by Sam Eastland
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.
As if the weight of his revolver had suddenly become too much to bear, Pekkala lowered the gun. ‘Go,’ he whispered. ‘Find your own way to oblivion.’
Slowly, Vasko’s arms dropped to his side. ‘Is this some kind of trick?’ he asked.
‘Go!’ repeated Pekkala, his voice rising. ‘Before I change my mind!’
A cold wind shuffled through the treetops, sending wisps of fine snow cascading from the branches. Glittering flakes powdered the clothes of the two men, melting in tiny droplets on their skin.
Without another word, Vasko turned and ran.
Pekkala listened to his footsteps fading softly over the pine-needled earth. Then he sighed and put away his gun.
*
The sun had already set by the time Poskrebychev set out for the airfield in an American-made Packard, the personal vehicle of Stalin, which was garaged at the Kremlin Motor Pool. Its original weight of 6000 lb had been increased to 15,000 lb by the addition of armour plating, which included three-inch thick window glass, able to withstand a direct burst of machine gun fire.
Akhatov sat in the back. With a contented groan, he stretched out on to the padded leather seat. ‘Which airfield is it?’ he asked.
‘Krylova,’ replied Poskrebychev and as he spoke he removed an envelope from his chest pocket and tossed it over his shoulder into Akhatov’s lap.
Akhatov tore open the envelope and removed the banknotes it contained. There was a rapid fluttering sound as he let the bills play across his thumb. ‘One thing I’ll say about your boss,’ said Akhatov, tucking the money into his pocket. ‘He pays his debts on time.’
Poskrebychev did not reply. He stared at the road as it unravelled from the darkness, his hands white-knuckled on the wheel.
Soon they had passed beyond the city limits. Stars clustered above the ruffled black line of the horizon.
The gates of the Krylova airfield were open. Tall metal fences, topped with coils of barbed wire, stretched away into the darkness.
‘Why are there no lights?’ said Akhatov.
‘There is a blackout,’ answered Poskrebychev. ‘Military regulations.’ The Packard rolled across the railyard until it arrived at an empty hangar. The brakes squeaked as Poskrebychev brought the car to a halt. ‘We’re a little early,’ he said, cutting the engine. ‘The plane has not yet arrived. You might want to stretch your legs, Comrade Akhatov. You will be on that plane for a while.’
‘Not a bad idea,’ said Akhatov.
The two men climbed out of the car.
‘It’s a pretty night,’ said Akhatov, staring up at the sky.
‘It is,’ agreed Poskrebychev and, as he spoke, he drew a Nagant revolver from his pocket and shot Akhatov through the back of the head.
Akhatov dropped to his knees, and then tipped over on to his side.
The shot echoed across the deserted runway and through the empty buildings of Krylova. The station had been closed down six months before, after it was discovered that the main runway had been built over a spring and was prone to unexpected flooding. A new facility had just been completed at Perovichi, and it was here that the plane bound for Rovno waited, engines running, for a passenger who would never arrive.
Poskrebychev stared down at the body of Akhatov. The bullet had exited through the man’s forehead, just above the hairline, leaving a hole the size of a pocket watch in Akhatov’s skull.
Poskrebychev had never killed anyone before and now he nudged Akhatov with the toe of his boot, as if uncertain he had done the job correctly. Then he squatted down like a little boy, reached out slowly and touched his fingertip against Akhatov’s open right eye.
Satisfied, Poskrebychev set to work stripping off Akhatov’s coat, which he then wrapped around the dead man’s head. As soon as he had completed this task, he heaved Akhatov into the boot of the Packard and drove north towards the village of Stepanin, where his parents had once owned a summer cottage.
Before he reached the village, however, Poskrebychev pulled off on to a side road and drove into a wooded area where there had once been a slate quarry. The quarry had been abandoned long before, and the deep pit from which the slate had been extracted was now filled with water. As a boy, Poskrebychev had frequently come here with his parents, to swim in the luminous green water.
He backed up the Packard as far as he dared towards the lip of the quarry. Then he stopped the car, got out and walked to the edge. It was a long way down, enough to give him vertigo, and he quickly backed away.
