‘I don’t know,’ Pekkala replied.
‘She reminds me of a teacher I once had in the school at Tsarskoye Selo.’
‘I think I know the one.’
‘I saw the way you looked at her, Inspector.’
Wearily, Pekkala turned and glanced at Stefanov. But he did not speak.
‘You can’t let Churikova go free,’ said Stefanov‚ ‘no matter what your feelings are for her.’
Still there was no reply from Pekkala.
‘I wish. . ’ began Stefanov.
‘What is it you wish‚ Rifleman?’
‘I wish we had something to eat.’
Pekkala pushed aside his rifle, stood and walked into the forest.
A short while later, he returned. From one hip pocket, he removed some baby fiddle-head ferns and from the other he produced a bunch of wood sorrel, with tiny stems and clover-shaped leaves. Lastly, from his chest pockets came a dozen chanterelle mushrooms, their apricot-coloured flesh as delicate as silk.
Kirov would have fried these in butter, Pekkala thought to himself as he dropped half of them into Stefanov’s outstretched hands.
If there had been more time, Pekkala would have gathered earthworms, dried them in the sun, then ground them to a powder before eating. He would have hunted snails, as well, plucking them like berries from their silver trails over downed trees and stones. They had been one of Pekkala’s favourite foods in Siberia. After baking the snails in hot ashes, he used to prise them out of blackened shells using one of his most prized possessions‚ a rusted safety pin.
The two men ate in silence as the first shades of dawn glimmered eel-green on the horizon.
When the tiny meal was done, Stefanov brushed his hands together and began to roll himself a cigarette. Just before he sprinkled the dried black crumbs of machorka into the shred of old newsprint that would serve as rolling paper, he paused and glanced across towards Pekkala.
Pekkala was watching him.
‘No?’ asked Stefanov.
Pekkala shook his head.
‘Even here?’ protested Stefanov. ‘There’s no one around. I told you these woods are empty!’
‘Not entirely.’ Pekkala nodded in the direction from which they had come.
There, at the edge of the swampy ground from which they had recently emerged, stood a wolf.
It had been following them for some time. Pekkala had heard the beast’s loping tread as it pursued them through the bulrush thickets. But even before he had heard the animal, he’d known that they were being followed. Pekkala could not name what sense had telegraphed the presence of that wolf into his brain, but he had long ago learned to trust it with his life.
The wolf’s head was lowered as it studied them, the black nostrils flexing. The front paws shifted uneasily. Then, unhurriedly, it turned and vanished back among the reeds.
For a moment longer, Stefanov stared at the place where the wolf had been, as if some shadow of its presence still remained. Then he tucked away the tobacco pouch under his shirt. With an agitated groan, he slumped back against the trunk of a pine tree, realising too late that he had leaned his shoulder into a trickle of sap. Stefanov swore under his breath and picked at the honey-coloured smear, which remained stubbornly glued to his tunic. ‘In a few million years,’ he muttered, ‘this would have been treasure, instead of just a pain in my backside.’
Throughout that morning, the two men advanced over the pine-needled ground, where insect-eating plants, with a smell like rotting meat, reared their sexually open mouths.
After months of being on the move, the stillness of these woods was overwhelming for Stefanov. It reached him from beyond the boundaries of his senses, threading through the air like the long stray filaments of spider webs which dangled from the leaves. It walked among the columns of white birch like shadows of people long since vanished from the earth. Only a man like Pekkala‚ he thought‚ could survive for long in such a place.
Late in the afternoon, the two men emerged from the woods into an ocean of tall grass, which trailed out over rolling ground as far as the horizon. After being in the forest, the glare of sky not fractured by a mesh of branches felt strangely threatening.
‘Where is the bridge?’ asked Pekkala.
Stefanov‚ his throat too dry to speak‚ only motioned for Pekkala to follow.
On hands and knees, guns slung across their backs, they crawled through the waist-high grass. Reddish brown seeds clung to their sweat-soaked skin. Grasshoppers with iridescent green eyes catapulted themselves into the air with an audible snap of their legs.
At last, they spotted the bridge, a crude wooden structure which seemed to have no purpose until Stefanov dropped down into a dry stream bed which appeared before them, hidden until they were almost upon it.
These stream beds, known as Rachels, were a common feature of the landscape. In the spring, during the rasputitsa, the gully would be flooded by snow melt. But that was months away and now the bed was powder-dry.
The heat had sapped their energy, but now the two men felt a sudden sense of urgency as they scrambled over the dusty ground until they stood beneath the bridge. Sheltered beneath the heavy planks, zebra stripes of shadow lined their faces.
‘This structure was never meant for heavy vehicles,’ said Stefanov, ‘but since it is the only road from Tsarskoye Selo to Wilno, Engel must bring his truck across it.’
The distance across the gully was no more than ten paces. To support the bridge, heavy pilings had been set at an angle into either bank. The planks above were widely spaced and the wood bleached out by sun and snow and rain. Huge nail-heads looked like dull coins against the pilings, the wood around them dented by the blows of hammer strikes.
A breeze passed over the Rachel and dust sifted between the bridge planks. They blinked as it peppered their eyes. Above them, the steppe grass rustled with a sound like running water.
‘The truck is bound to be carrying an escort of armed guards,’ said Stefanov. ‘If we can stop them here, when the vehicle slows down to cross the bridge, it might give us an advantage. It’s too bad we can’t destroy the bridge before they reach it, but that would give away any hope of surprise.’
Pekkala handed over the grey canister. ‘Would this be enough for what you had in mind?’
Stefanov opened the lid of the canister and peered inside. Then he raised his head and looked at Pekkala. ‘Inspector,’ he gasped, ‘there is enough dynamite here to destroy this bridge and a dozen others like it!’
Immediately, they set to work. Pekkala scooped out some of the thick, dough-like mixture and packed it against two of the four main bridge supports. The marzipan smell of the mine’s Amytol explosives sifted into their lungs. Meanwhile, Stefanov unravelled the coil of wire for the instant fuse, the ignition battery stored safely in his pocket.
Once the charges had been laid, they dug out a space in the tall grass about twenty paces from the bridge, which was as far as the wire would stretch.
The whole process took less than half an hour, by the end of which the two men crouched sweating in their hiding place.
‘When this goes up, assuming we even survive the blast, your eardrums will hurt for a month,’ said Stefanov, as he hooked one wire to the negative battery terminal, saving the other, its filaments splayed like a skeleton hand, for connecting with the positive terminal.
Pekkala opened the black leather ammunition pouches on his belt and found that he had only three clips of bullets, fifteen rounds in all.
Stefanov fared better, with four magazines for the Schmeisser, each one containing thirty rounds, but it was no cause for celebration. Even that amount would soon disappear if they found themselves in a running battle with a squad of heavily armed soldiers.
There was nothing to do now but wait.
With fear and hunger scuttling like crabs behind their ribs, the two men lay hidden in the tall grass.