Shadow Pass

“Unless Nagorski was shot with his own weapon. In which case it could mean everything.” He slapped Kirov on the arm. “Time we paid Maximov a visit.”

MAXIMOV’S HOME WAS IN THE VILLAGE OF MYTISHCHI, NORTHEAST of the city. They found him at a garage across the street from the boardinghouse where he lived by himself in a room on the top floor. The caretaker at the building, a skeletally thin, angry-looking man in a blue boiler suit, aimed one stiletto finger at the garage. Then he held out his hand and said, “Na tchay.” For tea.

Pekkala dropped a coin into his palm.

The caretaker folded the coin into his fist and smiled. Men like these had a reputation for being the most enthusiastic informants in the city. It was a running joke that more people had been sent to Siberia for failing to tip caretakers on their birthdays than ever went away for crimes against the state.

“Maximov is here,” said the manager at the garage, a broad-faced man with thick black hair and a mustache gone yellowy-gray. “At least half of him is.”

“What do you mean?” asked Kirov.

“All we ever see of him is his legs. The rest of him is always under the hood of his car. Whenever he’s not on the job, you’ll find him working on that machine.”

The two investigators walked through the garage, whose floor was dingy black from years of spilled motor oil soaked into the concrete, and emerged into a graveyard of old motor parts, the husks of stripped-down cars, cracked tires driven bald, and the cobra-like hoods of transmissions ripped from their engine compartments.

At the far end, just as the manager had said, stood half of Maximov. He was naked to the waist and stooped over the engine of Nagorski’s car. The hood angled above him like the jaws of a huge animal, and Pekkala was reminded of stories he’d heard about crocodiles which opened their mouths to let little birds clean their teeth.

“Maximov,” said Pekkala.

At the mention of his name, Maximov spun around. He squinted into the bright light, but it was a moment before he recognized Pekkala. “Inspector,” he said. “What brings you here?”

“I have been thinking about something you said to me the other day.”

“It seems to me that I said many things,” replied Maximov, wiping an oily rag along the fuel relay hoses which curved like the arcs of seagull wings from the gray steel of the cylinder head.

“One thing in particular sticks in my mind. You said that you had not been able to defend Nagorski on the day he was killed, but I’m wondering if he might have been able to defend himself. Isn’t it true that Nagorski never went anywhere without a gun?”

“And where did you hear that, Pekkala?” Maximov worked the cloth in under his nails, digging out the dirt.

“From Professor Zalka.”

“Zalka! That troublemaker? Where did you dig that bastard up?”

“Did Nagorski carry a gun or not?” asked Pekkala. A coldness had entered his voice.

“Yes, he had a gun,” admitted Maximov. “Some German thing called a PPK.”

“What caliber weapon is that?” asked Pekkala.

“It’s a 7.62,” replied Maximov.

Kirov leaned over to Pekkala and whispered, “The cartridge we found in the pit was a 7.62.”

“What’s this all about?” asked Maximov.

“On the day I brought Nagorski in for questioning,” said Kirov, “he handed you a gun before he left the restaurant. Was that the PPK you just mentioned?”

“That’s right. He gave it to me for safekeeping. He was afraid it would be confiscated if you put him under arrest.”

“Where is that gun now?”

Maximov laughed and turned to face his interrogator. “Let me ask you this. That day in the restaurant, did you see what he was eating?”

“Yes,” replied Kirov. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“And did you see what I was eating?”

“A salad, I think. A small salad.”

“Exactly!” Maximov’s voice had risen to a shout. “Twice a week, Nagorski went to Chicherin’s place for lunch and I had to sit there with him, because no one else would, not even his wife, and he didn’t like to eat alone. But he wouldn’t think to buy me lunch. I had to pay for it myself, and of course I can’t afford Chicherin’s prices. The cost of that one salad is more than I spend on all my food on an average day. And half the time Nagorski didn’t even pay for what he ate. Now do you think a man like that would hand over something as expensive as an imported German gun and not ask for it back the first chance that he got?”

“Answer the question,” said Pekkala. “Did you return Nagorski’s gun to him or not?”

“After you had finished questioning Nagorski, he called and ordered me to meet him outside the Lubyanka. And the first words he spoke when he got inside the car were, ‘Give me back my gun.’ And that’s exactly what I did.” Angrily, Maximov threw the dirty rag onto the engine. “I know what you’re asking me, Inspector. I know where your questions are going. It may be my fault Nagorski is dead, because I wasn’t there to help him when he needed me. If you want to arrest me for that, go ahead. But there’s something you two don’t seem to understand, which is that my responsibility was not just to Colonel Nagorski. It was to his wife and Konstantin as well. I tried to be a father to that boy when his own father was nowhere to be found, and no matter how poorly the colonel treated me, I would never have done anything to hurt him, because of what it would have done to the rest of his family.”

“All right, Maximov,” said Pekkala. “Let’s assume you gave him back the gun. Was Zalka correct when he said Nagorski never went anywhere without it?”

“As far as I know, that’s the truth,” answered Maximov. “Why are you asking me this?”

“The gun wasn’t on Nagorski’s body when we found him.”

“It might have fallen out of his pocket. It’s probably still lying in the mud.”

“The pit was searched,” said Kirov. “No gun was found.”

“Don’t you see?” Maximov reached up, hooked his fingers over the end of the car hood, and brought it down with a crash. “This is all Zalka’s doing! He’s just trying to stir things up. Even though the colonel is dead, Zalka’s still jealous of the man.”

“There was one other thing he told us, Maximov. He said you were once an assassin for the Tsar.”

“Zalka can go to hell,” growled Maximov.

“Is it true?”

“What if it is?” he snapped. “We’ve all done things we wouldn’t mind forgetting.”

“And Nagorski knew about this when he hired you to be his bodyguard?”

“Of course he did,” said Maximov. “That’s the reason he hired me. If you want to stop a man from killing you, the best thing to do is find a killer of your own.”

“And you have no idea where Nagorski’s gun could be now?” asked Pekkala.

Maximov grabbed his shirt, which was lying on top of an empty fuel drum. He pulled it over his head. His big hands struggled with the little mother-of-pearl buttons. “I have no idea, Inspector. Unless it’s in the pocket of the man who murdered Nagorski, you’ll probably find it at his house.”

“All right,” said Pekkala. “I’ll search the Nagorski residence later today. Until that gun turns up, Maximov, you are the last one known to have had it in his possession. You understand what that means?”

“I do,” replied the bodyguard. “It means that unless you find that gun, I’m probably going to end up taking the blame for a murder I did not commit.” He turned to Kirov. “That ought to make you happy, Major. You’ve been looking for an excuse to arrest me ever since the day Nagorski was killed. So why don’t you just go ahead?” He thrust out his arms, hands placed side by side, palms up, ready for the handcuffs. “Whatever happened, or didn’t happen, you’ll bend the truth to fit your version of events.”

Kirov stepped towards him, red in the face with anger. “You realize I could arrest you for what you just said?”

“Which proves my point!” shouted Maximov.

“Enough!” barked Pekkala. “Both of you! Just stay where we can find you, Maximov.”

PEKKALA WENT BY HIMSELF TO THE NAGORSKI HOUSE. THE SAME guard let him in at the entrance gate of the facility.

Before turning down the road which led to Nagorski’s dacha, Pekkala stopped his car outside the main facility building. Inside, he found Gorenko sitting on a bullet-riddled oil drum, thumbing through a magazine. The scientist’s shoes were off and his bare feet rested in the sand which had poured out of the barrel.

When he saw Pekkala, Gorenko looked up and smiled. “Hello, Inspector!”

“No work today?” asked Pekkala.

“Work is done!” replied Gorenko. “Only two hours ago, a man arrived to transport our prototype T-34 to the factory at Stalingrad.”

“I didn’t realize that the prototype was ready.”

“It’s close enough. It’s like I said, Inspector. There’s a difference between excellence and perfection. There will always be more things to do, but Moscow obviously felt it was time to begin mass production.”

“How did Ushinsky take it?”

“He hasn’t come in yet. Being the perfectionist that he is, I doubt he will be very pleased. If he starts talking crazy again, I’ll send him straight to you, Inspector, and you can sort him out.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Pekkala. “In the meantime, Professor, the reason I’m here is that I’m trying to find out about a gun belonging to Colonel Nagorski. It was a small pistol of German manufacture. Apparently he carried it with him all the time.”

“I know it,” said Gorenko. “He didn’t have a holster for the thing, so he used to keep the gun in the pocket of his tunic, rattling around with his spare change.”

“Do you know where it came from? Where he got it?”

“Yes,” replied Gorenko. “It was a gift from a German general named Guderian. Guderian was a tank officer during the war. He wrote a book about tank warfare. Nagorski used to keep it by his bedside. The two of them met when the German army put on a display of armor in ’36. Dignitaries from all over the world were invited to watch. Nagorski was very impressed. He met Guderian when he was there. Obviously, the two of them had plenty in common. Before Nagorski returned home, Guderian gave him that pistol as a gift. Nagorski always said he hoped we’d never have to fight them.”

“Thank you, Professor.” Pekkala walked to the door. Then he turned back to Gorenko. “What will you do now?” he asked.

Gorenko gave him a sad smile. “I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose this is what it is like when you have children and they grow up and leave the house. You just have to get used to the quiet.”

A few minutes later, Pekkala pulled up to the Nagorski house.

Mrs. Nagorski was sitting on the porch. She wore a short brown corduroy jacket with the same mandarin collar as a Russian soldier’s tunic and a faded pair of blue canvas trousers of the type worn by factory workers. Her hair was covered by a white headscarf, decorated along the edges with red and blue flowers.

She looked as if she’d been expecting someone else.

Pekkala got out of the car and nodded hello. “I am sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Nagorski.”

“I thought you were the guards, come to throw me out of my house.”

“Why would they do that?”

“The question, Inspector, is why wouldn’t they, now that my husband is gone?”

“Well, I have not come to throw you out,” he said, trying to reassure her.

“Then what brings you here?” she asked. “Have you brought me some answers?”

“No,” replied Pekkala, “I have only brought questions for now.”

“Well,” she said, rising to her feet, “you had better come inside and ask them, hadn’t you?”

Once they were inside the dacha, she offered him a place in one of two chairs which faced the fireplace. Wedged under the iron grating was a bundle of twigs wrapped in newspaper, and balanced on the blackened iron bars of the grate stood a tidy pyramid of logs.

“You can light that,” she said, and handed him a box of matches. “I’ll get us something to eat.”

As he struck a match and held it to the edges of the newspaper, Pekkala watched the blue glow spread and the printed words crumble into darkness.

On the hearth she laid a plate with slices of bread fanned out like a deck of cards. Beside it, she placed a small bowl made of tin which was heaped with flakes of sea salt, like the scales of tiny fish. Then she sat down in the chair beside him.

“Well, Inspector,” she said, “have you learned anything at all since we last spoke?”

Her bluntness did not surprise him, and at this moment Pekkala was grateful for it. He reached down and picked up a piece of bread. He dipped a corner of it in the flakes of salt and took a bite. “I believe that your husband was killed with his own gun.”

“That thing he carried in his pocket?”

“Yes,” he replied with his mouth full, “and I am wondering if you know where it is.”

She shook her head. “He used to put it on the bedside table at night. It was his most prized possession. It’s not there now. He must have had it with him when he died.”

“There’s nowhere else it could be?”

“My husband was precise in his habits, Inspector. The gun was either in his pocket or on that table. He didn’t like not knowing where things were.”

“Did your husband have any meetings scheduled on the day he was killed?”

“I don’t know. He wouldn’t have told me if he did, unless it meant that he would be coming home late, and he didn’t say anything about that.”

“So he did not talk about his work with you.”

She waved her hand towards the T-34 blueprints plastered across the walls. “It was a combination of him not wanting to talk and me not wanting to listen.”

“When he left here on that day, was he alone?” asked Pekkala.

“Yes.”

“Maximov did not drive him?”

“My husband usually walked to the facility. It had started out sunny, so he set off on foot. It’s only about a twenty-minute walk and the only exercise he ever took.”

“Was there anything unusual about the day?”

“No. We had an argument, but there’s nothing unusual about that.”

“What was it about, this argument?”

“It was Konstantin’s birthday. The argument started when I told my husband that he shouldn’t be spending the whole day at work when he should have stayed home with his son on his birthday. Once we started shouting at each other, Konstantin got up and left the house.”

“And where did your son go?”

“Fishing. That’s where he usually goes to get away from us. He is old enough now that he does not have to tell us where he’s going. I wasn’t worried, and later I saw him out in his boat. That’s where he was when you arrived with Maximov.”

“I assume he can’t go into the forest because of the traps.”

“There are no traps here, only in the woods surrounding the facility. He’s perfectly safe around the house.”

“Did Konstantin ever accompany his father to the facility?”

“No,” she replied. “That was one of the few things my husband and I agreed upon. We did not want him playing around where there were weapons being built, guns being fired and so on.”

“This argument you had about the birthday. How did it resolve itself?”

“Resolve?” She laughed. “Inspector, you are being far too optimistic. Our arguments were never resolved. They simply ended when one of us couldn’t take it anymore and got up to leave the room. In this case, it was my husband, after I had accused him of forgetting Konstantin’s birthday altogether.”

“Did he deny it?”

“No. How could he? Even Maximov sent Konstantin a birthday card. What does that tell you, Inspector, when a bodyguard takes better care of a young man than his own father does?”

“This was the only thing you argued about?”

“The only thing in front of Konstantin.”

“You mean there was more?”

“The truth is,” she said with a sigh, “my husband and I were splitting up.” She looked at him, then looked away again. “I was having an affair, you see.”

“Ah,” he said softly. “And your husband found out about it.”

She nodded.

“How long had the affair been going on?”

“For some time,” she replied. “More than a year.”

“And how did your husband find out?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. He refused to tell me. By then, it really didn’t matter.”

“With whom did you have the affair?” asked Pekkala.

“Is this absolutely necessary, Inspector?”

“Yes, Mrs. Nagorski, I’m afraid it is.”

“With a man named Lev Zalka.”

“Zalka!”

“That sounds as if you know him.”

“I spoke to him this morning,” replied Pekkala, “and he didn’t tell me anything about an affair.”

“Would you have mentioned it, Inspector, if you could have avoided the subject?”

“Is that why he stopped working on the project?”

“Yes. There were other reasons, small things which could have been put right, but this was the end of everything between them. Afterwards, my husband wouldn’t even allow Zalka’s name to be mentioned at the facility. The other technicians never knew what had happened. They just thought it was a difference of opinion about something to do with the project.”

“And what about Konstantin? Did he know about this?”

“No,” she replied. “I begged my husband not to mention it until the project was completed. Then we would move back to the city and find different places to live. Konstantin would be going off to the Moscow Technical Institute to study engineering. He would live in the dormitory there, and he could come and see me or his father whenever he wanted.”

“And your husband agreed?”

“He did not tell me that he disagreed,” she replied, “and that was as much as I had hoped for, under the circumstances.”

“This morning,” said Pekkala, “my assistant and I ruled out Zalka as a suspect, but after what you’ve told me, I’m no longer sure what to think.”

“Are you asking me if I think Lev killed my husband?”

“Or that he ordered it, perhaps?”

“If you knew Lev Zalka, you would never think that.”

“Why not?”

“Because Lev never hated my husband. The person Lev hates is himself. From the first day we began seeing each other, I knew it was destroying him inside.”

“And yet you say this lasted for over a year.”

“Because he loved me, Inspector Pekkala. And, for what it’s worth, I loved him, too. A part of me still does. I was never strong enough to finish things with Lev. It was my great weakness and it was Lev’s as well. I was almost relieved when my husband found out. And what Lev does to himself now, those medical experiments he endures, he does out of guilt. He will tell you that it is so he can carry on his research, but the man is just bleeding to death.”

“Are you still in contact with him?”

“No,” she said. “We could never go back to just being acquaintances.”

There was the sound of a door opening at the back of the dacha. A moment later it closed again.

Pekkala turned.

Konstantin stood in the kitchen. In his hand, he carried an iron ring on which three trout had been skewered through the gills.

“My dear,” said Mrs. Nagorski, “Inspector Pekkala is here.”

“I wish you would leave us alone, Inspector,” replied Konstantin as he laid the fish on the kitchen counter.

“I was just about to,” said Pekkala, rising to his feet.

“The inspector is looking for your father’s gun,” said Mrs. Nagorski.

“Your mother says he kept it on his bedside table,” added Pekkala, “or in the pocket of his coat. Did you ever see the gun anywhere else?”

“I hardly ever saw that gun,” the boy replied, “because I hardly ever saw my father.”

Pekkala turned to Mrs. Nagorski. “I’ll rely on you to search the house. If the gun turns up, please let me know immediately.”

Outside the house, she shook his hand. “I’m sorry for the way Konstantin spoke to you,” she told Pekkala. “I’m the one he’s angry with. He just hasn’t gotten around to admitting it yet.”

IT WAS LATE IN THE DAY BY THE TIME PEKKALA RETURNED TO THE OFFICE. He had stopped to refuel the Emka, which took him out of his way, and the mechanic at the garage had persuaded him to change the oil and radiator fluid. He then discovered that the radiator needed replacing, by which time most of the day had gone.

“We should probably change the fuel gauge as well,” said the mechanic. “It appears to be sticking.”

“How long will that take?” asked Pekkala, already at the end of his patience.

“We’d have to order the part,” explained the mechanic. “You’d need to leave it here overnight, but there’s a cot we keep in the back …”

“No!” shouted Pekkala. “Just get me back on the road!”

When the repairs had finally been completed, Pekkala returned to the office. He was halfway up the stairs when he met Kirov coming down.

“There you are!” said Kirov.

“What’s the matter?”

“You just had a call from the Kremlin.”

Pekkala felt his heart clench. “Do you know what it’s about?”

“They didn’t tell me. All they said was to get you over there as soon as possible. Comrade Stalin is waiting.”

“He is waiting for me?” muttered Pekkala. “Well, there’s a change.”

Together, the two men returned to the street, where the Emka’s engine was still warm.

“IT’S OVER!” SHOUTED STALIN.

They were walking down a corridor towards Stalin’s private study. Staff officers and clerks in military uniform stood to the side, backs against the wall and staring straight ahead, like people disguised as statues. As if taking part in this elaborate game, Stalin ignored their existence.

“What is over?” asked Pekkala.

“The case!” Stalin replied. “We have the man who killed Nagorski.”

From offices on either side came the sounds of typewriters, the rustle of metal file cabinets opening and closing, and the murmur of indistinct voices.

