Shadow Pass

AS THE MOTORCYCLE CRESTED THE HILL, SUNLIGHT WINKED OFF THE goggles of the rider. Against the chill of early spring, he wore a double-breasted leather coat and a leather flying cap which buckled under his chin.

He had been on the road for three days, stopping only to buy fuel along the way. His saddlebags were filled with tins of food he’d brought from home.

At night, he did not stay in any town, but wheeled his motorcycle in among the trees. It was a new machine, a Zundapp K500, with a pressed-steel frame and girder forks. Normally he could never have afforded it, but this trip alone would pay for everything, and more besides. He thought about that as he sat there alone in the woods, eating cold soup from a can.

Before camouflaging the motorcycle with fallen branches, he wiped the dust from its sprung leather seat and the large teardrop-shaped fuel tank. He spat on every scratch he found and rubbed them with his sleeve.

The man slept on the ground, wrapped in an oilcloth sheet, without the comfort of a fire or even a cigarette. The smell of smoke might give away his location, and he could not afford to take the risk.

Sometimes, he was awakened by the rumble of Polish Army trucks passing by on the road. None of them stopped. Once he heard a crashing in among the trees. He drew a revolver from his coat and sat up just as a stag passed a few paces away, barely visible, as if the shadows themselves had come to life. For the rest of the night, the man did not sleep. Tormented by childhood nightmares of human shapes with antlers sprouting from their heads, he wanted only to be gone from this country. Ever since he crossed the German border into Poland, he had been afraid, although no one who saw him would ever have realized it. This was not the first time he had been on such a journey, and he knew from experience that his fear would not leave him until he was back among his own people again.

On the third day, he crossed into the Soviet Union at a lonely border checkpoint manned by one Polish soldier and one Russian soldier, neither of whom could speak the other’s language. Both men came out to admire his motorcycle. “Zundapp,” they crooned softly, as if saying the name of a loved one, and the man gritted his teeth while they ran their hands over the chrome.

A few minutes after leaving the checkpoint, he pulled over to the side of the road and raised the goggles to his forehead, revealing two pale moons of skin where the road dust had not settled on his face. Shielding his eyes with one hand, he looked out over the rolling countryside. The fields were plowed and muddy, seeds of rye and barley still sleeping in the ground. Thin feathers of smoke rose from the chimneys of solitary farmhouses, their slate roofs patched with luminous green moss.

The man wondered what the inhabitants of those houses might do if they knew their way of life would soon end. Even if they did know, he told himself, they would probably just carry on as they had always done, placing their faith in miracles. That, he thought, is precisely why they deserve to be extinct. The task he had come here to accomplish would bring that moment closer. After today, there would be nothing they could do to stop it. Then he wiped the fingerprints of the border guards off his handlebars and continued on his way.

He was close to the rendezvous point, racing along deserted roads, through patches of mist which clung to the hollows like ink diffusing in water. The words of half-remembered songs escaped his lips. Otherwise he did not speak, as if he were alone upon the earth. Driving out across that empty countryside, that was how he felt himself to be.

At last he came to the place he had been looking for. It was an abandoned farmhouse, roof sagging like the back of an old horse. Turning off the road, he drove the Zundapp through an opening in the stone wall which ringed the farmyard. Overgrown trees, sheathed with ivy, ringed the house. A flock of crows scattered from their branches, their ghostly shapes reflected in the puddles.

When he cut the engine, silence descended upon him. Removing his gauntlets, he scratched at the dried mud which had spattered his chin. It flaked away like scabs, revealing a week’s growth of stubble beneath.

Shutters hung loose and rotten on the windows of the farmhouse. The door had been kicked in and lay flat on the floor inside the house. Dandelions grew between cracks in the floorboards.

He set the Zundapp on its kickstand, drew his gun, and stepped cautiously into the house. Holding the revolver down by his side, he trod across the creaking floorboards. Gray light filtered through the slits between the shutters. In the fireplace, a pair of dragon-headed andirons scowled at him as he walked by.

“There you are,” said a voice.

The Zundapp rider flinched, but he did not raise the gun. He stood still, scanning the shadows. Then he spotted a man sitting at a table in the next room, which had once been a kitchen. The stranger smiled, raised one hand and moved it slowly back and forth. “Nice motorcycle,” he said.

The rider put away his gun and stepped into the kitchen.

“Right on time,” said the man. Set on the table in front of him was a Tokarev automatic pistol and two small metal cups, each one no bigger than an eggshell. Beside the cups stood an unopened bottle of Georgian Ustashi vodka, a blue-green color from the steppe grass used to flavor it. The man had placed a second chair on the other side of the table so that the rider would have a place to sit. “How was your trip?” asked the man.

“Do you have it?” said the rider.

“Of course.” The man reached into his coat and pulled out a bundle of documents which had been rolled up like a newspaper. He let them fall with a slap onto the table, raising a tiny cloud of dust from the dirty wooden surface.

“That’s everything?” asked the rider.

The man patted the bundle reassuringly. “Full operational schematics for the entire Konstantin Project.”

The rider put one foot on the chair and rolled up his trouser leg. Taped to his calf was a leather envelope. The man removed the tape, swearing quietly as it tore away the hair on his leg. Then he removed a stack of money from the envelope and laid it on the table. “Count it,” said the Zundapp rider.

Obligingly, the man counted the money, walking the tips of his fingers through the bills.

Somewhere above them, in the rafters of the house, starlings trilled and clicked their beaks.

When the man had finished counting, he filled the two small cups with vodka and lifted one of them. “On behalf of the White Guild, I would like to thank you. A toast to the Guild and to the downfall of Communism!”

The rider did not reach for his cup. “Are we finished here?” he asked.

“Yes!” The man knocked back his vodka, then reached for the second cup, raised it in salute, and drank that, too. “I think we are finished.”

The rider reached across and picked up the documents. As he tucked the bundle into the inside pocket of his coat, he paused to look around the room. He studied the canopies of spiderwebs, the puckered wallpaper, and the cracks which crazed the ceiling like the growth lines on a skull. You will be home soon, he thought. Then you can forget this ever happened.

“Would you care for a smoke?” asked the man. He laid a cigarette case on the table and set a brass lighter on top.

The rider stared at him, almost as if he knew this man from someplace before but could not remember where. “I should be going,” he said.

The man smiled. “Maybe next time.”

The rider turned away and started walking back towards his motorcycle.

He had gone only three paces when the man snatched up his Tokarev pistol, squinted down the line of his outstretched arm, and, without getting up from the table, shot the rider in the back of the head. The bullet tore through the rider’s skull and a piece of his forehead skittered away across the floor. He dropped to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

Now the man rose to his feet. He came out from behind the table and rolled the corpse over with his boot. The rider’s arm swung out and his knuckles struck against the floor. The man bent down and removed the documents from the rider’s pocket.

“You’ll drink now, you fascist son of a bitch,” he said. Then he took the bottle of vodka and emptied it out over the rider, soaking his head and shoulders and pouring a stream along the length of his legs. When the bottle was empty, he threw it away across the room. The heavy glass slammed against a rotten wall but did not break.

The man stashed the money and the documents in his pocket. Then he gathered up his gun, his little cups, and his box of cigarettes. On his way out of the house, he spun the metal wheel of his lighter, and when the fire jumped up from the wick, he dropped the lighter on top of the dead man. The alcohol burst into flames with a sound like a curtain billowing in the wind.

The man walked out into the farmyard and stood before the motorcycle, trailing his fingers over the Zundapp name emblazoned on the fuel tank. Then he straddled the motorcycle and lifted the helmet and goggles from the place where they hung on the handlebars. He put on the helmet and settled the goggles over his eyes. The heat of the dead man’s body was still in the leather eye pads. Kick-starting the motorcycle, he drove out onto the road and the Zundapp snarled as he shifted through the gears.

Behind him, already in the distance, a mushroom cloud of smoke rose from the blazing ruins of the farmhouse.

OFFICIALLY, THE BORODINO RESTAURANT, LOCATED IN A QUIET STREET just off the Bolotnaya Square in Moscow, was open to the public. Unofficially, the owner and headwaiter, a gaunt-faced man named Chicherin, would size up whoever came through the front door, its frosted glass panes decorated with a pattern of ivy leaves. Then Chicherin would either offer the patrons a table or direct them down a narrow, unlit corridor to what they assumed was a second dining room on the other side of the door. This would take them directly into an alley at the side of the restaurant. By the time they realized what had happened, the door would have locked automatically behind them. If the patrons still refused to take the hint and chose to come back into the restaurant, they would be confronted by the bartender, a former Greek wrestler named Niarchos, and ejected from the premises.

On a dreary afternoon in March, with clumps of dirty snow still clinging to the sunless corners of the city, a young man in a military uniform entered the Borodino. He was tall, with a narrow face, rosy cheeks, and a look of permanent curiosity. His smartly tailored gymnastyrka tunic fitted closely to his shoulders and his waist. He wore blue dress trousers with a red line of piping down the outside and knee-length black boots which glowed with a fresh coat of polish.

Chicherin scanned the uniform for any sign of elevated rank. Anything below the rank of captain was enough to qualify a soldier for a trip down the corridor to what Chicherin liked to call the Enchanted Grotto. Not only did this young man have no rank, he was not even wearing any insignia to denote his branch of service.

Chicherin was disgusted, but he smiled and said, “Good day,” lowering his head slightly but not taking his eyes off the young man.

“Good day to you,” came the reply. The man looked around at the full tables, admiring the plates of food. “Ah,” he sighed. “Shashlik.” He gestured towards a plate of fluffy white rice, on which a waiter was placing cubes of roast lamb, onions, and green peppers, carefully sliding them from the skewer on which they had been grilled. “Has the lamb been soaked in red wine”—he sniffed at the steam which drifted past his face—“or is it pomegranate juice?”

Chicherin narrowed his eyes. “Are you looking for a table?”

The young man did not seem to hear. “And there,” he pointed. “Salmon with dill and horseradish sauce.”

“Yes, that’s right.” Chicherin took him gently by the arm and steered him down the corridor. “This way, please.”

“Down there?” The young man squinted into the dark tunnel of the corridor.

“Yes, yes,” Chicherin reassured him. “The Enchanted Grotto.”

Obediently, the young man disappeared into the alley.

A moment later, Chicherin heard the reassuring clunk of the metal door locking shut. Then came the helpless rattle of the doorknob as the young man tried to get back in.

Usually people took the hint, and Chicherin never saw them again. This time, however, when the young man reappeared less than a minute later, still smiling innocently, Chicherin nodded to Niarchos.

Niarchos was smearing a grubby-looking rag inside glasses used for serving tea. When he caught Chicherin’s eye, he raised his head with a short, abrupt movement, like a horse trying to shake off its bridle. Then, very carefully, he set down the glass he had been polishing and came out from behind the bar.

“There seems to be some kind of mistake,” said the young man. “My name is Kirov, and—”

“You should go,” Niarchos interrupted. The Greek resented having to come out from behind the bar and lose the pleasant flow of daydreams as he mindlessly polished glasses.

“I think—” Kirov attempted once more to explain.

“Yes, yes,” hissed Chicherin, appearing suddenly beside him, the smile having evaporated from his face. “Some kind of mistake, you say. But the only mistake is your coming in here. Can’t you see that this is not the place for you?” He glanced out over the tables, populated mostly by jowly, red-faced men with grizzled hair. Some wore olive-brown gabardine tunics bearing the ranks of senior commissars. Others had civilian clothes, of European cut and good-quality wool, so finely woven that it seemed to shimmer beneath the orchid-shaped light fixtures. Sitting among these officers and politicians were beautiful but bored-looking women, sipping smoke from cork-tipped cigarettes. “Listen,” said Chicherin, “even if you could get a table here, I doubt you could afford the meal.”

“But I have not come to eat,” protested Kirov. “Besides, I do my own cooking, and it looks to me as if your chef relies too heavily on his sauces.”

Chicherin’s forehead crumpled in confusion. “So you are looking for a job?”

“No,” replied the young man. “I am looking for Colonel Nagorski.”

Chicherin’s eyes widened. He glanced towards a table in the corner of the room where two men were eating lunch. Both of the men wore suits. One was shaved bald, and the great dome of his head looked like a sphere of pink granite resting on the starched white pedestal of his shirt collar. The other man had thick black hair combed straight back on his head. The sharp angle of his cheekbones was offset by a slightly pointed beard cut close against his chin. This made him look as if his face had been stretched over an inverted triangle of wood, so tightly that even the slightest expression might tear the flesh from his bones.

“You want Colonel Nagorski?” asked Chicherin. He nodded towards the man with the thick black hair. “Well, there he is, but—”

“Thank you.” Kirov took one step towards the table.

Chicherin gripped his arm. “Listen, my young friend, do yourself a favor and go home. Whoever sent you on this errand is just trying to get you killed. Do you have any idea what you are doing? Or who you are dealing with?”

Patiently, Kirov reached inside his jacket. He removed a telegram, the fragile yellow paper banded with a line of red across the top, indicating that it had come from an office of the government. “You should take a look at this.”

Chicherin snatched the telegram from his hand.

All this time, the bartender Niarchos had been looming over the young man, his dark eyes narrowed into slits. But now, at the sight of this telegram, which looked to him so frail that it might at any moment evaporate into smoke, Niarchos began to grow nervous.

By now, Chicherin had finished reading the telegram.

“I need that back,” said the young man.

Chicherin did not reply. He continued to stare at the telegram, as if expecting more words to materialize.

Kirov slipped the flimsy paper from between Chicherin’s fingers and set off across the dining room.

This time, Chicherin did nothing to stop him.

Niarchos stepped out of the way, his huge body swinging to the side as if he were on some kind of hinge.

On his way to the table of Colonel Nagorski, Kirov paused to stare at various meals, breathing in the smells and sighing with contentment or making soft grunts of disapproval at the heavy-handed use of cream and parsley. Arriving at last beside Nagorski’s table, the young man cleared his throat.

Nagorski looked up. The skin stretched over the colonel’s cheekbones looked like polished wax. “More pancakes for the blinis!” He slapped his hand down on the table.

“Comrade Nagorski,” said Kirov.

Nagorski had turned back to his meal, but at the mention of his name he froze. “How do you know my name?” he asked quietly.

“Your presence is required, Comrade Nagorski.”

Nagorski glanced towards the bar, hoping to catch the eye of Niarchos. But Niarchos’s attention seemed completely focused on polishing tea glasses. Now Nagorski looked around for Chicherin, but the manager was nowhere to be seen. Finally, he turned to the young man. “Exactly where is my presence required?” he asked.

“That will be explained on the way,” replied Kirov.

Nagorski’s giant companion sat with arms folded, gaze fixed, his thoughts unreadable.

Kirov couldn’t help noticing that although Nagorski’s plate was loaded down with food, the only thing set in front of the bald giant was a small salad made of pickled cabbage and beets.

