The Red Coffin (6 page)

They were out in open country now, the Emka’s engine roaring contentedly as Kirov raced along the dusty Moscow Highway.

‘Do you think I have made a mistake?’ asked Pekkala.

‘A mistake with what, Inspector?’ asked Kirov, glancing at Pekkala in the rear-view mirror before turning his eyes back to the road.

‘Staying here. In Russia. I had a chance to leave and turned it down.’

‘Your work here is important,’ said Kirov. ‘Why do you think I asked to work with you, Inspector?’

‘I judged that to be your own business.’

‘It’s because every night when I lie down to sleep, I know I have done something that really matters. How many people can honestly say that?’

Pekkala did not reply. He wondered if Kirov was right, or whether, in agreeing to work for Stalin, he had compromised every ideal for which he’d ever stood.

Grey clouds hung just above the treetops.

As they neared the Nagorski facility, Pekkala looked out at a tall metal fence which stretched along one side of the road. The fence seemed to go on forever. It was twice the height of a man, topped by a second stage of fencing which jutted out at an angle towards the road and was lined
with four strands of barbed wire. Beyond the wire grew an unkempt tangle of forest, rising from the poor and marshy soil.

The monotony of this structure was broken only by occasional black metal signs which had been bolted to the fence. Stencilled on each sign, in dull yellow paint, was a jawless skull and crossbones.

‘Seems pretty secure so far,’ remarked Kirov.

But Pekkala wasn’t so certain. One intimidating sign and a layer of wire which could have been cut through with a set of household pliers did not fill him with confidence.

Finally, they came to a gate. A wooden guard shack, barely big enough for one person, stood on the other side of the wire. It was raining now, and droplets lay like silver coins upon the shack’s tar-paper roof.

Kirov brought the car to a stop. He sounded the horn.

Immediately, a man came tumbling out of the shack. He wore a rough-cut army tunic and was strapping on a plain leather belt, weighed down by a heavy leather holster. Hurriedly, he unlocked the gate, sliding back a metal bolt as thick as his wrist, and swung it open.

Kirov rolled the car forward, until it stood adjacent with the guard shack.

Pekkala rolled down his window.

‘Are you the doctors?’ asked the man in a breathless voice. ‘I wasn’t expecting you so soon.’

‘Doctors?’ asked Pekkala.

The man’s dull eyes grew suddenly sharp. ‘If you aren’t doctors, then what do you want here?’

Pekkala reached inside his pocket for his ID.

The guard drew his revolver and aimed it at Pekkala’s face.

Pekkala froze.

‘Slowly,’ said the guard.

Pekkala withdrew his pass book.

‘Hold it up so I can see it,’ said the guard.

Pekkala did as he was told.

The pass book was the size of a man’s outstretched hand, dull red in colour, with an outer cover made from fabric-covered cardboard in the manner of an old school text book. The Soviet state seal, cradled in its two bound sheaves of wheat, had been emblazoned on the front. Inside, in the top left-hand corner, a photograph of Pekkala had been attached with a heat seal, cracking the emulsion of the photograph. Beneath that, in pale bluish-green letters, were the letters NKVD and a second stamp indicating that Pekkala was on Special Assignment for the government. The particulars of his birth, his blood group, and his state identification number filled up the right-hand page.

Most government pass books contained only those two pages, but in Pekkala’s, a third page had been inserted. Printed on canary yellow paper with a red border around the edge, were the following words:

Although this special insert was known officially as a Classified Operations Permit, it was more commonly referred to as a Shadow Pass. With it, a man could appear and disappear at will within the wilderness of regulations that controlled the state. Fewer than a dozen of these Shadow Passes were known to exist. Even within the ranks of the NKVD, most people had never seen one.

Rain flicked at the pass book, darkening the paper.

The guard squinted to read the words. It took a moment for him to grasp what he was looking at. Then he looked at the gun in his hand as if he had no idea how he had come to be holding it. ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled, hurriedly replacing the weapon in its holster.

‘Why would you think we were doctors?’ asked Pekkala.

‘There has been an accident,’ explained the guard.

‘What happened?’