“You do?” Pekkala was unable to hide his surprise. “Who is he?”

“I don’t know yet. I haven’t received the final report. All I can tell you is that we have a man in custody and that he has confessed to killing Nagorski, as well as trying to sell information on the Konstantin Project to the Germans.”

As they reached the door to the waiting room, two guards, each armed with a submachine gun, clicked their heels together. One guard opened the door with a flick of his hand so that Stalin passed through into his study without even breaking his stride.

The three clerks, including Poskrebyshev, rose sharply from their chairs as Stalin entered. Poskrebyshev moved towards the study door, in an attempt to open it for Stalin.

“Get out of the way,” barked Stalin.

Without any change of expression, Poskrebyshev stopped in midstride, turned, and went back to his desk.

Inside the study, Stalin closed the door and broke into a smile. “I must say, Pekkala, I am taking some pleasure in the fact that this was one case you were unable to solve.”

“How did you catch this man?” asked Pekkala.

“That woman brought him in, that NKVD major you thought might prove useful.”

“Lysenkova?”

“That’s her. She got a call from someone at the Nagorski facility who was able to identify the killer.”

“I knew nothing about this,” said Pekkala. “We had agreed that Major Lysenkova would keep me informed.”

Stalin made a vague grumble of surprise. “None of that matters now, Pekkala. What matters is that we have the man who did it.”

“What about the White Guild and those agents who were killed?”

“It looks as if that might be a separate matter,” replied Stalin.

“May I speak to this man?” asked Pekkala.

Stalin shrugged. “Of course. I don’t know what kind of shape he is in, but I assume he can still talk.”

“Where is he being held?”

“At the Lubyanka, in one of the isolation cells. Come.” Stalin rested his hand on Pekkala’s shoulder and steered him towards the tall windows, which looked out over the empty parade ground below. Stalin stopped a few paces short of the window itself. He never took the risk of being seen by someone outside. “Within a matter of months,” he said, “you will see T-34 tanks parked end to end down there, and it won’t be a minute too soon. Germany is now openly preparing for war. I am doing everything I can to buy us time. Yesterday I halted all patrols along the Polish border, in case of accidental incursions into their territory. Any movement by us beyond our own national boundaries will be interpreted by Germany as an act of aggression, and Hitler is looking for any excuse to begin hostilities. These measures cannot prevent what is inevitable. They can only delay it, hopefully long enough that the T-34’s will be waiting when our enemies decide to attack.”

Pekkala left Stalin staring out the window at the imaginary procession of armor.

Down on the street, Kirov was pacing back and forth beside the Emka.

Pekkala came running out of the building. “Get us over to the Lubyanka as quickly as you can.”

MINUTES LATER, THE EMKA ROARED AROUND THE CORNER OF Dzerzhinsky Square and into the main courtyard of the Lubyanka prison. Even though it had not snowed in weeks, piles of filthy snow left over from the winter were still plowed up into the corners where the sunlight failed to reach. On three sides of the courtyard, walls rose several stories high. Windows stretched along the ground floor, but above that were rows of strange metal sheets, each one anchored with iron pins a hand’s width from the wall, hiding whatever lay behind them.

A guard escorted them inside the prison. He wore a bulky greatcoat made of poor-quality wool dyed an irregular shade of purplish brown and a bulky, fur-lined hat known as a ushanka. Pekkala and Kirov signed in at the front desk. They scrawled their names in a huge book containing thousands of pages. The book had a steel plate covering everything except the space for them to write their names.

The man behind the desk picked up a phone. “Pekkala is here,” he said.

Now another guard took over from the first. He led them down a series of long, windowless, dimly illuminated corridors. Hundreds of gray metal doors lined the way. All were closed. The place stank of ammonia, sweat, and the dampness of old stone. The floors were covered with brown industrial carpeting. The guard even wore felt-soled boots, as if sound itself was a crime. Except for the padding of their feet upon the carpet, the place was absolutely silent. No matter how many times Pekkala came here, the silence always unnerved him.

The guard stopped at one of the cells, rapped his knuckles on the door and opened it without waiting for a reply. He jerked his head, indicating that they could go inside.

Pekkala and Kirov entered a room with a tall ceiling, roughly three paces long by four paces wide. The walls were painted brown up to chest height. Above that, everything was white. The light in the room came from a single bulb set back into the wall above the door and covered with a wire cage.

In the center of the room was a table, on which lay a heap of old rags.

Between Pekkala and this table, with her back to them, stood Major Lysenkova. She wore the NKVD dress uniform—an olive-colored tunic with polished brass buttons and dark blue trousers with a purplish-red stripe running down the side tucked into black knee-length boots.

“I told you I was not to be disturbed!” she shouted as she turned around. Only then did she realize who had entered the room. “Pekkala!” Her eyes widened with surprise. “I was not expecting you.”

“Evidently.” Pekkala glanced at a figure huddled in the corner of the cell. It was a man, wearing the thin beige cotton pajamas issued to all prisoners at Lubyanka. The man’s knees were drawn up to his chest and his head lay on his knees. One of his arms hung limply at his side. The shoulder had been dislocated. The other arm was wrapped around his shins, as if he were trying to make himself as small as possible. Now, at the sound of Pekkala’s voice, the man lifted his head.

The side of his face was so puffed with bruises that at first Pekkala could not identify him.

“Inspector,” croaked the man.

Now Pekkala recognized the voice. “Ushinsky!” He gaped at the wreckage of the scientist.

Major Lysenkova lifted a sheet of paper from the desk. “Here is his full confession, to the crime of murder and of intending to sell secrets to the enemy. He has signed it. The matter is closed.”

“Major,” said Pekkala, “we agreed that you would take no action without informing me first.”

“Don’t look so surprised, Inspector,” she replied. “I told you I had learned what it takes to survive. I saw a chance to get myself out of that mess and I took it. Whatever agreement you and I had has been canceled. Comrade Stalin does not care who solved this case, just that it has been solved. The only people who care are you”—she glanced at Kirov—“and your assistant.”

Kirov did not reply. He stood against the wall, staring in disbelief at Lysenkova.

“Since the case is officially closed,” Pekkala told Lysenkova, “you won’t mind if I have a few words with the prisoner.”

She glanced at the man in the corner. “I suppose not.”

Finally Kirov spoke. “I can’t believe you did this,” he said.

Lysenkova fixed him with a stare. “I know you can’t,” she said. Then she walked past him and stepped out into the hall. “Take all the time you need, Inspectors,” she told them, before closing the door behind her.

In the cell, nobody spoke or moved.

It was Ushinsky who at last broke the silence. “It was Gorenko,” he whispered hoarsely. “He called her. He said I was planning to give the T-34 plans to the Germans.”

Pekkala crouched down before the injured man. “And were you?”

“Of course not! When I showed up for work and found out that the prototype had been picked up, I exploded. I told Gorenko it wasn’t ready yet. Those tanks might look all right. They will run. The guns will fire. They will perform adequately under controlled conditions like the ones we have at the facility. But once you put those machines to work out in the real world, it won’t be long before you’ll be looking at major failures in the engine and suspension systems. You must get in touch with the factory, Inspector. Tell them they cannot begin production. Too many pieces of the puzzle are missing!”

“What did Gorenko say when you told him this?” asked Pekkala.

“He said it was good enough. That’s what he always says! Then I told him we might as well hand over the design to the damn Germans, since they wouldn’t stop until they got it right. The next thing I knew, I was arrested by the NKVD.”

“And what about Nagorski?” asked Kirov. “Did you have anything to do with his death?”

The prisoner shook his head. “I would never have done anything to hurt him.”

“That confession says you did,” Kirov reminded him.

“Yes,” said Ushinsky, “and I signed it right after they dislocated my arm.”

“Are you a member of the White Guild?” asked Pekkala.

“No! I’ve never even heard of them before. What’s going to happen to me now, Inspector? The major says I’m being sent out to a special location in Siberia, a camp called Mamlin-3.”

At the mention of that place Pekkala had to force himself to breathe. Suddenly he turned to Kirov. “Leave the room,” he said. “Go out to the car. Do not wait for me. I will join you at the office later.”

Kirov watched him in confusion. “Why?” he asked.

“Please,” Pekkala urged.

“You are going to try to get him out of here?” Slowly Kirov raised his hands, open palms towards Pekkala, as if to fend off what was coming. “Oh, no, Inspector. You can’t—”

“You have to go now, Kirov.”

“But you mustn’t!” sputtered Kirov. “This is completely irregular.”

Ushinsky no longer seemed aware of their presence. His one good hand wandered feebly over his body, as if by some miracle of touch he hoped to heal himself.

“This man is innocent,” Pekkala told his assistant. “You know that as well as I do.”

“But it’s too late,” protested Kirov, lifting the confession from the table. “He signed!”

“You’d have signed, too, if they’d done the same thing to you.”

“Inspector, please. This isn’t our problem anymore.”

“I know where they’re sending him,” replied Pekkala. “I know what happens there.”

“You can’t get him out of here,” Kirov pleaded. “Not even a Shadow Pass will allow you to do that.”

“Leave now,” said Pekkala. “Go back to the office. When you get there, put in a call to Major Lysenkova. Put it through the main switchboard.”

“Why would I want to speak to her?” asked Kirov.

“You wouldn’t,” replied Pekkala. “But you need that switchboard operator to log in the time that you called. That way, it will show that you were not at Lubyanka. Just find some excuse, talk to her for a minute, then hang up and wait for me to come back.”

“Do you really mean to go through with this?”

“I will not stand by and let an innocent man be sent to Mamlin-3. Now, Kirov, my friend, do as I tell you and go.”

Without another word, the young man turned towards the door.

“Thank you,” whispered Pekkala.

Then suddenly Kirov spun around, and this time he had a Tokarev aimed at Pekkala.

“What are you doing?” asked Pekkala.

“You will thank me later,” said Kirov, “when you have come to your senses.”

Calmly, Pekkala stared down the barrel of the gun. “I see you brought your weapon this time. At least I have taught you that much.”

“You also taught me that the law is the law,” said Kirov. “You cannot pick and choose what to obey. There was a time when it seemed to me you knew the difference between right and wrong.”

“The older I get, Kirov, the harder it becomes to tell one from the other.”

For a long time, the two men stood there.

The barrel of the gun began to tremble in Kirov’s hand. “You know I can’t shoot you,” he whispered.

“I know,” replied Pekkala in a kindly voice.

Kirov lowered the gun. Clumsily, he returned the pistol to its holster. Then he shook his head and left the room.

Pekkala and Ushinsky were alone now.

A hoarse rattling echoed from Ushinsky’s throat.

It took Pekkala a moment to realize that Ushinsky was laughing.

“Major Kirov is right, isn’t he? You can’t get me out of here.”

“No, Ushinsky, I can’t.”

“And the things that go on in this camp, are they as bad as you say?”

“Worse than anything you can imagine.”

A faint moan escaped his lips. “Please, Inspector. Please, don’t let them take me there.”

“You understand what we are talking about?” asked Pekkala.

“I do.” Ushinsky struggled to stand, but he could not manage on his own.

“Help me up,” he pleaded.

Pekkala hooked a hand under Ushinsky’s good arm and raised him to his feet.

The scientist sagged back against the wall, breathing heavily. “Gorenko thinks I hate him, but the truth is he’s the only friend I’ve got. Don’t tell him what happened to me.”

“I won’t.”

“Which tank did they take?” asked Ushinsky.

“I don’t know.”

“I always hoped it would be number 4.”

“Professor, we don’t have much time.”

Ushinsky nodded. “I understand. Good-bye, Inspector Pekkala.”

“Good-bye, Professor Ushinsky.” Pekkala reached into his coat and drew the Webley from its holster.

At the far end of the hallway, the guard on duty heard the shot. It sounded so muffled that at first he confused it with the clank of the vision slit plate moving back and forth as the guard in the next hallway inspected the other cells. But then, when the other guard stuck his head around the corner and asked, “What was that?” he realized what had happened.

The guard ran to Ushinsky’s cell, feet padding on the carpeted floor, threw back the locking bolt, and flung open the door. The first thing he saw was a halo of blood on the wall.

Ushinsky lay in the corner, one leg bent under him and the other stretched out across the floor.

Pekkala stood in the center of the room. The Webley was still in his hand. Gun smoke swirled around the lightbulb and the air smelled of burnt cordite.

“What the hell happened?” yelled the guard.

“Take me to the prison commandant,” Pekkala replied.

FIVE MINUTES LATER, PEKKALA STOOD IN THE OFFICE OF A BULL-NECKED man with a shaved head named Maltsev. He was in charge of the Kommendatura, a special branch within the Lubyanka prison system, responsible for carrying out executions. In the past three years, Maltsev himself had liquidated over a thousand people. Now Maltsev sat at his desk. He looked stunned, as if he couldn’t have stood up even if he’d wanted to.

Behind Pekkala stood two armed guards.

“Explain yourself.” Maltsev’s balled fists rested on the desktop like two fleshy hand grenades. “And you’d better make it good.”

Pekkala took out his NKVD ID book. He handed it to Maltsev. “Read this,” he said quietly.

Maltsev opened the red booklet. Immediately, his eyes fastened on the Classified Operations Permit. Maltsev looked up at the guards. “You two,” he said, “get out.”

Hurriedly, the guards abandoned the room.

Maltsev handed back the ID book. “I should have known you’d have a Shadow Pass,” he said. He looked even more annoyed than he had a minute before. “I can’t arrest you. I can’t even ask you why you did it, can I?”

“No,” replied Pekkala.

Maltsev sat back heavily in his chair and laced his fingers together. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. We have his confession. His transfer paper to Mamlin had already been made out. One way or another, he was not long for this world.”

Fifteen minutes later, as the gates of the Lubyanka closed behind him, Pekkala glanced up and down the street. The Emka was gone. Kirov had followed his orders. Now Pekkala set off on foot towards the office.

But that wasn’t where he ended up.

Frozen in his mind was the image of Kirov, staring at him down the barrel of a gun. Kirov had done the right thing. He had simply followed regulations, and if he had continued to follow them, he would now be back at the office, writing up charges against Pekkala of professional misconduct.

The more Pekkala thought about this, the louder he heard Kropotkin’s words from the last time they’d met—that the day would come when he would have to choose between what his job required him to do and what his conscience would allow.

Perhaps the time has come at last to disappear, he told himself, and suddenly it no longer seemed impossible.

He remembered the morning he had stood with the Tsar on the terrace of the Catherine Palace, watching Ilya lead her students on a walk to the Chinese Theater just across the park. “If you let her get away,” the Tsar said, “you’ll never forgive yourself. And neither will I, by the way.”

The Tsar had been telling the truth. Pekkala had not forgiven himself. We did not separate by choice, he thought. We were driven apart by circumstances which neither of us caused or wanted. Even if she is with someone else now, even if she has a child, what order of the universe demands that I be satisfied with living out my days as a ghost in her heart?

With his office building only two blocks away, Pekkala turned the corner and headed for the Cafe Tilsit. He didn’t know if he would find Kropotkin there, but when he came within sight of the place, he saw Kropotkin standing on the sidewalk next to the triangular, double-sided board on which Bruno, the owner, wrote the day’s menu. Kropotkin was smoking a cigarette. A short-brimmed cap obscured his face, but Pekkala recognized him by the way he stood—the legs slightly spread and firmly planted on the ground, one hand tucked behind the back. There was no mistaking the stance of a policeman, whether he had left the ranks or not.

Kropotkin noticed him and smiled. “I wondered if I’d see you again,” he said, and flicked the cigarette into the street.

In the cafe, the two men found a place away from the crowded benches, sitting at a small table tucked beneath the staircase to the second floor. Here they knew no one would overhear them.

Bruno had made borscht. He ladled the soup like torrents of blood into the wooden bowls in which all meals were served.

“I have thought a lot about our last conversation,” said Pekkala, as he spooned up the ruby-colored soup.

“I hope you have forgiven me for speaking as bluntly as I did,” replied Kropotkin. “It is in my nature, and I cannot help it.”

“There is nothing to forgive. You mentioned the possibility of disappearing.”

“Yes. And I realize I was wrong to have suggested it.”

His words struck Pekkala as if they had been shards of glass. It was the last thing he had expected Kropotkin to say.

“This is not a time for running,” continued Kropotkin. “What good can we do if we simply allow ourselves to fade away?”

Pekkala gave no answer. His head was spinning.

Kropotkin ate as he spoke, slurping his soup off the spoon. “The truth is, Pekkala, I had hoped we might find a way to work together, as we did back in Ekaterinburg.”

It took Pekkala a moment to understand that Kropotkin was asking for a job. All that talk about disappearing had been nothing more than words. Pekkala did not blame Kropotkin. Instead, he blamed himself for believing it. At the time Kropotkin may have meant what he was saying. He might even have gone through with it, but that was then, and now he believed something else. The long days of driving back and forth across this country have caught up with him, decided Pekkala. He is looking back on his days in the police and wishing things could be the way they used to be. But the world he is remembering has gone for good. It may never have existed in the first place. Besides, Pekkala told himself, the reason Kropotkin was dismissed from the force would prevent him from ever being reinstated, no matter how many strings I tried to pull. “I can’t,” said Pekkala. “I’m sorry. It is not possible.”

When Kropotkin heard this, the light went out of his eyes. “I’m sorry to hear that.” He glanced around the room. “I’ll be back in a minute, Pekkala. I am due to pick up some cargo on the other side of town and I need to find out if it is ready for loading onto my truck.”

“Of course,” Pekkala assured him. “I’ll be here when you get back.”

While he waited for Kropotkin to return, Pekkala felt as if he were waking from a dream. Suddenly he felt ashamed, deeply ashamed, that he had even considered abandoning his post and leaving Kirov to face the consequences. He thought about Ilya, and as her face shimmered into focus in his mind, he experienced a strange hallucination.

He was standing on the platform of the Imperial Station at Tsarskoye Selo. Ilya was with him. Winter sunlight on the plastered brickwork glowed like the flesh of apricots. It was her birthday. They were heading into Petrograd for dinner. He turned to speak to her and, suddenly, she disappeared.

Next, Pekkala found himself at an iron gate, an ornate bronze wreath bolted to the railings, just outside the Alexander Palace. It was a place he knew well. He often met Ilya here, after she had finished her classes. Then they would walk out across the grounds together. The following year, the Tsarina and her daughters would stand at this gate and plead with the palace guards to remain loyal as soldiers of the Revolutionary Guard advanced upon Tsarskoye Selo. But that was still to come. Now Pekkala saw Ilya walking towards him, still carrying her textbooks, feet crunching on the pale carpet of gravel. Pekkala reached out to open the gate and this time it was he who disappeared.