“What makes you think,” began Nagorski, “that I am just going to get up and walk out of here with you?”

“If you don’t come willingly, Comrade Nagorski, I have orders to arrest you.” Kirov held out the telegram.

Nagorski brushed the piece of paper aside. “Arrest me?” he shouted.

A sudden silence descended upon the restaurant.

Nagorski dabbed a napkin against his thin lips. Then he threw the cloth down on top of his food and stood up.

By now, all eyes had turned to the table in the corner.

Nagorski smiled broadly, but his eyes remained cold and hostile. Digging one hand into the pockets of his coat, he withdrew a small automatic pistol.

A gasp went up from the nearby tables. Knives and forks clattered onto plates.

Kirov blinked at the gun.

Nagorski smiled. “You look a little jumpy.” Then he turned the weapon in his palm so that the butt was facing outwards and handed it to the other man at the table.

His companion reached out and took it.

“Take good care of that,” said Nagorski. “I’ll be wanting it back very soon.”

“Yes, Colonel,” replied the man. He set the gun beside his plate, as if it were another piece of cutlery.

Now Nagorski slapped the young man on the back. “Let’s see what this is all about, shall we?”

Kirov almost lost his balance from the jolt of Nagorski’s palm. “A car is waiting.”

“Good!” Nagorski announced in a loud voice. “Why walk when we can ride?” He laughed and looked around.

Faint smiles crossed the faces of the other customers.

The two men made their way outside.

As Nagorski walked by the kitchen, he saw Chicherin’s face framed in one of the little round windows of the double swinging doors.

Outside the Borodino, sleet lay like frog spawn on the pavement.

As soon as the door had closed behind them, Nagorski grabbed the young man by his collar and threw him up against the brick wall of the restaurant.

The young man did not resist. He looked as if he’d been expecting this.

“Nobody disturbs me when I am eating!” growled Nagorski, lifting the young man up onto the tips of his toes. “Nobody survives that kind of stupidity!”

Kirov nodded towards a black car, its engine running, pulled up at the curbside. “He is waiting, Comrade Nagorski.”

Nagorski glanced over his shoulder. He noticed the shape of someone sitting in the backseat. He could not make out a face. Then he turned back to the young man. “Who are you?” he asked.

“My name is Kirov. Major Kirov.”

“Major?” Nagorski let go of him suddenly. “Why didn’t you say so?” Now he stood back and brushed at Kirov’s crumpled lapel. “We might have avoided this unpleasantness.” He strode across to the car and climbed into the rear seat.

Major Kirov got in behind the wheel.

Nagorski settled back into his seat. Only then did he look at the person sitting beside him. “You!” he shouted.

“Good afternoon,” said Pekkala.

“Oh, shit,” replied Colonel Nagorski.

INSPECTOR PEKKALA WAS A TALL, POWERFUL-LOOKING MAN WITH broad shoulders and slightly narrowed eyes the color of mahogany. He had been born in Lappeenranta, Finland, at a time when it was still a Russian colony. His mother was a Laplander, from Rovaniemi in the north.

At the age of eighteen, on the wishes of his father, Pekkala traveled to Petrograd in order to enlist in the Tsar’s elite Finnish Legion. There, early in his training, he had been singled out by the Tsar for duty as his own Special Investigator. It was a position which had never existed before and which would one day give Pekkala powers considered unimaginable before the Tsar chose to create them.

In preparation for this, he was given over to the police, then to the State Police—the Gendarmerie—and after that to the Tsar’s Secret Police, who were known as the Okhrana. In those long months, doors were opened to him which few men even knew existed. At the completion of Pekkala’s training, the Tsar presented to him the only badge of office he would ever wear—a heavy gold disk, as wide as the length of his little finger. Across 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, these elements formed the unmistakable shape of an eye. Pekkala never forgot the first time he held the disk in his hand, the way he had traced his fingertip over the eye, feeling the smooth bump of the jewel, like a blind man reading braille.

It was because of this badge that Pekkala became known as the Emerald Eye. The public knew little else about him. His photograph could not be published or even taken. In the absence of facts, legends grew up around Pekkala, including rumors that he was not human, but rather was some demon conjured into life through the black arts of an arctic shaman.

Throughout his years of service, Pekkala answered only to the Tsar. In that time he learned the secrets of an empire, and when that empire fell, and those who shared the secrets had taken them to their graves, Pekkala was surprised to find himself still breathing.

Captured during the Revolution, he was sent to the Siberian labor camp of Borodok, where he tried to forget the world he’d left behind.

But the world he’d left behind did not forget him.

After seven years in the forest of Krasnagolyana, during which time he lived more like a wild animal than a man, Pekkala was brought back to Moscow on the orders of Stalin himself.

Since then, maintaining an uneasy truce with his former enemies, Pekkala had continued in his role as Special Investigator.

DEEP BENEATH THE STREETS OF MOSCOW, COLONEL ROLAN NAGORSKI sat on a metal chair in a cramped cell of the Lubyanka prison. The walls were painted white. A single lightbulb, protected by a dusty metal cage, lit the room.

Nagorski had taken off his jacket and hung it on the back of the chair. Suspenders stretched tight over his shoulders. As he spoke, he rolled up his sleeves, as if preparing for a brawl. “Before you start firing questions at me, Inspector Pekkala, let me ask one of you.”

“Go ahead,” said Pekkala. He sat opposite the man, on the same kind of metal chair. The room was so small that their knees almost touched.

Even though it was stifling in the room, Pekkala had not taken off his coat. It was cut in the old style: black and knee-length, with a short collar and concealed buttons which fastened on the left side of his chest. He sat unnaturally straight, like a man with an injured back. This was caused by the gun which he kept strapped across his chest.

The gun was a Webley .455 revolver, with solid brass handles and a pin-sized hole drilled into the barrel just behind the forward sight to stop the pistol from bucking when it fired. The modification had been made not for Pekkala but for the Tsar, who received it as a gift from his cousin King George V. The Tsar had then issued the Webley to Pekkala. “I have no use for such a weapon,” the Tsar had told him. “If my enemies get close enough for me to need this, it will already be too late to do me any good.”

“The question I wanted to ask you, Inspector,” Nagorski said to Pekkala, “is why you think I would give away the secret of my own invention to the same people we might have to use it against?”

Pekkala opened his mouth to reply, but he did not get the chance.

“You see, I know why I’m here,” continued Nagorski. “You think I am responsible for breaches of security in the Konstantin Project. I am neither so naive nor so uninformed that I don’t know what’s going on around me. That’s why every stage of development has taken place in a secure facility. The entire base is under permanent lockdown and under my own personal control. Everyone who works there has been cleared by me. Nothing happens at the facility without my knowing about it.”

“Which brings us back to your reason for being here today.”

Now Nagorski leaned forward. “Yes, Inspector Pekkala. Yes, it does, and I could have saved you some time and myself a very expensive meal if you had simply let me tell your errand boy—”

“That ‘errand boy,’ as you call him, is a major of Internal Security.”

“Even NKVD officers can be errand boys, Inspector, if their bosses are running the country. What I could have told your major is the same thing I’m going to tell you now—which is that there has been no breach of security.”

“The weapon you are calling the T-34 is known to our enemies,” said Pekkala. “I’m afraid that is a fact you can’t deny.”

“Of course, its existence is known! You can’t design, build, and field-test a machine weighing thirty tons and expect it to remain invisible. But its existence is not what I’m talking about. The secret lies in what it can do. I admit it’s true that there are members of my design team who could tell you pieces of this puzzle, but only one person knows its full potential.” Nagorski sat back and folded his arms. Sweat was running down his polished face. “That would be me, Inspector Pekkala.”

“There is something I don’t understand,” said Pekkala. “What is so special about your invention? Don’t we already have tanks?”

Nagorski coughed out a laugh. “Certainly! There is the T-26.” He let one hand fall open, as if a miniature tank were resting on his palm. “But it is too slow.” The hand closed into a fist. “Then there is the BT series.” The other hand fell open. “But it doesn’t have enough armor. You might as well ask me why we are building weapons at all when there are plenty of stones lying around to throw at our enemies when they invade.”

“You sound very confident, Comrade Nagorski.”

“I am more than confident!” Nagorski barked in his face. “I am certain, and it is not merely because I invented the T-34. It is because I have faced tanks in battle. Only when you have watched them lumbering towards you, and you know you are helpless to stop them, do you understand why tanks can win not only a battle but a war.”

“When did you face tanks?” Pekkala asked.

“In the war we fought against Germany, and God help us if we ever have to fight another. When the war broke out in the summer of 1914, I was in Lyon, competing in the French Grand Prix. Back then, racing automobiles was my entire life. I won that race, you know, the only automobile race our country has ever won. It was the happiest day of my life, and it would have been perfect if my chief mechanic hadn’t been struck by one of the other race cars, which skidded off the track.”

“Was he killed?” asked Pekkala.

“No,” replied Nagorski, “but he was badly injured. You see, racing is a dangerous game, Inspector, even if you’re not behind the wheel.”

“When did you first become interested in these machines?”

As the topic turned to engines, Nagorski began to relax. “I got my first look at an automobile in 1907. It was a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, which had been brought into Russia by the Grand Duke Mikhail. My father and he used to go hunting each year, for Merganser ducks up in the Pripet Marshes. Once, when the Grand Duke stopped by our house in his car, my father asked to see the inner workings of the machine.” Nagorski laughed. “That’s what he called them. The inner workings. As if it was some kind of mantel clock. When the Grand Duke lifted the hood, my life changed in an instant. My father just stared at it. To him, it was nothing more than a baffling collection of metal pipes and bolts. But to me that engine made sense. It was as if I had seen it before. I have never been able to explain it properly. All I knew for certain was that my future lay with these engines. It wasn’t long before I had built one for myself. Over the next ten years, I won more than twenty races. If the war hadn’t come along, that’s what I’d still be doing. But everybody has a story which begins that way, don’t they, Inspector? If the war hadn’t come along …”

“What did happen to you in the war?” interrupted Pekkala.

“I couldn’t get back to Russia, so I enlisted in the French Foreign Legion. There were men from all over the world, caught in the wrong country when the war broke out and with no way to return home. I had been with the Legion almost two years when we came up against tanks near the French village of Flers. We had all heard about these machines. The British first used them against the Germans at the Battle of Cambrai in 1917. By the following year the Germans had designed their own. I had never even seen one until we went into action against them. My first thought was how slowly they moved. Six kilometers an hour. That’s a walking pace. And nothing graceful about them. It was like being attacked by giant metal cockroaches. Three of the five broke down before they even reached us, one was knocked out with artillery and the last managed to escape, although we found it two days later burned out by the side of the road, apparently from engine malfunction.”

“That does not sound like an impressive introduction.”

“No, but as I watched those iron hulks being destroyed, or grinding to a halt of their own accord, I realized that the future of warfare lay in these machines. Tanks are not merely some passing fad of butchery, like the crossbow or the trebuchet. I saw at once what needed to be done to improve the design. I glimpsed technologies that had not even been invented yet, but which, in the months ahead, I created in my head and on any scrap of paper I could find. When the war ended, those scraps were what I brought back with me to this country.”

Pekkala knew the rest of that story—how one day Nagorski had walked into the newly formed Soviet Patent Office in Moscow with more than twenty different designs, which ultimately earned him the directorship of the T-34 project. Until that time he had been eking out a living on the streets of Moscow, polishing the boots of men he would later command.

“Do you know the limits of my development budget?” asked Nagorski.

“I do not,” replied Pekkala.

“That’s because there aren’t any,” said Nagorski. “Comrade Stalin knows exactly how important this machine is to the safety of our country. So I can spend whatever I want, take whatever I want, order whomever I choose to do whatever I decide. You accuse me of taking risks with the safety of this country, but the blame for that belongs with the man who sent you here. You can tell Comrade Stalin from me that if he continues arresting members of the Soviet armed forces at the rate he is doing, there will be no one left to drive my tanks even if he does let me finish my work!”

Pekkala knew that the true measure of Nagorski’s power was not in the money he could spend but in the fact that he could say what he’d just said without fear of a bullet in the brain. And Pekkala himself said nothing in reply, not because he feared Nagorski but because he knew that Nagorski was right.

Afraid that he was losing control of the government, Stalin had ordered mass arrests. In the past year and a half, over a million people had been taken into custody. Among them were most of the Soviet high command, who had then either been shot or sent out to the Gulags.

“Perhaps,” Pekkala suggested to Nagorski, “you have had a change of heart about this tank of yours. It might occur to someone in that situation to undo what they have done.”

“By giving its secrets to the enemy, you mean?”

Pekkala nodded slowly. “That is one possibility.”

“Do you know why it is called the Konstantin Project?”

“No, Comrade Nagorski.”

“Konstantin is the name of my son, my only child. You see, Inspector, this project is as sacred to me as my own family. There is nothing I would do to harm it. Some people cannot understand that. They write me off as some kind of Dr. Frankenstein, obsessed only with bringing a monster to life. They don’t understand the price I have to pay for my accomplishments. Success can be as harmful as failure when you are just trying to get on with your life. My wife and son have suffered greatly.”

“I understand,” said Pekkala.

“Do you?” asked Nagorski, almost pleading. “Do you really?”

“We have both made difficult choices,” Pekkala said.

Nagorski nodded, staring away into the corner of the room, lost in thought. Suddenly, he faced Pekkala. “Then you should know that everything I’ve told you is the truth.”

“Excuse me, Colonel Nagorski,” said Pekkala. He got up, left the room, and walked down the corridor, which was lined with metal doors. His footsteps made no sound on the gray industrial carpeting. All sound had been removed from this place, as if the air had been sucked out of it. At the end of the corridor, one door remained slightly ajar. Pekkala knocked once and walked into a room so filled with smoke that his first breath felt like a mouthful of ashes.

“Well, Pekkala?” said a voice. Sitting by himself in a chair in the corner of the otherwise empty room was a man of medium height and stocky build, with a pockmarked face and a withered left hand. His hair was thick and dark, combed straight back on his head. A mustache sewn with threads of gray bunched beneath his nose. He was smoking a cigarette, of which so little remained that one more puff would have touched the embers to his skin.

“Very well, Comrade Stalin,” said Pekkala.

The man stubbed out his cigarette on the sole of his shoe and blew the last gray breath in two streams from his nose. “What do you think of our Colonel Nagorski?” he asked.

“I think he is telling the truth,” replied Pekkala.

“I don’t believe it,” replied Stalin. “Perhaps your assistant should be questioning him.”

“Major Kirov,” said Pekkala.

“I know who he is!” Stalin’s voice rose in anger.

Pekkala understood. It was the mention of Kirov’s name which unnerved Stalin, since Kirov was also the name of the former Leningrad Party Chief, who had been assassinated five years earlier. The murder of Kirov had weighed upon Stalin, not because of any lasting affection for the man but because it showed that if a person like Kirov could be killed, then Stalin himself might be next. Since Kirov’s death, Stalin had never walked out into the streets, among the people whom he ruled but did not trust.