Poskrebychev dragged Akhatov’s body from the car, letting it fall heavily to the ground. Then he got down on his knees and, using all his strength, rolled the corpse off the edge of the cliff. Akhatov fell, limbs trailing, until he splashed into the quarry lake, leaving a halo in the blackness of the water. For a while, the corpse floated on the surface, pale and shimmering. Then it sank away into the dark.
Before he got back into the car, Poskrebychev threw the murder weapon into the quarry. The Nagant had belonged to his uncle, who had carried it in the Great War and gave it to his nephew as a present on the day he first joined the Kremlin staff. But Poskrebychev never wore a gun. From that day until this, the Nagant had been hidden in a metal tub of rice in his kitchen.
Before returning to Moscow, Poskrebychev drove to the Perovichi airfield, where he found the Lavochkin still waiting.
‘Hurry up!’ called the pilot, when Poskrebychev stepped out of the Packard and approached the aircraft. ‘I’ve wasted enough fuel already.’
‘I am not your passenger!’ Poskrebychev shouted over the buzz-saw thrumming of the aircraft’s Shevtsov engine.
The pilot threw up his hands. ‘Then where the devil is he?’
‘He’s not coming.’
‘But I have orders to fly this plane to Rovno!’
‘Oh, you’re still going there,’ Poskrebychev told him.
‘Without a passenger?’ the pilot demanded in amazement. ‘But the amount of fuel this is going to take-’
‘Do you presume,’ hollered Poskrebychev, ‘to question the will of Comrade Stalin?’
‘No!’ the pilot replied hastily. ‘It’s not that. .’
‘Then go!’ cried Poskrebychev, using the particularly shrill tone he employed on all who were beneath him. ‘Take to the sky and be gone and I’ll forget your suicidal proclamations!’
Within minutes, the plane had vanished into the night sky.
As he drove back to Moscow, Poskrebychev realised that he had given almost no thought to everything he had just done. There had been no time to consider his actions and to balance out the risks. Poskrebychev had simply made up his mind on the spot that Akhatov had to be stopped. Now he wondered if he would be caught, but these thoughts were vague and fleeting, as if the risk belonged to someone he had met in a dream. There was nothing to do now, Poskrebychev decided, but to carry on as if nothing unusual had happened. He wondered if this was what bravery felt like. He had never been brave before. He had been sly and cowardly and grovelling, but never actually brave. Until now, the opportunity had never presented itself. As he raced along the empty, frozen roads towards the lights of Moscow in the distance, the steady thrum of the V12 engine seemed to reach a perfect equilibrium, as engines sometimes do at night, and Poskrebychev was filled with a curious blur of energy and peace of mind, as if the gods were telling him that no harm would come his way.
After returning the Packard to the Kremlin motor pool, Poskrebychev walked back to his office to collect some paperwork before heading home.
Entering the room, he turned on the lights and gasped.
Stalin was sitting as his desk.
‘Comrade Stalin?’ spluttered Poskrebychev. ‘What are you doing there, alone and in the dark?’
‘You dro
ve my Packard.’
‘Yes, Comrade Stalin.’
‘That is my car! It is not for running errands.’
‘But it is the only vehicle whose destination is never listed in the motor-pool logbook, Comrade Stalin.’
Stalin was silent for a moment. ‘Yes,’ he said finally, ‘Under the circumstances, I suppose it makes sense to have used it.’ Stalin rose from the desk. ‘But if I find one scratch on the paint, you will answer for it, I promise.’
‘Yes, Comrade Stalin.’
‘The Siberian has been dropped off?’
‘I handled it myself,’ replied Poskrebychev.
Just before he left the room, Stalin paused and turned to his secretary. ‘I know what you think about my decision but, in time, you will see that everything which has been done is for the best.’
‘I see it already, Comrade Stalin.’
For a moment, Stalin only stared at Poskrebychev, as if struggling to comprehend the meaning of his words. Then he gave a noncommittal grunt, walked out and shut the door.
