Red Moth

‘Stefanov!’

‘Stefanov!’ bellowed Gorchakov. ‘Have you gone deaf?’

Stefanov raised his head. ‘Colonel?’

‘Get over here.’

Stefanov shambled over to Gorchakov and saluted. Dried mud clung like fish scales to his boots. His eyes fell on Pekkala. It can’t be, Stefanov thought.

‘Listen to me,’ said Gorchakov. ‘You just came from the Catherine Palace, didn’t you?’

‘I was there, Comrade Colonel, but it was several days ago.’

Stefanov continued to stare at Pekkala. ‘My eyes are playing tricks on me,’ he murmured. ‘I could have sworn you were. .’

‘Say hello to the Emerald Eye,’ said Gorchakov.

Stefanov opened his mouth but no sound came out. Suddenly, he was thrown back through time to that day when he stood with his father on the fence by the compost heap at Tsarskoye Selo. Solemnly‚ he bowed his head towards Pekkala. ‘I am the son of Agripin Dobrushinovich Stefanov, the gardener at Tsarskoye Selo.’

‘Never mind that!’ growled Gorchakov. ‘Do you know where the enemy has concentrated its forces between here and Catherine Palace?’

‘I cannot say for certain, Comrade Colonel.’

‘But you crept right through their lines last night.’ Gorchakov turned to Pekkala. ‘And carrying a dead man on his back. At least, that’s what I heard.’

‘It’s true I made it through their lines,’ stammered the rifleman. ‘But I was just lucky. That’s all.’

‘Luck is worth plenty out here,’ Gorchakov told him, ‘and since you’ve done it once, it shouldn’t be much trouble doing it again.’

‘Doing what, Comrade Colonel?’

‘You will be guiding the Inspector back.’

‘Back? You mean to the Catherine Palace?’

‘That is what I said.’

Stefanov looked from one man to the other, certain that he must have misunderstood. ‘Comrades, the Fascists have reached Tsarskoye Selo. We can’t go back.’

‘Gather up your things,’ Gorchakov replied matter of factly, ‘and be ready to go in five minutes.’

‘I have no things, Comrade Colonel.’

Gorchakov reached out and skewered a finger against Stefanov’s chest, as if he meant to bore a hole into his heart. ‘Then you are ready now!’

As the colonel’s order finally sank in, Stefanov’s first reaction was to turn and run away. What prevented him from doing so was not the fear of summary execution at the hands of Gorchakov’s men, but rather the presence of Inspector Pekkala, at whose side he felt a peculiar assurance that no harm could come to him.

Now Pekkala turned to Stefanov. ‘Before the Germans attacked, did you go inside the Catherine Palace?’

‘We had orders not to trespass,’ began Stefanov.

‘That’s not what he’s asking,’ barked Gorchakov. ‘What he wants to know is if you went inside, not whether you had permission to do so.’

‘Yes,’ admitted Stefanov. ‘I went inside the palace, but I did not take anything. I swear!’

‘Do you know where the Amber Room is located?’ asked Pekkala.

The words shot through Stefanov’s brain. He remembered what his father had said about Pekkala being conjured from its walls by the god-like powers of the Tsar. So many times he had envisaged the man who stood before him now materialising from the fiery collage on the walls of that room, that he no longer knew for certain whether it was something he had imagined or whether he had somehow glimpsed a moment which lay beyond the boundaries of his life. ‘I know where it is, Inspector.’

‘And did you go in there?’ demanded Gorchakov. He had no idea why Pekkala would be interested in the Amber Room, but he nevertheless felt that he should be a part of this interrogation, and so the colonel fixed upon his face an expression of total awareness.

‘I did.’

‘And what did you find?’ asked Pekkala.

‘Nothing, Inspector. The room was empty. They were all empty, except for picture frames and pieces of broken furniture. So, you see,’ he tried to reason with them, ‘there can be no point in going back.’

‘What you have just told us,’ said Pekkala, ‘is all the reason we need.’

Turning away from the bewildered rifleman, Gorchakov addressed Pekkala. ‘Your ride will take you to the front, where you will rendezvous with Captain Leontev. He has been informed of the situation. He will do what he can to get you through the lines. But you must hurry. The Germans will be here in a few hours. We are falling back to a new defensive line.’

Leaving the town, they drove by the old schoolhouse which had been converted into a field hospital just as a truck pulled up at the main gate. The canvas flap was thrown back. A squad of Frontier Guards, with distinctive blue-green bands on their caps, piled out into the muddy street and made their way into the schoolhouse.

Stefanov remembered what the doctor had told him — how the wounded could not be moved. He saw the flash of the first shot, lighting up one of the rooms on the first floor, and then the building slid out of view behind them.

They passed ramshackle houses at the edge of Chertova. Peeking through a tear in the truck’s tarpaulin roof, Pekkala saw women in headscarves, wearing blue-and-white-striped dresses like the cloth of mattress covers. The women stared at the truck as it sped by, their eyes filled with contempt now that the army was abandoning them to their fate.