by Sam Eastland
The sun had just set that day when the door swung open and a guard named Krol walked in.
Hunyadi had been lying on his bunk. Now he sat up in confusion. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
‘Get undressed,’ ordered the guard.
Hunyadi, who had been asleep when Krol opened the door, was at first so confused by this command that he just sat on his bunk and did not move.
Angered by Hunyadi’s stupor, Krol stepped forward and fetched the detective a mighty slap across the face. ‘Strip, damn you!’ he bellowed.
Blearily, Hunyadi obeyed.
When at last he stood naked in front of Kroll, the guard turned and marched out of the room. ‘Follow me!’ he commanded.
As Hunyadi left his cell for the first time in months, another guard fell in behind him and he walked between the two men, the almost noiseless shuffle of his bare feet in stark contrast to the crunch of the guards’ hobnailed boots upon the concrete floor.
It was only when they turned a corner and he could see the courtyard dead ahead, that he finally grasped what was happening.
His heart began to thunder, as if it was trying to hammer its way out of his chest.
He could see the gallows now, and on it were three nooses, hanging side by side. Two men, as naked as Hunyadi, stood with the nooses in front of them, hands bound behind their backs. Nobody stood behind the third noose, and Hunyadi understood that it was meant for him.
He did not recognise the men. The paleness of their flesh appeared grotesque.
Why do they need us to be naked? Hunyadi wondered to himself. What final insult is this?
He was halfway across the courtyard now. Little pebbles in the gravel dug into his heels.
He thought of Franziska. He wondered what she was doing now. He had heard stories of people feeling something they described as a kind of snapping shock at the moment when their loved ones passed away, as if some invisible thread were snapping. I wonder if she’ll feel it, thought Hunyadi.
And then suddenly Hunyadi realised that the terror which had haunted him for so many days that he could no longer recall what it felt like to live without it was only the fear of dying and not of death itself.
As soon as he understood that, even the fear of dying lost its grip on him and faded away into the still air of the courtyard.
Krol turned and looked back at Hunyadi, to make sure that the man had not begun to falter. And the guard, who had led so many men to their deaths these past few months, was astonished to see Hunyadi smiling.
‘Stop!’ called a voice.
All three men, the two guards and Hunyadi, came to an abrupt halt. They turned in unison to see a man, wearing the finely tailored uniform of a camp administrator, come tumbling out of the same doorway from which they had only just emerged.
‘What is it?’ demanded Krol.
‘Bring him back,’ said the man.
‘I will not!’ roared Krol. ‘I have my orders!’
‘Your orders have been overruled,’ said the administrator, ‘unless you’d care to take it up with General Rattenhuber in Berlin!’
Krol blinked, as if a bright light was suddenly shining into his face. Grabbing Hunyadi by the arm, he marched the naked man back inside, followed by the second guard, who looked as confused as his prisoner.
As the three men stepped into the shadows of the concrete block house, they heard the heavy clunk of gallows trap doors swinging open.
‘What is happening?’ stammered Hunyadi.
To this, Krol just shook his head in stunned amazement.
‘What’s happening,’ explained the administrator, ‘is that your death has been postponed.’
‘But why?’
‘You have a friend in high places, Hunyadi. Very high places indeed.’
‘Hitler?’ gasped Hunyadi.
The administrator nodded.
‘But he’s the one who put me here!’ shouted Hunyadi. ‘I demand an explanation!’ But even as he spoke, Hunyadi became aware of how difficult it was to make demands of any kind when fat, middle-aged and the only naked man in the room.
The administrator, who had retrieved Hunyadi’s clothes from his cell, now dumped the reeking garments at his feet. ‘Ask him yourself when you see him,’ he said.
‘Pekkala,’ said Stalin, as soon as Major Kirov had left the room, ‘there is something we need to discuss.’
‘Can this not wait?’ asked Pekkala. ‘Every minute that I linger here in Moscow brings Hunyadi one step closer to Lilya.’
