Shadow Pass

BORODOK LABOR CAMP

VALLEY OF KRASNAGOLYANA

SIBERIA

In a cave, deep underground, lit by the greasy flame of a kerosene lamp, the man knelt in a puddle, his empty hands held out as if to catch drops of water which fell through the cracks in the ceiling. He was badly wounded, with deep cuts across his chest and arms. The homemade knife with which he had attempted to defend himself lay out of reach behind him. Head bowed, he stared with a look of confusion at his own reflection in the puddle, like a man who no longer recognized himself.

Before him stretched the shadow of the killer who had brought him to this place. “I came here to offer you a reason to go on living,” the killer said, “and this is how you repay me?”

With fumbling, blood-smeared fingers, the man undid the button on his shirt pocket. He pulled out a crumpled photograph of a group of soldiers on horseback, dense forest in the background. The men leaned forward in their saddles, grinning at the camera. “They are my reason for living.”

“And now they will be your reason for dying.” Slowly, the way people sometimes move in dreams, the killer stepped behind the man. With movements almost gentle, he grasped the man by his short and filthy hair, pulling his head back so that the tendons stood out in his neck. Then he drew a knife from the folds of his clothing, cut the man’s throat, and held him like a lover while his heart bled dry.

“POSKREBYSHEV!” THE VOICE OF JOSEPH STALIN EXPLODED THROUGH the wall.

In the adjoining room, Stalin’s secretary sprang to his feet. Poskrebyshev was a short, round-faced man, bald except for a fringe of gray which arced around the back of his head and resembled the wreath of a Roman emperor. Like his master, he wore trousers tucked into black calfskin boots and a plain mandarin-collared tunic in precisely the same shade of brownish green as the rotten apples that two neighborhood bullies, Ermakov and Schwartz, used to hurl at him from their hiding places along the young Poskrebyshev’s route to school.

Since the war had broken out, one month before, there had been many such outbursts from the man Poskrebyshev referred to as Vozhd. The Boss.

On September 1, 1939, as part of a secret agreement between Germany and Russia, buried in a peace treaty signed between the two countries and known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Germany had invaded Poland.

Justification for the invasion had been provided by a staged attack on a German customshouse called Hochlinde and on the Gleiwitz radio substation. Thirteen inmates from Oranienburg Concentration Camp, believing that they had been chosen to take part in a propaganda film designed to improve relations between the Germans and the Poles, were trucked towards Hochlinde under cover of darkness. All were dressed in Polish army uniforms. The inmates had been convinced that they were to enact a meeting between German and Polish troops, somewhere in the forest on the border between the two countries.

The plot of the film would be simple. At first both sides, each mistrustful of the other, would draw their weapons. For an agonizing moment, it would seem as if a gunfight might actually break out. But then the men would recognize their common ground as human beings. The guns would be lowered. Cigarettes would be exchanged. The two patrols would part company and melt back into the forest. Upon completion of the film, the inmates had been promised, they would be sent home as free men.

As they neared Hochlinde, the trucks pulled over and the prisoners shared rations with a squad of SS guards accompanying them. Each prisoner was also given what he was told would be a tetanus shot, as a matter of standard procedure. The syringes were not filled with tetanus vaccine, however. Instead, the men were injected with prussic acid. Within minutes, all of them were dead.

Afterwards, the bodies were loaded back onto the trucks and the convoy continued to the vicinity of Hochlinde, where the corpses were dumped in the woods and shot with German weapons. The bodies would later be exhibited as proof that Polish soldiers had launched an attack on German soil.

Meanwhile, at the Gleiwitz radio station, an officer of the SS named Naujocks, with the help of a Polish-speaking German, interrupted regular radio transmission to announce that Gleiwitz was under attack by Polish troops.

Within hours, German planes were bombing Warsaw. On the following day, German panzers rolled across the Polish border.

Two weeks later, in accordance with the secret clauses of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Russian army began its own invasion from the east.

Even though the obliteration of Polish forces had been virtually guaranteed from the beginning, the slightest setback—a temporary withdrawal, a mistimed attack, supplies sent to the wrong location—sent Stalin into a rage.

And that rage fell first upon Poskrebyshev.

“Where is he?” Stalin’s muffled voice boomed from behind the closed doors of his study. “Poskrebyshev!”

“Mother of God,” muttered Poskrebyshev, the sweat already beading on his forehead. “What have I done now?”

