on how things go, I might be following her in a matter of days or it could be a matter of weeks, but I think it’s best if she and the kids leave now. I don’t know if you’ve heard anything from the others who came over, and by that I mean anything about me specifically, but if you have, then just remember that there’s two sides to every story. I’ll explain it all when I see you again, which I hope won’t be too long from now.

Your old friend, Bill Vasko

The tyres of Kirov’s battered Emka saloon popped rhythmically over the cobblestones.

Robotically, Kirov steered down one street and another as the chassis of the Emka swayed creaking on its worn-out springs. He wheeled past roadblocks fashioned out of torn-up railroad tracks which had been in place since the winter of 1941, when advance units of the German army Group Centre came within sight of Moscow and the seizure of the capital had seemed almost a foregone conclusion. Now those sections of rail, welded into bouquets of rusted iron, seemed to belong to a different universe from the one in which Russia existed today.

At last, Kirov pulled up to the kerb outside Linsky’s. It was on a dreary street, so choked with ice and snow by midwinter that few vehicles would risk the journey. Even in summer, the tall buildings cleaved away the light except when the sun stood directly overhead.

As Kirov climbed out of the car, he paused and looked around. Apart from a man sweeping slush from the sidewalk with a large twig broom on the other side of the street, there was nobody around. And yet he had the feeling that he was being watched. This same sensation had come to him so many times since Pekkala disappeared that Kirov had begun to worry he might be growing paranoid. With gritted teeth, he scanned the windows of the buildings across the way, whose empty reflections returned his nervous stare. He looked up and down the street, but there was only the sweeper, his back turned to Kirov, methodically brushing the sidewalk. Finally, with a growl of frustration at his own fragmenting sanity, Kirov returned to his errand.

Linsky’s window had not changed in all the years that Kirov had known about the existence of this eccentric little business. The intricate floral designs etched into the corners of the frosted-glass window belonged to a style more reminiscent of the nineteenth century than of the twentieth.

Inside, it was cramped and poorly lit, with scuffed wooden floors and a large mirror at one end. On the other side of the room was a platform on which clients stood when they were being measured for their clothes. The wall behind the platform was papered dark green and decorated with vertical pillars of ivy printed in gold and red. The effect was like that of a dense hedgerow, through which Kirov imagined he might push into a secret garden on the other side. Opposite the entrance was a large wooden counter, on which stood an ancient cash register with a brass plate identifying its maker as M. Righetti, Bologna. On either side of the register stood little trays of pins, loose buttons and a tattered yellow tape measure, coiled like a snake about to strike.

Behind this stood Linsky himself. He was a slight but well-proportioned man, with rosy cheeks, pale blue eyes and hair combed so flat that an ashtray could have balanced on top. He had thin, smirking lips, which gave him an expression of permanent disdain that Kirov could not help but take to heart.

‘Comrade Linsky,’ he said, as he removed his cap and tucked it smartly under his right arm.

‘Major Kirov.’ Linsky bowed his head in formal greeting. ‘Comrade Poskrebychev mentioned that you might be stopping by.’

Kirov felt the blood rush to his face as he imagined the laughs they must have had at his expense. ‘I had been meaning to stop by, anyway,’ he muttered.

Faint wrinkles of bemusement appeared in the corners of the old man’s eyes. ‘Judging from the state of your clothes, Major, you have arrived not a minute too soon.’

Kirov’s jaw muscles clenched. ‘If we could just get started,’ he said.

‘Certainly,’ replied Linsky. Opening a drawer in the counter, he pulled out a black box and rifled through the crumpled documents inside. A moment later, he withdrew a letter and handed it to Kirov.

‘What’s this?’ he asked.

‘The real reason you are here,’ replied Linsky.

‘The real reason? I don’t understand.’

‘But you are about to, Major Kirov.’

Cautiously, Kirov took hold of the envelope, opened it and removed the piece of paper it contained. As he read, his head tilted to one side, like a man who has suddenly lost his balance.

The typed letter was an order for a new set of clothes, specifically two pairs of brown corduroy trousers made of 21-ounce cotton, three white collarless shirts made of linen with mother-of-pearl buttons, two waistcoats made of dark grey Bedford cord and one black double-breasted coat made of Crombie wool and lined with navy blue silk. At the bottom of the page was a date, specifying when the clothes should be ready.

The breath snagged in Kirov’s throat as he recognised the familiar patterns and materials. ‘Are these clothes for Pekkala?’

‘It would appear so,’ answered Linsky.

‘And this is from two weeks ago!’

‘Yes.’

‘So you have seen him!’

Linsky shook his head.

Kirov held up the piece of paper. ‘Then where did this come from? Was it mailed to you?

‘Somebody slid it under the door.’

‘So how can you be certain that these are for the Inspector? I admit I don’t know anyone else who dresses like this, but. .’

‘It’s not just the clothing,’ explained Linsky. ‘It’s the cloth. No one but Pekkala would have requested Crombie wool or Bedford cord. Those are English fabrics, of which I just happen to have a small quantity. And the only person who knows that I have them is the person who brought them to me before the Revolution, when I ran my business out of the Gosciny Dvor in Petrograd! He left the cloth with me so that I could use it to make the clothes he wanted. And that is what I have done for many years, for Pekkala and for no one else. The measurements are his, Major. There can be no doubt about who placed the order. They are exactly the same as he has always ordered from me. Well, almost exactly.’

‘What do you mean by ‘almost’?’ asked Kirov.

‘The coat had some modifications.’

‘What kind of modifications?’

‘Little pockets, two dozen of them, built into the left inside flap.’

‘What was the exact size of these pockets?’

‘Four centimetres long and two centimetres wide.’

Too wide for a bullet, thought Kirov.

‘And there was more,’ continued Linsky. ‘He also ordered several straps to be fitted into the right inside flap.’

‘For what purpose? Was it clear?’

Linsky shrugged. ‘The specifications were for double-thick canvas straps so whatever things he intended to carry with them must have been quite heavy. It required reinforcement of the coat’s entire right flap.’

‘More than one strap, you say?’

‘Yes. Three of them.’

‘Did they correspond to any particular shape?’

‘Not that I could tell. I puzzled over them for quite some time.’

‘And did you make the clothes?’

‘Of course, exactly as instructed.’

Kirov turned his attention back to the piece of paper in his hand. ‘According to this, everything should have been picked up by now.’

‘Yes, Major.’

‘But you say you haven’t seen Pekkala.’

‘No.’

‘Then where is the clothing? May I see it?’

‘No, Major. It’s all gone.’

‘Gone?’ Kirov’s forehead creased. ‘You mean somebody stole the clothes?’

‘Not exactly, Major.’ Linsky pulled back a dark blue curtain directly behind him, revealing a grey metal bar, on which hung several sets of newly finished clothes, waiting to be picked up by their owners. ‘On the day before everything was due to be picked up I placed the garments here, as I always do with outgoing orders. But when I arrived here for work on the following day, the clothes were missing. The lock had been picked.’

‘Did you report the break-in?’

‘No. Nothing was stolen.’

‘But you just told me you were robbed!’

‘The clothing was gone, but payment for the order was left in a small leather bag, hanging from the bar where the clothes had been hanging.’

‘And there were no messages inside?’

‘Just the money.’

‘Do you still have that leather bag?’

‘Yes, somewhere here.’ He rummaged in the drawer and pulled out a bag of the type normally used by Russian soldiers to carry their rations of machorka tobacco. The bags were made from circles of leather, which then had holes punched around the edges. A leather cord was threaded through the holes and drawn tight, forming the shape of the bag. The bag Linsky held out to Kirov was, like most bags of this type, made from soft, suede leather, since it was intended to be worn around the neck of the soldier, where the tobacco stood the best chance of staying dry.

‘What type of payment was used?’ asked Kirov. ‘Gold? Silver?’

‘Nothing so exotic, I’m afraid. Just paper notes. That’s all.’

‘Was anything written on them? There might have been a message.’

‘I thought of that,’ Linsky replied, ‘but it was just a fistful of money, the likes of which you’d find inside the pocket of every person walking past this shop.’

‘And all of this happened almost a week ago.’

‘Five days, to be precise.’

‘And why didn’t you tell anyone until now?’

‘I did,’ answered Linsky. ‘I told Comrade Poskrebychev the day after the clothes disappeared, when he came in to pick up a new tunic for himself.’

‘Let me get this straight, Linsky. You don’t trust me enough to let me know that Pekkala himself, with whom I have worked for over a decade, was, in all probability, standing right here in this shop when the whole world thinks he is dead and yet the only person in whom you choose to confide is Poskrebychev?’

Now Linsky leaned across the counter. For a moment, he did not speak, but only stared at Kirov, his pupils the colour of old glacier ice. ‘Would you mind if I spoke plainly, Major?’

‘I imagine that you’re going to, whether I mind it or not.’

‘There have only ever been a handful of people I trusted in this world,’ said Linsky, ‘and you and your Internal Security thugs killed most of them a long time ago. I do not question your loyalty, Major, only I find myself wondering with whom that loyalty ultimately rests. As for Poskrebychev, he and I have spoken about Pekkala many times before and I know he would do anything, just as I would, to help the Emerald Eye. I can only hope his instincts are correct and that you will use whatever help we can offer to guarantee Pekkala’s safe return.’

‘That much, at least, we can agree upon,’ said Kirov, as he handed Linsky the leather tobacco bag.

Linsky held up his hands in refusal. ‘Hold on to that, Major. Perhaps, one day soon, you can return it to our mutual friend. Now,’ he gestured towards the platform on the other side of the room, ‘if you would not mind standing over there, we can get you fitted for your new uniform.’

‘Is that really necessary now?’ asked Kirov.

Linsky glanced at him knowingly. ‘Why else would you be here, Comrade Major?

*

After his brief conversation with Major Kirov in the hallway outside Stalin’s office, Poskrebychev had returned to his desk and immediately resumed his rubber-stamping of official documents. But his hands were trembling so much that he kept smudging the facsimile of Stalin’s signature. Eventually, he was forced to set it aside. He folded his hands in his lap and breathed deeply, trying to slow the tripping rhythm of his heart.

Ever since Linsky had confided in him, Poskrebychev had known that he could not go to Stalin with the news. As far as the Boss was concerned, Pekkala was either dead or soon would be if he ever reappeared. In spite of what Stalin had said to Major Kirov, Poskrebychev knew from experience that death warrants, such as had been issued for Pekkala, were rarely, if ever, rescinded. Only Kirov could help Pekkala now, and Poskrebychev’s loyalty to the Inspector demanded that he pass along to the major what he had learned in Linsky’s shop. But how? He couldn’t place a call to Kirov. All of the Kremlin lines were monitored, even those originating from Stalin’s own office. The same was true for telegrams and letters. Poskrebychev didn’t dare go in person to the Major, in case he was observed along the way. If that happened, questions would be asked and those questions would end with his brains splashed on the wall of Lubyanka prison. Days passed as Poskrebychev struggled to find a solution. Valuable time was being wasted. Just when Poskrebychev was on the verge of despairing, Stalin had summoned Kirov to a briefing. Poskrebychev knew that this would be his only chance, but he couldn’t just blurt it out there in the halls of the Kremlin, where ears were pressed to every door and unblinking eyes peered from each polished brass key hole. All he could do was to point the Kirov in the right direction and hope that the major did as he was told.

But now his mind was filled with doubts. He won’t go, thought Poskrebychev. It would never occur to Kirov that I might know anything of value except those scraps of information which Stalin permits me to overhear from his office, like breadcrumbs swept from a table for a dog to lick up after a meal.

But this time it was different.

In spite of the risk, Poskrebychev did not regret what he had done, nor would he have taken such a risk for anyone except the Emerald Eye.

The reason for this was that he and the great Inspector shared a secret of their own which, if Pekkala had ever divulged it, would undoubtedly have cost Poskrebychev his life. But Poskrebychev knew without a shadow of doubt that his secret would be safe with Pekkala. The very fact that Pekkala had never used this knowledge as leverage against him, nor even mentioned it in passing, was what now compelled Poskrebychev to do whatever he could on behalf of the Emerald Eye.

It all had to do with a joke. Several jokes, in fact, all of them conjured by Stalin and unleashed upon his secretary. They amounted to three or four each year, and ranged from sawing the legs off Poskrebychev’s desk to dismantling it entirely so that it collapsed on top of him when he opened the main drawer. There had been others, less inspired, such as the day Stalin’s bodyguard, Pauker, threw him in a duck pond on Stalin’s orders, after Poskrebychev had admitted that he could not swim.

When Poskrebychev described these events to the few friends he possessed, he was astonished and frustrated to discover that none of them actually believed him. Comrade Stalin would not engage in such behaviour, they told him. The Boss is too serious a man to be amused by acts of mere frivolity.

What their shuttered minds so stubbornly failed to comprehend was that these jokes, and the cruelty which lay at their core, revealed more about Stalin’s true nature than anything which they might ever wring out of the pages of Izvestia.

If they could only have witnessed Pauker, describing to Stalin how, at the trial of Nikolai Bukharin, one of Stalin’s most loyal followers, the accused man had begged the court to notify the Boss as he was led away to be shot, little realising that it was Stalin himself who had ordered the execution. With ape-like gestures Pauker acted out the scene, clawing at the walls and promising to make amends for crimes he had never committed.

Stalin enjoyed it so much that he ordered Pauker to tell the story twice. Each time Stalin wept with laughter, gasping for breath until finally he had waved everyone out of his office. For the rest of the day, fits of giggling exploded from the room as Stalin replayed Pauker’s antics in his head.

But there was no laughter when, soon afterwards, Stalin ordered Pauker himself to be shot against the wall of Lubyanka.

After Poskrebychev’s desk collapsed, and Stalin’s crow-like cackling reached him through the scratchy intercom, something snapped inside him. Poskrebychev did something he had thought he’d never do. He took revenge.

Knowing the fastidiousness with which Stalin monitored his surroundings, Poskrebychev waited until Stalin left for a meeting, then crept into his master’s office and began to rearrange the objects in the room. The chair. The clock. The curtains. The ashtray. He moved them only fractions of centimetres, so that the displacement of each object by itself would have gone unnoticed. But cumulatively, the effect was exactly as Poskrebychev had intended. When Stalin arrived at his office, he was driven almost to distraction by some nameless anxiety whose source he could not comprehend. After the Boss had left, Poskrebychev replaced everything exactly as it had been before, which only added to Stalin’s consternation when he showed up the following day.

For a brief moment, Poskrebychev believed he had committed the perfect act of revenge. Then Pekkala emerged from a meeting in Stalin’s office and, stopping at Poskrebychev’s desk, very carefully moved the black box of the intercom a hair’s breadth to one side. No words passed between them. There was no need. In that moment, Poskrebychev knew he’d been discovered by the only person, he now realised, who could possibly have figured it out.

