by Sam Eastland
“You have already proven that,” replied Pekkala.
“Not exactly, Inspector. I am Lieutenant Commissar Savushkin of the Bureau of Special Operations. I would shake your hand, but”—he held up his battered fists—“perhaps some other time.”
“Special Operations?” asked Pekkala. “I don’t understand. Why are you on the train?”
“I was assigned to protect you. Comrade Stalin himself gave the order. No one else knows I am here, not the guards on the train or even the commandant of Borodok. You almost gave me a heart attack when you didn’t show up at the station. I thought I would be traveling all the way to Siberia for nothing. I kept thinking you must be in disguise. Until the moment I set eyes on you, it never occurred to me you would be hiding in plain sight.”
Hearing those words, Pekkala thought back to his days of training with Chief Inspector Vassileyev, head of the Tsar’s Secret Police.
Vassileyev drilled into Pekkala’s mind the importance of blending into different surroundings in order to carry out an investigation. To train Pekkala in the “Art of Disappearance,” as he called it, Vassileyev constructed a series of elaborate games which he referred to as “Field Exercises.”
Every Friday morning, while the streets of St. Petersburg bustled with people on their way to work, Vassileyev would vanish into the crowds. One hour later, Pekkala himself would set out, with the task of tracking down his mentor. Each week Vassileyev would choose a different part of the city. Sometimes he walked along quiet mansion-lined streets. Other times he chose one of the bustling markets. His favorite location, however, was the slums which bordered the northeast end of the city.
In the first month of these Field Exercises, Pekkala failed consistently to locate Vassileyev. There were times when the chief inspector would be standing almost in front of him and still Pekkala could not see through the disguises. Once, Pekkala hired a droshky to transport him around the district, thinking he would have a better chance of spotting Vassileyev if he moved more quickly through the streets. In desperation, Pekkala explained his predicament to the driver. Caught up in the game, the old man whipped up his horse and Pekkala spent the next two hours clinging to the sides of the open carriage while they careened through the streets in search of Vassileyev. In the end, confounded once again, Pekkala climbed down to pay the driver.
“You have already paid for the ride,” said the old man.
Pekkala, wallet in hand, glanced up to see what the driver meant and only then realized, to his dismay, that the old man was, in fact, Vassileyev.
After these humiliating defeats, the two men would walk back to Okhrana headquarters. Along the way, Vassileyev would explain the tricks of his craft. Considering that Vassileyev had lost part of his right leg to an anarchist bomb years ago and now stumped about on a wooden prosthesis, Pekkala was amazed at how quickly the man could move.
“Merely throwing on a new set of clothes is not enough,” explained Vassileyev. “Your disguise must have a narrative, so that people will be lured into the story of your life. Once they become lost in fathoming the details, they will fail to see the magnitude of your illusion.”
“Couldn’t I just wear a hat?” asked Pekkala.
“Of course!” replied Vassileyev, oblivious to Pekkala’s sarcasm. “Hats are important. But what kind of hat? No single article of clothing more quickly places you in whatever bracket of society you want to occupy. But hats alone are not enough. First you must find yourself a cafe.”
“A cafe?”
“Yes!” insisted Vassileyev. “Watch the people going past, the people sitting around you. See the clothes they wear. See how they wear them. Pay close attention to their shoes. Gentlemen of the old school will lace their shoes in straight lines across the grommets. The rest will lace diagonally. Once you have chosen your character from among them, do not go out and buy yourself new clothes. Find yourself a shop or an open-air market where they sell used garments. Every city has one on the weekends. That is the place to choose your second skin.
“Do people look healthy?” continued Vassileyev. “Do people look sick? To give the appearance of living an unhealthy life, rub cooking oil on your forehead. Sprinkle the ashes of cheap tobacco in your pockets so that the smell of it will hang about you. Stir a pinch of ash into your tea and drink it. Within a week, your complexion will grow sallow. Dab a piece of raw onion in the corners of your eyes. Put a coat of beeswax on your lips.” As he spoke, he scraped away a crust of grime from the corners of his mouth, which had given the droshky driver the appearance of a man whose days of hard work in the open air should have been behind him, but were not.