Now he stood at the dockside in Petrograd, watching the Tsar’s yacht, the Standart, pulling up to the quay. Sailors threw their mooring lines, the ropes weighted at the ends with huge monkey-fist knots. Dozens of signal flags hung from the halyard lines, so gaudy that together they looked like the laundry of court jesters hung out to dry. Again Ilya was with him, a breeze stirring her white summer dress about her knees. He wore his usual heavy black coat on the excuse that he’d heard some rumor of a cold front approaching. The truth was, he wore the coat because, even in this weather, he did not feel comfortable in anything else. They had been invited on board for dinner, the first time the Romanovs had asked them as a couple. Ilya was very happy. Pekkala felt uneasy. He did not care for dinner parties, especially in the confines of a boat, even if it was the Royal Yacht. She knew what he was thinking. He felt her arm across the back of his waist.

“I don’t want to leave,” he told her, but even as he said the words, his eyes opened and he found himself back in the cafe.

AT FIRST, PEKKALA DID NOT UNDERSTAND.

It was as if his memories of Ilya had all been thrown into the air like confetti and were flickering down around him. So often he had returned to these images, retreating from the world around him, their vividness erasing all the years between that world and this. But now time began to accelerate. All he could do was watch things going by, too fast to comprehend, until at last the strands of memory in which he had cocooned himself began to snap. Finally, when the last strand had broken free, he realized that there could be no going back.

Kropotkin returned. “My cargo is ready,” he said. “I’m afraid I can’t stay any longer.”

“I’ll walk you out,” replied Pekkala, rising, his back stooped against the staircase which loomed over their heads.

Outside the cafe, the two men shook hands.

The lunchtime crowd was leaving the cafe. People stood on the sidewalk, buttoning up their coats or lighting cigarettes to keep them company on the walk back to their jobs.

“Good-bye, old friend,” said Kropotkin.

Bruno, the owner, came out with a wet rag and a stub of chalk. “Out of soup!” he announced to them as he passed. He crouched down in front of the menu board and began to erase the word BORSCHT.

As he let go of Kropotkin’s hand, Pekkala thought about the people who had drifted through his life. Their faces shuffling past behind his eyes. Now, to that long line, as if fixing a photo into an album, he added Kropotkin.

“Good-bye,” said Pekkala, but his voice was drowned out by the thudding rumble of a large motorcycle coming up the road.

“Hey!” shouted Bruno.

Pekkala turned to see Bruno waving the wet rag at the motorcycle driver, who was riding his machine almost in the gutter as he swooped past. The rider wore a leather helmet and goggles. To Pekkala, he looked like the head of a giant insect with the body of a man. His arm reached out, as if to snatch the rag from Bruno’s hand.

That’s a stupid prank, thought Pekkala.

But then he realized that the rider was holding out a gun.

What happened next took only seconds, but it seemed to Pekkala that everything had slowed down to the point where he could almost see the bullets leaving the barrel.

The rider began to fire, steadily pulling the trigger as round after round left the gun. His arm swiveled as he aimed, but the sidewalk was so crowded with people leaving the restaurant that Pekkala had no idea who the man was aiming at.

He heard the crash of glass behind him as the window of the Cafe Tilsit shattered. Kropotkin sprang to the side. As Bruno lunged away from the motorcycle, he caught his leg on the menu board. The heavy board flew into the air, spreading like a pair of wings.

Pekkala saw it coming towards him.

That was the last thing he remembered.

THE NEXT THING HE KNEW, A MAN WAS BENDING DOWN OVER HIM.

Pekkala grabbed him by the throat.

The man’s face turned red. His eyes bulged.

“Stop!” shouted a woman’s voice.

Now someone had hold of Pekkala’s hand, trying to prize it off the man’s throat.

Completely disoriented, Pekkala squinted at this pair of hands and followed them to the body of the woman. She was wearing the uniform of an ambulance nurse—gray skirt, white tunic, and white cap with a red cross on the forehead.

“Let go of him!” shouted the woman. “He’s only trying to help you!”

Pekkala released his grip.

The man tipped over backwards and lay gasping on the sidewalk.

Pekkala struggled upright. He realized he was outside the Cafe Tilsit. The sidewalk glittered with broken glass. A body lay under a black sheet, only an arm’s length away. Farther along the pavement, there were two more bodies. Those had been covered, too. Blood had seeped out from under one of the sheets, following the cracks in the pavement like a red lightning bolt.

The man Pekkala had been choking climbed unsteadily to his feet, still holding his throat. He too wore the uniform of an ambulance worker.

Now Pekkala remembered the gun. “Have I been shot?” he asked.

“No,” replied the man hoarsely. “That’s what hit you.”

Pekkala looked at where the man was pointing. He saw Bruno’s menu board.

“You’re lucky,” said the man. “You won’t even need stitches.”

Pekkala put his hand to his face. He felt a ragged tear of skin just below the hairline. When he pulled his hand away, his fingertips were flecked with blood.

Uniformed men from the Moscow Police Department were milling about on the pavement. Their boots crunched on the broken glass. “Can I talk to him now?” one of the officers asked the nurse as he pointed at Pekkala.

“In a minute,” she replied sharply. “Let me bandage him first.”

“How long have I been lying here?” he asked.

“About an hour,” the nurse replied, kneeling beside him and unraveling a roll of gauze to place upon the wound. “We dealt with the most serious cases first. They have already been taken to hospital. You were lucky …”

She was still talking when Pekkala got up and went over to the black sheet lying beside him. He pulled it back. Bruno’s eyes were glazed and open. Then he went over to the other two sheets and pulled them back as well. One was a man and the other was a woman. He recognized neither. He felt a moment of relief that Kropotkin was not among the dead. “I was standing with another man,” he said, as he turned to the nurse.

“Those not injured were sent away by the police,” she replied. “Your friend probably just went home. Only the dead were covered up, so your friend must know you’re still alive.”

Pekkala remembered that Kropotkin had been on his way to pick up cargo for his truck. It didn’t surprise him that he had not waited. When they’d said their good-byes, there had been a finality in Kropotkin’s voice which told Pekkala that the two of them would never meet again. Kropotkin was probably on the road by now, driving to Mongolia for all Pekkala knew.

“Do you have a description of the gunman?” he asked.

The officer shook his head. “All we know is that it was a man on a motorcycle. He drove by so quickly that nobody got a good look at him.”

While the nurse was bandaging his head, Pekkala gave a statement to the policeman. He sat on the curb, the soles of his shoes two islands in a puddle of Bruno’s blood. There was not much he could tell them. It had all happened so quickly. He recalled the rider’s face hidden behind the goggles and the leather helmet.

“What about the motorcycle?” asked the policeman.

“It was black,” he told the officer, “and bigger than most I have seen on the streets of this city. There was some writing on the side of the fuel tank. It was silver. I couldn’t tell what it said.”

The policeman scribbled down a few words on a notepad.

“Do you know who he was shooting at?” Pekkala asked.

“Hard to say,” replied the policeman. “A lot of people were standing here when he rode by. He might not have been aiming for anyone in particular.”

The nurse helped Pekkala to his feet. “You should come with us to the hospital,” she said.

“No,” he replied. “There’s someplace else I need to be.”

She rested her thumb against the skin just under his right eyebrow. Then she opened his eye and shone a small penlight against his pupil. “All right,” she told him reluctantly, “but if you have headaches, if you get dizzy, if your eyesight becomes blurred, you should get to a doctor immediately. Understand?”

Pekkala nodded. He turned to the ambulance man. “I’m sorry,” he said.

The man smiled. “Next time,” he said, “I’ll leave you to fix yourself.”

PEKKALA WALKED THE REST OF THE WAY TO HIS OFFICE. HIS HEAD hurt like a hangover and the smell of the gauze, as well as the disinfectant used to clean the wound, made him queasy. Once inside the building, he went into the ground-floor bathroom, removed the bandage, and washed his face in the cold water. Then he climbed up the stairs to his office.

He found Kirov sweeping the floor. “Inspector!” he said, when Pekkala had entered the room. “What on earth happened to you?”

Pekkala explained.

“Do you think he was aiming for you?” asked Kirov, bewildered.

“Whether he was or not, he came pretty close to finishing me off. How many people have I put behind bars, Kirov?”

“Dozens.” He shrugged. “More.”

“Exactly, and any one of them could have come after me, if they were even trying. The police are investigating it. They said they’d get in touch if they learn something.” Now Pekkala paused. “There is something I need to tell you, Kirov.”

Without a word, Kirov set the broom against the wall and sat down at his desk. “Inspector, I have been thinking …”

“I’ve been thinking as well,” replied Pekkala. “About rules. At the Lubyanka today, I broke every one I ever taught you. If you need to file a report on my conduct, I will support your decision.”

Kirov smiled. “Not every rule, Inspector. You once told me to do only what I can live with. That was what you did back at the prison, and it is what I’m doing now. Let’s not speak of reports. Besides, if Nagorski’s killer is still out there, there is plenty of work to be done.”

“I agree.” Pekkala walked to the window and looked out over the rooftops of the city. The gray slates gleamed like copper in the evening sunlight. “They may have their confession, but they don’t have the truth. Not yet.” Then he breathed in and sighed, and his breath bloomed gray against the glass. “Thank you, Kirov.”

“And Major Lysenkova won’t be taking all the credit.” Kirov folded his arms and slumped in his chair. “What a bitch.”

“Because she happened to take advantage of you more effectively than you took advantage of her?”

“It’s not like that!” protested Kirov. “I was really beginning to like her!”

“Then she really did take advantage of you,” said Pekkala.

“I don’t see how you can be so jovial,” huffed Kirov. “I almost shot you today.”

“But you didn’t, and that is reason enough to celebrate.” Pekkala slid open a drawer of his desk, hauling out a strangely rounded bottle wrapped in wicker and plugged with a cork. It contained his supply of plum brandy, which he obtained in small quantities from a lovesick Ukrainian in the Sukharevka market. But as with many things in that market, he traded rather than paid. The Ukrainian had a girlfriend in Finland. He had met her when he worked on a trading ship in the Baltic. She wrote to him in her native language and Pekkala translated the letters in exchange. Then, while the Ukrainian poured out his heart, Pekkala wrote a translation for the Finnish girl. For this, and for his discretion, he received half a liter every month.

“The Slivovitz!” exclaimed Kirov. “Now that’s more like it!” He picked two glasses off the shelf, blew the dust out, and set them down before Pekkala.

Into each glass Pekkala poured the greenish-yellow liquid. Then he slid one over to Kirov.

In a toast, they raised their glasses to the level of their foreheads.

As he drank, a taste of plums blossomed softly in Pekkala’s head, filling his mind with the ripe fruit’s dusty purpleness. “You know,” he said, after the fire had left his breath, “this was the only liquor the Tsar would touch.”

“It seems unpatriotic,” replied Kirov, his voice gone hoarse from the drink, “to be Russian and not to like a drop of vodka now and then.”

“He had his reasons,” said Pekkala, and decided to leave it at that.

Pekkala stood out in the wide expanse of the Alexander Park.

It was an evening in late May. The days had grown longer, and the sky remained light long after the sun had gone down.

The pink and white petals of the dogwood trees had fallen, replaced by shiny, lime-green leaves. Summer did not come gradually to this place. Instead, it seemed to explode across the landscape.

After a long day in the city of Petrograd, Pekkala would finish his supper and walk out on the grounds of the estate. He rarely encountered anyone else this time of night, but now he saw a rider coming towards him. The horse ambled lazily, its reins held slack, the rider slouched in his saddle. He knew instantly from the man’s silhouette that it was the Tsar. His narrow shoulders. The way he held his head, as if the joints of his neck were too tight.

At last, the Tsar came up alongside him. “What brings you out here, Pekkala?”

“I often walk in the evenings.”

“I could get you a horse, you know,” said the Tsar.

And then the two men laughed quietly, remembering that it was a matter of a horse which had first brought them together. In the course of Pekkala’s training with the Finnish Regiment, he had been ordered to jump his horse over a barricade on which the drill instructor had laced a coil of barbed wire. By the time the exercise was halfway through, most of the animals were bleeding from cuts to their legs and bellies. Blood, bright as rubies, speckled the sawdust floor. When Pekkala refused to jump his horse, the drill instructor first threatened, then humiliated him, and finally attempted to reason with him. Pekkala had known before he said a word that a refusal to carry out an order would mean being thrown out of the cadets. He would be on the next train home to Finland. But it was at this point that the sergeant and cadets realized they were being watched. The Tsar had been standing in the shadows.

Later, when Pekkala led his horse back to the stables, the Tsar was waiting for him. One hour later, he had been transferred out of the Finnish Regiment and into a special course of study with the Imperial Police, the State Police, and the Okhrana. Two years and two months from that day when he led his horse out of the ring, Pekkala pinned on the badge of the Emerald Eye. Since that time, he had always preferred, whenever possible, to travel on his own two feet.

That spring evening, the Tsar removed a pewter flask from the pocket of his tunic, unscrewed the cap, took a drink, and handed the flask to Pekkala.

That was the first time he ever tasted Slivovitz. The aftertaste reminded him of a liquor his mother used to make from a distillation of cloudberries, which she gathered in the forest near their home. They were not easy to find. Cloudberries did not always grow in the same place year after year. Instead, they sprouted unexpectedly, and for most people, finding them was so much a matter of chance that they often did not bother. But Pekkala’s mother always seemed to know from one glance at the undergrowth exactly where cloudberries would be growing. How she knew this was as much a mystery to Pekkala as the Tsar’s reasons for making him into the Emerald Eye.

“It is my wedding anniversary tomorrow,” remarked the Tsar.

“Congratulations, Majesty,” replied Pekkala. “Do you have plans to mark the occasion?”

“That is not a day I celebrate,” said the Tsar.

Pekkala did not have to ask why. On the day of the Tsar’s coronation in May 1896, the Tsar and Tsarina sat for five hours on gold and ivory thrones while the names of his dominion were read out—Moscow, Petrograd, Kiev, Poland, Bulgaria, Finland. Finally, after he had been proclaimed The Lord and Judge of Russia, bells rang out across the city and cannon fire echoed in the sky.

During this time, a crowd of half a million had gathered on the outskirts of the city, at a military staging area known as Khodynka field, with a promise of free food, beer, and souvenir mugs. When a rumor spread that the beer was running out, the crowd surged forward. More than a thousand people—some said as many as three thousand—were trampled to death in the panic.

For hours afterwards, carts loaded with bodies raced through the streets of Moscow, while their drivers searched for places where the dead could be kept out of sight until the wedding cortege had passed. In the confusion, some of those carts, with the legs and arms of the dead lolling out from under their tarpaulin covers, found themselves both ahead of and behind the royal procession.

“That afternoon,” the Tsar told Pekkala, “before the wedding ceremony began, I drank a toast to the crowd on Khodynka field. That’s the last time I ever touched vodka.” Now the Tsar smiled, trying to forget. He raised the flask. “So what do you think of my alternative? I have it sent to me from Belgrade. I own some orchards there.”

“I like it well enough, Majesty.”

“Well enough,” repeated the Tsar, and he took another drink.

“It wasn’t your fault, Majesty,” said Pekkala, “what happened on that field.”

The Tsar breathed in sharply. “Wasn’t it? I have never been sure about that.”

“Some things just happen.”

“I know that.”

But Pekkala could tell he was lying.

“The trouble is,” continued the Tsar, “that either I am placed here by God to be the ruler of this land, in which case the day of my wedding is proof that we are living out the will of the Almighty, or else”—he paused—“or else that is not so. Do you have any idea how much I would like to believe you are right—that those people died simply because of an accident? They haunt me. I cannot get away from their faces. But if I believe it was just an accident, Pekkala, then what about everything else which happened on that day? Either God has a hand in our affairs or he does not. I cannot pick and choose according to what suits me best.”

Pekkala saw the torment in his face. “No more than the plum can choose its taste, Majesty.”

Now the Tsar smiled. “I will remember that,” he said, and he tossed the flask down to Pekkala.

Pekkala had been carrying that flask five years later when Bolshevik Guards arrested him at the border, when he tried to flee the country after the Revolution had begun. Although his badge and gun were eventually returned to him, the flask vanished somewhere along the way.

Since that day out in the twilight in the Alexander Park, the glassy green of Slivovitz had taken on a meaning almost sacred to Pekkala. In a world where a Shadow Pass allowed him to do almost anything he chose, the taste of ripe plums served as a reminder to him of how much he did not control.

LATE THAT NIGHT, AS PEKKALA SAT ON THE END OF HIS BED, READING his copy of the Kalevala, the phone rang at the end of the hall. There was only one phone on each floor and the calls never came for him there, so he did not even look up from his book. He heard Babayaga’s apartment door open and the patter of Talia’s footsteps as she raced to grab the receiver.

Nobody liked to be the one who had to go out and answer the phone, especially when it was so late, so an unofficial arrangement had been made that Talia would pick up the call and notify whoever it was for. In exchange for this, the child would receive a small gift of some kind, preferably something made with sugar.

Then there was more pattering and Pekkala was surprised to hear Talia knocking on his door. “Inspector,” she called, “it’s for you.”

The first thing Pekkala did when he heard this was to look around the room for something he could give Talia as a present. Spotting nothing, he stood and rummaged in his pockets. He inspected his handful of change.

“Inspector,” asked Talia, “are you in there?”

“Yes,” he answered hurriedly. “I’ll be right out.”

“Are you finding me a present?”

“That’s right.”

“Then you can take your time.”

When he opened the door a moment later, she plucked the coin from his hand. “Come along, Inspector!” she urged.

It was only as Pekkala picked up the receiver that he had time to wonder who might be calling at this hour.

“Inspector?” said a woman’s voice. “Is that you?”

“This is Pekkala. Who am I speaking to?”

“It’s Yelena Nagorski.”

“Oh!” he said, surprised. “Is everything all right?”

“Well, no, Inspector, I’m afraid it isn’t.”

“What is it, Yelena?”

“Konstantin has learned the reason why my husband and I were splitting up.”

“But how?”

“It was Maximov who told him.”

“Why would he do a thing like that?”

“I don’t know. He showed up here this evening. Maximov had gotten the idea in his head that he and I should get married.”

“Married? Was he serious?”

“I think he was completely serious,” replied Yelena, “but I also think he was completely drunk. I wouldn’t let him in the house. I told him that if he did not go away I would report him to the guards at the facility.”