The double doors flew open and Stalin burst into the outer office.

“Where is he?” screamed Stalin, as he stomped up to Poskrebyshev. “Where is that blackhearted troll?”

“I am here, Comrade Stalin,” replied Poskrebyshev, his eyes bulging with fear.

Stalin’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

“I am here, Comrade Stalin!” shouted Poskrebyshev, his voice raised to a bellow of blind obedience.

“Have you completely lost your mind?” demanded Stalin, resting his knuckles on Poskrebyshev’s desk and leaning forward until their faces were only a handsbreadth apart. “I am looking for Pekkala!”

“You have found him,” said a voice.

Poskrebyshev turned. He saw a man standing in the doorway to the outer office. Neither he nor Stalin had heard him enter the room.

Pekkala was tall and broad-shouldered, with a straight nose and strong white teeth. Streaks of premature gray ran through his short dark hair. His eyes were marked by a strange silvery quality, which people noticed only when he was looking directly at them. He wore a knee-length coat made of black wool, with a mandarin collar and concealed buttons which fastened on the left side of his chest. His ankle-high boots, also black, were double-soled and polished. He stood with his hands tucked behind his back, the shape of a revolver in a shoulder holster just visible beneath the heavy cloth of his coat.

Stalin’s anger dissipated as abruptly as it had appeared. Now a smile crept over his face, narrowing his eyes. “Pekkala!” he said, growling out the name. “I have a job for you.”

As the two men disappeared into Stalin’s office and the door closed quietly behind them, the residue of fear in Poskrebyshev’s brain was still too powerful to let him feel relief.

STALIN, SITTING AT HIS DESK in a leather-backed chair, carefully stuffed his pipe with honey-colored shreds of Balkan tobacco.

There was no chair on the other side of the desk, so Pekkala had to stand while he waited for the man to complete his ritual.

During this time, the only sound in the room was the dry rustle of Stalin’s breathing as he held a match over the pipe bowl and coaxed the tobacco to burn. Once this had been accomplished, he waved the match and dropped the smoldering stick into a brass ashtray. The soft, sweet smell of the tobacco drifted about the room. Finally, Stalin spoke. “I am sending you back to Siberia.”

The words struck Pekkala like a slap in the face. At first, he was too shocked to reply.

“Although not as a prisoner,” continued Stalin. “Not officially. There has been a murder in your old camp. Borodok.”

“With respect, Comrade Stalin, there must be murders in that place every day of the week.”

“This one has caught my attention.” Stalin seemed preoccupied with the ashtray, moving it from one side of his desk to the other and then back to its original place. “Do you remember Colonel Kolchak?”

“Of course I remember him!”

Stalin’s words threw Pekkala back to a dreary, rain-soaked night in March of 1917, just before the Tsar stepped down from power.

He was woken by the sound of horses passing on the gravel road outside his bedroom window. During his years as Special Investigator for the Tsar, Pekkala had lived in a small cottage on the grounds of the Imperial estate, known as Tsarskoye Selo, on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. Living near the old Pensioners’ Stables, Pekkala was used to the noise of horses moving by, but not at this time of night.

Peering through the curtains, Pekkala glimpsed a shadowy procession of wagons, three in all, each one weighed down by wooden boxes with rope handles which resembled ammunition crates. He counted twenty-five boxes on each wagon.

One of these wagons had split a wheel, dumping its cargo. Now soldiers milled about, stacking the heavy boxes at the side of the path. Others were busy trying to remove the wheel so they could rig it with a spare.

Pekkala opened the door and stepped out into the dark.

“There you are!” said a voice. “Sorry to have woken you.”

Pekkala turned to see a man wearing a close-tailored uniform and moving with the slightly bowlegged gait of a cavalry officer. His face was fierce and thin and dominated by a rigidly waxed mustache. Pekkala instantly recognized Colonel Kolchak, a man whose social standing in the ranks of Russian nobility, combined with an utter ruthlessness of character, had won him favor with the Tsar.

Finding Kolchak here, amid all of these boxes, Pekkala suddenly realized what he was looking at. Now that the Revolution had begun, the Tsar’s gold was being evacuated to a place of safety. The task had been given to Colonel Kolchak, who, in the company of fifty handpicked men, would transport the treasure to Siberia.

