by Sam Eastland
Unable to hide his nervousness at this unexpected summons, Kirov made his way back through the lair of Poskrebychev and returned to Stalin’s study.
Out in the hallway, after only a few paces, Pekkala came to a halt, so overwhelmed by what he had just heard that he could no longer bring himself to place one foot in front of the other.
But it was not rage which sapped him of his strength.
In his years of working with the Kremlin, Pekkala had learned never to apply the rules of other men to Joseph Stalin. With him, different logic prevailed. Only a fool would believe what Stalin said, and most of them had long since paid with their lives for such naivety. With Stalin, what mattered were his actions, not his promises.
The Russians even had a word for this. They called it maskirovka. Translated, it meant ‘camouflage’, but in the minds of men like Stalin it transformed into the art of deception.
In order to survive among men like the leader of Russia, and those who carried out his will because they had been mesmerised by fear, Pekkala had taught himself to see beyond the outrage of dishonesty. Instead, the task became to answer one simple question – What does Stalin want? – knowing that no amount of blood, hypocrisy or lies would sway the Boss from his desires.
As long as Pekkala proved himself useful in fulfilling Stalin’s wishes, he was perfectly safe. The trick had become to carry out his master’s will, and not lose his soul in the process.
Terrible as it was to know that he’d been lied to all these years, Pekkala was not surprised to hear it. He even understood. Stalin had needed him, and so the Boss had done whatever was necessary to continue their fragile alliance.
It served no purpose to be angry with Stalin, now or ever. How could it, when all traces of guilt or remorse had been scalpeled from his character? There were times when Pekkala even pitied the man, existing in the spiritual wasteland of someone whose word counted for nothing.
For Pekkala, what mattered now was not how to grapple with the depth of Stalin’s betrayal, but to judge whether the offer he had made would ever be matched by his deeds.
Kirov, meanwhile, stood before the desk of Joseph Stalin.
‘Sit down!’ the Boss commanded, nodding towards the chair on the opposite side of his desk.
Kirov subsided into the chair like a marionette whose strings had been cut.
‘I am placing you in charge,’ Stalin announced.
‘In charge of what?’ Kirov asked breathlessly.
‘Of the journey you are taking to Berlin.’
These words so confused Kirov that, at first, he could not bring himself to comprehend their meaning. Blankly, he stared at his master.
‘Did you hear what I said?’ asked Stalin.
‘I heard you, Comrade Stalin,’ replied Kirov. ‘I just don’t understand why you are saying it. I work for the Inspector. It is he who gives the orders. That’s the way it’s always been.’
‘You work for me,’ Stalin corrected him, ‘and it is I who give the orders.’
‘Of course, but . . .’ And suddenly he faltered.
Stalin raised his heavy eyebrows. ‘Yes?’
‘Very well, Comrade Stalin,’ answered Kirov, finally coming to his senses.
‘Good.’ Stalin pressed his palms together. ‘Then you may go.’
Kirov knew what he was supposed to do next. He should have risen to his feet, saluted and left. Instead, halfway out of the room, he all but skidded to a halt and wheeled about.
Stalin was staring at the Major, as if he had just placed a wager with himself on whether Kirov could make his exit smoothly. From the look on Stalin’s face, he had just won that little bet.
‘Why?’ gasped Kirov. ‘Why are you doing this to Pekkala?’
‘Because I don’t trust him,’ came the answer.
‘Forgive me for saying so, Comrade Stalin, but you have never trusted him.’
‘That is true,’ agreed Stalin, ‘at least with regard to his following my instructions, but he has always managed, one way or another, to carry out the task I set for him. I make no secret, to you or to anyone else, that I find Pekkala to be the most disobedient person I have ever allowed to keep on breathing. We have an unspoken truce, the Inspector and I. We may be very different, he and I, but we do have one important thing in common.’
‘And what is that?’ asked Kirov.
‘The survival of the country,’ answered Stalin. ‘This has been enough to secure our allegiance to each other. At least, it was until today.’
‘What has changed?’ asked Kirov.
