Red Moth

How exactly did you

‘How exactly did you get on the wrong side of this man?’ asked Kirov.

‘Bakhturin had a painting,’ explained Semykin, ‘which he had personally removed from the house of a railway official in Poland after the invasion of 1939. It was a painting by the Polish artist Stanislaw Wyspianski. He showed me a photograph of it and asked if I would sell it for him. I agreed, on condition that he obtained papers which legalised his ownership of the painting. While these were being drawn up by the Department of Cultural Affairs, I contacted someone I thought would be interested, a government minister named Osipov. Osipov was so taken with the picture I showed him that we agreed on a price before the painting had even touched our hands. When I told Bakhturin what I thought I could get for the painting, he was very pleased. But when the painting arrived. .’ His voice trailed off.

‘What?’ demanded Kirov. ‘What happened? Was it a fake?’

‘Technically, it was a copy. Not a fake.’

‘What’s the difference?’

‘Wyspianski always signed his work, but he had the eccentricity of signing the back, not the front. So when I looked at the photo and saw that the work was not signed, that did not trouble me, because I assumed that the work had been signed on the back.’

‘But it wasn’t signed?’ asked Kirov.

Semykin shook his head. ‘Someone had simply made a copy of a Wyspianski painting. He often made several paintings based on the same subject matter and I had assumed this was simply part of a series. Whoever this artist was, he or she wasn’t trying to fool anybody. If they had been creating a forgery, they would have put Wyspianski’s name on the back.’

‘If they had done that, would you still have known it was a fake?’

‘Of course!’ Semykin replied indignantly. ‘To tell which art is real and which is not, that’s what I have been put on earth to do.’

‘That much the Inspector did tell me,’ said Kirov.

Semykin gave a snort of satisfaction. ‘Why else would you be here? And why else would I be here if not because I informed Bakhturin that his painting was a copy and that I would have to renegotiate with Osipov?’

‘And did you renegotiate?’

‘Before I had the chance an old colleague of mine, Professor Urbaniak‚ summoned me to the Catherine Palace. The poor man had been given the impossible task of packing away the hundreds of art works on display there before the Germans arrived. He knew it couldn’t be done in the time he had been given, so he asked me to help him prioritise which treasures should be transported first. The rest, we knew, might have to be left behind. It was a grim task, I assure you, like being forced to choose which of your friends should live and which of them should die.’

‘And when you returned from the palace,’ asked Kirov, ‘what happened with the Wyspianski painting?’

‘I had been hoping that Bakhturin might decide to forget the whole thing, but the commissar had other ideas. He ordered me to keep my mouth shut about the Wyspianski being a copy. He told me to sell it to Osipov as authentic, even to fake Wyspianski’s signature on the back if I thought that would bring in the money.’

‘And you refused?’

‘Naturally. And then Bakhturin had me arrested.’

‘On what charge?’ demanded Kirov.

‘Trying to sell forged works of art.’

‘But you were trying not to sell it!’

‘A subtlety which was lost upon the court, their minds no doubt swayed by the fact that the man who brought charges against me was a Senior People’s Commissar.’

‘You are lucky to be alive,’ said Kirov. ‘How long will you be here?’

‘My sentence is five years. In my business, you must often ask yourself — what is the price of integrity? And now I know. Five years in solitary confinement. Which brings me back to my original question. What are you doing here and what do you want with me?’

This time, it was Pekkala who answered. ‘I need you to look at something and tell me what you think.’

‘And why should I help you — ’ he flipped his hand with irritation, spattering Kirov’s tunic with blood — ‘or anyone else out there?’

‘I had anticipated that your country’s gratitude might not be enough to win you over.’

‘Which I accept as proof of your own sanity!’ blustered Semykin.

Pekkala held up the paper-wrapped parcel, which he had removed from the briefcase before entering the cell. ‘In recompense for your help‚ I have brought you this. To examine. For two minutes.’

Semykin eyed the package suspiciously. ‘Well, what is it?’

‘First, you will help, then I’ll show you what is underneath this paper.’

‘For a Finn, you bargain a lot like a Russian.’

‘Your people have taught me a few things.’

It became very still in the room.

Semykin gave a low growl. ‘Very well,’ he whispered. ‘What do you need me to do?’

Kirov handed him the leather briefcase.

Semykin sat down on the bench and carefully wiped his bloody fingers on the knees of his prison pyjamas. After opening the brass latch, he slid out the painting of the moth. The first thing he did was to study the back of the canvas. ‘Ostubafengel,’ he said, reading out the word which had been written on the reverse. He began to work his thumbs along the wooden stretcher as if searching for some hidden defect in the wood. Afterwards, with equal care, Semykin slowly raked his nails across the canvas, eyes closed with concentration while he listened to the sound they made. Only then did he turn the painting over and examine the picture itself. ‘It is curious,’ he said. ‘The canvas was made in haste, but the painting itself shows considerable precision. The pattern on the wings was made with a brush containing only a few strands of hair. The painter would have had to use a large magnifying glass, like the kind employed by those who tie flies for trout fishing. It is not a forgery, if that is what you’ve come to ask me, or if it is, then I have never seen or heard of the original, but if you’re here to ask me what it’s worth, I’m afraid this briefcase is more valuable than its contents.’

‘What about the artist?’ asked Kirov. ‘Have you ever heard of anyone named Ostubafengel?’

