Red Moth

In the course

In the course of their Okhrana training, Vassileyev had familiarised the two young recruits in the use of secret codes, disguises, bomb defusing and firearms, which included so many hours spent firing their Nagant revolvers in the underground range beneath Okhrana Headquarters that Pekkala and Kovalevsky resorted to dipping their index fingers in molten candle wax before the sessions began every day, since the skin had been worn off the pads of their fingertips by the triggers of the guns.

Vassileyev’s favourite topic, however, was the hunting down of suspects. He was, in spite of the fact that he had lost one of his legs in a bomb blast, still considered to be the finest practitioner of the art of tailing and pursuit in all of Russia.

So it struck the two men as particularly strange when, after only an hour of preparation, Vassileyev assigned them the task of following a courier named Worunchuk from the telegraph office he visited each afternoon to the point where he crossed the Potsuleyev bridge.

‘But you must go no further than the bridge!’ commanded Vassileyev.

Perplexed by this cryptic order, Kovalevsky and Pekkala did not know what to think.

‘Inspector. .’ Pekkala began hesitantly.

‘Yes? What is it?’

‘Are you sure we are ready for this? We’ve been shooting at targets for months, but we spent less than a day learning how to tail suspects.’

‘You are exactly as ready as I need you to be! Now go!’ He shooed them out of the room. ‘Get to work!’

Following Vassileyev’s instructions, Kovalevsky and Pekkala waited at a tram stop across the road from the telegraph office. Each time a tram halted to allow passengers on or off, the two men would step back until the tram had departed and resume their observation of the telegraph office. It was a small building, painted bone-white except for a red sign, outlined with black and gold, above the entrance, which read, ‘Government Signals Bureau’.

‘I don’t think he’s ever coming,’ muttered Kovalevsky, after they had been standing there for an hour.

‘Vassileyev taught us to be patient,’ replied Pekkala, although he was beginning to have his own doubts.

It was three hours before Worunchuk finally arrived. The physical description Vassileyev had provided them made the suspect easy to identify. He was a heavy-set man with an olive complexion, sharp, sloping nose and a black moustache. He wore a black, velvet-lapelled overcoat that came down to his knees of the type commonly seen on lawyers, bankers and office managers.

Worunchuk had chosen the time of day when most businesses were closing, and the streets were filled with people heading home from work.

Rather than risk losing him in the crowds, Kovalevsky and Pekkala hurriedly crossed the road as Worunchuk ducked into the telegraph office. They waited two doors down, outside a woman’s clothing shop, until Worunchuk appeared a few minutes later, tucking an envelope into the chest pocket of his coat.

He set off at a brisk pace along the road which ran beside the Moika River. Several times, he crossed the street and then crossed back again for no apparent reason, forcing Pekkala and Kovalevsky to reverse direction in the middle of the road. Once he stopped in front of a butcher shop, eyeing the cuts of meat on display behind the large glass window.

It was not long before Worunchuk crossed the Potsuleyev bridge, leaving his pursuers sweating with exertion as they watched him disappear among the commuters. As soon as he was out of sight, Kovalevsky and Pekkala hurried back to Vassileyev.

They found him sitting behind his desk, whittling out the inside of his wooden leg with a large bone-handled pen knife. ‘Did you find him?’ asked Vassileyev, without even looking up to see who had entered the room.

‘Yes.’ Kovalevsky removed a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed the sweat from his forehead. ‘He moves quickly!’

‘And he crossed the Potsuleyev bridge?’

‘That is correct, Inspector,’ Pekkala confirmed, ‘and from there, we let him go, just as you ordered.’

‘Good!’ Vassileyev laid his wooden leg upon the table. ‘Tomorrow you will do the same again. Follow him to the Potsuleyev bridge.’

‘Yes, Inspector,’ both men chorused.

Vassileyev aimed a finger at them. ‘But no further. That’s an order!’

The next day and the next and the next, the two men took up their station at the tram stop.

Worunchuk kept a tight schedule, arriving at the telegraph office at three minutes to five every day. The route he took to reach the Potsuleyev bridge also remained unchanged, and varied only in those places where he zigzagged mindlessly across the road. But he always stopped at the butcher shop, standing before its large glass window to study the cuts of meat.

