by Sam Eastland
Before going to see Kovalevsky
Before going to see Kovalevsky, Pekkala returned to the office in order to tell Kirov where he was going.
When he arrived, he was surprised to find a young woman sitting at his desk.
She took one look at Pekkala and launched herself to her feet. ‘I’m sorry, Inspector!’ she said.
The woman was in her mid-twenties, head and shoulders shorter than Pekkala, with a round and slightly freckled face, a small chin and dark, inquisitive eyes. She had on a dark blue skirt and a grey, hand-knitted sweater, but Pekkala guessed from the faint but particular rub mark at her throat that she had recently been wearing a tight-collared gymnastiorka tunic, and the skirt itself was the same cut and colour as that issued to women serving in administrative and medical positions in the Red Army. His notion was confirmed when he spotted the dark blue beret, with its brass and red enamel star, issued to women in the Soviet military. ‘You must be the friend of Major Kirov,’ said Pekkala.
‘Elizaveta Kapanina.’
Pekkala felt his neck muscles tighten as he recalled his unfortunate conversation with Kirov at the Cafe Tilsit.
‘And this,’ announced Kirov, slouched comfortably in the chair from Hotel Metropol, ‘is Inspector Pekkala.’ Behind him, late-afternoon light filtered through the kumquat tree and other potted plants lined up along the window sill, casting jungly shadows on the floor.
Did he tell me just to be myself? Pekkala struggled to recall. Or was it not to be myself? And if I’m not supposed to be myself, then who the hell am I supposed to be?
‘It is a pleasure to meet you, Inspector,’ said Elizaveta. ‘Yulian has told me all about you.’
Pekkala nodded. ‘Yulian‚’ he repeated slowly.
‘That’s my name‚’ said Kirov‚ ‘which you would know if you ever used it.’
‘Yulian,’ continued Elizaveta, ‘says that your father ran a funeral business where you lived in Finland.’
‘Yes, do you have undertakers in your family?’
‘No, but I was thinking how strange it must have been, growing up with dead people in your house all the time.’
‘It did make my mother nervous,’ admitted Pekkala. ‘She worried that their souls would stay behind when the bodies were taken for burial. And besides, my father talked to them.’
‘To the dead?’
‘That’s right,’ said Pekkala. ‘I used to sit at the top of the stairs and listen to the things he said.’
‘What things?’ asked Elizaveta.
‘He talked about his life. Sometimes, it was just about the day he’d had.’
‘And that never bothered you?’
‘The thing is,’ explained Pekkala, ‘that he believed they spoke to him as well. The only thing that worried me was that I believed it too.’
‘This is how you introduce yourself?’ muttered Kirov.
‘I’m sorry I can’t stay‚’ said Pekkala. ‘I have a meeting I must get to. I just came to drop something off.’ He took off his coat and removed the Webley in its shoulder holster. Then he laid the weapon on his desk.
‘I’ve never seen you do that before,’ said Kirov.
‘Do what?’ asked Pekkala.
‘Leave this room without your weapon.’
As he buttoned his coat again, Pekkala tried to accustom himself to the unfamiliar lightness across his chest and shoulder blade. ‘For this particular meeting, my only weapon is defencelessness.’
When Pekkala had gone, Elizaveta Kapanina slumped back into his chair. Her breath trailed out. The tips of her fingers were shaking.
‘Why did you do that?’ asked Kirov.
‘Do what?’ she replied.
‘Of all the things to ask him about. .’
‘I’m sorry. I was just trying to make conversation. Besides, it was all I could think about. He dresses like an undertaker!’
‘I know,’ Kirov groaned. ‘He buys his clothes at Linsky’s.’
‘He’s a very strange man,’ said Elizaveta, ‘in case you hadn’t noticed.’
‘Strange or not, I think he likes you.’
Elizaveta laughed sarcastically. ‘And I think you are a liar, Major Kirov.’
‘No, I mean it. I’ve never heard him tell that story before, to me or to anyone else.’
‘You almost sound as if you’re jealous.’
‘Perhaps I am, a little.’
