‘What if Engel has already discovered the amber?’
‘That depends,’ replied Stalin. ‘If they decide to leave the panels where they are, your orders are to leave them untouched until such time as we can reclaim the ground we have lost. But if you discover that the Fascists have chosen to move those panels to some location of their own, in spite of the damage it might cause, in order to parade the Amber Room before the world as a symbol of our defeat, then I am ordering you to destroy it.’
‘But Comrade Stalin,’ he finally managed to say, ‘you just declared the Amber Room to be an irreplaceable State treasure. Now you are telling me to destroy it?’
‘We must be prepared to sacrifice everything,’ Stalin replied, ‘or else face oblivion. From now on, the only way we can survive is to hold nothing sacred. Besides, I’ll wager that your distaste for the Tsar’s garish displays of wealth is no less strongly felt today than it was when you were in his service. Wouldn’t you secretly welcome the chance to rid this world of such a monument to human excess?’
‘Human excess has many monuments, Comrade Stalin, the gulag at Borodok for one. But even if you were correct in my opinion of the Amber Room, exactly how do you expect me to destroy it?’ asked Pekkala.
‘When the time comes,’ Stalin replied, ‘you will be provided with the means.’
‘And Lieutenant Churikova? Does she know about this order?’
‘She will when you tell her. But you must move quickly, Pekkala. Rather than give this traitor another chance to strike at us again, I have decided to move up the start time for the operation.’
‘By how much?’ asked Pekkala. ‘I thought we still had three days to plan the mission.’
‘Your plane leaves in less than twelve hours.’
In the outer room, Poskrebychev leaned across his desk, his ear almost touching the dust-clogged mesh of the intercom speaker.
At Pekkala’s mention of the gulag at Borodok, which must have struck Stalin like a back hand across the face, Poskrebychev had held his breath, waiting for the eruption of Stalin’s volcanic rage. Poskrebychev had always been mystified by Pekkala, and had never made up his mind whether to respect the Emerald Eye for his suicidal forthrightness or to pity him for the price Poskrebychev felt certain that the Finn would some day have to pay for all his insolence.
But yet another moment passed in which Stalin’s anger failed to ignite, as Poskrebychev felt sure it would have done with anyone other than Pekkala. He wondered if the fairy tales he’d heard as a child, in which the Finns were always vanishing, or casting spells to change the weather, or communing with the spirits of the forest, might have some truth in them. Surely, thought Poskrebychev, Stalin must have been bewitched.
As he heard the door handle turn, Poskrebychev sat back in his chair and busied himself with paperwork.
Pekkala swept by, accompanied by the creak of his double-soled boots and the rustle of his heavy corduroy trousers.
The two men did not exchange words.
Only when Pekkala had gone by did Poskrebychev raise his head. Glancing at the broad shoulders of the Inspector, he wondered if the truth might be simpler than he’d thought. Perhaps what it boiled down to was the fact that Stalin needed Pekkala too much, and so endured a frankness which, Poskrebychev had no doubt, would have cost him his life if he had ever dared to speak those words himself.
Lieutenant Churikova
Lieutenant Churikova had returned to the barracks, from which she and her battalion had departed only a few days before.
When Pekkala found her, she was alone in a dormitory which would normally have housed sixteen people. Pale sunlight shone through the dusty windows, whose frames chequered the dull red linoleum floors.
Churikova had scrounged some blankets, rolling one up as a pillow. The remaining fifteen beds were bare except for thin, horsehair-stuffed mattresses, their blue-and-white-striped ticking stained by the metal springs beneath as the mattresses were turned over each month.
Churikova was folding her clothes. ‘I heard you coming,’ she said, as Pekkala stepped into the room. ‘It’s so quiet in here now. Last night, I heard the footsteps of a mouse as it ran across the floor.’
‘Stalin tells me you volunteered to help bring back Gustav Engel.’
‘Yes. That’s right. I did.’
Pekkala explained Stalin’s instructions.
Churikova had continued to fold her clothes as she listened, carefully packing them into a canvas duffel bag, but suddenly she paused. ‘He really means for us to destroy the amber?’
‘Those are his orders, in the event that Engel has decided to move the panels to some place inside Germany. The sooner we can get to Tsarskoye Selo‚ the better chance we have of saving the Amber Room.’
‘When do we leave?’ asked Churikova.
‘Tomorrow. A car will come for you before dawn.’ Pekkala turned to leave.
‘Inspector?’
He paused and looked back. ‘Yes?’
‘Thank you.’
‘For what?’
‘When I volunteered to come on this mission, Comrade Stalin said you’d try to talk me out of it. But you didn’t.’
‘I would have,’ replied Pekkala, ‘if I’d thought it could do any good.’
The sun was not yet up
The sun was not yet up when Kirov drove Pekkala to the airfield.
The props of the twin-engined Lisunov cargo plane were already roaring like thunder.
Since that moment in the office, when Pekkala had spoken of the burden of their fragile lives, it was as if a wall had gone up between them.
Anyone looking at them from a distance, as they got out of the car and, with a stiff formality, shook hands, would have thought that the two men were strangers.
One of the plane’s crew, his body swathed in a fur-lined flight suit, approached the Emka. ‘Inspector?’
‘Yes,’ replied Pekkala. ‘Where is Lieutenant Churikova?’
‘She’s already on board. We take off in two minutes. Follow me.’
Without another word to Kirov, Pekkala set out with the crewman. But halfway to the plane, he stopped.
‘Is something the matter, Inspector?’ asked the crewman.
‘Yes,’ replied Pekkala, as he turned and ran back to the car.
Kirov was already behind the wheel. He had just put the Emka in gear when Pekkala appeared out of the dark and rapped a knuckle on the window.
Kirov rolled down the window. ‘What is it, Inspector?’
‘I was wrong,’ said Pekkala. ‘About Elizaveta. In spite of the risks we take‚ it would be an even greater risk to turn away from something that could bring you happiness, even if you know it might not last. I can’t change what happened to me, but I know what I’d have done if I could. I’d have boarded that train with her back in Petrograd and I would never have looked back. This may be the last order I ever give you, Kirov‚ and it may be the most important. Don’t make the same mistake as I did. Will you promise me that?’
‘Of course, Inspector, but don’t let us speak of finalities.’ He clasped Pekkala’s hand, and suddenly they were not strangers any more. ‘I’ll see you again soon enough.’
‘Inspector!’ The crewman stood in the doorway to the cargo plane. ‘We must leave now!’
Pekkala turned and headed for the plane. This time, he did not look back.
Rather than return
Rather than return to the silence of his office, Kirov went straight to work.
His first stop was the office of municipal police for the 4th Central District of Moscow, within whose boundaries Kovalevsky’s murder had taken place. In order not to draw attention to the significance of Kovalevsky’s death, the case had not been handed over to NKVD. Kovalevsky’s true identity had not been revealed, even to the police or the doctors who pronounced him dead when his body arrived at the hospital. In a city where gunfire was not uncommon, the murder itself had not even been mentioned in the newspapers. Except for the few bystanders who had seen what happened, few people even knew that the killing had taken place.