Kolchak’s orders, Pekkala knew, were to follow the route of the Trans-Siberian Railroad and link up with his uncle, Alexander Vassileyevich Kolchak, an admiral in the Tsar’s Pacific Fleet in Vladivostok, who would then take charge of the gold. The admiral was forming an army of anti-Bolshevik forces. Rumors swirled that he planned to declare independence for the whole of Siberia.

The order to begin transporting the gold should have been given weeks, if not months before, but Pekkala had seen for himself that, in spite of all the warning signs that the Revolution would soon overwhelm them, the Romanovs had chosen to believe such a thing was impossible. Now, Revolutionary Guards were in control of St. Petersburg: It was only a matter of time before they advanced on Tsarskoye Selo.

“Heading out?” asked Kolchak, as he shook Pekkala’s hand.

“Soon,” replied Pekkala. “All I have to do is pack my bag.”

“Traveling light,” remarked Kolchak. He was trying to sound jovial, but the anger at this delay penetrated his voice.

“Not so for you,” replied Pekkala, as he glanced at the wagons.

“No indeed,” sighed Kolchak. With a sharp command, he sent the two good wagons on ahead, remaining behind to oversee the repair of the third.

Another hour passed before the broken wheel had finally been replaced. As two soldiers heaved the crates back onto the wagon, one of the rope handles broke. The box slipped from their hands, spilling its contents of gold ingots onto the ground.

“Damn you!” Kolchak shouted at the soldiers. Then he turned to Pekkala. “I am supposed to bring all this to the other side of the country. How can I possibly accomplish my task if these carts can’t even make it off the grounds of the Imperial estate?”

“You have much work ahead of you,” agreed Pekkala.

“What you are witnessing,” Kolchak said brusquely, “is final proof that the world we know is coming to an end. Men like us must now look to our own survival.”

As the last wagon trundled away into the dark, Kolchak climbed back onto his horse. “We must learn to be patient,” he told Pekkala. “One day we shall have our vengeance for what these bastards are about to do with everything we love. This fight isn’t over, Pekkala.”

“AND DO YOU REMEMBER what became of the Kolchak Expedition?” asked Stalin.

“I do,” replied Pekkala. “Almost as soon as the expedition was under way, Kolchak learned that an informant had betrayed him to the Bolsheviks. Guessing that Kolchak would head for the territory held by his uncle, the Bolsheviks sent their own cavalry to intercept the expedition before it reached Siberia. Once Kolchak realized that he was being followed, and since the wagons which transported the gold were slowing down his progress, he decided to leave the gold behind in the city of Kazan as he passed through there on his way to Siberia. The gold was later removed from its hiding place by the anti-Bolshevik forces of the Czechoslovakian Legion, who were also on their way to Vladivostok.”

Stalin nodded. “Go on.”

“In the winter of 1918, Czech Legion troops under the command of General Gaida had joined with the admiral’s White Russian Army. In the spring of 1919, they launched an offensive against the Reds from their base in Siberia.”

“But the offensive stalled out, didn’t it?”

“Yes,” agreed Pekkala, “and by November of that year, the admiral was forced to abandon his capital at Omsk. All through that winter, Czech and White Russian troops retreated east towards Vladivostok. There they hoped to board ships which would take them out of the country. They had captured a number of trains, some of them specially armored, and were traveling along the Trans-Siberian Railroad. By January of 1920, they were still nowhere near the coast. Seeing that his situation was hopeless, Admiral Kolchak stepped down from power. From then on, he was placed under the protection of the Sixth Czechoslovakian Rifle Regiment, under General Janin. The Czechs became responsible for the safety of the admiral as they continued their journey to Vladivostok.”

“And what happened then?”

“You know what happened, Comrade Stalin. Why are you asking me now?”

Stalin slowly rolled his hand before his face. “Humor me, Pekkala. What happened next?”

“Very well,” sighed Pekkala. “When the Czech train convoy reached the city of Irkutsk, they were stopped by armed members of the Socialist Political Center, who demanded that they hand over Admiral Kolchak in return for being allowed to pass through.”

“And what else did they want, these socialists?”

“Gold,” replied Pekkala. “Specifically, the Imperial Reserves which were still being guarded by the Czechs.”

“And what did they do, these Czechs of the Sixth Rifle Regiment?”

“They handed the gold over, along with Admiral Kolchak.”

“Why?”

“The Socialist Center had mined the tunnels around Lake Baikal. If they decided to blow the tunnels, the Czechs would never have gotten through. Handing over Kolchak and the gold was their only hope of reaching Vladivostok.”