Semykin shook his head. ‘But that doesn’t mean he or she isn’t out there somewhere. Sounds like one of those complicated Habsburg names to me. Hungarian perhaps. Where did it come from?’

Pekkala told him the story.

‘Then it is obviously worth something,’ said Semykin, ‘but its value does not lie in the painting itself. That much I can tell you for certain.’

‘Do you think there may be a message hidden inside the frame?’ asked Kirov.

Semykin shrugged. ‘Possibly. Or else there might be something underneath the paint. An X-ray might reveal it, or ultraviolet light perhaps.’ He tilted the painting on its side and squinted along the flat surface of the canvas, like a man taking aim down a gunsight. ‘But I doubt you will find anything. The paint is very thin, and I don’t believe there is anything beneath it. The trouble is, once you start ripping it apart, the painting itself will be destroyed. Is that a risk you are prepared to take?’

‘Not yet,’ replied Pekkala.

‘Two men died to protect this painting,’ protested Kirov. ‘They obviously thought it was valuable.’

‘They did not die protecting the painting,’ countered Semykin. ‘The reason they died was to protect its secret. Whatever that secret is lies beyond my expertise. I’ve told you everything I can.’

‘And if an X-ray turns up nothing,’ said Kirov, ‘we will be right back where we started.’

‘There is someone else you could take this to,’ suggested Semykin.

‘And who is that?’ asked Pekkala.

‘Her name is Churikova. Polina Churikova. Until the war broke out, she was a student at the Moscow State Institute of Art. She spent the summer of 1940 as my assistant. Her speciality was forensics.’

‘But specialising in forensics makes her a student of crime, not of art,’ said Pekkala.

‘Actually,’ Semykin told him, ‘it made her a student of both. The business of art forgery is extremely lucrative. It is also more widespread than most people can imagine. It’s possible, for example, that up to a third of the paintings in the world’s great art museums could be fakes. By making a chemical analysis of a painting, using microscopic portions of the paint, the wood, the canvas and so on, those trained in forensics can determine whether an art work is authentic. But Polina Churikova was not only my student. She was also my friend. She was the only person who came to visit me before I began serving my sentence here at Lubyanka.’

‘When was that?’

‘Only a few weeks ago.’

‘And do you know where we can find her now?’

Semykin shrugged. ‘Ask the Red Army. When Churikova came to see me, she was in uniform, like everybody else. At the time, she said she was stationed in Moscow, but where she might be now is anybody’s guess. She told me she had joined the Army Signals Branch in late June, right after the Germans attacked, and subsequently became a cryptographer. Apparently, she has already made a name for herself by breaking something called the Ferdinand Cipher, which the Fascists were using to communicate between Berlin and their front-line headquarters.’

‘How does someone who studies forensics end up as a cryptographer?’ asked Kirov.

‘The two fields are quite similar,’ explained Semykin. ‘Forensics taught her to uncover things that lay hidden in works of art in order to determine whether they were originals or fakes. The forger will always leave traces, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose. Now, instead of paintings or sculptures, she finds what has been hidden in the labyrinth of words and numbers.’

‘What makes you think she can help us?’ asked Kirov.

‘I make no guarantee that she can, only that when two people look at a work of art, they rarely see the same thing. That is what makes it art.’

‘This is all very well,’ grumbled Kirov, ‘except her location is as much of a mystery as this painting!’

‘Solve one,’ Semykin told him, ‘and you may solve the other. For that, you must rely on your own art, Comrade Commissar.’

‘Thank you‚ Semykin‚’ said Pekkala‚ as he handed over the first paper-wrapped package. ‘We appreciate your assistance.’

Then he and Kirov waited while Semykin carefully untied the string. After folding back the layers of archival tissue, he gasped, as the face of the fiery-eyed saviour came into view. ‘Now this. .’ murmured Semykin, ‘this is authentic.’ As carefully as if it was a newborn infant, Semykin lifted the icon from its cradle of brown paper. Touching only the outermost edges of the frame, he held it up and sighed with admiration. ‘Is it Balkan?’

‘So I’m told,’ said Pekkala.

‘Late thirteenth century? Early fourteenth?’

‘Somewhere around there.’

‘Tempera on wood. Notice the asymmetrical nose and mouth, the deep furrows on his brow and the way this white lead backing brings to life the greenish ochre of his skin. The tension! The expressivity!’ Suddenly a look of consternation swept across Semykin’s face. ‘Wait,’ he said slowly. ‘I’ve seen this before somewhere.’ Sharply, he raised his head and stared questioningly at Pekkala. ‘Haven’t I?’

‘Yes,’ admitted Pekkala. ‘You have seen it hanging on the wall of the Museum of the Kremlin, and you will find it there again when you get out of here, Valery.’

Semykin’s eyes bulged. ‘You took this from the Kremlin Museum?’

‘Borrowed it,’ Pekkala corrected him.

‘Then see that it finds its way home,’ said Semykin as he carefully rewrapped the icon, ‘before Fabian Golyakovsky has a heart attack.’

‘It may be too late for that,’ muttered Kirov.

‘I may have lost faith in the country that owns this work of art,’ Semykin told them, ‘but the art itself is sacred, and will remain so, long after you and I and the butchers of Lubyanka have turned to dust.’