‘Why doesn’t he buy anything?’ muttered Kovalevsky. ‘If he can afford a coat like that, he can spring for a few links of sausage!’

When, once more, Worunchuk vanished across the Potsuleyev bridge, Kovalevsky turned angrily and began striding back towards Vassileyev’s office.

Pekkala struggled to keep up.

‘This is doing no good at all!’ Kovalevsky’s voice was filled with frustration. ‘As far as I can see‚ he’s doing nothing wrong.’

‘Yet.’

Kovalevsky stopped and turned to face Pekkala. ‘What did you say?’

‘I said “yet”. He hasn’t done anything wrong yet.’

‘This city is filled with people who haven’t done anything wrong yet. Are you suggesting that we follow all of them?’

‘No,’ Pekkala replied, ‘only the one Inspector Vassileyev has ordered us to pursue.’

Kovalevsky grunted disapprovingly, then headed off again towards Okhrana headquarters.

The next day, on Vassileyev’s orders, they were back at the tram stop, opposite the telegraph office.

Kovalevsky was in an even fouler mood than he had been the day before. ‘This is not what I signed up for.’ He glared at Pekkala. ‘Did you sign up for this?’

‘No,’ Pekkala told him. ‘I did not sign up at all. It was the Tsar who sent me here.’

At two minutes past five, when Worunchuk made his usual departure from the telegraph office, Pekkala and Kovalevsky set off after him, following at a safe distance.

As he did every day, Worunchuk paused before the butcher shop.

‘For pity’s sake,’ growled Kovalevsky, ‘go in and buy something today!’

Suddenly, as if Kovalevsky’s suggestion had forced itself into his mind, Worunchuk stepped into the shop.

‘Finally!’ groaned Kovalevsky.

The two men slowed their pace and came to a halt one door down from the butcher shop.

‘We shouldn’t stop here,’ said Pekkala. ‘We’ll walk slowly past the shop and wait for him on the other side. He’s bound to come out soon.’

As the two men strolled past the butcher shop, they were shocked to find Worunchuk standing in the doorway.

He had not entered the shop at all, but only stood at the entrance, waiting for the men to walk by.

Stunned, Pekkala and Kovalevsky met his stare, unable to hide their true purpose.

Angrily, Worunchuk pushed past them and set off towards the Potsuleyev bridge. He did not run. Nor did he turn to look back. It was as if he knew they could not touch him.

Pekkala had taken only one step in the direction of the fleeing man before he felt Kovalevsky’s arm on his sleeve, holding him back.

‘It’s no use,’ whispered Kovalevsky. ‘He’s made us. Somehow he figured it out. We might as well go back and tell Vassileyev we have failed.’

Gloomily, the two men watched him disappear into the crowd.

Half an hour later, Pekkala and Kovalevsky presented themselves at Vassileyev’s office.

Vassileyev was sitting at his desk, smoking a cigarette which he had taken from a gold and red box labelled ‘Markov’. ‘Well?’ he demanded, raising his chin and whistling a thin jet of smoke towards the ceiling.

‘He spotted us,’ explained Pekkala.

‘How?’ Vassileyev’s face showed no emotion.

After a deep sigh, Kovalevsky continued with their story. ‘He was waiting for us in the doorway to a butcher shop. He stopped there every day but never went inside. This day, he finally went in, at least we thought he had. .’

‘Did the shop have a window?’

‘Yes, for displaying the meat. Every day he went to see what they’d set out. But he never bought anything!’

‘He wasn’t looking at the meat,’ said Vassileyev. ‘He was studying your reflections in the window.’

As the truth became apparent, Pekkala lowered his head in shame and stared at the floor.

Kovalevsky’s lips began to twitch. ‘But when he crossed the road, back and forth, he never looked back. He didn’t see us then.’

‘He didn’t need to. He was testing who kept pace with him. Anyone not following him would maintain their speed along the pavement, but you would return to the exact same distance behind him. And all the confirmation he needed would be there for him to see in the shop window when he stopped.’

‘I am sorry,’ muttered Kovalevsky,

‘We are sorry,’ added Pekkala.

For a moment longer, Vassileyev’s face remained stony. Then, all of a sudden, he began to smile. ‘You have both done very well.’

