The Beast in the Red Forest

‘Then why would someone bother to reload it?’

Pekkala shook his head in bewilderment. ‘It’s as if the bullet has been rebuilt for some reason, but as to why. .’

‘Maybe this will help to explain,’ said Kirov, retrieving the fragment of lead and copper which the doctor had given him as a souvenir. ‘The surgeon pulled it out of me.’ He dropped the flattened round into Pekkala’s open palm.

With his face only a hand’s breadth away, Pekkala pushed the bullet around with his finger, like a cat toying with an insect. He raised his head suddenly. ‘You are lucky to be alive, Kirov.’

‘That’s what the doctor said.’

‘Trust me, you are even luckier than he knows. This was no squabble among the partisans. Whoever shot you and those other men was a professional assassin.’

‘But how can you tell?’

‘This is a specialised bullet, Kirov. It’s known as a soft point. The rounds in your gun are standard issue 7.62 mm Tokarev ammunition, in which the lead portion of the bullet is completely encased in copper. Check your own weapon and you’ll see.’

Obediently, Kirov removed his Tokarev, slid out the magazine and, using his thumb, pushed out a copper-jacketed round. ‘You’re right, Inspector. These are different.’

Now Pekkala held up the fired bullet, pinched between his thumb and index finger. ‘This bullet, however, is only half sleeved in copper. The front part is left open, exposing the lead core. Once it leaves the gun, the soft point collapses into the centre, causing the bullet to expand. It shortens the range, but produces greater impact strength than a regular bullet.’

‘The doctor said it was a ricochet,’ said Kirov. ‘I thought it looked this way because it was damaged by whatever it hit before it struck me. But now that you mention it, I can see the line where the copper jacket ends. So that’s why he rebuilt the cartridges, replacing regular bullets with these soft points. But if they are so effective, then why aren’t they standard issue for all Tokarev pistols?’

‘The exposed lead leaves a residue in the barrel which, if the gun is not constantly cleaned, can lead to jamming and misfires. The fully jacketed bullets are more practical for use in the field. Whoever this man is, he came prepared to do his killing at close range, and he worked hard to make sure that his identity could not be traced. Even the markings on the base of the cartridge have been filed off.’

‘Very thorough,’ agreed Kirov, ‘which makes me wonder what he had to gain by allowing me to live.’

‘And you say he wore the uniform of a captain?’

‘An army captain. Yes.’

‘Was he wearing any service medals?’

‘None that I saw.’

‘Did he say anything at all?’

‘When I mentioned your name, he asked if I was referring to the Emerald Eye.’ Kirov shrugged. ‘That was the only time he spoke, and his voice was muffled by the bandages.’

Although they continued to hunt for any trace which the killer might have left behind, the bunker yielded no more clues.

‘It’s time we left this butcher’s shop,’ said Pekkala.

‘We should make our way to the Red Army garrison,’ added Kirov.

‘The only Red Army garrison in Rovno is Yakushkin’s Counter-Intelligence brigade. They are quartered at the old Hotel Novostav, which the Germans used as the headquarters for their Secret Field Police until they pulled out last week.’

‘That will be the safest place.’

‘Not necessarily,’ Pekkala cautioned him. ‘Other than the partisans themselves, the only people who knew where and when that meeting was taking place were members of Yakushkin’s brigade. Until we have established the identity of this assassin, there is no one we can trust.’

They climbed up to the street.

A bank of clouds was closing in, as if a stone were being dragged across the entrance to a tomb, extinguishing the stars which lay like chips of broken glass upon the rooftops of abandoned houses.

Kirov raised his hands and let them fall again. ‘Then where are we to go, Inspector? There’s a storm coming in and I’d rather not sleep in the street.’

‘Luckily for us,’ replied Pekkala, ‘I know the finest place in town.’

*

Two hours after Kirov had checked himself out of his room at the hospital, a stranger appeared at the top of the stairs, dressed in the uniform of a Red Army officer.

Except for the splashing of sleet against the windowpanes, it was quiet in the hallway. The patients had been ordered off to sleep or drugged into unconsciousness. The night orderly lay dozing in his chair, cocooned within a pool of light from the candle which burned upon his desk. The young man’s name was Anatoli Tutko and he had been released from military service on account of blindness in one eye and a haze of cataract across the other.

Reaching down, the stranger slowly placed his hand upon Tutko’s forehead, the way a parent checks for fever in a child. So gently did he raise Tutko’s head that the orderly was only half awake when the stranger whispered in his ear, ‘Where is the commissar?’

Tutko’s eyes fluttered open. ‘What?’ he asked. ‘What’s going on?’ Then he felt the pinch of a knife held to his throat.

‘Where,’ the stranger asked again, ‘is the commissar you brought in here last night?’

‘Major Kirov?’ whispered Tutko, so conditioned not to wake the patients after dark that even now he did not raise his voice.

‘Kirov. Yes. Which room is he in?’

Tutko tried to swallow. The knife blade dragged against his Adam’s apple. ‘At the end of the hall on the left,’ he whispered.

‘Good,’ said the man. ‘Now you can go back to sleep,’ said the man.

Tutko felt the stranger’s grip loosen. A sigh of relief escaped his lungs.

In that same moment, the stranger slipped the knife blade into Tutko’s neck, then twisted it and, with one stroke, cut through the windpipe, almost severing the young man’s head. He laid the body face down on the desk as a wave of blood swept out across the wooden surface.

The man replaced the knife in its metal scabbard, which was clipped to the inside of his knee-length boots. Treading softly, as if the floor beneath his hobnailed soles was no more than a sheet of glass, he moved on down the hallway until he came to Kirov’s room.

But it was empty.

A whispered curse cracked like a spark in the still air.

‘You’re too late,’ said a voice.

The stranger whirled about.

Dombrowsky, unable to sleep as usual, had just wheeled himself into the hallway.

‘Where is he?’ asked the man.

‘Gone,’ Dombrowsky rolled his chair forward, the heel of his palm dragging on the wheel until it brought him to a stop before the man. ‘Earlier tonight, a visitor appeared and spoke to him.’

‘What kind of visitor?’

‘A man. More like a ghost, the way he moved.’

‘Yes,’ muttered the stranger. ‘That sounds like him.’

‘They spoke,’ said Dombrowsky, ‘and then they left.’

‘Do you know where they were going?’

‘I don’t, but nurse Antonina might. The major talked to her. He must have told her something.’

‘Where is this nurse?’

‘Gone home, but she lives at the end of this street, in a house with yellow shutters. I can see it from the window in my room. But you shouldn’t go there, Captain. Not if you value your life.’

‘And why is that?’

‘She’s a friend of Commander Yakushkin. His “campaign wife”. That’s what they call them, you know. He showed up here about a week ago, along with a battalion of Internal Security troops. Yakushkin came in here to get medicine for a stomach ulcer and she’s the nurse who treated him. Since then, from what I hear, Yakushkin has practically been living at her house. She’s a good cook, you see, and Yakushkin likes his food. But even if you were foolish enough to go there at this time of night, you wouldn’t get past Yakushkin’s bodyguard, who is with him wherever he goes.’

‘Thank you,’ said the man. ‘You have been very helpful. Now let’s get you back where you belong.’ Taking hold of the wheelchair’s handles, he turned the chair around and began to wheel him down the hall.

‘My room is the other way,’ said Dombrowsky.

‘Yes,’ said the man. ‘Yes, it is.’

They moved by the night orderly’s desk.

In the rippling light of the candle, Dombrowsky saw what had become of Anatoli Tutko. The thin wheels of his chair rolled through the blood which had cascaded from the desk and pooled across the floor. ‘Why are you doing this?’ he whispered frantically, his hand skidding uselessly upon the rubber wheels as he tried to slow them down. ‘I won’t say a word. No one believes me, anyway.’

‘I believe you,’ said the man and, with one sudden, vicious shove, he pushed Dombrowsky’s chair over the edge of the stairs and sent him tumbling to his death.

*

‘And what is the finest place in this town?’ asked Kirov, as he followed Pekkala through the bombed-out streets. ‘From what I’ve seen, that isn’t saying much.’

‘I am taking you to a safe house which was used during the occupation,’ answered Pekkala.

‘But I thought the Barabanschikovs lived in the forest.’

‘They did, and they still do, but Barabanschikov made sure that he still had access to Rovno. It was important to keep an eye on those who came and went from the headquarters of the Secret Field Police. Several of the merchants in this town — tailors, cobblers, watchmakers — were actually members of the Barabanschikovs, and the Field Police officers became their best customers. Some of them liked to talk while their watches were being repaired or the hems taken up on their trousers and any piece of information they let slip would find its way to Barabanschikov. Many important meetings were held here between the various partisan leaders, right under the noses of the police, which was the last place they ever thought to look. Barabanschikov himself chose this house, and when we get there, you’ll see why.’

By now, the sleet had turned to hail, stinging their faces and rattling like grains of uncooked rice upon the frozen ground.

The cold leached its way through Kirov’s tunic and up through the soles of his boots. He hoped the house was comfortable, with soft beds and blankets and a fire. Perhaps there might even be food, he thought. Fresh bread might not be too much to ask.

Pekkala ducked into a narrow alleyway, which was flanked on either side by tumbledown wooden fences, some of them held up only by the weeds and brambles which had grown between the slats.

By following this maze of paths, Pekkala was able to stay clear of the streets, where people gathered around oil-drum fires and dogs fought in the dirty snow for scraps of rotten meat.

Opening an iron gate, Pekkala stepped into an overgrown garden and beckoned for Kirov to follow.

Through tall, dishevelled grass, each strand bowed with its minute coating of ice, the two men crept towards the house.

The back door had been boarded up and the shutters on the windows fastened closed with planks of wood

‘How do we get inside?’ asked Kirov.

At that moment, Pekkala seemed to vanish, as if the earth had swallowed him completely.

Rushing forward, Kirov found himself at the edge of a deep but narrow trench which had been dug against the outer wall of the house.

‘Come on,’ Pekkala called out of the darkness of the trench, ‘unless you want to stay out there all night.’

Before he jumped, Kirov turned and looked back in the direction from which they had come. He could make out little more than the silhouettes of houses and the tumbledown fences which separated their gardens. Wind slithered through the grass, whose brittle strands crackled like electricity. Just then, Kirov caught sight of a dog, loping along the alleyway. As the animal drew close, Kirov realised that it was, in fact, a wolf. It stopped at the end of the garden, then turned and looked at him, its mean, thin face spliced by the iron railings of the gate. They watched each other, man and beast, breath rising like smoke from their nostrils. There was something about its stare which snatched the last faint trace of warmth from Kirov’s blood and he felt colder than he’d ever been before, as if a layer of frost had formed around his heart. The wolf moved on and Kirov scrambled to catch up with Pekkala.

Report on Arrest of William Vasko

Pekkala, Special Operations

Dated December 10th, 1937

REPORT CENSORED

In accordance with the instructions of Comrade Stalin, I have conducted an interview with William Vasko at Lubyanka, where he has been held in solitary confinement since his arrest and transfer from the Ford Motor Car plant in Nizhni-Novgorod. The circumstances of his arrest involved allegations that he was attempting to flee the country illegally, along with his wife and children. Although I have found no documentary evidence of this, Vasko readily admitted that he had planned to return his wife and children to the United States, which is their country of citizenship. However, Vasko denied that he himself intended to flee and further questioned whether such a departure would have been illegal, even if he had chosen to do so. Vasko initially refused to divulge the reasons why he was choosing to send his family away. However, when I travelled to Nizhni-Novgorod and began interviewing some of his fellow American workers, it soon became apparent that they believed Vasko to be behind the arrests of numerous other workers at the plant. In fact, by the time I arrived, over half the workforce had been taken into custody on charges ranging from sabotage to subversion to threats made against the leadership of the Soviet Union. His former comrades at the factory firmly believed that Vasko’s reports to Soviet security services had caused a large number of them to be arrested. These workers readily admitted that they had threatened Vasko with bodily harm if he did not immediately resign from the plant’s workforce.

On my return to Moscow, I interviewed Vasko for a second time. When confronted with these accusations, Vasko admitted that he had denounced a number of them to the authorities. However, he went on to explain that [the following section of the report is blacked out] xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. Vasko’s journey to the Soviet Union was xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. Vasko asserted that his wife and children were not aware of xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. When he realised that his workmates had stumbled upon the truth, or part of it, at least, fearing that his life was in danger, he did indeed attempt to resign from the plant. His request was denied, however, and he was forced to continue his work. Over the next few weeks, Vasko’s situation at the plant continued to deteriorate. He received threats on an almost daily basis and he was otherwise shunned by his colleagues. He began to believe that his family were also in danger. After one final appeal to quit the plant was denied, he took the first steps towards repatriating his wife and children to America. This, he believes, is what led to his arrest. He expressed concern that his wife might be forced to leave the housing provided for her at the plant and that she had no means of income. He had not heard from her, nor had he been allowed to make contact since his arrest, and he no longer knew whether she was still receiving his salary. He implored me to look into the matter personally and also to make his situation known to xxxxxxxxxxxx of xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, who, he believed, could secure his immediate release.

My subsequent enquiry to the Ford Motor Car plant revealed that Mrs Vasko left her housing in Novgorod and that she is currently staying at a homeless shelter in Moscow.

My enquiry to xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx of xxxxxxxxxxxxxx has not yet received a response.

My recommendation is for Vasko’s immediate release and for the swift location of his family, with whom he should be united. Given the innocence of his wife and children, I recommend that their return to the United States be granted if that is the family’s wish. As for Vasko I recommend that xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.

Signed — Pekkala, Special Operations.

HANDWRITTEN NOTE IN MARGIN: Complete report suppressed. Authorise immediate transfer of document to Archive 17. Signed — JS.

Having reached the safe house, Pekkala stopped next to an opening in the wall which had been camouflaged with the tattered remains of a German army blanket. He pushed aside the frozen wool and ducked inside, followed by Kirov a moment later.

They found themselves in what had once been a root cellar. The air was still and damp.

After climbing a ladder, they emerged on to the ground floor of the house. It was dark until Pekkala lit a match and then a soft glow spread around the room, revealing a table in the centre, surrounded by an assortment of dilapidated chairs. Against the walls, Kirov saw a crumpled heap of discarded clothes which the former occupants had used for bedding. Some were made from the dull field grey of German army cloth, others from the strange pinkish brown of Russian uniforms and one, which had either been riddled with bullets or else chewed by rats, Kirov couldn’t tell which, bore buttons crested with the double-headed eagle of the Tsar. He could almost hear the lice scuttling along the seams. The place smelled of sweat and tobacco, and the exhausted air felt heavy in their lungs.

Pekkala found an oil lamp resting on the windowsill. He lit the wick and carried the lamp over to the table.

Kirov looked around the dingy room. ‘You call this the best place in town?’

‘You’re welcome to find someplace else.’

There was no arguing with that. ‘And you think we will be safe here?’ he asked.

‘We used this as a hideout during the entire occupation. Every building on this street was searched at one time or another, but this one they left alone.’

‘But why?’

‘The owners died of typhus.’

‘Typhus!’ exclaimed Kirov. ‘We should get out of here immediately!’

‘Relax,’ Pekkala told him. ‘This house has saved more lives than it has taken.’ He picked a coat off the pile and spread it on the floor. Then lay down on it and pulled another coat on top of him. ‘Now get some sleep. Tomorrow you will meet the Barabanschikovs.’

Reluctantly, Kirov sat down with his back against the wall. In spite of the cold, he set his heel against the pile of dirty clothes and pushed them all away.

For a while, he sat there, hugging his ribs and listening to the storm howl down the chimney. He felt pain where the bullet had gone in, as if some small, persistent creature was gnawing its way through the scar. Leaning over to the lamp, he doused the light. Blackness crowded in around him. ‘I suppose there is nothing to eat?’ he asked.

He received no reply. Pekkala was already asleep.

*

Just before dawn, Pekkala awoke with a start. He sat up and looked around. The first grey slivers of dawn showed through cracks in the boarded-up windows.

On the bare floorboards beside him, Kirov lay curled in a ball and shivering in his dreams.

Rising to his feet, Pekkala picked up one of the coats and draped it over Kirov. Then he climbed down into the root cellar, pushed aside the blanket and stepped out into the ditch which had been dug along the edge of the house.

His first breath was like pepper in his lungs.

It had snowed in the night. Even the ruins looked clean.

Through eyes bloodshot with fatigue, Pekkala stared over the edge of the ditch, past the jungle of white-dusted grass to the alley where he had almost lost his life the year before.

*

Pekkala had lived among the partisans for several months before he made his first visit to Rovno, in order to rendezvous with Barabanschikov at the safe house. He had nearly made it there when he accidentally turned down the wrong side street and found himself in an alleyway which was blocked off by a pile of broken furniture. As Pekkala paused, trying to get his bearings, a man appeared from behind the makeshift barricade. From his black uniform with its silver buttons and a soft cap with shiny patent leather brim, Pekkala knew he was a member of the Ukrainian Nationalist Police. This paramilitary group consisted of Russian collaborators, tasked by their German masters with rounding up anyone who posed a threat to the German occupation. They had a reputation for summary brutality, particularly against those suspected of being partisans.

‘Stop!’ shouted the man. He wore round glasses, balanced on a long, thin nose. Beard stubble made a blue haze under his pasty skin. To Pekkala, he looked a like a big, pink rat. ‘Papers!’ he barked as he advanced upon Pekkala, one empty hand held out and the other one gripping a revolver.

Pekkala thought about running, but he knew he’d never make it to the end of the alleyway before the rat man gunned him down. On the orders of Barabanschikov, Pekkala did not carry a gun of his own. There was no possibility of shooting his way out of police custody and the mere possession of a gun was grounds for immediate execution. The only thing Pekkala carried was an old switchblade, its dull iron blade stamped with the maker’s mark of Geck in Brussels, and the stag-horn grips worn almost smooth from years of use. It had been old even when Pekkala spotted it one Sunday afternoon laid out on a table in the market across from his office in Moscow, along with a leather cigar case, a wallet made from crocodile and a pair of gold-rimmed glasses; the mute companions of some traveller’s life now finished with his journey. Tucked deep in his pocket, with the policeman’s revolver only inches from Pekkala’s forehead, the knife was useless to him now.

With no choice but to play the role which Barabanschikov had taught him as a cover, Pekkala pulled a crumpled identity book from the top right pocket of his shirt. The paper was soggy from the rain. The book was real, but it had been altered to fit Pekkala’s physical description. Knowing that the alterations wouldn’t pass close scrutiny, Pekkala struggled to keep his hands from shaking as he held out the book to the policeman.

The man plucked the book from Pekkala’s hand and opened it. ‘Name?’

‘Franko,’ replied Pekkala. ‘Oleksandr Franko.’

‘It says here you are a leather tanner.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Show me your hands.’

Pekkala held them out, palms up.

The rat man tilted his head back, peering out from under the brim of his hat. ‘My uncle was a tanner and his hands were always stained.’

‘The tannery is closed.’

‘And you’re from Rovno?’

‘No. From Zoborol.’

‘Well, as it happens, so am I.’ The policeman brought his gun closer, until the barrel nudged against Pekkala’s cheek. ‘I know everyone in that village, but I don’t know you, Oleksandr Franko.’

Slowly, Pekkala raised his hands, suddenly conscious of his appearance — the hand-carved toggles on his coat and the dirty, twisted strings which fastened them, the wooden-soled shoes fixed to their leather tops with carpeting nails, the knees of his trousers patched with sacking cloth. Dishevelled though Pekkala was, he looked no different from most people in this town, for whom the war had cut off all vestiges of the life which they had once taken for granted.

The man nodded towards the barricade. ‘Go on.’

Pekkala squeezed past a broken chest of drawers and, a few minutes later, found himself in the front hall of a small municipal station which had been taken over by the Nationalist Police.

Sitting at a desk was an officer, his grizzled, unwashed hair piled up like ashes on his head. He demanded Pekkala’s identity book, glanced at it and slapped it shut. ‘Put him in the cell.’

‘But there’s no room,’ the rat man protested.

