Red Moth ip-4

by Sam Eastland

  ‘How many of them are there?’ asked the cavalryman.

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Two! Ostubaf, I have brought a whole troop with me. That’s more than thirty riders! If we are only going after a couple of Russians, I can dismiss half of my men here and now.’

  ‘You may dismiss them,’ Engel replied calmly, ‘after the two men have been caught. And only one of them is Russian. The other is a Finn named Pekkala.’

  ‘A Finn,’ muttered the cavalryman. ‘Then I may need the whole troop, after all.’

  The floorboards creaked as the soldiers departed from the cottage.

  ‘Come,’ Engel said to Churikova, as the two of them walked out into the night. ‘Let us go back to the palace, and watch your genius at work.’

  For a moment longer, Pekkala lay on the stone floor, his mind in a turmoil of anger and confusion at the depth of Churikova’s treachery.

  ‘Are they gone?’ whispered Stefanov, calling from the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘Yes,’ Pekkala answered. ‘How much did you hear?’

  ‘Every word, Inspector. There’s a ventilation shaft down here, which leads up beneath the floor. They were standing right above me.’

  Cautiously, the two men crept out into the front room of the cottage.

  ‘You were right,’ said Stefanov.

  ‘No,’ muttered Pekkala. ‘If I’d been right, Engel would be in our custody by now, instead of hunting us with men on horseback as if we were a couple of foxes.’

  ‘Not about that. About this.’ Stefanov was holding up a bottle. ‘It was just where you said it would be.’

  Pekkala nodded, lost in thought.

  ‘What will we do now, Inspector?’ asked Stefanov, the bottle still clutched in his fist.

  ‘I will carry out my orders.’

  Stefanov tried to reason with Pekkala. ‘You heard him, Inspector. The room is guarded on all sides. They’d shoot us down before we even came close. If we leave now, there’s still a chance that we can get back to our lines before the cavalry pick up our trail.’

  ‘I have no choice,’ Pekkala told him. ‘Do you know what will happen to me if I return to Moscow empty-handed?’

  ‘No,’ admitted Stefanov, ‘but I can guess.’

  ‘And if I don’t get the job done,’ Pekkala continued, ‘Stalin will send someone else. And another and another until his wishes are fulfilled. It’s not the amber that is irreplaceable, Stefanov, it’s the lives that will be lost if I fail.’ Pekkala knew as he spoke how slim the chances were of his success, but they were still greater than the odds of his surviving Stalin’s wrath.

  Stefanov knew that there was no point in arguing with Pekkala. He wondered if he had been wrong even to try. There seemed a clear and brutal symmetry that the man who, if legends were to be believed, had been conjured from the walls of that room should be the one who would consign it to oblivion.

  ‘I must move quickly,’ said Pekkala. ‘By tomorrow, those panels will be in a truck bound for Wilno. This will be my only chance to prevent that from happening. The last place they will expect me to head for is the palace. With any luck, those riders are already far from Tsarskoye Selo. Your orders, Stefanov, are to make your way back to our lines. It’s too dangerous for you to wait here any longer, and there is nothing more that you can do to help.’

  ‘There may be one thing,’ replied Stefanov.

  ‘And what is that, Rifleman?’

  ‘I know the road they’ll take to get to Wilno. My father and I travelled along it every weekend in the summer, to sell the vegetables he grew in his spare time. The road passes through the forest of Murom, which is uninhabited. The locals wouldn’t go there, even to hunt‚ on account of the bogs which can swallow a man without trace.’

  ‘Is there somewhere on that road where those trucks can be stopped?’

  ‘I think so. Yes. At the far side of the forest, just where the fields begin again, the road passes over a bridge. It is a small bridge, made of wooden beams, which passes over a stream that only flows there in the spring. The rest of the year, it is dry.’

  ‘And if I follow that road, how long will it take me to get there?’

  ‘If you stay on the road, you might not get there in time,’ Stefanov replied, ‘but if we cut through the forest, I can get us there by morning.’

  ‘I am not asking you to bring me there. You said yourself that it’s too dangerous. You’re free to go, Stefanov.’