The two men stared at him in confusion.

‘You did exactly what I hoped you would do,’ explained Vassileyev.

‘You mean to let him see us?’ asked Kovalevsky.

‘You didn’t let him,’ said Vassileyev. ‘He outsmarted you. That’s all.’

‘And that was what you wanted?’ asked Pekkala. ‘I don’t understand, Chief Inspector.’

‘Worunchuk is not the man we’re after. As I told you‚ he is only a courier.’

‘Then who are you trying to arrest?’ asked Kovalevsky.

‘A bomb maker named Krebs. We believe he might have been the one who built the device that killed Tsar Alexander III. He has no politics, no convictions. He simply builds bombs for whoever can afford to pay him. We learned from an Okhrana agent at the telegraph office that messages had begun arriving regularly for a certain Julius Crabbe, a known alias for Krebs. The messages are coded, of course. We have no way of knowing exactly who he’s building for now, or what will be done with the bomb when it is ready. Our only chance is to arrest Krebs before he has a chance to deliver the bomb.’

‘But why not simply follow Worunchuk to the place where he’s delivering the telegram?’ Kovalevsky asked exasperatedly.

‘Oh, we’ve done that.’ Vassileyev dismissed the suggestion with a wave of his hand. ‘He lives in a flat across the road from the Petersburg Wind Instruments Factory.’

‘And why not arrest him there?’ asked Pekkala.

Vassileyev smiled patiently. ‘Because we happen to know that Krebs has prepared explosive devices strong enough to destroy the entire building, along with half the others on the street, if anyone should try to force their way into his apartment. We need to catch him when he is out on his own. Otherwise, he will kill as many or more people than would have been killed by the bomb he’s constructing now.’

‘But Worunchuk will have told him by now that he was being followed by the Okhrana. Surely he’ll be on the next train out of town.’

Vassileyev shook his head. ‘Worunchuk is a professional. He probably realised you were following him the first day you showed up outside the telegraph office.’

‘Then why would he come back the next day, and the next and the day after that?’

‘He was studying you,’ said Vassileyev, ‘seeing how well you were able to track him without being noticed.’

‘Not well at all, apparently,’ said Pekkala.

‘Exactly! And Worunchuk would quickly reach the conclusion that he was not dealing with agents of the Okhrana, who would have undergone months of training. What he would have seen were a couple of amateurs. Forgive me, boys, but what I needed from you these past few days was not your expertise but rather your lack of it.’

‘Then who will he think we are, if not government agents?’ asked Kovalevsky.

Vassileyev pursed his lips and let his hands fall open. ‘Most likely, just a couple of local thugs looking to shake him down. The fact that you would only follow him as far as the Potsuleyev bridge would have convinced him of this, since the gangs in this city co-exist by operating in specific territories. The bridge is one such boundary marker, and a line gang members would not dare to cross.’

‘We could have gotten him,’ said Kovalevsky. ‘He was standing right in front of us.’

‘It’s lucky for you that you didn’t try,’ replied Vassileyev. ‘He would have killed you both for sport.’

‘So what do we do now?’ asked Pekkala. ‘Do we simply show up tomorrow at the telegraph office and start following him all over again?’

‘There would be no point, ‘Vassileyev told him. ‘Worunchuk won’t be there. The fact that he was being followed, even if it was only by a couple of thugs such as yourselves, means that he can no longer function as a courier for Krebs. As soon as he has informed Krebs of the situation he will vanish, probably to another city. No doubt we will run into him again someday. But, for now, that leaves Krebs without a courier to receive his messages. He hasn’t got time to engage another courier.’

‘He will have to collect them himself,’ said Pekkala.

Vassileyev nodded. ‘And when he does, we will be waiting.’

‘What about the person who is paying for the bomb?’

‘In the city of Kiev, there is another equally humiliated pair of young Okhrana agents, and a courier who thinks he’s gotten the better of them. It won’t be long before the man who ordered the bomb is face to face with the oblivion he had planned for many others.’ Vassileyev stubbed out his cigarette and immediately reached into the box to find another. ‘Congratulations, boys. You have just completed your first successful mission.’

‘And what is this last mission to be?’ asked Kovalevsky, as he carefully spooned up his soup.