“And what became of Admiral Kolchak, the Ruler of Siberia?”

“On January 30, 1920, the admiral was executed by the Bolsheviks.”

“And what of his nephew, the colonel?”

“Red Cavalry finally caught up with him. After a fight lasting three days, survivors of the expedition surrendered. Among the men captured was Colonel Kolchak himself.”

By then, in St. Petersburg, on the other side of the country, Pekkala had also been taken prisoner by the Revolutionaries. Both men ended up in the Butyrka prison, although neither was aware of the other’s whereabouts at first.

“And, of course,” remarked Stalin, “you remember what happened at Butyrka?”

“Remember?” spat Pekkala. “Do you think I could ever forget?”

After months of torture and solitary confinement, prison guards frogmarched Pekkala down the spiral stone steps of the old fortress of Butyrka and into the basement. Knowing that these caverns, which had once boasted one of the world’s finest collections of wines, now served as execution chambers for enemies of the state, he fully expected to be murdered there.

Pekkala felt relieved that his time of suffering was almost over. In something approaching a gesture of compassion, some convicts were even shot before they reached the bottom of the stairs, so as to minimize the terror of their execution. Pekkala found himself hoping that he might merit such a speedy end, but when they reached the bottom of the stairs, the guards brought him to a room already occupied by several men who wore the Gymnastyrka tunics, dark blue trousers and knee-length riding boots of the State Security Troops.

There was also a third man, a barely human figure cowering naked in the corner. The man’s body was a mass of electrical burns and bruises.

This man was Colonel Kolchak.

The sentence was read out by Commissar Dzugashvili, the same man who had been responsible for Pekkala’s weeks of brutal interrogation.

In the final seconds of his life, Kolchak called out to Pekkala, “Inform His Majesty the Tsar that I told them nothing.”

Before the last word had left his mouth, the NKVD men opened fire. The concussion of the gunfire was stunning in the confined space of the cell. When the shooting finally stopped, Dzugashvili stepped forward, stuck the barrel in Kolchak’s right eye and put another bullet into Kolchak’s head.

IT WAS DZUGASHVILI who sat before Pekkala now. Joseph Dzugashvili, who had changed his name to Stalin—Man of Steel—as was the fashion of the early Bolsheviks.

“You know, Pekkala, memory can be deceiving. Even yours.”

“What do you mean?”

Stalin puffed thoughtfully at his pipe. “The man you thought was Colonel Kolchak, the man I also thought was Kolchak, turns out to have been an impostor.”

Although Pekkala was surprised to hear this, he knew it did not lie beyond the bounds of possibility. The Tsar himself had half a dozen look-alikes, who took his place at times of danger and who, in some cases, paid for that occupation with their lives. For someone as important to the Tsar as Colonel Kolchak, it did not seem unlikely that a double had been found for him as well.

“What does this have to do with the murder at Borodok?”

“The victim was a man named Isaac Ryabov, a former captain in the Imperial Cavalry and one of the last survivors of the Kolchak Expedition still in captivity at Borodok. Ryabov approached the camp commandant with an offer to reveal the whereabouts of Colonel Kolchak in exchange for being allowed to go free. But somebody got to him first.”

“Ryabov might well have known where Kolchak was hiding twenty years ago, but the colonel could have gone anywhere in the world since that time. Do you honestly think Ryabov’s information was still accurate?”

“It is a possibility which I cannot afford to overlook.” Stalin removed his pipe and laid it in the ashtray on his desk. Then he sat back and touched his fingertips together. “Do you suppose Colonel Kolchak has ever forgiven the Czechs for handing over his uncle to be executed?”

“I doubt it. From what I knew of Kolchak, forgiveness did not strike me as being one of his virtues. Personally, I think the Czechs had no choice.”

“I agree.” Stalin nodded. “But as far as Colonel Kolchak is concerned, the legion’s job was to protect his uncle as well as the gold. Whether every last one of them died fulfilling that duty would be irrelevant to a man like him.”

“And how do you know what he thinks?”

“I don’t. I am only telling you what I would think if I were Colonel Kolchak. And I am also telling you that when a man like Kolchak gets vengeance on his mind, he will set fire to the world before he can be satisfied.”

“Even if Kolchak can be found,” said Pekkala, “surely he does not pose a threat. He is only one man, after all.”

