The red curtains were drawn and the light in the room came from a three-bulbed fixture fitted to the ceiling. A thread of smoke rose from a cigarette which Stalin had recently stubbed out in a brass ashtray on his desk.
Stalin himself stood in the centre of the room, his back to Pekkala, staring at the wall.
It took Pekkala a moment to realise what Stalin was looking at.
Between the portraits of Lenin and Engels hung another painting, much smaller than the ones on either side of it.
‘Perhaps it would look better over there, Comrade Stalin.’
Stalin turned and squinted at Pekkala, his eyes red-rimmed with fatigue. ‘What did you say?’
‘Over there,’ repeated Pekkala, gesturing towards the blank wall behind Stalin’s desk.
‘Do you know what this is?’ demanded Stalin, aiming a finger at the painting.
Pekkala stepped forward and peered at the painting. ‘A cecropia moth.’
Stalin shook his head in amazement. ‘How is it, Inspector,’ he began, ‘that you can neither feed nor barely dress yourself except in clothing so long out of fashion that people regularly mistake you for a ghost, and yet you can tell me the name of that insect?’
‘I used to see them around the house where I grew up,’ explained Pekkala. He remembered the long path through the woods to the place where his father, an undertaker in the town of Lappeenranta in eastern Finland, had built a crematory oven. Pekkala’s mother had once given him a sandwich and a thermos of hot milk to take to his father, who was working all night at the oven. Four bodies were to be cremated that night, which meant eight hours of tending the fire. Carrying a lantern, Pekkala had set out along the path, staring straight ahead, convinced that the pine trees on either side were closing in on him. Arriving at the oven, he found his father stripped to the waist and sitting on the stump of a log. At first, Pekkala had thought the man was reading a book, but then he realised that his father was just staring at his hands. Behind him, the crematory oven roared like distant thunder. The iron door to the oven was so hot it had begun to glow a poppy-red. Reaching up into the darkness, the tall chimney belched black smoke, which spread across the sky as if the smoke itself had spawned the night. Fluttering around his father’s head, Pekkala saw three moths, each one larger than a man’s palm. His father took no notice of them, even when one landed on his naked shoulder, which glistened with sweat from the heat of the oven. At last his father looked up from studying the wrinkles in his palm.
‘I see you’re not alone,’ said Pekkala.
His father smiled. Gently he slid his fingers beneath the moth which had landed on his shoulder and lifted it into the air. Then he blew on the insect, as if blowing out the flame on a candle, and set the insect fluttering once more about his head. ‘Hyalophora cecropia,’ he told Pekkala. ‘They are an ancient breed, unchanged for thousands of years.’
‘Why have they not changed?’ asked Pekkala.
‘Because they are already perfectly adapted to the world in which they live. These moths keep me company out here, and remind me of the many imperfections of the human race.’
Although it had been many years since then, Pekkala had never forgotten the distinctive pattern on their wings; the two eyes at each wing tip and the four reddish-white splashes and the scalloped line which trailed along the edges, its colours fading from reddish-brown to white like ink which had bled through soft paper. The painting was not an exact representation. The artist appeared to have taken liberties with colours and the symmetry of the design, but there was no mistaking the cecropia.
‘If you have brought me here to admire your painting, Comrade Stalin,’ said Pekkala, ‘I think you could have chosen someone better qualified.’
Stalin glared at him. ‘If all you had to offer me was your love of the finer things in life, I would have left you to rot in Siberia.’
‘Then why am I here, Comrade Stalin?’
‘You are here,’ Stalin explained, ‘because I believe that the value of this painting does not lie in its artistic merits. Two days ago a German scout plane got lost in the clouds and landed at an airfield behind our lines. Of the two men aboard, one was a Luftwaffe pilot and the other an officer in the SS. The SS man was carrying a briefcase that contained this painting. If he had been transporting money, or jewellery or gold, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But why would that officer be flying around with this painting in his briefcase?’
‘Did anybody ask them?’
‘They never had the chance. The SS man murdered the pilot and then took his own life. Given what he had just witnessed, the Red Army officer on the scene realised that the painting must be of some importance, so he handed it over to NKVD. They considered it worthless‚ but filed a report all the same. When news of this painting reached my office I ordered it to be sent here right away. There’s something about it‚ Pekkala. Something that troubles me. I just can’t figure out why. For that‚ I am relying on you.’ Stalin walked over to the painting, removed it from the wall and replaced it in the German officer’s briefcase in which the painting had been delivered to Stalin. He handed the briefcase to Pekkala. ‘Bring me some answers, Inspector.’
By the time Pekkala and Kirov departed from the Kremlin, it was growing light.
Pekkala studied the painting, which rested on his lap. His attention was drawn to the tree in which the moth was resting. The leafless branches looked gnarled and crooked, like those of a magnolia in winter. He didn’t know enough about moths to be certain whether they would be out in the winter, but he doubted it.
Turning the painting over, he noticed something written in pencil on the untreated back of the canvas.
‘What does it say?’ asked Kirov, glancing over as he manoeuvred the Emka out of the Kremlin gates.
‘Ost-u-baf-engel,’ replied Pekkala, carefully deciphering the unfamiliar syllables. ‘I assume it is German, although I’ve never seen the word before. “Ost” means “east”. “Engel” is the word for “angel”. The whole middle section makes no sense to me.’ Turning the painting over again, Pekkala brought his face close to the canvas, as if the delicate creature might whisper to him the meaning of its existence.
‘Where do we even begin?’ Kirov wondered aloud.
‘The Lubyanka,’ replied Pekkala.
‘The prison? Why would we be going there?’
‘To speak with a man who can tell us if this painting is worth anything at all.’
‘And if it isn’t?’
‘Then he will tell us why.’
‘What’s a man like this doing in prison?’
‘Paying the price for his genius.’
‘Look, Inspector,’ Kirov tried to reason with him. ‘What about the Museum of the Kremlin? The director is Fabian Golyakovsky, the most famous art curator in the whole country. Perhaps we should speak with him instead.’
For a moment, Pekkala considered Kirov’s suggestion. ‘Very well!’ he announced. ‘Turn us around, Kirov. The museum will be our first stop.’
‘But the museum isn’t open yet‚’ protested Kirov. ‘I don’t know what the hours are now that Moscow is on alert for air raids. We might have to make a special appointment. .’
‘We’ll find a way in‚’ Pekkala told him. ‘I already know what I need in that museum. I don’t need an expert to tell me where it is. Now take us back to the Kremlin.’
‘Yes, Inspector,’ sighed Kirov. Then he jammed on the brakes and performed a sharp U-turn, tyres squealing as he cornered.
Although the Museum of the Kremlin
Although the Museum of the Kremlin was indeed closed at that hour, Fabian Golyakovsky himself came to see who was pounding on the doors.
Golyakovsky was a tall, stooped man with an unkempt mop of curly reddish hair. He wore a dark blue suit and a cream-coloured shirt with a rumpled collar and no tie.
‘Who on earth are you?’ demanded Golyakovsky. ‘Do you have any idea what time it is?’