“And did he go away?”

“Not at first. Konstantin came out and ordered him to leave. That was when Maximov told him what had happened between me and Lev Zalka.”

“But how did Maximov know?”

“My husband might have told him, and even if he didn’t, Maximov might have figured it out on his own. I always suspected that he knew.”

“And where is Maximov now?” asked Pekkala.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I think he drove back to the facility, assuming he didn’t run off the road on his way there. Where he might have gone from there I have no idea. The reason I’m calling you, Inspector, is that I have no idea where my son is either. When I had finally persuaded Maximov to leave, I turned around and discovered that Konstantin was gone. He must be out there in the forest. There’s nowhere else for him to go. Konstantin knows his way around those woods in daylight, but it’s pitch-black out there now. I’m worried that he’ll get lost and wander too close to the facility. And you know what is out there, Inspector.”

An image flashed into Pekkala’s mind of Captain Samarin, impaled upon that rusty metal pipe. “All right, Yelena,” he said. “I’m on my way. In the meantime, try not to worry. Konstantin is a capable young man. I’m sure he knows how to take care of himself.”

ONE HOUR LATER, AS THE HEADLIGHTS OF THE EMKA BULLDOZED back the darkness on the long road that bordered the testing facility, Pekkala felt a sudden loss of power from the engine. While he was trying to figure out what might have caused it, the engine stumbled again.

He stared at the dials on the dashboard. Battery. Clock. Speedometer. Fuel. He muttered a curse. The fuel gauge, which had registered three-quarters full when he left the city, now slumped against empty. He remembered the mechanic who had told him the fuel gauge appeared to be sticking and should be replaced. Pekkala wished now that he’d taken the man’s advice. The engine seemed to groan. The headlights flickered. It was as if the car had swooned.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” snapped Pekkala.

As if to spite him, the engine chose that moment to die completely. Then there was only the sound of the tires rolling to a standstill as he steered the car to the side of the road.

Pekkala got out and looked around. He cursed in Finnish, which was a language well equipped for swearing. “Jumalauta!” he roared into the darkness.

The road stretched out ahead, shining dimly in the night mist. On either side, the forest rose black and impenetrable. Stars crowded down to the horizon, hanging like ornaments from the saw-blade tips of the pine trees.

Pekkala buttoned up his coat and started walking.

Fifteen minutes later, he reached the main gate.

Outside the guard shack, the night watchman sat on a little wooden stool, stirring a stick in a fire. The orange light made his skin glow, as if he had been sculpted out of amber.

“Good evening,” said Pekkala.

The guard leaped to his feet. The stool tipped over backwards. “Holy Mother of God!” he shouted.

“No,” said Pekkala quietly. “It’s me.”

Clumsily, the man regained his balance and immediately rushed into his shack. He reappeared a moment later, carrying a rifle. “Who the hell is out there?” he yelled at the dark.

“Inspector Pekkala.”

The guard lowered his rifle and peered at Pekkala through the wire mesh. “You scared me half to death!”

“My car broke down.”

This brought the guard to his senses. He set the rifle aside and opened the gate. The metal creaked as it opened.

“Is Maximov here?” asked Pekkala.

“He drove in just before sunset. He hasn’t come out since and I’ve been on duty the whole time.”

“Thank you,” said Pekkala and he headed off down the road towards the facility. A minute later, when he looked back, Pekkala could see the guard back on his stool, sitting by the fire, poking the flames with a stick.

With only a couple of hours before sunrise, Pekkala arrived at the muddy central yard of the facility. He found Maximov’s car parked outside the mess hut, where workers at the facility took their meals. The door was open. Inside, Pekkala discovered Maximov passed out on the floor, mouth open, breathing heavily. He nudged Maximov’s foot with the toe of his boot.

“Stop it,” muttered Maximov. “Leave me alone.”

“Wake up,” said Pekkala.

“I told you …” Maximov sat up. His head swung in a wobbly arc until he caught sight of Pekkala. “You!” he said. “What do you want?”

“Yelena Nagorski sent for me. She said you had been causing trouble.”

“I wasn’t causing trouble,” protested Maximov. “I love her. And I care for her son!”

“You have a strange way of showing it, Maximov.”

Maximov looked blearily around the room. “I might have said some things I shouldn’t have.”

Pekkala set his boot against Maximov’s chest. Gently he pushed the man over. “Leave Mrs. Nagorski alone.”

Maximov settled back onto the floor with a soft thump. “I love her,” he muttered again.

“Go back to your dreams,” said Pekkala, “while I borrow your car for a while.”

But Maximov had already fallen asleep.

Pekkala removed the keys from Maximov’s pocket and had just settled himself in the driver’s seat of Maximov’s car when a door opened in the Iron House and a man ran out towards him.

It was Gorenko. “Inspector? Is that you? I must speak with you, Inspector! I’ve done a terrible thing! Ushinsky showed up for work just after you and I spoke the other day. When he found out that one of our T-34’s had been sent to the factory for production, he practically went insane. It’s just as I told you he would. He said the prototype wasn’t ready and that we might as well deliver it to the Germans! I tried calling you, Inspector. I wanted you to speak to him, just like we had discussed, but there was no answer at your office, so I called Major Lysenkova instead. I told her what was happening. I said I just needed someone to talk some sense into him. Now I hear he’s been arrested. They’re holding him at the Lubyanka! Inspector, you’ve got to help him.”

Pekkala had been listening in teeth-clenched silence, but now he finally exploded. “What did you think was going to happen when you called Major Lysenkova?” he shouted. “Nagorski sheltered you from these people when he was alive, because he knew what they were capable of. You’ve been living in a bubble, Professor, out here at this facility. You don’t understand. These people are dangerous, even more dangerous than the weapons you’ve been building for them!”

“I was at my wit’s end with Ushinsky,” protested Gorenko, wringing his hands. “I just wanted someone to talk to him.”

“Well, someone has,” said Pekkala, “and now I’ve done all I can for your colleague.”

“There is something else, Inspector. Something I don’t understand.”

Pekkala turned the key in the ignition. “It will have to wait!” he shouted over the roar of the engine.

Gorenko raised his arms in a gesture of exasperation. Then he turned and walked back into the Iron House.

Pekkala wheeled the car around and drove towards the Nagorski house. As he raced along the muddy road, he wondered again what would become of Yelena and Konstantin now that the T-34 project was completed. Neither of them seemed prepared for the world beyond the gates of this facility. It’s too bad Maximov made such a fool of himself this evening, thought Pekkala. From what he knew about the man, Maximov might have made a good companion for Yelena and a decent father figure for the boy.

He was lost in these thoughts when suddenly he heard a loud snap and something struck the windshield. His first thought was that a bird had flown into it. This time of night, he told himself, it must have been owl. Cool air whistled in through the cracked glass. Pekkala was just debating whether to drive on or to pull over when the entire windshield exploded. Glass blew all over the inside of the driving compartment. He felt shards bouncing off his coat and a sharp pain in his cheek as a sliver embedded itself in his skin.

He did not realize he was losing control of the car until it was too late. The back wheels slewed, then the whole car spun in a roar of kicked-up grit and mud. There was a stunning slam, his head struck the side window, and suddenly everything became quiet.

Pekkala realized he was in the ditch. The car was facing the opposite direction from which he had been driving. Opening the door, he fell out into the wet grass. For a moment, he remained there on his hands and knees, not sure if he could stand, trying to get clear in his head what had happened. He was dizzy from the knock to his head, but he did not think he had been badly hurt. Slowly, he clambered to his feet. Upright, but on shaky legs, he slumped back against the side of the car.

Then he noticed someone standing in the road. All he could see was the silhouette of a man. “Who’s there?” he asked.

“You should have left when you could,” said the silhouette.

The voice was familiar, but Pekkala could not place it.

Then, out of the black, came the flash of a gunshot.

In that same instant, Pekkala heard the clank of a bullet striking the car door beside him.

“I warned you, Maximov!”

“I’m not Maximov!” shouted Pekkala.

The shadow walked towards him. It stood at the edge of the ditch, looking down at Pekkala. “Then who are you?”

Now Pekkala placed the voice. “Konstantin,” he said, “it’s me. Inspector Pekkala.”

The two were close enough now that Pekkala could make out the boy’s face and the pistol aimed at his chest.

From the short barrel with its slightly rounded end and the angled trigger guard joining the barrel at the front like the web of a man’s thumb, Pekkala recognized the weapon they’d been searching for. It was Nagorski’s PPK. In that moment, the truth came crashing down upon Pekkala. “What have you done, Konstantin?” he stammered as he climbed up out of the ditch.

“I thought you were Maximov. I saw his car …”

“I am talking about your father!” snarled Pekkala. He pointed at the PPK, still gripped in Konstantin’s fist. “We know that’s the weapon which was used to kill Colonel Nagorski. Why did you do it, Konstantin?”

For what seemed like a long time, the boy did not reply.

Their breathing fogged the air between them.

Slowly, Pekkala held out his hand. “Son,” he said, “there is nowhere you can go.”

Hearing these words, Konstantin’s eyes filled with tears. After a moment’s hesitation, he placed the PPK upon Pekkala’s open hand.

Pekkala’s fingers closed around the metal. “Why did you do it?” he repeated.

“Because it was his fault,” said Konstantin. “At least, I thought it was.”

“What happened on that day?”

“It was my birthday. The week before, when my father asked me what I wanted, I told him I would like a ride in the tank. At first he said it was impossible. My mother would never allow it. But then he said that if I promised not to tell her, he would take me out in the machine, out into the proving ground. My mother thought he had forgotten about the birthday altogether. They started arguing. By then, I almost didn’t care.”

“Why not?” asked Pekkala.

“Maximov sent me a letter. A letter in a birthday card.”

“What did the letter say?”

“He told me that my parents were splitting up. He said he thought I should know, because they weren’t going to tell me themselves.”

“They were going to tell you,” said Pekkala, “as soon as you moved back to Moscow. It was for the best, Konstantin. Besides, this was none of Maximov’s business. And why would he tell you on your birthday?”

“I don’t know,” replied Konstantin. “For news like that, one day is as bad as another.”

“Do you still have that letter?”

Konstantin pulled a canvas wallet out of his pocket. From a jumble of crumpled bills and coins, he removed the folded letter. “I must have read it a hundred times by now. I keep waiting for the words to tell me something different.”

Pekkala looked at the letter. He couldn’t read it very well in the dark, but from what he could see, it was exactly as Konstantin described. “May I keep this for a while?” he asked.

“I don’t need it anymore,” the boy whispered. He seemed close to tears. Everything seemed to be catching up with him at once.

“Did you tell your parents what was in the letter?” asked Pekkala, folding the page and placing it inside his ID book for safekeeping.

“What would be the point of that?” asked Konstantin. “I was always afraid they would break up. When I read the letter, a part of me already knew. And I knew Maximov would never lie. He looked after me. More than my own parents.”

“So what did you do?”

“I met up with my father, just as we had planned. He brought me to the proving ground and let me drive the tank, through the puddles, over the bumps, sliding around in the mud. My father was enjoying himself. It was one of the few times I had ever seen him laughing. I should have been enjoying myself, too, but all I could think about was Maximov’s letter. The more I thought about it, the more angry I became with my father, that he had chosen this damned machine over our family. I couldn’t stand the thought of him hurting me and my mother any more than he’d already done. We stopped the tank out in the middle of the proving ground, in the middle of a muddy pit. We sank down into it. I thought the water would pour in at any moment. I was afraid we were going to drown inside that tank. But my father wasn’t even worried. He said this machine could drive through anything. We couldn’t hear each other properly. It was too noisy in the driving compartment. So we kept the engine running, put the gears in neutral, and climbed out on top of the turret.”

“And what happened then?” asked Pekkala.

“He turned to me, and suddenly he wasn’t laughing anymore. ‘Whatever happens,’ he said, ‘I want you to know that I love your mother very much.’ He started to climb back inside. That was when the gun fell out of his pocket. It landed on the back of the tank, just above the engine compartment. Because I was closest to it, my father asked me to fetch the pistol, so I did. Until I picked up the gun, I hadn’t thought about hurting him, I swear it. But then I started thinking about what he had just said—about loving my mother. I couldn’t bear to let him tell me such a lie and get away with it. He was standing on the turret with his back to me, looking out over that muddy field as if it was the most beautiful place on earth.”

“And that was when you shot him?”

The boy didn’t answer his question. “I had been so furious with him only a second before, but when I saw him fall into the water, all of that anger suddenly evaporated. I couldn’t believe what I’d done. I don’t know how to say this, Inspector, but even with the gun in my hand, I wasn’t even sure I had done it. It was as if someone else had pulled the trigger. I don’t know how long I stood there. It felt like a long time, but it may only have been a few seconds. Then I climbed back inside the tank, put it in gear and tried to drive it out of the pit.”

“Why?”

“I panicked. I thought maybe I could make it look like an accident. No one else knew I was with my father that day. Even my mother didn’t know. But I didn’t really understand how to work the engine. When I was halfway out of the pit, the motor stalled and the machine slid back into the water. Then I got out and ran to the supply building. I hid there for a long time. I was covered in mud. I was too scared to move. But then, when the soldiers arrived, I knew I had to get away, so I bolted into the woods. That was when you came after me, and when Captain Samarin was killed.”

“But how did you know the safe path through those woods? Weren’t you afraid of the traps?”

“My father hammered little metal disks into the trees. There is a color scheme. Red, blue, yellow. As long as you keep following that sequence of colors, you are on a safe path through the woods. He never told that to anyone else except me.”

Already, in his mind, Pekkala had begun to run through exactly what would happen to Konstantin now. The boy was old enough to be tried as an adult. Whatever the extenuating circumstances, he would almost certainly be executed for his crime. Pekkala thought back to his first conversation with Konstantin, when the boy had pleaded with him to track down his father’s killers. “Find them,” Konstantin had said. “Find them and put them to death.” Hidden in those words, spoken to the man whom Konstantin must have known would one day track him down, was an acceptance of the penalty he realized he’d have to pay.

“Please believe me, Inspector,” pleaded Konstantin. “I was not trying to harm you. I saw Maximov’s car coming down the road and I thought it must be him. I don’t even understand why you are here.”

“Your mother called me. She was worried about you, after Maximov’s visit this evening. His car was the only one available. What I don’t understand, Konstantin, is that if you trusted Maximov, why were you trying to kill him just now?”

“Because, after everything that’s happened, I don’t know who to trust anymore. When he showed up this evening, he had gone wild. We yelled at him to go away and I believed that was the end of it, but when I saw his car coming back, I thought he was going to kill us.”

“For what it’s worth,” said Pekkala, “I don’t think Maximov would ever try to hurt you, and I really do believe that, in his own way, he loves your mother.” His cuts and bruises were beginning to throb. “Why did you run into the forest after he left?”

Konstantin shrugged with a gesture of helplessness. “Maximov said my mother had been having an affair. I was afraid he might be telling the truth and I could not bear to hear my mother say the words.”

“He was telling the truth. I know he shouldn’t have written that letter or said anything about your mother’s affair, but people do strange things when they are in love. Believe me, Konstantin—very strange things.”

Konstantin’s voice cracked. “So it wasn’t my father’s fault that he and my mother were splitting up.”

“I’m sure if your father were here,” said Pekkala, “he would tell you they were both to blame.” He rested his hand on Konstantin’s shoulder. “I need you to come with me now.” One glance at Maximov’s car told Pekkala that it wasn’t going anywhere. “We’ll have to travel on foot.”

“Whatever you say, Inspector.” His voice sounded almost relieved.

Pekkala had seen this kind of thing before. For some people, the burden of waiting to be caught was far worse than whatever might happen to them afterwards. He had known men to walk briskly to their deaths, bounding up the gallows steps, impatient to be gone from this earth.

It was a January morning. Ice floes drifted down the Neva River into Petrograd, then drifted out again with the tide, heading for the Baltic Sea.

In a small motor launch, Pekkala, the Tsar, and his son, the Tsarevich Alexei, traveled out towards the grim ramparts of the prison island of St. Peter and St. Paul.

The three of them stood huddled in their coats, while the launch pilot maneuvered around miniature icebergs, twisting like dancers in the current. Alexei wore a military uniform without insignia, as well as a fur cap, exactly matching the clothes of his father.

They had set out before dawn from Tsarskoye Selo. Now, several hours later, the sun had risen, reflecting pale and milky off the huge stones which made up the outer walls of the prison.

“I want you to see this,” the Tsar had told Pekkala, after summoning him to his study.

“What is the nature of the visit, Majesty?”

“You’ll know when we get there,” replied the Tsar.

As they arrived at the island, the fortress towered above them, its battlements like blunted teeth against the dirty winter sky. Leathery streamers of seaweed clung to the lower walls, and the waves which slapped against the stone looked as thick and black as tar.

Alexei was lifted from the boat and the three of them walked up the concrete ramp to the main prison door.

Inside, a guard in a greatcoat which stretched to his ankles escorted them down a series of stone steps to an underground level. Here, frost rimed the walls and the damp chill seeped through their clothing. Pekkala had been here before, but never in winter. It did not seem possible that anyone could survive for long in these conditions. And he knew that in the spring, when the cells flooded knee-deep in water, the dungeons were even worse.

The only light in this stone corridor was an oil lamp carried by the guard, illuminating small wooden doors built into the walls. The guard’s shadow teetered drunkenly ahead of him.

The guard led them to one cell and opened the door. Behind the door was a set of bars which formed a second door, so that those on the outside could see who’d been confined inside without any risk of letting them escape.

When the guard held up the lamp, Pekkala looked through the bars at a man strangely hunched on the ground. Only his knees and elbows and the tips of his toes touched the floor. His head rested in his hands and he appeared to be asleep.

Alexei turned to the guard. “Why is he like that?”

“The prisoner is preserving his body heat, Excellency. That is the only way he will not freeze to death.”

“Tell him to get up,” said the Tsar.

“On your feet!” boomed the guard.

At first, the man did not move. Only when the guard jangled his keys, ready to burst into the cell and haul the man up, did the prisoner finally stand.

Pekkala recognized him now, although just barely. It was the killer Grodek, convicted two months previously for leading an attempt on the life of the Tsar. The trial had been swift and held in secret. After the verdict, Grodek, who was barely older than Alexei himself, had disappeared into the catacombs of the Russian prison system. Pekkala assumed that Grodek had simply been executed. Even though he had failed to assassinate the Tsar, to attempt it, or even to speak of it, was a capital offense. In addition, Grodek had managed to kill several Okhrana agents before Pekkala caught up with him on the Potsuleyev Bridge. It was more than enough to consign this young man to oblivion.