  In the moment that followed, Stefanov was surprised to hear coming from his mouth the same words spoken by his father on that cold night back in March of 1917. ‘I would rather help you now than spend the rest of my life knowing that I could have and didn’t.’

  ‘Very well.’ Pekkala nodded at the dusty old bottle in Stefanov’s hand. ‘Then the least I can do is offer you a drink.’

  Stefanov opened the slivovitz and, as they passed it back and forth, the brandy spread like wings of fire in their chests.

  An hour later

  An hour later, having slipped out through the shattered iron railings which circled the Tsar’s estate, Pekkala and Stefanov were making their way through a tangle of bulrushes on the swampy ground which bordered the forest of Murom. Stefanov had discovered a trail, so narrow that it could only have been made by the deer or wild boar that roamed the forest.

  Tattered clouds rode past beneath the waning gibbous moon. Beneath its silvery light, the tasselled heads of bulrushes weaved like the patterns of heat upon an iron stove.

  Suddenly, Stefanov wheeled about and motioned for Pekkala to take cover.

  The two men scattered into the rushes.

  A moment later, Pekkala heard the hollow thump of hooves on the soft ground. Then he saw a man on horseback coming down the path, a rifle slung across his back. From the angles of his helmet, Pekkala could tell it was a German soldier. After him came another rider, and then another after that. Peering through the screen of rushes, Pekkala counted eight riders. The horses moved slowly, tired heads bowed low. After they had passed on, the smell of their sweat lingered in the air.

  Without a word, Stefanov emerged from his hiding place.

  Pekkala fell in behind him and they began to move again, their senses sharpened to the danger.

  An owl glided past, just above the tops of the rushes, its silhouette like some grim coagulation of the darkness. As it came level with Pekkala, only an arm’s length away, it turned its flat, round head and blinked at him with dead man’s eyes.

  They had not gone far when Stefanov halted once again. ‘What’s that sound?’ he asked.

  Pekkala strained to hear above the rustling of the leaves. He thought it might be thunder or a gust of wind approaching. Then suddenly he felt a tremor from the ground beneath his feet. ‘They’re coming back!’ he hissed.

  Once more, Pekkala dived off the path, pawing through the bulrushes, sweeping them aside to get away. He heard shouting as he ran, but it seemed to be coming from above, as if creatures were descending from the night sky. All around, the rushes thrashed and crackled. In the next instant, the huge, black shape of a horse swept past him, static electricity crackling across its flanks. Shreds of blue-green flame tangled in the animal’s tail, sparking up the rider’s legs until it reached his arms and, outlined in that fire, the two transformed into a single beast. With a ring of unsheathed metal, the curve of a sabre blade flashed and hung suspended in the air above their heads, as if it were the stalled path of a meteor.

  Blindly, Pekkala stumbled forward through the reeds, feet sinking in the mud and the Mauser rifle, on its leather sling across his back, dragging through the rushes like an anchor. The same bright static swam around him; emeralds streaming through his fingers. He could not unshoulder the rifle without stopping, so struggled instead to draw the Webley from its holster. But it was too late.

  The air filled with the terrible snorting breath of the horse and the high-pitched shriek of the rider as a burning stripe of pain flashed across Pekkala’s shoulder blades. Th
e earth seemed to disappear from beneath him as he lost his footing. With a shout that emptied his lungs, he tumbled to the ground.

  The horse passed over him, hooves trailing sparks and clods of dirt. In another second it was gone, ploughing through the rushes, the rider still howling in the darkness.

  Sure that he had been cut down by the cavalryman’s sword, Pekkala had the sensation of being turned loose from the clumsy fastenings of his body. In what he did not doubt was the moment of his death, he seemed to leap into the sky unfolding wings from his back like those of a dragonfly from the papery husk of its larva.

  From far above, Pekkala looked down upon the field of rushes, where the paths of the horses spread out green through the black. He saw the cowering figure of Stefanov, and of the other riders, all of them varnished with moonlight.

  Then Pekkala tumbled back to earth and lay there‚ dazed‚ among the trampled rushes, in too much pain to be anything other than alive.

