by Sam Eastland
‘Kumquats,’ Kirov corrected him. ‘It took me months to find one of these plants and more than a year to get it to bear fruit. Are you ready?’
‘Kumquats,’ said Pekkala, still trying out the word.
Kirov reached out and took hold of a fruit between his thumb and first two fingers. Gently he twisted until the ball came away from its stem, then held it out to Pekkala.
Pekkala plucked the kumquat from Kirov’s fingers and sniffed at it.
‘Eat!’ said Kirov, his cheeks flushing red. ‘That’s an order!’
Pekkala raised his eyebrows. ‘An order, Kirov?’
‘I do outrank you.’
‘But I don’t have a rank!’
‘Exactly.’ Kirov flapped his hand at Pekkala as if he were shooing a fly. ‘Don’t make me ask you again!’
Pekkala took a small bite, tearing through the thin glowing skin of the kumquat and into the yellowy segments beneath. His eyes closed tightly as the sour taste flooded his mouth. ‘It’s inedible!’
‘It’s perfect,’ said Kirov. Then he went back to the window-sill and traced one finger lovingly over the deep green, shiny leaves.
‘You need a girlfriend, Kirov. Or a wife. You’re spending too much time with these kumquats. Now please go down and bring the car around front.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘We have a rendezvous with thirty tons of Russian steel. Nagorski has offered to give us a tour of the place where the tank is being designed. He is anxious to prove to us that the facility is secure.’
‘Yes, Inspector.’ Kirov picked up his keys and headed out the door.
‘Did you remember your gun?’ Pekkala called to him.
Kirov groaned. His footsteps came to a halt.
‘You forgot again, didn’t you?’
‘I don’t need it this time,’ Kirov protested.
‘You never know when you will need it. That’s why there are regulations, Kirov!’
Kirov trudged back up the stairs and into the office. Then he began rifling through the drawers of his desk.
‘Have you lost it?’ asked Pekkala.
‘It’s in here somewhere,’ muttered Kirov.
Pekkala shook his head and sighed.
‘Ah!’ shouted Kirov. ‘Here it is!’ He held up a Tokarev automatic; standard issue for army officers and members of state security.
‘Now go and get the car,’ Pekkala told him.
‘On my way!’ Kirov swept past and clattered down the stairs.
Before Pekkala left the office, he removed the new jacket, replaced it in the box, and put his old coat on again. As he fastened the buttons, he went over to the window and looked out over the rooftops of Moscow. Late-afternoon sunlight shone weak and silvery upon the slates. Crows and pigeons shared the chimney pots. His gaze returned to the plants on the windowsill. Glancing back to see if Kirov had returned, Pekkala reached out and plucked another kumquat. He put the whole thing in his mouth and bit down. The bitter juice exploded in his mouth. He swallowed and let out a gasp. Then he made his way down to the street.
*
A gentle rain was falling.
Kirov stood beside the car. It was a model 1935 Emka, with a squared-off roof, a large front grille and headlights mounted on the wide and sweeping cowlings, giving it a haughty look.
Kirov held open the passenger door, waiting for Pekkala. The engine was running. The Emka’s wipers twitched jerkily back and forth, like the antennae of an insect.
As Pekkala shut the battered yellow door behind him, he turned and almost barged into two women who were walking past.
The women were bundled in scarves and bulky coats. They chattered happily, breath condensing into halos about their heads.
‘Excuse me,’ said Pekkala, rocking back on his heels so as not to collide with the women.
The women did not break their stride. They merely glanced at him, then returned to their conversation.
Pekkala watched them go, staring at the woman on the left. He had only caught a glimpse of her – pale eyes and a wisp of blonde hair trailing across her cheek – but now the blood drained out of his face.
Kirov noticed. ‘Pekkala,’ he said quietly.
Pekkala did not seem to hear. He walked quickly after the women. Just before they turned the corner, reaching out, he touched the shoulder of the pale-eyed woman.
She wheeled about. ‘What is it?’ she asked, suddenly afraid. ‘What do you want?’