Now only the shape of his face looked familiar to Pekkala. His hair had been shaved off, and scabies sores patched the dome of his scalp. Prison clothing hung in rags from his emaciated body, and his skin bore the gray polished look of filth which was as old as his imprisonment. His sunken eyes, so alert at the trial, stared huge and vacant from their bluish sockets.

Grodek backed against the wall, shivering uncontrollably, his arms crossed over his chest. To Pekkala, it was hard to believe that this was the same person who had shouted defiantly from the witness stand, cursing the monarchy and everything it stood for.

“Who’s there?” Grodek asked, squinting at the light of the oil lamp. “What do you want from me?”

“I have brought someone to see you,” said the guard.

Now the Tsar turned to the guard. “Leave us,” he ordered.

“Yes, Majesty.” The guard set down the lantern and made his way back along the corridor, touching the walls with his hands to find his way.

Now that he was no longer blinded by the lantern light, Grodek could see his visitors. “Mother of God,” he whispered.

The Tsar waited until the sound of the guard’s footsteps had faded away before he spoke to Grodek. “You know me,” he said.

“I do,” replied Grodek.

“And my son, Alexei,” said the Tsar, resting his hands on the young man’s shoulders.

Grodek nodded but said nothing.

“This man,” the Tsar told Alexei, “is guilty of murder, and of attempted murder. He tried to kill me, but he failed.”

“Yes,” said Grodek. “I failed, but I have set something in motion that will end in your death, and the termination of your way of life.”

“You see!” said the Tsar, raising his voice for the first time. “You see how he is still defiant?”

“Yes, Father,” said Alexei.

“And what is to be done with him, Alexei? He is your own blood—a distant relative, but family all the same.”

“I don’t know what should happen,” said the boy. Pekkala heard a tremble in his voice.

“Someday, Alexei,” said the Tsar, “you will have to make decisions about whether men like this live or die.”

Grodek stepped forward to the middle of the cell, where the imprints of his knees and elbows dented the mud beneath his feet. “It may come as a surprise that I have nothing against you or your son,” he said. “My struggle is against what you stand for. You are a symbol of all that is wrong with the world. It is for this reason that I have fought against you.”

“You have also become a symbol,” replied the Tsar, “which I suspect was what you wanted all along. And as for your noble reasons for attempting to shoot me in the back, they are nothing but lies. But I did not come here to gloat over your current situation. I came here because, in a few moments, my son will decide what is to be done with you.”

Alexei turned to look at his father, as confused and frightened as the young man behind the bars.

“But I am to be executed,” said Grodek. “The guards tell me that every day.”

“And that may still happen,” replied the Tsar. “If my son decrees it.”

“I don’t want to kill that man,” said Alexei.

The Tsar patted his son on the shoulder. “You will not kill anyone, Alexei. That is not your task in life.”

“But you are asking me to say if he should die!” protested the boy.

“Yes,” replied the Tsar.

Grodek dropped to his knees, his hands resting palms up on the floor. “Excellency.” He addressed the Tsarevich. “You and I are not so different. In another time and place, we might even have been friends. What separates us is only these bars and the things we have seen in this world.”

“Are you innocent?” Alexei asked. “Did you try to kill my father?”

Grodek was silent.

Water dripped somewhere in the shadows. Pekkala heard waves break against the fortress walls, like thunder in the distance.

“Yes, I did,” said Grodek.

“And what would you do now,” asked the Tsarevich, “if I opened this door and let you out?”

“I would go far away from here,” Grodek promised. “You would never hear from me again.”

Already, the damp of this dungeon had worked its way into Pekkala’s skin. Now he shuddered as it coiled around his bones.

Alexei turned to his father. “Do not execute this man. Keep him here in this cell for the rest of his life.”

“Please, Excellency,” Grodek begged. “I never see the sun. The food they give me is not fit even for a dog. Let me leave! Let me go away. I’ll disappear. I’d rather die than stay any longer in this cell.”

Turning again, Alexei fixed Grodek with a stare. “Then find a way to kill yourself,” he replied. The fear had gone from his eyes.

The Tsar brought his face close to the bars. “How dare you say you are the same as him. You are nothing like my son. Remember this: Alexei will rule my country when I’m gone, and if you live to see that day, it will be because he is merciful to animals like you.”

Heading back across the water, Pekkala stood beside the Tsar. He breathed greedily, filling his lungs with the cold salt air and chasing the stench of that prison from his lungs.

“You think me cruel, Pekkala?” The Tsar faced straight ahead, eyes on the shore.

“I don’t know what to think,” he replied.

“He needs to learn the burden of command.”

“And why bring me to see it, Majesty?”

“One day he will rely on you, Pekkala, as I am relying on you now. You must know his strengths and weaknesses better than he knows them himself. Above all, his weaknesses.”

“What do you mean, Majesty?”

The Tsar glanced at him and looked away again. A layer of frost had formed where his breath touched the lapels of his coat. “When I was young, my father brought me to that island. He took me to the dungeon and showed me a man who had conspired to murder him. I had to make the same choice as Alexei.”

“And what did you do, Majesty?”

“I shot the man myself.” The Tsar paused. “My son has a gentle heart, Pekkala, and you and I both know that in this world all gentleness is crushed eventually.”

Less than five years later, having been released by Revolutionary Guards from the prison of St. Peter and St. Paul, Grodek caught up with the Romanovs in the town of Ekaterinburg in western Siberia. It was there, in the basement of a house belonging to a merchant named Ipatiev, that Grodek shot the young Tsarevich, and all the other members of his family.

PEKKALA AND KONSTANTIN MADE THEIR WAY ALONG THE DARK ROAD, headed towards the facility.

As they walked, Pekkala tried to fathom what must have been going on in Konstantin’s mind in that moment when he picked up the gun to shoot his father. There were some crimes Pekkala understood. Even the motives for murder made sense to him sometimes. Unchecked fear or greed or jealousy could push anyone to the brink of their own sanity. What happened beyond that point even the murderers themselves could not predict.

Pekkala remembered the last time he had seen his own father—that day on the train as it pulled out of the station. But now the image seemed strangely reversed. He stood not on the train but on the platform, seeing through the eyes of his father. Almost out of sight, he glimpsed the young man he had been, arm raised in farewell as he leaned from the window of the carriage, bound for Petrograd and the ranks of the Tsar’s Finnish Regiment.

Then the train was gone and he found himself alone. Sadness wrapped around his heart as he turned and walked out of the station. In that moment, Pekkala grasped something he had never understood before—that his father must have known they would not meet again. And if, in the end, the old man had not forgiven him for leaving, it was only because there had been nothing to forgive.

As the image stuttered into emptiness, like a reel of film clattering off its spool, Pekkala’s thoughts returned to the present. And he wondered if Nagorski might also have forgiven his son, if he could have found the breath to do so.

By the time they arrived at the facility, the sky was already beginning to lighten.

Pekkala rapped on the door of the Iron House and stood back.

Konstantin waited beside him, resigned to whatever happened next.

The door opened. A waft of stuffy air blew past them, smelling of old tobacco and gun oil. Gorenko filled up the doorway. He had pulled on his dingy lab coat and was fastening its black metal buttons, like a man welcoming guests to his home. “Inspector,” he said. “I thought you had gone back to Moscow for the night.” Then he caught sight of Konstantin and smiled. “Hello, young man! What brings you here so early in the morning?”

“Hello, Professor.” Konstantin could not return the smile. Instead, his whole face just seemed to crumple.

“I need you to watch him,” Pekkala told Gorenko. “I regret he will need to be handcuffed.”

“Handcuffs?” Gorenko’s eyes grew wide with astonishment. “He’s the colonel’s son. I can’t do that!”

“This is not a request,” said Pekkala.

“Inspector,” said Konstantin, “I give you my word I will not try to run away.”

“I know,” Pekkala answered quietly. “Believe me, I do, Konstantin, but from now on, there are procedures we must follow.”

“I don’t have any handcuffs!” protested Gorenko.

Pekkala reached into his pocket and brought out a set. A key was clipped onto the chain. He handed them to Gorenko. “Now you do.”

Gorenko stared at the cuffs. “But for how long?”

“A couple of hours, I expect. My car ran out of fuel back on the road. I have to get out there with some gasoline and then return to the facility. Then I will pick up Konstantin and we will travel back to Moscow. Until I tell you so myself, no one is to see him or to speak with him. Do you understand?”

Gorenko stared at Konstantin. “My dear boy,” he pleaded, “what have you gone and done?” The old professor seemed so confused that it looked as if Konstantin might have to lock the handcuffs on himself.

“Where do you store your fuel, Professor?” asked Pekkala.

“There are five-liter cans on a pallet on the other side of this building. Two of those would be more than enough to get you back to Moscow.”

Pekkala put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he said, as he turned to leave.

“Inspector,” Gorenko called after him, “I must speak with you. It is a matter of great importance.”

“We can talk about Ushinsky later,” said Pekkala.

“It’s not about him,” insisted Gorenko. “Something has happened. Something I don’t understand.”

Pekkala stared at him for a moment, then shook his head, walked into the building and handcuffed Konstantin to a table. Only then did he turn to Gorenko. “Follow me,” he said.

Around the side of the building, Pekkala picked up two fuel cans from the pallet. “What is it, Professor?” The cans were heavy and the liquid sloshed about in them. He hoped he would have the strength to carry them all the way back to the Emka.

“It’s about the tank.” Gorenko lowered his voice. “The one they sent to the factory in Stalingrad.”

“The prototype? What about it?”

“The tank has not arrived. I called to check. You know, in case there were questions.”

“It’s a long way to Stalingrad from here. Perhaps the truck broke down.”

“No, Inspector. I’m afraid that’s not it. You see, when I called them, they told me they had never put in a request for the tank.”

Slowly, Pekkala lowered the fuel cans to the ground. “But they must have. You saw the requisition form, didn’t you?”

“Yes. I have it here.” Gorenko rummaged in the pocket of his lab coat and produced a crumpled yellow paper. “This is my copy. I was going to frame it.”

Holding up the page so that he could read it in the lights which illuminated the compound, Pekkala searched the form for anything out of the ordinary. It was a standard government requisition form, correctly filled out by someone at the Stalingrad Tractor Factory, which he knew had been converted to tank production. The factory designation code looked right—KhPZ 183/STZ. The signature was so hastily scrawled as to be illegible, as most of them were on these forms. There was nothing unusual at all.

“I received a call the day before the truck arrived,” continued Gorenko, “from someone at the Stalingrad works, informing me about the requisition and telling me to prepare the tank for transport.”

“Did you mention that to the people in Stalingrad?”

“Yes.”

“And what did they say?”

“That they never telephoned me, Inspector.”

“This is probably just a miscommunication. Mistakes like this happen all the time. Was there anything suspicious about the truck or its driver?”

“No. It was just a big truck, like you see on the Moscow Highway every day. The driver even knew Maximov.”

“Knew him?”

Gorenko nodded. “I saw the two of them talking together after the tank had been loaded on board. It didn’t seem unusual to me. They are both drivers of one sort or another. I assumed they must have gotten to know each other the same way that professors become acquainted through their work, even if they live at opposite ends of the country.”

“This truck,” said Pekkala, “was it a flatbed or a container?”

“I don’t know what you mean, Inspector.”

“Did the tank sit on a platform at the back or was it inside a cargo area?”

“Oh, I see. Yes. It was a container. A large metal container big enough to hold the tank.”

“How did the driver get the tank into the container?”

“He drove it in himself. I showed the man how to operate the T-34’s gears and pedals. It only took him a minute to get the hang of it. Anyone who knows how to operate a tractor or a bulldozer is already familiar with the principles. Then he rolled the tank up a ramp and into the container.”

“And the container was sealed?”

“Yes, with two large metal doors.”

“What did this container look like?”

“It was painted red, with the State Transport Commission letters painted in green on the side.”

Like almost every other container on the highway, thought Pekkala. “And the driver? What did he look like?”

“Short, heavyset. Mustache.” Gorenko shrugged. “He seemed friendly enough.”

“Have you spoken to Maximov about this? Perhaps he knows how to reach the man.”

“I tried to, but he was too drunk to make any sense.”

“Fetch me a bucket of water,” said Pekkala.

FOR A MOMENT, THE RAGGED SILVER ARC SEEMED TO HANG SUSPENDED over the sleeping Maximov. Then the water shattered on his face, as if it were a pane of glass. Maximov sat bolt upright, spewing a mouthful of water from between his puckered lips.

Pekkala tossed the bucket to the other side of the room, where it rolled, clattering loudly into the corner.

“Mudak!” shouted Maximov. He doubled over, coughing, then swiped the water from his eyes and glared at Pekkala. “I thought you were going to let me sleep!”

“I was,” replied Pekkala, “but now I need you to tell me something.”

“What?”

“What is the name of the driver who picked up the tank from this facility?”

“How should I know?” groaned Maximov, smoothing the hair back on his head.

“You knew the driver. Gorenko saw you talking.”

“He was asking me directions. That’s all. Why?”

“The tank has not arrived in Stalingrad.”

“Then perhaps he is a very slow driver.” Maximov ran his hand over his mouth. “What’s the matter, Pekkala? Has your sorcery failed you at last?”

“Sorcery?” Pekkala crouched down in front of the big man. “There never was any sorcery, Maximov, but I’ve been in this job long enough to know when I’m being lied to. I see the way your back straightened when I mentioned that the tank had disappeared. I see your eyes drifting up and to the right when you are talking to me now. I see you covering your mouth, and I can read those signs like you can tell when it will rain by looking at the clouds. So tell me: Who has that machine and where have they taken it? You don’t want this on your conscience.”

“Conscience!” spat Maximov. “You’re the one who needs to search his conscience! You took an oath to serve the Tsar. Just because he’s dead doesn’t mean that oath no longer applies.”

“You’re right,” agreed Pekkala. “I did take an oath, and what I swore to do I’m doing now.”

“Then I pity you, Pekkala, because while you’re wasting your time talking to me, an old friend of yours is deciding the fate of this country.”

“You must be mistaken,” said Pekkala. “All of my old friends are dead.”

“Not this one!” laughed Maximov. “Not Alexander Kropotkin.”

Pekkala saw again the wide jaw, the strong teeth clenched in a smile and shoulders hunched like a bear. “No,” whispered Pekkala. “That’s impossible. He just asked me for a job in the police.”

“Asking for a job? No, Pekkala—he was offering you a chance to work with us. The White Guild could have used a man like you.”

It took a moment for Maximov’s words to sink in. “The Guild?”

“That’s right. But he said the Communists had gotten to you. The incorruptible Emerald Eye had finally been corrupted!”

Now, as Pekkala recalled the words of his last conversation with Kropotkin, it all began to turn around inside his brain. He had utterly misunderstood. “How did you find Kropotkin?”

“I didn’t,” replied Maximov. “He found me. Kropotkin was the one who figured out that the White Guild was just a front for luring Stalin’s enemies to their deaths. He decided to turn the White Guild against the Communists.”

“And it was you who killed those agents, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, and he ordered me to kill you as well. I would have, if Bruno hadn’t gotten in the way.”

“That was you, outside the Cafe Tilsit. But why?”

“Kropotkin had decided to give you one more chance to join us. Every day he waited at that cafe, knowing you’d show up eventually. When you turned him down, he made a call to me. I drove to the cafe on a motorcycle. When I saw you lying on the ground, I thought I’d killed you. It was only later that I found out you were still alive. From the apartments of the agents we killed, we managed to steal enough weapons and ammunition to keep us supplied for months. We even got our hands on a brand-new German motorcycle which one of the agents had parked in the middle of his living room! That’s the one I was riding when I took a shot at you. Then Kropotkin came up with the idea of stealing a T-34. By the time you people figured out what happened, it would already be too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“To stop the war we are about to declare.”

Pekkala was wondering whether Maximov had gone completely insane. “You might have been able to murder some government agents, but do you really think the White Guild can overthrow this country?”

“No,” replied Maximov, “but Germany can. They are looking for any excuse to invade us. All we have to do is offer them a reason. And what better reason than an attack across the Polish border by the Soviet Union’s newest, most devastating weapon? If we strike Poland, the Germans will see it as an act of aggression against the West. That is all the reason they need.”

“How much damage do you think could be done by a single tank?”

“Kropotkin has chosen a place where the Poles have nothing but cavalry units on their border with us. One tank could wipe out an entire brigade.”

“But don’t you realize what the Nazis will do to this country if they invade? We are not prepared to defend ourselves.”

“Kropotkin says that the quicker we are defeated, the less bloodshed there will be.”

“That’s a lie, Maximov! You may have taken an oath to the Tsar, but do you honestly think this is what he would have wanted? You will have unleashed a thing you can’t control. The Germans won’t just overthrow the Communists. They will turn this place into a wasteland.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“But Kropotkin does! You might think that you’re both fighting for the same cause, but I have known Kropotkin for a long time and I have seen his kind before. His only cause is vengeance for a world that no longer exists. All he wants to do is see this country burn.”

“Then let it burn,” replied Maximov. “I am not afraid.”

Hearing this, Pekkala was consumed by rage. He lunged at Maximov, grabbing him by the lapels of his jacket and heaving him across the room.

Maximov crashed against the far wall of the mess hut and slumped down with a groan.

“Have you stopped to think that you are not the only one who will go down in flames?” Pekkala shouted. “Kropotkin doesn’t care who lives or dies! That’s the difference between you and him. There are people you care about who will suffer even more than you. Yelena, for example. And Konstantin. He is already under arrest.”

“Listen, Pekkala,” growled Maximov, massaging the back of his head. “He had nothing to do with the Guild. You had no right to arrest him for a thing he did not even know about.”

“I arrested him,” said Pekkala, “because he murdered his father.”

Maximov froze. His face turned suddenly pale. “What?”

“Who do you think killed Colonel Nagorski?”

“I don’t know! It wasn’t us. That’s all I knew for sure. It might have been any number of people. Almost every one who met Nagorski ended up hating the bastard. But it couldn’t have been Konstantin!”

“How did you expect him to react after you wrote him that letter?”

“What letter? What the devil are you talking about?”

“The one you sent him on his birthday, telling him his parents were about to split up.”

“Have you lost your mind? I never wrote him any letter and even if I did, I wouldn’t have told him such a thing. That poor boy was already close to the breaking point. Why would I want to make things any worse for him, especially on his birthday?”

“Then how do you explain this?” Pekkala walked across to where Maximov was still slumped against the wall and held up the page in front of him.