  His rifle had gone. He had no idea where, and the leather Y-straps which had held his field equipment lay tangled in a heap beside him.

  Rolling on to his back, Pekkala tore open the top buttons of his tunic and put his hand against his chest, searching for a puncture wound. But he felt only skin and sweat. Next, he reached down the back of his neck, dabbing at the bruise where, he now realised, the cavalryman had caught his blade against the Mauser, severing the rifle strap, together with the thick leather of his equipment harness.

  A sub-machine gun roared, somewhere out there in the thicket. Then Pekkala heard the terrible shriek of a wounded horse and the thump of horse and rider going down together.

  Shouts reached across the swaying rushes. The cavalrymen were calling to each other.

  The machine gun fired once more in a long burst which was followed by silence. A moment later, he heard a rattle as someone removed a magazine and the dull clank as the person tapped a new magazine against their helmet to settle the rounds before inserting it into the weapon.

  The voices of the riders grew fainter. A moment later, they were gone.

  ‘Pekkala!’ shouted Stefanov. ‘Pekkala, are you out there?’

  ‘Yes!’ he called back. ‘I just got knocked down. That’s all.’ Painfully, he clambered to his feet. Pekkala gathered up his rifle, which had a deep gash in the wooden stock, and slung the gas-mask canister over his shoulder. The rest of his equipment he left lying on the ground amongst the mangled leather straps of his combat harness.

  Making his way out to the path, Pekkala found Stefanov standing over the body of a wounded horse. The animal lay on its side, its wide eyes glistening. The saddle had remained strapped to its back. Stirrups trailed upon the ground like the leg braces of a crippled child. Blood, as black as tar, pulsed from the horse’s neck, and the sound of its laboured breathing filled the air.

  Stefanov still gripped the German gun with which he had brought down the animal, as if he meant to shoot it once again.

  Pekkala rested his hand on Stefanov’s arm.

  Slowly, he lowered the weapon, but his eyes were fixed on something other than the horse.

  Pekkala followed Stefanov’s gaze to where the rider of the horse stood on the path, oblivious to the men who watched him. His own sword had gone through his chest as he came down from the horse. The blade protruded from his back. The cavalryman swayed back and forth, both hands gripping the hilt as if summoning his strength to draw the sword from its scabbard of flesh and bone. His legs, which looked unnaturally thin in his tall riding boots, trembled as he tried to remain on his feet.

  Only now did the rider seem to become aware of the two men who were watching him. He spoke to them in a voice no louder than a whisper.

  ‘What is he saying?’ asked Stefanov.

  ‘He says his horse is suffering‚’ replied Pekkala.

  Stefanov chambered a round in the Schmeisser, removed the magazine and set the barrel of the gun between the horse’s ears. There was a sharp crack as he fired and a tiny, musical ring as the smouldering brass cartridge ejected.

  The horse trembled and then it was dead.

  The rider was staring at them.

  Pekkala walked up to the man and‚ gently prising back the fingers one by one, forced him to release his grip upon the hilt. Then Pekkala took hold of the sword and drew the blade from the rider’s chest.

  The cavalryman gasped.

  Pekkala dropped the weapon at his feet.

  The rider sank to his knees.

  The two men stepped past him and continued up the path.

  Before the reeds closed up around them, Pekkala glanced back at the rider, who still knelt in the middle of the path, his hands wandering feebly over the place where the sword had gone in, as if by some miracle of touch he hoped to cure himself.

  In the plunging red-black darkness before dawn, they reached the edge of the forest. A sweetness of pine replaced the sulphurous reek of the swamp. Once more, the earth was hard beneath their feet.

  Here, they stopped to rest.

  Stefanov pulled off his boots and poured from them a stream of oily water. Then he lay back on the mossy ground, the rifle lying heavy on his chest, and wiped the rough wool of his sleeve across his sweaty face.

  Artillery fire coughed and rumbled on the horizon.

  ‘What will you do with the lieutenant when you find her?’ asked Stefanov.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Pekkala replied.

  ‘She reminds me of a teacher I once had in the school at Tsarskoye Selo.’

  ‘I think I know the one.’

  ‘I saw the way you looked at her, Inspector.’

