‘A map,’ whispered Pekkala, as he began to think it through. ‘But who made it? And why? Were the men in that plane picking it up or delivering it?’
‘And why,’ Kirov wondered aloud, ‘in an age of electronic messages, would someone resort to a technique as outdated as this?’
‘Sometimes the simplest techniques are the most difficult to crack,’ Churikova tapped her fingernail upon the crude wooden frame of the painting, ‘and, unfortunately for you, this one is virtually impossible to break. Even if you could decipher the matrix of symbols, you have no way of knowing what those symbols refer to, or where the object is or the scale of the map. It could be the size of something you keep in your pocket or it could be the size of Moscow. Without some pre-existing codex, which would have been agreed upon by the two people sharing the map, there is no way to determine what is hidden in this painting.’ Churikova rose slowly to her feet. ‘Perhaps you can take consolation in the fact that, at the rate the Germans are advancing, the location detailed in this map, wherever it was, is probably behind their lines by now.’
They walked out into the railyard. The Milky Way arched across the sky, like the vapour trail of a plane bound for another galaxy.
‘We can drive you back to your barracks in Moscow,’ offered Kirov.
‘There’s no one there,’ replied Churikova. ‘My whole battalion was aboard that train. I’d rather stay here and wait for the next one.’
A few minutes later, as the Emka pulled out on to the road, Pekkala glanced back at the station. In the darkness, he could just make out the silhouette of Churikova. She stood alone in the middle of the deserted railyard, staring up at the stars as if to decipher the meaning of their placement in the universe.
Rifleman Stefanov breathed in sharply
Rifleman Stefanov breathed in sharply and sat up, pushing aside the olive-brown rain cape he had been using as a blanket. His back ached sharply from lying in the foxhole. Barkat’s voice had woken him.
On the other side of the clearing, the gun-loader was moaning about the lost love of a woman named Ekaterina, whom he confessed was actually one of his cousins. ‘I was going to marry her!’ he announced.
‘You can’t do that!’ shouted Ragozin, who had left behind a wife and three children when he enlisted. He always seemed to be on the verge of hysterics, when he was not actually hysterical.
‘Can’t do what?’ asked Barkat. He was frying bread in a blackened mess kit full of bacon grease‚ which he had collected over several weeks.
‘Marry your cousin is what! You’ll end up with maniacs for children.’
‘I don’t think the correct word is “maniac”,’ said Stefanov.
‘Well, forgive me, Professor!’ Ragozin rolled his hand in mock obeisance.
‘I can think of better uses for the word maniac,’ replied Stefanov.
‘I’m not going to marry her now,’ said Barkat. With the point of a bayonet, he poked the bread around the pan, chasing the bubbles of boiling bacon grease. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’
‘I used to worry that my wife couldn’t manage without me.’ Ragozin sighed and rubbed his face. ‘Now I worry that she can. They’re all long gone,’ he muttered. ‘Yours. Mine.’ He wagged a finger in Barkat’s direction. ‘His sister or whoever she is. Every day that goes by is one step away from being able to pick up where we left off. Eventually, we’ll all reach a point where we can never pick things up. We’ll have to start again from scratch.’
At that moment, they heard a rumble of thunder in the distance.
‘Oh, no, not rain,’ groaned Ragozin. ‘We’ll drown in these foxholes if it pours.’
‘It can’t be rain,’ Stefanov countered. ‘The sky is clear.’
‘He’s right,’ said Barkat.
The three men looked around in confusion.
‘There!’ Stefanov pointed towards the north, where a wild, flickering light danced along the horizon.
‘They’re bombing Leningrad,’ Ragozin muttered sadly. ‘That poor city. They used to love my radio broadcasts.’
On the ride back to Moscow
On the ride back to Moscow, Pekkala remained silent. Ahead of them, the converging headlights of the Emka seemed to burrow the dirt road from the black cliff face of the night.
‘Inspector,’ asked Kirov, ‘why did you seem so nervous back there?’
‘The last time I saw eyes that colour was at the train station in Petrograd, back in 1917.’
‘Your fiancee.’
Pekkala nodded.
Kirov was in no mood to commiserate. ‘I don’t understand you, Inspector. For nine years, you lived like a savage! Nine years of Siberian winters! By every law of nature, you should be dead by now. Sometimes I think the reason Stalin gives you the worst assignments is not only because no one else can solve them, but because nobody else could survive them. And, in spite of all you have endured, it is the eyes of a woman that defeat you.’
To this‚ Pekkala only shrugged and looked the other way.
They were back inside the city limits now, racing along the unlit streets.
‘Shall I drop you at your apartment, Inspector? We could both use some sleep, you know.’
‘No. We must keep working.’
‘But you heard what the lieutenant said. Without the codex, deciphering the map becomes impossible.’
‘Virtually impossible. That is what she said.’
With a sigh, Kirov turned down a potholed street which ran beside the Dorogomilovsky market and began the familiar bumpy ride towards their office.
It was after midnight. The market stalls were empty. A few tattered awnings flapped in the cold, damp breeze. In the distance, the pale sabres of searchlights from anti-aircraft batteries stationed in the Kuskovo Park scratched restlessly against the night sky.
Minutes later, they were trudging up the stairs to the fifth floor, the soles of their boots rasping against the worn wooden steps.
Once inside the office, Kirov turned on the light switch but nothing happened.
Pekkala waited in the hallway, the painting tucked under his arm, listening to the metronomic click as Kirov flipped the switch impatiently back and forth. ‘Must be our turn for a black-out,’ he grumbled.
There had been several of these in the past weeks, mostly at night, rolling like waves of darkness across the city. Initially, the Moscow authorities denied the existence of any black-outs. These denials only led to speculation that these electricity failures were the work of German spies. Since then, the official line had been changed to assure the people of Moscow that all black-outs were deliberate, but nobody believed that, either.
While Kirov lit an oil lamp, Pekkala cleared away every scrap of paper on the large notice board which covered one wall of their office, leaving behind a constellation of drawing pins in the cork backing.
Then Pekkala cleared everything off his desk except for the painting, the oil lamp and a roll of waxy baker’s parchment which Kirov sometimes used for baking piroshky.
Kirov lit a fire in the old iron stove in the corner of their office and lit the samovar to boil water for tea. For a while, the only sound was of the kindling, spitting as it burned inside the stove.