Pekkala held up his Shadow Pass. ‘We need a few minutes of your time.’
Golyakovsky glanced at the text‚ his lips moving as he silently pronounced the words. ‘Very well‚’ he replied suspiciously. ‘Anything to oblige the Bureau of Special Operations‚ whom I had not realised until this moment were lovers of great art.’
‘Why are you here so early?’ asked Kirov.
‘I’ve been here all night,’ explained Golyakovsky as he stood back to let them enter, ‘cataloguing items which may soon have to be evacuated from the museum and transported to safety further east.’
Followed by a nervous Golyakovsky‚ Pekkala and Kirov strolled through the cold and musty-smelling halls and soon found themselves in a room whose walls were festooned with Russian icons.
With his hands clasped behind his back, Pekkala walked past the icons, studying each one intently.
‘Inspector, what does this moth painting have to do with ancient icons?’ Kirov asked in a low voice.
‘Nothing, as far as I know,’ replied Pekkala.
‘Then what are you looking for, Inspector?’
‘I will know it when I see it. Ah!’ Pekkala halted sharply in front of a small wooden panel on which had been painted the head and shoulders of a bearded, long-haired and angry-looking man. His skin was a greenish-yellow, as if illuminated by the light of a candle. The white background had been chipped in many places. ‘This one!’ he whispered, and proceeded to remove the icon from its hanging place.
‘Inspector!’ hissed Kirov. ‘You’re not supposed to touch them!’
‘Stop!’ shouted Golyakovsky, his voice echoing through the museum. ‘Are you out of your mind?’ He advanced upon Pekkala, waving his arms. ‘Have you no respect for the treasures of this country?’
It was Kirov who answered the question. ‘Believe me, Comrade Golyakovsky, he does not.’
By now, Golyakovsky had reached the place where the two men were standing. ‘Please.’ Golyakovsky reached out towards Pekkala, using a tone of voice reserved normally for people about to leap to their deaths from the tops of tall buildings or bridges. Gently, he removed the icon from Pekkala’s grasp. Golyakovsky cradled the panel in his arms, as if Pekkala had somehow awoken the man in the painting and now he meant to lull the angry Saviour back into his sleep of centuries. ‘Do you have any idea what this is?’
‘No,’ admitted Pekkala.
‘It is a priceless fourteenth-century icon from the Balkans, originally located in the Cathedral of the Assumption. It is known as The Saviour of the Fiery Eye. What could you possibly want with this?’
‘Major Kirov may be right about my regard for the treasures of Russia,’ replied Pekkala, ‘but I have seen what he has not, namely what becomes of those who covet them. I will soon require the help of someone whose knowledge of these works of art is matched only by his hatred of this country. I must persuade this man that there is still something sacred left in the world — ’ Pekkala pointed at the icon — ‘and the face of that man may convince him.’
‘Couldn’t you just bring him here to see the icon?’ pleaded Golyakovsky. ‘I will give him a personal tour!’
‘I’m certain that he would like nothing more,’ replied Pekkala, ‘but the laws of Lubyanka don’t allow it.’
‘Lubyanka?’ whispered Golyakovsky.
‘No harm will come to it,’ Pekkala assured him. ‘In his hands, your icon will be safer than in any of the vaults of your museum.’
‘Who is this man, Inspector?’
‘Who is this man, Inspector?’ asked Kirov, as they stepped out of the building a few minutes later, the icon wrapped in three layers of brown archival paper and safely tucked under Pekkala’s arm.
‘His name is Valery Semykin and he is an expert at identifying works of art and, in particular, whether a piece is genuine or a forgery. Before you see him, Kirov, we have one more stop to make. This is not a man you’ll want to deal with on an empty stomach, and neither are the isolation cells of Lubyanka.’
‘I suppose this means we’re going to the Cafe Tilsit?’ asked Kirov in a long-suffering voice.
Noting Kirov’s tone, Pekkala glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. ‘I don’t know what you have against that place.’
‘It’s not a cafe,’ he replied indignantly. ‘It is a feeding trough.’
‘Nevertheless,’ Pekkala told him, ‘they make the kind of art I can appreciate.’
Years ago, when Pekkala first started
Years ago, when Pekkala first started coming to the Cafe Tilsit, it was mainly for the reason that the place never closed and he ate when he was hungry‚ without regard to mealtimes‚ which sometimes meant in the middle of the night. Before the war, its customers had been mostly taxi drivers or night watchmen or insomniacs who could not find their way into the catacombs of sleep. Now, almost all the men were in the military, forming a mottled brown-green horde that smelled of boot grease, machorka tobacco and the particular earthy mustiness of Soviet Army wool. The women, too, wore uniforms of one kind of another. Some were military, with black berets and dark blue skirts beneath their tunics. Others wore the khaki overalls of factory workers, their heads bundled in blue scarves, under which the hair, for those employed in munitions factories, had turned a rancid yellow.
In spite of the way things had changed, Pekkala still found himself drawn to the condensation-misted windows and the long, bare wood tables where strangers sat elbow to elbow. It was the strange communion of being alone and not being alone which suited him.
Pekkala had found a seat at the back, facing the door. Kirov sat across from Pekkala. Between them, on the table, lay the leather briefcase, which now contained both the painting of the moth and The Saviour of the Fiery Eye.
Valentina, the woman who ran the Cafe Tilsit after her husband had been gunned down in the street two years before, approached them with a wooden mug of kvass, a half-fermented drink which looked like dirty dishwater and tasted like burned toast. Valentina was slender and narrow-shouldered, with thick, blonde hair combed straight back on her head and tied with a length of blue yarn. Her feet were buried up to the knees in a worn-out pair of felt boots called valenki, in which she shuffled silently between the rows of customers.
Valentina set the mug down before Pekkala. ‘There you go, my handsome Finn.’
‘What about me?’ asked Kirov.
Valentina stared at him, narrowing her eyes ‘You are handsome, too, but in a different way.’
‘That’s not what I mean,’ replied Kirov. ‘I mean, I would like some, too. And I wouldn’t mind breakfast, as well.’
‘Well, what do you want?’
Kirov gestured at Pekkala. ‘I’ll have whatever he’s having.’
‘Good,’ she turned to leave, ‘because there is no menu, only what I choose to serve.’
‘She thinks I’m handsome,’ whispered Pekkala‚ as he watched Valentina heading back into the kitchen.
‘Well, don’t let it go to your head,’ grumbled Kirov.
Pekkala sipped at his drink. ‘You are handsome, but “in a different way”.’
‘What does that even mean?’
Pekkala shrugged. ‘You should ask her when she comes back.’
‘I think I won’t.’
Pekkala nodded in agreement. ‘Always better not to know exactly what they’re thinking.’ He opened his mouth as if to say more, but then thought better of it and stayed silent. His gaze became distant and sad.
‘You still think about her, don’t you?’ asked Kirov.
‘Valentina?’
‘No. The other one.’
‘Of course,’ admitted Pekkala.
‘It was so many years ago, Inspector. If she saw you now, she’d probably think you were a ghost.’
‘We are all ghosts in this country,’ he muttered.
‘When was the last time you saw her?’
‘At the railway station in Petrograd, the night before Red Guards overran the city. The whole place was in chaos. I could not leave without the Tsar’s permission and I was afraid that if she delayed any longer, we might both be trapped. She agreed to go on ahead. We had arranged to meet in Paris. But I never made it. When the Tsar finally released me from my duties to him, I caught a train heading north into Finland. I was travelling under a forged passport, but the Red Guards arrested me anyway. After that,’ he shrugged helplessly, ‘prisons, interrogation and finally they put me on another train, but this one was heading to Siberia.’