Shadow Pass ip-2

by Sam Eastland

  “Do you have any suspects?”

  Stalin shook his head. “In his final report, one of those agents stated that he had been approached by some people wishing to join the Guild. One week later, the agents turned up dead. The names these people used turned out to be fake.”

  “Whoever these people were,” said Pekkala, “they must have discovered that Special Operations controlled the White Guild. They found out who the Special Operations agents were and killed them.”

  “Correct.”

  “What I don’t understand, Comrade Stalin, is why you think the Guild might be involved in the Nagorski killing, when you have just told me you closed it down before he died.”

  “I did close down the Guild,” said Stalin, “but I am afraid it has come back to life. The Guild was once a trap for luring enemy agents in, but these people, whoever they are, have now turned it against us. I think you’ll find they are the ones who killed Nagorski.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me any of this, Comrade Stalin?”

  Stalin threw a lever, which lay flush against the wall. The door swung open.

  Beyond lay a room with a huge map of the Soviet Union on the wall. The heavy red velvet curtains had been drawn. Pekkala had never seen this place before. Men in a variety of military uniforms sat around a table. At the head of the table was one empty seat. There had been a murmur of talk in the room, but as soon as the door opened, it fell silent. Now all of the men were watching the space from which Stalin was about to emerge.

  Before entering the room, however, Stalin turned to Pekkala. “I did not tell you,” he said quietly, “because I hoped I might be wrong. That does not seem to be the case, and it’s why I am telling you now.” Then he stepped into the room. A moment later, the door closed softly behind him.

  Pekkala found himself alone in the passageway, with no idea where he was.

  He retraced his steps to the stairs, then went down to the intersection. Before he reached it, all the lights went out. He realized they must have been on a timer, but where the switch was for that timer, Pekkala had no idea. At first, it was so dark inside the corridor that he felt as if he might as well have been struck blind. But slowly, as his eyes grew used to the blackness, he realized he could make out thin gray bands of light seeping under the bottoms of the trapdoors spaced out along the passageway.

  He could not read the yellow writing on the doors, so, sliding along with his back to the wall, he picked the first door he came to. Groping, he found the lever and pulled.

  The trapdoor clicked open.

  Pekkala heard the sound of heels upon a marble floor and knew instantly that he had emerged onto one of the main corridors of the Palace of Congresses, which adjoined the Kremlin Palace where Stalin’s office was located. He stepped through the opening and almost collided with a woman wearing the mouse-gray skirt and black tunic of a Kremlin secretary. She was carrying a bundle of papers, but when she saw Pekkala appear like a ghost out of the wall, she screamed and the papers went straight up into the air.

  “Well, I should be going,” said Pekkala, as the documents fluttered down around them. He smiled and nodded good-bye, then walked quickly away down the corridor.

  “YOU FORGOT YOUR GUN AGAIN, DIDN’T YOU?” ASKED PEKKALA, as they drove towards the Nagorski facility.

  “No, I didn’t forget,” replied Kirov. “I left it behind on purpose. We’re only going to talk to those scientists. They won’t give us any trouble.”

  “You should always bring your gun with you!” shouted Pekkala. “Pull over here!”

  Obediently, Kirov brought the car to a halt. Then he turned in his seat to face Pekkala. “What’s up, Inspector?”

  “Where is that lunch you made us?”

  “In the trunk. Why?”

  “Follow me,” said Pekkala, as he got out of the car. From the trunk, Pekkala removed the canvas satchel containing two sandwiches and some apples. Then he stalked into the field beside the road, pausing to snap off a dead branch, about the size of a walking stick, from a tree beside the road.

  “Where are you going with our food?”

  “Stay there,” Pekkala called back. After he had gone a short way into the field, he stopped. He jammed the branch into the ground, then removed an apple from the lunch bag and skewered it onto the end of the branch.

  “We were going to eat that!” shouted Kirov.

  Pekkala ignored him. He returned to where Kirov was standing, drew his Webley from its holster and handed it, butt first, to Kirov. Then he turned and pointed towards the apple. “What we will be doing—” he began, then flinched as the gun went off in Kirov’s hand. “For goodness sake, Kirov! Be careful! Take time to aim properly. There are many steps involved. Breathing. Stance. The way you grip the gun. It’s going to take some time.”

