The Tsar smiled. ‘You might not think so when you see where I have left it.’
‘It’s not in the cottage?’
‘It’s underneath the cottage,’ replied the Tsar, untying the horse and climbing into the saddle, ‘in your own private sanctuary from the madmen of this world.’
Pekkala did not reply.
‘I know how you feel about confined spaces,’ the Tsar told him, ‘and that you have no intention of going down into that hiding place if you can help it.’
‘That would be correct,’ replied Pekkala.
‘So, as a reward, or call it a challenge if you like, I have gone down there myself and left you a bottle of my finest slivovitz plum brandy. All you have to do is go and get it.’
The construction of these hideaways did little to quell Zubatov’s fears.
Although many of Zubatov’s contemporaries believed him to be paranoid, the Okhrana had learned that it was better to err on the side of caution, in case the failure to report a legitimate threat would recoil upon their heads.
Inevitably, word would reach the Tsar.
Then the Tsar would summon Pekkala.
‘Go to Moscow,’ he would say. ‘See what Zubatov has dreamed up this time.’
Zubatov insisted that all his meetings take place face to face, since he did not trust the phone system. As head of the Okhrana, Zubatov had tapped every phone exchange in the country, so there was good reason for his lack of faith.
‘Will I find him at the Metropol?’ asked Pekkala, his eyes glazing at the thought of another long train ride from St Petersburg.
‘Of course,’ replied the Tsar. ‘That’s the only place where he feels safe, although I’m damned if I know why.’
‘It’s because the anarchists also meet there, Excellency. They like the food too much to blow it up and Zubatov is convinced they are planning to turn it into their headquarters some day.’
The Tsar laughed. ‘I know what you think of Zubatov, Pekkala, but please don’t judge him too harshly. After all, he’s only trying to save my life.’
But Pekkala knew this wasn’t quite true. Zubatov’s greatest fear was not the death of the Tsar, but rather the removal of the Tsar from power. In Zubatov’s cold thinking, the Tsar himself could be replaced. But if the Tsar stepped down from power, Zubatov knew exactly who would seize control in the name of Revolution. Most of these men and women he knew by name, having spent his career trying to kill them.
In 1917, when the Tsar abdicated the throne, Zubatov’s nightmare came true. After dinner with his family, Zubatov excused himself from the table and went out onto the balcony of their Moscow apartment to smoke a cigar. When the cigar was finished‚ instead of returning inside‚ he leapt to his death into the street below.
Although the chair’s tapestry upholstering was faded and torn, Pekkala had immediately recognised the ornate woodwork on its arms as being the same type which once graced the lobby of the Metropol.
True to their word, the Bolshevik Central Committee had taken the hotel over as their headquarters during the 1920s, during which time most of its original furnishing, including the crystal chandeliers, polished brass and navy-blue carpeting, had lapsed into disrepair. Now that it had been converted once again into a grand hotel, frequented by foreign diplomats, journalists and actors, the original, dilapidated furniture often found its way out into the street.
Driving past the hotel one dreary winter’s day, Pekkala had spotted the chair, covered with snow and left out for the sanitation department to remove, or for someone to smash to pieces, and use the wood for kindling.
‘Stop!’ Pekkala had ordered.
Kirov skidded to a halt. ‘What is it, Inspector?’
Without a word of explanation, Pekkala left the car and picked up the chair. After carrying it to the Emka, he manhandled it into the boot.
In spite of Kirov’s initial groan of disapproval, Pekkala had often since returned from meetings to find Kirov sitting fast asleep in the chair, arms folded on his stomach and heels resting on the edge of his desk.
Pekkala couldn’t help wondering if he himself might once have sat in this same chair, head bowed towards Zubatov, while the man spelled out his fears.
Now Pekkala settled
Now Pekkala settled his body on to the battered upholstery, feeling the horsehair stuffing rustle as it took his weight. He had not slept for so long that his brain was grinding to a halt. His consciousness was fading away. The last things he saw as his eyes drooped shut were the drawings on the wall. They seemed to slide back and forth, one over the other, as if the puzzle of the red moth was trying to piece itself together.
While these images replayed in Pekkala’s mind, something caught his attention.
Slowly, his eyes reopened.
Rising to his feet, Pekkala went to the wall and removed the tracing he had made of the background in the picture, which left the moth itself as an empty space in the drawing. Then he pulled down the drawing he had made which traced only the diagonal lines within the framework of the moth.
Carefully, he placed one drawing over the other.
Then he stood back, fingertips pressed expectantly together, and examined the combination of lines.
What Pekkala had noticed was that some of the lines of the background, which were made to look like branches, corresponded to some of the lines which had been drawn as patterns on the wings of the moth.
Now Pekkala made a third sketch, using only the lines which matched up.
With a grunt of anticipation, as if afraid the lines might at any moment rearrange themselves into obscurity, Pekkala lunged for the bookshelf and began hauling out the volumes of railway tables. In the twenty-four volumes of the Soviet railway system each district was given a letter. Within that district lay a numbered grid, which broke the district down into smaller sections. The front page of each volume contained a map of that grid, the remainder of the volume listed all trains either arriving in or departing from locations within it. Pekkala flipped through one and, not finding what he wanted, let it fall to the floor. Thirteen volumes later, he finally came across the chart which had flashed behind his eyelids, as if he had been staring at the sun.
The volume Pekkala had chosen contained the layout of the Leningrad district.
Returning to his desk, Pekkala laid the grid page next to the painting. For a moment, his eyes raced over the two images. Then his back straightened suddenly. ‘There!’ he shouted, momentarily startled by the sound of his own voice.
It wasn’t the railway lines which had caught his attention. Instead, it was two crooked paths, at their widest in the top left-hand corner of the picture, and narrowing until they almost touched as they dropped down to the right. What Pekkala had noticed was that the course of these two lines, transforming from a tree branch into the pattern on the wings of the moth, corresponded exactly to the outline of the Gulf of Finland as it narrowed into the Neva River, which turned sharply to the right before trailing down to the bottom of the image, where it once again metamorphosed into the background of the picture, but he could see it now, like glimpsing the bones beneath the skin of a translucent deep-sea fish.
He could clearly make out the island of Kronstadt, depicted as a fleck of colour on the moth’s wing. And there was the promontory where the fortress of Oranienbaum stood. His finger tapped nervously against the wide stretch of ground that marked the location of Peterhof.
By now, Pekkala was dizzy from concentrating, but he could not tear his eyes from the diagram. So many other lines and speckles criss-crossed the painting that he wondered if what he had found was nothing more than a coincidence, or else perhaps these other lines had just been placed there in order to camouflage the outline of the city.
He lost track of time.
Pekkala had no idea how long he had been staring at the painting when another idea began to take shape in his head. What if, he thought, the diagram contains not one map but two.