‘Then cut parts off until he fits,’ growled the officer, ‘and when you get back, I want you to take this identity book over to the German garrison and have Krug check it over.’

‘It isn’t right, I can tell you,’ said the rat man. ‘I mean, it’s real but. .’

A withering stare from the officer choked the words off in his throat. ‘Just do what I tell you to do.’

The rat man grabbed Pekkala by the collar of his coat and, without searching him, led his prisoner down a corridor to a cell already so crowded that those in the middle had to stand. Fear clawed up his spine as he recalled the convict train on which he had travelled to the gulag of Borodok. He thought of the convicts who had died on their feet, their eyes cataracted with frost. The walls seemed to ripple with the faces of the dead and he heard again the sound of wheels clacking over the tracks.

A woman crouched against the concrete wall made a space for Pekkala. In the glare of a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling, Pekkala saw lice, tiny and translucent, scuttling across her scalp.

An hour later, footsteps sounded in the corridor and the rat-faced man appeared, swinging a wooden truncheon by its leather cord. He swung open the barred metal door.

Instinctively, the people in the room lowered their eyes. But one man, standing near the front, was not fast enough.

The rat man raised his truncheon and brought it down on the top of the prisoner’s skull.

The prisoner’s legs buckled as if a trap door had opened beneath his feet. He fell face down and blood began to spread across the floor, reflecting the light of a single bulb, which blazed in its wire cage on the ceiling. The occupants of the cell shuffled back from the creeping red tide, the heels of their shoes clicking dryly over the concrete.

The policeman stepped over to Pekkala. Ignoring the puddle of blood, he tracked red footprints across the floor. ‘Krug doesn’t like the look of your pass book. He said it had been altered, which I could have explained to him myself. Instead of that, I had to go all the way down the street to the German garrison and show them my own damned identity book so that I could get inside the building and be told what I already know!’

‘Rusak!’ shouted a voice from down at the end of the corridor. ‘Bring him here!’

Now Rusak took Pekkala by the arm and hauled him out into the corridor. He marched Pekkala past an empty cell where two policemen, stripped down to their shirts and with black braces stretched over their shoulders, sat cleaning their revolvers using handkerchiefs dipped in an ashtray filled with gun oil.

In the front hallway, the ash-haired officer was standing in the doorway, hands in his pockets, looking up at the rain which had just begun to fall. ‘Who are you?’ he asked Pekkala, without bothering to turn around.

Pekkala did not reply.

‘That’s what I thought,’ whispered the officer, as he stepped aside to let them pass.

Rusak pushed Pekkala ahead of him.

Pekkala gasped in a lungful of clean air as he staggered into the street. ‘Where are you taking me?’ he asked.

‘To a bigger cell,’ Rusak answered. ‘That other place is too crowded. That’s all. It’s nothing to worry about.’

It was those last few words which made Pekkala realise that everything he had just heard was lies. Now his heart pulsed in his throat. His breathing came shallow and fast.

Rusak walked him across the street and down an alley between two rows of buildings. The alleyway was bordered by high brick walls on either side. Coal dust lined the path, glittering in the damp air.

Rusak walked behind him, splashing through puddles in the alley.

Shivering as if he were cold, Pekkala put his hands in his trouser pockets. In his right hand, he took hold of the switchblade.

‘Chilly today, isn’t it?’ asked Rusak. ‘Well, don’t you worry, pal. You’ll soon be warm again.’

As Rusak spoke, Pekkala heard the unmistakable rustle of a pistol being drawn from its holster. In that moment, Pekkala stopped thinking. He pulled the knife out of his pocket, pressed the round metal button on the side, releasing the blade, and swung his arm around.

Rusak had no time to react. The knife struck him on the side of the head and the blade vanished into his temple. The rat man’s face showed only mild astonishment. His right eye filled with blood. He dropped the revolver, took one step forward and then fell into Pekkala’s arms.

Pekkala laid him down. Then he set his boot on Rusak’s neck, pulled out the blade and wiped it on the dead man’s coat. For a moment, Pekkala waited, watching and listening. Satisfied that they were alone, he folded the blade shut and returned the knife to his pocket.

He took hold of Rusak by the collar of his tunic and dragged him down the alley. Rusak's boots laid a trail though the glittering black coal dust. Ten paces further on, Pekkala came to a place where the brick wall was recessed, forming a space like a room with three sides and no roof. Judging from stains on the brick, the space had once been used to store garbage ready for collection. Now it was filled with half a dozen bodies, some soldiers and some civilians. They had all been shot in the back of the head and piled on top of each other. Their faces were shattered, the corpses wet from the rain.

Pekkala dumped Rusak on the pile. Then he took a few steps backwards, as if expecting Rusak to rise from the dead, before he turned and ran.

At the safe house, he met up with Barabanschikov. It turned out that the partisan leader had also been stopped at a police roadblock on the other side of town, but had managed to talk his way out of it.

‘You ran into the wrong people, that’s all,’ said Barabanschikov. ‘It was just bad luck that you were arrested.’

‘Maybe so,’ replied Pekkala, ‘but I’ll need more than luck to survive.’ From that day on, he carried the shotgun in his coat.

Memo: Joseph Stalin to Henrik Panasuk, Lubyanka. December 11th, 1937

Liquidation of prisoner E-15-K to be carried out immediately.

*

Memo: Henrik Panasuk, Director, Lubyanka, to Comrade Stalin. December 11th, 1937

In accordance with your instructions, prisoner E-15-K has been liquidated.

‘The Rasputitsa will come early this year,’ said a voice behind Pekkala.

Pekkala was startled at first, but then he sighed and smiled. ‘There is only one person who can sneak up on me like that.’

‘Luckily for you, that person is your friend.’

‘Good morning, Barabanschikov.’

Almost hidden among the skeleton-fingered branches of a Russian olive tree, Barabanschikov sat on an upturned bucket. He wore fingerless wool gloves and a cap pulled down over his ears. Lying across his lap was a Russian PPSh sub-machine gun fitted with a 50-round drum magazine. Such weapons, once almost impossible to obtain, were now commonplace among the partisans. Barabanschikov had been sitting there long enough that a fine layer of snow had settled upon his shoulders. The former school teacher had long ago given up shaving and a dark beard covered his face. His eyes, once patient and curious as he gazed across the rows of desks each morning while his students pulled notebooks from their satchels, had taken on a burning intensity brought on by malnourishment, insomnia and prolonged fear. Those children he once taught might not have recognised him at all, but for the gold-rimmed glasses he still wore.

Cupping his gloved hands to his mouth, Barabanschikov puffed warm breath on to his frozen fingers. ‘Have you found out yet who did the killings in the bunker?’

‘Not yet,’ replied Pekkala, ‘but I am working on it.’

Barabanschikov reached down and gently patted Pekkala’s face, the rough wool of his glove snagging against Pekkala’s three-day growth of stubble. ‘You had better work fast, my old friend. There has already been a gunfight between a Red Army patrol and a group of partisans searching for whoever killed their leader. Two partisans are dead. Three soldiers are wounded. We are fast approaching the moment when nothing can prevent an all-out war between us and the Red Army. In the war we have fought until now, all we had to do was survive until the Red Army pushed back the invaders. But the storm that is coming is not like any other they have seen. You know Stalin. You know what he is capable of doing. And unless you do something to stop this, he will annihilate us all.’

‘That’s why I have brought in some help,’ said Pekkala. ‘Come inside, Barabanschikov. It’s time you met the commissar.’

*

Kirov looked around him blearily. It was dark in the room. Only a few chinks of daylight worked their way in through gaps in the boards which had been nailed over the shutters. For a moment, he stared in confusion at the greatcoat which had been draped across him. Then he pushed it away, stood up and began slapping at his clothes, hoping to dislodge the lice which he felt sure had taken up residence in his uniform.

Having finished this frantic ritual, Kirov fished out a box of matches and lit the lantern. It was only then that he realised there were two men sitting at the table, both watching him intently.

One of them was Pekkala.

The other, Kirov had never seen before. With rags for clothes offset by an oddly dignified pair of gold-rimmed spectacles, he looked like a shipwrecked millionaire.

‘This is Major Kirov,’ said Pekkala.

‘And I,’ said the stranger, ‘am Andrei Barabanschikov. So, Commissar, you are here to help us catch a killer.’

‘That’s right,’ replied Kirov.

‘It seems to me that you need look no further than the ranks of your own people.’

Kirov bristled at the remark. ‘Why would you say that?’

‘From what I hear, the man who killed Andrich and those partisans was wearing a Red Army uniform.’

‘It was probably stolen.’

‘Perhaps,’ admitted Barabanschikov, ‘but then there is the matter of your survival,’ said Barabanschikov. ‘Doesn’t it strike you as unusual? The only person I can think of who might hesitate to kill a Russian commissar,’ he paused, ‘is another commissar.’

‘I did not come here to solve your murders, Comrade Barabanschikov, or to become one of your victims, either,’ Kirov pointed at the tear in his tunic where the bullet had gone in. ‘As far as I’m concerned, if Stalin has given the order to lay down your weapons, then that is exactly what you should do. This is simply a choice between life and death.’

‘Enough!’ shouted Pekkala. ‘If even you two can’t see eye to eye, then what hope is there of peace?’

‘But we do agree,’ insisted Barabanschikov. ‘About one thing, at least. The major is correct that this is indeed a choice between life and death. But what he does not seem to understand is that the choice is ours to make, not theirs.’

Their conversation was interrupted by the sound of a heavy diesel engine and a squeak of brakes in the alleyway behind the house.

‘They’re here,’ announced Barabanschikov.

‘Major Kirov,’ said Pekkala as he rose from his chair, ‘I would like for you to meet some friends of mine.’

Parked in the alley was a German military Hanomag truck, with SS number plates and a black and white Maltese cross painted upon each door of the driver’s cab. Its windscreen had been cracked into a spray of the silver lightning bolts, still tinted with the blood of the driver whose head had collided with the glass when an ambush ran it off the road the week before.

Crowded into the back were the truck’s new owners: an assortment of heavily armed men, most of them bearded, their hair long and unkempt. They were armed with weapons of all types — German Mausers, Russian Mosin-Nagants and Austrian Steyr-Mannlichers. Others had no guns at all, but carried butcher’s knives, sledgehammers and hatchets. Their clothing was equally varied. One had crammed himself into the silver-buttoned tunic of a Ukrainian Nationalist policeman, the black cloth gashed across the back where its former occupant had been hewn down with the same axe carried by the man who wore it now. Others were swathed in the dappled camouflage smocks of Waffen SS soldiers, or the deer-brown wool of greatcoats scavenged from the graves of Polish soldiers. They wore bullet-punctured helmets, cloth caps snatched from the heads of men as they begged for their lives or braided garlands of twigs which they carried on their heads like crowns of thorns. One was barely in his teens, a gymnastiorka tunic hanging scarecrow-like from narrow shoulders and a sub-machine gun monstrous-looking in his arms. Beside him stood an older man, his face pockmarked and ears so whittled down by frostbite they looked as if they had been chewed by a dog. This man carried no weapon at all, but only a stick carved from white birch. There was no glint of kindness in their eyes, nor of any emotion that could have brought about a moment’s hesitation in the furtherance of butchery.

Like miners emerging from a tunnel deep beneath the ground, Pekkala and Barabanschikov blinked in the glare of sunlight.

Catching sight of Pekkala and their leader, the partisans raised their grizzled paws at them and bared their teeth in smiles, but they regarded Kirov, and the red stars on his sleeves, with undisguised contempt.

The bullet-riddled door opened on the driver’s side. A man in a black leather coat got out and approached Barabanschikov. The driver was short and barrel-chested, his broad face scalpeled with pale creases in the smoke-stained skin.

After exchanging a few words, Barabanschikov turned to Kirov and Pekkala. His face was grim. ‘There’s been another killing,’ he said.

‘Who is it?’ asked Pekkala.

‘Yakushkin, Commander of the Red Army garrison. My men have just found his body. You’d better come quickly.’

Without another word, they all climbed into the back of the truck. Crammed among the partisans, they sped away down the street, careening around piles of bricks, the husks of burnt-out vehicles and the carcasses of horses, still fastened to the traces of wagons they’d been pulling when they died.

Memo: Office of Comrade Stalin, Kremlin, to Third Western Division of Foreign Affairs. December 12th, 1937

You are instructed to prepare documents of voluntary transfer of citizenship from the United States of America to citizenship of the Soviet Union for William H. Vasko. You are authorised to backdate documents to September 1st, 1936. Work is to be carried out immediately by order of Comrade Stalin.

Signed — Poskrebychev, secretary to Comrade Stalin

*

From the office of Joseph Stalin, Kremlin

To Ambassador Joseph Davies, US Embassy, Mokhovaya Street. December 16th, 1937

Ambassador -

On behalf of Comrade Stalin, I am replying to your request for information on the arrest of American citizen William H. Vasko. We regret to inform you that no such American citizen has been arrested. However, the Central Records Office of the 3rd Western Division of Soviet Foreign Affairs indicates that, on September 1st, 1936, a William Vasko voluntarily transferred citizenship from the United States to the Soviet Union. This transfer is a matter of public record and can be accessed through the Central Records Office at any time. As such, if the arrest of Comrade Vasko had, in fact, taken place, it would be a matter for Soviet Internal Security and not for the United States Embassy. However, I have been authorised to inform you that Comrade Vasko is not currently under arrest or in detention at any Soviet facility.

Comrade Stalin expresses his hope that your inquiry into this matter has been resolved and hopes that, in future, your embassy staff will conduct a more thorough investigation into such matters before referring them to the Kremlin.

Signed — Poskrebychev, secretary to Comrade Stalin

The night before, while Kirov and Pekkala made their way towards the safe house, Fyodor Yakushkin, commander of the SMERSH Brigade, had been waiting for his dinner in a dilapidated apartment near the hospital.

A smell of cooking filled the room.

Perched on a chair which was too small for him, Yakushkin rested his fists upon a table set for two. He was a heavy-set man with a bald head and fleshy lips set into a thick, square jaw. Since his belly was too large for him to wear his gun belt comfortably while sitting, he had taken it off and hung it over the back of his chair. Out of habit, he removed his pistol from its holster and laid it within reach on the table. Then he sighed impatiently as he looked around at the blue sponge-printed flower pattern dabbed on to the butter-yellow wall, the delicate curtains and the framed pictures of a squinting, shifty-looking old man and an equally pugnacious old woman in a head scarf. Their stares made him uneasy. Adding to his discomfort was the fact everything around him looked breakable, as if all he had to do was touch the pictures or the curtains and they would come crashing to the floor. This impression of flimsiness included the chair on which he sat. He was afraid even to lean back, in case it collapsed underneath him.

Yakushkin’s mood had been soured even before he arrived by news of Colonel Andrich’s murder. Yakushkin had met with Colonel Andrich on several occasions. He had warned the colonel that a truce with the partisans could never be achieved, but Andrich was determined to succeed. Yakushkin could not help admiring the colonel’s tenacity, even though he was, himself, convinced of the inevitable failure of the mission. As a gesture of goodwill, Yakushkin had even loaned the colonel his own chauffeur, Sergeant Zolkin, along with his beloved American Lend-Lease Willys Jeep.

Now Zolkin was missing, probably lying dead somewhere among the ruins. His jeep had been found, still parked outside the bunker, although so riddled with shrapnel that the motor pool mechanics weren’t sure it would ever run again.

The driver and the Willys Jeep could be replaced, but Andrich could not. As far as Yakushkin was concerned, the blame for these killings lay entirely with the partisans. They had been given a chance for peace, and they had squandered it. From now on, he thought to himself, the partisans will have to deal with us, and we do not negotiate.

Yakushkin was proud of his brigade’s bloody reputation, so much so that when its former commander, Grigori Danek, began to show a change of heart, Yakushkin was forced to take action.

In the old days, Danek had ordered his troops to open fire at the first sign of trouble, and the resulting massacres combined into a tally of butchery unmatched by any other branch of NKVD.

‘The only thing that impresses me,’ Danek had once growled to Yakushkin in one of his vodka-fuelled tirades, ‘is the efficiency with which we dispatch our enemies into the afterlife.’

But with the end of the war now in sight, Danek had begun to see things differently. He believed that the role of SMERSH had to change, and change quickly, before they found themselves scapegoats in the post-war world for all manner of atrocities, even those which they had not actually committed. In a conflict already brimming with horrors, what made SMERSH different was that the blood on their hands came mostly from their own countrymen.

This detail had never bothered Yakushkin, who saw his brigade as an instrument of vengeance for all who opposed Stalin’s will, no matter where they came from.

Danek spoke incessantly of a day of reckoning which he felt must surely come for those who had dispensed this vengeance.

Finally, Yakushkin had heard enough. When he encountered Danek, alone and too drunk to stand in an alley in the city of Minsk, he strangled the commander with his bare hands, employing an efficiency of technique which even Danek might have found impressive if he had not been on the receiving end of it.

In the days that followed, Yakushkin himself was put in charge of leading a thorough investigation into Danek’s murder, which naturally produced no results. The lack of reaction from Moscow was Yakushkin’s first real sign that Danek’s change of heart had come under unfavourable scrutiny from someone other than himself.

As the natural choice to succeed Danek, Yakushkin proved so successful that he had recently been informed of his transfer to headquarters in Moscow, to take effect as soon as this current task had been completed. For Yakushkin, this was a chance of a lifetime. Nothing could be allowed to prevent it, even if that meant the death of every partisan in Ukraine.

Such lofty goals do not come cheap to those who set them, and Yakushkin’s nerves were strained almost to breaking point.

The one thing which gave him comfort was the smell of food coming from the kitchen around the corner. Nurse Antonina was making tsapkhulis tsveni, a stew made with myslyvska sausages, apples, canned beans, eggplant and dried chilli peppers — all of which he had brought her as a gift the day before, with the understanding that they would be used to prepare a meal of which she would be allowed to eat a small portion. Yakushkin’s mouth flooded with saliva as he smelled the cardamom and pepper with which the sausages had been seasoned.

Since Yakushkin had begun paying visits to Antonina, the nurse had prepared several memorable meals: partridge in sour cream, venison with cranberries and khachapuri cheese bread. Of course, he had been obliged to supply the ingredients for these as well. A nurse at a field hospital could hardly be expected to find enough butter, eggs and meat to feed herself, let alone a man with such an appetite. But for someone of Yakushkin’s rank, these things were not hard to come by. It was finding someone to prepare them which provided the greater challenge.

Yakushkin listened to Antonina’s footsteps as she moved around the kitchen, the soft knocking of a wooden spoon against the sides of the stew pot as she stirred the meal and her humming of a tune he had not heard since childhood and whose name he’d never known.

It was past Yakushkin’s normal dinner time, but it had taken much longer than expected to oversee the clearing-out of munitions from the bunker where Andrich had been killed. By the time he arrived on Antonina’s doorstep, she had already gone to bed, but since Yakushkin had no intention of leaving without supper, he cajoled her into preparing a meal.

Yakushkin would have settled for a bowl of kasha, but instead Antonina had insisted on making a stew, which was taking forever to prepare, using all the ingredients he had given her.

Now Yakushkin wished he hadn’t come at all. In the hour he’d spent waiting, his stomach had become an empty chasm. When he got hungry like this, he became irrationally bad-tempered. His bodyguard, Molodin, knew to carry food on him at all times for just such occasions. The careers and even lives of men had been saved by Molodin’s quick thinking, as he pressed into the commander’s hand an apple, or a scrap of sweet churchkhela, made from rendered grape juice, flour and chopped walnuts, or a two-day-old vareniki dumpling stuffed with pickled cabbage, carefully saved in Molodin’s handkerchief.

Too irritated to sit still, Yakushkin got out of his chair and strode to the top of the stairs. The staircase descended to a narrow hallway, at the end of which was a door leading out to the street. Antonina’s apartment had no rooms on the ground floor, which was taken up by another apartment. ‘Molodin!’ he boomed.

