The Red Coffin (8 page)

He caught up with Kirov and the others on the road which led out of the facility.

‘I saw someone,’ explained Samarin, ‘hiding in one of the supply buildings, where they keep spare parts for the vehicles. I chased him out on to the road. Then he just vanished.’

‘Where are the other security guards?’ asked Pekkala.

‘There’s one stationed out at the gate. You saw him when you came in. There are only four others and they’re guarding the buildings. That is the protocol Colonel Nagorski put in place. In the event of an emergency, all buildings are locked and guarded.’

‘If this work is so important, why are there so few of you guarding this place?’

‘This isn’t a jewellery shop, Inspector,’ replied Samarin defensively. ‘The things we guard here are as big as houses and weigh about as much. You can’t just put one in your pocket and make off with it. Colonel Nagorski could have had a hundred people patrolling this place if he’d wanted it, but he said he didn’t need them. What worried the Colonel was that someone might run away with the plans for these inventions. Because of that, the fewer people wandering around this facility, the better. That’s the way he saw it.’

‘All right,’ said Pekkala, ‘the buildings are sealed. What other steps have been taken?’

‘I put in a call to NKVD headquarters in Moscow and asked for assistance. As soon as I confirmed that Colonel Nagorski had been killed, they said they would dispatch a squad of soldiers. After I sent you out into the proving ground, I received a call that the doctors had been intercepted and ordered to return to Moscow. The soldiers will be here soon, but for now it’s just us. That’s why I fetched these two,’ he gestured towards Kirov and Maximov. ‘I need all the help I can get.’

Pekkala turned to Maximov, ready to introduce himself. ‘I am …’ he began.

‘I know who you are,’ interrupted Maximov. His voice was deep and resonant, as if it emerged not from his mouth but in vibrations through his chest. As he spoke to Pekkala, he removed his cap, revealing a clean-shaven head and a wide forehead which looked as solid as the armour of Nagorski’s tank.

‘This man you saw,’ began Pekkala, turning back to Samarin. He was curious as to why they had not decided to pursue him.

‘He’s gone into the woods,’ said Samarin, ‘but he won’t last long in there.’

‘Why not?’ asked Pekkala.

‘Traps,’ replied Samarin. ‘During the construction of the facility Colonel Nagorski disappeared into those woods almost every day. No one was allowed to follow him. He dragged in slats of wood, metal pipes, rolls of wire, shovels, boxes nailed shut so that no one could see what was in them. No one knows how many traps he built.
Dozens. Maybe hundreds. Or what kind of traps, exactly. And where they are, nobody knows that either, except Colonel Nagorski.’

‘Why go to all that trouble?’ asked Kirov. ‘Surely …’

‘You did not know Colonel Nagorski,’ interrupted Samarin.

‘Is there really no map of where these traps were placed?’ asked Pekkala.

‘None that I’ve ever seen,’ replied Samarin. ‘Nagorski hammered small coloured discs into some of the trees. Some are blue, others red or yellow. What they mean, if they mean anything at all, only Nagorski knows.’

Squinting into the depths of the forest, Pekkala could make out some of these coloured discs, glimmering like eyes from the shadows.

A sound made them turn their heads – a series of muffled thumping sounds, somewhere lost among the trees.

‘There!’ shouted Samarin, drawing his revolver.

Something was running through the woods.

The figure moved so quickly that at first Pekkala thought it must be some kind of animal. No human could move that fast, he thought. The shape appeared and disappeared, bounding like a deer through the brambled thickets which grew between the trees. Then, as it leaped across a clearing, Pekkala realised it was a man.

In that moment, something snapped inside him. Pekkala knew that if they didn’t catch him now, they’d never find him in this wilderness. He had not forgotten about Nagorski’s traps, but some instinct had woken in him, overriding thoughts of
his own safety. Without a word to the others, Pekkala set off running through the woods.

‘Wait!’ screamed Samarin.

Pekkala raced among the trees, drawing his gun as he sprinted.

‘Have you gone completely mad?’ shouted Samarin.

Kirov too had joined the chase, hurdling the thickets as he struggled to catch up with Pekkala.

‘This is insane!’ roared Samarin. Then, with a shout, he lunged after them.

Brambles tore at their legs as the three men raced through the dying light.