Maximov squinted at the letter. “That’s not my writing.”

“Then whose is it? And why would they sign your name to it?”

“I—” Maximov’s face was a mask of confusion. “I don’t know.”

“Who else knew about the breakup besides you and the Nagorskis?”

“What could be gained …?” asked Maximov. Then suddenly he shuddered. “Let me see the letter again!”

Pekkala handed it to him.

Maximov stared at it. “Oh, no,” he whispered. Slowly, he raised his head. “This is Kropotkin’s writing.”

“What did you tell him about the Nagorskis?”

“Only that I didn’t want them involved. I knew that Nagorski and his wife were splitting up. They had been trying to keep it a secret. Konstantin was already on edge. I knew that once he realized what was going on between his parents, it would destroy his whole world.”

“Did Kropotkin know about the affair with Lev Zalka?”

“No,” replied Maximov. “Only that Nagorski was divorcing his wife.”

“After what you told him, Kropotkin must have guessed that the boy might try something like this. That way, he could not only steal the T-34 but also get rid of the man who invented it.”

“But how did Konstantin get hold of a gun?”

“Nagorski’s PPK was found in his possession. He fired it at me earlier this evening. The thing is, Maximov—the person he was trying to shoot was you.”

“Me? But why would he do that? He knows I would never do anything to harm him or his mother.”

“I believe that you care for them, Maximov, and if you hadn’t shown up drunk, you might have been a little more convincing. Instead, all you managed to do was terrify them.”

“What will they do to him now?” Maximov asked, dazed by what he had heard.

“Konstantin is guilty of murder. You know what they will do to him.”

“Kropotkin swore to me he’d keep them out of it …” whispered Maximov.

“Then help me stop him,” said Pekkala. “Kropotkin has betrayed you, and whatever you think of me, that’s not a thing I ever did.”

Maximov shuddered again. Then, finally, he spoke. “If I help you, you will see to it that Konstantin does not get sent to jail. Or worse.”

“I’ll do what I can for the boy, but you are guilty of murder and treason, not to mention trying to blow my head off—”

“I need no help from you, Pekkala. Just do what you can for Konstantin.”

“I promise,” said Pekkala.

Maximov seemed about to speak, but then he paused, as if he could not bring himself to give up Kropotkin, no matter what the man had done to him.

“Maximov,” Pekkala said gently. Hearing his name spoken seemed to snap him out of it.

“Kropotkin is heading for some place called Rusalka on the Polish border. It’s in the middle of a forest. I could show you on a map. How do you plan on stopping him?”

“One tank can be stopped by another,” said Pekkala. “Even if it is a T-34, we could send in a whole division to stop him.”

“That is exactly what Kropotkin would want you to do. The sudden arrival of troops in a quiet sector on the border is bound to be misinterpreted by the Poles. And if fighting breaks out, even if it is on our side of the border, Germany will have no trouble seeing that as an act of aggression.”

“Then we will have to go in there alone,” Pekkala told him.

“What? The two of us?” Maximov laughed. “And supposing we do track him down? What then? Will you just knock on the side of the tank and order him to come out? Pekkala, I will help you, but I am not a miracle worker—”

“No,” interrupted Pekkala. “You are an assassin, and for now, I am glad of that fact.”

LEAVING A GUARD IN CHARGE OF MAXIMOV, PEKKALA WENT TO FIND Gorenko in the Iron House.

Gorenko and Konstantin sat side by side on a couple of ammunition crates, like two men waiting for a bus. The handcuffs hung so loosely on Konstantin’s wrists that Pekkala knew the boy could have let them slip off without any effort at all if he had chosen to.

“Is there anything that can destroy a T-34?” asked Pekkala.

“Well,” said Gorenko, “it all depends …”

“I need an answer now, Gorenko.”

“All right,” he replied reluctantly. “There is a weapon we have been working on.” He led Pekkala to a corner of the building and pointed to something which had been covered with a sheet of canvas. “Here it is.” Gorenko removed the canvas, revealing a long wooden crate with rope handles and a coat of fresh Russian army paint, the color of rotten apples. “No one is supposed to know about this.”

“Open it,” said Pekkala.

Down on one knee, Gorenko flipped the latches of the crate and lifted the lid. Inside was a narrow iron tube. It took Pekkala a moment to realize that this was actually some kind of gun. A thick, curved pad at the end was designed to fit into the user’s shoulder, and another pad had been attached to the side, presumably to shield the user’s face when the gun was put to use. In front of these, he could see a large pistol grip, and a curved metal guard protecting the trigger. The weapon had a carrying handle about halfway up the tube and a set of bipod legs for stabilizing it. Attached to the end of the barrel was a squared-off piece of metal, which Pekkala assumed must be a muzzle-flash hider. The whole device looked crude and unreliable—a far cry from the neatly machined parts of his Webley revolver or the intricate assembly of Nagorski’s PPK.

“What is it?” asked Pekkala.

“This,” replied Gorenko, unable to conceal his pride in the invention, “is the PTRD, which stands for ‘Protivo Tankovoye Ruzhyo Degtyaryova.’ ”

“You have no imagination when it comes to names,” said Pekkala.

“I know,” replied Gorenko. “I even have a cat named Cat.”

Pekkala pointed at the gun. “That will stop a tank?”

Gorenko reached for a green metal box which had been fitted into the wooden case. “To be precise, Inspector,” he replied, lifting the lid of the box and taking out one of the largest bullets Pekkala had ever seen, “this is what will stop a tank.” Then he hesitated. “Or it should. But it’s not ready yet. The final product could be years away. And in the meantime, the whole thing is top secret!”

“Not anymore,” Pekkala told him.

FROM THE TELEPHONE IN CAPTAIN SAMARIN’S OFFICE, PEKKALA PUT in a call to Stalin’s office at the Kremlin.

Poskrebyshev answered. He was always the one who answered the phone, even at night.

When he heard the man’s voice, Pekkala found himself wondering if Poskrebyshev ever left the building.

“Put me through to Comrade Stalin,” Pekkala told the secretary.

“It is late,” replied Poskrebyshev.

“No,” said Pekkala, “it is early.”

Poskrebyshev’s voice disappeared with a click as he rerouted the call to Stalin’s residence.

A moment later, a gruff voice came on the line. “What is it, Pekkala?”

Pekkala explained what had happened.

“Konstantin Nagorski has confessed to killing his father?” asked Stalin, as if he could not understand what he’d been told.

“That is correct,” replied Pekkala. “He will be transferred to Lubyanka first thing in the morning.”

“This confession—was it obtained in the same manner as the other?”

“No,” said Pekkala. “It did not require force.” He looked at the mess of papers on Samarin’s desk. It seemed as if no one had touched them since the captain had died. In one corner stood a small framed picture of Samarin with a woman who must have been his wife.

“Do you believe,” asked Stalin, “that this man Ushinsky really intended to hand over the T-34 to the Germans?”

“No, Comrade Stalin. I do not.”

“And yet you are telling me that one of the tanks has gone missing?”

“That is also correct, but Ushinsky had nothing to do with it.” Pekkala heard the rustle of a match as Stalin lit himself a cigarette.

“This is the second time,” growled Stalin, “that Major Lysenkova has provided me with faulty information.”

“Comrade Stalin, I believe I can locate the missing T-34. I have narrowed the search to an area of dense woodland on the Polish border. It is a place called the forest of Rusalka.”

“The tank is armed?”

“Fully armed, Comrade Stalin.”

“But there’s only one man! Is that what you are telling me? Can he operate it by himself?”

“The process of driving, loading, aiming, and firing can be accomplished by a single person. The procedures take considerably more time, but—”

“But the tank is just as dangerous in the hands of one person as it is with an entire crew of—how many is it?”

“Four men, Comrade Stalin. And the answer is yes. One person who knows what he is doing can turn the T-34 into an extremely dangerous machine.”

There was a silence. Then Stalin exploded. “I will send an entire infantry division to the area! The Fifth Rifles will do. I will also send the Third Armored Division. They don’t have T-34’s, but they can get in his way until he’s run out of ammunition. I don’t care how many men it takes to stop it. I don’t care how many machines. I’ll send the entire Soviet army after the bastard if I need to!”

“Then you will give the Germans just the excuse they have been looking for.”

There was another pause.

“You may be right about that,” admitted Stalin, “but, whatever it costs, I will not allow that traitor to go free.”

Pekkala heard the sound of Stalin exhaling. He imagined the gray haze of tobacco smoke around Stalin’s head.

“There is a special detachment specializing in irregular warfare. It’s run by a Major Derevenko. They are a small group. We could send them instead.”

“I am glad to hear it, Comrade Stalin.”

There was a clatter as Stalin put down the receiver and then picked up a second telephone. “Get me Major Derevenko of the irregular warfare detachment in Kiev,” Pekkala heard him command. “Why not? When was that? Are you sure? I did?” Stalin slammed the phone down. A second later he was back on the line with Pekkala.

“Derevenko has been liquidated. The irregular warfare detachment was disbanded. I can’t send in the army.”

“No, Comrade Stalin.”

“Then you are suggesting I simply allow the attack to go ahead?”

“My suggestion is that you allow me to go out there and stop him.”

“You, Pekkala?”

“I will not be completely alone,” he explained. “My assistant will accompany me, and there is one other man. His name is Maximov.”

“You mean the one who helped Kropotkin steal the tank?”

“Yes. He has agreed to cooperate.”

“And you need this man?”

“I believe he is our best chance of negotiating with Kropotkin.”

“And what if Kropotkin won’t negotiate?”

“Then there are other measures we can take.”

“Other measures?” asked Stalin. “What sorcery have you got planned, Pekkala?”

“Not sorcery. Tungsten steel.”

“A new weapon?”

“Yes,” replied Pekkala. “It is still in the experimental stage. We will be testing it before we leave.”

“Why haven’t I heard about this?”

“As with most things, Comrade Stalin, Nagorski ordered it to be kept secret.”

“But not from me!” Stalin roared into the phone. “I am the keeper of secrets! There are no secrets kept from me! Do you remember what I told you about those rumors British intelligence was spreading? That we are planning to attack Germany across the Polish border? The Germans believe those rumors, Pekkala, and that is exactly what they will think is happening if you don’t stop this tank! Our country is not ready for a war! So this had better work, Pekkala! You have forty-eight hours to stop the machine. After that, I am sending in the army.”

“I understand,” said Pekkala.

“Did you know,” asked Stalin, “that I also have a son named Konstantin?”

“Yes, Comrade Stalin.”

Stalin sighed into the receiver, the sound like rain in Pekkala’s ears. “Imagine,” he whispered, “to be killed by your own flesh and blood.”

Before Pekkala could reply, he heard the click of Stalin hanging up the phone.

AS THE SUN ROSE ABOVE THE TREES, PEKKALA SQUINTED THROUGH A pair of binoculars at the far end of the muddy proving ground. Trapped like a fly in the filaments of the binoculars’ ranging grid was the vast hulk of a T-34, a white number 5 painted on the side of its turret.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Ready,” replied Kirov. He lay on the ground, the stock of the PTRD tucked into his shoulder and the barrel balanced on its tripod.

“Fire,” said Pekkala.

A stunning crash filled the air. Two bright red flashes spat from the side of the T-34’s turret, followed by a puff of smoke. When the smoke had cleared, Pekkala could see a patch of bare metal where the bullet had struck, obliterating half of the white number. He lowered the binoculars. “What happened?”

It was Gorenko who replied. “The bullet struck at an angle. It was deflected.”

Kirov still lay on the ground, his mouth open and eyes wide, stunned by the concussion of the gun. “I think I broke my jaw,” he mumbled.

“You hit it, anyway,” replied Pekkala.

“It doesn’t matter whether you hit it or not,” said Gorenko. “The shot must be perfect in order to penetrate the hull. The armor at that point is seventy millimeters thick.”

“Look, Professor,” said Kirov, lifting another bullet from beside the gun. “What happens to one of those machines if it is fired on in battle?”

“That depends,” Gorenko replied matter-of-factly, “on what you’re shooting at it. Bullets just bounce off. They won’t leave any more of a dent than a fingerprint on a cold slab of butter. Even some artillery shells can’t get through. It makes a hell of a noise, but that’s better than what happens if a shell gets through the hull.”

“And what does happen if a shell gets through?”

Gorenko took the bullet from Kirov’s hand and tapped the end of it with his finger. “When this round hits a vehicle,” he explained, “it is traveling at 1,012 meters per second. If it gets inside, the bullet begins to bounce around.” He turned the bullet slowly, so that it seemed to cartwheel first one way and then another. “It strikes a dozen times, a hundred, a thousand. Everyone inside will be torn to pieces, as thoroughly as if they had been cut apart with butcher knives. Or it will strike one of the cannon shells and the tank will explode from the inside out. Trust me, Inspector Kirov, you do not want to be in a tank when one of these comes crashing through the side. It shreds the metal of a hull compartment into something that looks like a giant bird’s nest.”

“Try it again,” Pekkala told Kirov.

Once more, Kirov fitted the gun stock against his shoulder. He slid back the breech, ejected the empty cartridge, and placed a new round in the chamber.

“This time,” said Gorenko, “aim for the place where the turret joins the chassis of the tank.”

“But that gap can’t be more than a couple of centimeters wide!” said Pekkala.

“We did not design this machine,” said Gorenko, “so that what you are trying to do would be easy.”

Kirov nestled the side of his face against the cheek pad. He closed one eye and bared his teeth. His toes dug into the ground.

“Whenever you’re ready,” said Pekkala.

The words were not even out of his mouth when a bolt of flame shot out of the end of the gun. The air around them seemed to shudder.

When the smoke cleared from around the tank, another stripe of silver showed at the base of the turret.

Gorenko shook his head.

In the distance, the squat shape of the T-34 seemed to mock them.

“It’s useless,” muttered Pekkala. “We will have to think of something else.”

Kirov climbed to his feet and slapped the dirt off his chest. “Maybe it’s time we called in the army. We’ve done everything we can do.”

“Not everything,” said Gorenko.

Both men turned to look at him.

“Even Achilles had his heel,” said the professor, reaching into his pocket and pulling out another cartridge for the PTRD. But this one was not like the others. Instead of the dull metal of tungsten steel, the bullet gleamed like mercury. “This is a mixture of titanium tetrachloride and calcium,” explained Gorenko. “It was invented by a man named William Kroll, only a few years ago, in Luxembourg. There is less than a kilo of the stuff in existence. Ushinsky and I obtained some for our experiments.” He tossed the bullet to Kirov. “I have no idea what will happen. It has never been tested before.”

“Load the gun,” said Pekkala.

At the next shot, there was no red flash. Instead, a small black spot appeared in the side of the turret. They heard a faint crackling sound, but that was all.

“Nothing,” muttered Kirov.

“Wait,” replied Gorenko.

A moment later, a strange bluish glow outlined the T-34. Then the turret of the tank rose into the air, hoisted on a pillar of flame. A wave of concussion spread out from the machine, flattening the grass. When the wall struck Pekkala, he felt as if he had been kicked in the chest.

The turret spun slowly in the air, as if it weighed nothing at all, then fell to earth with a crash that shook the ground beneath their feet. Thick black smoke billowed from the guts of the machine. More explosions sounded, some deep like thunder and others thin and snapping as the ammunition detonated in the blazing machine.

Kirov stood up and slapped Pekkala on the back. “Now you’ve got to admit it!”

“Admit what?” Pekkala asked suspiciously.

“That I’m a good shot! A great shot!”

Pekkala made a quiet grumbling noise.

Kirov turned to Gorenko, ready to congratulate him on the success of the titanium bullet.

But Gorenko’s face was grim. He stared at the wreckage of the T-34. “All this work bringing them to life,” he murmured. “It’s hard to see them killed that way.”

The smiles faded from their faces, as they heard the sadness in the old professor’s voice.

“How many more of those titanium bullets have you got?” asked Pekkala.

“One.” Gorenko pulled the other bullet from his pocket and put it in Pekkala’s open hand.

“Can you make others?” said Pekkala.

“Impossible.” Gorenko shook his head. “What you hold in your hand is all the titanium left in the country. If you miss with that, you will have to resort to something altogether more crude.”

“You mean you have something else?” asked Kirov.

“It is a last resort.” Gorenko sighed. “Nothing more.” He disappeared back into the assembly building. A moment later he reappeared carrying what looked like a wicker picnic basket. He set it down in front of the investigators and lifted the lid. Inside, separated by two wooden slats, were three wine bottles. The bottles had been sealed with pieces of cloth instead of corks. These hung down over the lip of each bottle and were held in place by black plumber’s tape wound several times around the glass.

Gorenko removed one of the bottles and held it up. “This is a mixture of paraffin, gasoline, sugar, and tar. The cloth stopper on each bottle has been soaked in acetone and allowed to dry. To use this, you light the cloth, then throw the bottle at the tank. But your throw must be very precise. The bottle must land on the top of the engine grille compartment. There are vents on the grille, and the burning liquid will pour down onto the engine. It should set the engine on fire, but even if it doesn’t it will melt the rubber hoses connected to the radiator, the fuel injection, and the air intake. It will stop the tank.”

“But only if I can get close enough to throw that bottle onto the engine,” said Kirov.

“Exactly,” replied Gorenko.

“For that, I practically have to be on top of the machine.”

“I told you it was a last resort,” said Gorenko, as he replaced the bottle in the wicker container.

Before they parted company, Gorenko pulled Pekkala aside.

“Can you get a message to Ushinsky?” he asked.

“Depending on how this mission goes,” replied Pekkala, “that is a possibility.”

“Tell him I’m sorry we argued,” said Gorenko. “Tell him I wish he was here.”

THEY HAD BEEN DRIVING FOR TWENTY-FOUR HOURS. KIROV AND Pekkala worked in three-hour shifts as they traveled towards the Polish border. Maximov sat in the back, his hands cuffed tightly together.

It was Kirov who had insisted on the cuffs.

“Are you sure that’s necessary?” asked Pekkala.

“It’s standard procedure,” replied Kirov, “for the transportation of prisoners.”

“I don’t blame him,” Maximov told Pekkala. “After all, I’m not helping you because I have decided that you’re right. The only reason I’m here is to save the life of Konstantin Nagorski.”

“Whether I trust you or not,” said Kirov, “is not the thing that’s going to change Kropotkin’s mind.”

