“Can you make others?” said Pekkala.
“Impossible.” Gorenko shook his head. “What you hold in your hand is all the titanium left in the country. If you miss with that, you will have to resort to something altogether more crude.”
“You mean you have something else?” asked Kirov.
“It is a last resort.” Gorenko sighed. “Nothing more.” He disappeared back into the assembly building. A moment later he reappeared carrying what looked like a wicker picnic basket. He set it down in front of the investigators and lifted the lid. Inside, separated by two wooden slats, were three wine bottles. The bottles had been sealed with pieces of cloth instead of corks. These hung down over the lip of each bottle and were held in place by black plumber’s tape wound several times around the glass.
Gorenko removed one of the bottles and held it up. “This is a mixture of paraffin, gasoline, sugar, and tar. The cloth stopper on each bottle has been soaked in acetone and allowed to dry. To use this, you light the cloth, then throw the bottle at the tank. But your throw must be very precise. The bottle must land on the top of the engine grille compartment. There are vents on the grille, and the burning liquid will pour down onto the engine. It should set the engine on fire, but even if it doesn’t it will melt the rubber hoses connected to the radiator, the fuel injection, and the air intake. It will stop the tank.”
“But only if I can get close enough to throw that bottle onto the engine,” said Kirov.
“Exactly,” replied Gorenko.
“For that, I practically have to be on top of the machine.”
“I told you it was a last resort,” said Gorenko, as he replaced the bottle in the wicker container.
Before they parted company, Gorenko pulled Pekkala aside.
“Can you get a message to Ushinsky?” he asked.
“Depending on how this mission goes,” replied Pekkala, “that is a possibility.”
“Tell him I’m sorry we argued,” said Gorenko. “Tell him I wish he was here.”
THEY HAD BEEN DRIVING FOR TWENTY-FOUR HOURS. KIROV AND Pekkala worked in three-hour shifts as they traveled towards the Polish border. Maximov sat in the back, his hands cuffed tightly together.
It was Kirov who had insisted on the cuffs.
“Are you sure that’s necessary?” asked Pekkala.
“It’s standard procedure,” replied Kirov, “for the transportation of prisoners.”
“I don’t blame him,” Maximov told Pekkala. “After all, I’m not helping you because I have decided that you’re right. The only reason I’m here is to save the life of Konstantin Nagorski.”
“Whether I trust you or not,” said Kirov, “is not the thing that’s going to change Kropotkin’s mind.”
It was spring now, a season which, at home in Moscow, Pekkala noticed only in the confined space of Kirov’s window boxes, or stuffed into tall galvanized buckets in the open-air market in Bolotnaya Square or when the Yeliseyev store set out its annual display of tulips arranged in the shape of a hammer and sickle. But here, it was all around him, like a gently spinning whirlwind, painting the black sides of the Emka with luminous yellow-green dust.
They were fortunate to have missed the time known as the Rasputitsa, when snow melted and roads became rivers of mud. But there were still places where their route disappeared into lakes, reappearing on the far bank and stubbornly unraveling across the countryside. Out in the middle of these ponds, tilting signposts seemed to point the way into a universe below the water’s edge.
The detours cost them hours, following paths which did not exist on their maps, and even those which did exist sometimes ended inexplicably while according to the map they carried on like arteries inside a human body.
On their way, they flew through villages whose white-picket-fenced gardens flickered past them as if in the projection of a film.
They stopped for fuel at government depots, where the oil-soaked ground was tinted with rainbows. Half hidden behind heaps of rubber tires left to rot beside the depot, the milky purple blossoms of hyacinth cascaded from the hedges. The scent of them mingled with the reek of spilled diesel.
Depots on the Moscow Highway were a hundred kilometers apart. The only way fuel could be obtained from them was with government-issued coupons. To prevent these coupons from being sold on the black market, each one was made out to the individual to whom they were issued. At each depot, Kirov and Pekkala checked to see whether Kropotkin had cashed in any of his coupons. They turned up nothing.
“What about depots off the highway?” Pekkala asked one depot manager, a man with a fuzz of stubble on his cheeks like a coating of mold on stale bread.
“There are none,” replied the manager, removing his false teeth and polishing them on his handkerchief before replacing them in his mouth. “The only way to get fuel is from these depots or through the local commissariats, who issue it for use in farm machinery. If the driver of a heavy truck tried to requisition fuel from a commissariat, he would be turned down.”
Kirov held up the bundle of fuel coupons which the manager had given him to inspect. “Could any of these have come from the black market?”
The manager shook his head. “Either you have a pass book allowing you to requisition fuel for government use, as you do, or you have coupons, like everyone else. If you have coupons, each one has to be matched up with the identity card and driver’s license of the person requisitioning the fuel. I’ve been doing this job for fifteen years, and believe me, I know the difference between what’s real and what is fake.”
While the manager filled up their car, Pekkala opened the Emka’s trunk and stared at the shortwave radio provided by Gorenko. It was the same type to be used in T-34’s, enabling them to communicate with artillery and air support groups out of normal radio range at the front. If the mission was successful, they could use it to transmit a message to an emergency channel monitored by the Kremlin before the forty-eight-hour deadline was up. Otherwise, as Stalin had promised, thousands of motorized troops would be dispatched to the Polish border.
Beside this radio lay the ungainly shape of the PTRD. The more Pekkala stared at it, the less it looked to him like a weapon and more like a crutch for some lame giant. He kept the titanium bullet in the pocket of his waistcoat, fastened shut with a black safety pin.
“Leave it,” said Kirov, closing the lid of the trunk. “It will be there when we need it.”
“But will it be enough?” asked Pekkala. The thought that they might already be too late to prevent Kropotkin from driving the tank into Poland echoed through Pekkala’s mind.
At some time in their eighteenth hour on the road, Kirov fell asleep at the wheel. The Emka slid off the highway and ended up in a field planted with sunflowers. Fortunately, there was no ditch, or the Emka would have been wrecked.
By the time the car had stopped moving, its side and windshield were coated with a spray of mud and the tiny pale green tongues of baby sunflower leaves. Without a word, Kirov got out of the car, went around to the back door and opened it. “Get out,” he said to Maximov.
Maximov did as he was told.
Kirov unlocked the cuffs. Then he held out his hand towards the empty driver’s seat.
With Maximov at the wheel and the two investigators pushing with their shoulders against the rear cowlings, they eased the Emka out of the mud and back onto the road.
High above them, vultures circled lazily on rising waves of heat. All around was the smell of this landlocked world, its dryness and its dustiness sifting through their blood, as spiced as nutmeg powder.
From then on, they drove in shifts of two hours each. By the time they arrived at the Rusalka, all three of them had reached the point of exhaustion where they could not have slept even if they’d wanted to.