Stalin kneaded his hands together, cracking his knuckles one after the other. “The Konstantin Project has been compromised, and I believe Nagorski is responsible.”

“I have yet to see the proof of that,” said Pekkala. “Is there something you’re not telling me, Comrade Stalin? Is there some proof that you can show? Or is this just another arrest? In which case, you have plenty of other investigators you could use.”

Stalin rolled the stub of his cigarette between his fingers. “Do you know how many people I allow to speak to me that way?”

“Not many, I imagine,” said Pekkala. Every time he met with Stalin, he became aware of an emotional blankness that seemed to hover around the man. It was something about Stalin’s eyes. The look on his face would change, but the expression in his eyes never did. When Stalin laughed, cajoled, and if that didn’t work, threatened, it was, for Pekkala, like watching an exchange of masks in a Japanese Kabuki play. There were moments, as one mask transformed into another, when it seemed to Pekkala that he could glimpse what lay behind. And what he found there filled him with dread. His only defense was to pretend he could not see it.

Stalin smiled, and suddenly the mask had changed again. “ ‘Not many’ is right. ‘None’ would be more correct. You are right that I do have other investigators, but this case is too important.” Then he put the cigarette butt in his pocket.

Pekkala had watched him do this before. It was a strange habit in a place where even the poorest people threw their cigarette butts on the ground and left them there. Strange, too, for a man who would never run short of the forty cigarettes he smoked each day. Maybe there was some story in it, perhaps dating back to his days as a bank robber in Tblisi. Pekkala wondered if Stalin, like some beggar in the street, removed the remaining tobacco from the stubs and rolled it into fresh cigarettes. Whatever the reason, Stalin kept it to himself.

“I admire your audacity, Pekkala. I like a person who is not afraid to speak his mind. That’s one of the reasons I trust you.”

“All I ask is that you let me do my job,” said Pekkala. “That was our agreement.”

Stalin let his hands fall with an impatient slap against his knees. “Do you know, Pekkala, that my pen once touched the paper of your death sentence? I was that close.” He pinched the air, as if he were still holding that pen, and traced the air with the ghost of his own signature. “I never regretted my choice. And how many years have we been working together now?”

“Six. Almost seven.”

“In all that time, have I ever interfered with one of your investigations?”

“No,” admitted Pekkala.

“And have I ever threatened you, simply because you disagreed with me?”

“No, Comrade Stalin.”

“And that”—Stalin aimed a finger at Pekkala, as if taking aim down the barrel of a gun—“is more than you can say about your former boss, or his meddling wife, Alexandra.”

In that moment Pekkala was hurled back through time.

Like a man snapping out of a trance, he found himself in the Alexander Palace, hand poised to knock upon the Tsar’s study door.

It was the day he finally tracked down the killer Grodek.

Grodek and his fiancée, a woman named Maria Balka, had been found hiding in an apartment near the Moika Canal. When agents of the Okhrana stormed the building, Grodek set off an explosive which destroyed the house and killed everyone inside, including the agents who had gone in to arrest him. Meanwhile, Grodek and Balka fled out the back, where Pekkala was waiting in case they tried to escape. Pekkala pursued them along the icy cobbled street until Grodek tried to cross the river on the Potsuleyev Bridge. But Okhrana men had stationed themselves on the other side of the bridge, and the two criminals found themselves with nowhere left to run. It was at this moment that Grodek had shot his fiancée rather than let her fall into the hands of the police. Balka’s body tumbled into the canal and disappeared among the plates of ice which drifted out towards the sea like rafts loaded with diamonds. Grodek, afraid to jump, had tried to shoot himself, only to discover that his gun was empty. He was immediately taken into custody.

The Tsar had ordered Pekkala to arrive at the Alexander Palace no later than 4 p.m. that day, in order to make his report. The Tsar did not like to be kept waiting, and Pekkala had raced the whole way from Petrograd, arriving with only minutes to spare. He dashed up the front steps of the Palace and straight to the Tsar’s study.

There was no answer, so Pekkala knocked again. Still there was no answer. Cautiously, he opened the door, but found the room empty.

Pekkala sighed with annoyance.

Although the Tsar did not like to be kept waiting, he had no trouble making others wait for him.

Just then, Pekkala heard the Tsar’s voice coming from the room across the hall. The chamber belonged to the Tsarina Alexandra and was known as the Mauve Boudoir. Of the hundred rooms in the Alexander Palace, it had become the most famous, because of how ugly people found it. Pekkala was forced to agree. To his eye, everything in that room was the color of boiled liver.

Pekkala stopped outside the room, trying to catch his breath from all the rushing he had done to be on time. Then he heard the voice of the Tsarina and the Tsar’s furious reply. As their words filtered into his brain, he realized they were talking about him.

“I am not going to dismiss Pekkala!” said the Tsar.

Pekkala heard the faint creak of the Tsar’s riding boots upon the floor. He knew exactly which pair of boots they were—they had been special-ordered from England and had arrived the week before. The Tsar was trying to break them in, although his feet were suffering in the meantime. He had confided to Pekkala that he had even resorted to the old peasant trick of softening new boots, which was to urinate in them and leave them standing overnight.

Now Pekkala heard the Tsarina speaking in her usual soft tone. He had never heard her shout. The Tsarina’s low pitch always sounded to him like a person uttering threats. “Our friend has urged us,” she said.

At the mention of “our friend,” Pekkala felt his jaw clench. That was the phrase the Tsar and the Tsarina used between themselves to describe the self-proclaimed holy man Rasputin.

Since his first appearance in the court of Tsar Nicholas Romanov, Rasputin’s hold upon the Imperial Family had grown so strong that he was now consulted on all matters, whether about the war, which was now in its second year and moving from one catastrophe to the next, or about appointments to the Royal Court, or about the illness of the Tsar’s youngest child, Alexei. Although it was officially denied, Alexei had been diagnosed with hemophilia. Injuries which would have been laughed off by any healthy boy confined him to his bed for days at a time. Often he had to be carried wherever he went by his personal servant, a sailor named Derevenko.

The Tsarina soon came to believe that Rasputin held the cure to Alexei’s disease.

Disturbed by the power Rasputin held over the royal family, the prime minister, Peter Stolypin, had ordered an investigation. The report he delivered to the Tsar was filled with stories of debauchery in Rasputin’s Petrograd apartment and secret meetings between the Tsarina and Rasputin at the house of her best friend, Anna Vyrubova.

The Tsarina was not well liked among the Russian people. They called her Nemka, the German Woman, and now that the country was at war with Germany, they wondered where her own loyalties lay.

After reading the report, the Tsar ordered Stolypin never to speak to him again about Rasputin. When Stolypin was shot by an assassin named Dimitri Bogrov at an opera house in Kiev, dying five days later, the lack of concern shown by the Tsar and Alexandra caused a scandal in the Russian court.

When the assassin Bogrov was arrested, he turned out to be a paid informant of the Okhrana. Lawyers at Bogrov’s trial were not permitted to ask whether there had been any connection between the assassin Bogrov and the Romanov family. Less than a week after Stolypin’s death, Bogrov himself was executed.

From then on, Rasputin’s meetings with the Tsarina continued unopposed. Rumors of infidelity spread. Although Pekkala himself did not believe that they were true, he knew many who did.

What Pekkala did believe was that the Tsarina’s anxiety over her son’s precarious health had pushed her to the brink of her own sanity. In spite of all the riches of the Romanovs, there was no cure their money could have bought. So the Tsarina had turned to superstitions, which now so governed her life that she existed in a world seen only through a lens of fear. And somehow, through that lens, Rasputin had taken on the presence of a god.

The Tsar himself was not so easily convinced, and Rasputin’s influence might have faded if not for one event which secured for him the loyalty of the entire royal family, and also sealed his fate.

At the Romanovs’ dreary hunting lodge of Spala, the young Tsarevich slipped when getting out of the bath and suffered a hemorrhage so severe that the doctors told his parents to make preparations for a funeral.

Then a telegram arrived from Rasputin, assuring the Tsarina that her son would not die.

What happened next, even Rasputin’s harshest critics were unable to deny.

After the arrival of the telegram, Alexei began, quite suddenly, to recover.

From that point on, no matter what Rasputin did, he became almost untouchable.

Almost.

Rasputin’s excesses continued, and Pekkala had quietly dreaded the day when he might be summoned by the Tsar to investigate the Siberian. One way or the other, it would have been the end of Pekkala’s career, or even of his life, just as it was for Stolypin. Perhaps for that very reason, or because he preferred not to know the truth, the Tsar had never placed upon Pekkala the burden of handling such a case.

“Our friend,” Pekkala heard the Tsar snap, “would do well to keep in mind that I myself appointed Pekkala.”

“Now, my darling,” said the Tsarina, and there was the rustle of a dress as she moved across the floor, “no one is suggesting that you were wrong to have appointed him. Your loyalty to Pekkala is beyond reproach. It is Pekkala’s loyalty to you that has come into question.”

Hearing this, Pekkala felt a burning in his chest. He had never done anything remotely disloyal. He knew this and the Tsar knew this. But in that moment, Pekkala felt the bile rise in his throat, because he knew that the Tsar was vulnerable. He could be persuaded. The Tsar liked to think of himself as a decisive man, and in some things he was, but he could be made to believe almost anything if his wife had decided to convince him.

“Sunny, don’t you understand?” protested the Tsar. “Pekkala’s loyalty is not to me.”

“Well, don’t you think it should be?”

“Pekkala’s duty is to the task I gave him,” replied the Tsar, “and that is where his loyalty belongs.”

“His duty—” began the Tsarina.

The Tsar cut her off. “Is to find out the truth of whatever matter I place before him, however unpleasant it might be to hear it. Such a man strikes fear into the hearts of those who are sheltering lies. And I wonder, Sunny, if our friend is not more worried for himself than he is for the well-being of the court.”

“You cannot say that, my love! Our friend wishes only for the good of our family, and of our country. He has even sent you a gift.” There was a rustling of paper.

“What on earth is that?”

“It is a comb,” she replied. “One of his own, and he has suggested that it would bring you good fortune to run it through your hair before you attend your daily meetings with the generals.”

Pekkala shuddered at the thought of Rasputin’s greasy hair.

The Tsar was thinking the same thing. “I will not take part in another one of Rasputin’s disgusting rituals!” he shouted, then strode out of the room and into the hallway.

There was nowhere for Pekkala to go. He had only one choice—to stay where he was.

The Tsar was startled.

For a moment the two men stared at each other.

Pekkala broke the silence, saying the first thing that came into his mind. “How are your boots, Majesty?”

For a moment, the Tsar just blinked in surprise. Then he smiled. “The English make wonderful shoes,” he replied, “only not for human beings.”

Now the Tsarina appeared in the doorway. She wore a plain white floor-length dress, with sleeves which stopped at the elbows and a collar that covered her throat. Tied around her waist was a belt made of black cloth, which had tassels at the end. Around her neck, suspended on a gold chain, she wore a crucifix made of bone which had been carved by Rasputin himself. She was a severe-looking woman, with a thin mouth that turned down at the edges, deep-set eyes, and a smooth, broad forehead. Pekkala had seen pictures of her just after she was married to the Tsar. She had seemed much happier then. Now, when her face was relaxed, lines of worry fell into place, like cracks in a pottery glaze.

“What do you want?” she demanded of Pekkala.

“His Majesty asked me to report to him at four p.m. precisely.”

“Then you are late,” she snapped.

“No, Majesty,” replied Pekkala. “I was on time.”

Then the Tsarina realized he must have heard every word she had said.

“What news of Grodek?” asked the Tsar, hurriedly moving to a new topic.

“We have him, Majesty,” answered Pekkala.

The Tsar’s face brightened. “Well done!” The Tsar slapped him gently on the shoulder. Then he walked away down the hall. As he passed his wife, he paused and whispered in her ear. “You go and tell that to your friend.”

Then it was just Pekkala and the Tsarina.

Her lips were dry, the result of the barbiturate Veronal, which she had been taking in order to help her sleep. The Veronal upset her stomach, so she had resorted to taking cocaine. One drug led to another. Over time, the cocaine had given her heart trouble, so she began taking small doses of arsenic. This had tinted the skin beneath her eyes a brownish green and also caused her sleeplessness, which put her right back where she had started. “I suffer from nightmares,” she told him, “and you, Pekkala, are in them.”

“I do not doubt it, Majesty,” he replied.

For a moment, the Tsarina’s mouth hung slightly open as she tried to grasp the meaning of his words. Then her teeth came together with a crack. She walked into her room and closed the door.

“YOU ASK FOR PROOF THAT THE T-34 HAS BEEN COMPROMISED?” asked Stalin. “All right, Pekkala. I will give you proof. Two days ago, a German agent tried to purchase design specifications of the entire Konstantin Project.”

“Purchase them?” asked Pekkala. “From whom?”

“The White Guild,” replied Stalin.

“The Guild!” Pekkala had not heard that name in a long time.

Some years before, Stalin had ordered the formation of a secret organization, to be known as the White Guild, made up of former soldiers who had remained loyal to the Tsar long after his death and were committed to overthrowing the Communists. The idea that Stalin would create an organization whose sole purpose was to topple himself from power was so unthinkable that none of its members ever dreamed that the whole operation had been controlled from the start by the NKVD’s Bureau of Special Operations. It was a trick Stalin had learned from the Okhrana: to lure enemies out of hiding, persuade them that they are taking part in actions against the state, and then, before the acts of violence could take place, arrest them. Since the White Guild had been in existence, hundreds of anti-Communist agents had met their deaths by firing squad against the stone wall of the Lubyanka courtyard.

“But if that’s who they were dealing with,” Pekkala told Stalin, “you have nothing to worry about. You control the Guild. It is your own invention, after all.”

“You are missing the point, Pekkala.” Stalin scratched at the back of his neck, his fingernails rustling over the smallpox scars embedded in his skin. “What worries me is that they even know the T-34 exists. The only time a secret is safe is when no one knows there is a secret being kept.”

“What happened to the German agent?” asked Pekkala. “May I question him?”

“You could,” replied Stalin, “but I think you would find it a very one-sided conversation.”

“I see,” said Pekkala. “But at least we were successful in preventing the enemy from acquiring the information.”

“That success is only temporary. They will come looking again.”

“If they are looking,” said Pekkala, “then perhaps you should let them find what they think they’re searching for.”

“That has already been arranged,” said Stalin, as he put a fresh cigarette between his lips. “Now go back and question him again.”

IN THE FOREST OF RUSALKA, ON THE POLISH-RUSSIAN BORDER, A dirt road wandered drunkenly among the pines. It had been raining, but now bolts of sunlight angled through the misty air. On either side of the road, tall pine trees grew so thickly that no daylight could penetrate. Only mushrooms sprouted from the brown pine needles carpeting the ground—the white-speckled red of Fly Agaric and the greasy white of the Avenging Angel, so poisonous that one small bite would kill a man.