It was spring now, a season which, at home in Moscow, Pekkala noticed only in the confined space of Kirov’s window boxes, or stuffed into tall galvanized buckets in the open-air market in Bolotnaya Square or when the Yeliseyev store set out its annual display of tulips arranged in the shape of a hammer and sickle. But here, it was all around him, like a gently spinning whirlwind, painting the black sides of the Emka with luminous yellow-green dust.

They were fortunate to have missed the time known as the Rasputitsa, when snow melted and roads became rivers of mud. But there were still places where their route disappeared into lakes, reappearing on the far bank and stubbornly unraveling across the countryside. Out in the middle of these ponds, tilting signposts seemed to point the way into a universe below the water’s edge.

The detours cost them hours, following paths which did not exist on their maps, and even those which did exist sometimes ended inexplicably while according to the map they carried on like arteries inside a human body.

On their way, they flew through villages whose white-picket-fenced gardens flickered past them as if in the projection of a film.

They stopped for fuel at government depots, where the oil-soaked ground was tinted with rainbows. Half hidden behind heaps of rubber tires left to rot beside the depot, the milky purple blossoms of hyacinth cascaded from the hedges. The scent of them mingled with the reek of spilled diesel.

Depots on the Moscow Highway were a hundred kilometers apart. The only way fuel could be obtained from them was with government-issued coupons. To prevent these coupons from being sold on the black market, each one was made out to the individual to whom they were issued. At each depot, Kirov and Pekkala checked to see whether Kropotkin had cashed in any of his coupons. They turned up nothing.

“What about depots off the highway?” Pekkala asked one depot manager, a man with a fuzz of stubble on his cheeks like a coating of mold on stale bread.

“There are none,” replied the manager, removing his false teeth and polishing them on his handkerchief before replacing them in his mouth. “The only way to get fuel is from these depots or through the local commissariats, who issue it for use in farm machinery. If the driver of a heavy truck tried to requisition fuel from a commissariat, he would be turned down.”

Kirov held up the bundle of fuel coupons which the manager had given him to inspect. “Could any of these have come from the black market?”

The manager shook his head. “Either you have a pass book allowing you to requisition fuel for government use, as you do, or you have coupons, like everyone else. If you have coupons, each one has to be matched up with the identity card and driver’s license of the person requisitioning the fuel. I’ve been doing this job for fifteen years, and believe me, I know the difference between what’s real and what is fake.”

While the manager filled up their car, Pekkala opened the Emka’s trunk and stared at the shortwave radio provided by Gorenko. It was the same type to be used in T-34’s, enabling them to communicate with artillery and air support groups out of normal radio range at the front. If the mission was successful, they could use it to transmit a message to an emergency channel monitored by the Kremlin before the forty-eight-hour deadline was up. Otherwise, as Stalin had promised, thousands of motorized troops would be dispatched to the Polish border.

Beside this radio lay the ungainly shape of the PTRD. The more Pekkala stared at it, the less it looked to him like a weapon and more like a crutch for some lame giant. He kept the titanium bullet in the pocket of his waistcoat, fastened shut with a black safety pin.

“Leave it,” said Kirov, closing the lid of the trunk. “It will be there when we need it.”

“But will it be enough?” asked Pekkala. The thought that they might already be too late to prevent Kropotkin from driving the tank into Poland echoed through Pekkala’s mind.

At some time in their eighteenth hour on the road, Kirov fell asleep at the wheel. The Emka slid off the highway and ended up in a field planted with sunflowers. Fortunately, there was no ditch, or the Emka would have been wrecked.

By the time the car had stopped moving, its side and windshield were coated with a spray of mud and the tiny pale green tongues of baby sunflower leaves. Without a word, Kirov got out of the car, went around to the back door and opened it. “Get out,” he said to Maximov.

Maximov did as he was told.

Kirov unlocked the cuffs. Then he held out his hand towards the empty driver’s seat.

With Maximov at the wheel and the two investigators pushing with their shoulders against the rear cowlings, they eased the Emka out of the mud and back onto the road.

High above them, vultures circled lazily on rising waves of heat. All around was the smell of this landlocked world, its dryness and its dustiness sifting through their blood, as spiced as nutmeg powder.

From then on, they drove in shifts of two hours each. By the time they arrived at the Rusalka, all three of them had reached the point of exhaustion where they could not have slept even if they’d wanted to.

On the map the forest resembled a jagged shard of green glass, hemmed in by white expanses indicating cultivated fields. It straddled the Soviet and Polish border, marked only by a wavy dotted line.

The Rusalka lay approximately two hundred kilometers due east of Warsaw. Only a handful of villages existed on the Russian end of the forest, but there were, according to Pekkala’s map, several on the Polish side.

Pekkala had studied it so many times that by now the shape of it was branded on his mind. It was as if by knowing its outline he might be better prepared for whatever lay inside its boundaries.

It was late in the afternoon when they reached a tiny village called Zorovka, the last Russian settlement before the road disappeared into the forest. Zorovka consisted of half a dozen thatched-roof houses built closely together on either side of the road running into the Rusalka. Indignant-looking chickens wandered across the road, so unused to traffic that they barely seemed to notice the Emka until its wheels were almost on top of them.

The village seemed deserted except for a woman who was tilling the earth in her garden. When the Emka rolled into sight the woman did not even raise her head, but continued to chip away with a hoe at the muddy clumps of dirt.

The fact that she did not look up made Pekkala realize that she must have been expecting them. “Stop the car,” he ordered.

Kirov hit the brakes.

Pekkala got out and walked over to the woman.

As he crossed the road towards her, the woman continued to ignore him.

Beneath the marks of wagon wheels and horses’ hooves, Pekkala saw the tracks of heavy tires. Now he knew they were on the right path. “When did the truck pass through here?” he asked the woman, standing on the other side of her garden fence.

She stopped chipping at the earth. She raised her head. “Who are you?” she asked.

“I am Inspector Pekkala, from the Bureau of Special Operations in Moscow.”

“Well, I don’t know anything about a truck,” she said in a voice so loud that Pekkala wondered if she might be hard of hearing.

“I can see the tire tracks in the road,” said Pekkala.

The woman came to the edge of her fence and looked out into the road. “Yes,” she said, her voice almost a shout, “I see them, too, but I still don’t know anything about it.” Then she glanced at him, and Pekkala knew from the look on her face that she was lying. And more than this—she wanted him to know she was lying.

A jolt passed through Pekkala’s chest. He looked down at the ground, as if distracted by something. “Is he here?” he whispered.

“He was.”

“How long ago?”

“Yesterday. Sometime in the afternoon.”

“Was he alone?”

“I did not see anyone else.”

“If he is gone,” asked Pekkala, “why are you still afraid?”

“The others in this town are hiding in their houses, watching us and listening at their doors. If anything happens, they will blame me for talking to you, but I will blame myself if I say nothing.”

“If anything happens?” asked Pekkala.

The woman stared at him for a moment. “This man who drove the truck, he took somebody with him. Someone from this village. His name is Maklarsky—a forester here in the Rusalka.”

“Why would he kidnap somebody?” asked Pekkala.

“At first the driver said he just wanted some fuel for his truck. But the thing is, we are only allowed so much every month from the local commissariat. We only have one tractor in this village and what they give us isn’t even enough to keep it running. The amount of fuel he wanted was more than we draw in a month. So we told him no. Then he asked for someone to show him the way to the border. The Rusalka is patrolled by Polish cavalry. Our own soldiers come through here sometimes, once a month or so, but the Poles ride through that forest almost every day. The woods are full of trails. It’s easy to get lost. We told him he should go back out to the Moscow Highway and cross the border into Poland from there. That was when the driver pulled a gun.”

“What did he look like?” asked Pekkala.

“Broad shoulders, a big square face, and a mustache. He had blond hair turning gray.”

“His name is Kropotkin,” said Pekkala, “and he is very dangerous. It is very important that I stop this man before he crosses into Poland.”

“He may have done that already,” said the woman.

“If he had,” said Pekkala, “we would know about it.”

“This man said that people would come looking for him. He said we should keep a lookout for a man with a black coat, who wore a badge shaped like an eye on his lapel.”

Pekkala turned up the collar of his coat. “He meant this.”

“Yes,” said the woman, staring at the Emerald Eye. “He told us if we kept quiet, he would let his hostage go. But I didn’t believe him. That is why I’m talking to you now. The others are too scared to speak with you. My name is Zoya Maklarskaya and that man I told you about is my father. The decision is mine whether talking to you now will do more harm than good.”

“We will do what we can to bring your father back,” said Pekkala.

The woman nodded at the churned-up road. “Those tracks will lead you to him, and you had better leave now if you want to find him before nightfall. Once the dark has settled on that forest, even the wolves get lost in there.”

As Pekkala turned, he saw a face in the window of a house, sliding back into the shadows like a drowned man sinking to the bottom of a lake.

IN FADING LIGHT, THEY FOLLOWED KROPOTKIN’S TRACKS INTO THE forest. The ranks of trees closed around them. Sunset leaned in crooked pillars through the branches, lighting clearings where blankets of grass gleamed as luminously as the emerald in Pekkala’s gold-framed eye.

The road itself appeared to mark the border.

On one side, they passed wooden signs written in Polish, indicating that they were traveling right along the edge of the two countries. On the other side, nailed to trees, were metal plaques showing the hammer-and-sickle emblem of the Soviet Union. From beneath the signs, where the nails had pierced the bark, white trickles of sap bled down to the ground.

From his hours of staring at the map, the Rusalka compressed in Pekkala’s mind until he had convinced himself that such a monster of a tank could never hide for long.

But now that they were in it, bumping along over washboard roads, eyes straining to follow the snakeskin trail of Kropotkin’s tire tracks, Pekkala realized that a hundred of those tanks could vanish in here without a trace.

Pekkala was overwhelmed by the vastness of these woods. His memories of the great cities Leningrad, Moscow, and Kiev all began to feel like a dream. It was as if the only thing that existed on this earth, that had ever existed, was the forest of Rusalka.

When the sunlight had finally gone, the darkness did not seem to settle from above as it did in the city. Instead, it rose up from the ground, like a black liquid flooding the earth.

They could no longer see the truck’s wheel marks, and it was too dangerous to use the Emka’s headlights when Kropotkin might be waiting for them around every bend in the road.

They steered the Emka off the road, cut the engine, and climbed stiff-legged from the car. The dew had settled. Wind blew through the tops of the trees.

“We’ll start looking again as soon as it is light,” said Pekkala. “As long as it’s dark, Kropotkin can’t risk moving either.”

“Can we make a fire?” asked Kirov.

“No,” replied Pekkala. “Even if he couldn’t see the flames, the smell of smoke would lead him right to us. We will all take turns standing guard. I’ll take the first watch.”

While Pekkala stood guard, Maximov and Kirov lay down in the cramped space of the car, Maximov in the front seat and Kirov in the back.

Pekkala sat on the hood of the Emka, feeling the warmth of the engine, which sighed and clicked as it cooled, like the ticking of an irregular clock.

After years spent in the constant rolling thunder of underground trains snaking their way beneath the sidewalks of Moscow, the clunk of water pipes in his apartment, and the distant clattering of trains pulling into the Belorussian station, the stillness of this forest unnerved Pekkala. Old memories of his time in Siberia came back to haunt him as he stared helplessly into the dark, knowing that Kropotkin could come within a few paces before he’d be able to see him.

Beads of moisture gathered on his clothes, transforming the dull black of his coat into a cape of pearls which shimmered even in this darkness.

After a while, the back door of the Emka opened and Kirov climbed out. The windows of the car had turned opaque with condensation.

“Has it been three hours already?” asked Pekkala.

“No,” replied Kirov. “I couldn’t sleep.” He came and stood beside Pekkala, hugging his ribs against the cold. “How much time do we have left?”

Pekkala checked his pocket watch. “Fourteen hours. By the time the sun comes up, we’ll have only a couple left.”

“Would it really be enough to start a war?” asked Kirov. “One tank, driven by a lunatic? Even if he does manage to kill a few innocent people, surely the world would come to its senses in time—”

Pekkala cut him off. “The last war was started by a lunatic named Gavrilo Princip. The only thing he used was a pistol, and all he had to do was kill one man, the Archduke Ferdinand.”

“An archduke sounds pretty high up.”

“He may have had an important title, but was Ferdinand important enough to bring about the deaths of over ten million people? The war began, Kirov, because one side wanted it to begin. All that side needed was a big enough lie to convince its own people that their way of life was threatened. The same is true today, and so the answer is yes: One lunatic is more than enough.”

THE CAR DOOR OPENED.

Pekkala felt a rush of cold brush across his face, sweeping away the stale air inside the Emka. He had been asleep, legs twisted down into the seat well and head resting on the passenger seat. The Emka’s gearshift jabbed into his ribs. His neck felt like the bellows of a broken accordion.

Someone was shaking his foot.

It seemed to Pekkala as if he had only just closed his eyes. He couldn’t believe it was time to go back out on watch again.

“Get up, Inspector,” whispered Kirov. “Maximov is gone.”

Kirov’s words jolted him awake. He scrambled out of the car. “What do you mean he’s gone?”

“I finished my watch,” explained Kirov. “Then I woke up Maximov and told him it was his turn to go on. I got up a few minutes ago to take a piss. That’s when I noticed he was gone.”

“Perhaps he’s nearby.”

“Inspector, I searched for him and found nothing. He’s gone.”

Both men stared out into the dark.

“He’s gone to warn Kropotkin,” muttered Kirov.

At first Pekkala was too shocked to reply, stubbornly refusing to believe that Maximov had deserted them.

“What should we do?” asked Kirov.

“We won’t find them in the dark,” replied Pekkala. “Not out here. Until it gets light, we wait for them to come to us. But as soon as it is light enough to see, we will go looking for them.”

A short distance up the road from where the Emka had been parked, they set up the PTRD anti-tank rifle in the ditch and covered it with a pine branch as camouflage. In addition, each of them carried a bottle filled with the explosive mixture. The greasy liquid sloshed about in the glass containers. The only other weapons they possessed were handguns.

They spent the rest of the night huddled in the ditch, watching the road. In the plunging darkness, their eyes played tricks on them. Phantoms drifted among the trees. Voices whispered in the hissing of the wind, then suddenly were gone and had never been there at all.

In the eel-green glimmer of dawn, they saw something coming towards them.

At first it did not seem human. The creature loped like a wolf, keeping to the edge of the road.

Slowly, Pekkala reached up to the edge of the ditch and eased his fingers around his gun.

Kirov did the same.

Now they could see it was a man, and a moment later, they recognized the bald head of Maximov. He ran with a long, steady stride, hunched over, his arms hanging down at his sides.

Arriving at the Emka, Maximov stopped and peered cautiously into the trees. “Kirov!” he whispered. “Pekkala, are you in there?”

Pekkala climbed out of the ditch and stood in the road, keeping the gun in his hand. “What do you want, Maximov?” In spite of what his instincts told him about Maximov, Pekkala had made up his mind to shoot the man if he so much as made a sudden movement.

Maximov seemed confused that Pekkala was not by the car. But then he realized what the two inspectors must be thinking. “I heard him!” said Maximov urgently, as he made his way towards Pekkala. “I heard the sound of metal against metal. I followed. I had to move quickly.” He came to a stop. Only then did he notice Kirov in the ditch, and the PTRD laid out under its covering of pine. He stared at the two men in confusion. “Did you think I had abandoned you?”

“What else were we supposed to think?” snapped Kirov.

“After what that man did to Konstantin,” Maximov answered, “did you honestly believe I would go back to helping him?”

“You say you followed him?” Pekkala asked, before Kirov could respond.

Maximov nodded. He pointed down the road. “He’s only about fifteen minutes away. There’s a clearing just off the road. The tank is already off the truck. It looks like he’s getting ready to head out as soon as it is light enough to see.”

“Was he alone?” asked Pekkala. “Did you see the man he took hostage?”

“The only person I saw was Kropotkin. We must go now if we’re going to catch him. It will be much harder to stop that tank once he’s on the move.”

Without another word, Kirov gathered up the PTRD. As he climbed out of the ditch, he handed his Tokarev to Maximov. “You’d better have this,” he said, “in case you can’t talk him out of it.” Then he glanced into the sky and exclaimed softly, “Look!”

Maximov and Pekkala turned. A plume of thick smoke rose above the trees in the distance.

“What is that?” asked Kirov. “Is that the exhaust from the tank?”

“It looks more like he’s trying to burn the forest down,” said Maximov.

At the car, each man took a bottle of the explosive mixture and as much extra ammunition as he could carry. Then they set off running, Maximov in the lead, wolf-striding ahead of the two inspectors.

As they ran, the smoke spread across the sky.

Soon they could smell it, and then they knew it wasn’t wood smoke. The thick haze reeked of burning oil.

They moved as quickly as they could through the maze of trees, over spongy earth where mud sucked at their boot heels and strange insect-eating plants, their smell like rotting meat, reared their open mouths.

Kirov followed close behind Pekkala, cursing softly as he scraped his shins against the limbs of fallen trees. Spindly branches whipped their faces and snatched at the guns in their hands.

By the time Maximov held up his hand for them to stop, Pekkala was drenched in sweat. He still had on his coat and the bottle in his hands had made running even more difficult.

Burdened by the bulky PTRD, Kirov was also exhausted.

Only Maximov seemed to show no sign of exertion. It was as if the big man could have kept on running without pause until the waves of the Atlantic washed about his feet.

They stepped into the trees to take cover. It was quickly growing lighter now.

Ahead, Pekkala could make out the blazing skeleton of the truck.

“What’s he doing, giving away his position like that?” whispered Kirov. “The smoke must be visible halfway across Poland.”

They crawled forward until through the shifting flames they could make out the shape of the tank. In front of it, they saw Kropotkin. He was pouring fuel from a battered gasoline container into the tank. Then, with a roar of anger, he flung the container across the clearing.

“That’s why he didn’t stop at the depots,” whispered Maximov. “He’s been draining fuel out of the T-34. Now he probably doesn’t have enough to drive the tank all the way into Poland.”

“So he set fire to the truck,” said Pekkala. “The woman I talked to in the village said that Polish cavalry run patrols through these woods all the time. He lit the fire so the Poles will come to him.”

Kropotkin disappeared around the other side of the tank. When he reappeared, an old man was with him. He was a short, bald man with narrow shoulders, wearing a collarless blue work shirt and heavy corduroy trousers. Pekkala knew it must be Zoya Maklarskaya’s father. Kropotkin had tied Maklarsky’s hands behind his back. Now he hauled the old man to the center of the clearing.

“You swore there would be gasoline here!” Kropotkin raged at his captive.