*
Pekkala picked up Malashenko, carried him over to the Jeep and laid his body across the rear seats.
By then, the sun had set, and darkness seemed to rise up through the ground.
He went back into the cabin, took up the paraffin lamp, and smashed it against the wall. The fuel splashed over the bare logs, trickling into a puddle on the floor. Afterwards, Pekkala lit a match from a box which he found on the windowsill. When he set fire to the paraffin, pearl-white flames raced across floor and walls and Pekkala backed out of the cabin, shielding his face with one hand.
Quickly, he climbed behind the wheel of the Jeep, turned on its blinkered headlights and raced back down the trail. The wheels spun and side-slipped in the mud and the body of the man who had saved his life jolted in the rear seat as if a pulse were returning to his veins.
As Pekkala drove, he thought about what Vasko had said about the second mission. Maybe the man had been lying, although he doubted it. Over the years, Pekkala had investigated numerous plots to assassinate Stalin. Most turned out to be nothing more than rumours and the rest had been stopped in their tracks long before they turned into actual threats. But Canaris was a formidable adversary. Stalin had confided to Pekkala that the only man who truly made him fear for his life was the admiral. The year before, Stalin’s fears had almost become reality when a German plot to assassinate him at a conference in Teheran had only been uncovered by accident. Fortunately, the admiral’s powers had been undermined by the ongoing struggle between the SS and the Abwehr, which had weakened both branches of German Intelligence. This bitter rivalry had forced Canaris to undertake operations so secret and complex that not even those within the German High Command were aware of their existence. Although Vasko had given Pekkala little to go on, the possibility that Canaris could have conceived and set in motion another plot to murder Stalin was very real. There was little Pekkala could do, however, except to transmit a message to the Kremlin as soon as he arrived in Rovno and hope that Moscow took his warning seriously.
As Pekkala drove through the outskirts of the town, he noticed a column of smoke rising from the centre, its blackness blotting out the stars. He found himself wondering what was even left to burn in Rovno. The town had been all but cremated in the numerous battles and air raids unleashed upon it.
The closer Pekkala came to the garrison, the clearer it became to him that the fire was coming from the building itself. Arriving at the barricade, he climbed out of the Jeep and joined a crowd of soldiers who were watching the blaze. No one made any attempt to put out the fire. Instead, they seemed content to stare at the inverted waterfalls of smoke and flames, rolling and boiling from the window frames.
Standing closest to the inferno was Commander Chaplinsky, his sooty face glistening with sweat. Chaplinsky held a bottle of brandy in one hand and the severed receiver of a field telephone in the other. The cloth-covered cord which once attached it to the body of the radio had been wrenched apart and now only multi-coloured strands of wire hung from the receiver.
‘What happened?’ asked Pekkala, as he went to stand beside Chaplinsky.
The commander glanced across at him, pig-eyed in his drunkenness. ‘Nobody knows for sure,’ he replied. ‘Some of our ammunition stores must have been hit during the battle. By the time we realised the place was burning, it was already too late. It was all we could do to get everyone out of there before the place started falling in upon itself. The partisans helped. Thank God we didn’t have to slaughter them. Just before the fire forced us out of the building, we received a message from Moscow, ordering us to cancel our attack on the Atrads.’
He was interrupted by the dull thump of a ceiling giving way. A geyser of sparks erupted through the gap of what had been the front doors of the building. The doors themselves lay flattened on the ground, as if knocked down by a stampede.
‘Is there any way that I can contact Moscow?’ asked Pekkala. ‘It may be urgent.’
Chaplinsky held out the broken radio receiver. ‘This is all that’s left of our equipment. After that last message from Moscow, everything went up in flames.’ Contemptuously, he tossed the receiver aside. ‘We’re cut off from the world, Inspector, and maybe that’s not a bad thing!’ he said as he passed the brandy to Pekkala.