“I take no comfort in that. One person can still be dangerous. I know, because I am only one man and I am very dangerous. And when I see in another man those qualities which I also recognize within myself, I know that I cannot ignore him. You and I have a strange alliance, Pekkala. In our thinking, we are opposites in almost every way. But the one place where our ideas intersect lies in the struggle for our country to survive. It is the reason you did not die that day in the basement of Butyrka prison. But Kolchak is not like you. And that is why I put him to death—or attempted to, anyway.”

“If this is simply a vendetta against a man you tried and failed to kill, send one of your assassins to find him. I could be put to better use on other cases.”

“You may be right, but if my instincts are correct that Kolchak poses a threat to this country—”

“Then I will bring him to justice,” interrupted Pekkala.

“And that is why I’m sending you instead of somebody else. Your investigation is to be conducted in the utmost secrecy. Once you arrive at Borodok, if word leaks out among the prisoners that you are working for the Bureau of Special Operations, I will lose not only Ryabov’s killer but you as well.”

“I may need to involve Major Kirov in this investigation.”

Stalin spread his arms magnanimously. “Understood, and the camp commandant has also been instructed to assist you in any way he can. He is holding the body, as well as the murder weapon, until you arrive at the camp.”

“Who is in charge there now?”

“The same man who was running it when you were there.”

“Klenovkin?” An image surfaced in Pekkala’s mind of a gaunt, slope-shouldered man with black hair cut so short that it stood up like porcupine quills from his skull. Pekkala had met him only once, when he first arrived at the camp.

Having summoned Pekkala to his office, Klenovkin did not look up when Pekkala entered the room. All he said was, “Remove your cap when you are in my presence.” He then busied himself reading Pekkala’s prisoner file, carefully turning the large yellow pages, each one with a red diagonal stripe in the upper right-hand corner.

At last Klenovkin closed the file and raised his head, squinting at Pekkala through rimless spectacles. “We have all fallen from grace in one way or another,” he said. There was a resonance in his voice as if he were addressing a crowd instead of just one man. “Having just read your history, convict Pekkala, I see that you have fallen further than most.

“You are a disease,” Klenovkin told Pekkala. “I will not allow you to infect my prisoners. The simplest thing to do would be to have you shot, but unfortunately I am not allowed to do that. Some benefit must be derived from your existence before we consign you to oblivion.

“I am sending you out into the wilderness,” continued Klenovkin. “You will become a tree-marker in the Valley of Krasnagolyana, a job no man has held for longer than six months.”

“Why not?”

“Because nobody lives that long.”

Working alone, with no chance of escape and far from any human contact, tree-markers died from exposure, starvation, and loneliness. Those who became lost, or who fell and broke a leg, were usually eaten by wolves. Tree marking was the only assignment at Borodok said to be worse than a death sentence.

But six months later, to Klenovkin’s astonishment, Pekkala was still alive. And he stayed alive.

When a young Lieutenant Kirov arrived to recall him back to duty with the Bureau of Special Operations, Pekkala had been living in the forest for nine years, longer than any other tree-marker in the history of the Gulag system.

TUCKING RYABOV’S FILE into his coat, Pekkala turned to leave.

“One more thing before you go,” said Stalin.

Pekkala turned again. “Yes?”

Reaching down beside his chair, Stalin picked up a small shopping bag and held it out towards Pekkala. “Your clothes for the journey.”

Pekkala glanced inside and saw what at first appeared to be some dirty, pinkish-gray rags. He lifted out the flimsy pajama-type shirt and recognized a standard prison-issue uniform. A shudder passed through him as he thought back to the last time he had worn garments like this.

At that moment, the door opened and Poskrebyshev walked in. “Comrade Stalin, I beg to report that Poland has surrendered.”

Stalin nodded and said nothing.

“I also beg to inform you that the Katyn Operation has begun,” continued Poskrebyshev.

Stalin’s only reply was an angry stare.

“You asked me to tell you …”

“Get out,” said Stalin quietly.

Poskrebyshev’s heels smashed together once more, then he turned and left the room, closing the double doors behind him with a barely audible click of the lock.

“The Katyn Operation?” asked Pekkala.

“It would have been better for you not to know,” Stalin replied, “but since it is too late for that, let me answer your question with a question of my own. Suppose you were an officer in the Polish army, that you had surrendered and been taken prisoner. Let us say you had been well treated. You had been housed. You had been fed.”

“What is it you want to know, Comrade Stalin?”

