by Sam Eastland
Konstantin looked from face to face, waiting for someone to explain.
It was Maximov who went to him. He put his arm around the boy, speaking in a voice too low for anyone else to hear.
Konstantin’s face turned pale. He seemed to be staring at something no one else could see, as if the ghost of his father were standing right in front of him.
Pekkala watched this, feeling a weight settle in his heart, like a man whose blood had turned to sand.
WHILE MAXIMOV DROVE MRS. NAGORSKI TO THE FACILITY, PEKKALA sat with her son at the dining table in the dacha.
The walls were covered with dozens of blueprints. Some were exploded engine diagrams. Others showed the inner workings of guns or traced the crooked path of exhaust systems. On shelves around the room lay pieces of metal, twisted fan blades, a slab of wood into which different-sized screws had been drilled. A single link of tank track lay upon the stone mantelpiece. The room did not smell like a home—of fires and cooking and soap. Instead, it reeked of machine oil and the sharply pungent ink used to make the blueprints.
The furniture was of the highest quality—walnut cabinets with diamond-paned glass fronts, leather chairs with brass nails running like machine gun belts along the seams. The table at which they sat was far too big for the cramped space of the dacha.
Pekkala knew that the Nagorski family had probably belonged to the old aristocracy. Most of these families had either fled the country during the Revolution or been swallowed up in labor camps. Only a few remained, and fewer still had held on to the relics of their former status in society. Only those who had proved themselves valuable to the government were permitted such luxuries.
Nagorski may have earned that right, but Pekkala wondered what would become of the rest of his family, now that he was gone.
Pekkala knew that there was nothing he could say. Sometimes, the best that could be done was just to keep a person company.
Konstantin stared fiercely out the window as the last purpling twilight bled into the solid black of night.
Seeing the young man so locked away inside his head, Pekkala remembered the last time he had seen his own father, that freezing January morning when he left home to enlist in the Tsar’s Finnish Regiment.
He was leaning out the window of a train as it pulled out of the station. On the platform stood his father, in a long black coat and wide-brimmed hat set squarely on his head. His mother had been too upset to accompany them to the station. His father held up one hand in a gesture of farewell. Above him, bent back like the teeth of eels, icicles hung from the station house roof.
Two years later, left to run the funeral parlor alone, the old man suffered a heart attack while dragging a body on a sled to the crematorium that he maintained some distance into the woods behind their house. The horse that usually hauled the sled had slipped on the ice that winter and was lame, so Pekkala’s father had tried to do the work himself.
The old man was found on his knees in front of the sled, hands gripping his thighs, chin sunk onto his chest. Slung across his shoulders were the leather traces normally worn by the horse for inching the sled along the narrow forest path. The way he knelt gave the impression that his father had just stopped for a moment to rest and would, at any moment, rise to his feet and go back to hauling his burden.
Although it had been his father’s wish that Pekkala enlist in the Regiment, rather than remain at home to help with the family business, Pekkala had never forgiven himself for not having been there to pick the old man up when he stumbled and fell.
Pekkala saw that same emotion on the face of this young man.
Suddenly Konstantin spoke. “Are you going to find who murdered my father?”
“I am not certain he was murdered, but if he was, I will track down whoever is responsible.”
“Find them,” said Konstantin. “Find them and put them to death.”
At that moment, headlights swept through the room as Maximov’s car pulled up beside the house. A moment later the front door opened. “Why is it so dark in here?” Mrs. Nagorski asked, as she hurried to light a kerosene lamp.
Konstantin rose sharply to his feet. “Did you see him? Is it true? Is he really dead?”
“Yes,” she replied, tears coming at last to her eyes. “It is true.”
Pekkala left them alone to grieve. He stood on the porch with Maximov, who was smoking a cigarette.
“Today is his birthday,” said Maximov. “That boy deserves a better life than this.”
Pekkala did not reply.
The smell of burning tobacco lingered in the wet night air.
PEKKALA RETURNED TO THE ASSEMBLY BUILDING, THE FLAT-ROOFED brick structure which Ushinsky had christened the Iron House. Engines hung in wooden cradles against one wall. Against the other wall, the bare metal shells of tanks balanced on iron rails, rust already forming on the welding joints, as if the steel had been sprinkled with cinnamon powder. Elsewhere, like islands in this vast warehouse, machine guns had been laid out in a row. Arching high above the work floor, metal girders held the ceiling in place. To Pekkala, an air of lifelessness hung about this place. It was as if these tanks were not pieces of the future but fragments from the distant past, like the bones of once-formidable dinosaurs waiting to be reassembled by archaeologists.
A table had been cleared off. Engine parts were strewn across the floor where NKVD men had set them hurriedly aside. On the table lay the remains of Colonel Nagorski. The bled-out tissue seemed to glow under the ruthless work lights. Lysenkova was spreading an army rain cape over Nagorski’s head, having just examined the body.
Beside her stood Kirov, the muscles drawn tight in his face. He had seen bodies before, but nothing like this, Pekkala knew.