“There was!” The old man pointed at the empty fuel can. “I told you, they always leave some here for an emergency.”

“One fuel can is not enough!”

“It is if you’re driving a tractor,” protested Maklarsky. “You didn’t tell me how much you needed. You just asked if there was fuel.”

“Well, I guess it doesn’t matter now,” said Kropotkin, taking a knife from his pocket.

“What are you going to do with that?” Maklarsky’s eyes were fixed on the blade.

“I’m letting you go, old man,” replied Kropotkin, “just like I promised.” He cut through the ropes and they fell like dead snakes to the ground. “Go on,” said Kropotkin, and gave him a shove.

But Maklarsky didn’t run. Instead, he turned and looked back at Kropotkin, motionless.

“Go on!” bellowed Kropotkin, folding the knife shut with a click and returning it to his pocket. “I don’t need you anymore.”

Slowly, Maklarsky began to walk out of the clearing, following the path which led to the main road.

Then the three men watched helplessly as Kropotkin drew a gun from his coat. The dry snap of a pistol echoed through the trees.

Maklarsky staggered forward. He did not seem to realize what had happened. Crookedly, he walked on a few more paces.

Kropotkin strode across the clearing. With the barrel of the gun touching the back of Maklarsky’s head, he pulled the trigger. This time, the old man dropped, so suddenly it looked as if the ground had swallowed him up.

Kropotkin returned to the tank. He climbed up onto the turret, whose hatch was already open, and dropped down inside the machine.

Pekkala realized that Kropotkin was preparing to move out, whether he had enough fuel or not. He nodded at Kirov.

Kirov unlocked the tripod from the barrel of the anti-tank rifle. He set it up and lay down behind the gun.

“Do you have a clear shot?” Pekkala asked.

“No,” replied Kirov, after he had squinted through the sights. “Too many trees in the way.”

“We’ll move around the side and stop him where the clearing meets the road,” Pekkala told him.

Kirov picked up the gun and the three men set off down the road, keeping inside the cover of the trees. They reached the place where the wide path intersected with the road. Here, they realized that the path from the clearing did not run straight out to the road. It curved to the left, so that the tank was out of sight. The only way Kirov would have a clear shot was if the tank drove out to the road.

Knowing they had little time to spare, the three men dashed across the road and slid down into the ditch on the other side. With trembling hands, Kirov set up the PTRD so that it was pointing directly down the path into the clearing. If Kropotkin tried to drive the T-34 out onto the road, Kirov would have a clear shot.

“Do you still think you can talk him out of it?” Pekkala asked Maximov.

“I doubt it, but I can probably buy you some time.”

“All right,” said Pekkala. “We’ll both go. We’ll have a better chance if we both try to reason with him, but if he won’t listen to us, get out of his way as fast as you can. He’s bound to head towards the road. He doesn’t want to get trapped in that clearing and he’s got nowhere else to go except down that path.”

“I don’t see how you can walk out there to face a tank with nothing more than words to shield yourself,” said Kirov.

Pekkala held out the titanium bullet. “If words don’t convince him, then maybe this will. No matter what happens, if you see an opportunity to take the shot, take it. Do you understand?”

“It’s a hell of a risk, Inspector.” Kirov took the bullet from his hand. “If this thing hits you, it will blow you to pieces.”

“That’s why I’m glad you’re a good shot.”

“At least you finally admitted it,” said Kirov, as he settled himself behind the gun.

Maximov and Pekkala set out towards the clearing.

Pekkala felt the open space around him as if it were a field of electricity. He saw the tank, hunched like a cornered animal at the clearing’s edge. With each step towards the iron monster, he felt his legs weaken. His breathing grew shallow and fast. He had never been so aware of the impossible fragility of his own body.

Leading away from the clearing, Pekkala saw woodsmen’s trails, too narrow for trucks, which snaked into the darkness of the forest. On one of these, a glint of silver caught his eye. Just off the path, partially camouflaged with branches, a motorcycle was propped against a tree. A pair of leather-padded goggles hung from the handlebars. The machine looked almost new and he could even see the maker’s name—Zundapp—emblazoned in silver on the teardrop-shaped fuel tank. In that moment, he realized it was the same machine he had seen the day Maximov had tried to gun him down outside the Cafe Tilsit. The motorcycle was the first indication Pekkala had seen that Kropotkin planned on surviving what he was about to do.

There was no sound except the fierce crackle of the flames still rising from the wreckage of the truck. Smoke swirled through bolts of sunlight which made their way down through the trees.

They reached the clearing, littered with strips of old bark from the logs which had been piled there by the foresters. Between them and the tank lay the body of the old man, facedown in the dirt, a tidy red circle in the pale blue cloth of his shirt.

The two men halted. The liquid from the bottle in Pekkala’s pocket sloshed as he came to a stop.

Now that he was only a few paces from the T-34, it seemed to Pekkala that his quarrel was no longer with Kropotkin but with the machine itself.

“Kropotkin!” shouted Maximov.

There was no reply. Instead, with a dreadful bellowing sound, the tank engine fired up. The noise was deafening. Two jets of smoke poured from its exhaust pipes. The T-34 lurched forward.

Instinctively, the two men stumbled back.

Suddenly the tank jerked to a stop, like a dog held by a chain.

“Kropotkin!” Pekkala called out. “We know you’re short of fuel. Just listen to us!”

But if his words reached through the layers of steel, the man in the tank gave no sign of having heard them.

The T-34 jolted towards them, spinning in its tracks. Mud and twisted shreds of bark sprayed out behind the machine. This time it did not stop.

“Run!” shouted Pekkala.

But Maximov was already on the move.

Pekkala turned and sprinted for the road. The bottle fell out of his pocket, but he did not stop to pick it up. He could feel the machine right behind him. He did not dare look back to see how close it was.

One moment Maximov was beside him, and the next he was gone as he dove away among the trees.

Pekkala kept running. The tank was almost on top of him. The weight of his coat held him back. His feet slipped on the muddy ground. With every gasp of breath, the acrid haze of burning rubber poured into his lungs.

He saw the main road straight ahead. He spotted Kirov in the tall grass growing along the edge of the ditch. The PTRD was aimed steadily at Pekkala.

The roaring grew louder. The tank gathered speed. Pekkala realized he would not make it to the road before the T-34 overtook him.

“Shoot!” he yelled.

The tank was closing on him, only a few paces behind.

“Shoot!” he screamed again.

And then he slipped. He barely had time to register that he had fallen before slamming into the ground.

A second later, the huge machine rolled over him, its tracks on either side of his body, their terrible clatter filling his ears. Pekkala was sure he would be crushed, like some animal run over by a car.

As the belly of the tank slid past above him, Pekkala saw a flash from the PTRD, and then there was a stunning crash of metal as the titanium round struck the turret.

The treads of the T-34 locked. The machine slid to a halt. The engine clanked into neutral.

The shot must not have penetrated the hull, thought Pekkala. Kropotkin is still alive.

Now the tearing rattle of the T-34’s machine gun sounded above him. A line of bullets stitched across the ditch. The trees where Kirov had taken cover began to fly apart, revealing pale, naked slashes as the bark was torn away.

Pekkala heard footsteps behind him. Turning his head, he saw Maximov running out of the woods, clumps of mud flicking up from his heels. Clasped in his hand was a bottle of the explosive mixture, the rag end already lit and spilling greasy flames as he sprinted towards the tank.

“Get away!” Maximov shouted. “Damn it, Pekkala, get out while you can!” In a few more strides, he had reached the T-34 and immediately climbed up onto the engine grille.

Underneath the tank, Pekkala struggled through the mud, clawing at the ground to free himself before Maximov detonated the explosives. Scrambling clear, Pekkala heard a crash of glass as Maximov smashed the bottle. Then came a roar as burning liquid splashed through the engine grille and into the T-34’s motor compartment.

Pekkala heard Kropotkin scream inside the tank.

He didn’t look back. Pekkala had just raised himself up, ready to sprint towards the road, when a wall of concussion blew him off his feet. He landed heavily, facedown, the wind knocked out of him. In the next instant, a wave of fire washed over him, spreading like fingers over the ground and setting it alight.

“Get up!” Kirov waved to him from the ditch. “Inspector, it’s going to explode!”

Pekkala climbed to his feet and ran. Behind him, he could hear the crackle of ammunition bursting inside the machine. He threw himself down beside Kirov just as the muffled thump of superheated cannon shells thundered out of the tank.

Still slapping the sparks from his clothes, Pekkala raised his head and watched as the machine tore itself apart.

The T-34 was now engulfed in flames. Its gun ports glittered red as fire consumed first the driver’s, then the gunner’s compartment.

A few seconds later, when the remaining ammunition exploded, the top turret hatch blew off with a shriek of tearing steel. It tumbled like a blazing wheel into the woods, leaving a spray of molten paint in its path. Now, from the ruptured hull of the tank, brilliant orange geysers, tinged with black, reared up into the sky.

The air was filled with the smell of burning diesel fuel and pine sap from branches cut down by the T-34’s machine gun.

As smoke boiled from the wreckage, the T-34 no longer seemed like a machine to Pekkala. Instead, it looked more like a living thing writhing in agony.

When the explosions had finally died away, Pekkala and Kirov climbed cautiously out of the ditch, so mesmerized by the death throes of the T-34 that at first they did not see the line of men on horseback appearing from around a bend in the road.

The horses were moving at a canter, and the men had drawn rifles from the scabbards mounted on their saddles.

“Poles,” whispered Pekkala.

The squad of Polish cavalry rode up to them. The men carried their guns with barrels pointed upwards and the butt plates resting on their thighs. The officer of the troop, wearing a double-breasted black leather jacket and with a pistol on his belt, sat his horse and stared at the tank, which resembled the carapace of some huge and predatory insect, menacing even when the soul had been burned out of it. The officer looked at his men, all of whom were watching him for a sign of what to do next.

Pekkala and Kirov were completely surrounded by the horses. Not knowing what else to do, they raised their hands.

This drew the attention of the officer. He flapped his hand and grunted, to show that their gesture of surrender was not necessary.

Bewildered, Kirov and Pekkala lowered their hands.

Then one of the men, hidden somewhere in the ranks, began to laugh.

The officer’s head snapped up. At first he looked angry, but then a smile crept across his face. “Machine bust!” he said.

The others started laughing now. “Machine bust!” they all began to shout.

Bewildered, Kirov looked at Pekkala.

Pekkala shrugged.

Only when the laughter had died down did the cavalrymen replace their rifles in the scabbards.

The officer nodded at Pekkala. He said something in Polish, which Pekkala could not understand. Then he shouted an order and spurred his horse. The troop of cavalry began to move. The men were talking in the ranks, joking loudly and glancing back at the two men, but at a sharp command from their officer they immediately fell silent. Then there was only the clap of horses’ hooves as they passed on down the road.

The two men were alone again.

“What was that?” asked Kirov.

“I have no idea,” replied Pekkala.

They walked back to the tank. Scorched metal showed where fire had peeled away the paint. The engine grille sagged down onto the ruined motor parts, and the tires had melted into black puddles beside the tracks.

There was no sign of Maximov.

“I guess he didn’t make it,” Kirov said.

Pekkala prepared himself for the sight of Maximov’s shattered corpse. He wondered how much could be left of anyone caught in the path of such destruction. Bewildered, Pekkala glanced around the clearing, wondering if the fire had consumed the man completely.

In that moment, he realized that the Zundapp motorcycle was missing. He saw the line of motorcycle tracks, disappearing down one of the woodsmen’s trails. Then it dawned on Pekkala that Maximov was not dead at all. He had escaped, hidden by the wall of fire and the roar of exploding ammunition.

“I misjudged him,” said Kirov. “He died very bravely.”

Pekkala did not reply. He glanced at Kirov, then glanced away again.

They started walking back towards the Emka.

“How much time do we have?” asked Kirov.

“About an hour,” replied Pekkala. “I hope that radio works.” It was only now that he realized his coat was still smoldering. He swatted at his sleeves, smoke lifting like dust from the charred cloth.

“Good thing you have those new clothes I bought you.”

“Yes,” said Pekkala. “Lucky me.”

IF THERE WAS A BORDER CHECKPOINT AT THE EDGE OF THE RUSALKA forest, Maximov never saw it. The first indication he had that he was in a different country was when he rumbled through a village and saw a sign for a bakery written in Polish. Since then, he had not stopped. At fueling stations in the eastern part of the country, he had been able to pay for gasoline with the Russian money he was carrying in his wallet. But as he approached the border of Czechoslovakia, the locals stopped accepting Russian currency and he was forced to barter his watch, then a gold ring. Finally, he siphoned it out of other vehicles using a piece of rubber hose.

Now was the third day of Maximov’s journey. As the Zundapp crested the hill, sunrise winked off his goggles. He had been riding all night, coat buttoned up to his throat to fend off the chill as he raced across the Polish countryside. He pulled off the road and looked out over fields of newly sprouted barley, wheat, and rye. Feathers of smoke rose from the chimneys of solitary farmhouses.

Maximov could see the little checkpoint at the bottom of the hill and knew that all the land beyond was Czechoslovakia.

Seven minutes later, he arrived at the border. Like most of the crossings on these quiet secondary roads, the checkpoint consisted of a hut which had been divided into two, with a red-and-white-striped boom across the road which could be raised and lowered by the guards.

A bleary-eyed Czech border guard shuffled out to meet him. He held out his hand for Maximov’s papers.

Maximov reached into his coat and pulled out his pass book.

The Czech flipped through it, glancing up at Maximov to check his face against the picture.

“The Polack is asleep,” he said, nodding towards the other half of the building, where beige blinds had been pulled down over the windows. “Where are you going, Russian?”

“I am going to America,” he said.

The Czech raised his eyebrows. For a moment the guard just stood there, as if he could not comprehend the idea of traveling that far. Now his gaze turned towards the motorcycle. “Zundapp,” he said, pronouncing it “Soondop.” He grunted with approval, resting his knuckles on the chrome fuel tank as if it were a lucky talisman. At last he handed Maximov his pass book and raised the boom across the road. “Go on to America,” he said, “you and your beautiful Soondop!”

It took Maximov another week to reach Le Havre. There he sold the beautiful Zundapp and bought a ticket to New York. When the ship left port, he stood at the railing, watching the coast of France until it seemed to sink beneath the waves.

PEKKALA STOOD IN STALIN’S OFFICE AT THE KREMLIN, HANDS BEHIND his back, waiting for the man to appear.

Finally, after half an hour, the trapdoor clicked and Stalin ducked into the room. “Well, Pekkala,” he said as he settled himself into his red leather chair, “I have taken your advice and placed the engineer named Zalka in charge of completing the T-34. He assures me that the final adjustments to the prototype design will be ready in a matter of weeks. Zalka has told me that he will be adding several safety features to the original design. Apparently, the test drivers had already started calling it—”

“I know,” said Pekkala.

“I happen to agree with Nagorski,” continued Stalin, as if Pekkala had not interrupted. “The machine should come first, but we can’t have them calling the T-34 a coffin before it’s even started rolling off the production line, can we?”

“No, Comrade Stalin.”

“All mention of Colonel Nagorski in connection to the Konstantin Project has been erased. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, he had nothing to do with it. I have no wish for our enemies to gloat over the death of one of our most prominent inventors.”

“And what about the boy?” asked Pekkala.

“I have given it some thought.” Stalin reached for his pipe. “It seems to me that can all be pushed to the edge—don’t you agree, Pekkala?”

“Yes, Comrade Stalin.”

“The killer lurks in every one of us,” Stalin continued. “If it didn’t, our whole species would long ago have ceased to walk this earth. And it would be a waste to throw away a young man who might one day follow in the footsteps of his father.”

“He has potential,” said Pekkala.

“I agree. And that is why I have appointed the boy to be Zalka’s apprentice until the Konstantin Project is completed. After that, he will be enrolled in the Moscow Technical Institute. But I am expecting results. I will be watching. And you, Pekkala, will keep your Emerald Eye on him.”

“I will indeed,” he said.

Stalin aimed the pipe at him. “I see you have a nice new jacket.”

“Ah,” said Pekkala. He looked down at the clothes Kirov had bought him. “This is just temporary. I’m having some made up at Linsky’s.”

“Linsky’s?” asked Stalin as he hunted in his desk drawer for a match. “Over by the Bolshoi Theatre? You know what they say about the things he makes? Clothes for Dead Men! What do you think of that, Pekkala?”

“It gets more funny every time I hear it.”

“Anyway,” said Stalin, “you won’t be needing anything from Linsky.”

“I won’t?”

Stalin had found a match. He struck it, the tiny stick positioned between his thumb and first two fingers. For the next few seconds, the only sound was the dry rustle of his breathing as he coaxed the tobacco to burn. The soft, sweet smell drifted towards Pekkala. Finally he spoke. “I am sending you to Siberia.”

“What?” shouted Pekkala.

“You are going back to Borodok.”

The door opened. Poskrebyshev, Stalin’s secretary, poked his head into the room. “Is everything all right, Comrade Stalin?”

“Out!” snapped Stalin.

Poskrebyshev took a long and disapproving look at Pekkala. Then he closed the door behind him.

“You are sending me to prison?” Pekkala asked Stalin.

“Yes. Although not as a prisoner. Not officially, at any rate. There has been a murder in the Borodok camp.”

“With respect, Comrade Stalin, there are murders in that camp every day of the week.”

“This one has caught my attention.”

“When am I leaving?”

“In two days. Until then, you may consider yourself on vacation.”

“What about Major Kirov?”

“Oh, the major will be busy here in Moscow, handling his end of the investigation. I have already spoken to him, here in this office, earlier today. Which reminds me.” Stalin reached into his pocket and then, from his closed fist, dropped four kumquats upon the desk. “He gave me these. What am I supposed to do with them?”

“Kirov didn’t tell you?”

“He just said they were a gift.”

“You eat them, Comrade Stalin.”

“What?” He picked one up and stared at it. “In little pieces?”

“No. All at once. All four of them. Just put them in your mouth and bite down. It’s a real treat.”

“Hmm.” Stalin gathered the fruit back into his hand. “Well, I suppose I could give it a try.”

“I should be going, Comrade Stalin, or my vacation will be over before I am out of the building.”

Stalin’s attention was focused on the kumquats. “Good,” he mumbled, staring at the tiny orange globes laid out on his palm. “Good-bye, Pekkala.”

“Good-bye, Comrade Stalin.”

As he walked out through the waiting room, Pekkala heard Stalin roar as he bit down on the kumquats and then spat them across the room. “Pekkala!”

Pekkala only smiled and kept on walking.