The front door opened and, a moment later, Molodin himself appeared at the bottom of the stairs. He was a slight but agile man, with a pale, angular face, neatly shaved head and eyes the milky green colour of opals. Draped across his shoulders was a rain cape, in whose folds the sleet clustered like frog spawn. Slung across his chest beneath the cape, Molodin carried a PPSh sub-machine gun. ‘Is everything all right, Commander?’ he asked, and, as he spoke, his hand appeared from beneath his dripping rain cape. Pinched between his fingers was a piece of cheese, which he had been saving for his own breakfast. ‘Something to eat, perhaps?’

‘Keep it!’ Yakushkin smiled down at him. ‘I can’t steal another man’s meal!’ The truth was, Yakushkin would gladly have eaten Molodin’s last crumb of food, but he did not like the look of that cheese, cracked and yellowed like an old toenail, or the unwashed hand which held it out to him.

Molodin nodded, relieved not to be parting with his rations.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Yakushkin. ‘There’ll be plenty to eat when we get to Moscow.’

Molodin smiled gratefully although, in truth, he detested city life, and would never have set foot in Moscow unless ordered to do so.

‘Go on!’ Yakushkin waved him away cheerfully. ‘Back to work!’

‘Yes, Commander,’ replied Molodin, as he returned to his post outside the front door.

With his mood somewhat restored, Yakushkin returned to the little dining room. Easing himself back into the flimsy chair, Yakushkin picked up the knife, and examined the cutting edge, turning it in the light of an oil lamp in the middle of the table. Then he wiped the blade on his trouser leg and returned it to its place. After that, he repositioned his gun beside the knife, as if it were a piece of cutlery essential to the meal.

‘It’s almost ready,’ Antonina called to him from the next room. ‘It took a little longer than I expected.’

‘I will miss your cooking when I’m transferred to Moscow.’

‘You don’t have to miss it. You don’t have to miss anything at all.’

Yakushkin gave a nervous laugh. Antonina had made no secret of the fact that she wanted to accompany him to Moscow. He was her ticket out of this godforsaken place, for which her skill in the kitchen was not the only talent she seemed willing to provide. And now she spoke of Moscow as if he had already agreed to take her there, which he most definitely had not.

It was common practice for women to accompany high-ranking officers in the field, although spouses left at home were kept as ignorant as possible of the existence of these campaign wives. But Yakushkin didn’t have a wife at home and he didn’t want one out here either, especially one sporting a black eye; the result, she had told him, of trying to restrain a delirious patient at the hospital. What Yakushkin wanted was a decent cook, who would place his meal upon the table and then leave him to eat it in peace, rather than engage in banter whose horizontal outcome was never in serious doubt.

Antonina’s smiling face appeared around the corner, her forehead glistening with sweat from working over the stove. ‘Won’t it be nice to have a family to come home to in Moscow?’

‘A family?’ he spluttered. ‘Well, I don’t know. .’

‘You seem so uneasy, my love,’ she said. ‘Do you not enjoy our time together?’

‘Of course I do!’ Yakushkin gazed disconsolately at the empty plate. For pity’s sake, he thought, just bring out the food and stop talking.

‘When will we be leaving for Moscow?’

We, he thought. There is no we. The moment was fast approaching when Yakushkin would need to explain this to Antonina, but he had delayed this conversation for as long as possible, because he was in little doubt as to how disappointed she would be. And disappointed women were rarely good cooks. ‘It all depends upon those blasted partisans,’ he told her. ‘If things go the way they seem to be headed, my soldiers will soon be killing them in the hundreds.’

‘How could that be, after everything we have endured together in this war against the Fascists?’

‘I have asked myself that same question many times, darling. But as with everything in war, the answer is seldom what it should be. I believe these partisans, living behind the lines, have become infected with ideas that do not correspond to those of Comrade Stalin and the Central Committee. The simplest thing would be for them all to lay down their guns, come out of their forest lairs and place their collective fate in the hands of the Soviet Union, as it was before the war began. But it appears from recent events that this isn’t what they want.’

‘Then what do they want?’

Yakushkin shrugged. ‘I’m damned if I know. I don’t think they know either. And they just killed Colonel Andrich, the only man who might have had a clue.’

‘You really think the partisans killed him?’

‘Certainly. Who else?’

‘But what about the partisan leaders who died with him?’

‘They were leaders, yes, but each of his own tiny kingdom. Every partisan band has its own allegiance, and its own ideas about the future of their country. The only dream they have in common is to live in some fantasy of a world that never existed and never will. Hiding out in the woods for all those years has given them an illusion that such fantasies are possible. Whoever murdered the colonel and the others must have been convinced that this future did not include cooperating with the Soviets. The colonel was their best, perhaps their only hope. If Andrich had lived another month, he might have been able to win over enough of the Atrads that all the others would have followed. Instead, he was butchered by the very people he was trying to help. And now,’ Yakushkin clenched his fists and held them out, ‘the partisans and the Red Army are like two trains, racing towards each other on the same track. And I tell you, Antonina,’ He drew his fists together, cogging the knuckle bones, ‘those trains are about to collide.’

Just then, Yakushkin heard a noise somewhere behind him. It was a faint scuffling sound, but unmistakable. Turning suddenly, his hand reached out for the gun. But there was only the wall and a chest of drawers. He blinked in confusion. ‘Is someone else here?’ he asked.

‘Somebody else? Besides your bodyguard, you mean?’

Yakushkin pointed at the chest of drawers. ‘What is behind that wall?’

‘The next door neighbour’s apartment, but I think it’s empty now. Why?’

Yakushkin shook his head. ‘I thought I heard someone.’

‘This old house is full of noises,’ she told him. ‘It’s probably just the storm outside.’

More likely a rat, Yakushkin thought to himself.

At that moment, the door opened downstairs as Molodin stepped in out of the rain, closing the door behind him.

Yakushkin didn’t mind Molodin coming into the house without permission, but he felt a twinge of embarrassment that his bodyguard would now be able to overhear the silly things he was forced to say to Antonina. ‘Don’t worry, Molodin!’ he called out. ‘I promise to save you some food.’

‘Here it is!’ said Antonina, as she came around the corner with the glazed earthenware pot containing the stew.

Yakushkin clapped his hands together. ‘At last!’ Just then, he heard the stairs creak as Molodin began making his way up to the apartment. ‘Not yet, Molodin!’ he called out. ‘I have not even begun the meal!’

Antonina placed the pot before Yakushkin, handed him a serving ladle, then took her seat at the opposite side of the table.

Yakushkin rose to his feet, like a man about to give a speech. ‘Beautiful,’ he said, as he gazed into the stew, breathing the fragrant steam which dampened his red face. ‘Truly a wonder of the world!’ In that moment, Yakushkin’s heart softened and he felt ashamed. What a fool I’d be, he thought, if I let this woman go. Of course I will take her to Moscow and we will be that happy family she spoke about.

Lifting his eyes, Yakushkin cast an adoring glance at Antonina, but was surprised to see she wasn’t looking back at him. Instead, she was staring at the doorway with a startled expression on her face.

He turned to follow her gaze.

In the doorway stood a captain of the Red Army, his tunic darkened by the freezing rain which had soaked him to the bone. His hands were tucked behind his back, as if standing at ease on a parade ground. Water dripped from his elbows on to the scuffed floorboards.

‘Who are you?’ Yakushkin demanded angrily. ‘Has something happened at the garrison? Speak up, Captain! State your business and be gone.’

But the man said nothing, and he made no move to leave. Instead, he turned and stared at Antonina.

They know each other, thought Yakushkin. And suddenly he felt the burn of jealousy for a woman he had never wanted until now. He rounded upon Antonina. ‘Who is this man to you?’ he asked.

‘I’ve never seen him before!’ replied Antonina, her voice quavering as she spoke. ‘I swear.’

Yakushkin didn’t believe her. ‘I trusted you,’ he snapped, ‘but I promise that is over now!’

‘Yes,’ said the officer. ‘It’s over now.’ From behind his back he drew a gun.

A wave of helpless dread passed through Yakushkin’s mind. He glanced down at his Tokarev, which lay beside the empty dinner plate. The captain had already drawn his gun. Yakushkin knew it was too late to save himself. He looked across at Antonina. ‘I could have loved you,’ he said, and then he snatched up the pistol and shot her in the chest.

At that same instant, a bullet crashed through the back of Yakushkin’s skull. He fell forward on to the table, which collapsed beneath his weight. The contents of the earthenware pot spilled across the floor and cutlery crashed to the ground.

Antonina was still alive, but barely. The force of the bullet had knocked her out of her chair. Now she lay on her back, her legs askew like those of a dropped marionette. She tried to speak, but her words were lost in the blood which spilled from the corners of her mouth.

The man stepped carefully across the room, avoiding the steaming pieces of sliced apple, boiled sausage and shattered crockery. Curiously, he looked at the woman. From the look on his face, it would have been clear to Yakushkin that these two had never met before. He bent down and gently put his hand upon her forehead. ‘Where is the major you treated at the hospital?’ he asked quietly. ‘The one named Kirov. Where is he now?’

‘Still there,’ she whispered.

‘No,’ the man told her. ‘He’s gone. Where did he go?’

She stared at him blankly.

‘You don’t know, do you?’ asked the man.

Her lips moved feebly, but she made no sound.

Slowly he moved his hand down from her forehead, until he was covering her eyes. Then he set the pistol against her left temple and pulled the trigger. The gun bucked and, in the flash of burning powder, some of her hair caught fire. He brushed it away from her face. Reeking metallically, the burned strands crumbled into ash.

The man stood and made his way back down the stairs. Before he vanished out into the storm, he paused to glance at Molodin, who lay in the hallway, tongue protruding from between his purple lips, and eyes bulging grotesquely from the garrotting wire sunk into his neck.

Memo from Joseph Davies, US Ambassador to Moscow, Yacht ‘Sea Cloud’, Stavanger, Norway to Counsellor Richard Sparks, Acting Supervisor of US Embassy, Moscow. December 21st, 1937

I order you to terminate the employment of Samuel Hayes, secretary at the Embassy, effective immediately. His gross negligence with regard to a recent inquiry into the arrest of a Soviet citizen has caused grave and unnecessary friction between this office and the office of the Kremlin, notwithstanding the considerable efforts made by me personally into resolving the case. Had I been aware of the facts, now provided to me by the Soviets, I would never have taken such steps. Mr Hayes’ obligation to pursue the facts before risking an international incident was entirely neglected. His conduct, which is entirely out of keeping with the highest standards of the US Diplomatic Corps, merits nothing less than his dismissal and return to the United States on the next available transport.

Signed — Joseph Davies, Ambassador

PS See to it that the cases of champagne ordered for the upcoming reception of Soviet dignitaries are kept at a suitable temperature until ready for use.

Minutes after leaving the safe house, the Hanomag truck pulled up beside the building where Yakushkin and the nurse had been killed. Outside its front door, a partisan stood guard. He was tall and bony, with sunken cheeks, narrowed eyes almost hidden under a floppy, short-brimmed cap, and armed with a German MP40 sub-machine gun. He wore a mixture of military and civilian gear: grey wool riding breeches, worn through at both knees and with leather panels along the inside of each thigh, had been tucked into knee-length lace-up boots. His jacket was a lumpy woollen thing, oddly tight about the shoulders but with arms so long the man had been forced to roll them up, revealing the black and white striped lining. The garment had been cinched around his waist with a German leather belt. The aluminium buckle, once emblazoned with an eagle, a swastika and the words ‘Gott Mit Uns’, had been ground down and polished smooth, and the shape of a red star cut out of the centre, a common modification among the partisans.

‘Good morning, Malashenko.’ Pekkala nodded to the partisan as he and Barabanschikov climbed down from the truck.

‘Good morning, Inspector,’ replied the man. He stood aside to let Pekkala by, but when Kirov tried to pass, the partisan blocked his way. ‘Not you, Commissar.’

‘The commissar is helping us,’ said Barabanschikov.

Malashenko shot a questioning glance at his commander, and for a moment seemed ready to defy him. ‘First time for everything,’ he muttered, as he grudgingly moved out of the way.

Barabanschikov rested his hand upon Pekkala’s shoulder. ‘I must leave now, but Malashenko will remain with you for protection.’

‘I don’t need a bodyguard,’ said Pekkala.

‘Consider it as insurance against your ending up as the next man on this assassin’s list of victims. Use the safe house for as long as you need it. Our patrols will keep an eye on the place.’ With those words, Barabanschikov climbed into the truck and the Hanomag disappeared down the road in a blue cloud of diesel exhaust.

‘Why haven’t the police been informed about this?’ Kirov asked Malashenko.

‘There are no police,’ he answered. ‘Not any more.’

‘Then what about the Red Army? Why aren’t they guarding the crime scene?’

‘Because they haven’t found it yet.’

‘So who reported the incident?’

‘The locals did. To us. We are the only ones they trust, Commissar, and there is good reason for that.’

Now Pekkala turned to Malashenko. ‘Does anyone at the garrison know that Yakushkin is even missing?’

‘They knew he was gone from the barracks last night,’ replied the partisan, ‘but no one looked for him until this morning. They are aware that he had been spending time with Antonina Baranova, the woman who lived in this house. It won’t be long before they find out he was here.’

‘And where is this woman?’

‘Upstairs with a bullet in her brain,’ Malashenko told him, ‘the same as Commander Yakushkin.’

‘How long have we got to examine the crime scene?’ asked Pekkala.

‘Five minutes, maybe less. But we need to be gone before then. Once those soldiers realise their commander is dead, they’ll arrest every partisan they can lay their hands on.’

‘We’ll be as quick as we can,’ Pekkala assured him.

In the front hallway, Kirov almost tripped over the body of Yakushkin’s bodyguard, Molodin. No one had touched him. He straddled the narrow space of the hallway, neck bent against the lower part of the wall so that his head was upright. Molodin’s left arm had been dislocated in the struggle and now his hand hung poised above his face, fingers strangely clawed, as if to cast a spell upon himself. The dead man’s lips had turned a livid purple, as had the tips of his fingers and his skin was grey and patched with blooms of yellowish-blue.

At the top of the stairs, Kirov and Pekkala entered the little dining room where the two murders had taken place. The air smelled of the stew which Antonina had prepared. Congealed fat merged with the blood of the victims, staining the bare wooden floor. Lying in among the broken plates, the knives and forks and the remains of the uneaten dinner, lay the bodies of Yakushkin and the woman.

Kirov gasped as he realised she was the nurse who had treated him at the hospital.

Antonina lay on her back, eyes half open and the side of her skull shot away. Her teeth had been stained red with her own blood.

Pekkala crouched over Yakushkin’s body, which lay rigor-mortised like a statue tumbled from its pedestal. The commander lay on his right side, his right arm tucked under him and his left stretched out in front of him, as if reaching towards the gun he had been carrying. The point-blank shot which killed him had done so much damage that if it were not for the insignia on his uniform, he might have been unrecognisable.

‘That appears to be the general’s gun.’ Kirov pointed at the Tokarev lying on the floor. ‘He must have drawn his weapon, but by then it was too late to use it.’

‘Possibly.’ Pekkala lapsed into silence as he stared at the corpse of the woman.

‘Why “possibly”?’ asked Kirov. ‘You think he might have wounded the assassin?’

Pekkala nodded towards the dead woman. ‘Look at the placement of the shots.’

‘One to the head and one to the chest.’

‘Which tells you what, Kirov?’

‘That the woman wasn’t killed by the first bullet that struck her.’

‘Not killed, perhaps,’ agreed Pekkala, ‘but mortally wounded for certain.’

‘I don’t see what you’re getting at, Inspector.’

‘The first bullet struck her dead centre in the chest, as if she was a target at a shooting range. After sustaining that injury, she had, at best, a few minutes left to live. Nothing could have saved her. The assassin would have realised that.’

‘And you’re wondering why he bothered to administer a coup de grace when he knew she would be dead before he even reached the street?’

Just then, Pekkala spotted something. He bent down over the shellac of congealed blood which had seeped out around the corpses.

Kirov clenched his teeth as he watched Pekkala’s fingers reach into the gore.

When Pekkala straightened up, he held in his hand three empty pistol cartridges.

‘Are they the same kind we found in the bunker?’ asked Kirov.

Pekkala examined them closely. ‘Two of them show signs of having been reloaded,’ he replied, ‘but the third one does not.’

Kirov picked up the commander’s gun and removed the magazine. ‘There is one bullet missing from the magazine. The rest are standard ammunition.’

‘Which means that the assassin fired twice,’ Pekkala pointed at the two bodies, ‘and that Yakushkin’s final act was to murder the woman with whom he was just sitting down to dinner.’

‘Why would he fire at her and not at the man who was trying to kill him?’ Kirov wondered aloud. ‘Could she have been the murderer’s accomplice?’

‘The general must have thought so,’ said Pekkala, ‘but what I don’t understand is why the gunman would take the time to finish her off when every second spent at the crime scene increased his chances of being caught as he tried to escape?’

‘He must have chosen not to let her suffer any longer than was absolutely necessary.’

‘Because she was a woman?’ suggested Pekkala.

‘That can’t be it,’ replied Kirov. ‘He didn’t hesitate when he killed those two secretaries in the bunker.’

Pekkala waved his hand over the bodies. ‘Then something else happened here. Whatever the answer, it points towards a weakness in his character.’

‘If you call compassion a weakness.’

‘In his line of work,’ replied Pekkala, ‘that’s exactly what it is.’

Just then, they heard a sound, a scuffling which seemed to be coming from inside a chest of drawers set against the wall.

Both men lunged for their weapons. In an instant, Pekkala’s Webley and Kirov’s Tokarev were aimed at the bulky wooden structure.

Without a word, Kirov stepped over to the chest of drawers. He knelt down, knees cracking, and set his ear against the side panel. For a moment, he remained there, motionless and listening.

Then both men heard a strange and high-pitched sound, like that of a trapped bird, coming from the same location.

Caught off guard by the noise, Kirov tipped backwards, landing heavily upon the floor. He scrambled backwards, then jumped once again to his feet. ‘What was that?’ he whispered to Pekkala.

‘I think it was the sound of someone crying,’ replied Pekkala. Stepping over to the chest of drawers, he gently tapped the barrel of the Webley against the wood. ‘Come out,’ he said gently. ‘No one is here to hurt you.’

‘I can’t,’ replied a voice, so faint that they could barely make it out.

‘Why not?’ asked Pekkala.

‘You have to move the chest,’ replied the voice.

‘It’s a child!’ gasped Kirov. Setting his weight against the chest of drawers, he moved the structure aside, revealing a hole in the wall behind. It had been crudely excavated, the sides hacked from the plaster. The stumps of wooden laths protruded like the ends of broken ribs. The hole itself was narrow, far too small for anyone to stand inside and too short to lie down in. Curled in a foetal position, with her knees drawn up to her chin, was a young girl, no more than ten years old. She wore a tattered blue coat and worn-out shoes, fastened by a strap with flower-shaped buckles, which must once have been saved only for special occasions.

Immediately, Pekkala put away his gun and knelt down beside the hole. ‘What is your name?’ he asked gently.

‘Shura.’

‘It’s safe to come out now, Shura.’ He beckoned to her with his blood-stained fingers.

The girl stared at him, her eyes reddened from hours of weeping.

‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘Why was there shooting? Why is the table tipped over? Who is that lying on the floor? Is that the general?’

‘We are trying to answer those questions,’ Pekkala shifted his stance to block the girl’s view of the carnage, while Kirov removed his tunic and laid it over the dead woman’s face. Then he gathered up the once-cheerful white and yellow table cloth and heaped it on the shattered ruination of the general’s skull. Pekkala kept talking to the girl. ‘And I think you might be able to help us, but first tell me, Shura, who put you in this place?’

‘My mother.’

‘And your mother’s name is Antonina?’

‘Yes,’ she told them. ‘When the general comes to visit, my mother takes me to my grandmother’s house. But if there isn’t time, she makes me hide in here.’

‘Why? Did she think that the general would hurt you?’

‘No, that’s not it,’ she replied. ‘She said that if the general knew about me, he might not come at all. She didn’t want him to know that she had a child. He brought food with him, you see. My mother always saved some for me. But then, last night, someone came up the stairs.’

‘How many of them were there?’

‘Only one.’

Pekkala narrowed his eyes. ‘Are you certain, Shura? Only one?’