  “Yes, Inspector,” replied Kirov meekly.

  “Now,” said Pekkala, returning his attention to the apple. “What? Where’s it gone? Oh, damn! It’s fallen off.” He strode back towards the stake, but had gone only a few paces when he noticed shreds of apple peel scattered across the ground. The apple appeared to have exploded, and it was a few more seconds before Pekkala finally got it into his head that Kirov had hit the apple with his first shot. He spun around and stared at Kirov.

  “Sorry,” said Kirov. “Did you have something else in mind?”

  “Well,” growled Pekkala, “that was a good start. But you mustn’t get your hopes up. What we want is to be able to hit the target not just once, but every time. Or almost every time.” He fished another apple from the bag and stuck it on the end of the stick.

  “What do you expect us to eat?” asked Kirov.

  “Now don’t go blasting away until I get back there,” ordered Pekkala as he strode towards Kirov. “It is important to make a firm platform with your feet, and to grip the gun tightly but not too tightly. The Webley is a well-balanced weapon, but it’s got a hard kick, much greater than the Tokarev.”

  Casually, Kirov raised the Webley and fired.

  “Damn it, Kirov!” raged Pekkala. “You’ve got to wait until you’re ready!”

  “I was ready,” replied Kirov serenely.

  Pekkala squinted at the stake. All that remained of the second apple was a cloud of white juice, diffusing in the air. Pekkala’s mouth twitched. “Stay there!” he said and went back into the field. This time he pulled the branch up, walked several paces farther back and stuck it into the ground. Then he took a sandwich wrapped in brown wax paper from the bag and jammed it onto the stick.

  “I’m not shooting my sandwich!” shouted Kirov.

  Pekkala wheeled. “You won’t? Or you can’t?”

  “If I hit that,” said Kirov, “will you stop bothering me?”

  “I certainly will,” agreed Pekkala.

  “And you will admit that I’m a good shot?”

  “Don’t push your luck, Comrade Kirov.”

  Three minutes later, the Emka was back on the road.

  Pekkala slumped in the back, arms folded across his chest, feeling the warmth of the gun’s cylinder radiating through his leather holster.

  “You know,” said Kirov cheerfully, “I have a certificate of merit from the Komsomol for target practice. It’s hanging on my wall at home.”

  “I must have missed that one,” mumbled Pekkala.

  “It’s in the living room,” said Kirov, “right next to my music award.”

  “You got an award for music?”

  “For my rendition of ‘Farewell, Slavianka,’ ” replied Kirov. He breathed in, stuck out his chest, and began to sing, glancing in the mirror at his audience. “Farewell, the land of the fathers …”

  One raised eyebrow from Pekkala shut him up.

  MACHINE-GUN FIRE ECHOED AROUND THE BUILDINGS OF THE Nagorski facility.

  In the confined space of the Iron House, the percussion of each shell tangled into a continuous, deafening snarl. To Pekkala, at the entrance, it was as if the air itself were being torn apart. Beside him stood K
irov. The two men waited while the metal snake of bullets uncoiled from its green ammunition box, spitting a shower of flickering brass from the ejection port of the machine gun. Just when it seemed as if the sound would never end, the belt ran out and the gunfire ceased abruptly. Spent cartridges rang musically as they tumbled to the concrete floor.

  Gorenko and Ushinsky set the gun aside, climbed to their feet, and removed the cup-shaped noise protectors from their ears. A hazy wreath of gun smoke hung about their heads.

  The weapon was aimed at a pyramid of hundred-liter metal barrels. The diesel fuel these barrels once contained had been replaced with sand to absorb the impact of the bullets. Now gaping tears showed in the metal and sand poured in streams from the holes, forming cones upon the floor like time marked in an hourglass.

  Gorenko held up a stopwatch. “Thirty-three seconds.”

  “Better,” said Ushinsky.