The sound of hoofbeats startled a pheasant from its hiding place. With a loud, croaking squawk, the bird took to the air and vanished into the fog.

From around a bend in the road appeared a rider on a horse. He wore a uniform whose cloth was the same grayish brown as the hide of a deer in the winter. His riding boots glowed with a fresh coat of neat’s-foot oil, and the brass buttons of his tunic were emblazoned with the Polish eagle crest. In his left hand the man carried a lance. Its short, pig-sticker blade shone brightly as it passed through the pillars of sunlight. Both horse and horseman looked like ghosts from a time long before the one in which they had materialized. Then more men appeared—a troop of cavalry—and these had rifles slung across their backs. They moved in beautiful formation, two columns wide and seven deep.

The men belonged to the Pomorske Cavalry Brigade and were on a routine patrol. The road on which they traveled snaked back and forth across the Polish-Russian border, but since it was the only road, and since the forest was so seldom visited except by woodcutters and soldiers patrolling the border, Soviet and Polish troops sometimes crossed paths in the Rusalka.

As the point rider moved around another bend in the road, he was lost in thoughts of how uneventful these patrols were and what a dreary place the Rusalka was and how unnaturally quiet it always seemed here.

Suddenly his horse reared up, very nearly throwing him. He struggled to stay in the saddle. Then he saw, blocking the path ahead of him, the huge, squat shape of a tank unlike any he had ever seen before. The barrel of its cannon pointed straight at him, and the opening at the end of the barrel seemed to glare like the eye of a cyclops. Its rotten-apple green paint made it seem as if the machine had sprouted from the dirt on which it stood.

As the other troopers came around the bend, both men and animals were startled. The clean lines of their riding formation broke apart. The lancers snapped commands and tugged at reins, trying to bring their mounts under control.

Awakened from its iron sleep, the tank engine gave a sudden, bestial roar. Two columns of bluish smoke belched from its twin exhaust pipes, rising like cobras into the damp air.

One of the Polish horses reared up on its hind legs. Its rider toppled off into the mud. The officer in charge of the troop, identifiable only by the fact that he wore a revolver on his belt, shouted at the man who had fallen. The trooper, his whole side painted with mud, scrambled back into the saddle.

The tank did not move, but its engine continued to bellow. All around the huge machine, the khaki-silted puddles trembled.

The lancers exchanged glances, unable to hide their fear.

One trooper unshouldered his rifle.

Seeing this, the officer spurred his horse towards the man, knocking the gun from his grasp.

Just when it seemed that the lancers were about to withdraw in confusion, the tank’s engine clattered and died.

The echo faded away through the trees. Except for the heavy breathing of the horses, silence returned to the forest. Then a hatch opened on the turret of the tank and a man climbed out. He wore the black leather double-breasted jacket of a Soviet tank officer. At first he gave no sign of realizing that the Poles were even there. As soon as he had cleared the turret hatch, he swung his legs to the side and clambered down to the ground. Only then did he acknowledge the presence of the horsemen. Awkwardly, he raised one hand in greeting.

The Poles looked at each other. They did not wave back.

“Tank bust!” said the tank officer, speaking in broken Polish. He threw up his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

In an instant, all fear vanished from the Polish lancers. Now they began to laugh and talk among themselves.

Two more soldiers emerged from the tank, one through the turret and another through a forward hatch which flopped open like the lazy blinking of an eyelid. The men who climbed out wore stone-gray overalls and padded cloth helmets. They glanced at the Poles, who were still laughing, then went around to the back of the tank. One man opened the engine compartment and the other looked inside.

The black-jacketed Soviet commander seemed unaffected by the laughter of the cavalrymen. He merely shrugged and said again, “Tank bust!”

The Polish officer gave a sharp command to his men, who immediately began to form up in their original columns. As soon as this had been done, the officer snapped his hand forward and the troop advanced. The two columns divided around the hulk of the tank, like the flow of water around a stone set in a stream.

The Poles could not hide their contempt for the broken machine. The point rider dipped the tip of his lance and dragged the blade along the metal hull, scraping up a curl of white paint from a large number 4 painted on its side.

The Soviets did nothing to stop them. Instead, they busied themselves with repairing the engine.

As the last Polish lancer rode by, he leaned in his saddle until he could have touched the tank commander. “Machine broken!” he mocked.

The Soviet officer nodded and grinned, but as soon as the horses had passed, the smile sheared off his face.

The two crewmen, who had been stooped over the engine compartment, both straightened and watched the swinging rear ends of the horses as they rounded the next bend in the road and disappeared.

“That’s right, Polack,” said one of the crewmen, in a voice barely above a whisper. “Laugh it up.”

“And we’ll laugh, too,” said the other, “when we are pissing on your Polish graves.”

The tank commander spun one finger in a circle; it was the signal for the engine to be started up again.

The crewmen nodded. They closed the engine cover and climbed back inside the tank.

Once more, the T-34 thundered to life and the machine jolted forward, gouging the road and kicking up a spray of mud as it rolled onward. When it came to an unmarked trail, the driver locked one of the tracks. The tank slewed sideways and then both tracks began to move again. The T-34 crashed into the undergrowth, splintering trees as it went. Soon it had vanished from sight and there was only the sound of its engine, fading into the distance.

IN A DARK, NARROW SIDE STREET TWO BLOCKS FROM THE KREMLIN, Pekkala inserted a long brass key into the lock of a battered door. The door was plated with iron which had once been painted a cheerful yellow, as if to lure in more sunlight than the few minutes a day when the sun shone directly overhead. Now most of the paint was gone and what remained had faded to the color of old varnish.

As Pekkala made his way up to the third floor, treading heavily upon the scuffed wooden stairs, his fingers trailed along the black metal bannister. The only light came from a single bulb, fringed with dusty cobwebs. In a dark corner, an old gray cat with matted fur lounged on a broken chair. Empty zinc coal buckets were stacked outside a doorway and coal dust glittered on the carpeting.

But at the third floor, everything changed. Here, the walls were freshly painted. A wooden coatrack stood at one end of the hallway, an umbrella hanging from one crooked peg. On the door, stenciled in black letters, was Pekkala’s name and under it, the word INVESTIGATOR. Beneath it, in smaller letters, was KIROV, ASSISTANT TO INSPECTOR PEKKALA.

Every time Pekkala reached the third floor, he silently gave thanks to his fastidious assistant.

There were times when, entering his office, Pekkala wondered if he had gotten lost and wandered instead into some strange arboretum. Plants sat on every surface—the sweet, musty smell of tomatoes, the sexually open mouths of orchid blossoms, the orange and purple beak-shaped bloom of the bird of paradise. The dust was swept daily from their leaves, the soil kept damp but not wet, showing marks where Kirov regularly pressed the earth down with his fingers, as if tucking an infant into bed.

The air felt heavy in here, as in a jungle, Pekkala thought, and seeing his desk almost hidden among the foliage, he had the impression that this was how his office might look if all humans suddenly vanished from the world and plants took over, swallowing the world of men.

Today, the office smelled of cooking and Pekkala remembered it was Friday, the one day of the week when Kirov prepared him a meal. Pekkala breathed a sigh of contentment at the odor of boiled ham, cloves, and gravy.

Kirov, still in his uniform, hunched over the stove, which took up one corner of the room. He was stirring the contents of a cast-iron pot with a wooden spoon and humming quietly to himself.

When Pekkala shut the door, the young man wheeled around, spoon raised like a magic wand. “Inspector! Just in time.”

“You know you don’t have to go to all this trouble,” said Pekkala, trying to sound convincing.

“If it was up to you,” replied Kirov, “we would be eating army-issue cans of Tushonka meat three times a day. My taste buds would commit suicide.”

Pekkala took a pair of earthenware bowls from the shelf and carried them over to the windowsill. Then, from the drawer of his desk, he brought out two metal spoons. “What have you got for us today?” he asked, peering over Kirov’s shoulder into the pot. He saw a dark sauce, a knot of ham, potatoes, boiled chestnuts, and a bundle of what looked like yellow twigs.

“Boujenina,” replied Kirov, tasting the end of the steaming wooden spoon.

“What’s that?” asked Pekkala, pointing at the twigs. “It looks like grass.”

“Not grass,” explained Kirov. “Hay.”

Pekkala brought his face closer to the bubbling mixture in the pot. “People can eat hay?”

“It’s just for seasoning.” Kirov picked up a chipped red-and-white enameled ladle and scooped some of the stew into Pekkala’s bowl.

Pekkala sat down in the creaky wooden chair behind his desk and peered suspiciously at his lunch. “Hay,” he repeated, and sniffed at the steam as it rose from his stew.

Kirov perched on the windowsill. His long legs dangled almost to the floor.

Pekkala opened his mouth to ask another question. Several questions, actually. What kind of hay was it? Where did it come from? Who thought this up? What does “boujenina” mean? But Kirov silenced him before he had a chance to speak.

“Don’t talk, Inspector. Eat!”

Obediently, Pekkala spooned the boujenina into his mouth. The salty warmth spread through his body. The taste of cloves sparked in his brain, like electricity. And the taste of the hay reached him now; a mellow earthiness which summoned memories of childhood from the darkened corners of his mind.

They ate in comfortable silence.

A minute later, when Pekkala’s spoon was scraping the bottom of the bowl, Kirov loudly cleared his throat. “Have you finished already?”

“Yes,” replied Pekkala. “Is there any more?”

“There is more, but that’s not the point! How can you eat so quickly?”

Pekkala shrugged. “It’s what I do.”

“What I mean,” explained Kirov, “is that you should learn to savor your food. Food is like dreams, Inspector.”

Pekkala held out his bowl. “Could I have some more while you explain this to me?”

Sighing with exasperation, Kirov took the bowl from Pekkala’s hand, refilled it, and handed it back. “There are three kinds of dream,” he began. “The first is just a scribble in your mind. It means nothing. It’s just your brain unwinding like a clock spring. The second kind does mean something. Your unconscious mind is trying to tell you something, but you have to interpret what it means.”

“And the third?” asked Pekkala, his mouth full of stew.

“The third,” said Kirov, “is what the mystics call Barakka. It is a waking dream, a vision, when you glimpse the workings of the universe.”

“Like Saint Paul,” said Pekkala, “on the road to Damascus.”

“What?”

“Never mind.” Pekkala waved his spoon. “Keep going. What does this have to do with food?”

“There is the meal you eat simply to fill your stomach.”

“Like a can of meat,” suggested Pekkala.

Kirov shuddered. “Yes, like those cans of meat you put away. And then there are the meals you buy at the cafe where you eat your lunch, which are not much better except that you don’t have to clean up after yourself.”

“And then?”

“And then there are meals which elevate food to an art.”

Pekkala, who had been eating all this time, dropped his spoon into the empty bowl.

Hearing this, Kirov shook his head in amazement. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you, Inspector?”

“No,” agreed Pekkala, “but I’ve had some excellent dreams. I don’t know why you didn’t become a professional chef.”

“I cook because I want to,” replied Kirov, “not because I have to.”

“Is there a difference?” asked Pekkala.

“All the difference in the world,” said Kirov. “If I had to cook all day for men like Nagorski, it would take all the pleasure out of cooking. Do you know what he was eating when I went into that restaurant? Blinis. With Caspian sevruga, each morsel like a perfect black pearl. He was just stuffing it into his face. The art of food was lost on him completely.”

Self-consciously, Pekkala glanced into his already empty bowl. He had done his best to eat at a dignified pace, but the truth was that if Kirov hadn’t been there, he would have set aside the bowl and would be eating right out of the pot by now.

“Any luck with Nagorski?” asked Kirov.

“Depends,” sighed Pekkala, “on what you call luck.”

“That machine he built,” said Kirov. “I hear it weighs more than ten tons.”

“Thirty, to be precise,” replied Pekkala. “To hear him speak of it, you’d think that tank was a member of his family.”

“You think he’s guilty?”

Pekkala shook his head. “Unpleasant, maybe, but not guilty, as far as I can tell. I released him. He is now back at the facility where his tank is being designed.” It was then he noticed a large box placed just inside the door. “What is that?”

“Ah,” Kirov began.

“Whenever you say ‘ah,’ I know it’s something I’m not going to like.”

“Not at all!” Kirov laughed nervously. “It’s a present for you.”

“It’s not my birthday.”

“Well, it’s sort of a present. Actually it’s more of a …”

“So it’s not really a present.”

“No,” admitted Kirov. “It’s really more of a suggestion.”

“A suggestion,” repeated Pekkala.

“Open it!” said Kirov, brandishing his spoon.

Pekkala got out of his chair. He placed the box on his desk and lifted the lid. Inside was a neatly folded coat. Several other garments lay underneath.

“I thought it was time you had a new outfit,” said Kirov.

“New?” Pekkala looked down at the clothes he was wearing. “But these are new. Almost, anyway. I bought them just last year.”

Kirov made a sound in his throat. “Well, when I say new, what I mean is ‘up to date.’ ”

“I am up to date!” Pekkala protested. “I bought these clothes right here in Moscow. They were very expensive.” And he was just about to go on about the prices he’d been forced to pay when Kirov cut him off.

“All right,” the major said patiently, trying another angle. “Where did you buy your clothes?”

“Linsky’s, over by the Bolshoi Theatre. Linsky makes durable stuff!” said Pekkala, patting the chest of his coat. “He told me himself that when you buy a coat from him, it’s the last one you will ever need to wear. That’s his personal motto, you know.”

“Yes”—Kirov brought his hands together in a silent clap—“but do you know what people call his shop? Clothes for Dead Men.”

“Well, that seems a little dramatic.”

“For goodness’ sake, Inspector, Linsky sells clothes to funeral homes!”

“So what if he does?” Pekkala protested. “Funeral directors need something to wear, you know. They can’t all walk around naked. My father was a funeral director—”

Kirov was finally losing his patience. “Linsky doesn’t sell clothes to the directors! Linsky makes the clothes that go on bodies when they are laid out for a viewing. That’s why his clothes are the last ones you’ll ever wear. Because you’ll be buried in them!”

Pekkala frowned. He inspected his lapels. “But I’ve always worn this style of coat.”

“That’s the problem, Inspector,” said Kirov. “There is such a thing as fashion, even for people like you. Now, look.” Kirov walked across the room and removed the coat from the box. Carefully, he unfolded it. Then, holding it by the shoulders, he lifted it up for Pekkala to see. “Look at this. This is the latest style. Try it on. That’s all I’m asking.”

Reluctantly, Pekkala put on the jacket.

Kirov helped him into it. “There!” he announced. “How does it feel?”

Pekkala raised his arms and lowered them again. “All right, I suppose.”

“You see! I told you! And there’s a shirt there and a new pair of trousers too. Now no one will be able to call you a fossil.”

Pekkala frowned. “I didn’t realize anyone called me a fossil.”