  Wearily, Pekkala turned and glanced at Stefanov. But he did not speak.

  ‘You can’t let Churikova go free,’ said Stefanov‚ ‘no matter what your feelings are for her.’

  Still there was no reply from Pekkala.

  ‘I wish. . ’ began Stefanov.

  ‘What is it you wish‚ Rifleman?’

  ‘I wish we had something to eat.’

  Pekkala pushed aside his rifle, stood and walked into the forest.

  A short while later, he returned. From one hip pocket, he removed some baby fiddle-head ferns and from the other he produced a bunch of wood sorrel, with tiny stems and clover-shaped leaves. Lastly, from his chest pockets came a dozen chanterelle mushrooms, their apricot-coloured flesh as delicate as silk.

  Kirov would have fried these in butter, Pekkala thought to himself as he dropped half of them into Stefanov’s outstretched hands.

  If there had been more time, Pekkala would have gathered earthworms, dried them in the sun, then ground them to a powder before eating. He would have hunted snails, as well, plucking them like berries from their silver trails over downed trees and stones. They had been one of Pekkala’s favourite foods in Siberia. After baking the snails in hot ashes, he used to prise them out of blackened shells using one of his most prized possessions‚ a rusted safety pin.

  The two men ate in silence as the first shades of dawn glimmered eel-green on the horizon.

  When the tiny meal was done, Stefanov brushed his hands together and began to roll himself a cigarette. Just before he sprinkled the dried black crumbs of machorka into the shred of old newsprint that would serve as rolling paper, he paused and glanced across towards Pekkala.

  Pekkala was watching him.

  ‘No?’ asked Stefanov.

  Pekkala shook his head.

  ‘Even here?’ protested Stefanov. ‘There’s no one around. I told you these woods are empty!’

  ‘Not entirely.’ Pekkala nodded in the direction from which they had come.

  There, at the edge of the swampy ground from which they had recently emerged, stood a wolf.

  It had been following them for some time. Pekkala had heard the beast’s loping tread as it pursued them through the bulrush thickets. But even before he had heard the animal, he’d known that they were being followed. Pekkala could not name what sense had telegraphed the presence of that wolf into his brain, but
he had long ago learned to trust it with his life.

  The wolf’s head was lowered as it studied them, the black nostrils flexing. The front paws shifted uneasily. Then, unhurriedly, it turned and vanished back among the reeds.

  For a moment longer, Stefanov stared at the place where the wolf had been, as if some shadow of its presence still remained. Then he tucked away the tobacco pouch under his shirt. With an agitated groan, he slumped back against the trunk of a pine tree, realising too late that he had leaned his shoulder into a trickle of sap. Stefanov swore under his breath and picked at the honey-coloured smear, which remained stubbornly glued to his tunic. ‘In a few million years,’ he muttered, ‘this would have been treasure, instead of just a pain in my backside.’

  Throughout that morning, the two men advanced over the pine-needled ground, where insect-eating plants, with a smell like rotting meat, reared their sexually open mouths.

  After months of being on the move, the stillness of these woods was overwhelming for Stefanov. It reached him from beyond the boundaries of his senses, threading through the air like the long stray filaments of spider webs which dangled from the leaves. It walked among the columns of white birch like shadows of people long since vanished from the earth. Only a man like Pekkala‚ he thought‚ could survive for long in such a place.

  Late in the afternoon, the two men emerged from the woods into an ocean of tall grass, which trailed out over rolling ground as far as the horizon. After being in the forest, the glare of sky not fractured by a mesh of branches felt strangely threatening.

  ‘Where is the bridge?’ asked Pekkala.

  Stefanov‚ his throat too dry to speak‚ only motioned for Pekkala to follow.

  On hands and knees, guns slung across their backs, they crawled through the waist-high grass. Reddish brown seeds clung to their sweat-soaked skin. Grasshoppers with iridescent green eyes catapulted themselves into the air with an audible snap of their legs.

  At last, they spotted the bridge, a crude wooden structure which seemed to have no purpose until Stefanov dropped down into a dry stream bed which appeared before them, hidden until they were almost upon it.