“Change your stride!” ordered Vassileyev, cracking Pekkala on the shin with his heavy walking stick.
Pekkala cried out in pain and hopped along beside the chief inspector. “You can’t expect me to do that every time I go undercover!”
“No.” Vassileyev held up a one-kopek coin. “All you need is this. Put the coin inside your shoe, beneath your heel, and it will alter the way you walk. Soon you will not even think about it anymore. And that is the whole point. Put too much effort into it, and people will suspect. It must appear natural in its abnormality!”
Vassileyev’s lectures were filled with such apparent contradictions that Pekkala began to feel as if he would never master the subtle skills which Vassileyev was trying to teach him.
Then, one day, only minutes after he had arrived in the marketplace chosen for that week’s Field Exercise, Pekkala spotted Vassileyev. The old man was wearing a short double-breasted wool coat and sitting on an upturned barrel with a porter’s trolley beside him.
“How did you do it?” asked Vassileyev, as they sat down to lunch at one of the market restaurants, its floor strewn with sawdust and the tables covered with brown paper.
“I don’t know,” Pekkala replied honestly. “I wasn’t even concentrating.”
Vassileyev thumped Pekkala’s back. “Now you understand!”
“I do?”
“Our life’s work is to sift through the details,” his mentor explained. “And yet sometimes we must learn to ignore them, so that the bigger picture comes into focus. Do you see now?”
“I am beginning to,” he answered.
For their final exercise, Vassileyev promised Pekkala his hardest task yet.
That day, as he wandered up and down Morskaya Street, Pekkala studied the faces of everyone he passed, searching for some chink in the armor of their disguises. But he found nothing.
Then, just as he was about to give up, he spotted Vassileyev. The man had been sitting on a bench the whole time. Pekkala had walked past the bench at least a dozen times and never even seen Vassileyev. It was as if he had become invisible.
But the most incredible thing about it was that Vassileyev had not put on any disguise at all. He had simply been himself. And Pekkala, searching for anyone but the man he recognized, had failed to see him.
“Sometimes,” said Vassileyev, “the most effective place to hide is in plain sight. Only when you have learned to conceal yourself are you ready to see through the disguises of others. The most dangerous thing is not the face that remains hidden”—Vassileyev passed a hand before his eyes—“but what hides behind that face.”
“I DIDN’T THINK I’d ever need a bodyguard,” said Pekkala.
As Savushkin pulled on his torn shirt, he looked down at the mangled corpse. “Neither did I, until now.”
“What enemies did you make to draw such a wretched assignment as this?”
Savushkin’s face brightened. “No enemies at all, Inspector. I volunteered for this!”
“Volunteered? But why?”
“For the chance to tell my children I once served beside the Emerald Eye.”
“I’m glad you are here, Savushkin.”
Savushkin grinned, but then his face became serious. “A word of advice, Inspector. In the days ahead do not place your faith in anyone. Anyone! Do you understand?”
“I think I can
trust you, Savushkin. You just saved my life, after all.”
Before Savushkin could reply, the urgent wail of the locomotive’s whistle summoned them back to the train.
The two men watched as the wagon doors slid open and prisoners began to climb aboard.
“Looks like we’re not spending the night here after all,” remarked Savushkin, as he kicked a blanket of snow over the body which lay at their feet.
They raced across the field, waving and shouting.
“Why,” asked Pekkala, fighting for breath as the cold air raked at his throat, “did you keep asking me who I was if you already knew?”
“It gave me an excuse to stay close to you,” gasped Savushkin. “Besides, I knew they were safe questions to ask.”
“And how did you know that?” asked Pekkala.
“Because you’d never have told me, Inspector.”
They climbed aboard just as the train began to move.
The railroad siding slipped away into the grainy air. In the distance the grove of trees seemed to disintegrate, atom by atom, until it too was gone.
