Red Icon

by Sam Eastland

  He did not see Kirov until it was already too late.

  The major stepped out from behind one of the stone buttresses of the church, appearing so suddenly in front of Stefan that the two men actually collided.

  Kirov did not hesitate.

  The bullet passed through the icon, smashed through Stefan’s chest and left a hole the size of a man’s fist as it exited through his back.

  Kohl stepped back abruptly, a startled look on his face.

  Kirov fired two more rounds before Stefan’s legs gave out from under him.

  Stefan lay on his back. Through dimming sight he looked up at the sky. He could smell smoke; sweet like church incense and through the sputter of his failing senses he perceived that the Shepherd had come to life and stood before him now, casting a shadow on his face and filling him with warmth as what he believed could only be his soul was lifted from the ruins of his body. Stefan thought about the night he had stood in the rain, speaking to the man he had pulled from the ditch on the road to Krasnoyar, and how his mind had been so plagued with doubt about choosing the course his life would take. How he wished he could go back to that moment in time and reassure his younger self that everything the pilgrim had told him was the truth. There is no doubt, he thought. ‘No doubt at all,’ he whispered.

  ‘What?’ Kirov looked down pitilessly upon the man he had just shot. ‘What are you saying?’

  Kohl breathed out in a long, rattling sigh.

  Then Kirov knew that there would be no answer to his question. Coughing, he stepped back from the tatters of smoke rising from the dead man’s chest. The muzzle flash of the Tokarev had ignited highly flammable paint, setting fire to the ancient wooden panel and causing Stefan’s blood to crackle and blacken as it boiled.

  Kirov holstered his gun and went back to find Elizaveta. He caught up with her and Pekkala as they were walking down the street. They both moved slowly and unsteadily, as if old age had suddenly crept up on them.

  Kirov ran up to his wife and embraced her.

  Pekkala, his pale knees poking from the ragged holes in his trousers, waited patiently, until at last they stood back from each other. ‘Did you find him?’ he asked Kirov.

  Kirov nodded.

  ‘Where is he now?’ demanded the Inspector.

  ‘Lying in the churchyard,’ Kirov replied.

  ‘And the icon?’

  Reluctantly, Kirov explained what had happened. ‘It was only a painting, after all,’ he added with a kind of hopeless optimism.

  For a moment, Pekkala said nothing. Then finally he spoke. ‘You may be right about that, Major,’ he said, much to Kirov’s surprise.

  From the distance came the rumble and clank of approaching Soviet tanks.

  ‘Perhaps the offensive has begun,’ remarked Elizaveta.

  ‘If we start walking now,’ said Pekkala, ‘we’ll run into them before they reach the town. We can warn them about the soman and they will take the necessary steps to decontaminate the area.’

  ‘And after that?’ asked Kirov. ‘Those planes destroyed our vehicle. How are we supposed to make it back to Moscow?’

  For the first time since Kohl had kidnapped her off the street, Elizaveta smiled. ‘Come with me, gentlemen,’ she said. ‘An old friend of yours is waiting.’

  One hour later, with Kirov behind the wheel of the Emka, they encountered a Red Army reconnaissance squad making its way cautiously towards Ahlborn. After flagging down the lead armoured car of the squad, Pekkala informed the commander about the briefcase. Then they carried on towards Moscow, passing dozens of tanks and trucks, all of them loaded with soldiers, making their way steadily westwards.

  By then, Elizaveta had told the men the story of her capture, and what had become of Sergeant Zolkin.

  ‘But he was alive when you saw him last,’ said Pekkala.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘but . . .’

  Pekkala cut her off. ‘Then there is still room for hope,’ he said.

  ‘I should never have left you in Moscow,’ Kirov told Elizaveta.

  ‘And I should never have allowed you to leave.’

  ‘Allowed me?’ One eyebrow raised, he glanced at his wife in the rear-view mirror. ‘Is that so, Corporal?’

  ‘It is, Major Kirov,’ she replied.

  ‘This time I think she outranks you,’ agreed Pekkala.

