Vasko moaned and rocked from side to side, plagued by memories of the days he had spent in the hold of that prison ship bound for Kolyma after it had run aground on the shoals of Reshiri Island. Each wave that struck that crippled vessel sounded like a cannon ball against the iron hull. As the freezing water rose higher and higher in the cargo bays where he and the others had been left to die, Vasko had focused on the sound of the waves in order to drown out first the screams, then the pleas, then prayers and at last only the whimpering of those who had abandoned any hope of rescue. By the time the Japanese Coastguard peeled away a section of the hull to let them out, the sound of those waves had fixed forever in Vasko’s mind, until it had become like the beating of a second heart, driving him so close to madness that he could no longer recall how it felt to be sane.
*
It did not take long for Malashenko to learn both where and when Andrich’s meeting with the partisan leaders would take place. For a man of his particular abilities, few secrets could stay hidden in the rubble of that town.
First thing the following morning, he delivered the information to Vasko.
Within six hours, Andrich and the partisans who’d been with him were dead. Not long afterwards came the news that Commander Yakushkin had also been murdered.
As soon as Malashenko had dropped off the little girl at her grandmother’s house, ignoring the old woman’s questions about her daughter, he made his way back to the cabin where Vasko had been hiding in order to collect his bar of gold.
But Vasko wasn’t there.
Assuming that he had been tricked, Malashenko turned around and headed back to Rovno, roaring curses at the treetops on his way.
*
Admiral Canaris was sleeping in his chair, as he often did after a lunch at Horchner’s, his favourite restaurant in Berlin. With his hands folded across his stomach and a pair of slippers on his feet, these brief moments of oblivion had lately become his only respite from the unending stream of bad news which occupied his waking hours.
There was a gentle knocking on the door and Canaris’s adjutant, Lieutenant Wolke, entered the room. He was a young man, with a straight back, rosy cheeks and honest-looking eyes. He carried a print-out of a message just received from an informant behind the Russian lines.
The Admiral’s dachshunds, which had also been taking a nap, looked up from their cushioned chair and, recognising Wolke’s familiar face, lowered their heads and went back to sleep.
Moving almost silently across the room, Wolke placed the message upon the Admiral’s desk.
The Admiral breathed in deeply, then exhaled in a long, snuffling breath, but did not wake.
Wolke gritted his teeth. The Admiral did not like to be woken, but the message had been classified A3, which meant it was of the highest importance and required immediate attention. Which meant waking Canaris, whether he liked it or not.
Wolke cleared his throat.
Canaris’s eyes slid open. He blinked uncomprehendingly at Wolke, as if he had never seen the man before.
‘Admiral,’ said Wolke, his voice barely above a whisper. ‘An A3 has just come in.’
Slowly, Canaris sat forward, rubbing the sleep from his face, and picked up the piece of paper with one hand. At the same time, he reached out with his other hand, fetched his glasses and perched them upon his long and dignified nose.
The message contained an intercepted Soviet radio transmission indicating that Colonel Andrich had been killed in a shoot-out with Soviet partisans.
‘Good,’ muttered Canaris. ‘They have taken the bait.’ It was exactly what he had been hoping for.
But the second half of the message was not.
It went on to say that Commander Yakushkin, of the NKVD’s motorised rifle battalion, currently stationed in Rovno, had also been found dead. It gave no details about where Yakushkin had died or who had killed him or what the circumstances had been. Canaris cursed under his breath.
‘Is everything all right, Admiral?’ asked Wolke.
‘No,’ replied Canaris. ‘No, it is not.’ But he did not explain further, and Wolke knew better than to ask. ‘Has there been any word from Vasko?’
‘No news yet, Admiral.’
Canaris let the telegram slip from his fingers. ‘As soon as he returns to Berlin, have him sent straight to my office.’
‘Yes, Admiral.’
‘And Wolke. .’
‘Yes, Admiral?’
‘In the event that Vasko does not appear, type up a report placing the blame upon Otto Skorzeny.’
Wolke nodded. ‘Zu Befehl, Herr Admiral.’
*
Having carried out the liquidation of Colonel Andrich, Vasko spent the rest of that day, as well as the following day, lying low in the ruins of an abandoned house not far from the hospital where Major Kirov was being treated for his gunshot wound.
By doing so, he was directly disobeying the orders of Admiral Canaris to immediately transmit the message that his task had been carried out, after which Skorzeny would dispatch a guide to escort him back across the lines.
He guessed that, by now, word of the colonel’s murder might already have reached Berlin. If so, Skorzeny would be waiting for the signal.
But the news that Pekkala was alive had thrown Vasko’s mind into confusion. When that gawky Commissar had stumbled down into the bunker, calling out Pekkala’s name like some fragment of an ancient spell, Vasko heard again his mother’s voice, assuring him and his sister that their father would soon be back where he belonged, thanks to the work of the incorruptible Inspector. ‘Our prayers have been answered,’ she assured them and, for a while, at least, the young Vasko had believed this fairy tale.
It wasn’t until his mother’s arrest on the charge of possessing foreign currency that Vasko realised Pekkala had betrayed them. But only when the judge at the People’s Tribunal read out the length of their sentences, to be served in the Gulag at Kolyma, did Vasko understand the magnitude of this treachery.
Weeks later, when their ship ran aground on the shoals of Tetsumu, and Vasko had remained alive in the freezing darkness of that flooded compartment by clinging to the grotesque heap of drowned bodies, he swore that if he ever made it out of there he would consecrate his life to avenging the deaths of his family.
By 1941, under the personal guidance of Admiral Canaris, Vasko had become an agent of the Abwehr. Late that same year, news reached him that Pekkala had been killed not far from the Tsar’s summer estate at Tsarskoye Selo. At the time, Vasko did not know whether to feel satisfaction that the Emerald Eye was dead or disappointment that he had not been responsible for it.
But when he learned that Pekkala had somehow cheated death, Vasko knew at once what he must do, even if it meant disobeying Canaris.
This was the reason why Vasko had not executed Commissar Kirov that night in the bunker. He reasoned that, once Pekkala learned of Major Kirov’s injuries, the Inspector would visit him at the hospital. All that Vasko had to do was wait until Pekkala made contact with the major, then finish them both off together.
That first night, from his hiding place among the ruins, Vasko kept watch on the front door of the hospital, waiting for the moment when Pekkala would arrive. But after waiting for almost two days, and with no sign of the Inspector, Vasko knew he had to act or risk losing his chance to kill Pekkala. He waited until the middle of the night, then made his way into the hospital, determined either to extract the Inspector’s whereabouts from the major or, if Kirov didn’t know, to kidnap the wounded man and thereby, he hoped, to draw Pekkala out into the open.
When Vasko learned from Captain Dombrowsky that the major had already gone, he pursued the only lead he had left, which brought him to the nurse’s house. There, Vasko stumbled across Commander Yakushkin and his bodyguard. The killing of Yakushkin, although it must have seemed a calculated attack to those who found his body, was no more than a collateral necessity. Vasko’s real target that night had been the nurse, from whom he hoped to learn the major’s location, but Yakushkin, mistaking Vasko’s presence for that of a rival, had foiled his plan with a bullet through the woman’s heart.