‘There he is!’ shouted Samarin.

Pekkala’s lungs were burning. The weight of the coat hung on his shoulders and dragged against his thighs.

Samarin had overtaken him now, picking up speed as he gained on the running man. Then, suddenly, he skidded to a halt, one hand raised in warning.

Barely in time to avoid crashing into Samarin, Pekkala managed to stop. He bent double, hands on his knees, his throat raw and painful as he struggled for breath.

With twitching fingertips, Samarin pointed to a strand of wire strung across the path. It threaded through a bent nail which had been hammered into the trunk of a nearby stump. From there the wire stretched up through the leaves of a tree beside the path until at last Pekkala’s straining eyes could see where it wrapped around the handle of a Type 33 grenade, bound with threads of dried grass to a branch directly above their heads. A tug on the wire would bring it down. This movement would arm the grenade, since Type 33s – like iron
soup cans attached to a short heavy stem and wrapped with a gridded fragmentation sleeve – were normally activated by the movement of throwing them through the air.

‘We’ll keep after him,’ said Samarin, as he bent down to untie the string, ‘as soon as I’ve disarmed this thing.’

As Pekkala moved forward, he glanced up once more at the grenade. It was then he noticed that the slide cover at the top of the grenade, which should have contained the cigarette-shaped detonator, was empty. The thought that this might, somehow, have been intentional was only half-born in his mind when he heard a loud rustle in the branches above him.

He had just enough time to turn his head to look at Samarin.

Their eyes met.

A shape flashed in front of Pekkala. The speed of it brushed cold against his cheek. Then came a dull and heavy thump. Leaves flickered down around him.

Pekkala had not moved, paralysed by the closeness of whatever had swept past him, but now he forced himself to turn and look at Samarin.

At first glance, Samarin appeared to be crouched against a tree stump. His arms were thrown out to the sides, as if to steady himself. A shape, some tangling of earth and wood and weather-beaten steel, obscured his body.

It took Pekkala a moment to understand that this object was an iron pipe. It had been sawn through on a diagonal so that the end was like the needle of a huge syringe. The pipe had then been bound with vines to the trunk of a bent sapling and had been released by the weight of Samarin’s foot.

The grenade was only a diversion, drawing their gaze away from the real danger hidden in the leaves.

The sharpened pipe had struck Samarin square in the chest. Its force had thrown him back against the stump. The rotten wood had exploded and now, from that throne of dust, a rabble of shiny black ants, pincer-tailed earwigs and wood lice streamed out in confusion. The insects swarmed over Samarin’s shoulders, migrating down his arms and out along the walkways of his fingers.

Samarin was still alive. He stared straight ahead, a look of resignation on his face. Then something happened to his eyes. They became like those of a cat. And suddenly he was dead.

The rain had stopped. Through shredded clouds, beams of sunlight slanted through the trees so that the air itself appeared like molten copper.

‘Where the hell is Maximov?’ asked Kirov. ‘Why didn’t he help?’

‘Too late now,’ replied Pekkala. ‘Whoever that man was, we have lost him.’ As he stared once more at the place where the man had disappeared, it occurred to him that they might not have been chasing a human at all, but something supernatural, a creature that could drift above the ground, oblivious to the traps, drawing around itself the million tangled branches of the trees to vanish in the air.

The two men walked over to Samarin.

There was no gentle way to pry him loose. Pekkala set his boot against the dead man’s shoulder and wrenched the bar out of his chest.

Together, Kirov and Pekkala carried Samarin’s body back to the road. There, they found Maximov waiting just where they had left him.

Maximov stared at the body of Samarin. Then he raised his head and looked Pekkala in the eye, but he did not say a word.

Kirov could not contain his anger. He stalked over to Maximov, so that the two men were only an arm’s length apart. ‘Why didn’t you help us?’ he raged.

‘I know what’s out there in those woods,’ replied Maximov. His voice betrayed no emotion.

‘
He
knew!’ Kirov pointed at the body of Captain Samarin. ‘He knew and still he came with us.’

Maximov’s head turned slowly, until he was looking at Samarin’s corpse. ‘Yes, he did,’ said Maximov.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ yelled Kirov. ‘Were you afraid to take the risk?’