  24 March 1945

  Moscow

  At the Sklivassovsky Hospital, they found Zolkin alive, although with twenty stitches in his neck. As soon as they entered the room, he climbed out of bed and embraced each one in turn. Although he was under orders not to speak, and could manage no more than a whisper, he immediately inquired about the Emka, which he had last seen driving off with Stefan Kohl behind the wheel.

  He took Elizaveta’s hand in both of his. ‘I suppose you will no longer need me as your bodyguard,’ he croaked.

  ‘Luckily for both of us, that’s true,’ she replied.

  Then a nurse arrived and ordered him back into bed.

  Kirov and Pekkala left Elizaveta at the hospital, to make sure that she was suffering no ill effects from her exposure to the chemical weapon.

  ‘But what about you?’ she asked Pekkala.

  ‘I’ll be back,’ he told her, ‘but first your husband and I have some business to take care of.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To see if your theory is correct.’

  ‘Theory?’ asked Kirov, following him down the corridor. ‘What theory?’

  26 March 1945

  Gorokhovaya Ulitsa, Leningrad

  In what had once been the courtyard of Rasputin’s apartment building, the mangled wreckage of a Soviet 37mm anti-aircraft gun still aimed its useless barrel at the sky. An artillery round had landed in the street outside, blown through the brick wall of the courtyard and demolished the steel gun-carriage used to transport the gun. The gun itself bore the scars of multiple shrapnel strikes and the rubber tyres, which had been painted a camouflage green, were now warped and deflated and the paint had crackled so that it resembled the skin of a reptile. It appeared that the gun had simply been abandoned, along with the ground floor of the building, which had also been ruined in the blast.

  Pekkala stood in the courtyard, shielding his eyes with one hand as he squinted up to the floor on which Rasputin had lived.

  ‘I still don’t understand what we’re doing here,’ said Kirov.

  Pekkala lowered his hand and turned to the major. ‘Testing your theory,’ he said.

  ‘I wish you would tell me what this damned theory of mine is!’ shouted Kirov.

  They entered the building through the gaping hole in the masonry which had once held an ornate front door, complete with frosted glass engraved with a French-influenced pattern of twined ivy leaves that had once been all the rage in this city. Then Pekkala began to climb the stairs.

  Kirov followed, grudgingly.

  When the two men reached Rasputin’s old apartment, Pekkala paused and looked around. The landing on which he stood had not seen a coat of paint in many years. The loose panes of the window looking out over the courtyard rattled in the breeze. It was not that things had looked that much better in Rasputin’s day. The Siberian had never paid attention to the upkeep of the various houses where he stayed as a guest of wealthy benefactors. That duty had usually fallen to the Tsarina herself, who had been known to send in teams of decorators to recarpet floors, replace every article of furniture, even down to the cutlery, and repaint the walls in her favourite shade of mauve.

  That colour, which Pekkala loathed because it reminded him of the boiled liver he had been forced to eat as a child, had returned many times to his mind over the past few days as he recalled the occasion when he came to visit Rasputin after the theft of the icon. The walls had just been painted. When he remarked upon the fact to Rasputin, he had received the answer that the Tsarina had ordered it to be done out of reverence for the icon. And he had thought no more about it. Until now.

  P
ekkala rapped his knuckles on the door.

  ‘Who’s there?’ called the nervous voice of a man standing on the other side, so close that the shadow of his feet showed on the floor.

  ‘Special Operations,’ said Pekkala.

  ‘Special Operations?’ echoed the man. ‘What did they send you for?’

  Kirov turned to Pekkala and shrugged. Then he faced the door again. ‘Are you going to open up or not?’

  There was a rattling of chains and the clunk of a deadbolt sliding back. The door swung wide, revealing a short, elderly man with a fuzz of grey hair and startled-looking blue eyes, which gave him the appearance of a baby bird that had been ousted from its nest. He wore a thick, long-sleeved undershirt tucked into high-waisted black trousers that were held up by a pair of white braces. He had no shoes on, and his bare feet looked small and vulnerable. ‘My name is Gleb Kutsov,’ said the man, pronouncing his name in a way that sounded almost like a sneeze, ‘and I would have taken care of it. All I needed was a little more time.’

