Red Moth (19 page)

After a three-hour flight from Moscow in the unheated cargo bay of the Lisunov, Pekkala and Lieutenant Churikova landed at an airfield in Tikhvin, east of Leningrad. A truck was waiting for them at the side of the runway. Its windscreen had been smashed out and the driver wore a pair of motorcycle goggles to protect his eyes from the mud and grit which had splattered the upper half of his body. ‘Get in the back,’ he told them, ‘unless you want to look like me.’

‘Where are we going?’ asked Pekkala, struggling to speak since his jaw was almost frozen shut.

‘To the town of Chertova, but we had better be quick. I knew where the front was when I left this morning, but I’ve no idea where it is now.’ As the driver spoke, he removed the goggles, revealing pale moons of skin around his eyes. He licked the dirt off the lenses, spitting after each swipe of his tongue over the glass, then fitted the goggles back on to his face.

Hurriedly, Churikova and Pekkala piled into the back of the truck.

The driver battened down the canvas flap and soon they were on the move again.

‘What happens when we get to Chertova?’ asked Churikova, once they were under way. She had tried during the flight to question Pekkala about the plan for getting them behind the German lines, but the noise in the cargo plane, not to mention the cold, had prevented any kind of conversation.

From the pocket of his coat, Pekkala removed his orders of transport. ‘According to this, we are being delivered to the headquarters of the 35th Rifle Division, which must be based in Chertova. Once we arrive, a Colonel Gorchakov of Glavpur, Military Intelligence, will provide us with further instructions.’

‘But how will he get us through the lines?’ Churikova pressed him.

‘I don’t know,’ replied Pekkala. ‘At this point, I doubt that he knows, either.’

On the outskirts of Chertova, the truck pulled over beside a cemetery. The driver got out and undid the canvas flap. ‘We’re here,’ he said.

There was no sound of birds or barking dogs, or the bumblebee droning of tractors in the fields beyond the town. All they could hear was the rumble of artillery in the distance.

Pekkala peered out across the graveyard. ‘Military Intelligence?’

‘Come see for yourself,’ said the driver, his face expressionless behind the mud-splashed goggles.

Leaving Churikova in the back of the truck, Pekkala jumped down into the mud and followed the driver out into the cemetery. As Pekkala trudged along, he looked out over the crooked ranks of gravestones. Some bore the tilted cross of the Orthodox Church, others were topped by ancient weeping angels made of concrete. The oldest were nothing more than blunted slabs of stone, leaning at odd angles like the teeth of hags.

Pekkala could not see any sign of a command post. Just as he was beginning to wonder if Colonel Gorchakov had already moved on, he noticed a soldier emerge from the stone hut of a family mausoleum and disappear underground to where a bunker had been dug among the bones.

Pekkala found Gorchakov, a round-faced man with ears as fleshy as the petals of an orchid, sitting on a stone bench inside the mausoleum. Built into the walls were niches for coffins. Some of these were still in place, tassels of old black ribbon knotted to the brass carrying handles. Other coffins had been carried outside and left in a heap. Bones and tattered clothes lay scattered in the mud. Men from the Glavpur staff were sleeping in the empty spaces, using greatcoats for blankets and their helmets as pillows.

Gorchakov sat behind a small collapsible table. In front of him stood an opened tin of
tushonka
ration meat encased in a frog spawn of gelatine, and an almost empty bottle of home-made alcohol called
samahonka
. ‘Pekkala?’ asked Gorchakov, busily scooping out the greyish-red meat with his fingers and packing it into his mouth.

‘Yes, Comrade Colonel.’

‘It is an honour to meet you, Inspector.’ He picked up the bottle and held it out. ‘May I offer you a drink?’ he asked, his lips shining with grease.

Pekkala eyed the cloudy dregs of
samahonka
. ‘Later, perhaps.’

The colonel shrugged and drank off the last of the alcohol, his tongue writhing like a bloated leech around the bottle’s mouth. Then he tossed the empty container through the doorway. With a dull, soft thump, the bottle fell among the gravestones. ‘Now what it says here . . .’ he began thrashing around amongst some papers on his table, eventually snatching up the pulpy yellow form of an incoming radio message . . . ‘is that I am to provide you with a means of reaching the Catherine Palace which is, as of two days ago, no longer under our control.’

‘That is correct.’

Gorchakov nodded as he set aside the message and began scooping out another clump of meat. ‘Just you?’

