While Pekkala stood guard, Maximov and Kirov lay down in the cramped space of the car, Maximov in the front seat and Kirov in the back.
Pekkala sat on the hood of the Emka, feeling the warmth of the engine, which sighed and clicked as it cooled, like the ticking of an irregular clock.
After years spent in the constant rolling thunder of underground trains snaking their way beneath the sidewalks of Moscow, the clunk of water pipes in his apartment, and the distant clattering of trains pulling into the Belorussian station, the stillness of this forest unnerved Pekkala. Old memories of his time in Siberia came back to haunt him as he stared helplessly into the dark, knowing that Kropotkin could come within a few paces before he’d be able to see him.
Beads of moisture gathered on his clothes, transforming the dull black of his coat into a cape of pearls which shimmered even in this darkness.
After a while, the back door of the Emka opened and Kirov climbed out. The windows of the car had turned opaque with condensation.
“Has it been three hours already?” asked Pekkala.
“No,” replied Kirov. “I couldn’t sleep.” He came and stood beside Pekkala, hugging his ribs against the cold. “How much time do we have left?”
Pekkala checked his pocket watch. “Fourteen hours. By the time the sun comes up, we’ll have only a couple left.”
“Would it really be enough to start a war?” asked Kirov. “One tank, driven by a lunatic? Even if he does manage to kill a few innocent people, surely the world would come to its senses in time—”
Pekkala cut him off. “The last war was started by a lunatic named Gavrilo Princip. The only thing he used was a pistol, and all he had to do was kill one man, the Archduke Ferdinand.”
“An archduke sounds pretty high up.”
“He may have had an important title, but was Ferdinand important enough to bring about the deaths of over ten million people? The war began, Kirov, because one side wanted it to begin. All that side needed was a big enough lie to convince its own people that their way of life was threatened. The same is true today, and so the answer is yes: One lunatic is more than enough.”
THE CAR DOOR OPENED.
Pekkala felt a rush of cold brush across his face, sweeping away the stale air inside the Emka. He had been asleep, legs twisted down into the seat well and head resting on the passenger seat. The Emka’s gearshift jabbed into his ribs. His neck felt like the bellows of a broken accordion.
Someone was shaking his foot.
It seemed to Pekkala as if he had only just closed his eyes. He couldn’t believe it was time to go back out on watch again.
“Get up, Inspector,” whispered Kirov. “Maximov is gone.”
Kirov’s words jolted him awake. He scrambled out of the car. “What do you mean he’s gone?”
“I finished my watch,” explained Kirov. “Then I woke up Maximov and told him it was his turn to go on. I got up a few minutes ago to take a piss. That’s when I noticed he was gone.”
“Perhaps he’s nearby.”
“Inspector, I searched for him and found nothing. He’s gone.”
Both men stared out into the dark.
“He’s gone to warn Kropotkin,” muttered Kirov.
At first Pekkala was too shocked to reply, stubbornly refusing to believe that Maximov had deserted them.
“What should we do?” asked Kirov.
“We won’t find them in the dark,” replied Pekkala. “Not out here. Until it gets light, we wait for them to come to us. But as soon as it is light enough to see, we will go looking for them.”
A short distance up the road from where the Emka had been parked, they set up the PTRD anti-tank rifle in the ditch and covered it with a pine branch as camouflage. In addition, each of them carried a bottle filled with the explosive mixture. The greasy liquid sloshed about in the glass containers. The only other weapons they possessed were handguns.
They spent the rest of the night huddled in the ditch, watching the road. In the plunging darkness, their eyes played tricks on them. Phantoms drifted among the trees. Voices whispered in the hissing of the wind, then suddenly were gone and had never been there at all.
In the eel-green glimmer of dawn, they saw something coming towards them.
At first it did not seem human. The creature loped like a wolf, keeping to the edge of the road.
Slowly, Pekkala reached up to the edge of the ditch and eased his fingers around his gun.
Kirov did the same.
Now they could see it was a man, and a moment later, they recognized the bald head of Maximov. He ran with a long, steady stride, hunched over, his arms hanging down at his sides.
Arriving at the Emka, Maximov stopped and peered cautiously into the trees. “Kirov!” he whispered. “Pekkala, are you in there?”
Pekkala climbed out of the ditch and stood in the road, keeping the gun in his hand. “What do you want, Maximov?” In spite of what his instincts told him about Maximov, Pekkala had made up his mind to shoot the man if he so much as made a sudden movement.
Maximov seemed confused that Pekkala was not by the car. But then he realized what the two inspectors must be thinking. “I heard him!” said Maximov urgently, as he made his way towards Pekkala. “I heard the sound of metal against metal. I followed. I had to move quickly.” He came to a stop. Only then did he notice Kirov in the ditch, and the PTRD laid out under its covering of pine. He stared at the two men in confusion. “Did you think I had abandoned you?”
“What else were we supposed to think?” snapped Kirov.
“After what that man did to Konstantin,” Maximov answered, “did you honestly believe I would go back to helping him?”
“You say you followed him?” Pekkala asked, before Kirov could respond.
Maximov nodded. He pointed down the road. “He’s only about fifteen minutes away. There’s a clearing just off the road. The tank is already off the truck. It looks like he’s getting ready to head out as soon as it is light enough to see.”
“Was he alone?” asked Pekkala. “Did you see the man he took hostage?”
“The only person I saw was Kropotkin. We must go now if we’re going to catch him. It will be much harder to stop that tank once he’s on the move.”
Without another word, Kirov gathered up the PTRD. As he climbed out of the ditch, he handed his Tokarev to Maximov. “You’d better have this,” he said, “in case you can’t talk him out of it.” Then he glanced into the sky and exclaimed softly, “Look!”
Maximov and Pekkala turned. A plume of thick smoke rose above the trees in the distance.
“What is that?” asked Kirov. “Is that the exhaust from the tank?”
“It looks more like he’s trying to burn the forest down,” said Maximov.
At the car, each man took a bottle of the explosive mixture and as much extra ammunition as he could carry. Then they set off running, Maximov in the lead, wolf-striding ahead of the two inspectors.
As they ran, the smoke spread across the sky.
Soon they could smell it, and then they knew it wasn’t wood smoke. The thick haze reeked of burning oil.
They moved as quickly as they could through the maze of trees, over spongy earth where mud sucked at their boot heels and strange insect-eating plants, their smell like rotting meat, reared their open mouths.
Kirov followed close behind Pekkala, cursing softly as he scraped his shins against the limbs of fallen trees. Spindly branches whipped their faces and snatched at the guns in their hands.
By the time Maximov held up his hand for them to stop, Pekkala was drenched in sweat. He still had on his coat and the bottle in his hands had made running even more difficult.
Burdened by the bulky PTRD, Kirov was also exhausted.
Only Maximov seemed to show no sign of exertion. It was as if the big man could have kept on running without pause until the waves of the Atlantic washed about his feet.