Red Moth (24 page)

‘Engel!’ Churikova pointed at a man who had just emerged from the north entrance of the palace and was now heading down the steps towards the gardens.

‘Are you sure?’ Pekkala demanded. ‘You must be absolutely certain.’

‘Yes.’ There was no hesitation in her voice.

Pekkala snatched up his rifle and turned to Stefanov. ‘If we’re not at the cottage by dark, your orders are to return to the Russian lines and to send word to Comrade Stalin that the mission has been a failure.’

Stefanov nodded in reply. Then, without a word, he vanished among the trees, heading for the Pensioners’ Stable.

As Pekkala and Churikova made their way towards the Catherine Palace, the lieutenant out in front with her arms above her head as if Pekkala were escorting a prisoner, they passed between the tall, leafy hedges of the Gribok Kurtina. Beyond the Gribok, they crossed over the Chinese Bridge, its iron railings wrenched into beckoning fingers where bullets had cut through the metal.

A cool autumn breeze blew in off the still, green water of the Great Pond, smelling of weeds and decay.

On the other side of the bridge, wounded German soldiers lay in the shade of a giant oak tree. A few were talking or writing letters. Others lay wax-faced and staring at the sky. Many of the stretchers were covered with grey army blankets, showing the outlines of men who had died before the doctors could get to them. Nearby stood a large white tent with a red cross painted on the canvas. Every few minutes, medical assistants in blood-spattered white aprons appeared from the tent, picked up a stretcher and carried a soldier inside. A noise of sawing filtered through the canvas walls.

Arriving at the steps of the palace, they trod over a stream of blood, which had trickled down the main staircase, staining the grey stone as if it were the shadow of a lightning bolt. Soldiers clattered past him, heel irons sparking on the stone. Pekkala heard them speaking Finnish and remembered what Leontev had said about the presence of foreign volunteers among the German troops.

On the balcony, beside the main entrance, sat a squad of SS infantry, still in their palm-leaf-patterned camouflage smocks and black leather combat harnesses. Mauser rifles leaned against the walls beside them and their helmets lay upturned on the ground.

These soldiers all wore the same long stare of total exhaustion and, at first, they barely seemed to notice the military policeman or his prisoner. It was only when they realised that Pekkala’s prisoner was a woman that a few smiles creased their gunsmoke-blackened faces.

Having climbed the staircase, Pekkala and Churikova passed through an open door at the base of the Grand Staircase. Nailed against one bullet-pocked wall, the lids of wooden ammunition crates had been converted into direction signs.

Directly in front of him stood a marble pedestal, at the base of which lay the shattered remnants of a large sixteenth-century Venetian vase and a puddle of water that the vase had once contained.

For a moment, Pekkala could only stare in dismay at the damage all around him. Then, coming to his senses, he pushed Churikova forward. They moved on through the first and second Exhibition Halls, whose bare walls chanted back the echo of their footsteps.

Arriving at the Great Hall, Pekkala found its vast space empty except for a portable desk set just inside the front entrance. The desk looked absurdly small in this room, as did the man who sat behind it, the dull silver chevron of an army corporal stitched on to his sleeve. He appeared to be adrift there, like a man on a life raft in the middle of a flat calm sea. The corporal’s hair was neatly groomed, hair parted severely at an angle across his scalp. When he caught sight of Pekkala’s insignia, he stood, crashed his heels together and saluted. As he did so, the man’s gaze drifted to Churikova and then back to Pekkala.

Speaking in German, Pekkala told the man, ‘I am delivering this prisoner to Gustav Engel.’ He had not spoken the language in some time and, not entirely trusting that what he had said was correct, Pekkala accompanied his words with a gesture towards Churikova and then down the hallway towards the Amber Room.

Pekkala’s accent seemed to peck against the corporal as if they had been hailstones. The salute and the stiff back disappeared. ‘Another foreign volunteer!’ he remarked. ‘This army is becoming a tower of Babel. What are you? Dutch? Dane?’

‘Finn.’

The corporal acknowledged with a grunt. ‘And you are bringing her to Obersturmbannführer Engel?’

Another nod.

‘What is the purpose of this?’

‘She is a woman,’ replied Pekkala. ‘What more do you need to know?’

With a muttered comment about the privileges of rank, the corporal sat back down at his desk, filled out a pass on a pad of green paper, then tore off the sheet and handed it over.

Throughout this exchange, Churikova had remained with her hands raised, staring at the floor.

As the corporal returned to his paperwork, Pekkala grasped Churikova by the arm and led her out of the room.