This was the secret they shared, the value of it measured not only by the fact that it was safe, but that someone aside from Poskrebychev had enjoyed a laugh at the expense of Joseph Stalin. And survived.

(Postmark: none.)

Letter hand delivered to American Embassy, Spano House, Mokhovaya St, Moscow.

Date: July 2nd, 1937

Dear Ambassador Davies,

My name is Betty Jean Vasko and I am a citizen of the United States of America. I came here to see you in person, but the secretary here told me you are away on a sailing trip and will not be back for some time. I asked him to forward this letter to you and he said he would see what he could do.

I am writing to you about my husband, William H. Vasko, who is a foreman at the Ford Motor Car Plant in Nizhni Novgorod.

We came to Russia last year so that my husband could look for work. He had been laid off from his job where we lived in Newark, New Jersey, and we had no prospects there at the time. We brought our two children with us because we didn’t know how long we would be gone and we considered the possibility that we might settle here in Russia for good.

When we arrived, my husband quickly found work at the Ford plant and, for a while, things were pretty good. My husband was promoted to foreman of the welding section. We had a house, thanks to the company. We had food and we had a school for our children. Truly, Ambassador, the closest I have come to living the American Dream was right here in the Soviet Union.

But things have taken a turn for the worse and that is why I am writing to you now. Last week, Bill was arrested by Russian police at our home, just as we were sitting down to dinner. I do not know why this happened and the police did not give us a reason. They put him into the back of a car and drove away and I have not seen him since. And Mr Ambassador, that car was one of the same Fords my husband helped to make!

I went to the police station in Nizhni-Novgorod but they told me he wasn’t being held there. They told me to go home and wait for a call, which I did. I waited three days, then four then five and finally I decided I would have to come to you to ask for help.

Ambassador Davies, please help me to find out what has happened to my husband and to secure his release because whatever they are saying he did, I swear he is innocent. As a citizen of the United States, I’m sure he must be entitled to representation by our government.

Thank you for taking the time to read my letter. Please hurry. I do not have a job as I have been home with the kids. I have no means of support except my husband’s salary and do not know how much longer the factory will continue to allow us to remain in the housing they provide.

Yours sincerely,

Betty Jean Vasko

Immediately after departing from Linsky’s shop, Kirov drove straight to NKVD Headquarters in Lubyanka Square. But instead of heading up to the fourth floor to visit Elizaveta, as he usually did, this time he made his way down to the basement to consult with Lazarev, the armourer.

Lazarev was a legendary figure at Lubyanka. From his workshop in the basement, he managed the supply and repair of all weapons issued to Moscow NKVD. He had been there from the beginning, personally appointed by Felix Dzerzhinsky, the first head of the Cheka, who commandeered what had once been the offices of the All-Russian Insurance Company and converted it into the Centre of the Extraordinary Commission. From then on, the imposing yellow-stone building served as an administrative complex, prison and place of execution. The Cheka had changed its name several times since then, from OGPU to GPU to NKVD, transforming under various directors into its current incarnation. Throughout these gruelling and sometimes bloody metamorphoses, which emptied, reoccupied and emptied once again the desks of countless servants of the State, Lazarev had remained at his post, until only he remained of those who had set the great machine of Internal State Security in motion. This was not due to luck or skill in navigating the minefield of the purges, but rather to the fact that, no matter who did the killing and who did the dying above ground, a gunsmith was always needed to make sure the weapons kept working.

For a man of such mythic status, Lazarev’s appearance came as something of a disappointment. He was short and hunched, with pockmarked cheeks so pale they seemed to confirm the rumours that he never travelled above ground, but migrated like a mole through secret tunnels known only to him beneath the streets of Moscow. He wore a tan shop-coat, whose frayed pockets sagged from the weight of bullets, screwdrivers and gun parts. He wore this tattered coat buttoned right up to his throat, giving rise to another rumour; namely that he wore nothing underneath. This story was reinforced by the sight of Lazarev’s bare legs beneath the knee-length coat. He had a peculiar habit of never lifting his feet from the floor as he moved about the armoury, choosing instead to slide along like a man condemned to live on ice. He shaved infrequently, and the slivers of beard that jutted from his chin resembled the spines of a cactus. His eyes, watery blue in their shallow sockets, showed his patience with a world that did not understand his passion for the gun and the wheezy, reassuring growl of his voice, once heard, was unforgettable.

The last time Kirov had seen Lazarev was to hand over the fire-damaged Webley belonging to Pekkala, and which had been brought back from the front line by Rifleman Stefanov as proof of the Inspector’s death. The once lustrous bluing on its barrel had been peeled away by the intensity of the blaze that had devoured the body on which it had been found. The trigger spring no longer functioned. Empty bullet cases appeared to have fused in place inside the cylinder. It was lucky that Pekkala had fired all the rounds. If the cartridges had been loaded, they would almost certainly have exploded in the fire, destroying the weapon completely. Only the brass grips, peculiar to this weapon, seemed to have been unaffected by the blaze and the metal still glowed softly as it had done when Pekkala carried the weapon with him, everywhere he went.

Even though the weapon was so damaged as to be inoperable, regulations dictated that it still had to be delivered to the NKVD armoury for processing.

‘Major!’ exclaimed Lazarev, as Kirov reached the bottom of the stairs. ‘What brings you down here to the bowels of the earth? From what I hear these days, your visits are usually,’ he grinned and aimed a dirty finger at the ceiling, ‘to the lair of Sergeant Gatkina.’

Kirov sighed, wondering if there was anyone in this building who did not know every detail of his romance with Elizaveta. ‘I’m here,’ he said, ‘because I need some advice.’

‘If it’s anything to do with that charming young lady on the fourth floor,’ remarked Lazarev, allowing his hands to settle gently upon the counter top which separated the two men, its surface strewn with gun parts, oil cans, pull-through cloths and brass bristled brushes, coiled like the tails of newborn puppies, ‘then I’m afraid you have come to the wrong place.’

‘I want to know why someone would have certain modifications made to an overcoat.’

‘An overcoat?’ Lazarev screwed up his face in confusion, sending wrinkles like branches of lightning from the corners of his eyes. ‘I’m a weapons man, Major. Not a follower of haute couture.’

‘That much I know already,’ Kirov told him, and he went on to describe the loops and straps which Linsky had built into the coat.

Lazarev nodded slowly as he listened. ‘And you think this has something to do with weaponry?’

‘I believe it might.’

‘What leads you to this conclusion?’

‘The coat in question was made for Inspector Pekkala.’

‘Ah, yes,’ muttered Lazarev, ‘the famous Webley.’

‘But even I can tell that those straps weren’t made for a revolver. I was hoping you could tell me what they are.’

‘Does it really matter now?’ Lazarev drew in a slow, rustling breath. ‘Why can’t you let a dead man rest in peace?’

‘I would,’ replied Kirov, ‘if I believed that he was truly dead.’

Lazarev touched his fingertips to his lips, momentarily lost in thought. ‘I always wondered if they’d really got to him. Since he disappeared, rumours have trickled down to me here in the basement, but it’s hard to know which ones you can believe.’

‘I must follow them all,’ replied Kirov. ‘There is no other way.’

‘Well, I don’t know if this will help you or not, Major, but I know exactly what those straps were made for.’

‘You do?’

‘A shotgun.’

Kirov shook his head. ‘Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. You couldn’t hide a whole shotgun under that coat. It’s too short.’

‘You could,’ insisted Lazarev, ‘if the gun had also been modified.’

‘But how?’

‘It’s an old poacher’s trick. Cut down the stock, saw off the end of the barrel. Rework the hinge so that barrel and stock can be quickly pulled apart and fitted back together. Hang the separate pieces in your jacket, gun on one side, ammunition on the other.’

‘Shotgun shells,’ exclaimed Kirov. ‘Of course! That’s what those loops would hold, but I doubt that Pekkala would have turned his talents to poaching ducks.’

‘Not ducks, Major. My guess is that he’s after bigger prey. Few weapons can do more damage at close range than a shotgun. It is hardly a weapon of precision, but as a blunt and lethal instrument, you’d be hard pressed to find something better.’

‘That still doesn’t explain what he’d be doing with it. We’re in the middle of a war of rifles and machine guns and cannons and tanks. Who would choose a shotgun to fight against weapons like those?’

Lazarev did not hesitate. ‘The answer is partisans. Think about it, Major. The coat you have described to me is not a piece of military uniform.’

Kirov agreed. ‘Except for those modifications, it’s the same kind of coat he always wore.’

‘Now who wears civilian clothes and still carries weapons?’

‘Some members of Special Operations. Pekkala for one.’

‘And except for him, they all carry Tokarev automatics. But the only people out of uniform who are involved in the kind of close-quarter fighting where shotguns are turned into an anti-personnel weapon are partisans. Shotgun ammunition isn’t regulated the way military ammunition is, because people still use it for hunting and the more they can hunt, the less they have to rely on the authorities to feed them. If you’re looking for him, Major, you should begin your search among the partisans.’

‘But there must be hundreds of groups scattered behind the German lines.’

‘Thousands, more likely, and most of them in western Ukraine. Some groups have only a few dozen members. Others are almost as large as divisions in the army. There are bands of Ukrainian Nationalists, Poles, Jews, Communists, and escaped POW’s. And they aren’t all fighting the Germans. Some of these people are so busy fighting each other that they barely have time for the Fascists. And as far as the Germans are concerned, the whole lot of them should be finished off. They give out awards to their soldiers who fight against the partisans. The medal shows a skull with snakes coiled around it. That’s how they think of the partisans; as nothing more than reptiles to be wiped off the face of the earth.’

‘Stalin has ordered me to track down Pekkala, no matter where the journey takes me, but if you’re right, Lazarev, then how on earth do I even begin searching for him?’

‘For that, you’ll need more clues than the one you have found in this coat, but if you do locate the Inspector, you may as well give this to him.’ As Lazarev spoke, he opened a battered metal cabinet, removed an object wrapped in a dirty, oily rag and handed the bundle to Kirov.

Inside, Kirov was astonished to find Pekkala’s Webley. The last time Kirov had seen this gun, it was little more than a charred relic. Now, with its fresh coat of bluing, the Webley appeared almost new. While Lazarev folded his arms and gazed on with satisfaction at his work, Kirov squinted down the barrel, then opened the gun, which folded forward on a hinge. He spun the well-oiled cylinder, and examined with approval the almost gilded finish of the solid brass handles.

‘How did you do it, Lazarev?’ gasped Kirov.

‘For many months now, it has been my secret project.’

‘And what did you plan on doing with it when you finished?’

‘Exactly what I’m doing now,’ he answered. ‘Making sure that the Webley is returned to its proper owner.’

‘So you didn’t believe the stories, either?’

‘About Pekkala’s death?’ Lazarev waved a hand through the air, as if to brush away the words he had just spoken. ‘The day they can find a way to kill the Inspector, I’ll hang up this coat and go home.’

‘I will hand this to him personally,’ said Kirov, tucking the gun inside his tunic, ‘and it won’t leave my sight until then.’ He turned to leave.

‘You are forgetting something, Major.’

Kirov spun around. ‘I am?’

Lazarev slid a fist-sized cardboard box across the counter. A dog-eared paper label, written in English, listed the contents as fifty rounds of Mark VI.455 Revolver ammunition, dated 1939 and manufactured by the Birmingham Small Arms factory. ‘Bullets for the Webley,’ he explained.

‘Where on earth did you find these?’ asked Kirov.

‘The British Ambassador here in Moscow had a rather expensive shotgun made by James Woodward on which the side-lock ejector had broken. Stalin himself referred the Ambassador to me, in order to see if the gun could be repaired. When I had completed the work, the Ambassador offered to pay me, but this,’ he tapped the box of bullets, ‘is what I asked for instead. You can tell Pekkala that there are plenty more where these came from. Now,’ Lazarev held out his hand, palm up, like a man looking to be paid, ‘before you leave, let’s have a look at your own gun, Major Kirov.’

Kirov did as he was told, removing the Tokarev from its leather holster and handing it to Lazarev.

With none of the reverence he had shown to Pekkala’s Webley, Lazarev took hold of the weapon. With movements so fast that they were hard to follow, he disassembled the Tokarev and laid it out in front of him. Over the next few minutes, Lazarev inspected the barrel to check for pitting, tested the recoil spring, the trigger and the magazine. Satisfied, he reassembled the gun and returned it to Kirov. ‘Good,’ said Lazarev.

‘I’m glad you approve,’ replied Kirov.

‘I expect you’ll need that where you’re going. And I hope for your sake that you’re right about one thing if you do ever find Pekkala.’

‘What is that, Lazarev?’

‘That the Emerald Eye wants to be found.’

Letter forwarded July 16th, 1937 by Samuel Hayes, clerk at US Embassy Moscow, to poste-restante Gotland, Sweden, awaiting arrival of yacht ‘Sea Cloud’ on extended tour of Baltic region.

Letter arrived Gotland August 2nd, 1937.

Forwarded to Grand Hotel, Oslo, August 10th.

Forwarded to Hotel Rondane, Bergen, September 1st.

September 30th, 1937, Hirtshals, Denmark. Yacht ‘Sea Cloud’. Memo from Joseph Davies, US Ambassador to Moscow, to Secretary Samuel Hayes, Moscow.

The Ambassador has no comment on the matter of the arrest of William Vasko or on the numerous other arrests of American citizens which have allegedly taken place in recent weeks. He is confident that any arrests are the result of crimes committed and confident, also, that the Soviet authorities were acting within their legal jurisdiction in these cases. Said authorities will process these criminals according to their own judicial system, at which time said authorities will notify the Embassy. Until such time, no action should be taken that could impede the forward momentum of US-Soviet relations.

Signed, p/p for Joseph Davies, Ambassador

Before leaving NKVD headquarters, Kirov climbed up to the fourth floor, where he found Elizaveta, Sergeant Gatkina and Corporal Korolenko in the fire-bucket room, just sitting down to tea.

Sergeant Gatkina slapped her hand upon the empty crate beside her. ‘Perfect timing, Major,’

‘I have some good news,’ announced Kirov, as he took his place upon the rough wooden seat.

‘A promotion, I hope,’ said Gatkina. ‘It’s about time they made you a colonel.’

‘About time!’ echoed Corporal Korolenko.

Gatkina turned and stared at her. ‘Must you repeat everything I say?’

Korolenko did her best to look offended, turning up her nose and looking the other way, as if suddenly fascinated by the wall.

‘Well, no,’ began Kirov, ‘it’s not a promotion. Not that, exactly.’

‘Is it scandal?’ asked Corporal Korolenko, unable to sustain her indignation. ‘Because I love scandal.’

‘Then find yourself some general to seduce!’ grumbled Sergeant Gatkina.

‘I might,’ replied Korolenko, sipping at the scalding tea. ‘I just might.’