Pekkala jerked his hand away as if he’d just been shocked. ‘I’m sorry,’ he stammered. ‘I thought you were somebody else.’
Kirov was walking towards them.
Pekkala swallowed, barely able to speak. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he told her.
‘Who did you think I was?’ she asked.
Kirov came to a stop beside them. ‘Excuse us, ladies,’ he said cheerfully. ‘We were just going in the opposite direction.’
‘Well, I hope you find who you are looking for,’ the woman told Pekkala.
Then she and her friend walked on down the street, while Kirov and Pekkala returned to the car.
‘You didn’t have to come after me like that,’ said Pekkala. ‘I’m perfectly capable of getting myself out of embarrassing situations.’
‘Not as capable as you are of getting into them,’ replied Kirov. ‘How many times are you going to go galloping after strange women?’
‘I thought it was …’
‘I know who you thought it was, and I also know as well as you do that she’s not in Moscow. She’s not even in the country! And even if she was here, right in front of you, it wouldn’t matter because she has another life now. Or have you forgotten all that?’
‘No,’ sighed Pekkala, ‘I have not forgotten.’
‘Come on, Inspector, let’s go have a look at this tank. Maybe they will let us take one home.’
‘We wouldn’t have to worry about someone taking our parking spot,’ said Pekkala, as he climbed into the rear seat of the Emka. ‘We’d just park on top of them.’
As Kirov pulled out into the stream of cars, he did not see Pekkala look back at the empty road where he had stood with the women, as if to see some ghost of his old self among the shadows.
Her name was Ilya Simonova. She had been a teacher at the Tsarskoye Primary school, just outside the grounds of the Tsar’s estate. Most of the Palace staff sent their children to the Tsarskoye school, and Ilya often led groups of students on walks across the Catherine and Alexander Parks. That was how Pekkala had met her; at a garden party to mark the beginning of the new school year. He had not actually gone to the party, but saw it on his way home from the station. He stopped at the wall of the school and looked in.
Of that moment in time, Pekkala had no recollection of anything else except the sight of her, standing just outside a white marquee set up for the occasion. Ilya was wearing a pale green dress. She did not have a hat, so he could see her face clearly – high cheekbones and eyes a dusty blue.
At first, he thought he must know her from somewhere before. Something in his mind made her seem familiar to him. But that wasn’t it. And whatever it was, this sudden lurching of his senses towards something it couldn’t explain, stopped him in his tracks and kept him there. The next thing he knew, a woman on the other side of the wall had come up and asked him if he was looking for somebody. She was tall and dignified, her grey hair knotted at the back.
‘Who is that?’ asked Pekkala, nodding towards the woman in the green dress.
‘That’s the new teacher, Ilya Simonova. I am the headmistress, Rada Obolenskaya. And you are the Tsar’s new detective.’
‘Inspector Pekkala.’ He bowed his head in greeting.
‘Would you like me to introduce you?’
‘Yes!’ Pekkala blurted out. ‘I just … she looks like someone I know. At least, I think she does.’
‘I see,’ said Madame Obolenskaya.
‘I might be wrong,’ explained Pekkala.
‘I don’t suppose you ar
e,’ she replied.
He proposed to Ilya Simonova exactly one year later.
A date was set, but they were never married. They never got the chance. Instead, on the eve of the Revolution, Ilya boarded the last train heading west. It was bound for Paris, where Pekkala promised to meet her as soon as the Tsar had granted him permission to get out of the country. But Pekkala never did get out. Some months later, he was arrested by Bolshevik militia men while attempting to cross into Finland. From there, his journey to Siberia began, and it would be many years before he had another chance to leave the country.
‘You are free to go now if you wish,’ said Stalin, ‘but before you make your decision, there is something you should know.’
‘What?’ asked Pekkala nervously. ‘What do I need to know?’
Stalin was watching him closely, as if the two men were playing cards. Now he opened a drawer on his side of the desk, the dry wood squeaking as he pulled. He withdrew a photograph. For a moment, he studied it. He laid the picture down, placed one finger on top of it and slid the photograph towards Pekkala.