  ‘What is he talking about?’ whispered Kirov.

  Pekkala stepped into the room and was surprised to see Rasputin’s old leather couch still sitting in the corner. But that, other than the layout of the room, was the only remaining trace of the Siberian. The walls, no longer mauve, had been covered over in paper of a chiffon-yellow colour decorated with a repeating pattern of tiny red flowers. In the place where the icon had been, however briefly, hung a small reprint of Leonid Kotliarov’s portrait of a miner named Alexei Stakhanov, who had come to symbolise the ideal Soviet worker. In the picture, Stakhanov was chipping away at a coalface with a large pneumatic drill. He wore clothes almost as dark as the coalface itself and his features were illuminated by some impossible light source.

  ‘Like I said,’ repeated the man, ‘there was no need to call on Special Operations for a matter as simple as paying the rent!’

  ‘Is that why you think we are here?’ asked Pekkala.

  ‘Well, isn’t it?’ replied the man. ‘Let me tell you something about this so-called landlord.’

  Pekkala raised his hand, opening his fingers slowly, like a magician revealing the disappearance of a coin.

  The man fell immediately silent.

  ‘I am not here about the rent,’ Pekkala said quietly.

  ‘Then what on earth . . . ?’ Kutsov paused as he followed Pekkala’s gaze to the painting of Stakhanov. ‘The print?’ he asked. ‘Is there something wrong with it? Has the artist fallen out of favour? Because if he has, I swear to you, comrades, I knew nothing about it!’ Kutsov began to breathe heavily. ‘I never really liked it, to be honest. A friend gave it to me, and a friend no longer, I should say!’ He all but lunged at the wall, removed the painting from its supporting nail and handed it to Major Kirov. ‘Take it!’ he commanded, turning his head away as if he could not even bear to see the painting any longer. ‘Make it go away! I never want to see it again.’

  Pekkala stepped up to the blank wall. ‘Was this nail here when you moved in?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘And when did you move in?’

  ‘I’ve been here since 1923. The place had been empty for several years when I arrived.’

  Pekkala reached over and tapped against the wall. ‘It’s not very thick.’

  ‘It’s just a board, I think,’ said Kutsov, staring at the space as if to find some meaning in its blankness.

  ‘I am sorry to do this,’ said Pekkala, and with those words, he removed the lock knife from his pocket, opened the blade and rammed the tip into the wall.

  Kutsov gasped, as if the metal had pierced his own flesh.

  Without letting the blade sink in too deeply, Pekkala dragged the knife down the wall, and then across and then dragged it back up again, creating a U-shaped scar in the thin plaster board. Then, his teeth clenched with the effort, he worked the knife across the top until a rectangular cut had been made. He then put the knife away and, with one sharp strike from the heel of his palm, knocked the piece loose. It fell back into the space behind the wall and dropped away.

  And then the three men stared in amazement at the picture which met their eyes. It was The Shepherd, its bright colours obscured by a fine layer of plaster dust.

  Pekkala leaned forward and, as if extinguishing a candle, blew away the powder.

  ‘I know that painting,’ said Kutsov. ‘But I thought . . .’

  ‘So did we all,’ replied Pekkala.

  Slowly Kutsov sank to his knees. ‘Do you mean to tell me that this has been hanging in my house the whole time I’ve been living here?’

  ‘That appears to be the case,’ said Kirov, as he reached in through the gap and carefully removed the icon.

  Pekkala rested his hand upon Kutsov’s shoulder. ‘Someone will come to fix the damage,’ he said.

  When the two men walked out of the room, Kutsov was still fixated upon the crater in his wall, as if at any moment, more treasures might tumble from the dusty gloom.

  ‘How did you know?’ asked Kirov, as they walked down to the street.

  ‘Back in Ahlborn,’ said Pekkala, ‘when you told me it was just a painting, I remembered that I’d heard those words before.’

  ‘From whom?’

