‘Let’s hope Lieutenant Churikova has the answers,’ Pekkala remarked as he put the car in gear and steered them back on course towards the train station.
On their previous visit to Ostankinsky, they had found the place almost deserted. Now hundreds of soldiers crammed the railyard. Some lay sleeping on the ground, using their rucksacks as pillows. Other sat in tight circles, playing cards or coaxing mess tins full of water to the boil over fires made from twigs.
Many looked up when they heard the growling of the Emka’s engine, hoping that some other form of transport might have arrived at last. Seeing only one four-seater car, the optimism faded from their eyes.
‘All the trains must be held up because of the bombing last night,’ said Pekkala. ‘She’s probably still here.’
‘But how are we going to find her in that crowd?’ wondered Kirov.
Pekkala turned to him. ‘I believe I have the solution.’
Five minutes later, Kirov was making his way along the spine of the steeply angled roof, his arms held out to the side and wobbling unsteadily, like a tightrope walker high above the big ring of a circus.
By now, every pair of eyes in the railyard was following his progress.
‘Go on, Commissar!’ shouted a soldier, who wore a filthy greatcoat so long that it trailed along the ground as he walked towards the station house. ‘Jump! Jump!’
Arriving at the centre of the roof, Kirov came to a stop. Slowly, he turned to face the crowd and cupped his hands to his mouth. ‘I am looking for a woman!’
At first, the soldiers simply stared at him in confusion.
Then, one by one, came the replies.
‘Let me know when you find her!’ shouted a soldier, rising slowly to his feet, a fan of playing cards clutched in his fist.
‘I am also looking for a woman!’ boomed another man, raising his rifle in the air. ‘She must report to me at once!’
‘Come down here, Comrade Commissar,’ called a broad-faced man with piggy eyes, his head so closely shaved that his scalp gleamed in the sun. Unlike the others, this man did not smile as he hurled his insults at the figure on the roof. ‘Come down here and. . ’
A shot rang out across the station yard.
Hundreds of men flinched simultaneously. The laughter ceased abruptly.
Kirov waited until the last sliver of smoke had escaped from the barrel of his Tokarev before replacing the weapon in its holster. ‘Her name,’ he called into the silence, ‘is Lieutenant Churikova!’
There was a creaking sound, which seemed to come from directly beneath Kirov’s feet. It crossed his mind that the roof might be collapsing under him.
But the sound was from the door of the station house, which now fell back with a clatter against its crooked frame.
A soldier walked down the three steps of the station house into the dust of the railyard, then stopped and turned. It was Churikova. She squinted up at Kirov, half blinded by the sun behind his back. ‘I didn’t think I’d seen the last of you‚’ she said.
On the ground once again, Kirov led Churikova to the Emka, where Pekkala handed her one sketch after another as he explained what they had learned about the map.
Churikova examined each one, carefully and in silence.
‘Well?’ Pekkala asked‚ unable to disguise his impatience. ‘What do you think?’
It was a moment before she replied. ‘I think you are correct,’ she said at last, ‘but even if you have deciphered this Baden-Powell diagram, the map contained within it has no purpose any more. You must have heard the broadcast on State Radio, reporting that the Amber Room has been removed from the Palace. What’s more, even if the Kremlin hasn’t admitted it yet, every soldier in that railyard knows that the Germans will soon be at the gates of Leningrad. The Catherine Palace lies directly in the path of their advance. Whatever information this map might have provided is useless now. You might as well throw it away.’
‘Before I can do that,’ replied Pekkala, ‘there is someone who will want to hear the opinion of an expert. For that, I must bring you back to Moscow.’
‘Who is this person?’
‘You will know him when you see him.’
‘But I have a train to catch,’ protested Churikova. ‘I must rejoin my battalion.’
Kirov and Pekkala exchanged glances, realising that the results of last night’s bombing raid had either been suppressed by the authorities, or else had not yet reached the Ostankinsky railyard.
Pekkala opened the door of the Emka, gesturing for Churikova to take a seat. ‘Please, Lieutenant,’ he said gently.
Driving back to Moscow, Pekkala relayed the grim details about the train which had been hit.
Churikova struggled to absorb the information. ‘Surely they weren’t all killed, Inspector? There must have been survivors.’
Pekkala thought of what Poskrebychev had told him about the wheel which had been found over half a kilometre from the wreck. He imagined it, smouldering in the dirt like a meteor which had just collided with the earth. ‘I am told that there were none.’
Having crossed
Having crossed the wide expanse of the Alexander Park‚ the three men stood at last before the entrance to the Catherine Palace.
Stefanov tried the doors but found them both locked.
‘Well, what did you expect?’ hissed Ragozin. ‘We should go back at once!’
But Barkat had already climbed in through a broken window. A moment later, there was a rattling as he slid back the bolt. ‘Your majesties,’ he said, swinging wide the double doors, and bowing extravagantly as the other two walked past him into the palace.
In front of them, the grand staircase rose up into the darkness of the floor above. At the base of the stairs, balanced on a short white marble pillar, stood a huge porcelain vase, strangely out of place in the otherwise empty hallway.
The three men went over to the vase, drawn to it like boys towards a pie left on a window sill to cool. Barkat wrapped his arms around the vase. ‘Maybe I can get this into the truck.’
‘You shouldn’t do that,’ muttered Stefanov, but even as he spoke, he wished he had thought of it first.
Barkat grunted. ‘I can’t even lift it!’
‘Let me try,’ said Ragozin, pushing Barkat aside. He had no luck either. ‘This thing is heavy!’ he whispered.
Now it was Stefanov’s turn. Folding his arms around the vase, he hugged the vase to his chest, braced his legs and lifted. The vase seemed to shift, as if it was a living thing determined to stay rooted to the spot. And then he understood why none of them could move it. The vase was filled with water.
‘Why would they do that?’ asked Ragozin.
‘Maybe it had flowers in it,’ suggested Barkat.
‘No,’ said Stefanov. ‘It’s so the vase won’t shatter from the concussion of an exploding shell. My family used to live right by the railroad tracks. Sometimes those trains would make the whole house shake. If the vibration reached a certain pitch, it could shatter a window, or a glass inside a cabinet, or a vase. At home, my father used to fill our only flower vase with water, so that it could absorb the shock. Whoever did this,’ Stefanov tapped a fingernail against the vase, ‘thinks there’s going to be a battle here. Come on. We have to hurry. It’s this way.’
Although Ragozin had brought an army-issue torch‚ there was enough moonlight coming in from outside that they could make their way around without it.
Instead of climbing the stairs, the three men went through a doorway to the right and entered a space which had once been the picture hall. No paintings hung there now and the gaping frames that once contained them lay scattered on the floor amongst handfuls of straw and a pile of empty, musty-smelling suitcases.
Of the furniture that once decorated the hall, only a single sideboard cabinet remained, its drawers pulled out and missing, as if the place had already been looted. On top of the sideboard, looking strangely out of place, sat a broken American-made Sylvania radio, the guts of its wires hanging out the back. Ragozin gently took the radio in both hands and lifted it so that the speaker pressed against his ear. ‘They listened to me on this,’ he whispered. ‘My voice came out through here. I can feel it.’