‘It concerns Lilya,’ answered Stalin, ‘and her family, as well.’
‘You mean her husband and their child?’
‘Exactly. So you have not forgotten them?’
‘Of course not,’ replied Pekkala. ‘I still remember the photograph you showed me, back when I first agreed to work with you.’
‘Yes.’ Stalin paused to clear his throat in a long, gravelly eruption from his smoke-clogged lungs. ‘Let us talk about that picture.’
When Stalin had sent the young Lieutenant Kirov to retrieve Pekkala from Siberia, it had been with one purpose in mind – to conduct a secret investigation into the death of the Tsar and his family. Although a statement had been issued long ago, confirming the executions in the basement of a house in Ekaterinburg, which had once belonged to a merchant named Ipatiev, Stalin had harboured his own suspicions about the accuracy of the report. He had become fixated on the possibility that one person in particular night have survived – the Tsar’s only son, Alexei, whose frailty, caused by haemophilia, had consumed the royal couple even to the end of their days. It was this very frailty, combined with the young man’s youth and innocence, which led Stalin to believe the executioners might have taken pity upon the boy, and perhaps even on some of the daughters as well. A steady flow of rumours had circulated, not only in Russia but throughout the world, that various members of the Romanov clan, once thought to have been butchered in captivity, might still be alive, after all. Eventually, inevitably, these suspicions loomed so large in Stalin’s mind that he knew he must find out the truth. And even as the thought occurred to him, he realised that there was only one man alive who knew enough about the Romanovs to dig out the truth once and for all. It was the Emerald Eye.
Stalin had kept Pekkala alive for a reason, even if he had not known at the time what that reason might amount to. The execution order had been there on Stalin’s desk and he had been about to sign it when he hesitated. Such a thing had never happened before. Even he did not know what had caused his pen to hover over the page. It was part fear, part admiration, part practicality.
Stalin knew where to find Pekkala. What he did not know was whether the Inspector would agree to join forces with a man who had once been his enemy. It would not be enough to simply order him. In order to tip the balance in his favour, Stalin had made Pekkala an offer – complete the investigation, and then Pekkala could go free.
And he had intended to keep his word, at least in the beginning, but by the time Pekkala’s investigation was completed, Stalin had changed his mind. Not only would Pekkala’s brand of expertise prove useful in running the country, Stalin could not imagine how he’d ever do without it. But he knew that Pekkala could never be forced into such an arrangement. He would have to be persuaded.
In the end, all Stalin needed was a single photograph.
The picture was of Lilya Simonova, sitting at a café in Paris, where she had fled at the outset of the Revolution. Pekkala’s plan had been to join her there, but his arrest by Red Guard Militia, at a lonely, snowbound checkpoint on the Russo-Finnish border as he tried to leave the country, had put an end to that.
In the photo, Lilya Simonova was smiling. Sitting beside her was a man, slightly built, with dark hair combed straight back. He wore a jacket and tie and the stub of a cigarette was pinched between his thumb and second finger. He held the cigarette in the Russian manner, with the burning end balanced over his palm as if to catch the falling ash. Like Lilya, the man was also s
miling. Both of them were watching something just to the left of the camera. On the other side of the table was a pram, its hood pulled up to shelter the infant from the sun.
Procuring such a photograph had not been difficult. Stalin’s network of informants had charted the whereabouts of almost every Russian émigré in Paris.
Mother. Father. Child. The picture was perfectly clear.
Stalin’s purpose in showing the photo to Pekkala had been equally clear – to persuade him to remain in Russia, and carry on the work he had begun when he first attached the gold and emerald badge beneath the collar of his coat.
‘You must not blame her,’ Stalin had told the Inspector. ‘She waited. She waited a very long time. But a person cannot wait forever, can they?’ Better, Stalin had explained, that Pekkala should learn the truth now than to arrive in Paris, ready to start a new life, only to find that it was once more out of reach. ‘You could still go to her, of course. I have her address if you want it. One look at you and whatever peace of mind she might have won for herself in these past years would be gone forever. And let us say, for the sake of argument, that you might persuade her to leave the man she married. Let us say that she even leaves behind her child . . .’