While Kovalevsky ate, Pekkala explained everything.

By the time he had finished, Kovalevsky’s bowl was empty. With a sigh, he pushed it to the centre of the table, sat back and folded his hands across his stomach. ‘What I don’t understand, Pekkala, is why you need my help at all. It has been years since I practised my old trade. Surely Stalin has his own men to do this job!’

‘He does, but none that he can trust. Somewhere in the ranks of NKVD, or even in the Kremlin itself, there is a traitor. If this person, whoever he is, learns of our plan to bring back Gustav Engel, as soon as we cross the lines, we will be heading straight into a trap. You are the only one with the necessary skills whom we are certain is not involved.’

‘Yet.’

Pekkala nodded.

‘You mentioned that this would be my final mission‚’ said Kovalevsky. ‘I do not mean to sound mercenary‚ Pekkala‚ but what exactly are you offering in exchange for my help on this case?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You drive a hard bargain, Pekkala.’

‘No, old friend. I don’t think you understand. When I said nothing, I meant that your past would be officially forgotten. You would simply go back to living out your life as Professor Shulepov.’

‘That is more than generous,’ said Kovalevsky. ‘Besides, it would have been hard to walk away from a job I’ve grown to love. I am also tired of running. But I wonder if you realise just how difficult a mission this could be.’

‘Getting through the German lines never sounded easy to me.’

‘That is not the hard part,’ explained Kovalevsky. ‘The greatest challenge, since you cannot simply kill this man and be done with it, will be in persuading him to come back with us.’

‘Persuading him? It almost sounds as if you expect him to come of his own free will.’

‘That is precisely what I mean,’ replied Kovalevsky.

‘But surely there are ways to smuggle him across, even if he doesn’t want to go?’

‘There are, but none of them are reliable. We can drug him, bandage him up and try to carry him through as a badly wounded soldier. If it was only a matter of hours, this method would be practical, but it will take days to return and the longer we try to keep a man knocked out, the greater the risk that we might accidentally kill him with the drug, or that the drug might fail and he wakes up and sounds the alarm. If that happens, or if he gets away from you, we are as good as dead.’

‘Is there any way to do this without drugging him?’

‘If you are afraid he might run, you can cut one of his Achilles’ tendons.’

Pekkala winced at the matter-of-fact tone in Kovalevsky’s voice.

‘But the injury tends to arouse suspicion,’ continued Kovalevsky, ‘and unless you find a way to silence him, the man can still cry out for help.’

‘I have taken many people into custody over the years, but none under circumstances as difficult as this.’ Reluctantly, Pekkala returned to Kovalevsky’s original idea. ‘How do you propose that we convince a man to travel with us to what might be his death?’

‘In that one sentence, Pekkala, you have already provided the answer.’

‘I have?’

‘You said “might”. Once we have him at gunpoint, Engel will quickly realise that his chances of surviving an escape attempt are next to none. He will also understand that his odds of surviving in Soviet captivity are very small. Small as they might be, however, we must convince him that this small chance of survival does exist, provided he cooperates. Add to that the possibility that if, on arriving in Moscow, he agrees to tell you everything he knows, he will not only survive, he will prosper.’

‘You mean to get him to change sides.’

Kovalevsky shrugged. ‘If the alternative is a hole in the ground, changing sides can be a mere formality. Remember what this man is fighting for. It is not a love of one country and a hatred of another. It is these works of art. If we can offer him a stake in their future, as well as a future for himself, I think the outcome of this journey will be the one that Stalin has in mind. Have you met this man Engel?’

‘No. That’s why we are bringing someone who can identify him. Her name is Lieutenant Churikova.’

‘Even better. When it comes to convincing Engel, a woman is likely to be more persuasive than a couple of thugs like us.’

‘Even if she can persuade Engel to come with us of his own free will, it will be much harder for Engel to persuade Stalin to keep him alive.’

‘Stalin has made peace with enemies before, provided they are useful enough. You and I are living proof of that. If Engel plays his cards right, he may yet live a long and happy life.’

Their meal concluded‚ the two men stood up to leave.