Kirov patted him on the shoulder. “It’s just an expression. And now I have something else for you. A real present this time.” He held his arm out towards the windowsill, where a small plant sagged under the weight of bright orange fruits.

“Tangerines?” asked Pekkala.

“Kumquats,” corrected Kirov proudly. “It took me months to find one of these plants and more than a year to get it to bear fruit. Are you ready?”

“Kumquats,” said Pekkala, still trying out the word.

Kirov reached out and took hold of a fruit between his thumb and first two fingers. Gently he twisted until the ball came away from its stem, then held it out to Pekkala.

Pekkala plucked the kumquat from Kirov’s fingers and sniffed at it.

“Eat!” said Kirov, his cheeks flushing red. “That’s an order!”

Pekkala raised his eyebrows. “An order, Kirov?”

“I do outrank you.”

“But I don’t have a rank!”

“Exactly.” Kirov flapped his hand at Pekkala as if he were shooing a fly. “Don’t make me ask you again!”

Pekkala took a small bite, tearing through the thin, glowing skin of the kumquat and into the yellowy segments beneath. His eyes closed tightly as the sour taste flooded his mouth. “It’s inedible!”

“It’s perfect,” said Kirov. Then he went back to the windowsill and traced one finger lovingly over the deep green, shiny leaves.

“You need a girlfriend, Kirov. Or a wife. You’re spending too much time with these kumquats. Now please go down and bring the car around front.”

“Where are we going?”

“We have a rendezvous with thirty tons of Russian steel. Nagorski has offered to give us a tour of the place where the tank is being designed. He is anxious to prove to us that the facility is secure.”

“Yes, Inspector.” Kirov picked up his keys and headed out the door.

“Did you remember your gun?” Pekkala called to him.

Kirov groaned. His footsteps came to a halt.

“You forgot again, didn’t you?”

“I don’t need it this time,” Kirov protested.

“You never know when you will need it. That’s why there are regulations, Kirov!”

Kirov trudged back up the stairs and into the office. Then he began rifling through the drawers of his desk.

“Have you lost it?” asked Pekkala.

“It’s in here somewhere,” muttered Kirov.

Pekkala shook his head and sighed.

“Ah!” shouted Kirov. “Here it is!” He held up a Tokarev automatic, standard issue for army officers and members of state security.

“Now go and get the car,” Pekkala told him.

“On my way!” Kirov swept past and clattered down the stairs.

Before Pekkala left the office, he removed the new jacket, replaced it in the box, and put his old coat on again. As he fastened the buttons, he went to the window and looked out over the rooftops of Moscow. Late-afternoon sunlight shone weak and silvery upon the slates. Crows and pigeons shared the chimney pots. His gaze returned to the plants on the windowsill. Glancing back to see if Kirov had returned, Pekkala reached out and plucked another kumquat. He put the whole thing in his mouth and bit down. The bitter juice exploded in his mouth. He swallowed and let out a gasp. Then he made his way down to the street.

A GENTLE RAIN WAS FALLING.

Kirov stood beside the car. It was a 1935 Emka, with a squared-off roof, a large front grille, and headlights mounted on the wide and sweeping cowlings, giving it a haughty look. The engine was running. The Emka’s wipers twitched jerkily back and forth, like the antennae of an insect.

Kirov held open the passenger door, waiting for Pekkala.

As Pekkala shut the battered yellow door behind him, he turned and almost barged into two women who were walking past.

The women were bundled in scarves and bulky coats. They chattered happily, breath condensing into halos about their heads.

“Excuse me,” said Pekkala, rocking back on his heels so as not to collide with the women.

The women did not break their stride. They merely glanced at him, then returned to their conversation.

Pekkala watched them go, staring at the woman on the left. He had caught only a glimpse of her—pale brown eyes and a wisp of blond hair trailing across her cheek—but now the blood drained out of his face.

Kirov noticed. “Pekkala,” he said quietly.

Pekkala did not seem to hear. He walked quickly after the women. Reaching out, he touched the shoulder of the brown-eyed woman.

She wheeled. “What is it?” she cried, instantly afraid. “What do you want?”

Pekkala jerked his hand away as if he’d just been shocked. “I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I thought you were somebody else.”

Kirov was walking towards them.

Pekkala swallowed, barely able to speak. “I’m so sorry,” he told her.

“Who did you think I was?” she asked.

Kirov came to a stop beside them. “Excuse us, ladies,” he said cheerfully. “We were just going in the opposite direction.”

“Well, I hope you find who you are looking for,” the woman told Pekkala.

Then she and her friend walked on down the street, while Kirov and Pekkala returned to the car.

“You didn’t have to come after me like that,” said Pekkala. “I’m perfectly capable of getting myself out of embarrassing situations.”

“Not as capable as you are of getting into them,” replied Kirov. “How many times are you going to go galloping after strange women?”

“I thought it was …”

“I know who you thought it was. And I also know as well as you do that she’s not in Moscow. She’s not even in the country! And even if she was here, right in front of you, it wouldn’t matter, because she has another life now. Or have you forgotten all that?”

“No,” sighed Pekkala, “I have not forgotten.”

“Come on, Inspector, let’s go have a look at this tank. Maybe they will let us take one home.”

“We wouldn’t have to worry about someone taking our parking spot,” said Pekkala, as he climbed into the rear seat of the Emka. “We’d just park on top of them.”

As Kirov pulled out into the stream of cars, he did not see Pekkala look back at the empty road where he had stood with the women, as if to see some ghost of his old self among the shadows.

Her name was Ilya Simonova. She had been a teacher at the Tsarskoye primary school, just outside the grounds of the Tsar’s estate. Most of the Palace staff sent their children to the Tsarskoye school, and Ilya often led groups of students on walks across the Catherine and Alexander parks. That was how Pekkala had met her: at a garden party to mark the beginning of the new school year. He had not actually gone to the party, but saw it on his way home from the station. He stopped at the wall of the school and looked in.

Of that moment in time, Pekkala had no recollection of anything else except the sight of her, standing just outside a white marquee set up for the occasion. She was wearing a pale green dress. She did not have a hat, so he could see her face quite clearly—high cheekbones and eyes a dusty blue.

At first he thought he must know her from somewhere before. Something in his mind made her seem familiar to him. But that wasn’t it. And whatever it was, this sudden lurching of his senses towards something it couldn’t explain, it stopped him in his tracks and held him there. The next thing he knew, a woman on the other side of the wall had come up and asked him if he was looking for somebody. She was tall and dignified, her gray hair knotted at the back.

“Who is that?” Pekkala had asked, nodding towards the young woman in the green dress.

“That’s the new teacher, Ilya Simonova. I am the headmistress, Rada Obolenskaya. And you are the Tsar’s new detective.”

“Inspector Pekkala.” He bowed his head in greeting.

“Would you like me to introduce you, Inspector?”

“Yes!” Pekkala blurted out. “I just … she looks like someone I know. At least, I think she does.”

“I see,” said Madame Obolenskaya.

“I might be wrong,” explained Pekkala.

“I don’t suppose you are,” she replied.

He proposed to Ilya Simonova exactly one year later, down on his knees in the same schoolyard where they first met.

A date was set, but they were never married. They never got the chance. Instead, on the eve of the Revolution, Ilya boarded the last train heading west. It was bound for Paris, where Pekkala promised to meet her as soon as the Tsar had granted him permission to leave the country. But Pekkala never did get out. Months later, he was arrested by Bolshevik militiamen while attempting to cross into Finland. From there, his journey to Siberia began, and it was many years before he had another chance to leave.

“You are free to go now if you wish,” said Stalin, “but before you make your decision, there is something you should know.”

“What?” asked Pekkala nervously. “What do I need to know?”

Stalin was watching him closely, as if the two men were playing cards. Now he opened a drawer on his side of the desk, the dry wood squeaking as he pulled. He withdrew a photograph. For a moment, he studied it. Then he laid the picture down, placed one finger on top of it, and slid the photograph towards Pekkala.

It was Ilya. He recognized her instantly. She was sitting at a small cafe table. Behind her, printed on the awning of the cafe, Pekkala saw the words LES DEUX MAGOTS. She was smiling as she watched something to the left of where the camera had been placed. He could see her strong white teeth. Now, reluctantly, Pekkala’s gaze shifted to the man who was sitting beside her. He was thin, with dark hair. He wore a jacket and tie, and the stub of a cigarette was pinched between his thumb and second finger. He held the cigarette in the Russian manner, with the burning end balanced over his palm as if to catch the falling ash. Like Ilya, the man was smiling. Both of them were watching something just to the left of the camera. On the other side of the table was an object which at first Pekkala almost failed to recognize, since it had been so long since he had seen one. It was a baby carriage, its hood pulled up to shelter the infant from the sun.

Pekkala realized he wasn’t breathing. He had to force himself to fill his lungs.

Quietly, Stalin cleared his throat. “You must not hold it against her. She waited, Pekkala. She waited a very long time. Over ten years. But a person cannot wait forever, can they?”

Pekkala stared at the baby carriage. He wondered if the child had her eyes.

“As you see”—Stalin gestured towards the picture—“Ilya is happy now. She has a family. She is a teacher, of Russian of course, at the prestigious École Stanislas. She has tried to put the past behind her. That is something all of us must do at some point in our lives.”

Slowly, Pekkala raised his head, until he was looking Stalin in the eye. “Why did you show this to me?”

Stalin’s lips twitched. “Would you rather have arrived in Paris, ready to start a new life, only to find that it was once more out of reach?”

“Out of reach?” Pekkala felt dizzy. His mind seemed to rush from one end of his skull to the other, like a fish trapped in a net.

“You could still go to her, of course.” Stalin shrugged. “But whatever peace of mind she might have won for herself in these past years would then be gone in an instant. And let us say, for the sake of argument, that you could persuade her to leave the man she married. Let us say that she even leaves behind her child—”

“Stop,” Pekkala said.

“You are not that kind of man, Pekkala. You are not the monster that your enemies once believed you to be. If you were, you would never have been such a formidable opponent for people like myself. Monsters are easy to defeat. With such people, it is merely a question of blood and time, since their only weapon is fear. But you, Pekkala—you won the hearts of the people and the respect of your enemies. I do not believe you understand how rare a thing that is. Those whom you once served are out there still.” Stalin brushed his hand towards the window of his study, and out across the pale blue autumn sky. “They have not forgotten you, Pekkala, and I don’t believe you have forgotten them.”

“No,” whispered Pekkala, “I have not forgotten.”

“What I am trying to tell you, Pekkala, is that you can leave this country if you want to. I’ll put you on the next train to Paris, if that’s really what you want. Or you can stay here, where you are truly needed and where you still have a place if you want it.”

Until that moment, the thought of staying on in Russia had not occurred to him. But now Pekkala realized that his last gesture of affection for the woman he’d once thought would be his wife must be to let her believe he was dead.

THEY WERE OUT IN OPEN COUNTRY NOW, THE EMKA’S ENGINE ROARING contentedly as Kirov raced along the dusty Moscow Highway.

“Do you think I have made a mistake?” asked Pekkala.

“A mistake with what, Inspector?” asked Kirov, glancing at Pekkala in the rearview mirror before turning his eyes back to the road.

“Staying here. In Russia. I had a chance to leave and turned it down.”

“Your work here is important,” said Kirov. “Why do you think I asked to work with you, Inspector?”

“I judged that to be your own business.”

“It’s because every night when I lie down to sleep, I know I have done something that really matters. How many people can honestly say that?”

Pekkala did not reply. He wondered if Kirov was right, or if, in agreeing to work for Stalin, he had compromised every ideal for which he’d ever stood.

Gray clouds hung just above the treetops.

As they neared the Nagorski facility, Pekkala looked out at a tall metal fence which stretched along one side of the road. The fence seemed to go on forever. It was twice the height of a man, topped by a second stage of fencing which jutted out at an angle towards the road, and was lined with four strands of barbed wire. Beyond the wire grew an unkempt tangle of forest, rising from the poor and marshy soil.

The monotony of this structure was broken only by occasional black metal signs which had been bolted to the fence. Stenciled on each sign, in dull yellow paint, was a jawless skull and crossbones.

“Seems pretty secure so far,” remarked Kirov.

But Pekkala wasn’t so certain. A layer of wire which could have been cut through with a set of household pliers did not fill him with confidence.

Finally, they came to a gate. A wooden guard shack, barely big enough for one person, stood on the other side of the wire. It was raining now, and droplets lay like silver coins upon the shack’s tar-paper roof.

Kirov brought the car to a stop. He sounded the horn.

Immediately, a man came tumbling out of the shack. He wore a rough-cut army tunic and was strapping on a plain leather belt, weighed down by a heavy leather holster. Hurriedly, he unlocked the gate, sliding back a metal bolt as thick as his wrist, and swung it open.

Kirov rolled the car forward until it was adjacent to the guard shack.

Pekkala rolled down his window.

“Are you the doctors?” asked the man in a breathless voice. “I wasn’t expecting you so soon.”

“Doctors?” asked Pekkala.

The man’s dull eyes grew suddenly sharp. “If you aren’t doctors, then what do you want here?”

Pekkala reached inside his pocket for his ID.

The guard drew his revolver and aimed it at Pekkala’s face.

Pekkala froze.

“Slowly,” said the guard.

Pekkala withdrew his pass book.

“Hold it up so I can see it,” said the guard.

Pekkala did as he was told.

The pass book was the size of the man’s outstretched hand, dull red in color, with an outer cover made from fabric-covered cardboard in the manner of an old school textbook. The Soviet state seal, cradled in its two bound sheaves of wheat, had been emblazoned on the front. Inside, in the top left-hand corner, a photograph of Pekkala had been attached with a heat seal, cracking the emulsion of the photograph. Beneath that, in pale bluish-green letters, were the letters NKVD and a second stamp indicating that Pekkala was on Special Assignment for the government. The particulars of his birth, his blood group, and his state identification number filled up the right-hand page.

Most government pass books contained only those two pages, but in Pekkala’s, a third page had been inserted. Printed on canary-yellow paper with a red border around the edge were the following words:

THE PERSON IDENTIFIED IN THIS DOCUMENT IS ACTING UNDER THE DIRECT ORDERS OF COMRADE STALIN.

DO NOT QUESTION OR DETAIN HIM.

HE IS AUTHORIZED TO WEAR CIVILIAN CLOTHES, TO CARRY WEAPONS, TO TRANSPORT PROHIBITED ITEMS, INCLUDING POISON, EXPLOSIVES, AND FOREIGN CURRENCY. HE MAY PASS INTO RESTRICTED AREAS AND MAY REQUISITION EQUIPMENT OF ALL TYPES, INCLUDING WEAPONS AND VEHICLES.

IF HE IS KILLED OR INJURED, NOTIFY THE BUREAU OF SPECIAL OPERATIONS IMMEDIATELY.