‘I heard his footsteps. If there were more, I would have heard them, too. I thought it was the general’s helper, Molodin. He knows I live here, but he promised not to tell. Sometimes he would come by with gifts for me.’

‘How do you know it wasn’t him?’ said Pekkala.

‘I heard a voice and I knew it wasn’t Molodin. And I heard my mother’s voice, too. But softly. I couldn’t tell what they were saying. After that, the gun went off again.’

Pekkala nodded, trying to conceal his emotions. Just then, he noticed the blood on his fingers, tucked his hand behind him and wiped it on the back of his coat.

‘Are you hurt?’ asked the girl.

‘No,’ replied Pekkala. ‘I’m fine, Shura. Won’t you come out now? It’s safe. No one is going to hurt you.’

The girl crawled out of the space and Pekkala swept her up in his arms.

‘Is that my mother lying there?’ From the flat tone of her voice, it was clear that she already knew. In the hours she’d spent huddled in the blindness of that hiding place, the girl had pieced together images from what she’d only heard.

‘Look at me,’ said Pekkala.

As if lost in a trance, Shura continued to stare at the hulk of the dead general, his stiffened body like an island on the blood-daubed floor, and the granite pallor of her mother’s legs protruding from her skirt.

‘Look at me, Shura,’ he repeated.

This time, the girl obeyed.

‘I want you to do something for me,’ Pekkala told her. ‘I want you to close your eyes and let me carry you downstairs. It is better not to see what’s here. Do you understand?’

The girl’s eyes slid shut like those of a doll tilted on to its back.

Pekkala carried her down, stepping over the body of the guard, and out into the street.

‘My God,’ said Malashenko, his gaze fastening upon the little girl. ‘What is she doing here?’

Hearing a familiar voice, Shura opened her eyes and looked around, squinting in the harsh daylight.

‘You know this girl?’ Pekkala asked Malashenko.

‘I do,’ he replied.

Pekkala set her down and she walked over to Malashenko, who crouched down and placed her on his knee.

‘Shura,’ said the partisan, ‘do you recognise me? I was a friend of your mother’s.’

‘I know who you are,’ replied Shura.

‘Do you know where her grandmother lives?’ Pekkala asked Malashenko. ‘Can you take her there?’

‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘but I am supposed to be guarding you.’

‘Meet us at the safe house when you’re done. We’ll manage until you get back.’

‘Yes, Inspector. I promise to return right away.’

‘Move fast, Malashenko,’ said Kirov. ‘Here come Yakushkin’s men.’

They all heard it now, the sound of a vehicle fast approaching from the direction of the hospital.

‘You had better leave with me, Inspector,’ said Malashenko. He shifted the little girl off his knee and rose to his feet. ‘Your friend might be safe in that uniform of his, but you won’t be safe among the soldiers.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Kirov assured him. ‘I guarantee Pekkala’s safety.’

‘Your guarantee?’ asked Malashenko. ‘What use is that? The promise of a commissar is no better than the oath of a whore.’

The words were not even out of Malashenko’s mouth, before Kirov’s gun was levelled at his face.

The speed of Kirov’s draw left Malashenko wide-eyed with astonishment. ‘You see?’ spluttered the partisan, not taking his eyes off the weapon. ‘You see who these men really are?’

‘Major,’ said Pekkala, ‘you will put the gun away. And you!’ he turned to Malashenko. ‘Go now, before that mouth of yours gets you in more trouble than I can get you out of.’

Fascinated, the little girl had watched all this. Now she reached out her arms to be carried as Malashenko slung the sub-machine gun on his back, and he lifted her up and vanished down an alley just as a Red Army truck appeared around the corner, and began speeding towards the yellow house.

‘What was that just now?’ demanded Pekkala. ‘Have you completely lost your mind!’

‘No,’ Kirov said through clenched teeth, ‘but that’s what I’d like him to think.’

Internal Memo, Office of Immigration and Naturalisation, US Embassy, Moscow. December 28th, 1937

Application for replacement of US passports for Mrs William H. Vasko, aged 42, her son Peter Vasko aged 16 and daughter Rachel Vasko, aged 9.

Filing of application delayed pending payment of $2 US Dollars per passport. Applicant did not have required US Dollars and will return shortly.

*

Police Report, Kremlin District, December 29th, 1937

Arrest of Betty Jean Vasko and two children, charged with illegal possession of foreign currency pursuant to NKVD directive 3/A 1933.

*

Minutes of Central Court, Moscow, March 4th, 1938

Prisoners G-29-K Betty Jean Vasko, G-30-K Peter Vasko, and G-31-K, Rachel Vasko convicted of currency manipulation and illegal possession of foreign currency. Sentenced to 10, 5 and 2 years respectively. Transport to Kolyma.

One hour later, Kirov and Pekkala were standing in the office of Captain Igor Chaplinksy, a slight man with thinning hair and a sharply angled face who had, until Yakushkin’s death, been second-in-command of the garrison.

Only days before, this building had been the central headquarters of the German Secret Field Police for the entire Western Ukraine. They had left in a hurry, abandoning most of their equipment — typewriters, radios and drawers full of documents, some of which had been burned in the courtyard below, while the rest had either been torn to shreds or else smashed into uselessness by the rifle butts of the departing soldiers.

Commander Yakushkin’s staff had moved into the building less than twenty-four hours after the previous tenants had taken to their heels. In their rush to establish a headquarters, there had been no time to remove the broken equipment and it remained as it had been left by its owners, in tangles of ripped-out wiring, broken glass tubes and a confetti of multicoloured requisition slips. There was even a large and mysterious splash of dried blood, fanned out like the feathers of a peacock on the wall behind Chaplinsky’s desk.

Chaplinsky’s first thought, after the Inspector and his assistant had identified themselves, was that he would somehow be held accountable for Yakushkin’s death, about which he had been notified even as Pekkala was climbing the stairs to his office. The fact that Pekkala had arrived in the company of a major of Special Operations convinced him that his fate was already decided.

‘I had no idea where the commander was last night,’ said Chaplinksy, clasping his hands together in front of his chest like a man wringing water from a rag. Although the gesture was intended to reinforce the sincerity of his defence, it gave instead the impression of a man begging for mercy which, as far as Chaplinsky was concerned, was not far from the truth. ‘He did not tell me where he was going. And I ask you, comrades, was it even my duty to ask? Commander Yakushkin was often absent, particularly at night. Am I responsible for his private life! No! I am a simple soldier in the service of his country. That is all. I serve the Soviet people. I. .’

Pekkala leaned forward. ‘Captain Chaplinsky,’ he said softly.

Chaplinsky cut short his monologue. ‘Yes?’ he almost sobbed.

‘We are not here to charge you with his murder.’

‘You aren’t?’ Chaplinsky settled back in his chair as if he were deflating. ‘Then why are you here, gentlemen?’

‘We were investigating the murder of Colonel Andrich,’ explained Pekkala. ‘Now, unfortunately, that investigation has expanded to include Commander Yakushkin.’

‘And one more, as well, I’m afraid,’ said Chaplinsky, ‘although I’m not certain it is related to your case.’

‘Who else has been killed?’ asked Pekkala.

‘A hospital orderly by the name of Anatoli Tutko. He was knifed to death last night at about the same time as Commander Yakushkin was murdered. Tutko worked on the same floor as the nurse with whom Yakushkin was involved. As I say, it may not be related, but you can be certain of one thing, Inspector.’

‘And what is that?’ asked Pekkala.

‘That the partisans are behind all these killings.’

‘They seem equally convinced that you are to blame.’

‘Andrich was working for us!’ Chaplinsky said indignantly. ‘And no one in the Red Army would dare lift a hand against Commander Yakushkin. The partisans must have found out what was coming to them and decided to take vengeance before we had even begun.’

‘What is coming?’ asked Kirov. ‘What are you talking about?’

Chaplinsky snatched a piece of paper off his desk. ‘These are my orders to prepare for an all-out assault against the partisans. The message just came through from Moscow, and we are now on full alert until the command comes through to commence the attack.’

‘Comrade Chaplinsky,’ said Pekkala, ‘you must do everything you can to delay taking action, at least until I can find out who is really behind the murders of Colonel Andrich and Commander Yakushkin, or the result will be a needless slaughter.’

‘I am well aware of what the cost will be in blood, Inspector, but what would you have me do? An order is an order, especially one from the Kremlin.’

‘A commander in the field,’ said Kirov, ‘is always afforded some discretion.’

‘Commander?’ echoed Chaplinsky.

‘Of course,’ Kirov told him. ‘You are in charge now, after all.’

Everything had happened so suddenly that this fact had not yet dawned upon Chaplinsky. Yes, he thought to himself. I am the commander. And his face assumed a solemn gravity.

‘So you will do what you can?’

‘As commander,’ said Chaplinsky, ‘I assure you that I will.’

‘There is one other matter,’ said Kirov.

‘Anything to assist the men of Special Operations,’ Chaplinsky answered grandly.

‘We would be grateful for some kind of transport while we carry out our investigation.’

‘Of course. You may have Sergeant Zolkin for as long as you need him.’

‘Zolkin?’ asked Kirov, remembering the man who had met him at the airstrip upon his arrival in Rovno. ‘I thought he was killed in the air raid the other night.’

‘He is very much alive, I assure you,’ said Chaplinsky. ‘You can find him at the motor pool, down in the courtyard of this building. Sergeant Zolkin will drive you wherever you need to go. Just don’t go too far. I have just received word that the Germans might be mounting an attack to retake Rovno. There is heavy fighting west of here. Our troops are holding them for now, but there is a chance, a good chance, that the Fascists might break through as early as tomorrow. If that happens, we have been ordered to defend this town, no matter what the cost.’

*

‘The death of that orderly was no coincidence,’ remarked Pekkala, as they made their way downstairs.

‘I agree,’ replied Kirov. ‘The gunman went to find the nurse, hoping she could lead him to Yakushkin. It was the orderly who told him where to go.’

‘There is one other possibility,’ said Pekkala.

‘And what is that, Inspector?’

‘He might have been looking for you.’

Emerging into the courtyard, they found it crowded with vehicles in various states of disrepair. A heap of bullet-shredded tyres lay in one corner and mangled pieces of exhaust pipe clattered with a ring of metal on stone as they were tossed by grease-blackened mechanics on to the tiles of what had once been the summer dining area of the hotel.

In the centre of the courtyard, Pekkala and Kirov discovered Yakushkin’s jeep. Its olive-drab paint had been gashed down to the bare metal in places where shrapnel had torn through the bonnet and cowlings. Two men in blue overalls huddled over the engine.

‘Zolkin?’ asked Kirov, unsure which one he should be talking to.

Both men turned and squinted at the new arrivals. Neither was the Sergeant. One man aimed a greasy spanner at the other side of the courtyard to where Zolkin was sorting through a heap of punctured radiator hoses. His unbuttoned telogreika revealed a sweat-stained undershirt beneath. ‘I thought you were dead!’ he exclaimed, when he caught sight of Kirov.

‘I thought the same of you,’ replied the major. ‘What happened to you when the bombing started?’

‘I was on the other side of the street, buying a mug of tea from some old woman when the bombs started falling. She and I ended up down in her basement. A bomb fell so close by that the house collapsed on top of us. We weren’t hurt, but it took me several hours to dig our way through the rubble. By the time I got us out of there, the locals told me that a number of bodies had been removed from the bunker. They said everyone down there had been killed.’

‘I was only wounded,’ Kirov explained. ‘It seems that we have both been lucky.’

‘I thought so, too, until I heard about the death of Commander Yakushkin.’

‘That news has travelled fast.’

‘Everyone in the garrison knows about it,’ replied Zolkin.

‘You were supposed to go with him to Moscow, weren’t you?’

Zolkin sighed and nodded. ‘So much for the chance of a lifetime.’ But then he raised his head. ‘Unless. .’

‘Unless what?’ asked Kirov.

‘You could take me with you when you return,’ suggested Zolkin. ‘I would gladly serve as your driver in Moscow, if you don’t already have one.’

‘Sergeant,’ Kirov began, ‘I’m afraid. .’

‘We don’t have a driver,’ said Pekkala.

Kirov glanced at him in confusion. ‘I drive us everywhere!’

‘If you want to call it driving.’

‘Are you going to compare my driving with yours? Because if you are. .’

Zolkin had been watching this exchange like a spectator at a tennis match, but now he raised his voice. ‘Comrades!’

The two men turned to look at him.

‘I will be the best driver you have ever had,’ Zolkin assured them.

‘You would be the only driver we have ever had,’ said Pekkala, ‘and I see no reason why you should not come with us to Moscow.’

‘Do you have the authority to get me transferred?’ Zolkin asked.

Pekkala smiled and handed Zolkin his pass book.

Zolkin opened it and read the text inside. ‘You are Inspector Pekkala?’ He raised his head and stared.

‘Yes, he is,’ Kirov answered with another sigh of annoyance, ‘and, unfortunately, you will find, if you read that little yellow piece of paper in his pass book, that he most definitely has the authority required to transfer you to Moscow.’

Zolkin squinted at the Classified Operations Permit. Slowly, he read out part of what it said. ‘May pass into restricted areas and may requisition equipment of all types, including weapons and vehicles. .’

‘And drivers, too,’ Pekkala added cheerfully.

‘Congratulations,’ Kirov growled at the sergeant. ‘It seems that you will soon be on your way to Moscow.’

The sergeant’s mouth hung open for a moment. Then he reached out and clasped Kirov’s hand in both of his. After nearly dislocating the major’s wrist, Zolkin turned his attention to Pekkala and, grasping the Inspector’s hand, gave him the same bone-jarring treatment. ‘When do we leave?’ he asked.

‘As soon as we have solved these murders,’ answered Pekkala.

‘In the meantime,’ added Kirov, ‘Commander Chaplinsky has appointed you to be our driver. That is, if you have still have a vehicle which runs.’

‘We are working on that now,’ said Zolkin. ‘The Jeep should be fixed by tomorrow, as long as you don’t mind a few chips to the paint.’

‘We are staying at a house not far from here,’ said Pekkala. He gave Zolkin the directions. ‘As soon as you are ready, come and find us.’

‘Very good, Comrade Major.’ Zolkin clicked his heels and set off towards the mechanics, buttoning up his jacket as he went.

Now that they were alone, Kirov turned to Pekkala. ‘A chauffeur?’ he asked.

‘I’ve always wanted one,’ Pekkala replied smugly.

‘But you don’t even sleep in a bed!’ shouted Kirov.

Their conversation was interrupted by a long, low rumble in the distance.

‘It’s early in the year for thunder,’ remarked Kirov, glancing up at the sky.

‘That is not thunder,’ said Pekkala. ‘That’s artillery.’

(Postmark: Vladivostock. May 10th, 1938)

To:

Mrs Frances Harper

Hague Rd,

Monkton, Indiana, USA

Dear Sister,

I must be brief. Last year, Bill got arrested by the Russian police. I don’t know why. They just took him away and I haven’t seen or heard from him since. Then, last month, I was also arrested. The Russian authorities charged me with carrying 6 American Dollars, which I did have but I needed them in order to pay for replacement passports for Peter, Rachel and me. We needed those passports because all of our papers were taken from us when we first arrived in Russia. They promised to give everything back but never did. The American Embassy would only take dollars, not Soviet money, but the Russians consider it a crime to own dollars, so they sentenced me to 10 years of hard labour. They also handed out sentences for the kids. Even little Rachel! But at least we are all together and, God willing, we will stay that way. There are hundreds of us here at this holding camp in Vladivostok on the Pacific coast. We have crossed almost half the length of Russia to get here and conditions are very bad. It is very cold and we have not had a proper meal in weeks. We are waiting to board a cargo ship, which will take us on a six-day journey across the Sea of Okhotsk to the Kolyma Peninsula, where we will begin our years of penal servitude in the city of Magadan. The stories they tell about Kolyma make me wonder how long the children and I can possibly last. One of the other prisoners told me that, at the Sturmovoi gold mine, where many of us will be put to work, the life expectancy is less than one month. Frances, I beg of you, do what you can for us. Write to the State Department in Washington. Go there yourself if you have to. But you must act quickly. We are leaving now. I have paid one of the guards to mail this letter and I pray that it will reach you soon.

Your sister, Betty Jean.

Intercepted and withheld by Censor, District Office 338 NKVD, Vladivostok

After dropping the girl off at her grandmother’s house, Malashenko did not return immediately to the safe house, as he had promised Pekkala he would do.

Instead, he made his way alone into the forest east of Rovno. Following trails used only by himself and wild dogs, Malashenko arrived at an old hunter’s cabin. The cabin stood at the edge of a muddy path once used by wood cutters but abandoned since the outbreak of the war. Three kilometres to the north, the path connected with the main road running out of Rovno, but it wasn’t even on the maps.

Before the war, the cabin had been the home of a gamekeeper named Pitoniak. The building had been well-constructed, with an overhanging roof, earth piled up waist deep around the logs which formed the walls, as well as a floor tiled with interlocking pieces of slate. The cabin’s inner walls had been insulated with old newspaper shellacked in place, and a potbellied stove kept it warm in wintertime.

Pitoniak had built the cabin with his own hands and the few people who knew of its existence, besides Pitoniak himself, had been killed off in the opening days of the German invasion. After the Germans took over in Rovno, he had simply continued with his duties, expecting at any moment to be relieved of his post by the occupying government. Instead, to Pitoniak’s astonishment, he continued to receive a monthly pay cheque, as well as his fuel and salt allotment, as if nothing had ever happened. For a while, it seemed as if Pitoniak’s luck might last throughout the war.

But it ran out one dreary February morning, when he encountered a small group of former Red Army soldiers who had escaped from German captivity and were now living in the forest. Their weapons had been fashioned in the manner of their ancestors, from sharpened stones and fire-hardened sticks and the gnarled fists of tree roots wrestled out of the black earth.

Pitoniak had been patrolling in a desolate valley, where he knew a pack of wild boar spent the winter. To get there and back was a full day’s walk from his cabin, but he was curious to see if the boar had produced any offspring that year. Pitoniak had set out before sunrise and arrived at the edge of the valley just before noon.

It was here that he ran into the soldiers.

There were only three of them and they were lost. They had been wandering in circles for days. Pitoniak gave them what little food he had brought with him — a small loaf of dense chumatsky bread, made from rye and wheat flour, and a fist-sized piece of soloyna bacon.

He offered to lead the men back to his cabin, and to put them in touch with a partisan Atrad under the command of Andrei Barabanschikov, which had begun forming in a remote area to the south of his cabin.

The soldiers agreed at once, and Pitoniak led them from the valley where they would soon have perished without his help.

Arriving at the cabin, Pitoniak built a fire in the potbellied stove.

The men stood by, hands held out towards the heat-hazed iron, faces blotched white with the beginnings of frostbite. They spat on the stove plates, watching their saliva crack and roll around like tiny fizzing pearls before it disappeared. When their clothing warmed, the men began to scratch themselves as dozens of cold-numbed lice came back to life.

Taking pity on these men, Pitoniak fed them sapkhulis tsveni stew made from deer kidneys, dill pickles and potatoes, which he had made for himself before he set out for the valley.

The soldiers wept with thanks.

After they had eaten, they sat naked by the stove, running candle flames up and down the seams of their shirts and trousers. The fires spat as lice eggs exploded in the heat.

When this was done, the soldiers bathed in an old wooden barrel filled with rainwater which stood behind his cabin.

As Pitoniak watched them set aside the filthy remnants of their uniforms and step out of their boots on to pale, trench-rotted feet, Pitoniak wondered if the Barabanschikovs would even take them in — three more mouths to feed and the men half dead as they were.

He was not the only one to have these thoughts.

That night, as the men lay sleeping, one of the soldiers rose to his feet, took up Pitoniak’s gun and shot the gamekeeper where he lay in his bunk. Then he turned the gun upon the other two men, killing them as well.

The name of this man was Vadim Ivanovich Malashenko.

After burying the bodies in a shallow grave, Malashenko made himself at home in the cabin. Over the next month, he steadily ate his way through Pitoniak’s food supply.