It was drizzling as they stepped out into a world of moving shadows. On account of air raid precautions, the streetlamps were no longer illuminated. The only lights came from vehicles which, with their headlights blinkered into slits, resembled huge black cats prowling through the rain-slicked streets. Many people were still on their way home from work and since the tram and underground services had been scaled back due to fuel shortages, the pavements were busier this time of day than they had ever been before the war.

‘Do you know what my first thought was when I saw you at the school?’ asked Kovalevsky. Without waiting for an answer, he went on. ‘I thought to myself that Myednikov would have been disappointed in me.’

‘But why? After all, you are the one who survived.’

‘That was more luck than skill. I neglected the most important rule he ever taught me — to have an exit out of every situation, whether it is a way out of that restaurant, or a route out of the city or the country. And then there is the exit through which you disappear forever, after which the person you knew as yourself no longer exists. But that is the most dangerous one of all. After you have gone through that door, only one exit remains.’

‘And what is that?’

‘For me, the day I became Professor Shulepov, my only way out was a Browning 1910.’

‘I am glad you didn’t take it,’ said Pekkala.

‘So am I,’ agreed Kovalevsky. ‘And whatever skills I possess, outdated though they might be, are now at your disposal. All I ask in exchange is the chance to go back into hiding.’

‘You have my word, old friend.’

‘How long do we have to prepare?’

‘Three days.’

‘Very well. That should be enough time. Tomorrow, I will begin making preparations,’ said Kovalevsky. ‘I will need information about precise troop displacements, as well as aerial reconnaissance photographs showing what roads and bridges might still be open.’

‘I’ll make sure you get them.’

‘We will need money,’ Kovalevsky continued, ‘and not standard currency. Gold coins will work best, preferably German, French or British.’

‘I’m sure some can be found.’

‘Concealed compasses.’

‘NKVD has some which fit inside standard Red Army tunic buttons.’

‘And we will need vials of potassium cyanide, one for each person, in case we are captured.’

To this, Pekkala only nodded, recalling the thin glass containers, each one containing about a teaspoonful of the poison. The vial itself was stored in a brass cartridge, which could be unscrewed in the middle. NKVD issued these vials in sets of three, laid out in blue velvet in a small leather-bound case, exactly the same kind one might find in a jeweller’s shop for displaying a wedding ring or a set of pearl earrings.

The vials came with no instructions for use, unlike almost everything else issued by NKVD, even down to shoelaces and torches. Each person to whom the poison was issued had the choice of precisely where and how to store the means of suicide. One popular method was to have a vial sewn into the collar of a shirt, in the place where the collar stay would normally go. This was a place where a person under arrest was unlikely to be searched. Once the vial had been placed in the mouth, the user only had to bite down gently and the poison would be released, causing death in less than four seconds.

Pekkala had been issued a set of vials, but he had never carried them. No one had ever insisted, or even asked him why, which was fortunate, because he would have found it difficult to explain. It wasn’t the fear of taking his own life at a time when his death would otherwise be certain. The method was simple. The poison was quick. For Pekkala, that was the real danger of owning the cyanide vials. What Pekkala truly feared was that the darkness in his mind might one day become unendurable and he would give up his life with no more effort than a shrug.

Although he carried a revolver, the fact that he had been trained in its use and had seen for himself the terrible damage it worked upon the human body, had built a kind of mental barricade against any instinct to point the Webley at himself. So far, the barricade had held. No one, not even Kirov, was aware that such thoughts had ever entered Pekkala’s head, because there were no witnesses to the times Pekkala had sat at the bare table in his apartment in the middle of the night, the brass-handled gun placed before him, fists clenched tight against his chest, while the demons in his skull chanted their anthems of despair.

‘Did you hear me, Pekkala?’ asked Kovalevsky.

‘Potassium cyanide. Yes.’ Pekkala paused to glance up at the searchlights, tilting back and forth across the night sky, like giant metronomes marking time for the movement of the planets. He thought back to the Northern Lights he’d often seen draped across the heavens as a boy. It appeared on nights of bitter cold, when frost would beard the inside of his bedroom windows. He would lie bundled in his blankets, staring through the ice-encrusted glass at the curtains of green and pink and yellow, billowing out in the darkness. These searchlights, too, were beautiful in their way. It was possible to forget, even if only for a moment, the grim fact of their purpose.