Although this special insert was known officially as a Classified Operations Permit, it was more commonly referred to as a Shadow Pass. With it, a man could appear and disappear at will within the wilderness of regulations that controlled the Stalinist state. Fewer than a dozen of these Shadow Passes were known to exist. Even within the ranks of the NKVD, most people had never seen one.

Rain flicked at the pass book, darkening the paper.

The guard squinted to read the words. It took a moment for him to grasp what he was looking at. Then he looked at the gun in his hand as if he had no idea how he had come to be holding it. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, hurriedly returning the weapon to its holster.

“Why would you think we were doctors?” asked Pekkala.

“There has been an accident,” explained the guard.

“What happened?”

The guard shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you. When the facility called me here at the guardhouse about half an hour ago, all they said was that a doctor would be arriving soon and to let him through without delay. Whatever it is, I’m sure Colonel Nagorski has the situation under control.” The guard paused. “Listen, are you really Inspector Pekkala?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” asked Pekkala.

“It’s just …” The guard smiled awkwardly, scratching his forehead with his thumbnail. “I wasn’t sure you really existed.”

“Do we have your permission to proceed?” Pekkala asked.

“Of course!” The guard stood back and waved them forward with a sweep of his arm, like a man clearing bread crumbs off a table.

Kirov put the car in gear and drove on.

For several minutes, the Emka traveled on the long, straight road. The facility was nowhere in sight.

“This place really is in the middle of nowhere,” muttered Kirov.

Pekkala grunted in agreement. He squinted up at the trees, which seemed to stoop over the car as if curious to see who was inside.

Then, up ahead, they saw where the woods had been hacked back from a cluster of hunched and flat-roofed brick buildings.

As they pulled into a dirt courtyard, the door to one of the smaller buildings swung open and a man dashed out, making straight towards them. Like the guard, he wore a military uniform. By the time he reached the Emka, he was already out of breath.

Pekkala and Kirov got out of the car.

“I am Captain Samarin,” wheezed the NKVD man. He had black, Asiatic-looking hair, thin lips, and deep-set eyes. “It’s this way, Doctor,” he panted. “You’ll need your medical bag.”

“We are not doctors,” corrected Pekkala.

Samarin was flustered. “I don’t understand,” he told them. “Then what is your business here?”

“I am Inspector Pekkala, of the Bureau of Special Operations, and this is Major Kirov. Colonel Nagorski was kind enough to offer us a tour of the facility.”

“I’m afraid that a tour is out of the question, Inspector,” replied Samarin, “but I would be glad to show you why.”

Samarin led them to the edge of what looked at first glance to be a huge half-drained lake filled with large puddles of dirty water. In the middle of it, sunk almost to the top of its tracks in the mud, lay one of Nagorski’s tanks, a large white number 3 painted on its side. Two men stood beside the tank, their shoulders hunched against the rain.

“So that is the T-34,” said Pekkala.

“It is,” confirmed Samarin. “And this place”—he waved his hand across the sea of mud—“is what we call the proving ground. This is where the machines are tested.”

The rain was falling harder now, pattering on the dead leaves in the nearby woods so that the air filled with a hissing sound. The smell of the damp earth hung heavy, and the solid mass of clouds, like a blind man’s eye rolled around to white, encased the dome of sky above them.

“Where is Nagorski?” asked Pekkala.

Samarin pointed at the men beside the tank.

The huddled figures were too far away for Pekkala to be able to recognize which one of them was the colonel.

Pekkala turned to Kirov. “Wait here,” he said. Then, without another word, he stepped forward and slid down the steep embankment. He arrived at the end of the slope on his back, his clothes and hands plastered with slime. The brownish-yellow ooze stood out sharply against the black of Pekkala’s coat. As he rose to his feet, dirty water poured out of his sleeves. He took one step towards the tank before realizing that one of his shoes had come off. Gouging it out of the clay, he perched on one leg like a heron and jammed his foot back into the shoe before continuing on his way.

After several minutes of wading from one flooded crater to the next, Pekkala arrived at the tank. The closer he came, the larger the machine appeared, until at last he stood before it. Even though it was half buried in the mud, the T-34 still towered over him.

Pekkala glanced at the two disheveled men. Both were as plastered in filth as he was. One wore what had once been a white lab coat. The other had a brown wool coat with a fur collar which was also painted with mud. But neither of them was Nagorski.

“Are you the doctor?” asked the man in the filthy lab coat. He had a big, square face, with a thick crop of bristly gray hair.

Pekkala explained who he was.

“Well, Inspector Pekkala,” said the gray-haired man, spreading his arms wide, “welcome to the madhouse.”

“An investigator already,” snorted the other, a short, frail-looking man with a complexion so pale that his skin looked like mother-of-pearl. “You people don’t waste any time.”

“Where is the colonel?” asked Pekkala. “Is he hurt?”

“No, Inspector,” the gray-haired man replied. “Colonel Nagorski is dead.”

“Dead?” shouted Pekkala. “How?”

The men exchanged glances. They seemed reluctant to speak.

“Where is he?” demanded Pekkala. “In the tank?”

It was the gray-haired man who finally explained. “Colonel Nagorski is not in the tank. Colonel Nagorski is under the tank.”

His companion pointed at the ground. “See for yourself.”

For the first time, standing beside the T-34’s track, Pekkala noticed a cluster of fingertips, pale dimples rising just above the surface of the water. As his eyes struggled to see into the murky water, he spotted a leg, visible only from the knee down. At the end of this limb, which seemed to have been partially torn from the body, Pekkala could make out a distorted black shoe. It appeared to have split at all its seams, as if forced on someone with a foot much too large for the shoe. “That is Nagorski?” he asked.

“What’s left of him,” replied the gray-haired man impassively.

No matter how many times Pekkala looked down upon the dead, the first sight of a corpse always stunned him. It was as if his mind could not bear to carry the burden of this moment and so, time after time, erased it from his brain. As a result, the initial shock never lessened in intensity.

What struck Pekkala was not how different the dead appeared but how much alike bodies became, no matter if they were man or woman, old or young, when the life had left them. The same terrible stillness surrounded them, the same dull eyes, and eventually, the same piercing sweet smell. Some nights, he would wake with the stench of the dead flooding his nostrils. Staggering to the sink, he would wash his face and scrub his hands until the knuckles bled but still the smell remained, as if those corpses lay about the floor right beside his bed.

Pekkala crouched down. Reaching out, he touched Nagorski’s fingertips, his own hand forming a reflection of the one which lay submerged beneath the muddy water. The image of Nagorski returned to him, blustery and sweating in the interrogation room of the Lubyanka prison. There had seemed to be something indestructible about him. Now Pekkala felt the cold skin of the dead colonel radiating up through his arm, as if his own life were being drained out through his pores. He pulled his hand away and rose, forcing his thoughts to the work that lay ahead. “Who are you two?” he asked the men.

“I am Professor Ushinsky,” explained the one with the gray hair. “I am responsible for developing armaments here at the facility. And this”—he gestured to the man in the brown coat—“is Professor Gorenko.”

“I am the drive-train specialist,” explained Gorenko. He kept his hands inside his pockets. His shoulders were trembling with the cold.

“How did this happen?” asked Pekkala.

“We aren’t sure.” Gorenko tried to wipe some of the mud from his coat but succeeded only in smearing it into the wool. “This morning, when we reported for work, Nagorski said he would be working on number 3.” With knuckles blue from cold, he rapped on the side of the tank. “This is number 3,” he said.

“The colonel said he would be working by himself,” added Ushinsky.

“Was that unusual?”

“No,” replied Ushinsky. “The colonel often carried out tests on his own.”

“Tests? You mean the tank is not finished yet?”

Both men shook their heads.

“There are seven complete machines at the facility. Each one has been equipped with slightly different mechanisms, engine configurations, and so on. They are constantly being tested and compared to each other. Eventually, we will standardize the pattern. Then the T-34 will go into mass production. Until then, the colonel wanted to keep everything as secret as possible.”

“Even from you?”

“From everyone, Inspector,” replied Gorenko. “Without exception.”

“At what point did you realize that something had gone wrong?”

“When I stepped outside the main assembly plant.” Ushinsky nodded towards the largest of the facility buildings. “We call it the Iron House. It’s where all the parts for the tanks are stored. There’s so much metal in there, I’m surprised the whole structure hasn’t sunk beneath the ground. Before I went outside, I’d been working on the final drive mechanism. The single straight reduction gears have armored mountings at each side of the tail …”

As if he could not help himself, Gorenko’s hands drifted up to the chest of his coat and began scraping once more at the mud embedded in the cloth.

“Will you stop that!” shouted Ushinsky.

“It’s a brand-new coat,” muttered Gorenko. “I only bought it yesterday.”

“The boss is dead!” Ushinsky grabbed Gorenko by the wrists and pulled his hands away. “Can’t you get that into your thick skull?”

Both men appeared to be in shock. Pekkala had seen behavior like this many times before. “When did you realize that something had gone wrong?” he asked patiently, trying to steer them back on track.

“I was out smoking my cigarette—” said Ushinsky.

“No smoking in the factory,” interrupted Gorenko.

“I can do this by myself!” shouted Ushinsky, jabbing a finger against Gorenko’s chest.

Gorenko staggered backwards and almost lost his footing. “You don’t have to be like that!” he snapped.

“And I noticed that number 3 was half sunk in the mud,” continued Ushinsky. “I thought—look what the colonel’s gone and done. He’s buried the machine. I assumed he had gotten it stuck on purpose, just to see what would happen. That’s the kind of thing he’d do. I waited to see if he could get it out of there, but then I began to think that something might have gone wrong.”

“What gave you that idea?” asked Pekkala.

“To begin with, the engine wasn’t running. Nagorski wouldn’t have cut power to the motor under those circumstances, not even for an experiment. The whole tank could sink into this mud. If water flooded the engine compartment, the entire drive train could be ruined. Even Nagorski wouldn’t take a chance like that.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes. The turret hatch was open, and it was pouring. Colonel Nagorski would have closed the hatch. And, finally, there was no sign of him.”

“What did you do then?”

“I went in and fetched Gorenko,” said Ushinsky.

Gorenko took this as a sign that he could speak at last. “We both went out to take a look,” he explained.

“First we checked inside the tank,” Ushinsky said. “It was empty.”

“Then I spotted the body lying under the tracks,” added Gorenko. “We ran and found Captain Samarin, the head of security. We all came back to the tank and Samarin told us to stay here.”

“Not to touch anything.”

“Then he went to call the ambulance.”

“And we’ve been here ever since,” said Gorenko, hugging his arms against his chest.

“Shouldn’t we get him out from under there?” Ushinsky was staring at the colonel’s hand, which seemed to tremble in the wind-stirred puddle at their feet.

“Not just yet,” replied Pekkala. “Until I have examined the area, no evidence can be disturbed.”

“It’s hard to think of him like that,” muttered Gorenko. “As evidence.”

The time would come, Pekkala knew, when Nagorski’s body would receive the respect it deserved. For now, the dead man was part of an equation, along with the mud in which he lay and the iron which had crushed out his life. “If Nagorski was here by himself,” Pekkala asked, “do you have any idea how he could have ended up beneath the machine?”

“We’ve been asking ourselves the same question,” said Ushinsky.

“It just doesn’t seem possible,” Gorenko chimed in.

“Have you been inside the tank since you got here?” asked Pekkala.

“Only to see that it was empty.”

“Can you show me the driver’s compartment?”

“Of course,” replied Gorenko.

At the opposite end of the tank from where Nagorski’s body had been pinned, Pekkala set his foot on one of the wheels and tried to lift himself up on the side of the tank. He lost his balance and with a groan of frustration fell back spread-eagled into the water. By the time he emerged, Gorenko had gone around to the front of the tank and put his foot up on the fender. “Always board from the front, Inspector. Like this!” He scrambled up onto the turret, opened the hatch, and dropped down inside.

Pekkala followed, his soaked coat weighing on his back and his ruined shoes slipping on the smooth metal surfaces. His fingers clawed for a grip as he moved from one handhold to another. When he finally reached the turret hatch, he peered down into the cramped space of the compartment.

“How many people fit in here?”

“Five,” replied Gorenko, looking up at him.

To Pekkala, it didn’t look as if there was even enough room for himself and Gorenko, let alone three other men.

“Are you all right, Inspector?”

“Yes. Why?”

“You look a little pale.”

“I’m fine,” Pekkala lied.

“Well, then,” said Gorenko. “Down you come, Inspector.”

Pekkala sighed heavily. Then he clambered down into the tank. The first thing he noticed, as his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, was the smell of new paint mixing with the odor of diesel fuel. Cramped as it had appeared from above, the interior space seemed even smaller now that he was inside it. Pekkala felt as if he had entered a tomb. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He had struggled with claustrophobia ever since he was a child, when his brother, Anton, as a joke, had locked him in the crematory oven belonging to their father’s undertaking business.

“This is the fighting compartment,” said Gorenko, perched on a seat in the far right corner. The seat was fixed into the metal wall and had a separate back support which wrapped around in a semicircle, following the contours of the wall. Gorenko gestured to an identical seat on the left of the compartment. “Please,” he said, with the cordiality of a man inviting someone into his living room.

Hunched almost double, Pekkala took his place in the seat.

“You are now in the loader’s position,” explained Gorenko. “I am where the commander sits.” He extended one leg and rested his heel on a rack of huge cannon shells which stretched along the side of the compartment. Each shell was fastened with a quick-release clasp.

“You say the engine wasn’t running when you found it.”

“That’s right.”

“Does that mean someone had switched it off?”

“I would assume so.”

“Is there any way to check?”

Gorenko peered into the driver’s area, an even smaller space located just ahead of the main fighting compartment. His eyes narrowed as he deciphered the confusion of steering levers, gear sticks, and pedals. “Ah,” he said. “I was wrong. It’s still in forward. First gear. The engine must have stalled out.”

“So someone else was driving it?”

“Probably. But I couldn’t guarantee it. The clutch may have slipped while he was outside the machine.”

“I’ve heard of clutches popping out of gear,” said Pekkala, “but never popping in.”

“These machines have not yet been perfected, Inspector. Sometimes they do things they aren’t supposed to do.”

Pekkala’s instincts begged him to get out. He forced himself to remain calm. “Do you see anything else in here which looks out of place?”

Gorenko glanced around. “Everything is as it should be.”

Pekkala nodded. He had seen what he needed to see. Now it was time to retrieve Nagorski’s body. “Can you drive this machine?” he asked.

“Of course,” replied Gorenko, “but whether it can get out of this crater without being towed is another question. That’s probably what Nagorski was trying to discover.”

“Will you try?”

“Certainly, Inspector. You had better wait outside. It’s hard to tell what will happen once I move the tracks. It could sink even deeper and if that happens, this compartment is going to flood. Give me a minute to check the controls, and make sure you are standing well clear when I start the engine.”