The guard shrugged. ‘I couldn’t tell you. When the facility called me here at the guard house about half an hour ago, all they said was that a doctor would be arriving soon and to let him through without delay. Whatever it is, I’m sure Colonel Nagorski has the situation under control.’ The guard paused. ‘Listen, are you really Inspector Pekkala?’

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ asked Pekkala.

‘It’s just …’ The guard smiled awkwardly, scratching his forehead with his thumbnail, ‘I wasn’t sure you really existed.’

‘Do we have your permission to proceed?’ asked Pekkala.

‘Of course!’ The guard stood back and waved them forward with a sweep of his arm, like a man clearing breadcrumbs off a table.

Kirov put the car in gear and drove on.

For several minutes, the Emka travelled on the long, straight road with the facility nowhere in sight.

‘This place really is in the middle of nowhere,’ muttered Kirov.

Pekkala grunted in agreement. He squinted up at the trees, which seemed to stoop over the car as if curious to see who was inside.

Then, up ahead, they saw where the woods had been cut back around a group of hunched and flat-roofed brick buildings.

As they pulled into a dirt courtyard, the door to one of the smaller buildings swung open and a man dashed out, making straight towards them. Like the guard, he wore a military uniform. By the time he reached the Emka, he was already out of breath.

Pekkala and Kirov got out of the car.

‘I am Captain Samarin,’ wheezed the NKVD man. He had black, Asiatic-looking hair, thin lips and deep-set eyes. ‘It’s this way, Doctor,’ he panted. ‘You’ll need your medical bag.’

‘We are not doctors,’ explained Pekkala.

Samarin was flustered. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘What is your business here?’

‘I am Inspector Pekkala, of the Bureau of Special Operations, and this is Major Kirov. Colonel Nagorski was kind enough to offer us a tour of the facility.’

‘I’m afraid that a tour is out of the question, Inspector,’ replied Samarin, ‘but I would be glad to show you why.’

Samarin led them to the edge of what looked at first glance to be a huge half-drained lake filled with large puddles of dirty water. In the middle of it, sunk almost to the top of its tracks in the mud, lay one of Nagorski’s tanks, a large white number 3 painted on its side. Two men stood beside the tank, their shoulders hunched against the rain.

‘So that is the T-34,’ said Pekkala.

‘It is,’ confirmed Samarin, ‘and this place,’ he waved his hand across the sea of mud, ‘is what we call the proving ground. This is where the machines are tested.’

The rain was falling harder now, pattering on the dead leaves in the nearby woods so that the air filled with a hissing sound. The smell of the damp earth hung heavy in the air and the solid mass of clouds, like a blind man’s eye rolled around to white, encased the dome of sky above them.

‘Where is Nagorski?’ asked Pekkala.

Samarin pointed at the men beside the tank.

The huddled figures were too far away for Pekkala to be able to see which one of them was the Colonel.

Pekkala turned to Kirov. ‘Wait here,’ he said. Then, without another word, he stepped forward and slid down the steep embankment. He arrived at the end of the slope on his back, his clothes and hands plastered with slime. The brownish-yellow ooze stood out sharply against the black of his coat. As
Pekkala rose to his feet, dirty water poured out of his sleeves. He took one step towards the tank before realising that one of his shoes had come off. Gouging it out of the clay, Pekkala perched on one leg like a heron and jammed his foot back into the shoe before continuing on his way.

After several minutes of wading from one flooded crater to the next, Pekkala arrived at the tank. The closer he came, the larger the machine appeared, until at last he stood before the tank. Even though it was half buried in the mud, the T-34 still towered over him.

Pekkala glanced at the two dishevelled men. Both were as plastered in filth as he was. One wore what had once been a white lab coat. The other had a brown wool coat with a fur collar which was also painted with mud. But neither of them was Nagorski.

‘Are you the doctor?’ asked the man in the filthy lab coat. He had a big, square face, with a thick crop of bristly grey hair.

Pekkala explained who he was.

‘Well, Inspector Pekkala,’ said the grey-haired man, spreading his arms wide, ‘welcome to the mad house.’