‘You are as strange as he is, Major Kirov,’ Elizaveta told him. ‘Maybe even more so, since you’re pretending that you’re not.’
From the shelter of his kumquat tree, Kirov shot her a quizzical glance.
At that same moment
At that same moment, somewhere in the bowels of Lubyanka, a guard swung open the door to Semykin’s cell. ‘Come with us,’ he said.
Out in the hallway, Semykin fell in between two guards, who marched him in silence to a cell on the other side of the prison. Both of Semykin’s hands had been wrapped in bandages, making it almost impossible for him to hold up his prison pyjama trousers. As he shuffled clumsily between the straight-backed guards, Semykin wondered what was happening, but he knew he could not ask.
Advancing down a corridor no different in appearance from the one they’d left only a few minutes before, the guards stopped outside a cell. The guard in front slid back the locking bolt and turned to face the convict. ‘You have unusual friends, Semykin, unusual and powerful friends.’
As Semykin entered the cell, he gasped in astonishment. The walls had been completely covered with works of art from the Kremlin Museum. He recognised them instantly — the fifteenth-century embroidered silk-and-damask veil showing the revelation of the Virgin Mary to St Sergius, the seventeenth-century wooden panel depicting St Theodore Stratilates, the sixteenth-century tempera-on-wood painting of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. And there, staring back at him once more, was The Saviour of the Fiery Eye.
Semykin turned and slowly turned again. As tears obscured his vision, the colours of the artwork blurred and sparkled, as if the paint on them was fresh, the silk just unravelled from the spool, and the breath of the artists, dead for centuries, still hovered before their creations.
Walking up a flight
Walking up a flight of concrete steps to the entrance of Moscow School No. 554, Pekkala caught the dry sweet smell of chalk dust wafting from one of the open windows on the ground floor. As he entered the three-storey building through the metal-fronted double doors, the reek of disinfectant raked across his senses. Layered upon this was the odour of boiled food, sweat and damp wool, awaking in Pekkala memories of his own schooldays in Finland.
He found himself in a long corridor with doors on either side stretching down the length of either wall. In its structure, the space was not unlike the halls of Lubyanka, but that place had been governed by silence. Here‚ it was the opposite. Pekkala made his way down the corridor, hearing the booming voices of teachers behind the closed doors of their classrooms, the tack and swish of chalk on blackboards and the occasional grinding squeak as a chair scudded back across the floor.
The walls between the classroom doors were covered with posters showing Lenin and Stalin, always seen from below, always looking off to the side. The posters had various slogans, such as ‘Motherland is calling!’ and ‘Red Army soldier, save us!’ One had an illustration of a line of soldiers standing to attention, in which only the knee-length boots were visible. Beside these boots the soldiers held their long Mosin-Nagant guns, butt plates on the ground. The top half of the poster was taken up with the slogan, ‘Rifles To Your Legs!’
At last, guided by the smell of tobacco smoke and the sound of quiet laughter, he arrived at the place he had been looking for.
Sprawled upon a tired-looking couch in the faculty lounge, a teacher was reading that day’s edition of Izvestia. His jacket lay bunched under his head as a pillow and all but the top button of his waistcoat had been undone.
In another corner of the room, a teacher sat at a small table, correcting papers with
short vicious swipes of his pen. A freshly lit cigarette wobbled between his lips as he passed his muttered judgements on the work.
‘I am looking for Professor Shulepov,’ said Pekkala.
The teacher let his newspaper settle against his chest and glanced at the visitor. ‘Two doors down and on the left,’ he said.
‘Be careful, though,’ remarked the other teacher, without looking up from his papers. ‘This is the time Shulepov takes his rest, and waking him before he’s ready can be downright dangerous.’
More than you know, thought Pekkala, as he thanked them and proceeded down the hall.
A moment later, he located the room. The door was closed and a blind had been drawn in front of the glass window which looked from the classroom out into the hall. Opening the door as quietly as he could, Pekkala stepped inside.
A man in a grey wool jacket with wooden cuff buttons sat at his desk, asleep, head resting on his folded arms.
Pekkala recognised Kovalevsky’s curly hair, although the great mop he had sported back in his days of training had thinned to a wispy mass as faint as mare’s tail clouds.