While Gorenko squeezed into the tiny driver’s compartment, Pekkala clambered out of the tank. His broad shoulders caught painfully on the rim of the turret hatch. Pekkala was glad to get out into the open air, even if it was only to stand in the rain once again.

Outside the tank, Ushinsky was puffing on a cigarette, his hand cupped over the burning tip to shield it from the wind and rain.

“Gorenko says the engine was in gear,” said Pekkala, as he splashed down into the mud beside Ushinsky.

“So it wasn’t an accident.”

“Possibly not,” replied Pekkala. “Did Nagorski have enemies here?”

“Let me put it this way, Inspector,” he replied. “The hard part would be finding someone around here who didn’t have a grudge against him. The bastard worked us like slaves. Our names were never even mentioned on the design reports. He grabbed all the credit. Comrade Stalin probably thinks Nagorski built this entire machine by himself.”

“Is there anyone who felt strongly enough to want him dead?”

Ushinsky brushed aside the words, like a man swatting cobwebs from his face. “None of us would ever think of hurting him.”

“And why is that?” asked Pekkala.

“Because even if we did not like the way Nagorski treated us, the Konstantin Project has become the purpose of our lives. Without Nagorski, the project would never have been possible. I know it might be hard to understand, but what might look like hell to you”—he raised his arms, as if to encompass the T-34, along with the vast and filthy basin of its proving ground—“is paradise to us.”

Pekkala breathed out. “How can men work inside those things? What happens if something goes wrong? How can they get out?”

Ushinsky’s lips twitched, as if it was a subject he did not feel safe discussing. “You are not the only one to have considered this, Inspector. Once inside, the tank crew are well protected, but if the hull is breached, say by an anti-tank round, it is extremely difficult to exit.”

“Can’t you change that? Can’t you make it easier for the tank crew to escape?”

“Oh, yes. It can be done, but Nagorski designed the T-34 with regard to the optimum performance of the machine. The equation is very simple, Inspector. When the T-34 is functioning, it is important to protect those who are inside. But if the machine is disabled in combat, its life, effectively, is over. And those who operate it are no longer considered necessary. The test drivers have already coined a name for it.”

“And what is that?”

“They call it the Red Coffin, Inspector.” Ushinsky’s voice was drowned out by the tank, as Gorenko fired up the engine.

Pekkala and Ushinsky stood back. The tracks spun, spraying a sheet of muddy water. Then the treads found their grip, and the T-34 began to crawl up the sides of the crater. For a moment, it seemed as if the whole machine might slide backwards, but then there was a crash of gears and the tank lurched out of the hole. When it reached level ground, Gorenko set the motor in neutral, then switched off the engine again.

The cloud of exhaust smoke unraveled into the sky, and the silence which followed was almost as deafening as the sound of the engine itself.

Gorenko climbed out and jumped down to the ground, his mud-smeared lab coat flapping behind him like a pair of broken wings. He joined Pekkala and Ushinsky at the edge of the pit. In silence, the three men stared down into the trough’s churned-up water.

The crater’s surface was goose-fleshed with raindrops, obscuring the surface of the water. At first, they could not see the body. Then, like a ghost appearing through the mist, the corpse of Colonel Nagorski floated slowly into view. Rain pattered on his heavy canvas coat, which appeared to be the only thing holding his body together. The broken legs trailed like snakes from his misshapen torso. With the bones snapped in so many places, the limbs seemed to ripple, as if they were reflections of his body instead of the actual flesh. His hands had swollen obscenely, the weight of the tracks having forced the fluids of his body into its extremities. The pressure had split his fingertips wide open, like a pair of worn-out gloves. Some curvature of the soft ground had preserved half of Nagorski’s face, but the rest had been crushed by the tracks.

Ushinsky stared at the corpse, paralyzed by what he saw. “It’s all ruined,” he said. “Everything we worked for.”

It was Gorenko who moved first, sliding down into the crater to retrieve the body. The water came up to his chest. He lifted Nagorski in his arms. Staggering under the weight, he returned to the edge of the pit.

Pekkala grabbed Gorenko by the shoulders and helped him out.

Gently, Gorenko laid the colonel’s body on the ground.

With the body stretched out before him, Ushinsky seemed to wake from his trance. In spite of the cold, he took off his lab coat and laid it over Nagorski. The drenched cloth molded to the dead man’s face.

Now Pekkala caught sight of a tall man standing at the edge of the proving ground, half obscured by veils of rain which swept across the space between them. At first, he thought it might be Kirov, but on second glance he realized the man was much taller than his assistant.

“That’s Maximov,” said Ushinsky. “Nagorski’s chauffeur and bodyguard.”

“We call him the T-33,” said Gorenko.

“Why is that?” asked Pekkala.

“Before Nagorski decided to build himself a tank,” explained Ushinsky, “we say he built himself a Maximov.”

Just then, from somewhere among the drab buildings of the facility, they heard a shout.

Captain Samarin ran to the edge of the proving ground.

Kirov was close behind him. He yelled to Pekkala, but his words were lost in the rain.

As suddenly as they had arrived, Samarin and Kirov disappeared from view, followed by Maximov.

“What the devil’s happened now?” muttered Ushinsky.

Pekkala did not reply. He had already set off through the mud, heading towards the facility. Along the way, he sank up to his knees in craters of water, and once he lost his footing and stumbled with arms outstretched beneath the surface. For a moment, it seemed as if he might not reappear, but then he rose up, gasping, hair matted by silt, mud streaked across his face, like a creature forced into existence by some chemical reaction in the dirt. Having scrabbled up the slope, he paused to catch his breath at the edge of the proving ground. He glanced back towards the tank and saw the two scientists by the shattered body of Nagorski, as if they did not know where else to go. They reminded Pekkala of cavalry horses, standing on the battlefield beside their fallen riders.

He caught up with Kirov and the others on the road which led out of the facility.

“I saw someone,” explained Samarin. “Hiding in one of the supply buildings, where they keep spare parts for the vehicles. I chased him out onto the road. Then he just vanished.”

“Where are the other security guards?” asked Pekkala.

“There’s one stationed out at the gate. You saw him when you came in. There are only four others and they’re guarding the buildings. That is the protocol Colonel Nagorski put in place. In the event of an emergency, all buildings are locked and guarded.”

“If this work is so important, why are there so few of you guarding this place?”

“This isn’t a jewelry shop, Inspector,” replied Samarin defensively. “The things we guard here are as big as houses and weigh about as much. You can’t just put one in your pocket and make off with it. Colonel Nagorski could have had a hundred people patrolling this place if he’d wanted it, but he said he didn’t need them. What worried the colonel was that someone might run away with the plans for these inventions. Because of that, the fewer people wandering around this facility, the better. That’s the way he saw it.”

“All right,” said Pekkala, “the buildings are sealed. What other steps have been taken?”

“I put in a call to NKVD headquarters in Moscow and asked for assistance. As soon as I confirmed that Colonel Nagorski had been killed, they said they would dispatch a squad of soldiers. After I sent you out into the proving ground, I received a call that the doctors had been intercepted and ordered to return to Moscow. The soldiers will be here soon, but for now it’s just us. That’s why I fetched these two.” He gestured towards Kirov and Maximov. “I need all the help I can get.”

Pekkala turned to Maximov, ready to introduce himself. “I am—” he began.

“I know who you are,” interrupted Maximov. The bodyguard’s voice was deeply resonant, as if it emerged not from his mouth but in vibrations through his massive chest. As he spoke to Pekkala, he removed his cap, revealing a clean-shaven head and a wide forehead which looked as solid as the armor of Nagorski’s tank.

“This man you saw,” began Pekkala, turning back to Samarin. He was curious as to why they had decided not to pursue him.

“He’s gone into the woods,” said Samarin, “but he won’t last long in there.”

“Why not?”

“Traps,” replied Samarin. “During the construction of the facility, Colonel Nagorski disappeared into those woods almost every day. No one was allowed to follow him. He dragged in slats of wood, metal pipes, rolls of wire, shovels, boxes nailed shut so that no one could see what was in them. No one knows how many traps he built. Dozens. Maybe hundreds. Or what kind of traps, exactly. And where they are—nobody knows that either, except Colonel Nagorski.”

“Why go to all that trouble?” asked Kirov. “Surely—”

“You did not know Colonel Nagorski,” interrupted Samarin.

“Is there really no map of where these traps were placed?” Pekkala asked.

“None that I’ve ever seen,” replied Samarin. “Nagorski hammered small colored disks into some of the trees. Some are blue, others red or yellow. What they mean, if they mean anything at all, only Nagorski knows.”

Squinting into the depths of the forest, Pekkala could make out some of the colored disks, glimmering like eyes from the shadows.

A sound made them turn their heads—or, rather, a series of muffled thumping sounds, somewhere lost among the trees.

“There!” shouted Samarin, drawing his revolver.

Something was running through the woods.

The figure moved so swiftly that at first Pekkala thought it must be some kind of animal. No human could move so quickly, he thought. The shape appeared and disappeared, bounding like a deer through the brambled thickets which grew between the trees. Then, as it leaped across a clearing, Pekkala realized it was a man.

In that moment, something snapped inside him. Pekkala knew that if they didn’t catch him now, they’d never find him in this wilderness. He had not forgotten about Nagorski’s traps, but some instinct had awakened in him, overriding thoughts of his own safety. Without a word to the others, Pekkala set off running through the woods.

“Wait!” screamed Samarin.

Pekkala raced among the trees, drawing his gun as he sprinted.

“Have you gone completely mad?” shouted Samarin.

Kirov too joined the chase, hurdling the thickets as he struggled to catch up with Pekkala.

“This is insane!” roared Samarin. Then, with a shout, he lunged after them.

Brambles tore at their legs as the three men raced through the dying light.

“There he is!” shouted Samarin.

Pekkala’s lungs were burning. The weight of the coat hung on his shoulders and dragged against his thighs.

Samarin had overtaken him now, picking up speed as he gained on the running man. Then, suddenly, he skidded to a halt, a hand raised in warning.

Barely in time to avoid crashing into Samarin, Pekkala managed to stop. He bent double, hands on his knees, his throat raw and painful as he struggled for breath.

Mutely, Samarin pointed to the strand of wire strung across the path. It threaded through a bent nail which had been hammered into the trunk of a nearby stump. From there the wire stretched up through the leaves of a tree beside the path until at last, Pekkala’s straining eyes could see where it wrapped around the handle of a Type 33 grenade, bound with threads of dried grass to a branch directly above their heads. A tug on the wire would bring it down. This movement would arm the grenade, since Type 33’s—like iron soup cans attached to a short stem and wrapped with a gridded fragmentation sleeve—were normally activated by the movement of throwing them through the air.

“We’ll keep after him,” wheezed Samarin, as he bent down to untie the string, “as soon as I’ve disarmed this thing.”

As Pekkala moved forward, he glanced up once more at the grenade. It was then he noticed that the slide cover at the top of the grenade, which should have contained the cigarette-shaped detonator, was empty. The thought that this might, somehow, have been intentional was only half born in his mind when he heard a loud rustle in the branches above him.

He had just enough time to turn his head to look at Samarin.

Their eyes met.

A shape flashed in front of Pekkala. The speed of it brushed cold against his cheek. Then came a dull and heavy thump. Leaves flickered down around him.

Pekkala had not moved, paralyzed by the closeness of whatever had swept past him, but now he forced himself to turn.

At first glance, Samarin appeared to be crouched against a tree stump. His arms were thrown out to the sides, as if to steady himself. A shape, some tangling of earth and wood and weather-beaten steel, obscured his body.

It took Pekkala a moment to understand that this object was an iron pipe. It had been sawed through on a diagonal so that the end was like the needle of a huge syringe. The pipe had then been bound with vines to the trunk of a bent sapling; the weight of Samarin’s foot had loosed it.

The grenade was only a diversion, drawing their gaze away from the real danger hidden in the leaves.

The sharpened pipe had struck Samarin square in the chest. Its force had thrown him back against the stump. The rotten wood had exploded and now, from that throne of dust, a rabble of shiny black ants, pincer-tailed earwigs, and wood lice streamed out in confusion. The insects swarmed over Samarin’s shoulders, migrating frantically down his arms and out along the walkways of his fingers.

Samarin was still alive. He stared straight ahead, a look of resignation on his face. Then something happened to his eyes. They became like those of a cat. And suddenly he was dead.

Through shredded clouds, beams of sunlight slanted among the trees so that the air itself appeared like molten copper. The rain had stopped.

“Where the hell is Maximov?” asked Kirov. “Why didn’t he help?”

“Too late now,” replied Pekkala. “Whoever that man was, we have lost him.” As he stared once more at the place where the man had disappeared, it occurred to him that they might not have been chasing a human at all, but something supernatural, a creature that could drift above the ground, oblivious to the traps, drawing around itself the million tangled branches of the trees to vanish in the air.

The two men walked over to Samarin.

There was no gentle way to pry him loose. Pekkala set his boot against the dead man’s shoulder and wrenched the bar out of his chest.

Together, Kirov and Pekkala carried Samarin’s body back to the road. There they found Maximov waiting just where they had left him.

Maximov stared at the body of Samarin. Then he raised his head and looked Pekkala in the eye, but he did not say a word.

Kirov could not contain his anger. He stalked over to Maximov, so that the two men were only an arm’s length apart. “Why didn’t you help us?” he raged.

“I know what’s out there in those woods,” replied Maximov. His voice betrayed no emotion.

“He knew!” Kirov pointed at the body of Captain Samarin. “He knew and still he came with us.”

Maximov’s head turned slowly, until he was looking at Samarin’s corpse. “Yes, he did.”

“What’s the matter with you?” yelled Kirov. “Were you afraid to take the risk?”

At this insult, Maximov seemed to shudder, as if the ground were trembling beneath his feet. “There are better ways to serve your country, Comrade Commissar, than by throwing your life away at the first opportunity.”

“You can settle this later,” said Pekkala. “Right now, we have company.”

An army truck with NKVD license plates was coming down the road. The canvas covers were battened down. As it passed, the driver glanced out the side window, caught sight of Samarin, then turned to say something to someone in the passenger seat.

The truck pulled up in front of the facility. Armed men wearing the blue and red peaked caps of NKVD Security troops jumped down onto the muddy ground and took up positions around the buildings.

An officer emerged from the cab of the truck. It was only when the officer began walking towards them that Pekkala realized it was a woman, since she wore the same clothes and caps as the men, hiding the curve of her hips and her chest.

The woman stopped in front of them, surveying the filthy disarray of their clothes. She was of medium height, with a round face and wide green eyes. “I am Commissar Major Lysenkova of NKVD Internal Affairs.”

Pekkala had heard about this woman. She was famous for her work within the NKVD, for which most of her colleagues despised her. Commissar Lysenkova had the unenviable task of investigating crimes inside her own branch of service. In the past two years, over thirty NKVD men had gone to their deaths after being convicted of crimes investigated by Lysenkova. Within the close-knit ranks of the NKVD, Pekkala had never heard a kind word said about her. He had even heard a rumor that she denounced her own parents to the authorities, and that her whole family ended up in Siberia as a result.