Even Lysenkova looked upset, although she was trying hard to conceal it. “It’s impossible to say for sure,” the commissar told Pekkala, “but everything points towards an engine malfunction. Nagorski was out testing the machine on his own. He put the engine in neutral, got out to check something, and the tank must have popped into gear. He lost his footing and the tank ran over him before the engine stalled. It was an accident. That much is obvious.”
Kirov, standing behind her, slowly shook his head.
“Have you spoken to the staff here at the facility?” Pekkala asked Lysenkova.
“Yes,” she replied. “All of them are accounted for and none of them were with Nagorski at the time of his death.”
“What about the man we chased through the woods?”
“Well, whoever he is, he doesn’t work here at the facility. Given the fact that Nagorski’s death is an accident, the man you chased was likely just some hunter who made his way onto the grounds.”
“Then why did he run when he was ordered to stop?”
“If men with guns were chasing you, Inspector Pekkala, wouldn’t you run away, too?”
Pekkala ignored her question. “Would you mind if I examine the body?”
“Fine,” she said irritably. “But be quick. I am heading back to Moscow to file my report. Nagorski’s body will remain here for now. Guards will be arriving soon to make sure the corpse is not disturbed. I expect you to be gone when they arrive.”
The two men waited until Major Lysenkova had left the building.
“What did you find out?” Pekkala asked Kirov.
“What she said about the scientists is correct. They have all been accounted for by the guards at the time Nagorski died. During work hours, guards are stationed inside each of the facility buildings, which means that the scientists were also able to account for the whereabouts of the security personnel. Samarin was on his usual rounds this morning. He was seen by all of the staff at one time or another.”
“Is anyone missing?”
“No, and no one seems to have been anywhere near Nagorski when he died.” Kirov turned his attention to the rain cape, whose dips and folds crudely matched the contours of a human body. “But she’s wrong about this being an accident.”
“I a
gree,” replied Pekkala, “but how have you reached that conclusion?”
“You had better see for yourself, Inspector,” replied Kirov.
Grasping the edge of the cape, Pekkala drew it back until Nagorski’s head and shoulders were revealed. What he saw made him draw in his breath through clenched teeth.
Only a leathery mask remained of Nagorski’s face, behind which the shattered skull looked more like broken crockery than bone. He had never encountered a body as traumatized as the one which lay before him now.
“There.” Kirov pointed to a place where the inside of Nagorski’s skull had been exposed.
Gently taking hold of the dead man’s jaw, Pekkala tilted the head to one side. In the glare of the work light, a tiny splash of silver winked at him.
Pekkala reached into his pocket and brought out a bone-handled switchblade. He sprung the blade and touched the tip of it against the silver object. Lifting it from the rippled plate of bone, he eased the fleck of metal onto his palm. Now that he could see it clearly, Pekkala realized that the metal wasn’t silver. It was lead.
“What is it?” asked Kirov.
“Bullet fragment.”
“That rules out an accident.”
Removing a handkerchief from his pocket, Pekkala placed the sliver of lead in the middle and then folded the handkerchief into a bundle before returning it to his pocket.
“Could it have been suicide?” asked Kirov.
“We’ll see.” Pekkala’s focus returned to the wreckage of Nagorski’s face. He searched for an entry wound. Reaching under the head, fingers sifting through the matted hair, his fingertip snagged on a jagged edge at the base of the skull where the bullet had impacted the bone. Pressing his finger into the wound, he followed its trajectory to an exit point on the right side of the dead man’s face, where the flesh had been torn away. “This was no suicide,” said Pekkala.
“How can you be sure?” asked Kirov.
“A man who commits suicide with a pistol will hold the gun against his right temple if he is right-handed or against his left temple if he is left-handed. Or, if he knows what he is doing, he will put the gun between his teeth and shoot himself through the roof of the mouth. That will take out the dura oblongata, killing him instantly.” He pulled the rain cape back over Nagorski’s body, then wiped the gore from his hands on a corner of the cape.
“How do you get used to it?” asked Kirov, as he watched Pekkala scrape the blood out from under his fingernails.
“You can get used to almost anything.”
They left the warehouse just as three NKVD guards arrived to take charge of Nagorski’s corpse. Standing in the dark, the two men turned up the collars of their coats against a spitting rain.
“Are you certain Major Lysenkova didn’t spot the bullet wound in Nagorski’s skull?” asked Pekkala.
“She barely glanced at the remains,” replied Kirov. “It seemed to me that she just wants this case to go away as fast as possible.”
Just then, a figure appeared from the darkness. It was Maximov. He had been waiting for them. “I need to know,” he said. “What happened to Colonel Nagorski?”
Kirov glanced at Pekkala.
Almost imperceptibly, Pekkala nodded.
“He was shot,” replied the major.
The muscles twitched along Maximov’s jaw. “This is my fault,” he muttered.
“Why do you say that?” asked Pekkala.
“Yelena—Mrs. Nagorski—she was right. It was my job to protect him.”
“If I understand things correctly,” replied Pekkala, “he sent you away just before he was killed.”
“That’s true, but still, it was my job.”
“You can’t protect a man who refuses to be protected,” said Pekkala.
If Maximov took comfort in Pekkala’s words, he gave no sign of it. “What will happen to them now? To Yelena? To the boy?”