Pekkala took the bottle and held it up against the backdrop of the flames. On the label, not quite obscured by the name ‘Krug’, which had been scribbled across it in black pencil, Pekkala read the words, ‘Armagnac Baron de Sigognac’, as well as a date of 1940. He wondered what strange journey had brought it to this place. Through the dark green glass he saw the liquid swaying. It had been a long time since he’d been offered anything but samahonka, brewed by Barabanschikov himself in an old crow’s-foot bathtub, and which Pekkala wisely had not touched. Raising the bottle to his lips, he drank and felt the quiet fire of the brandy spread like wings inside his chest.
‘Where is my driver, Zolkin?’ asked Chaplinsky, retrieving the bottle from Pekkala. ‘Is that him sleeping in the back of the Jeep?’
‘No,’ replied the Inspector. ‘That is a partisan named Malashenko. He was one of Barabanschikov’s men.’
‘Was?’
‘That’s what I said,’ replied Pekkala.
‘Well, get him out of there before he bleeds on the seats! And where is Zolkin, anyway? Has he deserted? I never did trust that man. I’ll have him shot, I swear!’
‘Sergeant Zolkin has not deserted,’ Pekkala assured him. ‘He left for Moscow on a plane not long ago, in the company of my assistant, Major Kirov. He talked his way into becoming my chauffeur. I did not have a chance to tell you sooner.’
‘You’re welcome to him,’ said Chaplinsky. ‘Around here, drivers are not hard to find. It’s vehicles we don’t have enough of, not to mention spare parts for repairs. I guess I can’t blame him for leaving.’ He raised his bottle at the funeral pyre of the garrison. ‘Who wouldn’t trade Moscow for this?’
‘He said his greatest wish was to shake the hand of Joseph Stalin, and he may well get the chance before this day is out.’
Chaplinsky blinked at him stupidly. ‘You must be mistaken, Inspector. Zolkin is the last person who would want an audience with Stalin.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘His family used to be farmers in northern Ukraine, but they died of starvation when Stalin ordered the farms to be collectivised. Zolkin is the only one who survived, and if you believe the stories they tell about him, he did so by eating the flesh of his parents. A man like that,’ Chaplinsky paused to belch extravagantly, ‘is the kind who would carry a grudge.’
While Chaplinsky continued to ramble, one thought blazed across Pekkala’s mind. If I were Canaris, he thought, Zolkin is exactly the kind of person I would be looking to recruit. As Yakushkin’s personal driver, he too would have been transferred back to Moscow. Once there, Yakushkin would have been in direct contact with top-ranking members of the Kremlin staff, inc
luding Stalin. Drivers regularly accompanied the officers they served to meetings, acting partly as bodyguards and partly as baggage handlers for the briefcases full of documents required at each presentation to the high command. Zolkin would be armed as a matter of course. All drivers were. Perhaps Yakushkin’s murder had not been planned. The commander had simply been in the wrong place when Vasko went looking for information on the whereabouts of Major Kirov. Since Vasko did not know the identity of the second agent, or the details of his mission, he had no idea that he had placed the entire mission in jeopardy.
If Zolkin was indeed the second agent, his role in the assassination plot might have ended with Yakushkin’s death. Instead, the sergeant had just talked his way on to the plane bound for Moscow, and a meeting with Stalin himself.
And I am the one who made it possible, thought Pekkala, dread rising in the back of his throat. Within a matter of hours, Zolkin will be at the Kremlin. If he is able to carry out his task, it won’t just be Stalin who dies. The lives of Kirov and Barabanschikov are also in grave danger.
‘Of course,’ Chaplinsky continued, ‘there are others to blame besides the Boss. Some say it wasn’t Stalin’s fault at all. Some even say-’
‘I must get a message to Moscow!’ interrupted Pekkala. ‘Chaplinsky, this is very important.’
‘I told you, the radios are gone. Burned to ashes. The only way you can contact Moscow is if you get on the plane and go there yourself with the message.’
‘What plane?’ asked Pekkala.
‘The one that landed about half an hour ago, although exactly what he’s doing here is hard to say. It’s all very strange. He was carrying orders from Moscow to deliver a passenger. The thing is, though, he didn’t have any passengers with him.’
‘Where is the plane now?’ asked Pekkala.