‘This business with Lilya Simonova. For years, she has existed as a kind of dream for Pekkala – a beautiful image of the past, frozen in time since the Revolution began. But now that past has collided with the present, or soon will anyway, if you can get her out of Berlin in one piece.’
‘We will do everything we can . . .’
‘That is not what concerns me, Major Kirov. If she is there, Pekkala will find her. I have no doubt of that. It’s what happens after that which troubles me.’
Now Kirov had begun to understand. ‘And you are worried he will not return?’
‘What I’m worried about,’ answered Stalin, ‘is that he will not return with the information these Englishman are so desperate to obtain that they would come to us, cap in hand, to ask for help. I want that information here in front of me.’ He jabbed one thick, blunt finger on polished wood. ‘And only when I know exactly what it is, will I consider passing it along to those temporary gentlemen from London.’
‘I understand,’ said Kirov. ‘Would you like me to bring in the Inspector so that you can inform him about the change in command?’
‘You can take care of that yourself,’ muttered Stalin. ‘I have another meeting.’ And he began to fidget with the papers laid out in front of him.
Kirov didn’t tell Pekkala right away. He would rather not have told him at all.
The whole drive back to Pitnikov Street, the two men remained silent.
Pekkala did not press him for information, since it was clear from the look on Kirov’s face that a storm was brewing in his head.
The only sound was the soft voice of their driver, Zolkin, as he sang one of his favourite Ukrainian folksongs, called ‘The Duckling Swims’, about a young man going off to war. His low and mournful voice was interrupted from time to time by a grinding crash of the Emka’s mangled gears.
Finally, when they had tramped up to their office on the fifth floor of the building, Kirov revealed what Stalin had told him. As Kirov spoke, he could not bring himself even to look at Pekkala. Instead, he looked out of the window, past the luminous green leaves of basil, sage and rosemary which he grew in earthenware pots upon the windowsill, and rattled off Stalin’s instructions.
It seemed to take a long while to explain what was, in fact, a very simple order. By the time Kirov had finished, he felt completely out of breath. And now he waited, looking without really seeing through the dusty windowpanes, for the Inspector to make his pronouncement.
‘It’s a good idea,’ said Pekkala.
Astonished, Kirov whirled about. ‘Do you really think so?’ he gasped. It was the last thing he had expected to hear.
Pekkala had settled into his chair beside the wheezy iron stove. The stove was not lit and he had put his feet up on the circular cooking plates. From where Kirov stood, he could see the double thick soles of the Inspector’s heavy boots, and the iron heel plates, scuffed to a mercury shine. The Inspector seemed perfectly at ease, almost as if the idea had been his all along.
‘Congratulations on your first command,’ Pekkala added graciously.
‘Why, thank you,’ stammered Kirov.
‘Long overdue, if you ask me,’ continued Pekkala.
‘Well, now that you mention it,’ replied Kirov, his shattered confidence slowly reassembling, ‘I have been looking forward to the challenge for some time. I just never thought it would come.’
‘Stalin is no fool when it comes to recognising talent.’
Overwhelmed, Kirov strode across the room and shook Pekkala’s hand.
‘Be sure to tell your wife,’ said Pekkala. ‘I expect she will be pleased.’
‘I will!’ Kirov replied eagerly.
Elizaveta worked as a filing clerk in the records office on the fourth floor of the Lubyanka building which had, for many years, been the headquarters of Soviet Internal Security.
‘As soon as I have picked up our equipment for the journey,’ Kirov continued, ‘I’ll head upstairs and tell her the good news.’
‘If that suits you, of course, Comrade Major,’ Pekkala answered with a playful gravity.
‘I believe it does,’ said Kirov, lifting his chin dramatically. Then he set off to Lubyanka.
Arriving at the Lubyanka building, Kirov immediately made his way down to the basement, to consult with Lazarev, the armourer.
