The only sound was the soft voice of their driver, Zolkin, as he sang one of his favourite Ukrainian folksongs, called ‘The Duckling Swims’, about a young man going off to war. His low and mournful voice was interrupted from time to time by a grinding crash of the Emka’s mangled gears.
Finally, when they had tramped up to their office on the fifth floor of the building, Kirov revealed what Stalin had told him. As Kirov spoke, he could not bring himself even to look at Pekkala. Instead, he looked out of the window, past the luminous green leaves of basil, sage and rosemary which he grew in earthenware pots upon the windowsill, and rattled off Stalin’s instructions.
It seemed to take a long while to explain what was, in fact, a very simple order. By the time Kirov had finished, he felt completely out of breath. And now he waited, looking without really seeing through the dusty windowpanes, for the Inspector to make his pronouncement.
‘It’s a good idea,’ said Pekkala.
Astonished, Kirov whirled about. ‘Do you really think so?’ he gasped. It was the last thing he had expected to hear.
Pekkala had settled into his chair beside the wheezy iron stove. The stove was not lit and he had put his feet up on the circular cooking plates. From where Kirov stood, he could see the double thick soles of the Inspector’s heavy boots, and the iron heel plates, scuffed to a mercury shine. The Inspector seemed perfectly at ease, almost as if the idea had been his all along.
‘Congratulations on your first command,’ Pekkala added graciously.
‘Why, thank you,’ stammered Kirov.
‘Long overdue, if you ask me,’ continued Pekkala.
‘Well, now that you mention it,’ replied Kirov, his shattered confidence slowly reassembling, ‘I have been looking forward to the challenge for some time. I just never thought it would come.’
‘Stalin is no fool when it comes to recognising talent.’
Overwhelmed, Kirov strode across the room and shook Pekkala’s hand.
‘Be sure to tell your wife,’ said Pekkala. ‘I expect she will be pleased.’
‘I will!’ Kirov replied eagerly.
Elizaveta worked as a filing clerk in the records office on the fourth floor of the Lubyanka building which had, for many years, been the headquarters of Soviet Internal Security.
‘As soon as I have picked up our equipment for the journey,’ Kirov continued, ‘I’ll head upstairs and tell her the good news.’
‘If that suits you, of course, Comrade Major,’ Pekkala answered with a playful gravity.
‘I believe it does,’ said Kirov, lifting his chin dramatically. Then he set off to Lubyanka.
Arriving at the Lubyanka building, Kirov immediately made his way down to the basement, to consult with Lazarev, the armourer.
Lazarev was a legendary figure at Lubyanka. From his workshop in the basement, he managed the issue and repair of all weapons supplied to Moscow NKVD. He had been there from the beginning, personally appointed by Felix Dzerzhinsky, the first head of the Cheka, who commandeered what had once been the offices of the All-Russian Insurance Company and converted it into the All-Russia Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counter-revolution and Sabotage. From then on, the imposing yellow-stone building served as an administrative complex, prison and place of execution. The Cheka had changed its name several times since then, from OGPU to GPU to NKVD, transforming under various directors into its current incarnation. Throughout these gruelling and sometimes bloody metamorphoses, which emptied, reoccupied and emptied once again the desks of countless servants of the state, Lazarev had remained at his post, until only he remained of those who had set the great machine of Internal State Security in motion. This was not due to luck or skill in navigating the minefield of the purges, but rather to the fact that, no matter who did the killing and who did the dying above ground, a gunsmith was always needed to make sure the weapons kept working.
For a man of such mythic status, Lazarev’s appearance came as something of a disappointment. He was short and hunched, with pock-marked cheeks so pale they seemed to confirm the rumours that he never travelled above ground, but migrated like a mole through secret tunnels known only to him beneath the streets of Moscow. He wore a tan shop coat, whose frayed pockets sagged from the weight of bullets, screwdrivers and gun parts. He wore this tattered coat buttoned right up to his throat, giving rise to another rumour; namely that he wore nothing underneath. This story was reinforced by the sight of Lazarev’s bare legs beneath the knee-length coat. He had a peculiar habit of never lifting his feet from the floor as he moved about the armoury, choosing instead to slide along like a man condemned to live on ice. He shaved infrequently, and the slivers of beard that jutted from his chin resembled the spines of a cactus. His eyes, watery blue in their shallow sockets, showed his patience with a world that did not understand his passion for the gun and the wheezy, reassuring growl of his voice, once heard, was unforgettable.
As soon as Lazarev caught sight of Kirov’s highly polished boots descending the stairs, he reached below the counter, whose top was strewn with gun parts, oil cans, pull-through cloths and brass-bristled brushes, coiled like the tails of newborn puppies, and lifted out a Hungarian-made Femaru Model 37 pistol, still nestled in its brown leather holster. The weapon had been taken from the body of a Hungarian tank officer on the outskirts of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942 and was delivered to Lazarev for just such an occasion as this. In preparation for Kirov’s arrival, Lazarev had cleaned the weapon and loaded its 7-round magazine with freshly oiled 7.62 ammunition.
Kirov stared at the weapon, his eye drawn to the curious eyelash-shaped extension on the magazine, designed to rest against the user’s little finger when holding the gun.
Lazarev picked up the Femaru and held it out. The metal gleamed blue in the harsh light of the bulb above their heads. ‘You will find this less elegant than your issue Tokarev,’ he explained, ‘but just as lethal under the circumstances you are likely to encounter. More importantly, it is what they’ll be expecting if you are ever searched, the point being not to use the gun at all if you can help it.’
Kirov unfastened his officer’s belt, the heavy brass buckle emblazoned with a cut-out star, slid off the holster containing his issue Tokarev automatic and placed it on the table. Then, he replaced it with the Hungarian pistol. ‘Where do I sign?’ he asked.
‘No need!’ Lazarev waved away the thought with a brush of his hands.
Kirov narrowed his eyes. ‘But we always have to sign for weapons, and I know you are a stickler for the rules.’
Lazarev began to look flustered. ‘They called me from upstairs,’ he explained. ‘They said there was no need for you to sign.’
‘Who called?’ asked Kirov.
Lazarev rolled his shoulders, as if he had a crick in his spine. ‘Upstairs,’ he repeated quietly.
‘Why would there be no signature?’ demanded Kirov.
Lazarev reached across the counter top and rested his hand on Kirov’s shoulder. ‘You can sign when you return it,’ he said, a pained expression on his face. ‘How about that?’
Mystified at this breach of protocol, Kirov headed for the door. Then he stopped and turned. ‘I almost forgot,’ he said. ‘What about a weapon for Pekkala?’
Lazarev smiled. ‘Do you honestly think you can persuade him to give up that Webley of his?’
Kirov understood immediately what an impossible task that would be.
On his way to see his wife in the records office at the top of the building, Kirov stopped at the third floor, where he picked up two sets of identity papers. They consisted of a Hungarian passport, a small, sand-coloured booklet printed with the Hungarian crown and shield and the words ‘Magyar Kiralysag’ and a German Reisepass, containing various travel permits, stamps and handwritten validations. There were also driving licences, food ration books and Hungarian Fascist Party membership cards. Kirov marvelled at the attention to detail that had gone into preparing the books. There must have been half a dozen different inks used in signatures on the pale green pages of the passport, and the books themselves had been worn down in such a way that they even matched the contours of having been carried in a man’s chest pocket. If these documents had once belonged to someone else, Kirov could find no trace of alteration in the pictures, which had been heat-sealed into the identity books, cracking the emulsion of the little photograph and overlaying Kirov’s face with an image of an eagle from a registration office in the Berlin suburb of Spandau.