They passed through the Courtiers in Attendance Dining Room, which was empty except for two large mirrors, miraculously unbroken in spite of bullet craters in the plaster on either side of the frames.

Beyond that lay the dining room of Empress Maria Fyodorovna. It too had been gutted except for the ceiling mural, portraying the death of Alexander of Macedonia. Neck craned back as she walked, Churikova stared at the sprawling figures, pale arms outstretched towards the wild-eyed horses, who reared as if they meant to tear themselves from two dimensions into three.

From there, through the open doors, they moved into the Crimson and Green dining rooms, with their bands of red and emerald tinsel reaching as high as the ceiling. As in the Empress’s dining room, only the ceiling murals remained, as well as wooden floor mosaics, streaming like sunbursts from the centres of the rooms.

All around Pekkala, the ghosts of the Romanovs drifted in their finery, but as he halted outside the door to the Amber Room, these phantoms retreated back into the darkness of his mind.

Pekkala opened the door and walked in, pushing his prisoner ahead of him.

Wearily, Kirov trudged up the five flights of stairs to his office.

He had decided not to go home, as Stalin had advised. The thought of sitting around in his flat in the middle of the day made him restless. He made up his mind to keep working instead. There was plenty of paperwork to be done.

Disordered fragments from the night before flickered to life behind Kirov’s eyes. In the middle of this jumbled slide show, Kirov heard again the voice of Serge Bakhturin threatening to kill Gustav Engel with his bare hands, as if an echo of that moment, reverberating lazily across the rooftops of Moscow, had finally reached his ears.

Kirov puzzled over Bakhturin’s words. Why would Serge want to kill Engel? Had the man failed to live up to some part of their bargain? Had Serge not been paid? Or had the traitor himself been betrayed?

It was likely he would never know.

Ahead of him, a soldier plodded up the stairs, weighed down with a heavy pack which was crusted with mud.

Kirov wondered from what battlefield the man had just returned. He had never seen the man before, and thought perhaps he was the son of the old lady who lived on the third floor. But the soldier continued on past the third floor and now Kirov asked himself if it might be one of the lawyers who had maintained an office on the fourth until they were called up by the Army the year before. But he kept going past the fourth floor, too and eventually stopped right outside Kirov’s door.

‘Who are you looking for?’ asked Kirov.

The soldier turned, shrugged off the pack and dropped it on the floor. From his pocket, he fished out a piece of paper. ‘The name they gave me is Major Kirov, Special Operations.’

‘I am Major Kirov.’

The soldier nudged at the pack with the toe of his boot. ‘I have orders to deliver this to you.’

‘But that’s not my pack.’

‘It belongs to someone named Lieutenant Churikova and was salvaged from the wreck of a train that got bombed not long ago on its way to the front. It got sent to the Wrangel barracks here in Moscow. That’s where I work, in the supply depot.’

Kirov thought back to the night he and Pekkala had fetched Churikova from the train station, and how she had complained about not being able to retrieve her rucksack from the transport.

‘The pack arrived along with a load of other equipment which belonged to her battalion,’ continued the soldier. ‘It was all due to be reclaimed and re-issued, since there weren’t any survivors. At least, that’s what we thought. But then we received a message that this lieutenant wasn’t on the train when it got hit. Only her pack was on board. I called headquarters and they gave us this place as her forwarding address.’ Having completed his task, the soldier tramped downstairs and out into the street.

Kirov lifted the rucksack by its canvas straps, brought it inside and dumped it in the middle of the floor. With a sigh, he collapsed into the old chair from the Hotel Metropol and allowed his gaze to drift around the room, as if to reassure himself that everything was still in its proper place. He studied the potted plants on the window sills, the clutter on Pekkala’s desk and the battered brass samovar balanced on the stove. When his focus returned at last to the muddy rucksack on the floor, he realised there was something leaking out of it and into the carpet beneath.

Rising grumpily from his chair, he took hold of the pack and untied the drawstring which held it closed. The leaking was caused by a bottle containing a clear liquid, which he lifted out and set upright on the floor. The bottle had been sealed with a cork, which had then been covered with a coating of red wax. The wax seal had broken and the cork appeared to have been damaged, probably when the soldier dropped it on the floor. Now only half of the bottle’s contents remained. The rest of it had soaked whatever else was in the pack. Kirov touched the liquid, dabbed his fingertips against his tongue and realised it was vodka.