Lazarev was a legendary figure at Lubyanka. From his workshop in the basement, he managed the issue and repair of all weapons supplied to Moscow NKVD. He had been there from the beginning, personally appointed by Felix Dzerzhinsky, the first head of the Cheka, who commandeered what had once been the offices of the All-Russian Insurance Company and converted it into the All-Russia Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counter-revolution and Sabotage. From then on, the imposing yellow-stone building served as an administrative complex, prison and place of execution. The Cheka had changed its name several times since then, from OGPU to GPU to NKVD, transforming under various directors into its current incarnation. Throughout these gruelling and sometimes bloody metamorphoses, which emptied, reoccupied and emptied once again the desks of countless servants of the state, Lazarev had remained at his post, until only he remained of those who had set the great machine of Internal State Security in motion. This was not due to luck or skill in navigating the minefield of the purges, but rather to the fact that, no matter who did the killing and who did the dying above ground, a gunsmith was always needed to make sure the weapons kept working.
For a man of such mythic status, Lazarev’s appearance came as something of a disappointment. He was short and hunched, with pock-marked cheeks so pale they seemed to confirm the rumours that he never travelled above ground, but migrated like a mole through secret tunnels known only to him beneath the streets of Moscow. He wore a tan shop coat, whose frayed pockets sagged from the weight of bullets, screwdrivers and gun parts. He wore this tattered coat buttoned right up to his throat, giving rise to another rumour; namely that he wore nothing underneath. This story was reinforced by the sight of Lazarev’s bare legs beneath the knee-length coat. He had a peculiar habit of never lifting his feet from the floor as he moved about the armoury, choosing instead to slide along like a man condemned to live on ice. He shaved infrequently, and the slivers of beard that jutted from his chin resembled the spines of a cactus. His eyes, watery blue in their shallow sockets, showed his patience with a world that did not understand his passion for the gun and the wheezy, reassuring growl of his voice, once heard, was unforgettable.
As soon as Lazarev caught sight of Kirov’s highly polished boots descending the stairs, he reached below the counter, whose top was strewn with gun parts, oil cans, pull-through cloths and brass-bristled brushes, coiled like the tails of newborn puppies, and lifted out a Hungarian-made Femaru Model 37 pistol, still nestled in its brown leather holster. The weapon had been taken from the body of a Hungarian tank officer on the outskirts of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942 and was delivered to Lazarev for just such an occasion as this. In preparation for Kirov’s arrival, Lazarev had cleaned the weapon and loaded its 7-round magazine with freshly oiled 7.62 ammunition.
Kirov stared at the weapon, his eye drawn to the curious eyelash-shaped extension on the magazine, designed to rest against the user’s little finger when holding the gun.
Lazarev picked up the Femaru and held it out. The metal gleamed blue in the harsh light of the bulb above their heads. ‘You will find this less elegant than your issue Tokarev,’ he explained, ‘but just as lethal under the circumstances you are likely to encounter. More importantly, it is what they’ll be expecting if you are ever searched, the point being not to use the gun at all if you can help it.’
Kirov unfastened his officer’s belt, the heavy brass buckle emblazoned with a cut-out star, slid off the holster containing his issue Tokarev automatic and placed it on the table. Then, he replaced it with the Hungarian pistol. ‘Where do I sign?’ he asked.
‘No need!’ Lazarev waved away the thought with a brush of his hands.
Kirov narrowed his eyes. ‘But we always have to sign for weapons, and I know you are a stickler for the rules.’
Lazarev began to look flustered. ‘They called me from upstairs,’ he explained. ‘They said there was no need for you to sign.’
‘Who called?’ asked Kirov.
Lazarev rolled his shoulders, as if he had a crick in his spine. ‘Upstairs,’ he repeated quietly.
‘Why would there be no signature?’ demanded Kirov.
Lazarev reached across the counter top and rested his hand on Kirov’s shoulder. ‘You can sign when you return it,’ he said, a pained expression on his face. ‘How about that?’
Mystified at this breach of protocol, Kirov headed for the door. Then he stopped and turned. ‘I almost forgot,’ he said. ‘What about a weapon for Pekkala?’
Lazarev smiled. ‘Do you honestly think you can persuade him to give up that Webley of his?’