Given the reputation that preceded her, Pekkala was surprised at how Lysenkova appeared in person. Her tough reputation did not seem to match the gentle angles of her face, and the clothes she wore would have been too small for him by the time he was twelve years old.

“Which one of you is Pekkala?” she asked.

“I am.” Pekkala felt the stare of her luminous green eyes.

“What has happened here?” demanded Lysenkova, flicking a finger towards Samarin’s corpse.

Pekkala explained.

“And you failed to catch this person?”

“That is correct.”

“I am curious to know,” she continued, “how you managed to arrive at the crime scene before me, Inspector.”

“When we set out for this place,” replied Pekkala, “the crime had not yet been committed. But now that you are here, Commissar Lysenkova, I would appreciate whatever help you can give us.”

The green eyes blinked at him. “You seem to be confused, Inspector, about who is in charge of this investigation. This facility is under NKVD control.”

“Very well,” said Pekkala. “What do you intend to do now?”

“I will examine Colonel Nagorski’s body myself,” replied Lysenkova, “to see if I can determine the exact circumstances of his death. In the meantime, I will send guards out to patrol the main road, in case this runner makes it through the woods.”

“What about Nagorski’s family?” asked Pekkala.

“His wife and son live here on the compound,” said Maximov.

“Do they know what has happened?” Lysenkova asked.

“Not yet,” replied the bodyguard. “There is no phone at the house and no one has been out there since the accident.”

“I will break the news to them,” said Pekkala, but even as he spoke, he wondered where he would find the words. His trade was with the dead and those who brought them to that place, not with those who had to go on living in the wake of such disaster.

Lysenkova considered this for a moment. “All right,” she replied. “And report back to me when you’re done. But first”—she nodded towards Samarin—“you can bury that.”

“Here?” Kirov stared at her. “Now?”

“This is a secret facility,” she answered. “Everything that happens here is classified, including who works here and who has the misfortune of dying in this place. Have you ever heard of the White Sea Canal, Major?”

“Of course,” replied Kirov.

Designed to link the White Sea and the Baltic, a distance of over two hundred kilometers, the canal had been dug in the early 1930’s almost entirely by convict laborers using primitive tools in some of the harshest conditions on earth. Thousands had perished. In the end, the canal proved too narrow for the cargo ships it had been designed to carry.

“Do you know what they did with the prisoners who died on that project?” Without waiting for a reply, Lysenkova went on. “Their corpses were sunk into the wet cement which made up the walls of the canal. That’s what happens to secrets in this country, Major. They get buried. So do as I tell you and put him under the ground.”

“Where?” asked Kirov, still unable to believe what he was hearing.

“Here in the road, for all I care,” snapped Lysenkova, “but wherever it is, do it now.” Then she spun on her heel and left them.

“I guess the rumors about her are true,” said Kirov, watching Lysenkova as she strode back to the truck.

Maximov turned his head away and spat.

“Why didn’t you pull rank on her, Inspector?” Kirov asked Pekkala.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” replied Pekkala. “The fact that she is here at all means there is more going on than we realize. For now, let’s just see where she leads us.” He turned to Maximov. “Can you take me to Nagorski’s wife?”

Maximov nodded. “First we’ll bury Samarin, and then I’ll take you there.”

The three men carried the body a short distance into the woods. Lacking a shovel, they used their hands to claw a grave out of the soft, dark earth. Half an arm’s length from the surface, the hole filled with black liquid seeping from the peaty ground. They had no choice but to lay Samarin in it, arms folded across his chest, as if to hide the tunnel through his heart. The black water swallowed him up. Then they packed the spongy earth on top of his body. When it was done and they climbed to their feet, picking the dirt from under their fingernails, there was barely a trace to indicate that a man had just been buried there.

When Maximov went off to fetch his car, Kirov turned to Pekkala. “Why don’t we start by arresting that bastard?”

“Arrest him?” asked Pekkala. “On what charges?”

“I don’t know!” spluttered Kirov. “What about cowardice?”

“You seem to have made up your mind about him very quickly.”

“Sometimes a moment is all it takes,” insisted Kirov. “I’ve seen him before, you know. He was sitting at the table that day I went into Chicherin’s restaurant to find Nagorski. I didn’t like the look of him then and I like him even less now.”

“Did you stop to think that maybe he was right?”

“Right about what?”

“About not running into those woods. After all, why did you run?”

Kirov frowned, confused. “I ran because you ran, Inspector.”

“And do you know why I ran,” asked Pekkala, “in spite of the warning Samarin had given us?”

“No,” shrugged Kirov, “I suppose I don’t.”

“Neither do I,” replied Pekkala. “So it is only luck that we are standing here instead of lying in the ground.”

Maximov’s car appeared from behind one of the buildings and made its way towards them.

“I need you to keep an eye on Lysenkova,” Pekkala told Kirov. “Whatever you learn, keep it to yourself for now. And keep your temper, too.”

“That,” muttered the young major, “I cannot promise you.”

WITH PEKKALA IN THE FRONT PASSENGER SEAT, MAXIMOV DROVE along a narrow road leading away from the dreary facility.

“I am sorry about my assistant,” said Pekkala. “Sometimes he does things without thinking.”

“Seems to me,” replied Maximov, “that he is not the only one. But if you are worried about my feelings, Comrade Inspector, you can save yourself the trouble.”

“Where are you from, Maximov?”

“I have lived in many places. I am not from anywhere.”

“And what did you do before the Revolution?”

“The same as you, Inspector. I made a living for myself. I managed to survive.”

Pekkala studied the blur of trees flickering past. “That’s two questions you have avoided.”

Maximov hit the brakes. The tires locked and skidded. For a moment, it looked as if they were going to end up in the ditch, but they came to a stop just before the car left the road. Maximov cut the engine. “If you don’t like me avoiding your questions, maybe you should stop asking them.”

“It’s my job to ask questions,” said Pekkala, “and, sooner or later, you will need to answer them.”

Maximov glared at Pekkala, but as the seconds passed, the anger went out of his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said at last. “The only reason I’ve survived as long as I have is by keeping my mouth shut. Old habits die hard, Inspector.”

“Survival has been difficult for all of us,” said Pekkala.

“That’s not what I hear about you. People say you’ve lived a charmed life.”

“Those are merely stories, Maximov.”

“Are they? I just saw you walk out of those woods without so much as a scratch.”

“I was not the only one.”

“I’m sure Captain Samarin would take comfort in that, if he was still alive. You know, when I was a child, I heard that if a Russian goes into the woods, he becomes lost. But when a Finn steps into the forest”—he touched his fingertips together and then let them drift apart, like someone releasing a dove—“he simply disappears.”

“Like I told you. Just stories.”

“No, Inspector,” he replied. “There’s more to it than that. I have seen it for myself.”

“What have you seen?” asked Pekkala.

“I was there, that day on the Nevski Prospekt, where I know for a fact you should have died.”

It was a summer evening. Pekkala had spent the day trying to find a birthday present for Ilya, wandering up and down the arcade of shops in the Passazh—a glass-roofed corridor lined with expensive jewelers, tailors, and vendors of antiques.

For hours, he had paced back and forth in front of the Passazh windows, steeling himself to enter the cramped shops where he knew he would immediately be set upon by salesclerks.

Three times, he had abandoned the arcade and fled across the Nevski Prospekt to the huge produce market known as the Gostiny Dvor. The floors were strewn with sawdust, wilted cabbage leaves, and discarded sales receipts scribbled on cheap gray paper. Trucks pulled up onto the wide cobblestoned delivery area and porters in blue tunics with silver buttons, their hands bound with scraps of cloth as protection against the splintery wooden crates, unloaded vegetables and fruit.

Inside the vast, cold, echoing hall of the Gostiny Dvor, surrounded by vendors chanting out their lists of goods and the soft murmur of footsteps shuffling through the sawdust, Pekkala sat on a barrel in a cafe frequented by the porters, sipping a glass of tea and feeling his heart unclench after the stuffiness of the Passazh.

The last train to Tsarskoye Selo would be leaving in half an hour. Knowing that he could not go home empty-handed, he steeled himself for another trip to the Passazh. It’s now or never, Pekkala thought.

A minute later, on his way out of the hall, he noticed a man standing by one of the pillars at the exit. The man was watching him and trying not to make it obvious. But Pekkala could always tell when he was being watched, even if he could not see who was doing the watching. He felt it like static in the air.

Pekkala glanced at the man as he walked past, noting the stranger’s clothing—the knee-length coat made of wool and gray like the feathers of a dove, the out-of-fashion Homburg hat, rounded at the top and with an oval brim that sheltered his eyes so that Pekkala could not see them. He had an impressive mustache, which grew down to the line of his jaw, and a small, nervous-looking mouth.

But Pekkala was too preoccupied with Ilya’s birthday present to think much more about it.

Outside, the evening sky, which would not darken until midnight at this time of year, shimmered like an abalone shell.

He had almost reached the exit when he felt something nudge him in the back.

Pekkala spun around.

The man in the Homburg hat was standing there. He was holding a gun in his right hand. It was a poorly made automatic pistol, of a type manufactured in Bulgaria, which often showed up at crime scenes, since it was cheap and easy to purchase on the black market.

“Are you who I think you are?” asked the man.

Before Pekkala could come up with a reply, he heard a loud clapping sound.

Sparks erupted from the barrel of the gun. The air became hazy with smoke.

Pekkala realized he must have been shot, but he felt neither the impact of the bullet nor the burning, stinging pain which, he knew, would quickly change to a numbness radiating through his whole body. Astonishingly, he felt nothing at all.

The man was staring at him.

Only then did Pekkala notice that everything around him had come to a standstill. There were people everywhere—porters, shoppers with string bags, vendors behind their barricades of bright produce. And all of them were staring at him.

“Why?” he asked the man.

There was no reply. A look of terror spread across the man’s face. He set the gun against his own temple and pulled the trigger.

With the sound of that gunshot still ringing in Pekkala’s ears, the man fell in a heap into the sawdust.

Then, where there had been silence only seconds before, a wall of noise surrounded him. He heard the guttural cries of panicked men shouting useless commands. A woman grabbed him by the shoulders. “It’s Pekkala!” she shrieked. “They’ve killed the Emerald Eye!”

Carefully, Pekkala began to undo his coat. The act of unfastening the buttons felt suddenly unfamiliar, as if this was the first time he had ever done such a thing. He opened his coat, then his waistcoat, and finally his shirt. He prepared himself for the sight of the wound, the terrible whiteness of punctured flesh, the pulsing flow of blood from an arterial break. But the skin was smooth and unbroken. Not trusting his eyes, Pekkala ran his hands over his chest, certain that the wound must be there.

“He’s not hurt!” shouted a porter. “The bullet did not even touch him!”

“But I saw it!” shouted the woman who had grabbed Pekkala’s shoulders.

“There is no way he could have missed!” said the porter.

“Perhaps the gun wasn’t working!” said another man, a fishmonger in an apron splashed with guts and scales. He bent and picked up the weapon.

“Of course it works!” The porter gestured at the dead man. “There is the proof!”

Around the head of the corpse grew a halo of blood. The Homburg lay upturned beside him, like a bird’s nest knocked out of a tree. Pekkala’s eyes fixed on the tiny bow of silk used to join the two ends of the leather sweatband.

“Let me see that—” The porter tried to take the gun from the fishmonger.

“Be careful!” snapped the fishmonger.

As their fingers closed on the gun, it went off. The bullet smacked into a pyramid of potatoes.

The two men yelped and dropped the gun.

“Enough!” growled Pekkala.

They stared at him with bulging eyes, as if he were a statue come to life.

Pekkala picked up the gun and put it in his pocket. “Go find me the police,” he said quietly.

The two men, released from his freezing stare, scattered.

Later that night, having made his report to the Petrograd police, Pekkala found himself in the Tsar’s study.

The Tsar sat behind his desk. He had been going through papers all evening, reading by the light of a candle set into a bronze holder in the shape of a croaking frog. He insisted on reading all official documents himself and used a blue pencil to make notes in the margin. It slowed down the process by which any matters of state could be accomplished, but the Tsar preferred to handle these things personally. Now he had set aside his documents. He rested his elbows on the desk and settled his chin upon his folded hands. With his soft blue eyes, the Tsar regarded Pekkala. “Are you sure you are all right?”

“Yes, Majesty,” replied Pekkala.

“Well, I’m not, I don’t mind telling you,” replied the Tsar. “What the hell happened, Pekkala? I heard some madman shot you in the chest, but the bullet vanished in midair. The police checked out the gun. Their report indicates that it is functioning perfectly. All of Moscow is talking about this. You should hear the absurdities they’re uttering. They believe you’re supernatural. By tomorrow, it will be all over the country. Any idea who this man was? Or why he was trying to kill you?”

“No, Majesty. He was carrying no identification. His body had no distinctive marks, no tattoos, scars, or moles. All the labels had been removed from his clothes. Nor does he match the description of anyone currently wanted by the police. It is likely we will never know who he was, or why he attempted to kill me.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” said the Tsar. He sat back in his chair, letting his eyes wander across the gold-leafed titles of the books upon his shelves. “So we’ve got no answers at all.”

“We do have one,” replied Pekkala, placing something on the desk before the Tsar—a crumpled knot of gray the size of a robin’s egg.

The Tsar picked it up. “What’s this? Feels heavy.”

“Lead.” The candle flame trembled. A thread of molten wax poured into the frog’s open mouth.

“Is this the bullet?” He studied it with one eye closed, like a jeweler studying a diamond.

“Two bullets fused together,” replied Pekkala.

“Two? And where did you get them?”

“I removed them from the skull of the dead man.”

The Tsar dropped the bullets back onto the desk. “You could have told me that before.” He took out a handkerchief and wiped his fingers.

“While the police were examining the gun,” explained Pekkala, “I decided to examine the body. It was not the gun that malfunctioned, Majesty. It was the bullet.”

“I don’t understand.” The Tsar frowned. “How does a bullet malfunction?”

“The bullet he fired at me contained the wrong amount of gunpowder. The weapon was of poor quality, as was the ammunition that came with it. When the gun discharged, the cartridge ejected, but it only drove the bullet into the barrel, where it became stuck. Then next time he pulled the trigger, a second bullet smashed into the first …”

“And both bullets went into his head at the same time.”

“Precisely.”

“Meanwhile, the world thinks you’re some kind of sorcerer.” The Tsar brushed his fingers through his beard. “Have you informed the police about this discovery of yours?”

“It was late by the time I had finished my investigation. I will inform the Petrograd chief first thing in the morning. He can then make an announcement to the public.”

“Now, Pekkala.” The Tsar rested his fingertips on the desktop, like a man about to begin playing a piano. “I want you to do something for me.”

“And what is that, Majesty?”

“Nothing.”

“I beg your pardon?”