Maybe I will have a drink, he thought to himself. Those were Stalin’s orders, after all, and I’ll call Elizaveta, too. No. It’s too late. I’ll have a drink and then I’ll go to her flat. I’ll bring the bottle. By the time the lieutenant returns, I’ll have another one waiting for her.

Before he left, Kirov decided to empty the contents of the pack on to the floor, in order to give whatever had been soaked a chance to dry. It was a sad little collection – some spare clothes, a small canvas bag containing a toothbrush, nail scissors, and a standard manual of regulations issued to all Red Army officers, whose pages had absorbed much of the spilled vodka. Several pieces of paper had been stuffed between the covers of the manual, which were made of thin cardboard overlaid with green canvas. Kirov shook out the extra sheets of paper, in order to give them a better chance of drying. One of these sheets was a note from the director of the Kremlin Art Museum, Fabian Golyakovsky, granting Lieutenant Churikova access to both the archives and the laboratory of the museum, while the rest were travel passes from the Wrangel barracks, a pink requisition slip for a pair of 6x30 binoculars, and a map of the Moscow Underground.

Kirov poured himself a measure of the vodka, using the brass-framed glasses he and Pekkala normally reserved for tea. He was just about to drink it down in one gulp when he noticed that several ants had emerged from beneath the art museum document and were now crawling across the sheet of paper.

‘That’s all I need,’ he announced, ‘to have an office infested with insects!’ Setting down the glass of vodka, he carefully picked up the paper and went to the window, ready to shake off the ants into the gutter outside. The ants seemed to be multiplying as they swarmed across the page. He was just beginning to wonder whether he ought to sling the whole pack out the window when suddenly he stopped and stared at the paper.

They weren’t ants. They were numbers, materialising on the back side of the page, as if scribbled by an invisible hand. The numbers were appearing only where the vodka had soaked the paper. The rest of the page remained blank.

Baffled, Kirov fetched the bottle, set the page down on his desk and doused the rest of the page with the remaining vodka. After a few seconds, more ghostly numbers began to appear, until the whole back side of the document was covered in what appeared to be some kind of graph. One side of the graph was represented by a small circle, while the other had a symbol which resembled the Cyrillic letter for C or the letter U from the Latin alphabet, but instead of having the tail on the right hand side of the letter, the tail was on the left side.

Half an hour later, with the letter from Fabian Golyakovsky, still damp with vodka, clutched between his fingertips, Kirov arrived at the Kremlin Museum. 

We’re too late, Pekkala thought to himself. The words pulsed like a migraine in his skull.

He stood beside Lieutenant Churikova in the doorway of the Amber Room. Strewn across the floor in front of them were long strips of paper which had been torn from the walls, revealing the amber beneath. Heaped beside these giant scrolls were shreds of muslin cloth which had been added as a protective layer over the panels.

For a moment, neither of them spoke or moved. They stared at the amber-filled panels‚ mesmerised by haloes of gold, brown and yellow which gleamed in the evening sun that streamed through the open windows.

Their trance was broken when a voice called out, harsh and questioning, demanding to know who they were.

Out of the cloud of honey-coloured light, a man strode up to Pekkala. He was tall, with brown hair greying at the temples and nervous brown eyes, whose gaze seemed to swarm over the two strangers like a cloud of tiny insects. ‘I gave orders to be left alone!’ he shouted.

Now that Pekkala’s eyes had grown accustomed to the glare, he could see that this man was the only occupant of the room.

‘Professor Engel,’ said Churikova.

There was a pause.

In an instant, the man’s expression transformed from anger to astonishment. ‘Polina? Polina Churikova?’

‘Yes, Professor.’

‘It
is
you!’ spluttered Engel. ‘I thought the war had separated us for good. As you can see for yourself‚ this is a day of many miracles!’

‘I came to find you,’ she said.

‘But how did you know I was here?’

‘I knew you would come to the palace as soon as you possibly could.’

‘Of course!’ he laughed, ‘and I could have guessed I’d find you here as well. Look at us now, in the service of two different masters. But that cannot stand between us. It was never our choice to make. We will never be enemies, because we are bound by an even greater purpose.’ The professor seemed completely overwhelmed. A tremor of ecstasy filled his voice. ‘Even a war could not keep us away,’ he called out, turning and raising his arms in supplication to the vast mosaic of amber before him, ‘from the thing we love most in this world. This is the happiest day of my life‚ and I thank God that you are here to share it with me.’

In the moment that Engel turned, Pekkala’s eyes met Churikova’s. It was only for an instant, but long enough for Pekkala to communicate to her that the task ahead of them might be easier than he’d thought.

