Drawing the Webley from its holster on his chest, he made his way across the field, mud clogging his boots, until he reached a bank of grass. From there, he set off towards the church.
He had not gone far when he spotted the silhouette of a man standing on the churchyard wall, waving to him.
It was Kirov.
Neither man could hide his relief at having found the other in the dark.
It took them a while longer to locate the guide.
As soon as they spotted the man’s chute, wafting in the night breeze like some strange, aquatic creature, Kirov set off at a run to help the man, whom they could see lying motionless on the ground.
‘Stop!’ hissed Pekkala.
Kirov skidded to a halt and turned.
‘Don’t even get near him,’ warned Pekkala. ‘He’s hit a power line. The current has grounded through his body.’
As Kirov backed away, he watched a sliver of smoke, or maybe it was steam, slither from the dead man’s mouth, as if his soul were fleeing from the prison of his corpse.
With no clue as to precisely where they were, and no way to check the body of their guide for maps or any other sign of where they were supposed to go when they arrived in Berlin, the two men headed for the church, weaving between the gravestones until they reached the entrance. But the door was locked and there was no sign of life inside, so they retreated to a clump of trees in the corner of the churchyard to wait out the night. Their clothing had been soaked by the descent through the clouds and they decided to light a small fire, keeping its meagre flames hidden by a circle of stones their muddy fingers gouged out of the ground.
A cold wind raked across the field beyond the churchyard wall, rattling the branches of the trees.
Crouched above the mesh of burning twigs, both men reached their hands into the smoke as if somehow to wash them in the scent of burning alder.
With his head tucked down and chin tucked into the collar of his mud-spattered coat, Pekkala resembled one of the tramps who lived in the Vorobjev woods on the south-west outskirts of Moscow.
‘There’s no point going on,’ said Kirov, struggling to speak as his jaw trembled with the cold.
Pekkala looked up from the fire. ‘What?’ he asked in disbelief.
‘Without our guide,’ explained Kirov, ‘we’ll never find the safe house.’
‘We have some clues,’ countered Pekkala.
Kirov looked at him in astonishment. ‘Such as?’ he demanded.
‘We know that the contact is Hungarian,’ said Pekkala, ‘and the date we are supposed to meet at the safe house.’
‘It’s not enough,’ said Kirov. ‘Not nearly enough! The rendezvous is three days from now, and even if we can get to Berlin in time, what good is that in a city which is doubtless home to thousands of Hungarians, not to mention the refugees who have been pouring in from the east? You must face the fact, Inspector, that there’s no chance of making the rendezvous with Comrade Simonova.’
‘There is always a chance,’ said Pekkala.
An image appeared in Kirov’s mind of the two of them, shuffling from house to house and knocking at every door they came to. It would take them the rest of their lives. Kirov paused before he spoke again. It did not surprise him that Pekkala did not want to turn back, especially with what was now at stake. He knew he would have to choose his words carefully if he was to have any hope of persuading the Inspector to come home. ‘Inspector,’ he began, as he attempted to reason with Pekkala, ‘please consider the possibility that your judgement might be clouded in this instance.’
‘It might well be,’ replied Pekkala.
Encouraged by the Inspector’s admission, Kirov felt it safe to go on.
‘When morning comes,’ he said firmly, ‘we’ll return to the Soviet lines.’
‘Whatever you think of my judgement,’ Pekkala told him, ‘I have come too far to turn back now.’
‘But it isn’t so far!’ Kirov tried to reason with him. ‘It can’t be more than a day or two if we keep up a steady pace. All we have to do is head east. The Red Army is massing on the Seelow Heights. Once we reach the River Oder, we’ll be safe.’
‘Safe?’ echoed Pekkala. ‘How safe do you think you will be if we return to the Kremlin empty-handed?’
‘But we won’t,’ insisted Kirov. ‘As soon as we reach the Soviet lines, we can make contact with Special Operations in Moscow. They can reschedule the rendezvous at the safe house and find another guide to take us there. We’ll make it to Berlin, Inspector. It just might take a little longer than we thought.’
‘That is the problem, Major Kirov.’ Pekkala picked up a stick and jabbed it at the embers. ‘It might only be a matter of hours before Hunyadi tracks her down. So even if we did have the time to spare, Lilya Simonova does not.’
Having tried and failed to reason with Pekkala, Kirov realised that he had only one card left to play. ‘Inspector,’ he said, ‘by the authority of Comrade Stalin, I am giving you an order.’
For a moment, there was only the sound of the wind in the branches of the trees.
‘And if Stalin was here with us now,’ Pekkala gestured at a patch of dirt beside the fire, ‘do you think that would change my opinion?’
Kirov stared at the place where Pekkala was pointing, half expecting Stalin to rise like some hideous mushroom from the patchwork collage of dead leaves. ‘What would you have us do, Inspector?’
‘Give me until the deadline for the rendezvous has passed,’ answered Pekkala. ‘That’s all the time I’ll need.’
‘How on earth do you expect to find her in three days, with no idea of where she might be hiding?’ asked Kirov.
‘You let me worry about that,’ replied Pekkala.
That same night, Peter Garlinski, former supervisor of British Special Operations Relay Station 53A, was woken by a heavy hand rapping on his Moscow flat door.
Bleary-eyed with sleep, Garlinski went to see what the fuss was about and found himself face to face with a sergeant of NKVD, the Soviet Internal Security Agency. The sergeant was crisply dressed, with dark blue trousers and a gymnastiorka tunic. Across his waist, he wore a heavy leather belt with a plain iron buckle and a Tokarev in its polished leather holster.
Garlinski was simultaneously worried by the sight of this man and grateful for the visit. He had not spoken to anyone since the arrival of Inspector Pekkala some days before.
‘I have come to get you out of here!’ announced the sergeant, a rosy-cheeked man with a double chin and thick, dark eyebrows. His short-fingered hands, the colour of raw pork, were criss-crossed with scars across the knuckles, as if he had once punched his way through a window.
‘Out of here?’ Garlinski asked suspiciously. ‘Where to?’
The sergeant poked his head into the room. ‘Some place better than this.’
‘Finally!’ sighed Garlinski.
‘Pack your things,’ said the sergeant.
‘I have no things.’
‘All the better. Follow me!’
They walked towards the gate, the sergeant’s iron heel plates sparking off the flint stones of the courtyard. Outside in the street, a car was parked, its engine running.
The sergeant got behind the wheel.
Garlinski climbed into the back.
‘We have to make a stop at Lubyanka,’ said the sergeant, as he put the car in gear and set off down the road. ‘You haven’t been debriefed yet.’
‘I know!’ Garlinski replied excitedly. ‘I’ve been waiting for that.’
‘It won’t take long,’ said the sergeant. ‘Then we can get you to your new apartment.’
‘What about employment?’ asked Garlinski. ‘I think I could be very useful. I’m trained as a decoder, you know. I was head of a listening post back in England.’
The sergeant glanced at him in the rear-view mirror and smiled broadly. ‘Sounds like you’ll have your pick of assignments. Not like me. I have no special talents.’