Pekkala held up a hand for him to stop.
‘You see my point,’ continued Stalin. ‘You and I both know that you are not this kind of man. Nor are you the monster that your enemies once believed you to be. If you were, you would never have been such a formidable opponent for people like myself. Monsters are easy to defeat. With such people, it is only a question of blood and time, since their only weapon is fear. But you, Pekkala, you won the hearts of the people of Russia, along with the respect of your enemies. I do not believe you understand how rare a thing that is. Whatever your opinion of me, those whom you once served are out there still.’ Stalin brushed his hand towards the window, and out across the pale blue sky. ‘They know how difficult your job can be, and how few of those who walk your path can do what must be done and still hold on to their humanity. They have not forgotten you, Pekkala, and I don’t believe you have forgotten them.’
‘No,’ whispered Pekkala, ‘I have not forgotten.’
‘What I am trying to tell you’, Stalin had explained, ‘is that you still have a place here if you want it.’
Until that moment, the thought of staying on had not occurred to Pekkala. But now the plans he’d made held no more meaning. Pekkala realised that his last gesture of affection for the woman he’d once thought would be his wife must be to let her believe he was dead.
Now Stalin opened a file and from it he removed a picture, which he slid across the desk towards Pekkala.
It was that same photograph which he had set before Pekkala all those years ago.
A sigh escaped Pekkala’s lips. Even though he had recalled every detail of the picture, it still struck him to see it again. It was as if a hole had opened up in time and he found himself again, in this same room, in that moment when the course of his life had been altered by this single frozen image. ‘Why show me this again?’ he asked.
‘The photograph is not complete,’ Stalin said quietly, as if hoping that his words might pass unnoticed.
‘Not complete? I don’t understand,’ said Pekkala.
Now Stalin removed a second picture from the file. It was the same size as the first one, and showed almost the same image, but this one appeared to have been taken from several paces further back.
The second photo showed not only Lilya Simonova and the man beside her, as well as the pram that stood between them, but also the tables on either side. From this expanded view, it was evident that the man had been sitting at a separate table and that he was with another woman. The woman was holding a baby in her arms. The baby was laughing and it was this which had drawn the attention of Lilya and the man. The other thing which this photo made obvious was that Lilya Simonova was sitting at the table by herself. A stack of notes, perhaps the uncorrected papers of her students, lay neatly on the table top, and her hand, with a pen tucked in her fingers like a cigarette, lay on the notes, to stop them from blowing away.
As he stared at the picture, Pekkala realised that the first image he had been shown, all those years ago, had, in fact, been cropped to hide the presence of the other woman, the baby and the positioning of the tables.
In the second picture, the narrative had been completely changed.
The first picture was authentic, but the story it told had been a lie.
Pekkala’s mind reeled as he tried to grasp the magnitude of the deception.
‘I needed you here,’ explained Stalin, ‘and it would have done no good to force you to remain. The decision had to be yours. That picture came across my desk just as you were completing your first case for me. The subject of the photo, taken by one of our agents in Paris, was actually the man sitting next to your fiancée. His name was Kuznetsk and he was one of the founding members of the French anti-Bolshevik League known as the White Hand. The picture was taken to provide confirmation that the man was, in fact, Kuznetsk, prior to my issuing a liquidation order.’
Pekkala looked down again at the photo. He stared at the woman and the laughing child.
‘It was only when the picture was handed to me for approval that I noticed your fiancée, and I realised it could be useful in persuading you to stay and work for us.’
‘Why tell me this now?’ demanded Pekkala, as he struggled to contain his rage.
‘Because you would have learned the truth yourself within hours of reaching Berlin, and I would rather you heard it from me than from her.’