‘Spit it out, Major!’ commanded Gatkina, oblivious to their difference in rank.

‘It’s about Pekkala,’ explained Kirov.

At the mention of the Inspector, a tremor seemed to pass through the room.

‘What about him?’ asked Elizaveta.

‘I’ve been given new orders by Comrade Stalin. I’m no longer tied down here in Moscow. I am to search for the Inspector, no matter where it takes me. He told me to scour the earth if I had to! And that is exactly what I intend to do. New evidence has surfaced. I can’t talk about it. Not yet. But I can tell you that there’s a chance, a good chance, that Pekkala might still be alive.’

For a while, there was nothing but silence.

‘Tea break is over!’ announced Sergeant Gatkina. ‘Back to work, Korolenko.’

‘But I’ve just sat down!’ protested the corporal.

‘Then you can just stand up again!’

Muttering, Korolenko left the room, followed by Sergeant Gatkina, who rested her gnarled hand gently on Elizaveta’s shoulder. ‘Not you, dear,’ she said.

And then it was just Kirov and Elizaveta.

‘What did I say?’ asked Kirov. ‘Why did they leave like that?’

Elizaveta breathed in slowly. ‘Because they know I have been dreading the day that you would bring me news like this.’

‘News that Pekkala. .?’

‘Yes,’ she told him flatly.

‘But I thought you would be pleased!’

‘Did it never occur to you that I might wish he would never come back?’

‘Of course not!’ replied Kirov. ‘I don’t understand you, Elizaveta.’

‘Do you know that when Sergeant Gatkina heard you were working with Pekkala, she gave you six months to live?’

‘Why would she do that?’

‘Because of something everyone can see. Except you, apparently.’

‘And what would this be?’ he demanded.

‘Death travels with that man,’ she said. ‘He is drawn to it and it is drawn to him.’

‘And yet he has survived!’

‘But those around him have not. Don’t you see? He is like the lamb that leads other sheep to the slaughter.’

‘That’s ridiculous!’ laughed Kirov. ‘Listen to yourself.’

But Elizaveta was not smiling. ‘The first time I looked in Pekkala’s eyes, I knew exactly why the Tsar had chosen him.’

‘And why is that?’

‘Because of what he is.’

‘Because of who he is, you mean.’

‘No, that is not what I mean. If you go out there,’ Elizaveta aimed a finger through the wall, ‘in search of that man, I’m afraid you will never come back.’

‘Even if that were true, what choice do I have? Stalin has given me orders!’

‘To look for him, yes, but how hard you look is up to you.’

A look of confused disappointment passed like a shadow across Kirov’s face. ‘Even if I had no orders, you know what I would do.’

She nodded. ‘And that is why I am afraid.’

*

With Elizaveta’s words still echoing in his head, Kirov returned to the office.

Immediately, he set to work. After clearing everything off his desk, he laid out a map of Ukraine. Kirov’s lips moved silently as he whispered the names of places he’d never heard of before. Bolshoi Dvor, Dubovaya, Mintsevo. The vastness of it overwhelmed him.

If Pekkala really is out there, thought Kirov, somewhere in that wilderness of unfamiliar names, then why did he come all this way to Moscow, only to vanish again without ever getting in touch?

Lost in his own mind, Kirov reached instinctively for his pipe and the dwindling supply of good tobacco which he kept in the drawer of his desk. The tobacco was stored in an old leather pouch, so old and frayed that blond crumbs sifted through its broken seams every time he picked it up. Remembering the new pouch given to him by Linsky, Kirov fished it out of his pocket. For a moment, he studied the leather, turning it over in his hand as if the wrinkles of its grain, which curved and wandered like the roads upon the map which lay beneath it, might offer him some clue as to its original owner. Finding nothing, he untied the cord which held the pouch together and turned it inside out, to make sure it was free of dust and grit before loading the pouch with tobacco.

That was when he noticed a small black symbol burned into the hide. It showed what looked like two commas, facing each other. Beneath the commas was a triangle, the tip of which nudged up between the brackets. Under the triangle were the numbers 243.

It was just a tanner’s mark, the likes of which he had seen branded on leather saddles when his parents had run a tavern in a village called Torjuk on the road between Moscow and Petrograd.

Travellers arrived at all times of day or night, and it had been Kirov’s duty to see to their horses, removing the saddles, brushing them down and feeding them before the travellers departed. Almost every saddle had some kind of stamp in the leather, and sometimes several, placed there not only by the craftsmen who had manufactured the saddle but also by their owners. It had always seemed to Kirov that there were as many different stamps as there were saddles which he lifted from the backs of tired horses.

There was only one person he knew of who might have any idea how to trace such a symbol — a cobbler named Podolski. After the disappointment of his meeting with Lazarev, Kirov held out little hope that this tiny symbol might bring him any closer to Pekkala. But he knew he had to try, if only for the sake of thoroughness. With a groan, he rose to his feet and made his way back downstairs.

This time, Kirov did not take the car, but walked instead, striding across the city with his particular loping gait, the heel irons of his boots sparking off the cobblestones.

Podolski ran a shoe-repair business in a side street across from Lubyanka Square. His proximity to NKVD headquarters, and the fact that he specialised in military boots, meant that the personnel of Internal Security comprised almost all of his customers.

Unlike Linsky’s front window, which at least contained the products of his trade, festooned though they were upon some of the ugliest mannequins Kirov had ever seen, Podolski’s window display had nothing to do with shoes. The dusty space was strewn with old books, hats and odd gloves which Podolski had picked up off the street. This collection of orphaned relics was presided over by an old Manx cat who never seemed to move from its fur-matted cushion.

Just before he stepped inside the shop, Kirov paused and looked around. Once again, he had the feeling that he was being watched. But the side street was empty, and so was Lubyanka Square. No faces loomed from the doorway of NKVD Headquarters, or from the shuttered windows up above. And yet he experienced the unmistakable sensation of a stare burning into him, like a pinpoint of sun concentrated through a magnifying glass. I really am losing my mind, he told himself. If Stalin knew what was going on in my head, he’d tear up my Special Operations pass and have me thrown out into the street. If I could just talk to someone about it, he thought, but the only one who’d understand is Pekkala. I can’t breathe a word of this to Elizaveta. She already thinks I’m mad for not giving up on this search. I love her, he thought. I just don’t know if I can trust her. Not with something like this. Can you love someone and still not trust them? he wondered. Or do only mad men think these thoughts?

Podolski’s shop smelled of polish, glue and leather. Rows of repaired boots, buffed to a mirror shine, stood on shelves awaiting their owners, while boots still in need of repair lay heaped upon the floor.

Podolski was a squat, broad-shouldered man, whose body looked as if it had been designed for lifting heavy objects. A pair of glasses hung on a greasy length of string around his tree-trunk neck. On his gnarled feet, he wore a pair of old sandals so thrashed by years of use and neglect that if a customer had brought them in, he would have refused to fix them.

‘I just fixed your boots!’ muttered Podolski, when he caught sight of Kirov. He sat on a block of wood which had been draped with a piece of old carpet, a hammer in one hand and an army boot grasped in the other. The boot was positioned upon a dingy iron frame which resembled the branches of a tree. The end of each branch had been formed into shapes like the bills of large ducks, each one corresponding to the size and type of shoe which Podolski was repairing. Clenched between Podolski’s teeth were half a dozen miniature wooden pegs, used for attaching a new leather sole. When he spoke, the pegs twitched in his lips as if they were the legs of some small creature trying to escape from his mouth.

‘I’m not here about my boots, Comrade Podolski,’ replied Kirov. ‘I’ve come because I need your help.’

Podolski paused, hammer raised. Then he turned his head to one side and spat out the pegs between his teeth. Lowering the hammer to his side, he allowed it to slip from his fingers. The heavy iron fell with a dull thump to the floor. ‘The last time someone asked me for my help, I ended up fighting at the front for two years. And that was in the last war! Don’t say you’re calling me up again!’

Ignoring Podolski’s outburst, Kirov handed him the piece of leather from the tobacco bag. ‘Do you recognise that symbol?’

Without taking his eyes from the blurred scar of the brand mark, Podolski slid his fingers down the string attached to his glasses and perched them on the end of his nose. ‘The numbers 243 are the date this leather was tanned. It means ‘the second work quarter of 1943’, so somewhere around June or July of this year. But the symbol,’ he clicked his tongue, ‘isn’t one I’ve ever seen before. There are thousands of those symbols and they all look more or less the same. Trying to isolate just one of them would be like carrying water with a sieve.’

‘That’s what I was afraid of.’ Already, Kirov regretted having left the comfort of his office.

‘You’d have to go through the whole book,’ said Podolski.

‘A book?’ asked Kirov. ‘There’s a book of these symbols?’

‘A big book, but it would take hours to go through.’

‘Where can I find it?’ Kirov snapped impatiently.

With a groan, Podolski rose to his feet and made his way over to the window of his shop. ‘I’ve got it here somewhere.’

‘Find it, Podolski! This could be very important.’

‘Patience, Major. Patience.’ He paused to scratch the ear of his cat. ‘You should be like my friend here. He’s never in a hurry.’

‘I don’t have time to be patient!’ replied Kirov.

Podolski lifted up a thick volume crammed with pulpy grey pages. ‘Then good luck to you, Major,’ he said as he tossed the book to Kirov, ‘because you’ll find thousands of those little brands in there.’

The volume thumped against Kirov’s chest, almost knocking the wind out of him.

‘It’s probably in there somewhere,’ continued Podolski, making his way back to the wooden block. Thoughtfully, he rearranged the piece of carpet before sitting down again. ‘Unless it’s not a Soviet brand, in which case, you are completely out of luck. Either way, I wouldn’t know. I’ve never even looked in it.’

Kirov looked around for a chair, but there wasn’t one, so he lowered himself down to the floor with his back against the wall and rested the book on his lap. He was just about to open it, when suddenly he paused. ‘Why do you even have this book, Podolski, if you’ve never looked in it?’

‘The government gave it to me. I told them I didn’t want it, but they said it was the law. I have to own a copy, and so does anyone else who works with leather in this country.’

‘But why?’

‘All the leather I use for mending shoes and belts and whatever else comes through that door has to come from a State-approved tannery. Each tannery has its own symbol. They stamp the outer edges usually. You find them in each corner, in the parts of the hide that aren’t of even thickness or have too many creases. They usually get thrown away as scrap or turned into laces or,’ he skimmed the tobacco bag across the floor to Kirov, ‘turned into trinkets like these. As long as one of those stamps is on the hide when I buy it, I have nothing to worry about. But if I get caught using leather which hasn’t been approved, whether it’s any good or not, then I’m in trouble. And given my clientele, Major, that’s a chance I’d rather not take.’

‘You mean you have to go through this whole book every time you buy a hide for fixing shoes?’

‘All my leather comes from two or three local tanneries. I know their symbols by heart. One thing I can tell you, Major, wherever this came from, it’s nowhere near Moscow.’

Kirov began leafing through the fragile pages.

Podolski went back to work, after carefully fitting a new set of wooden pegs between his teeth.

The tanneries were listed alphabetically, each one with a symbol marked beside it, and Podolski was right — there were thousands to sort through. After half an hour of staring at symbols, they all started to look the same. They seemed to jump across the flimsy paper as if the book held a nestful of insects. Kirov kept losing his focus, sliding away into daydreams, only to wake from them and realise that he had been turning pages without looking at them properly. He had to go back and look at them again.

‘It’s time for me to go home,’ said Podolski. ‘My wife will be wondering what’s happened.’

‘Patience, Podolski,’ replied Kirov. ‘Think of your cat.’

‘He’s not married,’ grumbled Podolski. ‘He can afford to be patient.’

Two hours later, just as Podolski was closing up his shop for the day, sweeping the floor for scraps of leather and tooth-marked wooden pegs, Kirov located the symbol among the tanneries beginning with the letter K. By then, he was so dazed that he had to stare at it for a while before he could be sure. ‘Kolodenka Leather Cooperative,’ he read aloud.

Podolski’s broom came to a rustling halt across the floor. ‘Kolodenka! Where the hell is that?’

‘No idea,’ replied Kirov, ‘but wherever it is, that’s where I’m going.’

‘Then I hope it’s some place in the sun.’ Podolski propped his broom in the corner. Removing a small can of ground meat from the shelf above his head, he opened it with a key attached to its side. The lid peeled away in a coil like an old clock spring. Then he emptied the food into a bowl and placed it on the window sill for the cat.

The two men walked out into the dusk.

While Podolski locked the shop, Kirov glanced uneasily up and down the street.

‘Are you expecting someone?’ asked Podolski.

‘I wish I was,’ muttered Kirov. ‘Then, at least, I could explain why I always feel as if I’m being watched.’

‘You are being watched,’ Podolski told him.

‘But by whom?’

Podolski tapped the glass of his shop window, drawing Kirov’s gaze to the Manx cat. With eyes as green as gooseberries, it stared clean through into his soul.

*

‘You’re going where?’ demanded Stalin.

‘To the village of Kolodenka in western Ukraine,’ replied Kirov. ‘I believe that Pekkala may have been there recently, or somewhere near there, anyway.’

‘And this is based on what?’

Kirov paused. He knew he could not tell Stalin the truth. To do so would be to sign the death warrants of Linsky and Poskrebychev. ‘Unsubstantiated evidence,’ he stated categorically.

At that moment, in the outer office, Poskrebychev muttered a silent prayer of thanks. As usual, he had been eavesdropping through the intercom system between his desk and that of Stalin. Relaying Linsky’s message to the major had been the greatest act of faith that he had ever undertaken, and the days since then had been filled with terror at each unfamiliar face he encountered in the hallway, every noise outside the door of his apartment. Even the casual glances of people he passed in the street caused sweat to gather like a scattering of pearls upon his face. When Kirov had passed by on his way into Stalin’s office, he had not said a word to Poskrebychev. Kirov didn’t even look in his direction, which had caused Poskrebychev’s heart to accelerate completely out of control, and to flutter about his chest like a bird trapped behind the flimsy caging of his ribs. As soon as Kirov entered Stalin’s room, Poskrebychev had leaned forward and, with trembling fingers, switched on the intercom so as to hear every word of what he felt sure was his impending doom.

‘In other words,’ said Stalin, ‘you have nothing to go on but more rumours.’

‘That is correct, Comrade Stalin. Rumours are all we have.’

‘How did you plan on getting to this place? Kodo. .’

‘Kolodenka. I took a look at the map and the nearest airfield is just outside the town of Rovno, only a few kilometres from Kolodenka.’

‘Rovno.’ A flicker of recognition passed across Stalin’s face. ‘That’s partisan country.’

‘Yes, and I believe it’s possible that Pekkala has been living among them.’

‘I suppose this should come as no surprise, given how much trouble they have caused us in that region.’