When Malashenko’s strength had finally returned, he set off in search of the Barabanschikov Atrad and it was not long before their paths crossed in the Red Forest.

Seeing that this former soldier had a gun and was not on his last legs, like so many others who had come to them, the Barabanschikovs accepted Malashenko into their ranks.

He had been with them ever since.

Malashenko never mentioned the cabin to the other partisans, but sometimes he went back there on his own. In the evenings, he would sit by the fire, staring at the newspapers on the walls. The shellac had aged with time, forming a yellowy glaze over the pages. The papers dated back to the 1920s and although Malashenko couldn’t read, the thousands of unfamiliar words transformed into a thing of beauty separate from their hidden meanings.

By the end of 1942, Malashenko had become convinced that the days of the Barabanschikov Atrad were numbered, along with all the other partisans in the region. Hidden among the trees, he had seen the SS death squads at work — trenches dug in the sandy soil and truckload after truckload of civilians, partisans and captured Red Army prisoners arriving at the place of execution. Stripped naked, they filed into the pits, huddled and obedient, where they were dispatched by men wearing leather aprons and carrying revolvers. It was the acceptance of their fate which haunted him, even more than the killings, of which he had already seen more than one man could properly encompass in his mind.

Malashenko knew that he would have to act now if he wanted to avoid ending up in a pit like those others but, at first, he had no idea how to proceed. After several days of pondering the situation, he came upon a solution which would allow him not only to survive but to prosper in this war.

It had been staring right at him, every time he walked into town.

Among the new occupiers of Rovno were men with big ideas, which only the privilege of rank could bring to life. He saw them in their finely tailored uniforms, gold rings winking on their fingers. He watched them sitting in the cafés, now open only to their own kind, laughing with beautiful women, whose shoulders had been draped with precious furs. As Malashenko passed by, staring with undisguised longing at their steaming cups of coffee and the fresh bread on their plates, they glanced at him and looked away again, as if he had been nothing more than a handful of leaves stirred up by a passing gust of wind. The disdain of these women only increased his admiration for the officers who owned them. For such men, Rovno was only a stepping stone, a place to be plundered of its wealth before setting off once more upon the road to greatness.

One person in particular had caught his eye; Otto Krug, director of the German Secret Field Police — the Geheime Feldpolizei — for Rovno and the surrounding district.

For a man like that, thought Malashenko, information is the source of power. And I have information.

But what to ask for in return? Cash was no good. When paying for food or clothes or tobacco, Malashenko could no more easily explain a wallet crammed with Reichsmarks than he could afford to let his partisan brothers know that he had been collaborating with the enemy. It had to be something that would not raise the suspicions of those who, like Malashenko himself, suspected the worst in everyone.

The answer came to him as he trudged through the forest one day, gathering mushrooms for the partisans’ communal cooking pot. It was a warm afternoon and perspiration trickled down his forehead, stinging his eyes and wetting his dusty lips. And suddenly Malashenko realised what he would ask for in payment. ‘Genius,’ he muttered, licking the sweat from his fingertips.

The answer was salt. He would trade information for salt. Throughout history, people had substituted salt for money. Even the Roman soldiers, whose isolated garrisons had once clung like limpets to this landscape, received salt as part of their salaries.

Salt had always been expensive, even before the war, but once the fighting began all available reserves had been snatched up by the military. Only those crafty enough to have hidden away their supplies could get their hands on it now. Malashenko might not have been rich. He might not have been the kind of man for whom salt was always within easy reach. But Malashenko was exactly the kind of individual who might have hidden his supply from the claws of government. That was a story even the most suspicious of his neighbours would believe.

These days, a person could buy anything with salt. From now on, that was exactly what he intended to do.

On his next visit to Rovno, Malashenko walked into the headquarters of the Secret Field Police, located in the former Hotel Novostav. With cap in hand and gaze lowered humbly to the floor, he stood before the desk of Otto Krug.

Krug was a giant of a man, with a boiled red face, wispy white hair and huge fists tucked into pale green doeskin gloves, like bunches of unripe bananas. He wore these gloves, even inside his office, due to a bad case of eczema that split his fingertips and left his knuckles raw. The condition had appeared shortly after his arrival in Rovno, and he blamed it entirely on the stresses of his new job.

As a result, Krug despised Rovno. He hated everything about it. Even before he arrived to take up his post, Krug had already begun scheming for promotion to one of the larger, more important cities of this soon-to-be conquered nation. Minsk perhaps. Or Kiev. Odessa. Stalingrad. In the wide scope of Krug’s ambition, even Moscow was not out of the question, provided he first took advantage of all the opportunities available to him here in Rovno.

When Malashenko explained that he was a trusted member of the elusive Barabanschikov Atrad, Krug pulled out a Luger pistol and laid it on the desk in front of him. ‘Why should I let you walk out of here alive?’ he asked.

With his eyes fixed on the gun, Malashenko explained what he was prepared to do.

Without moving the Luger from the desk, Krug brought out a bottle of apricot brandy, poured a measure into a glass and slid it across the table to the dishevelled little man. Then he sat back, gloved fist gripped around the neck of the bottle.

Malashenko poured it down his throat and the soft sweetness of the fruit was so perfectly contained within the glassy liquid that he could almost feel the downy softness of the apricot’s skin against his lips.

‘Assuming I can use this information,’ said Krug, ‘what do you want in return?’

When Malashenko named the manner of his payment, Krug had to stop himself from laughing out loud at his good fortune. Whole warehouses of salt were no more than a requisition slip away.

Krug slid the bottle across to Malashenko. ‘Help yourself,’ he said.

The men shook hands before they parted company, the Chief of Secret Field Police towering over the diminutive Malashenko.

Soon afterwards, the salt began to flow.

In brown, moisture-proof half-kilo bags, Malashenko marked his own path to prosperity. He hid this newfound wealth in a secret underground chamber, dry and lined with stones, which he had constructed in the woods behind Pitoniak’s cabin.

Whenever Malashenko learned of anything which he thought might be of interest to Krug, he found some excuse to visit Rovno and then paid a visit to the Geheime Feldpolizei.

In order to be able to leave the Atrad’s hiding place in the forest and visit Rovno on a regular basis, Malashenko established himself as a courier to the hospital in town. Although wounded partisans could not be brought to the hospital, which was constantly being watched by the German authorities, sympathetic Russians who worked there could still smuggle out medicine to the Atrads. Occasionally, doctors or nurses could be persuaded to make visits to the Atrads. Malashenko acted as a courier for both the medicine and the doctors, who would be blindfolded and led down as many winding trails as possible on their way to the hiding place, so as not to be able to repeat the journey on their own. Once they arrived at the Atrad, the doctors would perform surgeries in the most primitive conditions imaginable. But it was better than nothing at all.

Part of Malashenko’s agreement with Krug was that he would continue to carry out his duties as a courier, even though the German authorities were well aware of what he was doing. Krug considered the stolen medical supplies and the occasional doctor visit a small price to pay, compared to the information Malashenko supplied about partisans in the region.

As a result of Malashenko’s information, numerous Atrads were wiped out.

The Barabanschikovs, however, remained untouched. Malashenko credited this to his value as an informant, but that was only partly true.

The local anti-partisan troops had found the Barabanschikovs so elusive that Krug decided it would be easier just to leave them alone for now, and to focus on easier targets. Krug had long since realised that the war against the partisans could only be won in stages, and not in one all-out attack. The day would come when Krug would focus all of his resources on destroying the Barabanschikovs. For now, however, Krug had good reason to leave them in peace.

Malashenko always delivered his information in person to Krug, not trusting any intermediary or other form of communication, since he could neither read nor write. He entered the Feldpolizei headquarters through a tunnel which ran from a bakery across the road directly into the basement of the old hotel. Krug had ordered the tunnel to be built, not as a means of conveying informants into the building, but as a means of his own escape if the headquarters ever came under attack.

The amount of salt Krug paid out varied, depending on the value of the information, but Malashenko never had cause to complain. No matter how trivial the news, Krug never turned him away. He even handed over an extra bag of salt at Christmas.

But the next year brought changes. First came the defeat of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad. Then the mighty clash of armour at Kursk, from which the Red Army emerged victorious. By the autumn of 1943, the German army was in full retreat. Even the most fanatical among them began to realise that their fate was sealed. Soon, Malashenko knew, the Soviets would be his masters once again.

This conclusion came without a trace of joy or gratitude that the hour of Russian liberation was at hand. Instead, all that Malashenko felt was a shudder of dread, clattering like a knife blade down the ladder of his spine. He harboured no illusions that the defeat of Germany would bring peace to his world. The terror meted out by Nazi gauleiters would simply be replaced by the heavy-handed justice of the commissars, as it had been before the war began.

Anticipating the imminent arrival of the Soviets, partisan activity in the forests around Rovno had increased. Some of their attacks, on railway lines, German patrols and even on Rovno itself had turned into full-scale battles. Successive air raids, first by the Red Air Force and then by the Luftwaffe, had reduced the lives of those few surviving inhabitants of the town to something out of the Stone Age.

Although he continued to supply information to Krug, and Krug continued to pay for it as generously as ever, Malashenko knew the day was fast approaching when this arrangement would come to an end.

The last piece of intelligence he sold to Krug was a rumour he had picked up about a former partisan, Viktor Andrich, who would soon be arriving from Moscow with a mission to negotiate an end to all partisan activity in the region. At this time, the Red Army was only 20 kilometres from Rovno and Malashenko knew that this might be his final chance to profit from his arrangement with Krug.

Arriving at Feldpolizei headquarters, Malashenko found the place in a shambles. In the hotel courtyard, clerks were pitching armfuls of documents into a huge fire. Stray pages wafted away from the blaze, flecking the ground with rectangles of white so that the courtyard resembled a jigsaw puzzle with half its pieces missing.

Malashenko discovered the garrison commander at his desk, still wearing his doeskin gloves and cradling a litre of Napoleon brandy, not the cheap apricot schnapps with which he plied his informants. With this brandy, Krug had once hoped to celebrate the unconditional surrender of Russia. He had entertained great notions of his role in the future of this country. In these moments of supreme confidence, he had whispered to himself the titles and awards he believed would soon garnish his name. But now Krug’s career lay in tatters, and he glimpsed the future — of a Berlin consumed in flames and Red Army soldiers fighting house to house among the ruins. By the time Malashenko entered the room, Krug had drunk most of the brandy and his vision was so blurred that at first he barely recognised the partisan.

‘I have information for you,’ said Malashenko, eyes fixed on Krug’s Luger, which lay upon the desk, just as it had done at their first meeting.

‘And I have some for you,’ replied Krug. ‘We’re leaving!’

‘So I see.’

‘Which means,’ Krug paused to swig from the bottle, ‘that your information is no longer of any use to me.’

‘Very well,’ said Malashenko, turning to leave. He didn’t put it past Krug to finish him off with that Luger, now that their dealings were done, and he made up his mind to get out of the building as quickly as possible.

‘On the other hand,’ said Krug.

Malashenko turned. ‘Yes?’ He expected to find Krug’s Luger aimed in his direction, but was relieved to see the weapon still lying on the desk.

‘You may as well tell me what it is.’

Malashenko explained what he had heard about Colonel Andrich.

‘That’s it?’ asked Krug. ‘That’s all you’ve got?’

‘It ought to be worth something,’ answered Malashenko.

Krug breathed in deeply, the air whistling in through his long, thin nose. ‘That’s what you all say,’ he muttered.

‘All who?’ demanded Malashenko. ‘It’s just me standing here.’

Krug laughed. ‘You think you are the only partisan who works for me?’

‘Maybe not,’ admitted Malashenko, ‘but after all I’ve done for you, are you really going to send me away empty-handed?’

Krug sighed. ‘I suppose you haven’t been completely useless.’ He reached down beside his chair, lifted up a bag of salt and tossed it on to the desk. ‘My last one,’ he whispered. ‘Take it. Take it and get out of here.’

Malashenko did as he was told.

After the partisan had gone, Krug raised himself uncertainly to his feet, crossed the room to an Enigma coding machine and relayed a message to Berlin, stating that Rovno was in imminent danger of being overrun by the Red Army. The message went on to say that a Soviet colonel named Andrich had been dispatched by Moscow to negotiate a ceasefire between the various partisan groups after the German army had pulled out of the region. From other sources, Krug had learned that a force of Soviet Counter Intelligence troops was also on its way to Rovno, to deal with the situation by force if Andrich’s negotiations proved unsuccessful.

As the message transmitted, Krug thought about the plans he had made for himself, tracing the arc of his ambition higher and higher through the ranks until, at last, he would find himself sitting side by side with the great and living gods of the thousand-year empire to which he had sworn his allegiance. His musings were interrupted by a rustling at his windowpane. He turned to see a piece of paper, smouldering at its edges, blown by a gust of wind against the glass. Walking over to the window, he squinted at the document. It was a copy of a recommendation, made out to Krug himself, for an Iron Cross First Class. In exchange for a month’s leave, Krug had persuaded his second-in-command to fill out and sign the necessary paperwork. The recommendation had been sent to Berlin several weeks previously but there had been no acknowledgement of its receipt. Another gust of wind snatched away the paper, giving Krug a view down into the courtyard below, where men from his staff were still burning heaps of documents. Caught in the rising smoke, more pieces of paper fluttered up into the air beyond Krug’s window and, for a while, he watched them with the fascination of a child as they side-slipped into the milky sky. Then Krug sat down at his desk, put the barrel of the Luger in his mouth and blew his brains out.

Japanese Coast Guard Officer Hiroo Nishikaichi, Wakkanai Station, Hokkaido. June 21st, 1938

A Russian cargo vessel, the 'Yenisei', has run aground on the Tetsumu shoals, north of the island of Reshiri. It was spotted by Japanese fishing vessels drifting without power one week ago in the sea of Okhotsk. It appears to be one of the many prison ships travelling between Vladivostok and Kolyma. We approached the 'Yenisei' and signalled our willingness to assist, but were waved away by men with guns. We continue to monitor the situation.

*

Report of Imperial Japanese Coast Guard Officer Hiroo Nishikaichi, Wakkanai Station, Hokkaido. June 23rd, 1938

A small vessel of Russian origin arrived at the stranded cargo vessel 'Yenisei' early this morning and removed the crew. The ship was evidently on its journey back to Vladivostok from Kolyma after delivering a cargo of prisoners when it lost power. The ship appears to be in very bad repair. These vessels, we have learned, are often sold by the Americans to the Russians when the Americans have determined that the ships are no longer seaworthy. The ships are sold for scrap, but the Russians then immediately return them to service. It is no wonder that a ship such as the 'Yenisei' should have suffered a breakdown.

*

Report — June 28th, 1938

The 'Yenisei' now appears to have been abandoned by the Russians. High winds from the recent storm have caused the vessel’s hull to shift. It is now listing hard to starboard and appears to be taking on water. Commander Sakai is in agreement with me that the ship is now in danger of floating free of the shoals. Commander Sakai has approved the measure of boarding the ship and cutting holes in its hull to ensure that the vessel will not drift into the shipping lanes before it sinks.

*

Report — June 29th, 1938

At approximately noon today, my crew and I boarded the 'Yenisei' with the intention of cutting holes in the hull in order to ensure that the wreck did not become a hazard to shipping in the event that it drifted free of the shoals. Using axes and acetylene torches, we cut through the hull on the port side aft. Even before we had completely removed the section, my crew and I observed that the cargo area below was filled with bodies. We realised that the 'Yenisei' had been on its outward voyage and not bound for home empty, as we had believed when the crew was evacuated. The crew of the 'Yenisei' had abandoned the convicts to their fate. The compartment had flooded almost to its entire depth and we saw no signs of life among the dead, which numbered in the hundreds. Moving to the forward section, we cut another section from the hull and discovered yet another compartment filled with bodies. This compartment was partially flooded and we found several of the prisoners still alive. They had crawled upon the dead to stay clear of the water, the temperature of which would otherwise have ensured their deaths. We were able to rescue fifteen people. At that point, the 'Yenisei' began to shift again and we were forced to abandon our search for more survivors. As we had feared, the ship had begun to float free from the shoal. No sooner had we returned to the ship with the survivors than the 'Yenisei' slid off the shoal and sank. Of the fifteen people we rescued, three died before we returned to Wakkanai Station. The remaining passengers, eight men and four women, were immediately transported to the Sapporo Naval Hospital and quarantined. While most of the prisoners are Russian, one of them, a young man about seventeen years old, claims to be an American. All are now being treated for starvation and hypothermia and some are not expected to survive.

*

Coded Message. Enigma Cipher. Rotor Configuration 573

German Embassy, Tokyo

To: Abwehr Headquarters, 72–76 Tirpitzufer, Berlin

Have been approached by American male, approx 18 yrs old, claiming to be survivor of shipwreck involving soviet prisoners bound for Kolyma. Says family emigrated to Russia 1933. Reports whole family murdered by Soviets. Mother and sister died on ship.

Coded Message. Enigma Cipher. Rotor Configuration 870

Abwehr HQ

To: German Embassy, Tokyo

Why did he not go to American Embassy?

Coded Message. Enigma Cipher. Rotor Configuration 224

German Embassy, Tokyo

To: Abwehr Headquarters, 72–76 Tirpitzufer, Berlin

Claims he does not trust them. Says they will hand him back to Soviets.

Coded Message. Enigma Cipher. Rotor Configuration 190

Abwehr HQ

To: German Embassy, Tokyo

Does he speak Russian?

Coded Message. Enigma Cipher. Rotor Configuration 513

German Embassy, Tokyo

To: Abwehr Headquarters, 72–76 Tirpitzufer, Berlin

Fluently.

Coded Message. Enigma Cipher. Rotor Configuration 745

Abwehr HQ

To: German Embassy, Tokyo

Is US Embassy aware of his location?

Coded Message. Enigma Cipher. Rotor Configuration 513

German Embassy, Tokyo

To: Abwehr Headquarters, 72–76 Tirpitzufer, Berlin

Negative.

Coded Message. Enigma Cipher. Rotor Configuration 298

Abwehr HQ

To: German Embassy, Tokyo

Bring him in.

One week after the death of Commander Krug, and with Red Army troops now in full control of Rovno, Malashenko was contacted by another person who had been collaborating with the Germans during their occupation of the town.

Malashenko was astonished to discover that this person was nurse Antonina from the Rovno hospital, who had regularly supplied him with stolen medications and who had, more recently, been seen in the company of Commander Yakushkin. The meeting took place when Malashenko arrived at the hospital, ostensibly to receive treatment for scabies. In fact, he was there to collect penicillin, bandages and suture thread for the partisan medical officer, a former butcher named Leiferkus, who had turned his old trade of disassembling the carcasses of animals into reassembling his fellow men as best he could when no actual doctors could be found.

Even though the Germans had pulled out of Rovno, most of the Atrads, the Barabanschikovs included, had no intention yet of simply laying down their arms before the Soviets. This meant that, for Malashenko, his missions into Rovno continued just as they had done before.

In the dozens of times Malashenko had met with Antonina over the years, he never once considered that she might also be collaborating with the enemy. But this, Malashenko realised, was the genius of the disguise which Krug had fashioned for her. Krug had said there were others, and Malashenko wondered how many, whose paths he crossed each day, were hiding the same lie as his own.

Antonina, for her part, was equally amazed to learn the truth about Malashenko. She had received a message from Berlin on a radio provided by Krug, to be used only if Krug himself was captured or killed by the enemy. ‘In two days, you will receive a visitor,’ she told Malashenko.

‘What visitor?’ he asked nervously.

‘I don’t know who,’ replied Antonina, ‘but they have ordered you to rendezvous with him three days from now.’

‘Ordered?’

‘Did you think you were finished with these people?’ Antonina laughed. ‘You will only be finished when you, or they, or both of you are dead.’

‘All right,’ grumbled Malashenko, ‘but I expect to get paid.’

‘That is between you and them,’ she said. ‘Where shall I say you’ll be meeting this visitor?’

Malashenko thought for a moment and then gave her directions to Pitoniak’s cabin. ‘Tell them I’ll be there at dusk. I’d feel better if I knew what this was about.’