“I don’t know,” replied Pekkala.
“They won’t be looked after,” insisted Maximov. “Not now that he is gone.”
“And what about you?” asked Pekkala. “What will you do now?”
Maximov shook his head, as if the thought had not occurred to him. “Just make sure they are looked after,” he said.
A cold wind blew through the wet trees, with a sound like the slithering of snakes.
“We’ll do what we can, Maximov,” Pekkala told the big man. “Now go home. Get some rest.”
“That man makes me nervous,” remarked Kirov after the bodyguard had vanished back into the dark.
“That’s part of his job,” replied Pekkala. “When we get back to the office, I want you to find out everything you can about him. I asked him some questions and he avoided every one of them.”
“We could bring him in for questioning at Lubyanka.”
Pekkala shook his head. “We won’t get much out of him that way. The only time a man like that will talk is if he wants to. Just find out what you can from the police files.”
“Very well, Inspector. Shall we head back to Moscow?”
“We can’t leave yet. Now that we know a gun was used, we have to search the pit where Nagorski’s body was found.”
“Can’t this wait until morning?” moaned Kirov, clutching his collar to his throat.
Pekkala’s silence was the answer.
“I didn’t think so,” mumbled Kirov.
Pekkala woke to the sound of someone banging on the door.
At first, he thought it was one of the shutters, dislodged by the wind. There was a snowstorm blowing. Pekkala knew that in the morning he would have to dig his way out of the house.
The banging came again, and this time Pekkala realized someone was outside and asking to come in.
He lit a match and set the oil lamp burning by his bed.
Once more he heard the pounding on the door.
“All right!” shouted Pekkala. He fetched his pocket watch from the bedside table and squinted at the hands. It was two in the morning. Beside him he heard a sigh. Ilya’s long hair covered her face and she brushed it aside with a half-conscious sweep of her hand.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Someone’s at the door,” Pekkala replied in a whisper as he pulled on his clothes, working the suspenders over his shoulders.
Ilya propped herself up on one elbow. “It’s the middle of the night!”
Pekkala did not reply. After doing up the buttons of his shirt, he walked into the front room, carrying the lamp. Reaching out to the brass doorknob, he suddenly paused, remembering that he had left his revolver on the chest of drawers in the bedroom. Now he thought about going to fetch it. No good news ever came knocking at two in the morning.
The heavy fist smashed against the wood. “Please!” said a voice.
Pekkala opened the door. A gust of freezing air blew in, along with a cloud of snow which glittered like fish scales in the lamplight.
Before him stood a man wearing a heavy sable coat. He had long, greasy hair, a scruffy beard and piercing eyes. In spite of the cold, he was sweating. “Pekkala!” wailed the man.
“Rasputin,” growled Pekkala.
The man stepped forward and fell into Pekkala’s arms.
Pekkala caught the stench of onions and salmon caviar on Rasputin’s breath. A few of the tiny fish eggs, like beads of amber, were lodged in the man’s frozen beard. The sour reek of alcohol oozed from his pores. “You must save me!” moaned Rasputin.
“Save you from what?”
Rasputin mumbled incoherently, his nose buried in Pekkala’s shirt.
“From what?” repeated Pekkala.
Rasputin stood back and spread his arms, “From myself!”
“Tell me what you are doing out here,” Pekkala demanded.
“I was at the church of Kazan,” said Rasputin, unbuttoning his coat to reveal a blood-red tunic and baggy black breeches tucked into a pair of knee-length boots. “At least I was until they threw me out.”
“What did you do
this time?” asked Pekkala.
“Nothing!” shouted Rasputin. “For once, all I did was sit there. And then that damned politician Rodzianko told me to leave. He called me a vile heathen!” He clenched his fist and waved it in the air. “I’ll have his job for that!” Then he slumped into Pekkala’s chair.
“What did you do after they threw you out?”
“I went straight to the Villa Rode!”
“Oh, no,” muttered Pekkala. “Not that place.”
The Villa Rode was a drinking club in Petrograd. Rasputin went there almost every night, because he did not have to pay his bills there. They were covered by an anonymous numbered account which, Pekkala knew, had actually been set up by the Tsarina. In addition, the owner of the Villa Rode had been paid to build an addition onto the back of the club, a room which was available only to Rasputin. It was, in effect, his own private club. The Tsarina had been persuaded to arrange this by members of the Secret Service, who were tasked with following Rasputin wherever he went and making sure he stayed out of trouble. This had proved to be impossible, so a safe house, in which he could drink as much as he wanted for free, meant that at least the Secret Service could protect him from those who had sworn to kill him if they could. There had already been two attempts on his life: in Pokrovsky in 1914 and again in Tsaritsyn the following year. Instead of frightening him into seclusion, these events had only served to convince Rasputin that he was indestructible. Even if the Secret Service could protect him from these would-be killers, the one person they could not protect him from was himself.
“When I was at the Villa,” continued Rasputin, “I decided I should file a complaint about Rodzianko. And then I thought—no! I’ll go straight to the Tsarina and tell her about it myself.”
“The Villa Rode is in Petrograd,” said Pekkala. “That’s nowhere near this place.”