‘Trouble?’ asked Kirov. ‘But the newspapers are filled with reports of their heroism in fighting behind the lines.’

Stalin barked out one sarcastic laugh. ‘Of course we are calling them heroes! That sounds a lot better than the truth.’

‘And what is the truth, Comrade Stalin?’

‘The truth,’ boomed Stalin, ‘as always, is complicated. And people don’t want complications. They want a simple narrative. They want to know who’s good and who’s not. Some of them have been fighting bravely against the Fascists, but others fought alongside them when the tide of war was flowing the other way. There are heroes among them and there are traitors as well. Deciding which is which has become very difficult. There is even a danger that some of them might turn their guns upon us, now that we are recapturing that corner of the country. The situation has become so serious that, just last week, I dispatched Colonel Viktor Andrich to Rovno, with the job of sorting out this mess. If anyone knows where Pekkala might be hiding, it is Andrich. I will see to it that you have letters of introduction, which will guarantee his full cooperation in your search. In the meantime, you may requisition whatever means of transport you might need to get you there. But you had better leave now, Kirov. If Andrich fails in his mission, a war could break out any day now between the Red Army and the partisans.’

Two minutes later, Kirov was striding down the hallway, bound for the nearest airfield and the first plane he could find which might be heading west. Then he heard someone calling his name. Kirov spun around and realised it was Poskrebychev, galloping unevenly towards him. Poskrebychev’s balance was offset by a bundle, wrapped in paper and tied with string, which he carried tucked under his arm.

‘Not again,’ Kirov muttered to himself. He had avoided even making eye contact with Poskrebychev on his way into Stalin’s office. Given the risks both of them had taken in keeping information from Stalin, the less the two men had to do with each other the better, at least for the present. And now, here was Poskrebychev, bounding through the Kremlin and shouting out his name as if everyone in Russia knew their secret.

Poskrebychev skidded to a halt in front of Kirov. He tried to speak but was so winded that at first he could not even talk. Instead, he held up one finger, nodded, then bent over and rested one hand upon his knee while he struggled to catch his breath. In his other arm, he continued to clutch the package he’d brought with him. ‘I have something for you,’ he gasped, still staring at the floor.

‘Something for me?’

Poskrebychev nodded, wheezing.

A woman passed by on her way to the records office, carrying a bundle of files. She eyed them suspiciously and then hurried on her way.

Kirov smiled at her and patted Poskrebychev on the shoulder, as if they were the best of friends. Then he lowered himself, until his lips were almost touching Poskrebychev’s ear. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ he whispered, his teeth clenched in a skull-like grin. ‘Are you trying to get us both killed?’

With a final gasp, Poskrebychev righted himself. His face was a liverish red. ‘From Linsky,’ he announced, shoving the parcel into Kirov’s hands. ‘Your new tunic, Major.’

Kirov had forgotten all about it. ‘Well,’ he said, flustered, ‘I don’t know how to thank you.’

‘Just bring him back,’ whispered Poskrebychev. ‘That will be more than enough.’

Letter found November 1st, 1937, wrapped around stone at entrance of US Embassy, Spano House, Mokhovaya Street, Moscow.

(Postmark: none.)

Dear Ambassador Davies,

I sent a letter to you in July of this year, regarding the arrest of my husband, William H. Vasko, of Newark, New Jersey, by Russian police at our home in Nizhni-Novgorod, where he was employed as a foreman at the Ford Motor Car factory.

I came to the Embassy several times to see if you had replied to my letter, but was told by your secretary, Mr Samuel Hayes, that you had no comment on the matter.

I cannot believe this is true.

Ambassador, my husband has been missing for almost five months and during that time I have received no word as to his whereabouts or even the crime he is supposed to have committed. In August, my children and I were told to vacate our house in order to make way for a new family of workers and since then we have been living at a homeless shelter here in Moscow.

I would like to return to America but I have no money and our passports were taken from us when we first arrived in the Soviet Union. We were told we’d get them back but it never happened.

I now believe that we are being followed and I do not dare approach the Embassy in person.

Ambassador Davies, I appeal to you as an American citizen to help me and my son and daughter.

Sincerely,

Betty Jean Vasko

The following day, out of a gently falling rain, a two-seater Polikarpov UTI-4 roared down on to a grass strip runway which ran beside the railway tracks, a few kilometres northwest of Rovno. The Polikarpov, normally used as a training aircraft, had been pressed into service earlier that day when Kirov, in his perfectly fitted new tunic, had interrupted a young pilot’s first day of flight instruction. Shortly after Kirov had transmitted instructions to the newly established Red Army garrison in Rovno that he would require transport upon his arrival, the Polikarpov had taken off towards the west, the pilot instructor still protesting loudly through the headphones and the student standing by himself on the runway, watching as the plane rose up into the clouds.

At the edge of the runway stood the ruins of a building which had once housed the ground controller. All that remained of it now was a silhouette of ash, and the smell of the damp, burned wood filled Kirov’s lungs as he walked towards a mud-splashed American Willys Jeep, one of thousands sent to Russia as part of the Lend-Lease programme, which waited for him by the railway tracks. The rails, destroyed by the retreating German army, twisted into the air like giant snakes charmed from a basket.

The only thing that Kirov carried with him was a canvas bag with a wooden toggle closure, intended for an army-issue gasmask. Its original contents had been disposed of, in favour of Pekkala’s Webley, the box of bullets, a lump of half stale bread and a piece of dried fish wrapped up in a handkerchief.

The driver of the Jeep was a thick-necked man with a wide forehead and narrow eyes, his upper body cocooned in a telogreika jacket. The telogreika’s tan cotton exterior was faded by washing in gasoline, which soldiers at the front often used instead of soap and water. The white fluff of raw cotton used to pad the jacket peeked from numerous tears in the cloth.

‘Welcome, Comrade Major!’ said the driver. ‘I am your driver, Sergeant Zolkin.’

Kirov climbed into the Jeep, dumping the bag on the floor at his feet. The seats smelled of sweat and old smoke. ‘Do you know where I can find Colonel Andrich?’

‘Yes, Comrade Major!’ exclaimed the driver, a broad smile sweeping across his face. ‘He is expecting you.’

Soon, the Jeep was racing along the muddy roads, its wipers twitching jerkily back and forth, like the antennae of an insect, smearing the raindrops from the windscreen.

‘So you have come from Moscow?’ asked Zolkin.

‘That’s right.’

‘It has been a dream of mine to visit that great city.’

‘Well,’ said Kirov, ‘perhaps you will get there some day.’

‘I do not have long to wait, Comrade Major! You see, I have been loaned to you by Commander Yakushkin, who is in charge of the Red Army garrison here in Rovno. This Jeep belongs to him and so do I. Commander Yakushkin will soon be transferred to Moscow, and I will be travelling with him. Once I am there, I intend to fulfil my life’s ambition, which is to shake the hand of the great Comrade Stalin.’

Although Kirov knew that the odds against that were slim indeed, he said nothing to dampen the sergeant’s enthusiasm.

By now, they had entered the outskirts of Rovno.

As two white chickens scattered from beneath the heavy-lugged tyres of the Jeep, Kirov glanced at the abandoned houses, their thatched roofs slumped like the backs of broken horses. He wondered how long it would take to rebuild a village like this. Perhaps, he thought to himself, they won’t even try. That was what had happened to his family’s tavern after the opening of the railway between Leningrad and Moscow. Within a year or two, traffic on the old road almost disappeared. There weren’t enough customers to keep the tavern open and they had to close. The building was left to rot. He had only seen it once since his family moved out, one winter’s day as he rode past in a train bound for Leningrad. By then, the roof had collapsed. The chimneys, one at either end of the tavern, leaned as if swooning into the ruins of what had once been the dining room. Snow had swept up against one side of the building and the jagged teeth of broken window panes glittered with frost. He had found it strangely beautiful to see how the structure, once the centre of his universe, had surrendered to the gravity of seasons.

The meandering of his thoughts was interrupted as the Jeep came to a sudden halt, slewing almost sideways in the mud.

‘What happened?’ asked Kirov, who had barely saved himself from being thrown out of the vehicle.

Zolkin didn’t reply. He left the engine running and launched himself from behind the wheel, drawing the pistol from his belt.

Seeing the gun, Kirov hauled out his Tokarev, jumped from the car and dived into the wide ditch, which was chest deep in water. The crack of the sergeant’s gun was the last thing Kirov heard before he went under. A moment later, he popped to the surface, spluttering out a mouthful of the oil-tinted ooze. The gunfire continued, but Kirov couldn’t tell what the driver was shooting at since his view was obscured by the wall of mud in front of him. He scrambled up the side of the ditch, one hand clawing at the dirt slope and the other still gripping his gun.

The shooting stopped abruptly and Kirov knew the man’s magazine must be empty. He rolled on to his back and chambered a round in the Tokarev, catching sight of his cap floating upside down in the ditch water like a child’s lopsided boat.

Cautiously, Kirov raised his head, ready to fight off the ambush into which he felt certain they must have driven. Instead, what he saw was the driver, standing in the middle of the road, the pistol tucked into his belt. In each hand, the man held a dead chicken. ‘What on earth are you doing, Comrade Major?’ asked the sergeant.

For the first time, Kirov became aware of the cold slime which filled his boots, the trickles of grit running down into his eyes and the taste of dirty water, rank and metallic in his spit. ‘What am I doing?’ he bellowed in reply. Then he sloshed back to the bottom of the ditch, retrieved his hat and squashed it on to his head. ‘If this is how you drive a car,’ he called out, ‘I don’t think you’ll last long in Moscow! And what are you doing with those birds?’

‘They’re for you, as well, of course,’ the driver told him, as he tossed the chickens into the back of the vehicle, splashing the seats with blood and feathers.

Kirov didn’t reply. He returned to the Jeep, climbed in, and stared off down the road. Water seeped from his cap and trickled down the side of his face.

‘I just couldn’t pass up-’ the sergeant began to explain.

‘This was a brand-new uniform!’ interrupted Kirov.

They finished their journey in silence.

Coils of smoke snaked upwards from the devastated centre of the town, obscuring the powder-blue sky. From what Kirov could see, not a single home was left intact.

Slowly the Jeep made its way forward over broken glass and pieces of smashed stone. Here and there, work crews made up of German prisoners were clearing the rubble, pitching brick after fire-blackened brick into rusty wheelbarrows.

In what had once been the display window of a shop stood a mannequin of a woman, naked except for a helmet which someone had put on her head. With one arm extended, her crumbled plaster fingers seemed to beckon them, like a leper begging for charity.

In the middle of this bombed-out street, their progress was halted by a huge crater, at the bottom of which a 20-ton Russian T34 tank lay upside down. There was no way to get past on either side.

Kirov climbed out of the Jeep, shouldering the bag, which had escaped being soaked in the ditch. Leaving the Jeep behind, the two men continued on foot.

Memo from Samuel Hayes, Secretary, US Embassy, Moscow, to US Ambassador Joseph Davies, Hotel President, Paris, November 5th, 1937

Ambassador — I would draw your attention to the unfortunate situation of Mrs William Vasko who, you might recall, wrote to you earlier this year concerning the arrest of her husband, William Vasko, a worker at the Ford Plant in Nizhni-Novgorod. As you instructed, no comment was made concerning the arrest. Mrs Vasko and her two children‚ whom she believes are now under surveillance by Soviet police, are now living in a homeless shelter here in Moscow.

Mr Vasko is only one of hundreds of arrests of American citizens reported to have taken place this year. I believe the real number may extend into the thousands. The Soviet government has furnished us with no information regarding any of these cases and we have, at present time, no way of ascertaining the whereabouts of these people.

May I impose upon you, Ambassador, to employ your considerable influence with Comrade Stalin to open a window into this phenomenon, so that we might take steps towards affording to these citizens of our country the legal assistance which is theirs by right?

I need not tell you that, with winter already upon us, significant adverse publicity could be generated if word were to spread that American women and children were freezing to death in the streets of Moscow while no action was taken by our own Embassy.

Sincerely,

Samuel Hayes, Secretary, US Embassy, Moscow

In spite of the damage, Rovno still showed signs of life.

A woman with soot-smeared hands picked through a broken chest of drawers which had somehow found its way into the middle of the road. She plucked out neatly folded undershirts and handkerchiefs, laying some over her arm to take away. The rest, she folded up, dappling them with smoky fingerprints, and replaced inside the drawer.

In the next street, a boy wearing a pilot’s leather flying helmet walked past them. Around his neck, he carried a belt of machine-gun bullets, like the sash of an Orthodox priest.

On a wide boulevard which cut through the centre of the town, a group of soldiers huddled around the wreck of a German aircraft. They were sawing off pieces of the aluminium wings and melting the metal over a fire. Once the aluminium had liquefied, they poured it into a mould shaped like a spoon which they had carved into a brick. Over this, they set another brick and bound the two together with wire. They had a production line of bricks stacked along the sidewalk, and dozens of new-made spoons were cooling in a bucket of water.

The plane was a German Focke-Wulf Fw 190, although little remained of it now. The propeller blades had been sheared off, along with the entire tail section, which now lay at the other end of the street. Bare metal showed through its camouflage paint, whose hazy black and green ripples resembled the pattern on a mackerel’s back.

In the mangled cockpit, minus his flying helmet, sat the pilot, still strapped into his seat. His chin rested on his chest. His eyes were closed. He looked almost peaceful, except for the fragment of propeller, as long as a man’s arm, which protruded from his chest.

They walked on, stepping over wooden beams puffed and blackened by the fires which had carbonised them.

At last, they stopped outside a house whose front door had been blown away, leaving only shards of wood attached. Now a piece of burlap sack hung in its place.

Zolkin pulled aside the burlap and gestured down a staircase, which leaned drunkenly sideways as it descended into the darkness. From somewhere down below came the clattering of typewriters. ‘Colonel Andrich is down here.’

Leaving Zolkin to wait in his Jeep, Kirov descended the staircase. At the bottom, he entered a small room with a low ceiling where case upon case of rifles, grenades, land mines, canned rations and field telephones had been stacked against the walls.

In the centre of this room, two women faced each other across a single desk. They wore heavy, knee-length army-issue skirts and gymnastiorka tunics. The sound of tapping keys filled the air, punctuated by the rustle of carbon paper and the whiz and ping of the return arm being struck. Each was so absorbed in their work that they did not even glance up to see who had entered the room. The women smoked as they typed. Ash fell in amongst the keys.

‘I am looking for Colonel Andrich,’ announced Kirov.

Only now did the women look up.

‘Through there,’ said one, jerking her chin towards a narrow tunnel that had been dug through to the basement of the adjoining building, of which only a pile of wreckage existed above ground. Wires along the dimly-lit corridor were held up by bent spoons jammed into the bare earth roof.