‘So would I,’ replied Antonina, ‘but neither of us do so there’s no point in worrying about it.’ She put several vials of penicillin in front of him, along with a stack of bandages, medical tape and suture thread. ‘You’d better carry those out of here, in case your people wonder what you’re doing.’

Malashenko rolled up his trouser leg and used the medical tape to strap the vials to his calves. Bald patches on his skin showed where previously applied strips of tape had been pulled away, leaving freckles of dried blood in the flesh.

‘How are you planning to get out of here,’ asked Antonina, ‘now that the Red Army has arrived?’

‘Out?’ replied Malashenko. ‘Where would I go?’

‘Any place at all, as long as it is far from here.’

‘I hadn’t thought about it.’

‘Well, you’d better start,’ Antonina told him. ‘If they find out you’ve been collaborating with the Germans. .’

Malashenko stopped wrapping the tape around his leg. ‘Why would they find out,’ he asked menacingly, ‘unless somebody told them?’

‘You should worry less about somebody giving you up and a little bit more about how things will change for us now that the Red Army is here. Better to leave and find some place where you can start again.’

‘Is that what you’re going to do?’ asked Malashenko, suddenly nervous that he did not have a plan of his own.

‘I’ve got an idea,’ she answered cryptically, ‘and if all goes well, I’ll be riding out of here in the arms of Commander Yakushkin.’

You’re a cold-hearted bitch, thought Malashenko, but he just nodded and smiled and hurried on his way.

*

The operation to assassinate Colonel Andrich had begun within hours of Krug’s message arriving at Abwehr Headquarters. Admiral Canaris, head of German Intelligence, had immediately grasped the vulnerability of the Kremlin’s plan. If Andrich could be liquidated, the Red Army would become bogged down in a war with their own people, diverting valuable troops from the front line and weakening the strength of the Soviet advance. All this, and significantly more if the full extent of the Admiral’s plan could be achieved, would be accomplished with the death of a single man, provided he was found in time.

Realising that the only way to achieve their objective would be to send an assassin, Admiral Canaris summoned SS Sturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny of the Brandenburg Kommando to a private meeting.

Skorzeny had carried out numerous commando operations during the course of the war including, in September of 1943, the rescue of Benito Mussolini from the castle of Gran Sasso, where the Duce was being held in captivity by Italian Communist partisans.

At his office on the Bendlerstrasse in Berlin, Canaris explained the situation to the six-foot-four-inch Skorzeny, who stood uncomfortably in Canaris’s drawing room, boots creaking as he tilted slowly between his heels and the balls of his feet, while the Admiral’s two dachshunds sniffed at his legs.

‘It could be done,’ said Skorzeny, when he had listened to the Admiral’s plan, ‘but doesn’t Abwehr have agents of its own to carry out the task?’

‘We do,’ replied Canaris. He was a tall man, with a gaunt face and deep-set eyes. His once blond hair had turned almost completely white and his lips twitched nervously whenever he listened to other people speak, as if forcing himself not to interrupt.

‘So why do you need me?’ asked Skorzeny.

‘Because what we don’t have is someone I can count on to deliver that agent to Rovno. That is why I’ve called on you, Skorzeny, because I know you can get the job done.’

‘As I understand it, Admiral, Rovno is now under Red Army control.’

‘And does that represent an insurmountable obstacle for you, Skorzeny?’

Skorzeny paused for a moment. ‘Not at all, Admiral, provided I am given the necessary resources.’

‘You may have whatever you need.’

‘And who is this agent, Admiral?’

‘His name is Peter Vasko.’

‘That sounds vaguely familiar.’

‘He came to us through the Embassy in Tokyo, back in ’38.’

‘Yes,’ said Skorzeny, ‘now I remember. The American.’

‘I would not call him that, if I were you. But yes, that is the man in question. Provided you can get him across the lines, Vasko will have no difficulty infiltrating Rovno as a Russian. He speaks the language and, thanks to his training with us, he is also an expert in firearms and explosives.’

At that moment, the phone rang, loud and jarring in the cramped space of the office.

Canaris picked up the phone. ‘Yes?’ As he spoke, he turned in his chair, until he was facing away from Skorzeny, and lowered his voice to a murmur.

Skorzeny took advantage of the disruption to kick one of the dachshunds and send it yelping under the Admiral’s desk.

Canaris turned to see what had caused the commotion, but by then Skorzeny appeared to be engrossed in studying the books which lined one wall of Canaris’s study.

Canaris hung up the phone. ‘You leave tonight, Skorzeny. Vasko will be ready. Any questions?’

‘I do have one.’

Canaris held out a hand, palm up, in a conciliatory gesture. ‘By all means.’

‘Are you certain it is wise to involve the SS in an Abwehr operation? Our two departments have been in conflict ever since the war began, and especially after Himmler took over the Intelligence Branch of the SS following the death of Reinhardt Heydrich.’

Skorzeny was telling the truth, and the source of this rancour between the two departments had largely been the result of a dispute between the SS and the Abwehr in the very area where Vasko would be carrying out his mission. Soon after the German invasion of Russia in 1941, Abwehr agents had begun working with local Ukrainian leaders to consolidate anti-Communist militias. Abwehr’s Eastern Group I, which was given responsibility for this large-scale operation, operated out of Sulejowek, across the border in occupied Poland. They succeeded not only in winning the support of the influential partisan leader Melnyk, who worked for the Germans under the code name ‘Konsul I’, but they were also able to recruit several companies of Ukrainian troops, who became known as the Gruppe Nachtigall.

How far-reaching this operation might have been would never be known, because it was derailed by the arrival of SS execution squads, known as Einsatzgruppen, which began a series of mass executions in the same region where Abwehr had been working to win over the local population.

Disillusioned Ukrainians, who had initially welcomed the arrival of German troops, now turned upon those they had seen as liberators and began a struggle against both the Fascists and the Communists.

Canaris had never forgiven the SS for their role in the failure of the Abwehr’s operations in the East. He had made no secret of that fact, which was why Skorzeny had good reason to wonder why the leader of the Abwehr would seek the assistance of an SS Sturmbannführer.

‘I chose you,’ explained Canaris, ‘because you are the best we’ve got, and also because this operation is too important to be waylaid by departmental politics.’

‘I understand, Admiral, and I am grateful for your confidence in me.’

‘And with that confidence in mind, I order you to maintain absolute secrecy with regard to this operation. No activity report is to be filed. No communication is to be made once the operation is under way. There will be no debriefing afterwards. No one may know. Absolutely no one. Not even Himmler!’

Skorzeny’s eyebrows rose almost imperceptibly.

‘Is that clear?’ asked Canaris.

‘Yes, Admiral. It is.’

‘You have your orders.’ Canaris waved him away. ‘Make them so.’

Immediately after Skorzeny’s departure, Canaris picked up the phone. ‘Get me Vasko,’ he ordered.

Two hours later, Vasko was standing in the room. He was of middle height, with a small mouth and large, staring blue eyes, which seemed to take in everything around him without looking at anything in particular. His hair, which he combed straight back on his head, was thin and the same dull shade of brown as the fur on the back of a mouse. He had an unremarkable face that appealed neither to women nor to men, and which allowed him to vanish in a crowd, ignored even by those who had stood in his presence, some of whom he had sent to their graves on the orders of Admiral Canaris.

‘Sit,’ Canaris gestured towards a chair. ‘Are you hungry? Thirsty?’

‘No, Admiral. Thank you.’

‘Skorzeny has agreed to transport you across the lines. You leave tonight. The mission is going ahead.’

‘But why bring in Skorzeny?’ demanded Vasko. ‘Surely the Abwehr have people who can get me through the lines.’

‘None who are as capable as Skorzeny,’ replied Canaris, ‘and if this mission goes wrong, I will need someone to take responsibility. Who better than the SS?’

‘And if it succeeds?’

‘Then Hitler’s flagging confidence in the Abwehr will be restored, and that slack-jawed chicken farmer Himmler will have no choice except to sing our praises to the heavens.’ Canaris lifted a sealed envelope from his desk and held it out.

Vasko leaned forward and slipped it from the Admiral’s grasp.

‘Once Skorzeny has brought you through the lines,’ Canaris continued, ‘you will be guided to your target by a partisan named Malashenko. He is a member of the Barabanschikov Atrad, and has served as an informant to the Secret Field Police in Rovno. The rendezvous point is an old hunter’s cabin in the forest south of Rovno. You’ll find the map coordinates inside that envelope.’

Vasko tucked it into the inside chest pocket of his coat. ‘How much did you tell Skorzeny about the operation?’

‘As much as he needs to know, but no more. Skorzeny is aware that you are going in to liquidate Colonel Andrich but, like you, he knows nothing at all about the full extent of the mission, or the agent who will be carrying out the secondary phase.’

‘Forgive me, Admiral, but are you sure it’s right to separate the two phases of the mission so completely? If I knew who this second agent was. .’

‘Then you would be in a position to give up the name of the agent if, God forbid, you were ever captured. Or vice versa. He does not know you and you do not know him. That is how I want it and, believe me, so do you.’

‘Yes, Admiral.’ Vasko stood up to leave.

‘There is one more thing.’ Opening a drawer in his desk, Canaris removed a bar of gold as long as his outstretched hand and as wide as his first three fingers. The finish of the gold was not shiny but rather a dusty brass colour. The surface bore several stamps, indicating its weight, purity and Reichsbank inventory number. Carefully, he set it down in front of Vasko. ‘Your guide is expecting to be paid.’

‘As much as that?’ remarked Vasko.

‘If everything goes according to plan, Colonel Andrich will soon be dead, and Stalin himself will not be far behind. For that,’ said Canaris, ‘one bar of gold is a small asking price.’

*

Malashenko stood in the doorway to his cabin, smoking a cigarette as he watched a man approaching down the centre of the path.

He wore the uniform of a Red Army officer, and all he carried with him was a leather satchel of the type used by blacksmiths for holding horse shoes. ‘You must be Malashenko,’ he said.

‘I am. And who are you?’

‘A stranger bearing gifts. That’s all you need to know.’

Malashenko flicked away his cigarette and stood aside to let him pass.

Inside the cabin, Vasko removed his gun belt, from which hung a holstered Tokarev and a Russian army canteen. He laid them on the table, then sat down and waited while Malashenko brewed coffee made from chicory in an old pan on the stove.

‘What is it you want from me?’ asked the partisan, as he poured the dark and bitter-smelling drink into a chipped enamel cup.

Vasko took the mug and turned it so that the handle was facing away from him but he did not lift it from the table. ‘You recently passed on information about a man named Colonel Andrich.’

‘That’s right. He arrived in Rovno two days ago.’

‘I need you to tell me where I can find him.’

‘That’s a nice pistol,’ said Malashenko, eyeing the gun belt on the table. Slowly, he reached out towards it.

‘If you want to keep those fingers,’ said Vasko, ‘don’t touch anything that doesn’t belong to you.’

Grumbling, Malashenko withdrew his hand.

‘Just do as you’re told and you will be well rewarded,’ Vasko told him.

‘How well?’

Vasko opened the satchel and pulled out something which had been placed inside an old grey sock. He set it on the table and pushed it across to Malashenko.

Malashenko picked up the sock and tipped the bar of gold on to the table. The spit dried up in his mouth. ‘Why are you paying me so much?’ he asked warily.

‘If it were up to me, I wouldn’t, but this is what the Admiral thinks you’re worth.’

Malashenko thought about Antonina’s advice, to leave Rovno and never come back. Better to travel with one bar of gold, he told himself, than with a hundred bags of salt.

Vasko slid the bar back into the sock and returned it to his farrier’s satchel. ‘Are we agreed?’

Malashenko nodded slowly. ‘Stay here tonight,’ he said. ‘You will be safe. I’ll be back in the morning, after I have found your Colonel Andrich.’

*

That first night in the cabin, as Vasko lay in the bunk, surrounded by the distantly familiar smells of Russian black bread, Russian tobacco and the fishy reek of Russian boot grease distilled from the rotted husks of Lake Baikal shrimp, he listened to the steady thudding of artillery in the distance.

He put his hands against his ears, hoping to block out the sound. But it didn’t work. The relentless pounding of the guns seemed to rise up from the earth beneath the cabin, until even the air he breathed appeared to tremble.

Vasko moaned and rocked from side to side, plagued by memories of the days he had spent in the hold of that prison ship bound for Kolyma after it had run aground on the shoals of Reshiri Island. Each wave that struck that crippled vessel sounded like a cannon ball against the iron hull. As the freezing water rose higher and higher in the cargo bays where he and the others had been left to die, Vasko had focused on the sound of the waves in order to drown out first the screams, then the pleas, then prayers and at last only the whimpering of those who had abandoned any hope of rescue. By the time the Japanese Coastguard peeled away a section of the hull to let them out, the sound of those waves had fixed forever in Vasko’s mind, until it had become like the beating of a second heart, driving him so close to madness that he could no longer recall how it felt to be sane.

*

It did not take long for Malashenko to learn both where and when Andrich’s meeting with the partisan leaders would take place. For a man of his particular abilities, few secrets could stay hidden in the rubble of that town.

First thing the following morning, he delivered the information to Vasko.

Within six hours, Andrich and the partisans who’d been with him were dead. Not long afterwards came the news that Commander Yakushkin had also been murdered.

As soon as Malashenko had dropped off the little girl at her grandmother’s house, ignoring the old woman’s questions about her daughter, he made his way back to the cabin where Vasko had been hiding in order to collect his bar of gold.

But Vasko wasn’t there.

Assuming that he had been tricked, Malashenko turned around and headed back to Rovno, roaring curses at the treetops on his way.

*

Admiral Canaris was sleeping in his chair, as he often did after a lunch at Horchner’s, his favourite restaurant in Berlin. With his hands folded across his stomach and a pair of slippers on his feet, these brief moments of oblivion had lately become his only respite from the unending stream of bad news which occupied his waking hours.

There was a gentle knocking on the door and Canaris’s adjutant, Lieutenant Wolke, entered the room. He was a young man, with a straight back, rosy cheeks and honest-looking eyes. He carried a print-out of a message just received from an informant behind the Russian lines.

The Admiral’s dachshunds, which had also been taking a nap, looked up from their cushioned chair and, recognising Wolke’s familiar face, lowered their heads and went back to sleep.

Moving almost silently across the room, Wolke placed the message upon the Admiral’s desk.

The Admiral breathed in deeply, then exhaled in a long, snuffling breath, but did not wake.

Wolke gritted his teeth. The Admiral did not like to be woken, but the message had been classified A3, which meant it was of the highest importance and required immediate attention. Which meant waking Canaris, whether he liked it or not.

Wolke cleared his throat.

Canaris’s eyes slid open. He blinked uncomprehendingly at Wolke, as if he had never seen the man before.

‘Admiral,’ said Wolke, his voice barely above a whisper. ‘An A3 has just come in.’

Slowly, Canaris sat forward, rubbing the sleep from his face, and picked up the piece of paper with one hand. At the same time, he reached out with his other hand, fetched his glasses and perched them upon his long and dignified nose.

The message contained an intercepted Soviet radio transmission indicating that Colonel Andrich had been killed in a shoot-out with Soviet partisans.

‘Good,’ muttered Canaris. ‘They have taken the bait.’ It was exactly what he had been hoping for.

But the second half of the message was not.

It went on to say that Commander Yakushkin, of the NKVD’s motorised rifle battalion, currently stationed in Rovno, had also been found dead. It gave no details about where Yakushkin had died or who had killed him or what the circumstances had been. Canaris cursed under his breath.

‘Is everything all right, Admiral?’ asked Wolke.

‘No,’ replied Canaris. ‘No, it is not.’ But he did not explain further, and Wolke knew better than to ask. ‘Has there been any word from Vasko?’

‘No news yet, Admiral.’

Canaris let the telegram slip from his fingers. ‘As soon as he returns to Berlin, have him sent straight to my office.’

‘Yes, Admiral.’

‘And Wolke. .’

‘Yes, Admiral?’

‘In the event that Vasko does not appear, type up a report placing the blame upon Otto Skorzeny.’

Wolke nodded. ‘Zu Befehl, Herr Admiral.’

*

Having carried out the liquidation of Colonel Andrich, Vasko spent the rest of that day, as well as the following day, lying low in the ruins of an abandoned house not far from the hospital where Major Kirov was being treated for his gunshot wound.

By doing so, he was directly disobeying the orders of Admiral Canaris to immediately transmit the message that his task had been carried out, after which Skorzeny would dispatch a guide to escort him back across the lines.

He guessed that, by now, word of the colonel’s murder might already have reached Berlin. If so, Skorzeny would be waiting for the signal.

But the news that Pekkala was alive had thrown Vasko’s mind into confusion. When that gawky Commissar had stumbled down into the bunker, calling out Pekkala’s name like some fragment of an ancient spell, Vasko heard again his mother’s voice, assuring him and his sister that their father would soon be back where he belonged, thanks to the work of the incorruptible Inspector. ‘Our prayers have been answered,’ she assured them and, for a while, at least, the young Vasko had believed this fairy tale.

It wasn’t until his mother’s arrest on the charge of possessing foreign currency that Vasko realised Pekkala had betrayed them. But only when the judge at the People’s Tribunal read out the length of their sentences, to be served in the Gulag at Kolyma, did Vasko understand the magnitude of this treachery.

Weeks later, when their ship ran aground on the shoals of Tetsumu, and Vasko had remained alive in the freezing darkness of that flooded compartment by clinging to the grotesque heap of drowned bodies, he swore that if he ever made it out of there he would consecrate his life to avenging the deaths of his family.

By 1941, under the personal guidance of Admiral Canaris, Vasko had become an agent of the Abwehr. Late that same year, news reached him that Pekkala had been killed not far from the Tsar’s summer estate at Tsarskoye Selo. At the time, Vasko did not know whether to feel satisfaction that the Emerald Eye was dead or disappointment that he had not been responsible for it.

But when he learned that Pekkala had somehow cheated death, Vasko knew at once what he must do, even if it meant disobeying Canaris.

This was the reason why Vasko had not executed Commissar Kirov that night in the bunker. He reasoned that, once Pekkala learned of Major Kirov’s injuries, the Inspector would visit him at the hospital. All that Vasko had to do was wait until Pekkala made contact with the major, then finish them both off together.

That first night, from his hiding place among the ruins, Vasko kept watch on the front door of the hospital, waiting for the moment when Pekkala would arrive. But after waiting for almost two days, and with no sign of the Inspector, Vasko knew he had to act or risk losing his chance to kill Pekkala. He waited until the middle of the night, then made his way into the hospital, determined either to extract the Inspector’s whereabouts from the major or, if Kirov didn’t know, to kidnap the wounded man and thereby, he hoped, to draw Pekkala out into the open.

When Vasko learned from Captain Dombrowsky that the major had already gone, he pursued the only lead he had left, which brought him to the nurse’s house. There, Vasko stumbled across Commander Yakushkin and his bodyguard. The killing of Yakushkin, although it must have seemed a calculated attack to those who found his body, was no more than a collateral necessity. Vasko’s real target that night had been the nurse, from whom he hoped to learn the major’s location, but Yakushkin, mistaking Vasko’s presence for that of a rival, had foiled his plan with a bullet through the woman’s heart.

After leaving the apartment, Vasko had returned to the ruined house where he had hidden for the past two days. Knowing that even in the uniform of a Red Army officer, his solitary presence at that time of night would attract unwanted attention, Vasko decided to wait until first light before returning to the cabin, which was some distance outside the town. Once there, he would enlist Malashenko’s help in tracking down Pekkala.

Shortly before dawn, a group of partisans arrived in a battered truck and entered the house where Yakushkin and the nurse had been killed. When Vasko recognised Malashenko among them, he knew that this must be the famous Barabanschikov Atrad. They departed soon afterwards, leaving Malashenko behind to guard the place.

While Vasko was debating whether to leave cover and approach Malashenko, to see if the partisan knew anything of Kirov’s whereabouts, the Barabanschikovs returned.

