‘There is one more thing they’ve given you, Inspector,’ said Leontev.
‘What is that?’
‘A coil of wire and a battery, for constructing an instant fuse. Simply cut the wire in half, embed one of each end in the explosives and one of the other ends to the negative battery terminal. As soon as you touch the fourth end to the positive terminal, you will complete the circuit, which sends an electric charge into the explosives and detonates them.’
‘Which means I have no chance of escape,’ Pekkala concluded.
‘It looks to me, Inspector, that they have put more value on this mission than they have done on your life.’
Red Army soldiers moved past them and into the house. In a minute, the place was ablaze. They had just left the building, when a heavy thump of mortars sounded on the ridge. Immediately the men set off at a run towards their gun positions.
‘Any moment now,’ said Leontev, ‘the Fascists will begin advancing up the slope. When you hear the shooting start, follow the cart path. It veers to the west in a couple of kilometres. You must not talk. You must not smoke. If you get lost, you must not cry out.’ He jabbed two fingers at his eyes, as if he meant to blind himself. ‘Never lose sight of the person in front of you. After one hour, you will come to a river, beside which are the ruins of a house. A man is waiting for you there. He is one of ours. He will show you how to get across the river. From there, the road runs straight to Tsarskoye Selo.’
The thatched roof was burning now. Whirlwinds of sparks vortexed into the sky. A loud explosion echoed through the trees as a wave of fire rolled across the ridge. More explosions followed, each one a dusty red plume punching out of the darkness.
Pekkala turned to look for Leontev, but the man had already vanished into the night.
People’s Commissar Bakhturin
People’s Commissar Bakhturin sat at his desk, blinking in astonishment at Major Kirov, who had just barged into his office.
The office consisted of a large corner room on the third floor of a building, which had, before the Revolution, been the home of Count Andronikov‚ the Tsar’s Minister of Agriculture. It had Persian carpets on the floor, paintings on the walls from Bakhturin’s personal collection and ornate pre-Revolution furniture imported from England and France. All of it had been requisitioned from special warehouses where the possessions of enemies of the State were stored until they could be redistributed among the people of the city. Some of the furnishings, such as a Chippendale oak chair and a desk from the workshop of the master carpenter Gustavus de Lisle, had also belonged to Count Andronikov. Having been confiscated, along with the building itself, they had subsequently found their way back to their original home, and were now set aside for the personal use of Commissar Bakhturin. Although the original plan was for such goods to be given out to anyone in good standing with the Communist Party and so dispersing the wealth of the former regime among the masses, it soon became apparent that only those with the right connections, like Viktor Bakhturin, would ever get their hands on luxuries such as these.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ demanded Bakhturin. ‘You can’t just walk in here!’
‘Where is your brother?’ asked Kirov. ‘He’s out of prison, isn’t he?’
‘He served his sentence. He didn’t escape, if that’s what you mean. He was released two weeks ago.’
‘I’m not asking where he was,’ said Kirov. ‘I want to know where he is now.’
Bakhturin hesitated. ‘As a matter of fact, I have no idea. He was supposed to have contacted me immediately after his release from Tulkino, but I never heard from him. He will show up eventually. He’s just enjoying his first few days of freedom before I put him back to work. What is this about, Major Kirov?’
‘A man was killed two nights ago, a friend of Inspector Pekkala’s.’
‘And you think my brother might have murdered a friend of the Inspector?’ Bakhturin sat back and shrugged. ‘Why would he want to do that?’
‘I believe that Pekkala might have been the real target, but the murderer shot the wrong man.’
‘Listen to me, Comrade Major. My brother may have been foolish enough to land himself in prison, but he’s not so stupid as to attempt the assassination of Stalin’s most valuable detective.’
‘Your brother owes you a debt.’
‘Yes, he does,’ agreed Bakhturin. ‘If it wasn’t for my help, Serge would never have graduated from primary school, let alone found a high-ranking job with the State Railways. But it was always my choice to help him. He never asked for favours, and I never wanted anything in return.’
‘Which makes the debt all the more difficult to repay, doesn’t it? You wanted Pekkala brought down. You made no secret of it.’
‘If I truly meant to kill Pekkala, I would find a better way of doing it than sending my own brother to carry out the task.’
‘And what if Serge decided to carry it out on his own? It was Pekkala, after all, who put him in prison.’
‘On his own?’ Bakhturin snorted. ‘Serge wouldn’t dare!’
‘And why not?’
‘Because then he would have to answer to me, as well as to you, and I can assure you that answering to me is the less attractive of those options for my brother!’
‘And the fact that you haven’t heard from Serge since he got out of prison is of no concern to you?’
Bakhturin stared into a corner of the room. ‘I will admit,’ he said quietly, ‘that this is not like him at all.’
‘Prison changes everyone.’
Bakhturin nodded. ‘The thought had crossed my mind.’
‘Then help me to find him,’ said Kirov. ‘Pekkala taught me that it is as important to exonerate an innocent man as it is to bring a guilty one to trial.’
For a while, Bakhturin remained lost in thought. Then he picked up a pencil and scribbled something down on a sheet of paper. Slowly, he rose to his feet and handed the paper to Kirov. ‘You might find him at this address, or at least someone who knows where he is. I would have gone there myself to find out, except he does not know I am aware of his interest in this place. And he would not want me to know. When you see my brother, Major Kirov, please do not tell him I sent you.’
‘Do you have any message for him?’
‘Yes,’ replied Bakhturin. ‘Tell him it’s time to come home.’
With the fires
With the fires of the burning farmhouses roaring on either side of them, Churikova and the two men made their way down the muddy cart track. Ash fell from the sky like a dusting of dirty snow.
Pekkala thought about the clothes he had left behind to be consumed in that inferno: his unofficial uniform of heavy corduroy trousers, double-soled boots and the thick wool coat, all made for him by a tailor named Linsky, whose shop was on the Ulitsa Varvarka. Those garments had become his second skin, his armour against the chaos of the world. Since his return from the gulag at Borodok, Pekkala had lived his life like someone who, at any moment, might be given half an hour’s notice to leave his home, his friends and everything he owned except the contents of his pockets, and to vanish forever to the other side of the earth. Only Linsky made the clothes for such a journey.
But Pekkala had not left everything behind, in spite of Leontev’s instructions to bring only his pass book. Strapped against his chest was the Webley in its holster and beneath the rough wool collar of his tunic, Pekkala had pinned the gold disc of the Emerald Eye. Those things he refused to do without.
The white walls of the farmhouse had soon faded into the night and the sounds of the gunfire grew faint. When Pekkala turned to look back, all he could see of the fighting were the lazy arcs of flares — reds, yellows, blues — rising and falling over the battlefield.
Glavpur had done its job. They were now behind enemy lines. Everything that happened from now until they crossed back into Russian territory was his responsibility. Even if there had been time to map out each detail of the task which lay ahead, Pekkala knew from experience that few operations ever went according to schedule. More often than not, it was decisions made on the spur of the moment which determined the final result. Those decisions‚ and their outcome‚ would rest upon his shoulders.