At the end of this tunnel, Kirov emerged into a second basement where more munitions had been piled up in the corners. Some of these cases were open, revealing stacks of Mosin-Nagant rifles and PPSh sub-machine guns. Canvas slings twined around their polished wooden stocks like olive-coloured vines. Another box, made of zinc and lined with foil that had been torn away, contained hundreds of rounds of loose ammunition. The brass cartridges gleamed in the dim light of a candle burning on an upturned fuel drum in the centre of the room.

Kirov had never set eyes upon so much weaponry before. Mixing with the smell of dampness, gun oil, and new paint from the ammunition crates was the sharp musty odour of sweat, tobacco smoke and the marzipan reek of ammonite explosives.

Several men were also crammed into this space. The only one dressed in full military uniform was a Red Army officer, perched on a flimsy chair and swathed in a bandage which covered one side of his face. Blood had soaked through along the line of his jaw.

There were two others, each of them garbed in a mixture of military and civilian clothing. Straggly and unkempt beards ranged across their filthy, wind-burned cheeks.

Partisans, thought Kirov, fear and curiosity mingling in his mind as he studied the assortment of captured German boots, Russian canteens and civilian coats so patched and ragged they belonged more on scarecrows than on men. The partisans were festooned with weapons. Grenades, knives and pistols hung from their belts and cross-straps like grotesque ornaments.

The focus of their attention was a large, bald man wearing a grey turtleneck sweater, who sat at the back of the room at a desk which had been cobbled together from a door torn off its hinges and balanced on two empty fuel drums. The man’s thick, dark eyebrows stood out sharply against his hairless face and his anvil-like hands lay flat upon the paper-strewn surface, as he if expected it all to be blown away by a sudden gust of wind. Beside the papers stood a candle in a wooden bowl and a civilian telephone, gleaming like a big, black toad upon the desk.

One by one, the men turned and stared at Kirov. The eyes of the partisans narrowed with contempt as they caught sight of the red bullion stars sewn to each of Kirov’s forearms, indicating his status as a commissar.

‘Colonel Andrich,’ said Kirov, addressing the wounded officer.

But it was not the officer who answered.

‘I am Colonel Andrich,’ said the man in the turtleneck sweater, ‘and you must be Major Kirov.’

Kirov slammed his heels together. ‘Comrade Colonel!’

‘I am quite busy at the moment,’ said Andrich, ‘so if you will excuse me, Commissar. .’ Without waiting for an explanation from Kirov, the colonel turned his attention back to the partisans. ‘As I was saying, we can protect you.’

‘The only people we need protection from are yours!’ replied a tall and sinewy man, whose sheepskin jacket was held tightly about his middle by a leather belt whose buckle bore the insignia of an SS officer, grey eagle and swastika surrounded by the words, ‘Meine Ehre Heisst Treue’ — My Honour is Loyalty. ‘Who is speaking for us in Moscow? What about the Central Partisan Command?’

Andrich tried to reason with the man. ‘Comrade Lipko, I have already explained to you that Partisan Central Command was abolished last month. As far as Moscow is concerned, the question of what should happen to the partisans has already been decided.’

‘Not by us,’ said Lipko.

‘That’s why I’m here,’ Andrich’s voice was filled with exasperation. ‘Moscow has sent me as proof that you have not been forgotten. There is now a Central Staff of the Partisan Movement, with departments represented by the Army, the Party and by the NKVD. It’s all under the direction of Panteleimon Ponomarenko. He is an expert on partisan issues.’

‘Then why are we speaking to you?’

‘Do not forget that I was once a partisan. For two years, I fought alongside you, until I agreed to return to Moscow and meet with those who are now deciding your fate, and the fate of all partisans.’

‘That’s right,’ sneered the other partisan. He had a slightly upturned nose wedged into a square face and small, vicious eyes, like those of a wild boar Kirov had seen, gutted and hanging upside down outside the stable of his father’s tavern. ‘You went to Moscow, far from the guns of the enemy.’

To Kirov, it seemed that this conversation had already been going on for a long time, and also that it was getting nowhere. As if to confirm Kirov’s assessment, Andrich raised his fist and smashed it down on the desk. ‘But then I came back, Comrade Fedorchak! Because Moscow knew that you would only speak to someone who truly understood what you had lived through. And, for myself, I knew that we would need someone to speak for us, or else we’d face oblivion. Why else would I be here, in this basement full of bombs, instead of safe in Moscow?’

‘And when it is over,’ demanded Lipko, ‘and we have been disarmed or else are lying dead somewhere out in the forest, what will you do then?’

‘I will return to Moscow,’ replied Andrich, ‘to work with Central Staff. There, I will have direct contact with Comrade Stalin. Through me, he will hear your voices and will be aware of your concerns.’

‘Central Partisan Command!’ spat Fedorchak. ‘Or Central Staff of Partisan Movement! What’s the difference? Do you think that by changing your name, you can fool us into thinking that you are different people? You’re all the same. You always have been. It’s men like you who came here in the twenties, ordering the farms to be collectivised and telling us how bright the future looked. And how did that work out? Ten million dead from starvation! And if we did do what you’re asking? If we laid down our weapons and disbanded, what then?’

‘All partisans who are eligible would be immediately enlisted in the Red Army. They would receive uniforms, weapons, food and they would be paid.’

‘What does it mean to be eligible?’ asked Lipko. ‘Who are those you don’t consider eligible and what will happen to them?’

‘I’ll tell you,’ answered Fedorchak. ‘It’s what all of us here already know.’

‘And what is that?’ asked Andrich.

‘That former prisoners of war, who escaped from captivity and joined the partisans, are being sent straight to the Gulag. And the same thing goes for anyone who’s not already a member of the Communist Party.’

‘How do you answer that?’ demanded Lipko.

Kirov glanced nervously around the room. From the looks on the faces of these partisans, it seemed to him that if the colonel didn’t provide them with a satisfactory answer, they would finish this conversation with gunfire.

For a moment, it appeared that Andrich was at a loss for words. But then he breathed in, slowly and deeply, and at last began to speak. ‘Not everyone’s motives in joining the partisans have been as clear and pure as yours. There are men who collaborated with the enemy, who are still collaborating, and who must now answer for their crimes. If you imagined it to be different, then you are simply being naive. And you are also being naive if you do not consider the alternative to what I’m offering. What do you think that Red Army Command is going to do? Allow heavily armed gangs to roam about freely in the newly reconquered territory? No! They are making you an offer to join them and if you turn them down, they are going to come in here and wipe you out. You can’t just turn around and vanish back into your secret lairs. They’ll burn your forests to the ground. In a matter of months, you’ll have nowhere left to hide.’

‘The Germans made the same threats back in 1941,’ remarked Fedorchak. ‘Now they’re gone and we’re still here. Maybe we’ll take our chances.’

‘The Fascists gave you no choice except to fight them or to fight against each other,’ explained Andrich, ‘but what I’m offering you is a way to not only survive but to be remembered as heroes in this wretched war. Victory is almost in sight. Why not share in the return of everything we have been fighting for?’

‘We did not fight so that everything could go back to the way it was before. We are fighting so that things might finally change. No more collective farms. No more forced conscription. No more arrests and executions simply to fill quotas set by Moscow. This whole countryside is one mass grave, and it’s not just our enemies who have done this.’ Now Fedorchak levelled a finger at Kirov. ‘It’s men like him as well.’

What have I walked into? wondered Kirov. The situation with these partisans is even worse than Comrade Stalin described.

‘What you want is what I want as well,’ Andrich pleaded with the men, ‘and I have faith that those things will come in time. But what matters right now is that we stay alive.’

For the first time, his words were not met with angry and sarcastic replies. The partisans seemed to be listening.

Taking advantage of this lull in the negotiations, Kirov removed the envelope, now wet and stained with water from the ditch, containing his letter of introduction from the Kremlin. He held it out towards Andrich, the once crisp rectangle sagging over the tips of his fingers. ‘Comrade Colonel, I have come directly from Moscow with instructions from Comrade Stalin.’

‘Can’t you see,’ Andrich said drily, ‘that I am already in the middle of following Comrade Stalin’s instructions?’

‘These are new instructions,’ answered Kirov.

Slowly Andrich reached out, took hold of the envelope and weighed the soggy paper in his hand. ‘Have you been swimming?’

Kirov opened his mouth to explain, but then thought better of it and said nothing.

Andrich opened the envelope, removed the letter it contained and glanced at it. ‘You’ve come all this way to search for one man, who may or may not be living with the partisans?’

‘Yes, Comrade Colonel.’

‘In which Atrad does he serve?’

‘Atrad?’ asked Kirov.

‘That is the name we give to groups of partisans.’

‘The answer to your question, Colonel, is that I do not know.’

The colonel’s breath trailed out impatiently. ‘Do you know how many bands are out there in the forests and the swamps?’

‘No, Comrade Colonel.’

‘Neither do I.’ Andrich gestured at the partisans. ‘Or they.’ Now the dagger of his finger swung towards the officer in the chair. ‘Not even this man knows and he has just arrived here today as my new intelligence liaison.’

The wounded officer attempted to nod in agreement, but the gesture was halted by the bandage wrapped around his head.

‘But his intelligence is useless to me!’ said Andrich, his voice rising to a shout.

Kirov imagined that the officer must have been grateful, at that moment, for the bandage concealing his expression.

‘It is useless,’ the colonel went on, ‘because, like everyone else, he cannot tell me the number or location of the Atrads. In spite of this, Moscow has given me the task of negotiating with them. How can I negotiate, Comrade Major, if I don’t even know who I’m negotiating with?’ Without waiting for a reply, he went on. ‘As you just heard me explain, if all partisans do not come in willingly and begin the process of demilitarising, they will find themselves at war with the same people who are currently trying to save them from extinction. The men you see before you are those I was able to track down, but I can’t get that message to the others, can I, if I don’t know where they are? So you see my predicament, Major.’

‘Yes, Comrade Colonel.’

‘And yet, Moscow would now like me to assist you in locating a single man who might be living with the partisans, even though neither you, nor I, nor God himself, knows where to find him?’

‘Yes, Comrade Colonel.’

Andrich sighed angrily. ‘I suppose you had better start by telling me his name.’

‘Pekkala.’

The wounded officer turned to stare at Kirov. ‘Pekkala, the Inspector? The one they call the Emerald Eye?’

‘That’s him,’ answered Kirov.

‘I heard he was dead,’ said Lipko, scratching at the collar of his coat as if the fur was his and not stripped from the back of a goat.

‘So did I,’ added Fedorchak. ‘A long time back.’

‘I have reason to believe that he may still be alive,’ Kirov assured them. ‘Have either of you heard any mention of his name out there in the forest?’

‘No,’ replied Fedorchak, ‘but that doesn’t mean he isn’t there. When people join the partisans, their real names are often kept secret, so that their friends and families, or sometimes the whole village where they lived, would not be put to death if their real identities were discovered.’

‘So now,’ said Colonel Andrich, ‘you can see what you are really up against. To find a man who may or may not be dead, without a name, living among partisans no one can find, sounds to me like an exercise in futility.’

‘He was a Finn, wasn’t he?’ asked Lipko.

‘That’s right. Why?’

‘I heard a Finn was living with the Barabanschikovs.’

At the mention of that name, it grew suddenly quiet in the room.

‘Who are these Barabanschikovs?’ asked Kirov.

The partisans kept quiet, shifting uneasily in their corpse-robbed boots.

It was Andrich who replied. ‘Let’s just say, that if he’s with the Barabanschikovs, then your task may be even more difficult.’

‘But if you know who they are, then surely someone must know where they are.’

Fedorchak laughed. ‘Oh, we know where they are, more or less. They’re in the Red Forest.’

‘I don’t recall seeing that name on the map,’ said Kirov.

‘That’s because it isn’t there,’ Fedorchak told him. ‘The Red Forest is a name the locals gave to a wilderness south of here, where hundreds of maple trees grow. In the autumn, when the leaves turn red, the forest looks as if it has been painted with blood.’

Kirov looked anxiously from one man to the other. ‘Will you take me there? It’s still light. We could set off now.’

The partisans both shook their heads. ‘That land belongs to Barabanschikov.’

‘Then just point me in the right direction,’ shouted Kirov, ‘and I’ll go myself!’

‘You don’t understand,’ Lipko told him. ‘No one in their right mind goes into the Red Forest.’

At that moment, the phone rang. Colonel Andrich picked up the receiver, pressing it against his fleshy ear. ‘Damn!’ he shouted and hung up.

‘What is it?’ asked Kirov,

‘Another air raid.’ The words were not even out of his mouth before they heard the rumble of multi-engine planes. The droning of the unsynchronised motors rose and fell. Kirov could tell they were German. Soviet bombers had synchronised engines, so that the noise they made was a steady, constant thrum, instead of this.

Soon after came the first deep shudder of explosions in the distance. The bombs were falling in clusters. Kirov flinched at each detonation. The floor trembled under his feet.

‘This is the third time in two days,’ muttered Colonel Andrich, staring grimly into space.

The next volley of explosions seemed to happen all at once. The building shook. A crack, like the path of a tiny lightning bolt, appeared in the ceiling above Kirov’s head.

The lights flickered.

If one piece of hot shrapnel hits these crates, thought Kirov, we will be falling from the sky in pieces as small as rain.

The colonel swore and grabbed hold of the sides of his desk.

The next sound was like a huge flag billowing in the wind. The shock nearly dropped Kirov to his knees and panic washed through him at the thought of being buried alive.

The candle went out, and was followed by darkness so complete, it was as if they’d all been struck blind.

A dry, snapping boom shook the building.

That blast was followed by another, but this one was more distant than the last. As the seconds passed, bombs continued to fall, each one further away than the last.

It’s over, Kirov thought to himself.

But, in the next instant, the room was filled with deafening explosions.

Kirov’s first thought was that some of the loose ammunition must have exploded, but then he glimpsed the splashing light of a gun muzzle. Somebody had opened fire, but he couldn’t see who held the gun. In the flickering glare, Kirov watched Fedorchak go down, his blood splashing in an arc across the ceiling.

Kirov turned to run, hoping to reach the stairs which led up to the street, when suddenly he felt a stunning blow to his side. The impact threw him against the wall. He stumbled and fell to the floor, gasping for breath. The whole upper part of his body felt as if it had caught fire.

The firing stopped and, a moment later, a sabre of torchlight punctured the dusty air.

Someone stepped over to the doorway.

Kirov heard a metallic rustle as the gunman slid an empty magazine from his pistol, letting it fall with a clatter to the floor. Unhurriedly, he replaced it with another, then chambered a round in the breech.

Kirov struggled to focus on the man, but his eyes were filled with smoke.

At that moment, there was a sound at the end of the excavated hallway.

The gunman aimed the beam of his torch down the tunnel, just as the two typists made a run for the exit.

The gun roared again, twice, three times, and the women fell in a heap at the base of the steps.