Vasko was astonished to see Major Kirov climb down from the truck, along with a tall man in civilian clothes. The moment Vasko realised he was looking at Pekkala, he felt his whole body go numb. His first thought was to open fire immediately and keep shooting until he ran out of bullets, in the hopes that a lucky shot might bring down the Inspector. It took all his self-control not to squander the only chance he knew he was likely to get. With a truckload of partisans between him and the Inspector, and only a pistol for a weapon, especially one loaded with bullets which were only accurate at close range, Vasko knew that he would never make the shot before the partisans gunned him down.

At the same time, Vasko realised that since Pekkala was now investigating the murder of Commander Yakushkin, it was only a matter of time before the Inspector tracked him down.

Vasko knew his best, perhaps his only, hope, was to let Pekkala do precisely that. Only in this way, thought Vasko, can I lure him to a place of my own choosing, where his death will not come at the cost of my own life.

For now, though, his primary concern was to leave this hiding place where, if discovered, it was clear he wouldn’t stand a chance. Vasko decided to make for the cabin in the woods; the only place he could think of where he might be safe.

No sooner had the Barabanschikovs left, however, than Red Army soldiers arrived and began patrolling the streets, obviously looking for whoever had murdered their commander.

The Red Army continued its patrols until just after sunset, by which time Vasko was cold, exhausted and hungry.

Just as he was preparing to move out, gangs of partisans appeared and began going door to door, intent on capturing whoever had murdered their leaders in the bunker the night before.

Vasko was trapped in the ruins, as a routine quickly established itself whereby the Red Army controlled the streets by day and the partisans took over after dark. By the morning of the second day, he had eaten his way through the small tin of emergency rations he always carried with him on missions. The rations came in a small, oval tin and consisted of chocolate heavily laced with caffeine, which offered him little more than an upset stomach and a case of jangling nerves.

Vasko knew that time was running out. Pekkala was still out there somewhere, and Skorzeny would not wait forever.

Vasko decided that, if the situation had not changed by the following morning, he would walk out in the daylight, hoping that the green metal lozenges on his collar tabs, denoting the rank of captain, might buy him at least a moment’s hesitation from any Red Army patrol which crossed his path. A moment would be all that he needed. As for trying to slip past the partisans, Vasko did not think much of his chances.

That night, wild dogs howled among the ruins. Vasko heard their snarling as they feasted on the dead. With frozen fingers locked around the gun, Vasko curled up in a ball beneath a sheet of corrugated iron. Sleet and rain pelted down upon him, the sound of it amplified against the rusted metal. That night, over the muttering of the wind, Vasko picked up fragments of voices and the noise of babies crying. Once, he caught the sound of balalaika music.

At last, when the dawn began to glimmer in the sky, Vasko was preparing to leave cover when a gunfight erupted between a crew of partisans returning to their base and a Red Army squad just heading out on patrol. From his hiding place, Vasko witnessed the battle. Some of the stray shots even slammed into the woodwork above his head. The Red Army soldiers pulled back, bringing their wounded with them as they headed for the safety of their headquarters, which had been fortified with barbed wire and sandbags. The partisans carried away two of their men who had been killed in the skirmish, and faded back into the darkness. In a matter of minutes, the streets were empty and quiet. But Vasko knew it might not stay that way for long. Both sides would almost certainly return with reinforcements. Taking advantage of the lull, he slipped away and was soon beyond the outskirts of the town.

*

‘I’ve searched the whole place,’ said Kirov, as he trampled down the rickety stairs of the safe house. ‘There’s no sign of Malashenko anywhere.’

‘He should have been here by now,’ muttered Pekkala, as he walked over to a window and peered out through a crack in the shutters.

‘So much for our bodyguard,’ grunted Kirov as he sat down in one of several mismatched chairs, tilted back and set his heels up on the table. ‘I’d gladly trade him for a plate of blinis.’

‘Blinis,’ Pekkala echoed thoughtfully.

‘With sour cream and caviar,’ continued Kirov, locking his hands behind his head, ‘and chopped red onion and a glass of cold vodka.’

Pekkala stared at the ceiling with a distant look in his eyes. ‘I can’t even recall the last time I had a good meal.’

‘We’ll soon put that right,’ Kirov assured him. ‘Once we get back to Moscow, we can return to our ritual of Friday afternoon meals, at which, with your permission, Elizaveta will become a permanent guest.’ The major smiled happily, his thoughts returning to their cosy little office, with its temperamental stove and wheezy samovar and the comfortable chair which they had salvaged off the street. ‘What do you say to that, Inspector?’

But there was no reply. Pekkala remained by the window, staring out into the street. Snow had begun to fall again. Fat, wet flakes slid down the weathered old shutters.

There was something about the way he stood; sombre and alone, which made Kirov realise that the fears he had secretly been harbouring ever since he’d found Pekkala might come true after all. ‘You’re not coming back to Moscow, are you?’ he asked.

*

‘Skorzeny, you idiot!’ Seated at his desk, in a high-ceilinged office on Prinz Albrechtstrasse in Berlin, Heinrich Himmler, lord of the SS, roared out his disapproval. ‘Why didn’t you inform me about this mission?’

‘I received a direct order from the Admiral not to share details of the mission with anyone. Anyone at all.’ Skorzeny shifted uneasily, knowing that his excuse was unlikely to appease the Reichsführer.

‘I am not “anyone”!’ barked Himmler, fixing Skorzeny with his grey-blue eyes, which appeared strangely calm, in spite of his obvious rage. ‘I am commander of the SS of which, as of today, at least, you’re still a member!’

‘And Canaris is an admiral,’ replied Skorzeny, ‘and his orders were perfectly clear.’

‘If your orders were to tell no one,’ Himmler leaned forward, placing his hands flat upon the desk, the thumbs side by side, in a way that reminded Skorzeny of the Sphinx, ‘then why are you telling me now?’

‘I believe that something may have gone wrong. Vasko was parachuted over the abandoned village of Misovichi, not far from the rendezvous point. There he was due to meet with a partisan named Malashenko, who has been working with the Abwehr’s Secret Field Police. Vasko made a low-level jump over the target and his chute was seen to open properly. Twenty-four hours ago, a reconnaissance aircraft reported seeing smoke rising from the chimney of a cabin where the meeting was due to take place.’

‘So far,’ said Himmler, ‘it sounds as if everything has gone according to plan.’

‘Yes, Reichsführer,’ replied Skorzeny. ‘Up to that point, I had no reason for concern, but Vasko was supposed to have contacted us immediately upon completion of his mission, at which time we would dispatch another agent to guide him back through the lines.’

‘Perhaps the answer is simply that he has not yet carried out his task.’

‘That’s just it, Reichsführer. He has.’

‘How do you know?’

‘We received confirmation from one of our informants in Rovno. The target, Colonel Andrich, has been eliminated. Vasko should have contacted us by now. I am afraid that his radio might have been damaged, leaving him unable to communicate, or even that he might have been captured.’

‘And it has suddenly occurred to you,’ said Himmler, ‘that it might not reflect well upon on the SS if Canaris chose to blame us for Vasko’s disappearance.’

Skorzeny nodded grimly.

Himmler removed his pince-nez glasses, the silver frames glittering in the light of his desk lamp. ‘This agent who has been assigned to guide Vasko back to our lines? Is he one of theirs or one of ours?’

‘He’s ours,’ Skorzeny assured him. ‘It’s Luther Benjamin.’

‘A capable man.’ Himmler nodded with approval. ‘And where is Benjamin now?’

‘He is currently travelling with soldiers who are engaged in an attempt to recapture Rovno from the enemy. As soon as we receive word from Vasko that his mission has been completed, we will relay a message to Vasko and. .’

‘There is to be no more waiting!’ As Himmler spoke, he polished his glasses vigorously with a black silk handkerchief, even though they were already clean. ‘Inform Benjamin that he is to proceed immediately to the rendezvous point. If Vasko is there, Benjamin will proceed with the original evacuation plan.’

‘Yes, Reichsführer.’ Then Skorzeny paused. ‘And if Vasko isn’t there?’

‘Then Benjamin is to return immediately on his own, and Vasko will be abandoned to his fate, just like the pompous admiral who sent him on this suicidal errand.’

*

‘I knew it!’ shouted Kirov, swiping his heels off the table and jumping to his feet.

Pekkala turned away from the window and glanced at the major. ‘Knew what?’ he asked.

‘That you’re not coming back to Moscow! But why, Inspector? You have a life waiting for you there, as well as people who rely on you, not to mention friends, one of whom came all this way to find you!’

‘You don’t understand,’ began Pekkala.

But Kirov hadn’t finished yet. ‘Why would you choose to remain among the partisans? Where are they, now that we need them? Where is Malashenko? Where is Barabanschikov? I’ll tell you where they are! They’ve disappeared, because that’s what they do best. And who knows where they’ve gone? Search for them now and all you’ll find are their abandoned forest hideaways. Is that where you’re going? Is that where you plan to spend your life, in the company of ghosts?’

‘Kirov!’ shouted Pekkala.

Startled, the major fell silent.

‘Be still,’ Pekkala told him, ‘and I will explain everything.’

Bewildered, Kirov slumped back into his chair. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I owe you that much, I suppose.’

As Pekkala began to speak, he felt a part of himself pull free from the heavy shackling of his bones and vanish into the past, like smoke coiled by the wind into the sky.

*

Deep in the Red Forest, not far from the Barabanschikov camp, was a lake called the Wolf’s Crossing. At first, the name made no sense to Pekkala. Only with the arrival of winter did he finally grasp its meaning, as packs of yellow-eyed wolves would lope across its frozen surface, bound on journeys whose purpose seemed a mystery even to the beasts who had embarked upon it.

Sometimes, Pekkala went out there alone to fish. The water in the lake was brown like tea from all the tannins in the pines which grew down to its banks, and contained perch and trout and even some landlocked salmon. Using an axe, Pekkala chopped several holes into the ice, then fed a line into each one. Straddling the holes was a cross-shaped contraption made from twigs bound together with dried grass. When a fish pulled on the line, the cross would tilt upwards and Pekkala would know he had a bite.

But he had to be patient. Hour after hour, he would stand bent-backed like an old hag, wrapped in the shreds of an old army blanket, shuffling his feet to stay warm, his only company the whirlwinds of glittering snow dust, spiralling like dancers across this frozen desert.

Sometimes the reward was hardly worth the effort, but on rare occasions when the lake yielded more fish than the partisans could eat, the extras would be dried over a smouldering birchwood fire, the two halves of their bodies split like wings, and packed away in a storehouse he had built, raised above the ground on stilts to keep away the mice in wintertime.

Stray leaves, dry and curled, blew out into the lake. There, warmed by the sun, they melted their perfect forms into the ice, as if to remind him that spring would come again, in those times when it seemed as if winter would never end.

It was out of this wilderness, on the coldest day he’d ever known, with sunlight blinding off the snow and a fierce blue sky, the colour of a Bunsen burner flame, that a man appeared who would change Pekkala’s life forever.

He had been gathering the fish he’d caught that day — one speckle-backed trout and three perch — when he glimpsed a figure in the distance, heading directly towards him.

Pekkala did not run, or reach for the gun in his coat. There was something about the forlornness of this creature which made him more curious than afraid.

Silhouetted against the blinding snow, the figure seemed to change its shape, separating from itself and merging together again, like a drop of dirty oil in water.

Only when the man was almost upon him could Pekkala clearly distinguish the tall, dishevelled man, clothed in a tattered coat, whose torn hem dragged through the snow. Rags bound his feet instead of shoes. He carried no weapon, or any equipment at all. Covering his face was a sheet of white birch bark which had slits cut into it — a primitive but effective measure against the glare of snow which would otherwise have blinded him. With the scarf about his face and eyes hidden behind this paper scroll, his human shape seemed almost accidental.

For a moment, the man stood in front of Pekkala. Then he tore away his mask, revealing a face so creased with dirt and worry that it seemed no more alive than the bark which had concealed it. He dropped to his knees, snatched up a perch and, ignoring dorsal spines which punctured his fingertips like a fan of hypodermic needles, he tore into the meat.

When nothing remained in his hands but a fragment of the tail, the man finally looked up at Pekkala. ‘The last man I expected to find out here,’ he said, ‘was the Emerald Eye himself.’

‘How do you know me?’ asked Pekkala.

The man offered no words of explanation. Instead, he simply removed his cap, grasping it from behind and tilting it forward off his head in the manner of the old Tsarist soldiers, and it was in this movement that Pekkala finally recognised the man, whom he had last seen in a clearing on the Polish border, just weeks before the outbreak of the war. His name was Maximov. A cavalry officer before the Revolution, Maximov had become the driver and bodyguard of Colonel Nagorski, the secretive designer of the Red Army’s T34 tank. Known to those who operated the 20-ton machine as the Red Coffin, this tank had been one of the few weapons in the Soviet arsenal which outgunned its German counterparts. While other Russian tanks proved to be no match for German armour, the T34 had held its own against all but the largest enemy weapons. In the winter of 1941, with the German army within sight of Moscow, the T34 had kept running when the temperature dipped below minus-60, thanks to the low-viscosity oil used in its engine, while the cold transformed the German panzers into useless hulks of iron.

Nagorski did not live long enough to see his great invention put to use. He was found shot to death in the muddy swamp which served as a testing ground for his machines.

It was during the investigation of Nagorski’s murder that Pekkala first came in contact with Maximov. For a while, it had seemed as if Maximov himself might be the killer, but Pekkala’s investigation eventually disclosed that Nagorski’s own son had fired the shot that ended his father’s life. Maximov had gone on to assist Pekkala and Kirov in tracking down a missing T34 prototype. Their search led them to the German-Polish border, where Alexander Kropotkin, an old acquaintance of Pekkala’s and a bitter enemy of Stalin, was attempting to stage an attack on German troops stationed nearby. With this suicidal move, Kropotkin was less interested in killing the enemy than in providing Hitler with an excuse to invade the Soviet Union. In those days, he was by no means alone in thinking that only with the destruction of the Red Army could Stalin be removed from power and that even Nazi occupation was better than continuing to live under the boot of the Communist Party.

Having located the missing tank, Kirov had disabled the machine using an anti-tank rifle equipped with experimental titanium bullets. The T34 was destroyed, and Kropotkin died in a blaze which engulfed the crew compartment. But when the fire had died down enough for Pekkala and Kirov to approach the wreck, they discovered that Maximov had disappeared. Upon their return to Moscow, Kirov wrote in his report that Maximov had been killed in the shoot-out and his body consumed in the inferno of the burning tank. Although Pekkala said nothing to contradict this, privately he had always suspected that Maximov might have survived after all.

The reason Pekkala kept these thoughts to himself was that, although Maximov had so far been able to conceal his former career as a Tsarist officer, the truth would undoubtedly have surfaced now that Maximov had been drawn into the spotlight of this investigation. Far from being the recipient of a medal for his heroism, it was more likely that Maximov would be arrested for his past deeds in the service of the Tsar. For Maximov, the future would have led only to the Gulag, which was why Pekkala turned a blind eye to a missing motorcycle that he had spotted near the tanks before the battle, and the faint but unmistakable impression of tyre tracks leading away through the forest.

Pekkala had never known where Maximov disappeared to that day, nor had he expected to set eyes on him again, since both men knew that to be seen back in Russia was a virtual guarantee of death.

And yet here he was: filthy, starving and alone.

‘You had better come with me,’ said Pekkala.

Together, the two men set out across the ice towards the dark wall of the forest.

A short time later, they had entered the outskirts of the camp. Small fires burned outside the primitive shelters, known as zemlyankas, where the partisans lived. The cold air smelled of pinewood smoke and roasting meat.

Pekkala brought Maximov to the fire in the centre of the camp, where he knew Barabanschikov would be.

‘Where did you find him?’ asked Barabanschikov.

‘Out on the ice,’ replied Pekkala, and he went on to tell the story of his acquaintance with Maximov, from Nagorski’s murder right up until the day he disappeared.

By the time Pekkala had finished, most of the camp had gathered by the fire to listen.

Barabanschikov listened intently, sitting on a tree stump, arms folded and leaning forward so as to catch every word. ‘Well, Maximov,’ he said when Pekkala had finished, ‘I think it’s time you told us where you’ve been since you and the Inspector parted company.’

Maximov explained how he had travelled all the way to the French coast before selling his motorcycle and using the proceeds to purchase a ticket to America. Three weeks later, he had arrived at Ellis Island and from there made his way to New York City.

He had worked in several jobs — as doorman at the Algonquin Hotel, as a longshoreman in Hoboken and as a croupier in an Atlantic City casino before settling down as a chauffeur for the mayor of that town, a profession not unlike the one in which he had been working when circumstances forced him out of Russia.

‘What happened?’ demanded Barabanschikov. ‘Did you commit a crime and have to leave?’

Maximov shook his head. ‘There was no crime.’

‘Problems with a woman, perhaps? A broken heart can send a man to the other end of the earth.’

Maximov smiled. ‘No broken heart.’

Barabanschikov shook his head in confusion. ‘Yet here you are. But why?’

‘I couldn’t just stand by and watch this country get destroyed,’ answered Maximov, staring at the faces which peered back at him from the shadows, their dark eyes wide with curiosity.

A murmur of approval rose from the gathered listeners.

‘Then, for as long as you wish, Maximov, you are welcome here with us,’ announced the partisan leader. ‘But first you must do what every stranger does when they come into my camp.’

‘And what is that?’

‘Empty your pockets!’

Maximov did as he was told, laying out his meagre possessions on the trampled ground.

Only one thing caught Barabanschikov’s attention. It was a little clockwork mouse, with a dented metal shell, a key sticking out of its side and three tiny wheels underneath.

Barabanschikov snapped his fingers at the toy. ‘Give me that.’

Maximov handed him the mouse.

‘You brought this from America?’

‘I did.’

‘Think of all the things you could have carried with you from America,’ Barabanschikov remarked incredulously. ‘A Colt revolver perhaps, or a Bowie knife, or a Hamilton pocket watch. But no. You have brought a clockwork mouse. What is it? A present for somebody?’

‘It is,’ admitted Maximov.

With a grunt of curiosity, Barabanschikov tried to wind it up, listening to the click of the cogs as if he were a safe cracker gauging the tumblers of the lock. But, having done this, he found that the wheels wouldn’t turn. ‘It’s broken! What kind of present is that?’ With a growl of disgust, Barabanschikov tossed the mouse over his shoulder into the dark.

‘Will that be all?’ asked Maximov.

‘Yes,’ Barabanschikov replied gruffly. ‘Now go and get some food and then we’ll find you a place where you can sleep.’

‘You are a soft touch,’ said Pekkala, after Maximov had been led away to eat.

In spite of Barabanschikov’s bluster, Pekkala had never known him to turn anyone away.

Barabanschikov’s reply to this was a long and wordless growl.

‘Perhaps this will cheer you up,’ said Pekkala as he handed over the trout he had caught that afternoon.

‘Ah!’ Barabanschikov took the fish in his outstretched hands. ‘Is there anything finer in the world?’

On the way back to his hut, which was a circular lean-to fashioned out of branches interwoven with vines, which the partisans referred to as a tchoom, Pekkala retrieved the broken clockwork mouse and put it in his pocket. The next morning, he returned the toy to Maximov.

By then, Maximov had bathed. His face was clean and he wore a different set of clothes. He took the mouse in his hand as if it was a living thing and slipped it into his pocket.

For several weeks, Maximov remained at the camp and it was during this time that Pekkala explained how he had come to be living among the Barabanschikovs. He found it easy to speak with Maximov. Even though the two men did not know each other well, the experiences they had shared in their days of service to the Tsar gave them a common outlook on the world. This strange communion with the past brought to their conversations a familiarity which would otherwise have taken years to cultivate.

‘I am only passing through,’ Pekkala explained to Maximov. ‘There is someone I must search for.’

‘Who?’ asked Maximov.

‘A woman to whom I was engaged,’ replied Pekkala. ‘She left for Paris, just before the Revolution. I was supposed to meet her there. It had all been arranged. But by the time the Tsar gave me permission to leave, the borders were already closing. I was arrested by Revolutionary Guards as I attempted to pass through into Finland. From there, they sent me to prison. And after that, the Gulag at Borodok.’

