It was twenty minutes later that Stefanov spotted the Stork, pulled up beside a small hangar at the edge of a grass strip runway.
Gasping for breath, he stepped off the road, clambered through a ditch choked with wildflowers, and stumbled out on to the runway.
Several soldiers were gathered in a circle.
Stefanov walked straight towards them. For the first time, he wondered what had become of the pilot and suddenly imagined himself meeting the man, perhaps even shaking his hand and introducing himself as the one who had brought him down. No, Stefanov reconsidered. He couldn’t shake the hand of a Fascist. The commissar might hear about that.
Stefanov walked past the Stork, which stood between him and the cluster of men. He was impressed that the pilot had managed to land it safely. Bare metal showed along the cowling where rounds had hit their target. Stefanov counted only three holes and felt momentarily ashamed at such a small number, considering that he had fired off a belt of 120 bullets. It does not matter, he consoled himself. One hit or a hundred hits is all the same, as long as the plane is brought down.
The soldiers, noticing Stefanov’s approach, all turned to stare at him.
It was only now that Stefanov caught his first glimpse of two bodies stretched out on the ground.
The breath caught in his throat.
‘Where did you come from?’ asked one of the soldiers.
Stefanov did not reply. He pushed his way through until he was standing right over the dead men. Both had been shot in the head. Their faces were disfigured in a way that reminded Stefanov of two broken earthenware pots. He stared at the uniforms of the two men, the grey-blue tunic of the Luftwaffe officer and the field-grey tunic of the man who, by the silver lightning bolts at his collar, Stefanov recognised as SS. Lying on the chest of the SS man was a leather briefcase, spattered with blood. ‘Why did you do it?’ asked Stefanov. He looked at the men who stood around him. ‘Did they refuse to surrender?’
‘We didn’t kill them,’ said one. ‘That SS officer took one look at us and then he shot the pilot of his plane.’
‘He did what?’ The sweat was starting to cool on Stefanov’s back. He felt numb and dazed, as if he had been sleepwalking and had woken up in an unfamiliar place. ‘Why would he do such a thing?’
‘That’s what we’d like to know,’ replied the soldier, ‘especially since, right afterwards, he blew his own brains out. Our officer thinks it has something to do with whatever’s in that briefcase. He’s gone to find a commissar who can take charge of it.’
The mention of the commissar seemed to snap Stefanov out of his trance.
‘Who are you, anyway?’ asked the soldier.
‘Nobody,’ replied Stefanov. ‘I’m nobody.’ He walked out of the circle of men and back across the airfield. After clambering back over the ditch, he reached the road and started retracing his steps towards the Catherine Palace. At first he only walked, but after a minute, Stefanov began to run again.
As the Emka rolled beneath the archway
The Emka rolled beneath the archway of the Kremlin’s Spassky Gate‚ with its ornamental battlements and gold and black clock tower looming from the misty night. Arriving at a dead end on the far side of Ivanovsky Square‚ Kirov parked the car and turned to Pekkala.
‘I’ll wait here for you, Inspector.’
‘Get some sleep,’ replied Pekkala as he climbed out of the Emka. He made his way to an unmarked door, which was guarded by a soldier. As Pekkala approached, the soldier slammed his heels together with a sound that echoed around the high brick walls and gave the traditional greeting of ‘Good health to you, Comrade Pekkala!’
This was not only a greeting, but also a sign that he had been recognised by the soldier and did not need to present his identity book.
Unlike the glittering emerald which had guaranteed Pekkala’s authority during the time of the Tsar, his ranking in the Soviet State consisted of a single piece of paper contained within his pass book. This book was the size of a man’s outstretched hand, dull red in colour, with an outer cover made from fabric-covered cardboard in the manner of an old school text book. The Soviet State seal, cradled in its two bound sheaves of wheat, had been emblazoned on the front. Inside, in the top left-hand corner, a photograph of Pekkala had been attached with a heat seal, cracking the emulsion of the photograph. Beneath that, in pale bluish-green letters, were the letters NKVD and a second stamp indicating that Pekkala was on Special Assignment for the government. The particulars of his birth, his blood group and his State identification number filled up the right-hand page.
Most government pass books contained only those two pages, but in Pekkala’s, a third page had been inserted. Printed on canary-yellow paper with a red border around the edge, were the following words:
the person identified in this document is acting under the direct orders of comrade stalin.
do not question or detain him.
he is authorised to wear civilian clothes, to carry weapons, to transport prohibited items, including poison, explosives and foreign currency. he may pass into restricted areas and may requisition equipment of all types, including weapons and vehicles.
if he is killed or injured, immediately notify the bureau of special operations.
Although this special insert was known officially as a Classified Operations Permit, it was more commonly referred to as a Shadow Pass. With it, a man could appear and disappear at will within the wilderness of regulations that controlled the State. Fewer than a dozen of these Shadow Passes were known to exist. Even within the ranks of the NKVD, most people had never seen one.
After passing through the unmarked door, he climbed a set of narrow stairs up to the second floor, emerging on to a long, wide corridor with tall ceilings. The floors were covered with a brownish-red carpeting, so that his footsteps made no sound. Tall doors lined the walls of this corridor on either side. By day, these doors would all be open and the hallway filled with people coming and going. But at this hour of the night, all the doors were closed as Pekkala walked towards a set of large double doors at the far end‚ beyond which lay Stalin’s reception room. It was a huge space, with eggshell-white walls and wooden slatted floors. In the centre of the room stood three desks. Only one was occupied, by a man wearing a collarless olive-green tunic in the same style as that worn by Stalin himself. The man stood as they entered. ‘Inspector.’
‘Poskrebychev.’
Advancing across the room to Stalin’s office, Poskrebychev knocked once and did not wait for a reply. He swung the door open, nodded for Pekkala to enter. As soon as Pekkala had walked into the room, Poskrebychev shut the door behind him.
Pekkala found himself in a large room with red velvet curtains and a red carpet which lined only the outer third of the floor. The centre was the same mosaic of wood as in the waiting room. The walls had been papered dark red, with caramel-coloured wooden dividers separating each panel. Hanging on these walls were portraits of Marx, Engels and Lenin, each one the same size and apparently done by the same artist.
Close to one wall stood Stalin’s desk, which had eight legs, two at each corner. On the desk lay several manila files, each one lying perfectly beside the other‚ as well as a leather briefcase which Pekkala had never seen before. Stalin’s chair had a wide back, padded with burgundy-coloured leather brass-tacked against the frame.
Apart from Stalin’s desk, and a table covered with a green cloth, the space was sparsely furnished. With the exception of a large eighteenth-century grandfather clock, made by the English clockmaker John Ellicott, which had been allowed to wind down and was silent now, the full yellow moon of its pendulum at rest behind the rippled glass window of its case.