Spent cartridges clattered down. One of them bounced off Kirov’s cheek, searing the flesh.

The gunman heard him gasp and suddenly the torch beam was burning into Kirov’s face.

The man bent over him.

Blinded in the glare, Kirov felt the hot muzzle of the gun pressing against the centre of his forehead. Cordite smoke sifted from the breech. Kirov knew he was about to die. The clarity of that thought cut through the shock of his wounds, but where Kirov had expected to feel terror, there was only a strange, shuddering emptiness, as if some part of him had already shrugged itself loose from the scaffolding of flesh and bones that anchored him to the world. He closed his eyes and waited for the end.

But the shot never came.

The next sound Kirov heard was the soft tread of the man’s boots as he made his way along the earth-walled passageway, stepped over the two dead women, climbed the stairs and was gone.

Kirov lay in the dark, unable to move, tasting blood at the back of his mouth and wondering why the gunman had left him alive. Perhaps, he thought, I am so badly wounded that he knows I’ll be dead before help can arrive. Although Kirov knew he had been shot, he wasn’t sure where he’d been hit. The pain had not yet focused and his whole body felt numb. Feebly, he dragged his fingertips across his chest, searching for a tear in his uniform where the bullet had gone in. But his strength began to fail him before he could locate the wound. A velvety blackness sifted through his mind. He struggled against it, but there was nothing he could do. The darkness seemed to overflow his skull and pour out through his eyes. His last conscious thought was that he might have been dead after all.

Memo from Joseph Davies, US Ambassador to Moscow, Hotel President, Paris‚ to Secretary Samuel Hayes, US Embassy, Moscow, November 21st, 1937

Following message to be forwarded through standard unofficial channel via Kremlin to Comrade Joseph Stalin.

Dear Comrade Stalin,

News has reached me of an unfortunate situation regarding one of our citizens currently residing in the Soviet Union, a Mrs William Vasko, who reports that her husband was taken into custody while employed at the Ford Motor Car plant in Nizhni-Novgorod. No word has been received of his whereabouts for some time. Any word on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Yours etc. Joseph Davies, Ambassador

PS Your proposal to purchase cargo ships currently in the process of being decommissioned by the US Navy is being closely examined in Washington. I hope soon to be able to deliver favourable news on the subject.

Kirov regained consciousness just as he was being wheeled into an operating room. He sat up suddenly, startling the nurses who were moving the gurney towards the surgery table. Ignoring their protests, he began to climb down, but when his feet touched the floor, he found that he could barely stand. It felt as if his bones had been removed.

One of the nurses took hold of Kirov’s shoulder, trying to push him back, but Kirov, in his morphine-fuelled delirium, punched her on the chin and laid her out cold on the red linoleum floor. Then the other nurse attacked, kicking his shins with her blunt-toed shoes and pulling his ears while she called for the doctor.

Angry and completely confused, Kirov fought against the woman, staggering around until his legs gave out from under him. His head struck the floor with a crack.

From where he lay, Kirov noticed a pile of severed arms and legs heaped into the corner.

The face of a man appeared above him. He wore a white smock smeared with blood. ‘You fool!’ he shouted, as he pressed something cold and wet against Kirov’s face. ‘These people are trying to help you!’

A sickly sweetness, smelling like paint thinner, filled Kirov’s lungs. ‘Damn you,’ he managed to say, before he tumbled back into oblivion.

*

Kirov woke with the sun on his face. His chest was covered with bandages and his bare feet poked out from under a grey army blanket.

He was by himself in a small room, which appeared to have been converted from some kind of closet. It had one window, against which the ice-sheathed branches of a tree tapped as they jostled in the breeze. The walls of the room were a pale brownish yellow, like coffee with milk that had been left in a mug and gone cold. The only thing aside from his bed was a collapsible chair in the corner.

Vaguely, he remembered hitting somebody. A woman. No, he thought. That can’t be right. I would never have done such a thing.

Then he leaned over and threw up, surprised to find a bucket already waiting on the floor beside his bed. He groaned, still hanging almost upside down, and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his hospital pyjamas. Although Kirov’s sight was blurred, the sunlight melting into rainbows everything on which he tried to focus, he was relieved to see his boots standing at the foot of the bed, along with the canvas bag containing Pekkala’s revolver.

As he lay back, Kirov noticed a movement on the other side of the room. A man was standing there, hidden until that moment by the glare of light pouring in through the window. ‘Who’s there?’ he asked.

The man did not reply.

‘Do I know you?’ demanded Kirov.

The man walked towards him, still masked in the flare of the sun.

In that silhouette, Kirov thought he recognised Pekkala’s shoulders, like plates of armour slung across his back, but his vision was blurred and his mind kept skipping, like a needle jumping on a record.

The man reached out and Kirov felt the warmth of a hand pressed against his forehead.

‘Sleep now,’ whispered the stranger.

As if the voice compelled him, Kirov slipped from consciousness, wading out into the black lake of his dreams.

*

The next time he woke, it was evening.

A nurse was tucking in the blanket, her back turned towards him.

‘Where am I?’ asked Kirov.

‘In the hospital,’ the nurse replied, ‘not far from Rovno, where you were wounded yesterday.’

‘I dreamed I hit someone,’ said Kirov.

Now the woman turned to face him. ‘Is that so?’

Kirov gasped as he caught sight of her black eye.

‘I must have had that dream as well,’ said the woman.

‘Forgive me,’ muttered Kirov.

‘In time, perhaps,’ she told him

‘There’s something else I dreamed,’ he said, ‘or thought I dreamed, at least.’

‘What was it?’

‘A man, standing right over there by the window.’

‘I was on duty all afternoon, and nobody came into the room apart from me. But don’t think you’re going crazy. They gave you morphine for the pain. That stuff can play tricks with your mind.’

‘I saw him, too,’ said a voice.

Kirov glanced towards the doorway, where a man sat in a wheelchair. He had lost both his legs halfway down the thigh and one of his arms at the bicep. With his one remaining hand, he steered the chair by gripping one of the wheels.

‘Return to your room, Captain Dombrowsky,’ commanded the nurse. ‘Leave this man alone. He needs his rest.’

Grinning but obedient, the man manoeuvred himself back into the hallway and creaked away back to his bed.

‘Don’t pay any attention to him,’ said the nurse. ‘His limbs aren’t the only things he’s lost. The Captain was transferred here from another hospital right after the Germans pulled out. He made such a nuisance of himself at the other place that they passed him over to us. And now we’re stuck with him.’

‘How did I get here?’ asked Kirov.

‘Some soldiers brought you in. They found you in a bunker after the air raid. They said you had been in a gunfight, but against whom they didn’t know.’

‘I don’t know, either,’ said Kirov. ‘Someone just started shooting. How are the others?’

‘You are the only survivor,’ replied the nurse. ‘When the soldiers carried you in, you were covered in so much blood that I thought they’d wasted their time. Turns out, it wasn’t all yours. The soldiers told me that, apart from you, they found three men, all of them dead. Two were obviously partisans. The third man had a Soviet identity book, but was wearing civilian clothes. They didn’t tell me his name.’

‘That must be Colonel Andrich,’ said Kirov, ‘but there was also a Red Army officer in the bunker with us. Did they find him, too?’

The nurse shook her head. ‘Whoever he was, it sounds like that’s the man who shot you and your friends.’

‘And there was a driver. He waited outside during the meeting. How is he?’

‘No one mentioned anything about a driver. He might have been killed in the air raid.’

At that moment, the doctor walked in. It was the same man who had dosed Kirov with ether when he tried to get down off the gurney. The doctor’s apron had been cleaned, but still showed the marks of blood stains in the cloth. Without any smile or greeting, the man unclipped a chart from the foot of Kirov’s bed. Still glancing at the chart, the doctor reached into the pocket of his white hospital coat, removed something about the size of a cherry stone and tossed it on to the bed. ‘Major, you’re a lucky man,’ he said.

Kirov squinted at the object, which had landed on the blanket just above his chest. It was a bullet, or what was left of one. Kirov stared at the gnarled mushroom of lead and copper.

‘The bullet must have ricocheted,’ explained the doctor, ‘which explains its deformed shape. By the time it hit you, the force was almost spent. We removed it from under your collar bone. If the round had been going any faster, it would have torn away your shoulder blade.’

A shudder passed through Kirov as he thought of the bullet ripping through his skin.

Seeing Kirov’s discomfort, the nurse picked up the piece of lead and tucked it into the pocket of his tunic, which was now draped over a chair in the corner of the room. ‘I really don’t know why you hand those things out,’ she told the doctor.

The doctor smiled. ‘A reminder to be more careful next time.’

‘I really should be going,’ said Kirov. ‘You see, I came here from Moscow to find someone.’ As he struggled to sit up, he felt a dull, tearing sensation across his chest and slumped back with a groan.

‘Be patient,’ warned the doctor. ‘Even for a commissar, willpower alone is not a cure. You’ll be back on the street soon enough. In the meantime, allow my nurse to make your life miserable for a few days. It’s the least you can do after punching her lights out yesterday.’

‘I have already apologised.’

‘Knowing her,’ said the doctor, as he replaced the chart, ‘I think it might take more than that to earn forgiveness.’

When the doctor had gone, the nurse finished tucking in the bed. ‘Don’t pay any attention to him,’ she told Kirov. ‘He likes to stir up trouble.’

‘So you won’t be making my life miserable?’

‘When the morphine wears off,’ she assured him, ‘your life will be miserable enough without my help.’

And she was right.

In the long, sleepless night which followed, blinding flashes of colour exploded behind Kirov’s eyes and pain rose from the fading haze of morphine, shuddering through his body as if some cruel phantom was prising at his joints with screwdrivers. He listened to the Morse-code tap of the branch against the window and the whimpering of soldiers whose amputated limbs still ghosted them with agony. The more Kirov listened, the louder the noises became, until he had to press his hands against his ears or else be deafened by them.

Kirov had no sense of having slept, or for how long, but in the morning he woke bathed in sweat, to the sound of a creaking wheel as Captain Dombrowsky steered himself into the room. ‘The nurse told you I was crazy, didn’t she?’

‘More or less.’ Kirov’s throat was dry. He wished he had something to drink.

‘Do you know what those nurses call me behind my back?’ asked Dombrowsky. ‘Their name for me is Samovar, because that’s what I look like with no legs and only one arm. To them, I am nothing more than a glorified teapot. Maybe I’m insane, but I know what I’m talking about.’

Kirov fixed him with a bloodshot stare. ‘And what are you talking about, Dombrowsky?’

‘About the man you saw. He appeared out of nowhere, like a ghost, right when the nurses were changing their shifts. He went straight to your room and as he walked he made no sound. No sound at all!’

‘What did he look like, this man?’

‘He was tall.’

‘That’s all you can tell me?’

‘He wore an old-fashioned coat, of a kind I haven’t seen since before the Revolution.’

Maybe I wasn’t hallucinating after all, thought Kirov.

The nurse appeared in the doorway. ‘What did I tell you, Captain?’ she scolded. ‘Now leave Major Kirov in peace! And stay away from the stairs! I saw you this morning, and you were much too close to the edge. If you try going down in that wheelchair, you’ll kill yourself.’

‘I’m going! I’m going!’ Meekly, Dombrowsky wheeled himself away, but as he passed by Kirov’s bed, he turned his head and winked.

*

That night, Rovno was bombed again. This time, it was the outskirts that received the full force of the destruction. Above the burning houses, the sky turned pink as salmon flesh and, at the hospital on the other side of town, shockwaves caused the windows to tremble like ripples in a pond.

Kirov drifted in and out of sleep. The fever had broken and now his discomfort centred on the livid purple scar beneath his collarbone. He found it difficult to lie in any one position for long and each time he moved, the pain would jolt him awake.

With a moan, Kirov rolled on to his back. His eyes flickered open and the darkness took shape around him — the light bulb in the ceiling, the crack in the bottom left pane of the window, through which he saw the sky punctuated by the flash of high explosives in the distance.

That was when he realised there was someone standing right beside his bed.

This time, there could be no doubt.

It was Pekkala.

For a moment, Kirov was too stunned to speak. Even though he had believed all along that the Inspector could have survived, he had always been guided more by faith than certainty. Now, at last, Kirov’s mind was no longer shackled by doubt. ‘I knew it!’ he shouted. ‘I knew they couldn’t kill the Emerald Eye!’

Pekkala responded by slapping his hand over Kirov’s mouth. ‘Quiet!’ he hissed. ‘Are you trying to wake the dead as well as the living?’

Kirov blinked at him in silence until Pekkala finally removed his hand.

‘How did you know I was in Rovno?’ asked Kirov.

‘The clues I left with Linsky,’ explained Pekkala, speaking so matter-of-factly that it was as if no time at all had passed since the two men parted company. ‘I knew they’d lead you here eventually.’

‘So you really were in Moscow!’

Pekkala patted his new coat. ‘And I did not leave Moscow empty-handed.’

‘But why did you wait so long?’

‘I came as soon as the German army pulled out of this area,’ explained Pekkala. ‘Before that, it was not possible to travel.’

‘But why leave clues for me to follow you out here?’ demanded Kirov. ‘Why didn’t you simply come to the office?’

‘You were being watched,’ explained Pekkala.

‘Watched?’ Kirov remembered the feeling of uneasiness which had pursued him almost to the point of madness. ‘By whom?’

‘From the look of them,’ answered Pekkala, ‘I’d say they were NKVD Special Operations.’

‘Our own people?’

‘Stalin knew that his best chance of catching me was if I came back to look for you. That’s why he had you followed.’

Now it all began to make sense. ‘And why every assignment I’ve been given since you disappeared has kept me in Moscow. He wanted to make sure you could find me.’

‘But Stalin grew tired of waiting. That’s why he finally allowed you to leave the city, hoping you’d lead him to me.’

‘All this time,’ Kirov muttered angrily, ‘I have been nothing more than bait in a trap.’

‘There’s a way around every trap,’ said Pekkala, ‘and my way around this one was Linsky. For several days, I had been shadowing the same people who were following you. They had staked out the office, your apartment, even your friend Elizaveta. But they had no one watching Linsky. I knew he would recognise who placed the order, even if I didn’t leave a name. I gambled that, as soon as Linsky realised I was still alive, he’d find a way to get in touch with you, and for you to pay a visit to a tailor would not arouse the suspicions of NKVD. In the meantime, I couldn’t stay in Moscow. It was too risky. So I left behind that tobacco pouch, trusting that the tanner’s mark inside would lead you here to Rovno.’

‘There was one other clue, Inspector.’

‘Oh, yes? And what was that?’

‘Your pass book and your gun were found on that body at the site of the ambush, but the emerald eye was missing.’

A faint smile creased Pekkala’s lips as he turned down the lapel of his coat. By the light of bombs exploding in the distance, the emerald-studded badge winked from the darkness.