‘Does she even know you are alive?’ asked Maximov.

‘That is only one of many questions I must answer,’ replied Pekkala, ‘which is why, as soon as the snow melts, I will turn my back on Russia once and for all.’

‘Then you and I are bound in opposite directions, Inspector.’

‘It seems that way,’ agreed Pekkala.

Winter was ending. The snow began to melt. Often they were startled by the gunshot echo of ice cracking out on the lake. The time of the Rasputitsa was coming. Soon everything would turn to mud.

One morning, the camp awoke to find that Maximov had gone. There had been no warning. No goodbyes. He had simply disappeared.

Troubled by the man’s sudden departure, Pekkala tracked his movements through the half-melted snow to the edge of the lake, where Maximov’s footprints set out across the ice. There Pekkala stopped, knowing it was suicide to continue.

The surface was rotten and unstable. No one who knew anything about the conditions at this time of year would ever have set foot upon it, for fear of falling through into the freezing water beneath. And once beneath the ice, it was almost impossible to find your way back to the surface. Even if you could, it was extremely difficult to climb from the water and make your way from there to firmer ground.

Pekkala scanned the horizon, hoping for a glimpse of Maximov, but there was nothing. He knew that, even if this former soldier of the Tsar survived the crossing of the lake, the chances of him living through this war, with enemies on either side, were slim to none.

But maybe, thought Pekkala, those odds mean nothing to him.

In Siberia, Pekkala had seen men fall into a dream that blinded them to their true limitations, until both the wilderness and the freedom that lay beyond it became more symbol than reality. Out on those ragged edges of the planet, the false promise of how far a person could go upon the power of his dreams alone inevitably proved to be fatal.

Standing at the edge of that lake, Pekkala wondered whether Maximov’s dreams had led him to his death. He doubted if he’d ever know.

Returning to his cabin, Pekkala discovered Maximov’s clockwork mouse resting on a log which jutted from the wall of the hut. It had been left there as a gift.

Pekkala brought the little toy inside the hut, determined to restore it to working condition if he could. By the light of a lamp made from deer fat floating in an old tin can, with a scrap of old shoelace for a wick, he carefully removed the outer shell. It was only then that he realised why the mechanism had been jammed. Placed inside the humped back of the mouse was a diamond as large as a pea, beautifully cut into an octagon. As soon as he removed it from the toy, the tiny wheels began to buzz and spin and the key in the side of the mouse revolved, moving slower and slower, until it finally clattered to a stop. Pekkala held the diamond in his palm, tilting his hand one way and then another, studying the way each facet caught the lamplight. Then he wrapped it up in a dirty handkerchief and tucked it in his pocket.

‘The beast has come to keep me company!’ cried Barabanschikov, when he caught sight of Pekkala later that morning. The partisan leader was sitting on a tree stump beside the smouldering remains of the previous night’s fire.

Pekkala sat down beside his friend.

Barabanschikov picked up a stick and stirred it in the grey dust, turfing up embers still glowing like fragments of amber. ‘He’s gone, hasn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ replied Pekkala.

‘And soon you, too, will be leaving on your journey to the west,’ said Barabanschikov. ‘I have not forgotten our agreement.’

‘I might not be leaving, after all,’ said Pekkala.

The stick froze in Barabanschikov’s hand. Slivers of smoke rose from the blackened wood. ‘I thought that your mind was made up.’

‘It was until Maximov appeared.’

‘What did he say to talk you out of it?’

‘It’s not what he said,’ answered Pekkala. ‘It’s what he is doing that convinced me. He left behind everything that was safe to come back here, even though the only thanks he is likely to get is to be killed by the very people he has come to help.’

‘You’ve been on that same journey all your life,’ said Barabanschikov.

‘There were times,’ admitted Pekkala, ‘when I thought that journey would end here in these woods.’

Barabanschikov slapped him gently on the back. ‘We have managed to survive so far, haven’t we? I am no longer afraid of death, Pekkala, only of squandering the memory of every good thing I have achieved in this life by burying it beneath terrible deeds that I have done to stay alive.’

‘You have saved more lives than just your own,’ Pekkala told him.

‘And will it be enough?’ asked Barabanschikov.

‘There is no judgement that an honest man should fear,’ Pekkala told him.

‘That is an easy thing to say, Inspector, but how can an honest man live in a country whose leaders are not?’

‘The answer,’ replied Pekkala, ‘is to tread softly, to stay alive and to do whatever good you can along the way.’

‘No matter what happens from now on,’ said Barabanschikov, ‘let us promise to live by those words.’

*

‘I made that promise to him,’ said Pekkala, as the memory of that day faded back into the darkness of his mind.

‘So you are coming back to Moscow?’ stammered Kirov.

‘Yes,’ replied Pekkala, ‘and I would have told you so earlier if you’d given me the chance.’

‘But that is excellent news!’ In a moment, Kirov was back on his feet. He slapped Pekkala on the back, raising a haze of dust from the soot-powdered wool of the Inspector’s coat.

Their conversation was interrupted by the tearing sound of heavy machine guns followed, soon afterwards, by the roar and clank of armoured vehicles.

‘Could those be ours?’ asked Kirov.

Pekkala shook his head. ‘There is no Soviet armour in Rovno.’

‘So the enemy has broken through.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Pekkala, ‘which means we need to find a place to hide, if it isn’t already too late.’

*

Luther Benjamin moved cautiously through the woods, passing through the deserted town of Misovichi on his way to the rendezvous site. He had set out before sunrise that morning, hiking south to clear the combat zone before turning east and crossing into enemy territory. Although he had met with no difficulties so far, Benjamin had been warned by Skorzeny that the cabin was difficult to spot and he was worried that he might miss it altogether in this wilderness. If it had been anyone other than Vasko, Benjamin might have considered turning back before travelling any further.

But Vasko was a friend.

He and Benjamin had gone through training together at the School of Special Weapons and Tactics, located in the Berlin suburb of Zossen, before Benjamin was transferred to the SS, while Vasko was chosen for service in the Abwehr. Of the fourteen men and women in that class, he and Vasko were the only ones still living.

In the case of Luther Benjamin, that was due to nothing more than luck. He had just returned from three months’ recuperation after being injured in a gunfight after his cover was blown in Zagreb and he barely escaped with his life. Although Benjamin had made a full physical recovery, according to the medical report, his mental state was such that the doctor recommended he not be sent on any further missions.

Recalled to duty in Berlin, Benjamin had expected that his tasks would, from then on, be no more arduous than filing reports, but when Skorzeny came to him and explained the mission, Benjamin knew that he couldn’t refuse.

Skorzeny had his doubts as to whether Benjamin was fit for active duty, but he had orders from Canaris to act immediately. Given that Benjamin was the only agent available at the time, it was only a matter of hours before Vasko’s old friend was on his way.

Since then, Benjamin had been travelling with advance units of the 27th SS Grenadier Division ‘Langemarck’, which had been tasked with recapturing Rovno. The Division was made up mostly of Flemish volunteers, whose language, unintelligible to Benjamin, sounded to him like men trying to speak with pebbles in their mouths.

Benjamin did not know how long it would take Vasko to carry out his mission, so he was not unduly alarmed as the days passed with still no message from Skorzeny.

When the signal eventually came through, ordering him to proceed, the Flemish Grenadiers were still heavily engaged west of Rovno and it was unclear whether the hoped-for breakthrough would come about. At the time Benjamin set out, the Langemarck Division was at a standstill outside the village of Yaseneviche, still some distance from its intended destination.

When Benjamin read that he was to return alone if Vasko was not at the meeting place, he suspected that something must have gone wrong, but he had no choice except to go through with the mission.

In spite of the dangerous situation, Benjamin succeeded in making his way through the lines, carefully noting the territory as he moved along, in preparation for his return journey.

Benjamin had been on the point of giving up when he finally spotted the cabin, almost hidden among the trees. Pausing a short distance from the structure, he unbuckled his rucksack, which contained ammunition, a radio and medical supplies in the event that Vasko might be wounded. Benjamin hid the rucksack in a hollow in the ground, where a tree had been uprooted long ago, then drew his sidearm, a Walther P38, and advanced towards the cabin.

Cautiously, he peered in at the window. In the gloomy light of the interior, he could see a table in the centre of the room and a bunk in the corner. A blanket crumpled on the bunk was the only sign he could detect that the cabin might be occupied.

Benjamin crept around to the back and tried the door. It was unlocked and swung open with a creak. He could smell the smoke of a recently extinguished fire. Standing to one side, he whispered Vasko’s name into the gloom.

There was no reply.

Benjamin could feel the stillness of the place, as much as he could see it with his eyes. Slowly, he stepped into the cabin, his gun held out. A single glance told him that the place was no longer occupied, although it was clear that someone had been here recently. Lying on the table were a few dried pieces of black Russian army bread, as well as a Soviet military canteen in its primitive cloth cover.

As Benjamin inspected the contents of the room, he discovered a small radio of the type issued to German field agents, hidden under a tarpaulin. Then he knew he had found the right place. Although his orders were to return immediately if Vasko was not at the rendezvous point, the presence of the radio was a clear indication that Vasko had been there. Faced with the thought of abandoning his friend, Benjamin decided to wait a while and see if Vasko showed up.

Benjamin sat down at the table, picked up a piece of the Russian bread and gnawed off a mouthful. After chewing for a couple of seconds, he spat it out on to the floor, wondering how humans could subsist on food like that. Then he reached for the canteen, intending to wash out his mouth. He was just about to unscrew the cap when he felt something underneath the canteen cover which made him pause. It might just have been a twig that had worked its way between the metal and the cloth, but something about it made Benjamin uneasy. Gently he shook the canteen. Water splashed about inside. Then he undid the single metal button which held the cloth cover in place and removed the canteen. As he held up the metal flask, he spotted what he had originally mistaken for a twig. It was a thin copper wire, soldered to the base of the canteen and running all the way up to the cap. The wire had been taped to the metal with black electric tape.

Benjamin held his breath. With acid slithering in his guts, he carefully replaced the canteen on the table.

He recalled the moment in his training when he and the other agents had been shown various items of sabotage which they might one day be required to use. There were pieces of plastic explosives, shaped and painted to look like coal, which could be thrown into the tenders of trains and would detonate when shovelled into the engine. There were hollowed-out books with spring triggers fitted into the covers which, when opened, would detonate enough explosives to blow the roof off a house. There was even a slab of explosives designed to look like a chocolate bar. The explosives had been covered in real chocolate and wrapped in paper with the brand name ‘Peters’ on the outside. If a piece of the chocolate was snapped off, it would trip a detonator located inside the bar. And there were canteens, just like the one before him. Explosives were packed into the lower section, with a thin metal panel fitted into the upper section to allow it to hold water. The two pieces were then soldered back together and a copper wire strung between the cap and a detonator lodged inside the lower portion. The suspicions of any soldier would be set aside when he heard the water in the canteen, but unscrewing the cap would trigger the bomb in his hands.

Benjamin sat back and stared at the canteen which, he now realised, Vasko must have brought with him from Berlin when he first set out on the mission. ‘You bastard,’ he whispered, closing his fists to stop his fingers from trembling.

Outside, it began to rain. Benjamin listened to the rustle of droplets coming down through the trees. A moment later, it was pouring.

Steering his mind back on course, he remembered that his first task once he reached the rendezvous point was to establish contact with Abwehr in Berlin. Rather than get soaked retrieving his backpack, Benjamin picked Vasko’s radio set off the floor and brought it to the table, where he set it down and checked that the battery was charged. He set the small Morse code pad in front of him and turned on the radio, which came to life with a faint hum. Then he plugged the earpiece into the machine. After entering his identification code as a prefix to the message, he typed out: Expect contact shortly. Will advise.

Benjamin finished the transmission with a secondary authentication code. Then he picked up the earpiece. As he had learned in his training, he did not press it directly against his ear but rather against his temple. The signal, when it came in, was often marred by interference so that the individual key strokes sometimes appeared to merge together unintelligibly. Pressing the earpiece against his temple allowed him to isolate the message from the interference.

Benjamin did not have long to wait. Through the veil of static, he picked up the shrill notes of the Morse code reply. It was only one word: Understood.

Benjamin wondered if it was Skorzeny himself on the other end. He imagined the giant, safe in the radio room on the second floor of SS Headquarters in Berlin. He wished he was there now. It won’t be long, Benjamin thought to himself. If those Flemish soldiers break through to Rovno, Vasko and I can ride back to Berlin in comfort, instead of slogging our way out through the forest. And then maybe they will give us both a desk job for the rest of this damned war.

The thought of that cheered him up. Smiling, Benjamin leaned forward and turned off the radio. Curious, he thought, as he heard not one click but two.

*

Just before sunrise that morning, a wild dog had picked up the scent of a man moving through the woods east of the village of Misovichi. Most wild animals would have steered clear of a human, but this dog had not always been wild.

It had once belonged to a farmer named Wolsky, who raised goats and sheep and some pigs, whose wool and meat his family had sold at the market square in Tynno for generations.

Wolsky had named the dog Choma, after a local man who once cheated him in a business deal. He would bring the dog to the market place and make the dog catch scraps of meat and bone for the amusement of his customers, and all the while the farmer would call out the name of Choma, scratching his ears and slapping the dog’s shaggy fur.

One day back in the summer of 1941, not long after the invasion had taken place, a truck filled with Ukrainian Nationalist partisans rolled into Wolsky’s farmyard. Among the partisans was Choma‚ the man who had once cheated Wolsky, and who had heard about the naming of the dog.

When Wolsky came out of his house to see what was going on, Choma shot him in the chest and left him lying face-down in the mud. Then he went looking for the dog, intent on killing it as well.

Choma found the dog asleep beside the barn. His first shot missed, gouging a fist-sized chunk of wood from the wooden boards above the dog’s head. By the time Choma had steadied his hand to take a second shot, the dog had already vanished.

It had been living in the woods ever since. In that time, the dog had forgotten its name, and almost everything about its former life, until the day it picked up the man’s scent. More out of curiosity than hunger, it followed the stranger, keeping always at a safe distance, until they arrived at the cabin.

The man went inside the building.

The dog hung back among the trees, sniffing the air for some clue as to what might be happening.

A short while later, the dog heard the muffled thump of an explosion inside the cabin. In a flash of light, the glass window sprayed out of its frame as if it had transformed into water. This was followed by a wave of concussion which sent the dog skittering away, but it soon doubled back, sniffing at the shards of glass which littered the ground, until it came upon the arm of a man, smouldering and severed at the elbow. It remembered the way the old farmer used to throw it pieces of food and how the other people used to clap and cheer when it leaped into the air to catch the scrap of meat. For a second, he remembered his name.

Then the dog picked up the arm and carried it away, deep into the perpetual twilight of the forest.

*

Outside the safe house, the sound of armoured vehicles was growing louder.

‘We must get back to the garrison,’ said Kirov. ‘It’s the only fortified location in town. If we run flat out, we can be there in five minutes.’

Pekkala paused to check that his Webley revolver was loaded. He had forgotten to test-fire the weapon and now it was too late. He would just have to hope that Lazarev had worked one of the miracles for which he was already famous, or else this weapon might blow up in his hands the second he pulled the trigger.

Suddenly, the sound of an approaching vehicle filled the air. The floorboards shuddered beneath their feet. Seconds later, a German half-track rumbled past.

The half-track was followed by a squad of infantry. Some were members of the Flemish SS, identifiable by the three-branched swastika ‘trifos’ on their collar tabs, a yellow shield emblazoned with a black lion on their left forearms and, just beneath it, a black and white cuff title with the word ‘Langemarck’ etched out in silver thread. These were the troops which had been given the task of breaking through to Rovno, although by the time the skeletal rooftops of the town at last came into view so few were left that they had now been reinforced by other soldiers pulled from decimated units in the area, turfed out of their beds at field hospitals or hauled off trains by members of the German Military Police, the Feldgendarmerie, as they made their way home on the only leave some of them had seen in more than three years. Among these Belgians walked men from Croatia, from Spain, from Norway and from Hungary, all of them communicating in some bastard Esperanto, cobbled from their native tongues and the snippets of German they had picked up in their service to the Reich.

With bayonets fixed upon their Mauser rifles, they moved at a slow trot to keep up with the machine. Their clothing was a threadbare collage of the battles they had seen. Some still wore the bottle-green collared tunics in which they had marched into Poland in the autumn of 1939. There were jackboots that had marched down the Champs-Elysées in the summer of 1940, and ankle boots looted from Dutch army warehouses, with laces made from scraps of radio wire and loose heel irons that jangled like spurs as they grazed over stones in the road. Slung from belts, some carried canvas bread bags bleached by the African sun out in the Sand Sea of Calanscio. Their sharply angled helmets hid beneath tattered strips of camouflage cut from old shelter capes, or covers fashioned out of rusty chicken wire, on which could still be seen the traces of white paint daubed upon them when their owners huddled freezing in the ruins of Borodino in the winter of ’41.The faces of these men appeared primordial, their smoke-clogged pores and blistered lips like scraps of leather thrown out by a tanning yard. Their bodies were those of young men, but shrunk to bony scaffolding beneath the patched and filthy grey of Wehrmacht uniforms. Although the shape of them was human, in the hollow darkness of their eyes, and with frost-bitten ears worn down like chips of sea glass, they were no longer recognisable as men. They bore no resemblance to the postered images which had propelled them on this journey, whose only outcome, they now realised, would be annihilation. They were all that remained of their generation; restless husks of who they’d been before they went away, unknowable now to those they left behind and in the ice-filmed puddles where they glimpsed their sad reflections, unfamiliar even to themselves.

Somewhere up the street, just beyond Pekkala’s field of view, the half-track came to a squeaking halt.

‘There are more of them out back,’ whispered Kirov. ‘They’re moving through the alleyways.’

At that moment, Pekkala spotted two soldiers walking directly towards the house. ‘Go!’ he whispered to Kirov.

The two men dashed across the room, slid down the ladder into the root cellar and closed the trap door on top of them, just as the front door blew open, splintered by a rifle butt.

The soldiers searched the house, floorboards groaning under the cautious tread of their hobnailed boots.

Huddled in the darkness, only a hand’s breadth below, Kirov and Pekkala knew that it was only a matter of time before the soldiers discovered the narrow trench which led directly to the root cellar. And when they did, there would be no way out.

*

The first thing Vasko saw when he came in sight of the cabin was sunlight glinting off the shards of broken window. The door to the cabin was wide open, with one of its hinges torn off. Vasko realised immediately that one of the explosive devices with which he had booby trapped the cabin must have detonated.

Probably that fool Malashenko, he thought, nosing around to see what he could steal. I warned him not to touch things that didn’t belong to him. But, to be certain, Vasko drew his gun and circled around through the trees, searching for any sign of movement as he approached the cabin door.

Picking a stone from the ground, he rolled it into the dark, knowing that anyone still alive inside would mistake it for a grenade. Then he waited, ready to shoot whoever came running out.

But there was no cry of surprise. No sound of footsteps or the chambering of weapons. Only the dull clatter of the rock as it skipped across the wooden floor.

Cautiously, Vasko stepped into the cabin, his gun held out and finger on the trigger.

The breath caught in his throat when he saw the carnage.

By the table, still sitting in the chair, which had tipped back against the wall, was a man without a head and missing one of his arms. The table itself had been broken almost in half, its surface cratered by a large scorch mark.

Vasko’s first guess was that Malashenko had triggered the booby trap in the canteen, but then he saw the canteen lying on the other side of the room. It was dented and the metal blackened by smoke but it had definitely not exploded.

Then, looking up, Vasko spotted pieces of what he realised was his radio embedded in the ceiling. Immediately, he guessed that Malashenko had instead set off the explosive device installed in the radio. Vasko had done the rewiring himself, using the on switch as both on and off depending on which way he turned it and using the separate off switch as a trigger for the dynamite. To lose a radio when in the field was serious, but to have one fall into the hands of the enemy was a capital offence. Vasko was glad that he had taken precautions against losing the device, but it left him without a guide who knew his way around Rovno, as well as any means of communicating with Skorzeny. At least, he thought, I now have a reason for delaying my return to Berlin.