He looked around the classroom, at nubs of chalk in the tray beneath the board, the battered chairs and floorboards scuffed to splinters underneath the desks.
Kovalevsky sighed in his sleep, oblivious to the happy shrieks of children in the playground just outside.
‘Professor?’ asked Pekkala, in a soft voice. He wondered if his old friend would even remember him after so many years.
Kovalevsky stirred but his head remained down on the desk.
‘Professor Shulepov?’
Kovalevsky groaned. His fingers uncurled as he stretched his hand. Slowly he sat up, blinking to clear his vision. ‘Is it time already?’ He squinted at Pekkala. ‘Oh, my word,’ he muttered as he reached for his glasses. ‘Did I forget a parent-teacher conference?’
‘No, Professor,’ said Pekkala. ‘I wondered if I could have a word?’
Struggling to revive himself, Kovalevsky rubbed his face, fingertips sliding up beneath the lenses of his spectacles as he massaged his eyelids. ‘Of course. Would you mind closing the door?’
‘Certainly,’ replied Pekkala. As he turned, he heard the dry squeak of a desk drawer being opened. Then he heard a faint metal click, which he recognised immediately as the hammer being drawn back on a gun. Pekkala paused, hand on the worn brass door knob. ‘That isn’t necessary, Valeri,’ he said quietly.
‘Shut up and close the door,’ replied Kovalevsky.
Pekkala did as he was told. Making sure that Kovalevsky could see his hands were empty, Pekkala slowly turned around. He expected to find himself staring down the barrel of a pistol, but was surprised to see instead that the gun in Kovalevsky’s hand, a Browning Model 1910, was pressed against the man’s own skull.
‘Are they out there now, Pekkala?’ A layer of sweat greased Kovalevsky’s forehead. ‘For God’s sake, don’t let them shoot me in front of the children.’
‘No one has come to hurt you, Valeri.’
‘Do you know what it’s like, Pekkala, to wake up each day amazed to find yourself still breathing?’
‘Believe it or not, yes I do.’
‘Then you would know why I am sceptical of your assurances.’
‘Either shoot me,’ said Pekkala, ‘or put down the gun and give me a chance to convince you.’
Kovalevsky hesitated. Then he tucked the gun into the pocket of his coat. ‘If you haven’t come to kill me, then what are you doing here?’
‘I need your help.’
Kovalevsky laughed scornfully. ‘Are you speaking to Professor Shulepov or to the last of Myednikov’s men?’
‘I think you already know the answer to that.’
Kovalevsky walked over to the window of the classroom and looked down at the playground, where a group of students were playing with a half-inflated soccer ball. ‘I teach history now. I’m no longer in the business of making it. What could I possibly do for you?’
‘I need you to get me through the German lines.’
‘Will you be coming back again?’
‘Yes.’
‘Alone?’
‘No. Four people, including you on the way out, and five on the journey home.’
‘This fifth person,’ asked Kovalevsky, ‘will he or she come willingly?’
‘He will not.’
At that moment, there was a gentle knocking on the door. A child’s voice murmured through the keyhole. ‘Professor! It’s time to wake up!’
‘Enter‚’ called Kovalevsky.
A ginger-haired boy walked in. Immediately, his hazel-coloured eyes fixed on Pekkala.
Kovalevsky nodded with approval. ‘Right on time, Zev, as usual.’
The boy smiled and straightened up. ‘Thank you, Professor Shulepov!’
‘Before you tell the others to come in,’ said the professor, ‘tell me how you are doing in your new home. Are you getting enough to eat? Did they give you a comfortable bed?’
‘Yes, Professor. I am settling in.’
‘You have made some new friends?’
‘Yes, Professor. Some.’
Kovalevsky rested his hand on the top of the boy’s head. ‘Very good. Now go out and tell the others it is time.’
The boy smiled back at him, then spun smartly on his heel and left the room.
‘He’s in an orphanage,’ explained Kovalevsky.
Pekkala remembered what Stalin had said about the boy whose parents had been shipped to the gulag at Mamlin-Three.