If anyone even noticed the absence of the knife-cut man, nobody mentioned it. With a shuffling of feet, the space he had once occupied was filled, as if he’d never been there at all.
As wagon #6 swayed rhythmically from side to side, with the clatter of its wheels like a heartbeat echoing across the countryside, the atmosphere inside it was almost peaceful.
“POSKREBYSHEV!”
“Yes, Comrade Stalin.”
“Have there been any messages from Pekkala?”
“No, Comrade Stalin. He has not yet arrived at the camp.”
“You must keep me informed, Poskrebyshev.”
“Yes, Comrade Stalin.” Poskrebyshev stared at the gray mesh of the intercom speaker. Some of the tiny holes were clogged with dust. There had been a particular tone in Stalin’s voice just then, an anxiety almost bordering on fear. I must be mistaken, he thought.
TEN DAYS AFTER its departure from Moscow, ETAP-1889 passed through the town of Verkneudinsk.
This was the last civilian outpost before the train’s course diverted from the Trans-Siberian Railroad onto a separate track that would bring it to the Borodok railhead.
Peering through the opening, Pekkala spotted two men standing outside a tavern which adjoined the Verkneudinsk station. Faintly, he heard the men singing. Tiger stripes of lamplight gleamed through bolted window shutters, illuminating the snow which fell around them.
Afterwards, while the train pressed on into a darkness so utter it was as if they’d left the earth and were now hurtling through space, the singing of those two men haunted him.
The following morning, the train arrived at Borodok.
One final time, the prisoners climbed from their wagons, past shouting guards and dogs on choke-chain leashes, and were herded into a lumberyard where thousands of logs had been stacked as high as double-storied houses, waiting to be shipped to the west on the same train which had delivered the prisoners. The air smelled sour from the wood, and piles of shredded bark steamed in the cold, melting the snow around them.
In one corner of the yard, behind a wire fence, stood a mountain of metal fuel drums, each one marked DALSTROY.
Pekkala wondered if those drums were already full, with dead men tucked like fetuses inside, or if they had been set aside for the prisoners who stood around him now.
A guard climbed up on top of the log pile. “There are many rules at Borodok!” he shouted, hands cupped around his mouth. “You will know what they are when you have broken them.”
The convicts stared at him in silence.
“Now strip!” commanded the guard.
Nobody moved. The convicts continued to stare at the guard, each one convinced that he must have misunderstood. The temperature was below zero and all they had on was the same threadbare pajamas in which they’d first boarded the train.
Seeing that his words had no effect, the guard drew a pistol from a holster on his belt and fired a shot into the crowd.
The entire group flinched. With the blast still echoing around the lumberyard, prisoners ran their fingers across their faces, down their chests and out along the branches of their arms, searching for the wound which every man felt certain he’d received.
Only then did someone cry out, a sound more of surprise than pain.
The crowd parted around one man, whose hands were clutched against his neck. With wide and pleading eyes, he turned and turned in the space which had been made for him.
Nobody stepped in to help.
Seconds later, the convict dropped to his knees. Slowly and deliberately, he lowered himself onto his side. Then he lay there in the dirty snow, blood pulsing out of his throat.
The guard called out again for everyone to strip. This time, there was no hesitation. Filthy garments slipped to the ground like the sloughed-off husks of metamorphosing insects.
While this was going on, three trucks pulled up at the entrance to the lumberyard.
Following another order shouted by the guard, the naked prisoners formed a line. With shoulders hunched and fists clenched over hearts, they filed past the trucks one by one. From the first vehicle, each man received a black hip-length jacket called a telogreika. Sewn into the jackets were long, sausage-shaped lines padded with raw cotton. From the second truck, prisoners received matching trousers, and from the third boots made of rubberized canvas. None of the clothing was new, but it had been washed in gasoline to kill the lice and strip away some of the dirt.
The guards who threw this clothing from the trucks had no time to think of sizes. Prisoners exchanged garments until they found what fit them, more or less.
