‘If he thinks he can just pick up where he left off,’ said Elizaveta, ‘then he is just a dreamer.’
‘There are worse things to be,’ Kirov answered defensively, ‘and maybe he just wants to save her life. After all, that’s what I’d do for you.’
Only now did she rise to embrace him. ‘I want you to make me a promise,’ she said.
‘What would that be?’ asked Kirov.
‘If it comes down to you or Pekkala,’ she said, her voice muffled against the chest of his neatly pressed tunic, ‘promise you’ll make the right decision.’
‘All right,’ Kirov told her softly. ‘I will.’
When the money first started arriving in her account, back in the summer of 1933, Lilya Simonova thought that somebody had made a mistake. After receiving her statement in the mail, and seeing that there was considerably more in her account than should have been there, she went to the bank manager to find out what had happened.
‘Everything is in order,’ he assured her. ‘The money has been wired from Moscow.’
‘But by whom?’
‘Rada Igorevna Obolenskaya,’ replied the manager. ‘Does that name sound familiar to you?’
‘Why yes,’ said Lilya, still confused. ‘Yes, it does, but . . .’
‘I am given to understand,’ interrupted the manager, ‘that additional amounts will be deposited each month.’
‘For how long?’
The manager shrugged. ‘No limit has been set.’
‘And is there any message from Rada Igorevna?’
‘None that I know of.’
‘What should I do about this?’ Lilya wondered aloud.
‘I’ll tell you exactly what to do,’ said the manager. ‘Take the money. Take it and be glad.’
The next month, just as the manager had said, another deposit arrived from Moscow. And it continued to arrive, without fail, for the following eight years.
Lilya Simonova attempted to make contact with her former employer. She had no idea where the headmistress might be living but wrote to the address of the school where they had worked together, hoping that she might still be there or that someone who remembered her might be able to forward it. But she received no reply and, after many attempts, she finally gave up.
In 1937, at a place called the Cafe Dimitri, where expatriate Russians often gathered to drink tea, Lilya ran into someone she had known in Petrograd before the Revolution. Her name was Olga Komarova and her children had attended the school where Lilya taught. When Lilya mentioned to her the gifts which had been sent by Rada Obolenskaya, a strange look passed over the face of her friend.
‘But that’s impossible,’ said Olga Komarova. ‘The school was burned to the ground, right at the beginning of the Revolution. It couldn’t have been more than a day after you left.’
‘Well,’ replied Lilya, ‘that explains why no one got the letters I sent. But Rada was a woman of means. I don’t think she needed her job to survive financially. Even with the school gone, I’m sure she still had money tucked away.’
Olga Komarova reached across and rested her hand upon Lilya’s. ‘No,’ she said softly, ‘you don’t understand. The poor woman was in the school when the Red Guards came to burn it down. They told her to leave, but she refused, so they burned the school anyway, with her inside it. Lilya, she’s been dead for years.’
‘You must be mistaken,’ Lilya insisted.
‘But I’m not,’ said Olga Komarova. ‘I saw them drag her body from the ashes. She was still holding that camera of hers. Aside from you and that school, I think it was the only thing she valued in this world.’
The next day, Lilya Simonova went back to the bank manager and told him what she had learned.
‘There’s a simple explanation,’ said the man. ‘She must have left it to you in her will. The executors of her estate must have arranged for these payments to be made.’
Lilya took him at his word but, even though it was a tidy explanation, her suspicions were never completely laid to rest. Then, in June of 1941, when the German army launched its campaign against Russia, banking routes between Moscow and Paris, which had been occupied by Germany for the previous year, shut down and the money stopped coming in as abruptly as it had first appeared.
An hour after leaving Lubyanka, Kirov was back at the office on Pitnikov Street.
There, Pekkala informed them that a car was already on its way to transport them to a military airfield on the outskirts of Moscow. As yet, neither of the men knew exactly how they would be arriving in Berlin.
Gloomily, Kirov slouched in the chair by the stove. Little clouds of raw cotton peeked from the chair’s tattered upholstery. Kirov’s condition did not look much better than that of his chair. He had already traded in his uniform and was now dressed in the Hungarian clothes he had been given. He looked depressingly shabby, unemployed and unemployable.
‘You don’t look so bad,’ said Pekkala, trying to cheer him up.
‘That’s easy for you to say,’ grumbled Kirov. ‘You get to wear your own kit.’
‘It’s because I have a certain universal quality,’ Pekkala announced grandly.
‘He said you were a barbarian.’
‘There are worse things to be called.’
Realising that he was never going to gain the upper hand in this conversation, Kirov turned his attention to the pistol given to him by Lazarev. ‘I can’t understand it,’ he said. ‘You have to sign for everything in that place! And you get in all kinds of trouble if you don’t return every little scrap of equipment you are issued. Why would they change their minds, all of a sudden?’
‘What would be the point of having you sign for a gun you will never return?’ asked Pekkala.
‘But of course I would return it!’ protested Kirov.
‘Not if we don’t make it back,’ replied Pekkala.
Kirov stared at him in amazement. ‘Do you mean they don’t expect us to survive?’
‘It looks that way to me.’
Kirov launched himself to his feet, as if he meant to march back to NKVD headquarters and demand an explanation. Then, realising the futility of such a gesture, he slumped back into his chair.
Just then, they heard the squeak of brakes.
Pekkala walked over to the window and glanced down into the street. ‘It’s time for us to leave,’ he said.
As Kirov and Pekkala set off on their journey to Berlin, Inspector Leopold Hunyadi had only just arrived in the city, still wearing the rags of his prison uniform.
Now he stood face to face with Adolf Hitler.
For this meeting, Hitler had chosen the rubble-strewn Chancellery gardens, where he was in the habit of walking his German shepherd dog, Blondi, at least once every day. He had dismissed his usual escort of armed guards, determined to keep his time with Hunyadi as secret as possible.
‘Hunyadi,’ muttered Hitler, drawing out the man’s name like a growl. ‘What have I done to deserve this?’
Hunyadi had no idea what Hitler was talking about, but it occurred to him that if he so much as asked, he might find himself on the next plane back to Flossenburg. So, for now at least, he held his tongue.
Hitler began to walk along the pathway, which had once been lined with flowers but now resembled a gangplank laid across a cratered field of mud. The dog walked on ahead, straining at its leash.
‘There is a spy,’ continued Hitler.
Hunyadi looked around at the jagged teeth of broken windows. ‘Here?’ he asked. ‘Now?’
Hitler shook his head, then jerked his chin towards the ground. ‘Down there, in the bunker.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Information has leaked out. The Allies are broadcasting it on the radio, as if to taunt me for my ignorance. I cannot allow it to continue. That is why I brought you here.’
‘You want me to find the spy?’
‘Exactly.’
‘But what about your own security service?’
Hitler breathed out sharply. ‘If Rattenhuber and his gang of Munich Bulls had done their jobs when they were supposed to, you would not be standing there now.’