‘What difference would that make?’ asked Pekkala. ‘You’re the one who lied to me, not her.’
‘And the British are lying to both of us, which is something else we need to talk about if you can hold on to your temper long enough!’
Pekkala stood there in silence, waiting for Stalin to continue.
‘In case you haven’t realised this already,’ Stalin told him, ‘the British don’t care about Lilya Simonova, at least not enough to come to us and beg for help as they have done.’
‘They why would they do such a thing?’
‘Because she has something they want.’
Pekkala narrowed his eyes. ‘You think this is about the Diamond Stream?’
Stalin nodded.
‘But the officer in the prisoner-of-war camp, the one Kirov spoke to. He said they couldn’t make it work.’
‘And, at the time of his capture, that was probably the truth,’ agreed Stalin, ‘but much could have happened since then.’
‘Assuming you are correct,’ said Pekkala, ‘and that this device is now operational, that still does not explain why you are in such a hurry to rescue a British agent. Even if they are our allies, you can’t honestly believe that they will share the secrets of this weapon.’
‘They won’t,’ confirmed Stalin, ‘but Lilya Simonova might.’
Pekkala breathed out sharply through his nose. ‘And why would she do that?’
‘Because of what I am about to offer you,’ replied Stalin.
‘And what is that?’ asked Pekkala.
‘A future for the two of you in Moscow.’
‘Her home is in Paris, not here.’
‘No, Pekkala. That is where you are wrong. Paris was never her home. She did not go there by choice, the way you chose to come to Russia, all those years ago. Bring her back to the place where she is from and I give you my word you can both live out your days in peace, as you were always meant to do.’
‘For a price,’ muttered Pekkala.
Stalin shrugged and smiled. ‘Nothing is free, Inspector. Especially not diamonds.’
‘You will have my answer soon enough,’ Pekkala told him as he turned to leave.
‘That is all I ask,’ replied Stalin. ‘Now, if you could send in Major Kirov on your way out, I will explain to him what must be done.’
Kirov was waiting in the hallway, having chosen not to linger in th
e outer office, under the squinting stare of Stalin’s secretary Poskrebychev. It was cold in the marble-floored hallway and a pale afternoon light seeped in through the tall windows. The two guards who stood outside Stalin’s office had come prepared with winter greatcoats and dense ushanka hats which bristled with a brownish-grey synthetic pile known to the soldiers as ‘fish fur’. With hands balled into fists inside his pockets and shoulders hunched against the shivers that crabbed across his back, Kirov paced about, wondering what could be taking Pekkala so long.
When Pekkala finally emerged, Kirov sighed with relief. He was anxious to be gone from here, and not just because of the cold. Although he had visited the Kremlin many times, and had always been impressed with its architectural beauty, Kirov never felt comfortable there. Maybe it had to do with the hidden passageways he knew existed behind the wood-panelled walls, along which Stalin was known to tread at all hours of the day or night, carrying his shoes so as not to make a noise. Or perhaps it was the lack of voices. Everyone in this building seemed compelled to speak in hushed tones, as if they knew that whatever they said would be overheard by someone else, invisible and dangerous, judging their every word. Although he had no proof of it, Kirov did not doubt that this was true. And the last thing which made Kirov nervous whenever he stepped into this labyrinth was the fact that he knew he didn’t belong here. Although he had reached the rank of major and was, after all, frequently summoned to this building by none other than the Vozhd – the Boss – himself, Kirov had come to realise that he would never belong to Stalin’s inner circle. Neither would he ever achieve that indispensability that Pekkala had been given from the start. If it weren’t for the Inspector, thought Kirov, Stalin wouldn’t even know my name.
‘He wants to see you,’ said Pekkala.
‘What?’ asked Kirov. ‘Just me?’
‘That’s what he said.’
‘What about?’ Have I done something wrong, wondered Kirov.
‘He didn’t tell me anything,’ replied Pekkala.
