But locating the panels was only a part of Stalin’s orders.
If the amber had indeed been discovered, Pekkala had been instructed to destroy the contents of the room with explosives, rather than allow the panels to be transported back to Germany.
According to Rifleman Stefanov, by the time they reached Tsarskoye Selo, the panels had not only been discovered but were already being loaded into a truck for transport to the rail junction at Wilno. From there, Pekkala learned, the amber was due to be transported to city of Königsberg, where Hitler had decreed that it should remain until such time as the panels could be installed as part of the permanent collection in a vast art museum he had planned for the Austrian city of Linz.
Hoping to intercept the truck before it reached the railhead, the two men travelled all night through the forest of Murom and rigged a dynamite charge at a bridge on the edge of the forest.
At dawn, two vehicles appeared, one of them an armoured car, which was destroyed in the ambush.
Rifleman Stefanov had described to Major Kirov how he and Pekkala then came under fire from several German soldiers travelling as armed escorts for the convoy. None of the soldiers survived the gunfight which followed and Pekkala ordered Stefanov to head back towards the Russian lines while he himself prepared to destroy the panels.
After reaching the shelter of a wooded slope, Stefanov stopped to wait for Pekkala to catch up. That was when, he reported to Kirov, he saw a huge explosion from the place where the truck had been stopped. After some time had passed, and Pekkala did not appear, Stefanov became worried and returned to the site of the explosion.
What he found was a man lying dead in the road, his body consumed by the explosion. From the charred remains, Stefanov retrieved Pekkala’s personal effects and presented them to Kirov upon his arrival in Moscow.
‘Comrade Stalin,’ said Kirov, ‘that corpse was too badly burned to be identified. There’s a chance that it might not have been the Inspector.’
‘Surely, if that were true,’ argued Stalin, ‘then Pekkala would have surfaced by now. And yet, in spite of your best efforts to locate him, the man is nowhere to be found.’
‘I might have had more success,’ Kirov replied frustratedly, ‘but for the fact that every case to which I’ve been assigned since he disappeared has kept me here in Moscow, the one place I’m certain he is not!’
‘What makes you sure of that?’
‘Why would he come back here, when doing so would put his life in danger?’
‘In danger from whom?’ demanded Stalin.
Kirov hesitated. ‘From you, Comrade Stalin.’
For a while, Stalin did not reply.
Kirov’s words seemed to sink into the red carpet, into the red velvet curtains, into the hollow walls, behind which hidden passages snaked from room to room inside the Kremlin.
In the long silence, Kirov felt an invisible noose tightening, the bunched fist of the knot pressing against the back of his skull.
Finally, Stalin spoke. ‘Why would you say such a thing, Major Kirov? Pekkala carried out his orders, even if he himself was unable to return to Moscow. Such conduct might be deserving of a medal, if I could ever have persuaded him to accept it.’
‘But you have left out one thing, Comrade Stalin.’
‘And what is that?’
‘In the radio broadcast which reported that the panels had been safely removed to Siberia, you also declared the Amber Room to be an irreplaceable State treasure.’
‘True,’ Stalin admitted quietly, ‘but what of it?’
‘As you are surely aware,’ explained Kirov, ‘such a decree meant that the Amber Room was not allowed to be destroyed under any circumstances. And having made such a declaration, Comrade Stalin. .’
It was Stalin who finished the sentence. ‘I would not want the world to know that I was also responsible for its destruction.’
Kirov knew he’d gone too far to turn back now. ‘Pekkala was to be sacrificed. He must have known that from the moment you gave him the order.’
To Kirov’s surprise, however, Stalin did not explode into a fit of rage, as he usually did when confronted. Instead, he only drummed his fingers on the desk, while searching for the words that might make sense of such a contradiction. ‘What you are saying may well have been the case when I sent Pekkala on the mission back in 1941. But things have changed since then. We no longer stand on the brink of destruction. After the defeat of the German 6th Army at Stalingrad, the tide began to turn. Since then, the Allies have taken North Africa and are making their way up through Italy. Soon, their forces will begin an advance through northern Europe. It is only a matter of time before the German army is crushed between the pincers of our advancing forces. What happened to the Amber Room has now been eclipsed by the victories of the Red Army. But what happened to Pekkala has not. It is he who has proved to be irreplaceable, not the amber which I sent him to destroy. Since he went away, I have watched cases grow cold, and criminals slip away into the darkness, because only Pekkala could have caught them. Nevertheless,’ Stalin leaned forward, sliding his hands across the desk, ‘the fact that we have seen no trace of Pekkala since he disappeared obliges any reasonable man to conclude that he has finally vanished for good.’
‘Then you are calling off the search?’
‘On the contrary,’ replied Stalin. ‘I never claimed to be a reasonable man.’
‘Then what are your orders, Comrade Stalin?’
‘Find Pekkala! Scour the earth if you have to! Bring me that shape-shifting troll! From this point on, until the Inspector is standing here in front of me or else his bones are heaped upon this desk, you are excused from all other assignments.’
Kirov smashed his heels together in salute, then made his way towards the outer room, where Stalin’s secretary Poskrebychev was busily stamping documents with a facsimile of his master’s signature.
‘Major!’ exclaimed Poskrebychev, as Kirov entered the room.
Lost in thought as to how he could possibly accomplish Stalin’s orders, Kirov only nodded and moved on. He had just reached the end of the hall, and was about to descend the staircase which would take him eventually to the exit where he had parked his car, when he heard someone calling his name.
It was Poskrebychev again.
The stout little man, with his wispy garland of hair clinging to an otherwise bald head, was shuffling urgently towards Kirov in his slipper-leather shoes, which he wore as he moved noiselessly around his office, in order not to disturb Comrade Stalin.
‘Wait!’ said Poskrebychev, as he came to a halt in front of Kirov, sweat beading on his forehead even after such a mild exertion. ‘I must have a word with you, Major.’
Kirov looked at him questioningly. He had never seen Poskrebychev outside of his office before. It was almost as if the secretary could not survive in any other atmosphere, like a goldfish scooped out of its bowl.
Hesitantly, Poskrebychev took another step towards Kirov, until the two men stood uncomfortably close. Slowly, Poskrebychev reached out and clasped the flap of Kirov’s chest pocket. As if hypnotised by the texture of the cloth, he began to smooth the material between his thumb and first two fingers.
‘What’s wrong with you, Poskrebychev?’ Kirov blurted out, pushing him away.
Poskrebychev glanced nervously around, as if worried that someone else might be listening. But the hall was otherwise empty and the doors nearest to them were closed. Behind them, the sound of clattering typewriters would have drowned out even a loud conversation in the hall. In spite of this, Poskrebychev now moved even closer, causing Kirov to lean precariously backwards. ‘You should pay a visit to Linsky,’ he whispered.