‘I came here to find you, Inspector, but I should have known you’d track me down instead.’

‘As soon as news reached me of a tall, skinny NKVD officer who had just arrived by plane from Moscow, I set out to meet you. Unfortunately, I was too late to prevent what happened. Can you describe the man who opened fire in the bunker?’

‘It was dark,’ explained Kirov. ‘There had just been an air raid and the electricity had gone out. But I know who it must have been, even if I didn’t see him pull the trigger. The nurse here told me that they recovered three bodies from the bunker. One was Andrich and the other two were partisans. The only other man in that room was a Red Army officer. With a bandage wrapped around his face, he looked as if he’d just been wounded, but I realise now that it was only a disguise. Andrich said the officer had just arrived from headquarters, so he might have been carrying forged papers as well as a stolen uniform. Inspector, do you have any idea why this happened?’

‘There are many blood feuds between the partisans,’ answered Pekkala. ‘It may be that you and Andrich were simply caught in the crossfire. Or it may be that Andrich himself was the target.’

‘But why would anyone want to murder the colonel? After all, he was negotiating a ceasefire.’

‘Perhaps,’ answered Pekkala, ‘because Andrich might have succeeded. He was the only man Moscow trusted who could speak to the partisans. When Andrich’s division was annihilated back in ’41, he took to the forest and joined the partisans, rather than surrender. Two years later, Moscow made contact with his group by dropping leaflets over the forest requesting someone who could act as a representative for the partisans. Andrich volunteered. He knew that somebody would have to speak for the partisan groups still active in this area. The partisans are sick of fighting, whether it’s against the Germans or each other. They just can’t find a way to stop. There is too much hatred among them.’

‘Why are they killing each other?’ asked Kirov.

‘Some groups originally sided with the Germans,’ explained Pekkala, ‘who used them to hunt down other partisans or to commit atrocities against Ukrainian civilians. When the Germans began to retreat, many of those who had taken up arms against the Ukrainians became victims themselves as old scores were settled. This has been a war within a war, Kirov, more bloody than anything I’ve ever seen before. Andrich knew that the only way the killing would cease was if all sides learned to trust each other. It might have worked, too, if Andrich hadn’t been murdered. And the fact that those two partisan leaders also died will only make the situation worse. Those men were all supposed to be under Soviet protection when the attack occurred. If Andrich was indeed the target, then the killer must have known that murdering him would destroy any hope of peace between the partisans and the Red Army. The faith which Andrich worked to build has now evaporated, just as Stalin knew it might. That’s why he recently ordered a brigade of counter-intelligence troops to be transferred to the Rovno garrison.’

The Soviet Counter-Intelligence Agency, known as SMERSH, had been formed by Stalin the previous year as a specialised task force with the NKVD and was responsible for crushing any acts of rebellion in the newly reconquered territories of the Soviet Union. Ruthlessly, they sought out enemy agents who had been recruited by Germany’s spy organisation, the Abwehr, under the control of Admiral Canaris, as well as those partisans, civilians and former POWs, who might have collaborated with the Germans during the years of occupation. Within six months of coming into existence, Counter-Intelligence troops had massacred tens of thousands of Russians, for crimes as vague as selling apples to German soldiers, allowing them to drink from a well or for having been captured in one of the vast encircling attacks that wiped out entire Soviet divisions in the first days of Operation Barbarossa.

The brigade that had been sent to Rovno fell under the Counter-Intelligence Agency’s Anti-Partisan Directorate. This brigade had originally been led by the notorious Commander Danek, whose excesses stunned even the most hardened NKVD members. But Danek had recently been killed under suspicious circumstances. It was rumoured that he had met his end at the hands of one of his own people, although nothing had been proven. The man who took his place, Commander Yakushkin, had been Danek’s right-hand man throughout the war. Since taking control of this SMERSH brigade, Yakushkin’s methods had proved to be even more cold-blooded than those of his former master.

‘Stalin said nothing to me about SMERSH,’ remarked Kirov.

‘Why would he?’ asked Pekkala. ‘Stalin may be hoping for peace, but he is also preparing for war. Commander Yakushkin had orders to wait and see if the partisans could be persuaded to lay down their arms peacefully. But Yakushkin knows only one thing and that is the art of butchery. Now that Andrich is dead, Yakushkin and his troops will soon begin the process of wiping out every partisan band in the whole region. The partisans may disagree with each other about many things, but even the bitterest foes among them will unite against a common enemy, especially if the alternative is annihilation. SMERSH have now become that enemy. The result will be the deaths of countless soldiers and partisans, along with any civilian who gets caught in their path. The only way to prevent it is to prove to Yakushkin that he is being drawn into a plot designed to pit him against the partisans, which would only end in their mutual destruction. Even a killer like Yakushkin doesn’t want that, but first I must persuade him. To accomplish this, Major Kirov, I am going to need your help.’

Kirov opened his mouth to reply, but Pekkala cut him off before he could speak.

‘Think carefully before you answer. Do not forget that Stalin has a price upon my head. That’s why I came here in the middle of the night, so that you can still return to Moscow if you choose, and pretend this meeting never took place.’

‘There’s no need for that, Inspector. The situation has changed. Whatever charges Stalin laid against you have been dismissed. You are forgiven. Stalin told me so himself. He needs you back, Inspector!’

Pekkala was not convinced. ‘One thing I have learned about Stalin is that the man does not forgive. All he does is to postpone his vengeance, but hopefully it will be long enough for me to track down this assassin.’

‘And of course I will help you to do it, Inspector, just as soon as I can get out of here!’

‘Is now soon enough?’ asked Pekkala.

‘Now?’ echoed Kirov. ‘Well, I suppose I. .’

‘Good!’ Pekkala walked over to the doorway and peered down the hall. He listened carefully. Satisfied that no one was coming, he beckoned to Kirov. ‘Hurry! There is much to be done.’

‘But can’t this wait until morning? Why do we have to leave now?’

‘It’s quite simple, Kirov. When the shooting started in the bunker, you were only an innocent bystander, but as soon as this assassin learns that you are intent on hunting him down, he will come back to finish what he started.’

‘I’ll just put some clothes on!’ whispered Kirov, as he lowering his feet uncertainly to the floor. He wasn’t even sure if he could walk, but a few minutes later, dressed in his still-muddy uniform and with the canvas bag slung over his shoulder, Kirov slipped past the night duty orderly, who had fallen asleep at his desk. Making their way through the deserted kitchen, which reeked sourly of cabbage and boiled fish, the two men made their way out into an alley behind the hospital and set off towards Rovno, where fires from the air raid still painted the low-hanging clouds.

‘You might need this,’ said Kirov, handing over a new Soviet identity book. ‘NKVD made you a replacement, since your last one was burned to a crisp. Fortunately, your picture was still on file. It’s the only one known to exist!’

The pass book was the size of a man’s outstretched hand, dull red in colour, with an outer cover made from fabric-covered cardboard in the manner of an old school text book. The Soviet State seal, cradled in its two bound sheaves of wheat, was emblazoned on the front. Inside, in the top left-hand corner, a photograph of Pekkala had been attached with a heat seal, cracking the emulsion of the photograph. Beneath that, in pale bluish-green ink, were the letters NKVD and a second stamp indicating that Pekkala was on Special Assignment for the government. The particulars of his birth, his blood group and his state identification number filled up the right-hand page.

Most government pass books contained only those two pages, but in Pekkala’s, a third page had been inserted. Printed on canary yellow paper with a red border around the edge, were the following words:

THE PERSON IDENTIFIED IN THIS DOCUMENT IS ACTING UNDER THE DIRECT ORDERS OF COMRADE STALIN.

DO NOT QUESTION OR DETAIN HIM.

HE IS AUTHORISED TO WEAR CIVILIAN CLOTHES, TO CARRY WEAPONS, TO TRANSPORT PROHIBITED ITEMS, INCLUDING POISON, EXPLOSIVES AND FOREIGN CURRENCY. HE MAY PASS INTO RESTRICTED AREAS AND MAY REQUISITION EQUIPMENT OF ALL TYPES, INCLUDING WEAPONS AND VEHICLES.

IF HE IS KILLED OR INJURED, IMMEDIATELY NOTIFY THE BUREAU OF SPECIAL OPERATIONS.

Although this special insert was known officially as a Classified Operations Permit, it was more commonly referred to as a Shadow Pass. With it, a man could appear and disappear at will within the wilderness of regulations that controlled the state. Fewer than a dozen of these Shadow Passes had ever been issued. Even within the ranks of the NKVD, most people had never seen one.

‘I never thought I’d need another one of these,’ said Pekkala, as he slipped the pass book into the inside pocket of his coat.

‘I have brought you something else as well,’ said Kirov, handing the bag to Pekkala.

‘I didn’t realise that we would be exchanging gifts,’ remarked Pekkala, as he undid the wooden toggle on the flap and reached into the bag. Feeling the familiar coolness of the Webley’s brass grip against his palm, a look of confusion spread across his face. He withdrew the weapon from the bag and stared at it, as if he did not quite believe what he was seeing. ‘Wasn’t this destroyed in the fire?’

‘Oh, it was. Believe me. I’d have said it was a hopeless task, trying to repair that gun.’

Pekkala glanced across at Kirov. ‘Then how. .?’

‘The miracle of Lazarev.’

‘Ah.’ Pekkala nodded slowly. ‘That explains it.’

‘It was he who helped me to understand those strange modifications Linsky made to your coat.’

‘I wondered if you would figure that out,’ said Pekkala, as he pulled aside the flaps of his coat, revealing a sawn-off double-barrelled shotgun, just as Lazarev had predicted. On the other side, tucked neatly into the loops fashioned by Linsky according to Pekkala’s cryptic instructions, were two rows of shotgun shells.

Kirov nodded at the bag in Pekkala’s hands. ‘There’s a box of bullets in there as well.’

‘And a nice piece of fish!’ exclaimed Pekkala, as he scrounged the dried meat from the bottom of the bag. With a grunt of satisfaction, he tore off a strip with his teeth and chewed away contentedly. ‘I must say,’ Pekkala said with his mouth full, ‘this is quite a treat.’

If a lump of old fish counts as a treat, thought Kirov, I wonder what Pekkala has been living off, out there in the forest. He knew that, in all likelihood, he might never know. The past would be consigned to the catacombs, deep inside Pekkala’s mind, surfacing only when he called out in his sleep, chased across the tundra of his dreams like a man pursued by wolves.

From the office of Comrade Joseph Stalin, Kremlin to Ambassador Joseph Davies, US Embassy, Mokhovaya Street, November 23rd, 1937

Ambassador -

On behalf of Comrade Stalin, I acknowledge receipt of your letter regarding Mr William H. Vasko. In view of the sensitive situation and as witness to the unbreakable bonds between our two great nations, Comrade Stalin has instructed me to inform you that he has assigned Inspector Pekkala, of the Bureau of Special Operations, his most capable investigator, to personally undertake an examination of this case. Comrade Stalin adds that he looks forward to your favourable news regarding the purchase of American cargo ships.

With great respect,

Poskrebychev

Secretary to Comrade Stalin

*

Memo from Joseph Stalin to Pekkala, November 23rd, 1937

Find out what is going on here and report back to me as soon as possible. William Vasko is being held at Lubyanka, prison number E-151-K.

*

From Inspector Pekkala, Special Operations, to Henrik Panasuk, Director, Lubyanka, November 23rd, 1937

You are hereby ordered to suspend all interrogation of prisoner E-151-K, William Vasko. He is to be transferred to a holding cell pending investigation by Special Operations.

As Pekkala strode along, Kirov struggled to keep pace. ‘Where are we going, Inspector?’ he asked.

‘We must return to the place where you were shot. Valuable evidence may be lost if we do not move quickly, and we must take advantage of the mistakes this assassin has made.’

‘What mistakes, Inspector?’

‘Leaving you alive, for one! By doing so, he left a witness to his crime.’

‘But Inspector, that was no mistake.’

Pekkala stopped in his tracks. ‘You mean he knew you were still breathing?’

‘Yes, Inspector. He saw me lying there. I was wounded, but still conscious.’

‘Why didn’t you shoot him?’

‘Everything had happened so quickly that my gun was still in its holster. I couldn’t get to it. I was completely helpless. I was certain he would finish me off, but he didn’t.’

‘Then he was sending a message,’ remarked Pekkala. ‘The question is, to whom?’

‘That day in the bunker,’ said Kirov, ‘when I asked the partisans if they had seen or heard of you, they spoke of rumours that a Finn was living among the Barabanschikovs, but both of them refused to take me to the Red Forest.’

‘They call it the country of the beast,’ replied Pekkala. ‘And they avoid it at all costs.’

‘So if nobody goes there,’ asked Kirov, ‘how on earth did you find them?’

‘I didn’t,’ answered Pekkala. ‘They were the ones who found me.’

*

After ambushing the truck that contained the stolen panels of the Amber Room, Pekkala knew that if he carried out his orders and destroyed them, Stalin would allow the blame to fall upon him, rather than accept responsibility himself. By liquidating Pekkala as soon as he returned to Moscow, Stalin would ensure that no word of the mission was ever traced back to the Kremlin.

Reluctant as he was to destroy the panels, Pekkala was certain that if he refused to carry out the order, Stalin would only send another to take his place, and another after that until the grim task had been completed.

Standing amongst the casualties of the battle, who lay strewn across the road amongst spatters of congealed arterial blood, Pekkala realised that he had no choice except to complete the mission, and then to fake his own death, before going into hiding.

After placing his Webley and pass book on the body of a soldier killed in the attack, he removed a flare gun from the driver’s compartment of the truck which had been halted in the ambush. Then he unlatched a 20-litre fuel can from its mountings on the running board and doused the vehicle, as well as the body he had chosen. He poured the last of the fuel on to an armoured car which had been escorting the convoy and which lay upside down in a gulley, its muffler pipes skewed out like antlers on the carcass of a deer.

When everything was ready, Pekkala gathered up a rifle from among the weapons which lay scattered on the ground, then fired one flare into the truck and another into the armoured car.

As a wall of boiling orange flame rose up from the explosions, Pekkala sprinted for the shelter of the trees. It would not be long before the vast column of black smoke was spotted by a squadron of German cavalry who had been sent into the forest to pursue him.

Pekkala kept moving until sunset, when he came upon a cluster of houses which had recently been destroyed. The cavalry had been here. Empty cartridges from Mauser rifles littered the ground. Pekkala went to drink from the well in the centre of the compound, but when he threw down the bucket on its rope, he heard it strike against something hard. As he peered into the darkness, he saw a pair of bare feet floating upside down just below the surface of the water.

Travelling mostly at night, he pressed on through the swamps, wading hip-deep in the tar-black water past peeping frogs whose ball-bearing eyes glinted amongst the reeds. When exhaustion overtook Pekkala, he struggled to dry ground, covered himself with leaves and slept while mist drifted around him like the sails of phantom ships.