At this insult, Maximov seemed to shudder, as if the ground were trembling beneath his feet. ‘There are better ways to serve your country, Comrade Commissar, than by throwing your life away at the first opportunity.’

‘You can settle this later,’ said Pekkala. ‘Right now, we have company.’

An army truck with NKVD licence plates was coming down the road. The canvas covers were battened down. As it passed, the driver glanced out the side window, caught sight of Samarin, then turned to say something to someone in the passenger seat.

The truck pulled up in front of the facility. Armed men, wearing the blue-and-red peaked caps of NKVD Security
troops, jumped down on to the muddy ground and took up positions around the buildings.

An officer emerged from the cab of the truck. It was only when the officer began walking towards them that Pekkala realised it was a woman, since she wore the same clothes and cap as the men, hiding the curve of her hips and her chest.

The woman stopped in front of them, surveying the filthy disarray of their clothes. She was of medium height, with a round face and wide green eyes. ‘I am Commissar Major Lysenkova of NKVD Internal Affairs.’

As soon as her name reached his ears, Pekkala realised he had heard about this woman. She was famous for her work within the NKVD, for which most of her colleagues despised her. Commissar Lysenkova had the unenviable task of investigating crimes inside her own branch of service. In the past two years, over thirty NKVD men had gone to their deaths after being convicted of crimes investigated by Lysenkova. Within the close-knit ranks of the NKVD, Pekkala had never heard a kind word said about her. He had even heard a rumour that she denounced her own parents to the authorities, and that her whole family ended up in Siberia as a result.

Given the reputation that preceded her, Pekkala was surprised at how Lysenkova appeared in person. Her tough reputation did not seem to match the gentle angles of her face and the clothes she wore would have been too small for him by the time he was twelve years old.

‘Which one of you is Pekkala?’ she asked.

‘I am.’ Pekkala felt the stare of her luminous green eyes.

‘What has happened here?’ demanded Lysenkova, flicking a finger towards Samarin’s corpse.

Pekkala explained.

‘And you failed to catch this person?’

‘That is correct,’ admitted Pekkala.

‘I am curious to know,’ she continued, ‘how you managed to arrive at the crime scene before me, Inspector.’

‘When we set out for this place,’ replied Pekkala, ‘the crime had not yet been committed. But now that you are here, Commissar Lysenkova, I would appreciate whatever help you can give us.’

The green eyes blinked at him. ‘You seem to be confused, Inspector, about who is in charge of this investigation. This facility is under NKVD control.’

‘Very well,’ said Pekkala. ‘What do you intend to do now?’

‘I will examine Colonel Nagorski’s body myself,’ replied Lysenkova, ‘to see if I can determine the exact circumstances of his death. In the meantime, I will send guards out to patrol the main road, in case this runner makes it through the woods.’

‘What about Nagorski’s family?’ asked Pekkala.

‘His wife and son live here on the compound,’ said Maximov.

‘Do they know what has happened?’ Lysenkova asked.

‘Not yet,’ replied the bodyguard. ‘There is no phone at the house and no one has been out there since the accident.’

‘I will break the news to them,’ said Pekkala, but even as he spoke, he wondered where he’d find the words. His trade was with the dead and those who brought them to that place, not with those who had to go on living in the wake of such disaster.

Lysenkova considered this for a moment. ‘All right,’ she replied, ‘and report back to me when you’re done. But first,’ she nodded towards Samarin, ‘you can bury that.’

‘Here?’ Kirov stared at her. ‘Now?’

‘This is a secret facility,’ she answered. ‘Everything that happens here is classified, including who works here and who has the misfortune of dying in this place. Have you ever heard of the White Sea Canal, Major?’

‘Of course,’ replied Kirov.

Designed to link the White Sea and the Baltic, a distance of over 200 kilometres, the canal had been dug in the early 1930s almost entirely by convict labourers using primitive tools in some of the harshest conditions on earth. Thousands had perished. In the end, the canal proved too narrow for the cargo ships it had been designed to carry.

‘Do you know what they did with the prisoners who died on that project?’ Without waiting for a reply, Lysenkova went on. ‘Their corpses were sunk into the wet cement which made up the walls of the canal. That’s what happens to secrets in this country, Major. They get buried. So do as I tell you and put him under ground.’