‘No. One other. A woman.’

Gorchakov paused, his fingers wedged into the can of
tushonka
. ‘A woman?’

‘Is that going to make your job more difficult?’ asked Pekkala.

‘Not necessarily.’ Gorchakov sucked a shred of meat from between his teeth. ‘A woman is good to have along. They hesitate before they shoot a woman.’

Gorchakov pulled his fingers out of the can, licked the oil off his thumb and wiped his hands with a dirty handkerchief. ‘I can transport you as far as the front line. After that, you must continue on foot. You’ll have to keep off the main roads, which means you’ll need a guide to get you there.’

‘I am familiar with some of the terrain,’ said Pekkala.

‘It’s not a question of terrain,’ replied Gorchakov. ‘It’s a question of knowing who controls it.’ He got up and walked over to one of the alcoves, where an army doctor lay sleeping. ‘What happened to that soldier who wandered into town last night, the one you found lying outside the field hospital?’

The doctor’s eyes fluttered open. ‘I brought him back here.’

‘What is his name?’

‘Stefanov, I think. He was in that anti-aircraft battery we accidentally shelled at Janusk.’

‘Don’t remind me about that!’ snapped Gorchakov. ‘Just tell me where he is now.’

With bleary eyes, the doctor looked around. ‘There!’ he aimed one stubby finger out into the cemetery.

Pekkala and Gorchakov walked to the doorway of the Mausoleum.

‘Rifleman Stefanov!’ the colonel shouted at a hunched, dishevelled figure, whose clothes were pasted to his body by a mixture of blood and dirt. Perched upon one of the coffins which had been evicted from the mausoleum‚ the man seemed oblivious to everything around him.

That morning, Stefanov had woken up beside the body of his friend‚ whose skin had turned the colour of an old cedar shingle left out too long in the sun. Slowly, as if he were rising from the fog of anaesthetic, Stefanov’s consciousness returned to the place where the pain becomes real. Morning sun shone brassy on the dew-slick cobblestones. It was cold and the food wagon had gone. Struggling to his feet, Stefanov drank the rain which had collected in his mess tin.

A man appeared in the doorway, wearing a greatcoat against the morning chill. It was the doctor Stefanov had seen the night before. ‘We are pulling out,’ said the doctor. ‘There isn’t enough transport to move the wounded. They will be left behind.’ He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a silver cigarette case with a hammer and sickle engraved on the front. ‘Can you walk?’ he asked.

‘Yes, Comrade Doctor.’

‘Then I suggest you come with me.’ He touched a small green stone set into the side of the case and opened it, revealing a neat row of cigarettes. The doctor did not offer one to Stefanov. ‘A squad of Frontier Police arrived in Chertova two hours ago. Now that they have no frontier left to guard, they are being used as blocking units, rounding up stragglers and deserters. You know what they’ll do if they find you.’ The doctor placed a cigarette in his mouth but did not light it.

‘I am not a straggler‚’ protested Stefanov. ‘I am the only one left!’

‘They will not care about your reasons.’ The cigarette wagged between his lips. ‘Leave your companion here. He will only slow you down.’ With that, he set off walking towards the cemetery. A moment later, a white puff of smoke rose from the man’s head and his arm swung down to his side, the lit cigarette pinched between his fingers.

Stefanov stared down at Barkat. The rain had pooled in his eye sockets. All they had been through together in the past months flickered through Stefanov’s mind, as if a pack of playing cards were being shuffled before his eyes. The pictures vanished as abruptly as they had appeared and suddenly he was back in the town of Chertova, surprised to feel his heart still beating in his chest.

As Stefanov ran to catch up with the doctor, he was already carrying the memory of Barkat, like a body on a stretcher, down a long dark corridor towards the ossuary in his mind where others lay whose paths had crossed his own, their lifeless faces shimmering like opals.

‘Stefanov!’ bellowed Gorchakov. ‘Have you gone deaf?’

Stefanov raised his head. ‘Colonel?’

‘Get over here.’

Stefanov shambled over to Gorchakov and saluted. Dried mud clung like fish scales to his boots. His eyes fell on Pekkala. It can’t be, Stefanov thought.

‘Listen to me,’ said Gorchakov. ‘You just came from the Catherine Palace, didn’t you?’

‘I was there, Comrade Colonel, but it was several days ago.’

Stefanov continued to stare at Pekkala. ‘My eyes are playing tricks on me,’ he murmured. ‘I could have sworn you were . . .’