  “Still not good enough,” replied Gorenko. “Nagorski would have been breathing down our necks—”

  “Gentlemen.” Pekkala’s voice resonated through the girders which supported the corrugated iron roof.

  Surprised, both scientists wheeled around to see where the voice had come from.

  “Inspector!” exclaimed Ushinsky. “Welcome back to the madhouse.”

  “What are you working on here?” asked Kirov.

  “We are testing the rate of fire of the T-34’s machine guns,” replied Gorenko. “It’s not right yet.”

  “It’s close enough,” said Ushinsky.

  “If the colonel was alive,” insisted Gorenko, “he’d never let you say a thing like that.”

  Pekkala walked over to where the scientists were standing. He removed the paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and held it out towards the two men. “Can either of you tell me what this means?”

  Both peered at the page.

  “That’s the colonel’s writing,” said Ushinsky.

  Gorenko nodded. “It’s a formula.”

  “A formula for what?” asked Pekkala.

  Ushinsky shook his head. “We’re not chemists, Inspector.”

  “That kind of thing is not our specialty,” agreed Gorenko.

  “Is there anyone here who could tell us?” asked Kirov.

  The scientists shook their heads.

  Pekkala sighed with annoyance, thinking that they had come all this way for nothing. “Let’s go,” he told Kirov.

  As they turned to leave, the scientists began a whispered conversation.

  Pekkala stopped. “What is it, gentlemen?”

  “Well—” began Ushinsky.

  “Keep your mouth shut,” ordered Gorenko. “Colonel Nagorski may be dead, but this is still his project and his rules should be obeyed!”

  “It doesn’t matter now!” yelled Ushinsky. He kicked an empty bullet cartridge across the floor. It skipped over the concrete, spinning away among the sleeping hulks of half-assembled tanks. “None of it matters now! Can’t you see?”

  “Nagorski said—”

  “Nagorski is gone!” bellowed Ushinsky. “Everything we’ve done has been for nothing.”

  “I thought the Konstantin Project was almost finished,” Pekkala said.

  “Almost!” replied Ushinsky. “Almost is not good enough.” He waved his arm across the assembly area. “We might as well just throw these monsters on the junk heap!”

  “One of these days,” Gorenko warned him, “you’re going to say something you’ll regret.”

  Ignoring his colleague, Ushinsky turned to the investigators. “You’ll need to speak with a man named Lev Zalka.”

  Gorenko looked at the ground and shook his head. “If the colonel heard you say that name …”

  “Zalka was part of the original team,” continued Ushinsky. “He designed the V2 diesel. That’s what we use in the tanks. But he’s been gone for months. Nagorski fired him. They got into an argument.”

  “An argument?” muttered Gorenko. “Is that what you call it? Nagorski attacked him with a wrench! The colonel would have killed Zalka if he hadn’t ducked. After that, Nagorski said that if anyone so much as mentioned Zalka’s name, they would be thrown off the project.”

  “What was this fight about?” asked Pekkala.

  Both scientists shrugged uneasily.

  “Zalka had wanted to install bigger turret hatches, as well as hatches underneath the hull.”

  “Why?” asked Kirov. “Wouldn’t that make the tank more vulnerable?”

  “Yes, it would,” replied Gorenko.

  “But bigger hatches,” interrupted Ushinsky, “would mean that the tank crew had a better chance of escaping if the engine caught fire or if the hull was breached.”

  “Colonel Nagorski refused to consider it. For him, the machine came first.”

  “And that’s why your test drivers have been calling it the Red Coffin,” said Pekkala.

  Gorenko shot an angry glance towards Ushinsky. “I see that someone has been talking.”

  “What does it matter now?” growled Ushinsky.

  “Are you certain this is what Nagorski and Zalka were arguing about on that day?” asked Pekkala, anxious to avoid another argument between the two men.

  “All I can tell you,” Gorenko replied, “is that Zalka left the facility that day. And he never came back.”

  “Do you have any idea where we could find this man?” asked Kirov.

  “He used to have an apartment on Prechistenka Street,” said Ushinsky, “but that was back when he worked here. He may have moved since then. If anybody knows what that formula means, it’s him.”