It began to snow. Large flakes, like pieces of eggshell, settled on their hair and shoulders. Before long, a blizzard was falling sideways through the air.
In ranks of three, the convicts set off walking towards the camp, leaving behind the man who had been shot. He lay upon the dirty snow surrounded by a halo of diluted blood.
A short distance away, Borodok’s tall stockade fence of sharpened logs loomed from the mist like a row of giant teeth.
The gates were opened, but before the prisoners could enter, a man with a bald head and a jagged-looking tattoo on his hand rode out on a cart piled with emaciated corpses. Wired around the left big toe of each body was a small metal tag. Together, they flickered like sequins on a woman’s party dress. The cart was a strange-looking contraption, its wheel spokes twisted like the horns of a mythical beast and its flared wooden sides decorated with red and green painted flowers foreign to Siberia. The horse that pulled this cart wore a white mane of frost, and long white lashes jutted from its eyelids like ivory splinters. The tattooed man did not even glance at the convicts as his cart jostled out into the storm.
Then the prisoners marched into the camp.
Once they were inside the stockade fence, the only view of the outside world was the tops of trees in the surrounding forest. Beyond the barracks, administrative building, kitchen, and hospital, the camp dead-ended against a wall of stone. There, on rusted iron stakes, snarls of barbed wire fringed the rock where a mine shaft had been cut into the mountain.
The center of the compound was dominated by the statues of a man and a woman, mounted on a massive concrete platform. The man, stripped to the waist, held a book in one hand and a blacksmith’s hammer in the other. The woman clutched a sheaf of wheat against her concrete dress. Both of them were frozen in midstride as they headed towards the main gates of the camp.
Engraved into the base were the words LET US HEAL THE SICK AND STRENGTHEN THE WEAK!
The statue had not been there on his last visit to the camp. Pekkala wondered where it had come from and what it was doing there. He wondered, too, what possible comfort a Gulag prisoner could draw from such an exhortation.
Like giants bound upon some journey without relevance to man, the statues appeared to stride past the barracks huts, whose tar-paper roof tiles winked like f
ish scales in the sunset.
The prisoners were ordered straight to their barracks, which were large, single-room buildings with bunk beds fitted one arm’s length apart. Bare wooden planks made up the floors and ceiling. The heating in the barracks came from two woodstoves, one at either end. Prisoners measured their seniority in how close they slept to those stoves. The room smelled of smoke and sweat and faintly of the bleach used to wash down the floors once a month. The barracks were guarded at night by an old soldier named Larchenko, who sat on a chair by the door reading a children’s book of fairy tales.
Having eaten his rations, which consisted of a scrap of dried fish wedged between two slices of black bread, Pekkala found himself in a bunk near the center of the main barracks block.
After the long journey, the convicts were too exhausted to talk. Within minutes, most of them were asleep.
Sometime in the night, Pekkala woke to see a figure shuffling about between the rows of beds which lined the walls.
It was the guard, Larchenko.
At first Pekkala thought he must be looking for something, the way the soldier moved so carefully across the splintery wooden boards. One of Larchenko’s arms was held out crookedly, as if it had been broken and then anchored in a cast. Blinking the sleep from his eyes, Pekkala lifted his head to get a better view.
In the darkness of the barracks, Larchenko was still nothing more than a silhouette, turning and turning like a clockwork ballerina in a jewelry box.
Then suddenly Pekkala understood. The man was dancing. His crooked arm was held about the waist of an imaginary partner. In that instant, the clumsy, swaying movements translated themselves into a waltz. Pekkala wondered who she was, this ghost of past acquaintance, and which orchestra’s music echoed in the ballroom of his skull.
A memory, shrouded until now in darkness, came hurtling like a meteor into the forefront of Pekkala’s mind.
The door of his cottage flew open.
It was the middle of the night.
By the time the Imperial Guard’s eyes had accustomed themselves to the dark, he was already looking down the blue-eyed barrel of Pekkala’s Webley revolver.