Pekkala’s dreams were interrupted by the sound of a car backfiring in the street.

Both men flinched and Kovalevsky, tripping on the sidewalk, would have fallen if Pekkala had not reached out and caught him.

‘It’s all right!’ laughed Pekkala. ‘I’ve got you.’

Kovalevsky slipped through his arms and collapsed in a heap on the pavement.

‘Kovalevsky?’ Slowly, as if he were still in that dream of himself, long ago, with the Northern Lights pulsing in the sky, Pekkala realised what had happened. It was no car backfiring. Instinctively, he reached for his Webley, fingers clawing across his chest, but the weapon wasn’t there. He had left it at the office. Stumbling back against the wall of a house, Pekkala searched the darkness for a shooter. People continued to make their way down the street, silhouettes as black as blindness. Pekkala knew from experience that it took three shots before most people even realised that a gunfight had broken out. Unless the gun was visible, most people passed off the sound of the first shot as a door slamming. Or a car backfiring. Nobody was running. Nobody cried out. A man sidestepped the place where Kovalevsky lay, glanced down at the still form and kept on walking.

Pekkala knelt down beside Kovalevsky, rolled the man over and stared into his face, which had become a mask of blood.

Kovalevsky had been hit in the throat. He was already dead.

‘Help me!’ Pekkala called out to the shadows walking by.

At first, nobody stopped.

‘Let him sleep it off,’ advised one man.

‘Please!’ yelled Pekkala. ‘Will somebody find the police?’

Only then did the flow of passing figures seem to ripple. Voices echoed through the night. Shadows converged around the dead man. Arms reached out. Shouts turned to screams. At last, a police car arrived.

Two hours later, Pekkala was back in his office. As he explained to Kirov who Kovalevsky had been and why he had gone to meet with the former tsarist agent, diluted splashes of the teacher’s blood dripped from the heavy wool of his coat, dappling the floor.

‘It could have been a stray shot,’ Kirov suggested. ‘A soldier on patrol could have misfired his weapon. It could have been an accident, Inspector. These things do happen.’

‘No,’ whispered Pekkala. ‘It was no accident. The traitor must have followed me.’

‘But even if you’re right, Inspector, why would they have gone after Kovalevsky? As far as the rest of the world is concerned, he’s just a harmless school master named Shulepov. Nobody knows his real identity. Nobody who’d want to kill him, anyway.’

Pekkala did not reply. Gently, as if to wake the man from sleep, Kirov reached out and touched Pekkala’s shoulder. ‘Inspector.’

Pekkala started, his eyes wild, as if in that moment he no longer recognised his colleague. It lasted only a second. ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered. ‘All these years, I had thought Kovalevsky’s bones had turned to dust. I had only just gotten used to him being alive again. And now. .’ Pekkala shook his head and his voice trailed away into silence.

‘Perhaps Elizaveta and I can cook you a meal tonight, Inspector,’ Kirov said. ‘It’s late, but there’s still time. Wouldn’t that be better than going back to your apartment alone?’

‘Don’t you see, Kirov? I have to be alone. And so should you.’

Kirov’s face paled in confusion. ‘I don’t understand, Inspector. I thought you liked Elizaveta.’

‘I do! And I know you do, as well. That’s why I’m saying you should stay away from her. Look at what happened this evening. It could just as easily have been me who was shot. Or it could have been you lying there in the gutter with your throat torn out. Our lives are too fragile to be shared, especially with those who love us. I learned that lesson a long time ago, Kirov, but by the time I had figured it out, I was in a rail car full of convicts crossing the Ural mountains into Siberia. And then it was too late. If you do love her, Kirov, or if you even think you could, don’t do to her what I did to my fiancee when I kissed her goodbye at the Leningrad station and promised we still had a future.’

The phone rang.

‘Answer it,’ ordered Pekkala.

Kirov picked up the receiver. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Right away.’ Then he hung up and looked at Pekkala.

‘Stalin?’

Kirov nodded. ‘He says he wants to see us right away.’

They spoke no more about Elizaveta.

As they left the room, Pekkala picked up the gun belt from where it lay on his desk. He strapped it on beneath his coat as he made his way downstairs, following the Morse-code trail of Kovalevsky’s blood which he had left upon the worn-out wooden steps.