It was Ilya. He recognised her instantly. She was sitting at a small café table. Behind her, printed on the awning of the café, Pekkala saw the words Les Deux Magots. She was smiling as she watched something to the left of where the camera had been placed. He could see her strong, white teeth. Now, reluctantly, Pekkala’s gaze shifted to the man who was sitting beside her. He was thin, with dark hair combed straight back. He wore a jacket and tie and the stub of a cigarette was pinched between his thumb and second finger. He held the cigarette in the Russian manner, with the burning end balanced over his palm as if to catch the falling ash. Like Ilya, the man was smiling. Both of them were watching something just to the left of the camera. On the other side of the table was an object which at first Pekkala almost failed to recognise, since it had been so long since he had seen one. It was a baby carriage, its hood pulled up to shelter the infant from the sun.
Pekkala realised he wasn’t breathing. He had to force himself to fill his lungs.
Quietly, Stalin cleared his throat. ‘You must not hold it against her. She waited, Pekkala. She waited a very long time. Over ten years. But a person cannot wait forever, can they?’
Pekkala stared at the baby carriage. He wondered if the child had her eyes.
‘As you see,’ Stalin gestured towards the picture, ‘Ilya is happy now. She has a family. She is a teacher, of Russian of course, at the prestigious École Stanislas. She has tried to put the past behind her. That is something all of us must do at some point in our lives.’
Slowly, Pekkala raised his head, until he was looking Stalin in the eye. ‘Why did you show this to me?’
Stalin’s lips twitched. ‘Would you rather have arrived in Paris, ready to start a new life, only to find that it was once more out of reach?’
‘Out of reach?’ Pekkala felt dizzy. His mind seemed to rush from one end of his skull to the other, like fish trapped in a net.
‘You could still go to her, of course.’ Stalin shrugged. ‘But whatever peace of mind she might have won for herself in these past years would be gone in an instant. And let us say, for the sake of argument, that you might persuade her to leave the man she married. Let us say that she even leaves behind her child …’
‘Stop,’ said Pekkala.
‘You are not that kind of man,’ continued Stalin. ‘You are not the monster that your enemies once believed you to be. If you were, you would never have been such a formidable opponent for people like myself. Monsters are easy to defeat. With such people, it is merely a question of blood and time, since their only weapon is fear. But you, Pekkala, you won the hearts of the people and the respect of your enemies. I do not believe you understand how rare a thing that is. Those whom you once served are out there still.’ Stalin brushed his hand towards the window of his study, and out across the pale blue autumn sky. ‘They have not forgotten you, Pekkala, and I don’t believe you have forgotten them.’
‘No,’ whispered Pekkala, ‘I have not forgotten.’
‘What I am trying to tell you, Pekkala, is that you can leave this country if you want to. I’ll put you on the next train to Paris if that’s really what you want. Or you can stay here, where you are truly needed and where you still have a place if you want it.’
Until that moment, the thought of staying on in Russia had not occurred to him. But now Pekkala realised that his last gesture of affection for the woman he’d once thought would be his wife must be to let her believe he was dead.
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:
THE PERSON IDENTIFIED IN THIS DOCUMENT IS ACTING UNDER THE DIRECT ORDERS OF COMRADE STALIN.
DO NOT QUESTION OR DETAIN HIM.
HE IS AUTHORISED TO WEAR CIVILIAN CLOTHES, TO CARRY WEAPONS, TO TRANSPORT PROHIBITED ITEMS, INCLUDING POISON, EXPLOSIVES AND FOREIGN CURRENCY. HE MAY PASS INTO RESTRICTED AREAS AND MAY REQUISI TION EQUIPMENT OF ALL TYPES, INCLUDING WEAPONS AND VEHICLES.
IF HE IS KILLED OR INJURED, NOTIFY THE BUREAU OF SPECIAL OPERATIONS IMMEDIATELY.
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.’