In his restless dreams, Pekkala saw himself caught and hanged by the men who were hunting for him now. The grotesque image swung like a pendulum from darkness into view and into darkness once again.

When turquoise banners trailed across the evening sky, Pekkala rose up from his shroud of leaves and continued on his way.

For weeks, Pekkala headed south, keeping to the forests, deserted valleys and roads so seldom travelled that they had all but been reclaimed by the wilderness from which they had been cut. All this time, he was pursued by an enemy whose numbers seemed to grow with every day. From hiding places in the bramble undergrowth, Pekkala watched them riding by, the hooves of their horses sometimes no more than an arm’s length away.

These cavalry men were used to open country, not the stifling confines of the forest and he realised they, too, were afraid.

Ultimately, it was the sheer size of their force which proved to be Pekkala’s greatest ally. He learned to watch for the dust kicked up by their horses and he listened to the plaintive wail of bugles calling from one squadron to another as they meandered lost among the alder thickets. After dark, he glimpsed the orange tongues of their campfires and when it rained and they could make no fires, he smelled the bitter smoke of Esbit cooking tablets used by German soldiers to heat their rations.

Only once did Pekkala come close to being caught, one night when he almost stumbled into one of their encampments. Their shelters had been sturdily built with pine-bough roofs and camouflage rain capes covering the entrances, on either side of a stream. Their horses had been tethered to a nearby tree.

Slipping into the water, Pekkala gritted his teeth against the shock of cold. Moonlight turned the stream into a flood of mercury. He waded hunchbacked through the rustling of current, hoping to pass unnoticed between the dugouts.

Pekkala was just coming level with the German positions when he heard the rustle of a rain cape being thrown back. The horses shifted nervously. Sidestepping into the weeds, Pekkala crouched down among the bristling stalks. Ten paces upstream, a man emerged from one of the dugouts. He walked to the edge of the bank. Moments later, a silver arc reached out into the dark. The soldier leaned back, gazing at the stars, then hawked and spat as he buttoned up his fly. The tiny island of saliva drifted past Pekkala’s hiding place as the soldier returned to his dugout.

Pekkala moved on, deeper and deeper into the wilderness, through storms which thrashed his face with sheets of rain while lightning, like a vast electric spider, stalked the earth. When the rain stopped, he could smell wild grapes on the breeze, the scent so sweet and heavy that it hummed like music in his brain.

Now there were no more horse tracks, or tracks of any kind except those only wild animals could have made.

One warm autumn afternoon, Pekkala passed through a forest of tall red maples. Coppery beams of sunlight splashed through the trees, refracting among the branches until the air itself appeared to be on fire. High above the forest canopy, vultures circled lazily on rising waves of heat. In this place, he came across strange, shallow depressions in the earth. He had seen structures just like this, employed by Ostyak hunters in Siberia. These primitive beds, lined with moss and lichen, had been recently constructed by war parties or groups of hunters moving quickly across the landscape, without time to build proper shelters. This was the work of savages.

Pekkala knew that he was in more danger now than he had ever been before. Although he had escaped the horsemen sent to kill him, there was no hiding from these people, for whom this wilderness was home.

Then he knew it was time to stop running.

After removing the bolt from his rifle, Pekkala buried it, along with the ammunition from the black leather pouches at his waist. Then he set the useless gun against a tree and left it there. Next, he took off the ragged German uniform that he had been wearing as part of his cover for the mission and which by now was little more than rags. Knowing that he would likely be butchered at first sight of the field grey wool, he heaped them in a pile, to which he added the scrolled bark of birch trees, twigs snapped from dead pine trees not yet toppled to the ground and fistfuls of dry, crumbling lichen. With one match, the head of which he had preserved in candle wax, he soon had a fire going.

Pekkala sat naked in front of the blaze, warming his filthy skin.

They came for him soon after dark, just as he had known they would.

Pekkala heard people moving towards him through the darkness. Six he guessed. Maybe seven. No more.

He let them come.

The shadows hauled him roughly to his feet.

‘Where is the bolt for that gun?’ asked a man, pointing at the rifle which Pekkala had dismantled.

‘Take me to whoever is in charge and I will tell you.’

‘I am in charge!’

‘No,’ said Pekkala. ‘You’re just the person he sent.’

The man hit Pekkala in the face.

Pekkala staggered back and then righted himself. He touched his fingers to his lips. The skin was split. He tasted blood.

‘I should kill you where you stand,’ growled the man.

‘Then you would have to explain why you don’t have the bolt for this gun, or the ammunition you will need to use it.’

‘You have ammunition?’

Pekkala nodded. ‘Enough to have killed you if I’d wanted to.’

‘I’ll do as you ask,’ said the man, ‘but you may well regret what you wish for.’

The shadows closed in around Pekkala, but they were hesitant, as if his nakedness defied the rusted edges of their handmade weaponry.

‘Now!’ screamed the man.

Fumbling, they put a sack over Pekkala’s head and dragged him away through the trees.

For several hours, they steered him through the darkness.

Branches clawed against his shoulders and the soles of his feet were cut by roots and stones. When at last the partisans lifted the sack from Pekkala’s head, they did so gingerly, as if unhooding a falcon.

Pekkala found himself in the middle of a small encampment deep in the forest. His gaze fixed upon two old women, their ankle-length dresses plastered with ashes and mud, huddled around a fire and roasting a dog on a spit. Beside the fire lay a small heap of dented pans and pots, like the emptied shells of river clams. The metal spike squeaked as the dog twisted slowly above the embers, teeth bared in a blackened snarl as if to rage at its misfortune.

Clothing, more filthy and ruined than the rags he had burned in the fire, was dumped at his feet. Shivering at the clammy touch of the cloth, Pekkala struggled into a rough linen shirt with wooden buttons and a pair of wool trousers patched across the seat. The garments reeked of old machorka, its smell like damp leaves in the rain.

‘Give him some food,’ ordered a voice.

Oblivious to the heat, one of the women took hold of the dog’s right rear leg. With a twisting cracking sound, she wrenched it off. Then she walked over to Pekkala, holding out the leg by its charred paw, steam rising from the splayed meat and the shiny white ball of the hip bone at the end.

Pekkala ripped away a mouthful of the scalding flesh. He had forgotten how hungry he was.

The woman stared at him while he ate, eyes glinting in her puckered face. Then she turned around and walked back to the fire.

A man appeared from the darkness. For a long time, he studied Pekkala, keeping to the edge of the light, his face masked in the shadows. ‘I don’t know who you are,’ he said, ‘but the Germans sent hundreds of men to kill you.’

‘That sounds about right,’ said Pekkala.

‘How in the name of God did you manage to survive?’

‘I’d say it was luck,’ he replied.

‘And I’d say it was more than that,’ replied the man, as he stepped from the shadows at last. His face was surprisingly gentle. He had a rounded chin, a thin and patchy beard and thoughtful brown eyes, which he struggled to focus on his prisoner. He is an intellectual, guessed Pekkala. A man who has learned to survive by something other than brute force. Who would have kept himself clean-shaven if only he could have found a razor. A man who has lost his glasses.

As if reading Pekkala’s mind, the man produced a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles, one of the temples replaced with a piece of string, looped them over his ears and continued his observation of the stranger. ‘I am Barabanschikov,’ he said.

‘And my name is Pekkala.’

Barabanschikov’s eyes widened. ‘Then it is no wonder they couldn’t find you. You are supposed to be dead!’

Then the darkness just beyond the firelight began to fill with whispers, swirling through the smoky air like the first gust of an approaching storm.

‘You make them nervous,’ observed Barabanschikov.

‘That was never my intention,’ replied Pekkala. ‘If you let me go, I will leave you my rifle, along with the location of the place where I buried the bolt and ammunition. You won’t ever see me again.’

‘That would be a pity.’ The man held up his hand in a gesture of conciliation, his palm glowing in the firelight. ‘I was hoping you might stay here for a while. Any man who can outrun an army might have skills that we’d find useful in the forest.’

A few snowflakes made their way down through the trees.

‘Winter is coming,’ warned Barabanschikov. ‘For a man to take his chances, out there alone in the snow, is the difference between brave and suicidal.’

Pekkala glanced about him at the ragged assembly of men and women. They had the look of death upon them, as if they knew how little time they had left. Although they did not speak, their eyes pleaded with him to stay. ‘I will remain with you until the ice has melted in the spring,’ he said, ‘but then I must be moving on.’

‘Until the ice has melted,’ agreed Barabanschikov.

He stepped forward and the two men shook hands.

‘I might need that rifle, after all,’ remarked Pekkala.

Barabanschikov reached into his coat, withdrew a sawn-off shotgun and handed it to Pekkala. ‘Take this instead. It strikes me that you are a man who does his killing at close range. A rifle is more suitable to those — ’ he jerked his chin towards the men who had brought Pekkala into the camp — ‘who find safety in numbers and distance.’

Humiliated, the men lowered their heads and scowled at the ground.

That was in the early days, when Barabanschikov’s Atrad was not a fighting force, but just a group of terrified and haphazardly armed people who had fled into the forest and were simply trying to stay alive. It was only later that they managed to acquire enough weapons to defend themselves.

Before the war began, the Red Army had not prepared for any kind of partisan activity. Those who had proposed training soldiers in guerrilla tactics on Russian soil, in the event of an invasion, were condemned as being defeatist. Teaching Russian soldiers to fight behind enemy lines assumed that Russia could be successfully attacked, and Red Army generals had assured Stalin that this was impossible. Any officers expressing doubts were shot, with the result that, when German troops poured across the border in the summer of 1941, the Soviet High Command had no idea how to combat the enemy in territory which had been overrun.

That was left to men like Barabanschikov and the hundreds, later thousands, of Red Army stragglers, known as okruzhentsy, who fled into the dense forests of Ukraine. Filling the ranks of these partisan bands were escaped Red Army prisoners of war, and other soldiers who were lucky enough to have avoided the vast encirclements which trapped and then annihilated entire Soviet army groups. Many were civilians, with no military training at all. Barabanschikov himself had been a school teacher in Rovno, before his school was converted into the headquarters of the German Secret Field Police. Together, this assortment of men, women and children began to organise themselves into bands united either by race or politics or simply the need to seek vengeance.

Few of them lasted for long.

In August of 1941, an SS Cavalry Brigade infiltrated the Pripet marshes and killed more than 13,000 partisans at the cost of only two men dead.

In the winter of that year, which was one of the harshest in living memory, most of those who had escaped the massacre either froze or starved to death, because the Red Army had scorched the earth as they retreated, burning homes and crops, killing livestock and poisoning wells. Their aim had been to leave nothing but a wasteland for the enemy, but it also left nothing for those who were just trying to survive. Nor was the landscape the only thing the Red Army devastated in the path of their flight. Mass executions took place in almost every city that would fall into enemy hands. On the orders of Lavrenti Beria, head of NKVD, over 100,000 Soviet civilians were shot as the Red Army decamped from Lvov.

By the time the Germans arrived, only those who had retreated deep into the hinterland even stood a chance. But those who did soon learned how to stay alive, and to fight back.

By the spring of 1942, stories had begun to spread of a solitary beast, which roamed through the Red Forest lacquered with the blood of its prey. Some said that the stories were just that — legends fabricated by Barabanschikov himself to strike terror into those who strayed into his territory. But there were others who, with fear-softened voices, uttered the name of Pekkala, as if to even to pronounce it might call forth the monster which they said lurked inside him. They said that Pekkala was dead, killed somewhere far to the north, and that Barabanschikov himself had conjured his spirit back to life out of the black earth and twisted vines and all of the assembled horrors lurking in that wilderness.

And there were men who heard these stories, having returned home from Siberia after years of captivity in the Gulag known as Borodok, who spoke of a similar creature, known to them as the Man with Bloody Hands, which had ranged across the forest in the valley of Krasnagolyana.

Letter from Samuel Hayes, Secretary, US Embassy, Moscow, to Mrs William Vasko, c/o Baranski, 44 Kurylovaya, Moscow, November 27th, 1937

Dear Mrs Vasko,

I am pleased to report that Mr Stalin himself has ordered an enquiry into your husband’s arrest. It is a mark of Mr Stalin’s affection and respect for the close bond between our nations that he has assigned Inspector Pekkala of the Bureau of Special Operations, the most capable detective in the entire Soviet Union, to personally undertake the investigation.

I can only imagine the distress you and your family must have been feeling recently, and I hope that this news brings some relief. I can say with virtual certainty that if Inspector Pekkala is working on this case, we will soon get to the bottom of it.

I will immediately forward to you whatever news I receive and hope that you will, in the meantime, take comfort in this excellent news.

With kind regards,

Samuel Hayes, US Embassy, Moscow

*

Letter from Mrs William Vasko, c/o Baranski, 44 Kurylovaya, Moscow to Samuel Hayes, Secretary, US Embassy, Moscow, November 29th, 1937

Dear Mr Hayes,

What great news this is! I cannot thank you enough for your help and your encouragement during this dark time. I have heard of the great Inspector Pekkala and share your confidence that my husband will soon be back with his family where he belongs, his innocence proven beyond a shadow of a doubt and this chapter of our life in Russia closed for good.

My faith in you, as well as in Comrade Stalin, has been wholly restored and I am frankly ashamed that my confidence was ever shaken to the point where doubts crept in. I join my children in expressing to you our most profound gratitude.

Yours sincerely,

Betty Jean Vasko

Making their way through the streets of Rovno, Kirov and Pekkala located the bunker without difficulty. The burlap curtain still hung in front of the door, speckled with burn holes made by embers coughed up from the blazing ruins. But when they reached the bottom of the stairs, following the beam of Pekkala’s torch, they found both rooms were empty. The desks, ammunition crates and stacks of firearms had all been spirited away.

‘It’s all gone,’ muttered Kirov. ‘Everything.’

‘Not everything,’ replied Pekkala, shining the torch on the gore-splashed walls and ceiling.

As they inspected the room, Kirov described what had taken place.

Their search produced several empty cartridges, trampled into the dirt floor by whoever had cleaned out the room, as well as a torn and bloody bandage, which appeared to be the same one the assassin had been wearing to cover his face.

Pekkala examined the cartridges carefully. ‘From a Tokarev.’

‘That’s right,’ said Kirov. ‘The missing man was carrying one in a holster.’

Pekkala held out the cartridges on the flat of his palm. ‘But these are not ordinary Tokarev casings.’

‘How can you tell?’

‘They have been reloaded,’ explained Pekkala, pointing to the base of the cartridge, which was ridged with several tiny nicks, as if some minute creature had sunk its teeth into the brass. ‘You can see extractor marks. There are also crimps along the side of the cartridge, where it has been held in a vice. But the strange thing is that the primer cap doesn’t appear to be a replacement. It hasn’t been fired before.’