The two men sat hunched over the little table, elbows resting on the bare wood, not knowing where to begin after so many years apart.
In spite of the years since they’d last seen each other, Pekkala felt immediately at ease with Kovalevsky. Their shared past had given them a particular angle of vision on the world which could not be blunted by time.
‘Did you think I wouldn’t show?’ asked Kovalevsky.
‘You’re here now‚’ replied Pekkala. ‘That’s what matters.’
‘I see you are not wearing your weapon.’
‘I knew I wouldn’t need it.’
With a smile, Kovalevsky drew open his coat, showing that he’d also come unarmed. ‘Ever since you stepped into my classroom this afternoon, I’ve been wondering how you tracked me down.’
‘You talk in your sleep,’ replied Pekkala.
‘I what?’
Without offering any further explanation, Pekkala asked a question of his own. ‘How on earth did you know I came here to the Tilsit?’
‘I come here myself from time to time. I’ve seen you here.’
Now it was Pekkala who seemed baffled. ‘How is it that I didn’t spot you?’
‘One thing I did not forget from my days with Myednikov is how to vanish in a crowded room. Besides, when a man is dead, you do not look for him. In that way, at least, Dzerzhinsky did me a favour.’
Valentina, the owner, arrived at their table with two wooden bowls of sorrel and spinach soup, into each of which a dollop of sour cream had been ladled. ‘Ah,’ she said to Pekkala, ‘I see you have made a new friend.’ And with those words, she bent down and kissed Kovalevsky on the cheek. ‘The professor is my favourite customer. Aren’t you, Professor?’
‘I try to be,’ he replied.
Pekkala smiled politely as he watched this exchange, but he couldn’t help remembering his last visit to the Tilsit, when Valentina had touched his shoulder. And he was embarrassed now at how that touch had made him feel, even if only for an instant.
‘So we are to go on a mission together,’ said Kovalevsky, when the two men were alone again.
‘The last one you will ever need to do.’
Kovalevsky nodded as he spooned some of the bright green soup into his mouth. ‘A fitting end to my career, since you were also my companion on the first mission we ever undertook.’
‘A humbling experience,’ remarked Pekkala, ‘thanks to Chief Inspector Vassileyev.’
In the course
In the course of their Okhrana training, Vassileyev had familiarised the two young recruits in the use of secret codes, disguises, bomb defusing and firearms, which included so many hours spent firing their Nagant revolvers in the underground range beneath Okhrana Headquarters that Pekkala and Kovalevsky resorted to dipping their index fingers in molten candle wax before the sessions began every day, since the skin had been worn off the pads of their fingertips by the triggers of the guns.
Vassileyev’s favourite topic, however, was the hunting down of suspects. He was, in spite of the fact that he had lost one of his legs in a bomb blast, still considered to be the finest practitioner of the art of tailing and pursuit in all of Russia.
So it struck the two men as particularly strange when, after only an hour of preparation, Vassileyev assigned them the task of following a courier named Worunchuk from the telegraph office he visited each afternoon to the point where he crossed the Potsuleyev bridge.
‘But you must go no further than the bridge!’ commanded Vassileyev.
Perplexed by this cryptic order, Kovalevsky and Pekkala did not know what to think.
‘Inspector. .’ Pekkala began hesitantly.
‘Yes? What is it?’
‘Are you sure we are ready for this? We’ve been shooting at targets for months, but we spent less than a day learning how to tail suspects.’
‘You are exactly as ready as I need you to be! Now go!’ He shooed them out of the room. ‘Get to work!’
Following Vassileyev’s instructions, Kovalevsky and Pekkala waited at a tram stop across the road from the telegraph office. Each time a tram halted to allow passengers on or off, the two men would step back until the tram had departed and resume their observation of the telegraph office. It was a small building, painted bone-white except for a red sign, outlined with black and gold, above the entrance, which read, ‘Government Signals Bureau’.
‘I don’t think he’s ever coming,’ muttered Kovalevsky, after they had been standing there for an hour.
‘Vassileyev taught us to be patient,’ replied Pekkala, although he was beginning to have his own doubts.
It was three hours before Worunchuk finally arrived. The physical description Vassileyev had provided them made the suspect easy to identify. He was a heavy-set man with an olive complexion, sharp, sloping nose and a black moustache. He wore a black, velvet-lapelled overcoat that came down to his knees of the type commonly seen on lawyers, bankers and office managers.
Worunchuk had chosen the time of day when most businesses were closing, and the streets were filled with people heading home from work.
Rather than risk losing him in the crowds, Kovalevsky and Pekkala hurriedly crossed the road as Worunchuk ducked into the telegraph office. They waited two doors down, outside a woman’s clothing shop, until Worunchuk appeared a few minutes later, tucking an envelope into the chest pocket of his coat.
He set off at a brisk pace along the road which ran beside the Moika River. Several times, he crossed the street and then crossed back again for no apparent reason, forcing Pekkala and Kovalevsky to reverse direction in the middle of the road. Once he stopped in front of a butcher shop, eyeing the cuts of meat on display behind the large glass window.
It was not long before Worunchuk crossed the Potsuleyev bridge, leaving his pursuers sweating with exertion as they watched him disappear among the commuters. As soon as he was out of sight, Kovalevsky and Pekkala hurried back to Vassileyev.
They found him sitting behind his desk, whittling out the inside of his wooden leg with a large bone-handled pen knife. ‘Did you find him?’ asked Vassileyev, without even looking up to see who had entered the room.
‘Yes.’ Kovalevsky removed a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed the sweat from his forehead. ‘He moves quickly!’
‘And he crossed the Potsuleyev bridge?’
‘That is correct, Inspector,’ Pekkala confirmed, ‘and from there, we let him go, just as you ordered.’
‘Good!’ Vassileyev laid his wooden leg upon the table. ‘Tomorrow you will do the same again. Follow him to the Potsuleyev bridge.’
‘Yes, Inspector,’ both men chorused.
Vassileyev aimed a finger at them. ‘But no further. That’s an order!’
The next day and the next and the next, the two men took up their station at the tram stop.
Worunchuk kept a tight schedule, arriving at the telegraph office at three minutes to five every day. The route he took to reach the Potsuleyev bridge also remained unchanged, and varied only in those places where he zigzagged mindlessly across the road. But he always stopped at the butcher shop, standing before its large glass window to study the cuts of meat.
‘Why doesn’t he buy anything?’ muttered Kovalevsky. ‘If he can afford a coat like that, he can spring for a few links of sausage!’
When, once more, Worunchuk vanished across the Potsuleyev bridge, Kovalevsky turned angrily and began striding back towards Vassileyev’s office.
Pekkala struggled to keep up.
‘This is doing no good at all!’ Kovalevsky’s voice was filled with frustration. ‘As far as I can see‚ he’s doing nothing wrong.’
‘Yet.’
Kovalevsky stopped and turned to face Pekkala. ‘What did you say?’
‘I said “yet”. He hasn’t done anything wrong yet.’
‘This city is filled with people who haven’t done anything wrong yet. Are you suggesting that we follow all of them?’
‘No,’ Pekkala replied, ‘only the one Inspector Vassileyev has ordered us to pursue.’