‘An investigator already,’ quipped the other, a short, frail-looking man with a complexion so pale that his skin looked like mother-of-pearl. ‘You people don’t waste any time.’

‘Where is the Colonel?’ asked Pekkala. ‘Is he hurt?’

‘No, Inspector,’ the grey-haired man replied. ‘Colonel Nagorski is dead.’

‘Dead?’ shouted Pekkala. ‘How?’

The men exchanged glances. They seemed reluctant to speak.

‘Where is he?’ demanded Pekkala. ‘In the tank?’

It was the grey-haired man who finally explained. ‘Colonel Nagorski is not in the tank. Colonel Nagorski is under the tank.’

His companion pointed at the ground. ‘See for yourself.’

Now, just beside the T-34’s track, Pekkala noticed a cluster of fingertips; pale dimples rising just above the surface of the water. As his eyes struggled to see into the murky water, he spotted a leg, visible only from the knee down. At the end of this limb, which seemed to have been partially torn from the body, Pekkala could make out a distorted black shoe. It appeared to have split at all its seams, as if forced on someone with a foot much too large for the shoe. ‘That is Nagorski?’ he asked.

‘What’s left of him,’ replied the grey-haired man.

No matter how many times Pekkala looked down upon the dead, the first sight of a corpse always stunned him. It was as if his mind could not bear to carry the burden of this moment and so, time after time, erased it from his brain. As a result, the initial shock never lessened in intensity.

What struck Pekkala was not how different the dead appeared but how much alike bodies became, no matter if they were man or woman, old or young, when the life had left their bodies. The same terrible stillness surrounded them, the same dull eyes and, eventually, the same piercing sweet smell. Some nights, he would wake with the stench of the dead flooding his nostrils. Staggering to the sink, he would wash his face and scrub his hands until the knuckles bled but still the smell remained, as if those corpses lay about the floor beside his bed.

Pekkala crouched down. Reaching out, he touched Nagorski’s fingertips, his own hand forming a reflection of
the one which lay submerged beneath the muddy water. The image of Nagorski returned to him, blustery and sweating in the interrogation room of the Lubyanka jail. There had seemed to be something indestructible about him. Now Pekkala felt the cold skin of the dead man radiating up through his arm, as if his own life were being drained out through his pores. He pulled his hand away and rose to his feet, thoughts already turning to the work that lay ahead. ‘Who are you two?’ he asked the men.

‘I am Professor Ushinsky,’ explained the one with the grey hair, ‘responsible for developing armaments here at the facility. And this,’ he gestured to the man in the brown coat, ‘is Professor Gorenko.’

‘I am the drive train specialist,’ explained Gorenko. He kept his hands inside his pockets. His shoulders were trembling with the cold.

‘How did this happen?’ asked Pekkala.

‘We aren’t sure.’ Gorenko tried to wipe some of the mud from his coat but succeeded only in smearing it into the wool. ‘This morning, when we reported for work, Nagorski said he would be working on Number 3.’ With knuckles blue from cold, he rapped on the side of the tank. ‘This is Number 3,’ he said.

‘The Colonel said he would be working by himself,’ added Ushinsky.

‘Was that unusual?’

‘No,’ replied Ushinsky. ‘The Colonel often carried out tests on his own.’

‘Tests? You mean the tank is not finished yet?’

Both men shook their heads.

‘There are seven complete machines at the facility. Each one has been equipped with slightly different mechanisms, engine configurations and so on. They are constantly being tested and compared to each other. Eventually, we will standardise the pattern. Then the T-34 will go into mass production. Until then, the Colonel wanted to keep everything as secret as possible.’

‘Even from you?’

‘From everyone, Inspector,’ replied Gorenko. ‘Without exception.’

‘At what point did you realise that something had gone wrong?’

‘When I stepped outside the main assembly plant.’ Ushinsky nodded towards the largest of the facility buildings. ‘We call it the Iron House. It’s where all the parts for the tanks are stored. There’s so much metal in there, I’m surprised the whole structure hasn’t sunk beneath the ground. Before I went outside, I’d been working on the final drive mechanism. The single straight reduction gears have armoured mountings at each side of the tail …’