Vasko, thought Pekkala, as the face of a terrified man shimmered into focus. Pekkala saw him again, sitting on a metal chair in an interrogation room at Lubyanka. His nose had been broken during previous interrogations. Some of his teeth had been knocked out and his scalp was dotted with open sores, the result of being struck by a man wearing a heavy ring. ‘I do remember him,’ he said. ‘He was a spy at the Novgorod Motor Plant.’
‘My father was no spy!’ hissed Vasko. ‘Just an ordinary assemblyman at a car factory.’
‘That’s not all he was,’ replied Pekkala.
‘And who would he be spying on, Inspector?’
‘His fellow workers at the plant.’
‘For who? America?’
Pekkala shook his head. ‘Russian Internal Security.’
‘You are lying!’ Vasko insisted. ‘Those men came to start a new life. Why would they spy on each other?’
‘That new life they found,’ explained Pekkala, ‘was not what they had been expecting. There was talk of a strike at the plant, and Internal Security needed a man on the inside to keep them informed.’
‘My father would never have allowed himself to be recruited as a Russian agent.’
‘He wasn’t recruited,’ said Pekkala. ‘It was your father who approached them, offering to deliver information, for a price.’
‘That is all lies!’ screamed Vasko.
‘What reason would I have for lying to you now?’ asked Pekkala. ‘Look who is holding the gun.’
‘If he was their informant, why would they have arrested him?’
‘The Americans at the plant realised that someone among them was spying for the Russians. When your father guessed that they suspected him, he panicked. He went to the local office of Internal Security and requested that they transfer him to another factory in a different part of Russia. But by then he had become a valuable asset to Russian Intelligence, and his request for transfer was denied. Your father was trapped. He couldn’t stay, but neither was he allowed to leave. Believing that his life was in danger, he tried the only thing that he could think of, which was to get back to the United States with his family. Unfortunately for your father, his letters to friends in America, in which he described his plan, were intercepted. That’s why he was arrested and detained. And because he was acting as a paid informant, and possessed intelligence which Internal Security considered sensitive, his whereabouts were kept secret. Since your father was no longer employed at the factory, you, your mother and your sister were evicted from housing supplied to the workers. Your mother brought you to Moscow and contacted the American Embassy. Following a request from Ambassador Davies to locate your father, Stalin assigned me to the case.’
‘And you condemned us all to death.’
‘The truth is quite the opposite,’ insisted Pekkala. ‘When I discovered that your father was being held at Lubyanka, I immediately had him transferred to a proper holding cell. There, I interviewed him personally in order to learn the details of the case. I also travelled to Novgorod and spoke to people who had known him at the plant. What they had to say confirmed his story. I wrote up a report, advising that he be repatriated to the United States, along with his entire family. If my instructions had been followed, you and your family would have been back in America long ago. I assumed that’s what had taken place, since my involvement with the case ended there.’
‘My father didn’t reach America,’ said Vasko. ‘He probably never made it out of the country. My mother, my sister and I were arrested outside the American Embassy on her way to apply for a passport to replace the ones which were taken from us when we first arrived in Russia. She was convicted of illegal currency possession and the three of us were exiled to the Gulag at Kolyma.’
‘Kolyma!’ exclaimed Pekkala. ‘And how is it that you survived?’
‘We never arrived,’ explained Vasko. ‘We were shipwrecked off the coast of Japan. I was one of only a few survivors. We were taken to a hospital in Japan, but I suspected that it was only a matter of time before we would be handed over to the Russians, so I escaped. I made my way to the German Embassy. When I explained who I was, they offered to smuggle me out of the country and to give me a new life in Germany.’
‘But why go to the German Embassy?’ asked Pekkala. ‘Why not go to the Americans?’
Vasko shook his head. ‘I didn’t trust them any more than I trusted the Soviets. When I reached Germany, it was admiral Canaris himself who took me in. He trained me. He gave purpose to my life, and I have no regrets for anything I’ve done in the service of the Abwehr.’
‘In spite of that, your mission has failed,’ Pekkala told him. ‘A ceasefire now exists between the men you hoped to turn against each other.’
Slowly Vasko shook his head. ‘It has not failed, Pekkala. All this was only a diversion. The real mission is still under way.’
Pekkala hesitated, wondering whether Vasko might be telling the truth, or if he was just bargaining with lies. ‘If you’re right about what you say, then tell me what you know and I’ll do what I can to protect you.’
‘All I know,’ said Vasko, ‘is that Stalin does not have long to live. Somewhere out there is another agent, and there is nothing you can do to stop him now.’
‘Tell me his name,’ said Pekkala. ‘This might be your only chance to save yourself.’
‘I couldn’t help you, Pekkala, even if I wanted to.’ Vasko spread his arms. ‘So why don’t you just go ahead and shoot?’
‘I have no intention of shooting you,’ Pekkala told him.
‘But you will be the one who hands me over to the men at Lubyanka and when, like my father, I am shot against the prison wall, will your guilt be any less than if you pulled the trigger yourself?’
Pekkala tightened his grip on the Webley. ‘It does not have to end this way,’ he said.
‘No,’ answered Vasko. ‘You could have me shipped me out to Kolyma, and I could end my days in the Sturmovoi goldmine. How long is the life expectancy there? One month? Or is it two? I would rather die here, now, than be led from this place like a lamb to the slaughtering pen.’
‘You know I cannot let you go.’ Sweat burned between Pekkala’s fingers, and his palm felt slick against the pistol grips.
‘Then at least have the courage to kill me yourself.’
‘You are giving me no choice,’ Pekkala answered quietly, as his finger curled around the trigger.
There was no fear in Vasko’s eyes. Instead, he stared Pekkala down, like a man who has foreseen his end a hundred times and for whom the emptiness of death could hold no fear.
Pekkala’s levelled the gun at the inverted V of Vasko’s solar plexus. His breathing grew steady and slow. The muscles in his shoulder tightened in anticipation of the Webley’s kick. Already Pekkala could feel the burden of Vasko’s death hanging like an anchor chain around his neck and he knew that it would never go away.
At that moment, an image flickered in his brain of the journey he had made to the labour camp at Borodok, in a cattle car so crowded that even the dead remained standing. Once more, Pekkala heard the moaning of the wind through barbed wire laced across the window opening and felt the heat of his body leach out through his flimsy prison clothes until his heart felt like a jagged piece of glass lodged in his throat. As that long, slow train clattered through the Ural mountains into Siberia, the knowledge had spread unspoken through those frost-encrusted wagons that even those who might return would never be the same. For the rest of their lives, the mark of the Gulag would be upon them; the unmistakable hollowness of their gaze, the pallor of their cheeks, the way they slept curled in upon themselves, hoarding their last spark of warmth.
While Vasko stood helpless before him, patiently awaiting his death, Pekkala saw the years fade from his face, like layers peeled from an onion, until he glimpsed a child, frightened and confused, and bound on that same journey through Siberia.