‘The process of heating the room has already begun. I have commandeered the engine block heaters from every vehicle parked on this estate. The room has been sealed and water is boiling on three separate field-kitchen stoves. If your figures are correct, by this time tomorrow, the room will be on its way to Konigsberg. The truck is being readied now. The cases I designed for moving the panels have been unloaded and are waiting for their cargo. Special passage documents will be signed within the hour by Field Marshal von Leeb, allowing us unlimited access to fuel and the right to commandeer any mode of transport we see fit. In two days, we will be in Wilno, far beyond the gaze of this Emerald Eye. In four days, Polina, we will dine together in the great hall of Konigsberg Castle, surrounded by the Eighth Wonder of the World. And in a few years, when the Linz Museum has been completed and the Amber Room is there on permanent display, you and I will not have been forgotten as the ones who made it possible. That is the promise I made to you when we first met, and I intend to keep it.’
In spite of Engel’s attempts to calm Churikova, her voice was still riddled with panic. ‘I told you, Pekkala has orders to destroy the room if we attempt to move it. He has explosives. .’
‘The room is guarded on all sides. There is no way he can get to it now. I swear it, Polina. Do you trust me?’
‘Yes, of course. I know that the amber is safe now. It’s just that when I heard that the painting had been captured, I was afraid this day might never come.’
‘I wish I could have seen it,’ remarked Engel. ‘The red moth!’
‘When I volunteered to find you, I was terrified that Stalin would say no.’
‘How could he? Pekkala needed you to point me out. And after you gave them the Ferdinand code, you had them eating out of your hand.’
‘When you delivered the cipher to me, I was afraid you had gone mad, but I see now that it was a sure way of convincing them.’
‘The Ferdinand code had become obsolete. Thanks to the Enigma Machine, which is now in use throughout the German military, the information you gave them was practically useless.’
‘Herr Obersturmbannfuhrer,’ said a soldier. ‘The cavalry troop is here, as you requested. An officer is outside, waiting for your orders.’
‘Send him in,’ replied Engel.
A man entered the room. There was a crash of heels coming together.
‘They are on foot,’ said Engel. ‘They can’t have gone far.’
‘How many of them are there?’ asked the cavalryman.
‘Two.’
‘Two! Ostubaf, I have brought a whole troop with me. That’s more than thirty riders! If we are only going after a couple of Russians, I can dismiss half of my men here and now.’
‘You may dismiss them,’ Engel replied calmly, ‘after the two men have been caught. And only one of them is Russian. The other is a Finn named Pekkala.’
‘A Finn,’ muttered the cavalryman. ‘Then I may need the whole troop, after all.’
The floorboards creaked as the soldiers departed from the cottage.
‘Come,’ Engel said to Churikova, as the two of them walked out into the night. ‘Let us go back to the palace, and watch your genius at work.’
For a moment longer, Pekkala lay on the stone floor, his mind in a turmoil of anger and confusion at the depth of Churikova’s treachery.
‘Are they gone?’ whispered Stefanov, calling from the bottom of the stairs.
‘Yes,’ Pekkala answered. ‘How much did you hear?’
‘Every word, Inspector. There’s a ventilation shaft down here, which leads up beneath the floor. They were standing right above me.’
Cautiously, the two men crept out into the front room of the cottage.
‘You were right,’ said Stefanov.
‘No,’ muttered Pekkala. ‘If I’d been right, Engel would be in our custody by now, instead of hunting us with men on horseback as if we were a couple of foxes.’
‘Not about that. About this.’ Stefanov was holding up a bottle. ‘It was just where you said it would be.’
Pekkala nodded, lost in thought.
‘What will we do now, Inspector?’ asked Stefanov, the bottle still clutched in his fist.
‘I will carry out my orders.’
Stefanov tried to reason with Pekkala. ‘You heard him, Inspector. The room is guarded on all sides. They’d shoot us down before we even came close. If we leave now, there’s still a chance that we can get back to our lines before the cavalry pick up our trail.’
‘I have no choice,’ Pekkala told him. ‘Do you know what will happen to me if I return to Moscow empty-handed?’
‘No,’ admitted Stefanov, ‘but I can guess.’
‘And if I don’t get the job done,’ Pekkala continued, ‘Stalin will send someone else. And another and another until his wishes are fulfilled. It’s not the amber that is irreplaceable, Stefanov, it’s the lives that will be lost if I fail.’ Pekkala knew as he spoke how slim the chances were of his success, but they were still greater than the odds of his surviving Stalin’s wrath.
Stefanov knew that there was no point in arguing with Pekkala. He wondered if he had been wrong even to try. There seemed a clear and brutal symmetry that the man who, if legends were to be believed, had been conjured from the walls of that room should be the one who would consign it to oblivion.
‘I must move quickly,’ said Pekkala. ‘By tomorrow, those panels will be in a truck bound for Wilno. This will be my only chance to prevent that from happening. The last place they will expect me to head for is the palace. With any luck, those riders are already far from Tsarskoye Selo. Your orders, Stefanov, are to make your way back to our lines. It’s too dangerous for you to wait here any longer, and there is nothing more that you can do to help.’
‘There may be one thing,’ replied Stefanov.
‘And what is that, Rifleman?’
‘I know the road they’ll take to get to Wilno. My father and I travelled along it every weekend in the summer, to sell the vegetables he grew in his spare time. The road passes through the forest of Murom, which is uninhabited. The locals wouldn’t go there, even to hunt‚ on account of the bogs which can swallow a man without trace.’
‘Is there somewhere on that road where those trucks can be stopped?’
‘I think so. Yes. At the far side of the forest, just where the fields begin again, the road passes over a bridge. It is a small bridge, made of wooden beams, which passes over a stream that only flows there in the spring. The rest of the year, it is dry.’
‘And if I follow that road, how long will it take me to get there?’
‘If you stay on the road, you might not get there in time,’ Stefanov replied, ‘but if we cut through the forest, I can get us there by morning.’
‘I am not asking you to bring me there. You said yourself that it’s too dangerous. You’re free to go, Stefanov.’
In the moment that followed, Stefanov was surprised to hear coming from his mouth the same words spoken by his father on that cold night back in March of 1917. ‘I would rather help you now than spend the rest of my life knowing that I could have and didn’t.’
‘Very well.’ Pekkala nodded at the dusty old bottle in Stefanov’s hand. ‘Then the least I can do is offer you a drink.’
Stefanov opened the slivovitz and, as they passed it back and forth, the brandy spread like wings of fire in their chests.
An hour later
An hour later, having slipped out through the shattered iron railings which circled the Tsar’s estate, Pekkala and Stefanov were making their way through a tangle of bulrushes on the swampy ground which bordered the forest of Murom. Stefanov had discovered a trail, so narrow that it could only have been made by the deer or wild boar that roamed the forest.
Tattered clouds rode past beneath the waning gibbous moon. Beneath its silvery light, the tasselled heads of bulrushes weaved like the patterns of heat upon an iron stove.