Red Moth

Lieutenant Churikova

Lieutenant Churikova had returned to the barracks, from which she and her battalion had departed only a few days before.

When Pekkala found her, she was alone in a dormitory which would normally have housed sixteen people. Pale sunlight shone through the dusty windows, whose frames chequered the dull red linoleum floors.

Churikova had scrounged some blankets, rolling one up as a pillow. The remaining fifteen beds were bare except for thin, horsehair-stuffed mattresses, their blue-and-white-striped ticking stained by the metal springs beneath as the mattresses were turned over each month.

Churikova was folding her clothes. ‘I heard you coming,’ she said, as Pekkala stepped into the room. ‘It’s so quiet in here now. Last night, I heard the footsteps of a mouse as it ran across the floor.’

‘Stalin tells me you volunteered to help bring back Gustav Engel.’

‘Yes. That’s right. I did.’

Pekkala explained Stalin’s instructions.

Churikova had continued to fold her clothes as she listened, carefully packing them into a canvas duffel bag, but suddenly she paused. ‘He really means for us to destroy the amber?’

‘Those are his orders, in the event that Engel has decided to move the panels to some place inside Germany. The sooner we can get to Tsarskoye Selo‚ the better chance we have of saving the Amber Room.’

‘When do we leave?’ asked Churikova.

‘Tomorrow. A car will come for you before dawn.’ Pekkala turned to leave.

‘Inspector?’

He paused and looked back. ‘Yes?’

‘Thank you.’

‘For what?’

‘When I volunteered to come on this mission, Comrade Stalin said you’d try to talk me out of it. But you didn’t.’

‘I would have,’ replied Pekkala, ‘if I’d thought it could do any good.’