Red Moth

Outside Pekkala’s apartment

Outside Pekkala’s apartment‚ shoulders hunched in the rain, stood Major Kirov. He was tall and thin, with high cheekbones that gave him an expression of perpetual surprise.

Their car, a 1939 model Emka, waited at the kerb, its engine running and windscreen wipers twitching like the antennae of some nervous insect.

‘Your belt is upside down,’ said Pekkala, as he walked out of the building.

Kirov glanced down at the brass buckle, whose cut-out pattern of a five-pointed star emblazoned with a hammer and sickle was indeed facing the wrong way. ‘I’m still half asleep,’ he muttered under his breath as he undid the belt and strapped it back on the right way.

‘Is it the Kremlin?’ asked Pekkala.

‘This time of night,’ replied Kirov, ‘it is always the Kremlin.’

‘When does Stalin expect us to sleep?’ grumbled Pekkala.

‘Inspector, you lie on the floor in your clothes, occasionally lapsing into unconsciousness, and in between you memorise railway timetables. That does not count as sleep. Where was it this time? Minsk? Tbilisi? Were all the trains running on time?’

‘Vladivostok,’ replied Pekkala as he walked towards the Emka, buttoning his heavy wool coat against the chill of that damp night. ‘Change at Ryazan and Omsk. And my trains are always on time.’

Kirov shook his head. ‘I can’t decide if it’s genius or madness.’

‘Then don’t.’

‘Don’t what?’

‘Decide,’ replied Pekkala as he climbed into the passenger seat and shut the door. Once inside the Emka he breathed the musty smell of the leather seats, mixed in with the reek of Kirov’s pipe tobacco.

Kirov slipped behind the wheel, put the car in gear and they set off through the unlit streets.

‘What does he want?’ asked Pekkala.

‘Poskrebychev said something about a butterfly.’

Poskrebychev, Stalin’s personal secretary, was a small, slope-shouldered man, bald on top and with a band of thinning hair worn like the leafy garland of a Roman emperor. Poskrebychev, who wore round glasses almost flush against his eyeballs, was rarely seen without his dull brownish green uniform, the short mandarin collar buttoned tight against his throat as if it was the only thing to stop his head from falling off. Unremarkable as he was in his appearance, Poskrebychev’s position as assistant to the Supreme Leader of the Soviet Union had placed him in a position of extraordinary power. Anyone who wanted to see Stalin had to deal first with Poskrebychev. Over the years, this influence had earned him countless enemies, but none who were prepared to act on it, and risk losing an audience with Stalin.

‘A butterfly?’ whispered Pekkala.

‘Whatever it is, Inspector, it must be important. He has asked to meet with you alone.’

For a while, neither of them spoke. The headlights of the Emka carved a pale tunnel through the night, the sifting rain like veils of silk billowing past them in the darkness.

‘I heard on the radio that Narva fell to the Germans today,’ remarked Kirov, anxious to break the silence.

‘That’s the third city in less than a week.’

In the distance, over the slate rooftops, gleaming like fish scales under the blue-black sky, Pekkala could see the domes of St Basil’s Cathedral and the Kremlin. All across the city, the skeleton claws of searchlights raked the sky for German bombers.