“Say I offer you a choice: either a place in the Red Army or the opportunity to return home as a civilian.”

“They will choose to go home,” said Pekkala.

“Yes,” replied Stalin. “Most of them did.”

“But they will never arrive, will they?”

“No.”

In his mind, Pekkala could see those officers, bundled in the mysterious brown of their Polish army greatcoats, hands tied behind their backs with copper wire. One after the other, NKVD troopers shoved them to the edge of a huge pit dug into the orangey-brown soil of a forest in eastern Poland. With the barrels of their guns, the NKVD men tipped off the caps of their prisoners, sending them into the pit below. As each Polish officer was shot in the back of the head, he fell forward into the pit, onto the bodies of those who had been killed before.

How many were there? Pekkala wondered. Hundreds? Thousands?

By nightfall, the pit would be covered up.

Within a few weeks, tiny shoots of grass would rise from the trampled soil.

One thing Pekkala had learned, however. Nothing stays buried forever.

“You have not answered my question,” said Stalin. “I asked what you would do. Not they.”

“I would realize I had no choice,” replied Pekkala.

With a scythe-like sweep of his hand, Stalin brushed aside Pekkala’s words. “But I did give them a choice!”

“No, Comrade Stalin, you did not.”

Stalin smiled. “That is why you have survived, and why those other men will not.”

As soon as Pekkala had departed, Stalin pushed the intercom button. “Poskrebyshev!”

“Yes, Comrade Stalin.”

“All messages between Pekkala and Major Kirov are to be intercepted.”

“Of course.”

“Whatever Pekkala has to say, I want to read it before Kirov does. I want no secrets kept from me.”

“No, Comrade Stalin,” said Poskrebyshev, and a fresh coat of sweat slicked his palms.

“Is there anything else, Poskrebyshev?”

“Why do you let Pekkala speak to you that way? So disrespectfully?” Over the years, Poskrebyshev had advanced to the stage where he could occasionally express an unsolicited opinion to the Boss, although only in the most reverent of tones. But the way Pekkala talked to Stalin caused Poskrebyshev’s bowels to cramp. Even more amazing to him was the fact that Stalin let Pekkala get away with it.

“The reason I endure his insolence—unlike, for example, yours, Poskrebyshev—is that Pekkala is the only person I know of who would not kill me for the chance to rule this country.”

“Surely that is not true, Comrade Stalin!” protested Poskrebyshev, knowing perfectly well that whether it was true or not, what mattered was that Stalin believed it.

“Ask yourself, Poskrebyshev—what would you do to sit where I am sitting now?”

An image flashed through Poskrebyshev’s mind, of himself at Stalin’s desk, smoking Stalin’s cigarettes and bullying his very own secretary. In that moment, Poskrebyshev knew that, in spite of all his claims of loyalty, he would have gutted Stalin like a fish for the chance to take the leader’s place.

ONE HOUR LATER, as the last rays of sunset glistened on the ice-sheathed telegraph wires, Pekkala’s battered Emka staff car, driven by his assistant, Major Kirov, pulled into a rail yard at mile marker 17 on the Moscow Highway. The rail yard had no name. It was known simply as V-4, and the only trains departing from this place were convict transports headed for the Gulags.

However miserable the journey promised to be, Pekkala knew it was necessary to travel as a convict in order to protect the cover story that he had fallen out of favor with Stalin and received a twenty-year sentence for unspecified crimes against the State.

“You can still call this off, Inspector,” Major Kirov said.

“You know that is impossible.”

“They have no right to send you back to that place, even if it is to carry out an investigation.”

“There is no ‘they,’ Kirov. The order came directly from Stalin.”

“Then he should at least have given you time to study the relevant files.”

“It wouldn’t have made any difference,” Pekkala answered. “The victim’s dossier is incomplete. There was only one page. The rest of it must be lost somewhere in NKVD archives. As a result, I know almost nothing about the man whose death I am being sent to investigate.”

The train whistle blew, and the prisoners began to climb aboard.

“It is time,” said Pekkala. “But first, there is something I need you to look after while I’m gone.” Into Kirov’s hand Pekkala dropped a heavy gold disk, as wide across as the length of his little finger. Along the center was a stripe of white enamel inlay, which began at a point, widened until it took up half the disk and narrowed again to a point on the other side. Embedded in the middle of the white enamel was a large round emerald. Together, the elements formed the unmistakable shape of an eye.