‘But how did you manage it, Polina?’ Engel spun around to face her once again, grasping her hands in his. ‘How did you get away from them?’

As Churikova recounted her alibi of desertion from the ranks of the Red Army, Engel stared at her intently. The professor appeared so entranced by Churikova’s presence that he barely listened to her words. She was halfway through explaining about the artworks hidden on the estate, when Engel interrupted. ‘Forgive me, Polina! You must be cold. You must be hungry. How terrifying it must have been for you as you made your way alone to this place, surrounded by soldiers who might easily have taken your life instead of taking you prisoner. You are a brave woman, and such bravery will not go unrewarded. But I understand why you had to do it. The thought that these panels might be left to rot in their makeshift hiding place is not only unbearable, it shows the depth of ignorance of those who claim to be its guardians. There is nothing to worry about now. Hitler has taken a particular interest in the Amber Room. He considers it, as I do, to be a German work of art, and obscenely out of place in Stalin’s Russia. That is why he has given his chief architect, Albert Speer, instructions to include a special gallery in the Linz Museum where the Amber Room could be displayed. And, to me, he gave the order that I was to locate it at all costs, even if I had to travel the length and breadth of Siberia to find it. When I first heard the radio broadcasts about the panels having been moved to safety somewhere in the Ural mountains, I imagined I might spend the rest of my life hunting for the amber. That was why, when I was back in Königsberg, I ordered the construction of special transport cases for each of the panels. They are lined in zinc, with built-in handles, shockproof and waterproof. I even had wheels attached to the cases in the event that suitable carrying devices couldn’t be found once I’d arrived at the palace. I planned everything out in such detail that I could dismantle the panels and transport them by myself if I had to. In spite of Stalin’s announcement, I knew that my search had to begin here. You see, I suspected that the radio broadcast might be a hoax, but I take little consolation in the fact that I was right. As your countrymen have discovered, the panels are too fragile to be moved in their present condition.’

Up until now, Engel had been oblivious to the grizzled military policeman standing beside the lieutenant.

Realising that the sooner he left Churikova alone with the professor, the more quickly she would be able to lure him out to the cottage, Pekkala cleared his throat noisily.

His attention momentarily diverted from Churikova, Engel shot Pekkala an irritated glance. ‘This woman is now in my charge,’ he snapped. ‘You are no longer needed.’ Then, as if his words had caused Pekkala to vanish into thin air, Engel took hold of Churikova’s arm and the two of them strolled away across the room. ‘Later we will go in search of these art works you say are hidden on the estate, but for now our first task must be to find you some new clothes!’

Having left the Amber Room, quietly closing the door behind him, Pekkala strode out of the palace. The crash of his steel-shod boots echoed off the once-pristine floors. The weight of the canister, packed with explosives, dragged against Pekkala’s spine. He was glad to know he’d never have to use it.

It was dark now.

As he had done so many times in the past, Pekkala made his way along the Dvortsovaya road, past the old Kitchen Pond and the Alexander Palace and from there along the path that would take him to his cottage by the Pensioners’ Stable. The view to his left stretched out across the Alexander Park and there were moments when it was almost possible to believe that the war had not touched Tsarskoye Selo.

This thought was wrenched from Pekkala’s mind by the thundering of hoof beats. In the next moment, he saw a dozen soldiers on horseback galloping past the arsenal monument down the long straight road towards the Parnas Gardens. He remembered what Leontev had said about the presence of an SS Cavalry Division in the area.

The breath stalled in Pekkala’s throat as he caught sight of the cottage where he had lived for more than a decade. The building did not seem to have suffered any damage, although the picket fence which once separated it from the path had been flattened by a vehicle that had veered off the road.

Rather than going in through the front door, he went around the back. The door leading into the mud room was open and past it he could see the familiar brick-red tiles of the kitchen floor. Before entering the cottage, Pekkala waited by the rain barrel, which stood beneath the gutter at the corner of the house, watching the road in case he had been followed. As he inhaled the musty smell of still water, which was both distant and familiar, Pekkala had to force himself to believe that any time at all had passed since he had last stood here.

Pekkala walked into the house. Through the closed shutters, a faint glimmer of moonlight painted zebra stripes of moonlight on the floor. He felt his way forward, fingertips skimming the walls, but had only taken a couple of steps before he felt the presence of someone standing right behind him. At the same moment, a gun appeared out of the shadows.

The blue-ringed eye of Stefanov’s rifle barrel seemed to blink as he lowered the Mauser and stepped out of the gloom. ‘Inspector,’ he whispered. ‘I had to be sure it was you.’