Kirov understood immediately what an impossible task that would be.
On his way to see his wife in the records office at the top of the building, Kirov stopped at the third floor, where he picked up two sets of identity papers. They consisted of a Hungarian passport, a small, sand-coloured booklet printed with the Hungarian crown and shield and the words ‘Magyar Kiralysag’ and a German Reisepass, containing various travel permits, stamps and handwritten validations. There were also driving licences, food ration books and Hungarian Fascist Party membership cards. Kirov marvelled at the attention to detail that had gone into preparing the books. There must have been half a dozen different inks used in signatures on the pale green pages of the passport, and the books themselves had been worn down in such a way that they even matched the contours of having been carried in a man’s chest pocket. If these documents had once belonged to someone else, Kirov could find no trace of alteration in the pictures, which had been heat-sealed into the identity books, cracking the emulsion of the little photograph and overlaying Kirov’s face with an image of an eagle from a registration office in the Berlin suburb of Spandau.
‘You’d better have this, too,’ said the clerk, setting before him a stack of German Reichsmark notes. ‘Spend it quickly, if you have the chance,’ he advised. ‘Pretty soon, it won’t be worth the paper it is printed on.’
Kirov picked up the brick of cash and turned to leave.
But the clerk called him back. ‘You’re not done yet!’ he said. ‘You’ll need another set of clothes.’
Led through the office to a room at the back, Kirov found himself in a room full of garments, all of them in various states of disrepair. Here, he was handed an old set of clothes by an even older clerk whom he had never seen before.
The man wore a tape measure around his neck, although he never put it to use. Instead, with a squinting of one watery eye, he judged the length of Kirov’s arms and legs and the width of his narrow chest, of which the major was slightly ashamed.
As Kirov held out his arms, the clerk piled on shirts and trousers and a tattered coat for him to try on.
‘I do have things at home besides my uniform,’ Kirov complained, his nose twitching at the smell of other men’s sweat and dogs and unfamiliar cigarettes which had sunk into the cloth.
‘But not like these,’ explained the clerk. ‘You’d be spotted as a Russian the minute you arrived in Berlin.’
‘But how?’ asked Kirov. ‘Clothes are just clothes, after all.’
‘No.’ The clerk shook his head
. ‘And I will prove it to you. See here,’ he said, holding out the collar of a shirt with a Budapest maker’s label. ‘The collar of a Hungarian shirt is more pointed than a Russian shirt and the way that the sleeves are attached here is different from what you would find on a German shirt. Even the way the buttons are attached, in two straight lines of thread as opposed to a cross are different from, say, on an English shirt.’ With his thumb, he levered up one tiny mother-of-pearl disc, letting it wink in the light to show the manner in which it had been stitched. ‘Even if those around you aren’t specifically aware of these details, they will nevertheless sense that something is not right. These clothes were carefully gathered from people who had travelled to Hungary before the war.’
‘Didn’t anybody have anything newer?’ asked Kirov. ‘Or cleaner, for that matter?’
The clerk laughed. ‘That is all part of the disguise! Nobody has new clothes in Berlin any more, or Budapest for that matter, and they haven’t for quite some time. Nor do they have the opportunity to clean their clothes as often as they should. Believe me, Major Kirov, you may not like the way you look when I am finished with you, but you will fit right in where you are going.’
‘Can you do the same thing for other countries?’ he asked.
‘Of course!’ boomed the old man and he began to sweep his hands around the room. ‘Over there is England. There is Spain, France. Turkey. Wherever you go, Major, my job is to make you invisible!’
‘Inspector Pekkala is also . . .’ began Kirov.
The man held up one hand to silence him. ‘Do not speak to me of that barbarian! What he wears does not belong in Russia, or Germany, or anywhere else on this earth! His tailor ought to be shot. And even if he would agree to let me outfit him for this journey, which he wouldn’t, it is hopeless anyway. Pekkala will never fit in. Anywhere! It’s just who he is. There is no camouflage for such a man.’
At last, Kirov arrived at the records office on the fourth floor, to share the good news of his promotion with his wife.