  When Pekkala and Kirov left the building, Gorenko followed them out. “I’m sorry, Inspectors,” he said. “You’ll have to forgive my colleague. He loses his temper a lot. He says things he doesn’t mean.”

  “It sounded like he meant them to me,” Kirov pointed out.

  “It’s just that we had some bad news today.”

  “What news is that?” asked Pekkala.

  “Come. Let me show you.” He led them around to the back of the assembly building to where a T-34 had been parked at the edge of the trees. The machine had a large number 4 painted on the side of its turret. Pekkala’s eye was drawn to a long, narrow scrape, which had cut down to the bare metal. The silver stripe passed along the length of the turret, neatly bisecting the number. “They brought it back this morning.”

  “Who did?” asked Pekkala.

  “The army,” Gorenko replied. “They had it out on some secret field trial. We weren’t allowed to know anything about it. And now it’s ruined.”

  “Ruined?” asked Kirov. “It looks the same as all the others.”

  Gorenko climbed up onto the flat section at the back of the tank and opened up the engine grille. He reached his hand into the engine and when he drew it out, it was smeared with what looked like grease. “You know what this is?”

  Pekkala shook his head.

  “It’s fuel,” explained Gorenko. “Ordinary diesel fuel. At least that’s what it is supposed to be. But it has been contaminated.”

  “With what?”

  “Bleach. It has destroyed the inner workings of the engine. The whole thing will have to be refitted, the fuel system drained, all hoses and feeds replaced. It needs a complete rebuild. Number 4 was Ushinsky’s own special project. Each of us here had a favorite. We sort of adopted them. And Ushinsky is taking this hard.”

  “Perhaps it was an accident,” suggested Kirov.

  Gorenko shook his head. “Whoever did this knew exactly how to wreck an engine. Not just damage it, you understand. Destroy it. There’s no doubt in my mind, Inspectors. This was a deliberate act.” He jumped down from the tank, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped the fuel from his fingers. “If you knew how hard he worked on this machine, you’d understand how he feels.”

  “Is he right?” asked Pekkala. “Is the whole project ruined?”

  “No!” replied Gorenko. “In a few months, as long as we can keep working on it, the T
-34 should be ready. Even with Nagorski gone, the T-34 will still be an excellent machine, but there’s a difference between excellence and perfection. The trouble with Ushinsky is that he needs everything to be perfect. As far as he’s concerned, now that the colonel is gone, any hope of perfection is out of reach. And I’ll tell you what I’ve been telling Ushinsky since we first began this project: It would never have been perfect. There will always be something, like the rate of fire in those machine guns, which will just have to be good enough.”

  “I understand,” said Pekkala. “Tell him we took no offense.”

  “If you could tell him yourself,” pleaded Gorenko. “If you could just talk to him, tell him to choose his words more carefully, I think it would really help.”

  “We don’t have time now,” said Kirov.

  “Call us at the office later,” suggested Pekkala. “Right now, we need to find Zalka.”

  “Maybe Ushinsky was right after all,” said Gorenko. “Now that Nagorski is gone, we could use all the help we can get.”

  ONE HOUR LATER, KIROV DROPPED PEKKALA AT THE OFFICE.

  “I’ll put in a call to Lysenkova,” Pekkala told him. “I need to tell her she can stop searching for those White Guild agents. As of now, all our efforts should be focused on locating Zalka. Get down to the records office and see if you can find out where he lives. But don’t try to bring him in on your own. We should assume that Zalka was the man in the woods. It looks like he has the motive for killing Nagorski, and the fact that he would have known his way around the facility would explain why Samarin thought someone on the inside was responsible for the murder.”

  While Kirov drove to the public records office, Pekkala went up to the office and called Lysenkova. Worried that NKVD might be listening in, he told her they needed to meet in person.

  As soon as she arrived, Pekkala explained about the White Guild agents.

  “Did you have any luck deciphering the formula, Inspector?” asked Lysenkova.

  “That’s the other reason for tracking down Zalka,” replied Pekkala. “If he’s still alive, he may be the only one who can help us.”