A moment later, the rest of the class filed into the room. As they took their seats, each one glanced cautiously at Pekkala.
‘This is an old friend of mine,’ said Kovalevsky, laying his hand upon Pekkala’s shoulder. ‘His name is Inspector Pekkala. Long ago, and still today, he is known as the Emerald Eye.’
‘Why do they call you that?’ asked the boy called Zev.
‘Because of this,’ replied Pekkala, lifting his lapel to reveal the gold badge. The emerald glinted in the pale light of the classroom.
A sound, somewhere between a moan and a sigh, went up from the students, as if they had just watched a firework explode into stars in the distance.
‘I know you!’ exclaimed a boy at the back excitedly tapping together the wooden-soled toes of his shoes. ‘My father says you are a shadow of the past.’
Pekkala smiled nervously. ‘I think what he means is that I am a holder of a Shadow Pass.’
‘No,’ replied the boy. ‘That isn’t what he said.’
‘Ah.’ Pekkala nodded and looked around the room.
‘Where are you from?’ asked a girl with the red scarf of the Comintern.
‘I am originally from Finland,’ replied Pekkala, glad to be changing the subject.
‘Can you do magic? All the Finns can do magic.’
‘I may know a card trick or two,’ Pekkala told her, casting a desperate glance at Kovalevsky.
‘The Inspector was just leaving!’ announced Kovalevsky.
‘Yes!’ agreed Pekkala. ‘Yes I was.’
Kovalevsky ushered him into the hall.
‘If you want my advice, Pekkala, the safest and the simplest thing to do would be to kill this man, rather than try to bring him back, and then to get out of the country as quickly as you can. That way, you have at least a reasonable chance of reaching home again.’
‘I must bring him back alive.’
‘Then the odds are against you, old friend.’
‘Never mind the odds,’ said Pekkala. ‘Can you help me?’
‘I can try,’ replied Kovalevsky. ‘Let’s talk about it over dinner this evening at the Cafe Tilsit. That is your favourite place, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Pekkala replied in confusion, ‘but how. .?’
He was interrupted by a loud and jarring bell which clanged in the hallway, indicating that the next lesson had begun.
‘Six o’clock!’ Kovalevsky stepped back inside his classroom. ‘Make s
ure you are punctual,’ he said with a smile as he began to close the door. ‘Teachers don’t like to be kept waiting.’
By the time their request
By the time their request to withdraw from the grounds of the Catherine Palace had been granted, the remnants of the 5th Anti-Aircraft Battery 35th Rifle Division had already been retreating for two days. Their new orders were to proceed to Leningrad, where the three remaining trucks would attempt to enter the city before the German encirclement was complete. If successful, they were to be deployed against the bombing raids which were now going on around the clock.
Barkat was driving at the rear of the column when, as they passed through a village so small it wasn’t even marked upon their maps, an old woman wearing an ankle-length blue dress and white shawl beckoned to them from the front gate of her garden.
‘What does that woman want?’ barked Commissar Sirko, sitting beside Barkat and smoking two cigarettes at the same time.
‘It looks like she’s holding a bottle,’ replied Barkat.
‘A bottle? Stop the truck!’
Obediently Barkat pulled to the side of the road and Sirko jumped down on to the road. He strode across to the woman. ‘What is it, granny? What have you got for me?’
She handed him an ornate glass container of the kind used to hold home-made vodka.
Sirko leaned over the garden’s white picket fence, which was twined with purple chicory flowers and kissed the woman on her sunburned, wrinkled cheek.
The old woman nodded and smiled and patted the air in farewell as Sirko walked back to the waiting truck, the bottle raised triumphantly above his head. ‘They love me!’ he announced to Stefanov and Ragozin, who had stuck their heads out from under the canvas flap at the back of the truck in order to see why they had stopped. ‘Even though we’re leaving them to an uncertain fate among the Fascists, they don’t hold it against us. You see, Stefanov. .’
‘Are you going to share that?’ asked Ragozin.
‘Go find your own vodka-making granny,’ replied Sirko. He drank half the bottle before the woman’s house was even out of sight.