‘Say hello to the Emerald Eye,’ said Gorchakov.

Stefanov opened his mouth but no sound came out. Suddenly, he was thrown back through time to that day when he stood with his father on the fence by the compost heap at Tsarskoye Selo. Solemnly‚ he bowed his head towards Pekkala. ‘I am the son of Agripin Dobrushinovich Stefanov, the gardener at Tsarskoye Selo.’

‘Never mind that!’ growled Gorchakov. ‘Do you know where the enemy has concentrated its forces between here and Catherine Palace?’

‘I cannot say for certain, Comrade Colonel.’

‘But you crept right through their lines last night.’ Gorchakov turned to Pekkala. ‘And carrying a dead man on his back. At least, that’s what I heard.’

‘It’s true I made it through their lines,’ stammered the rifleman. ‘But I was just lucky. That’s all.’

‘Luck is worth plenty out here,’ Gorchakov told him, ‘and since you’ve done it once, it shouldn’t be much trouble doing it again.’

‘Doing what, Comrade Colonel?’

‘You will be guiding the Inspector back.’

‘Back? You mean to the Catherine Palace?’

‘That is what I said.’

Stefanov looked from one man to the other, certain that he must have misunderstood. ‘Comrades, the Fascists have reached Tsarskoye Selo. We can’t go back.’

‘Gather up your things,’ Gorchakov replied matter of factly, ‘and be ready to go in five minutes.’

‘I have no things, Comrade Colonel.’

Gorchakov reached out and skewered a finger against Stefanov’s chest, as if he meant to bore a hole into his heart. ‘Then you are ready now!’

As the colonel’s order finally sank in, Stefanov’s first reaction was to turn and run away. What prevented him from doing so was not the fear of summary execution at the hands of Gorchakov’s men, but rather the presence of Inspector Pekkala, at whose side he felt a peculiar assurance that no harm could come to him.

Now Pekkala turned to Stefanov. ‘Before the Germans attacked, did you go inside the Catherine Palace?’

‘We had orders not to trespass,’ began Stefanov.

‘That’s not what he’s asking,’ barked Gorchakov. ‘What he wants to know is if you went inside, not whether you had permission to do so.’

‘Yes,’ admitted Stefanov. ‘I went inside the palace, but I did not take anything. I swear!’

‘Do you know where the Amber Room is located?’ asked Pekkala.

The words shot through Stefanov’s brain. He remembered what his father had said about Pekkala being conjured from its walls by the god-like powers of the Tsar. So many times he had envisaged the man who stood before him now materialising from the fiery collage on the walls of that room, that he no longer knew for certain whether it was something he had imagined or whether he had somehow glimpsed a moment which lay beyond the boundaries of his life. ‘I know where it is, Inspector.’

‘And did you go in there?’ demanded Gorchakov. He had no idea why Pekkala would be interested in the Amber Room, but he nevertheless felt that he should be a part of this interrogation, and so the colonel fixed upon his face an expression of total awareness.

‘I did.’

‘And what did you find?’ asked Pekkala.

‘Nothing, Inspector. The room was empty. They were all empty, except for picture frames and pieces of broken furniture. So, you see,’ he tried to reason with them, ‘there can be no point in going back.’

‘What you have just told us,’ said Pekkala, ‘is all the reason we need.’

Turning away from the bewildered rifleman, Gorchakov addressed Pekkala. ‘Your ride will take you to the front, where you will rendezvous with Captain Leontev. He has been informed of the situation. He will do what he can to get you through the lines. But you must hurry. The Germans will be here in a few hours. We are falling back to a new defensive line.’

Leaving the town, they drove by the old schoolhouse which had been converted into a field hospital just as a truck pulled up at the main gate. The canvas flap was thrown back. A squad of Frontier Guards, with distinctive blue-green bands on their caps, piled out into the muddy street and made their way into the schoolhouse.

Stefanov remembered what the doctor had told him – how the wounded could not be moved. He saw the flash of the first shot, lighting up one of the rooms on the first floor, and then the building slid out of view behind them.

They passed ramshackle houses at the edge of Chertova. Peeking through a tear in the truck’s tarpaulin roof, Pekkala saw women in headscarves, wearing blue-and-white-striped dresses like the cloth of mattress covers. The women stared at the truck as it sped by, their eyes filled with contempt now that the army was abandoning them to their fate.