  ‘Rasputin,’ answered Pekkala. ‘On the day the icon was reported stolen, I came to this house and he told me to abandon my search. He warned me how dangerous it would be if I continued the investigation. Grigori was right, but he was trying to tell me something else as well. When he said it was only a painting, I thought that sounded strange coming from a man as devout as Rasputin. What I didn’t understand until you spoke those words again was that he meant it literally.’

  ‘Then the thing Stefan Kohl was chasing all this time . . .’

  ‘Was a forgery, and, whoever did the work,’ said Pekkala, ‘the Tsarina must have known about it, as well as where the original was stashed. After all, she was the one who ordered the wall to be painted, which must have been to cover up the damage they had caused when hiding it.’

  ‘Why leave it at Rasputin’s?’ asked Kirov.

  ‘Because that is the one place she thought no one would look,’ replied Pekkala. ‘And when the people of Russia had finally resigned themselves to the fact that The Shepherd was gone, the Tsarina would spirit it back to its hiding place in their own Church of the Resurrection. You see, Kirov, although she believed in its power, she never had any intention of sharing that power with the world.’

  ‘But the forgery was perfect,’ remarked Kirov. ‘Even Semykin, the Kremlin’s own authenticator, was convinced. Is there no way to find out who painted it?’

  ‘Under different circumstances, I would probably say no,’ Pekkala told him. ‘A forger this accomplished would be well acquainted in the art of covering his tracks. However, the same is not always true of his employers and, in this case, I think I might know where to find the answer.’

  28 March 1945

  Moscow

  Outside the battered metal door of Archive 17, Pekkala stood in the rain.

  He had knocked several times, but there was no response. And yet he could see through the transom windows at the top of the wall, that the lights were on inside. Someone was there, and he knew that someone was Vosnovsky.

  He turned up the collar of his coat as a cold breeze swept along the empty street, ripping the puddles like stucco.

  With a low growl, he stepped up to the door and pounded on it once again.

  Nothing.

  ‘Vosnovsky!’ he shouted. ‘Open this wretched door!’

  But his only reply was the wind, moaning through the broken windows of the abandoned warehouse across the street.

  Pekkala paced out into the road, picked up one of the stones which had previously been hurled at the archive and prepared to pitch it at the door. But then he thought better of it and dropped the stone. Instead, he breathed in deeply and began to sing.

  He belted out a piece from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Legend of the Invisi
ble City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya, in which a woman who is lost in the wilderness of the Kerzhenskii woods dreams that she has awoken in paradise. In February of 1907, Pekkala had accompanied the Tsar to the opera’s premiere at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg. He did not want to go but the Tsar had insisted.

  ‘Pekkala, my wonderful savage,’ said the Tsar, ‘it is time we civilised you just a little.’

  It was Pekkala’s first time at the opera. Although his seat was too small, the music too loud for his taste and he felt overwhelmed to be packed in with so many people, he did enjoy the evening, even in spite of himself.

  The song of the Kerzhenskii woods had tattooed itself into Pekkala’s mind, as the songs from his childhood had done, and he sang it as best he could, which was not particularly well.

  The reason Pekkala bothered at all was that he had suddenly remembered the way Vosnovsky, in his previous incarnation as conductor on the Imperial Russian Railway line between Petersburg and Tsarskoye Selo, had sung operas while marching up and down the aisle of the rattly little train of which he was inordinately proud.

  Pekkala had not been yowling long before the door to the Archive suddenly flew open and there stood Vosnovsky, eyes wide in astonishment. ‘Rimsky-Korsakov!’ he shouted.

  ‘Actually,’ said Pekkala, ‘it’s me.’

  ‘Good God!’ exclaimed Vosnovsky. ‘Don’t stand there in the rain. Come in!’

  Inside the Archive building, Vosnovsky spread his arms to take in the hundreds of filing cabinets. ‘Just say a name, Inspector!’

  ‘Detlev,’ answered Pekkala. ‘If he’s in here, he should be in one of the old Okhrana files.’

  Vosnovsky turned sharply and strode away down one of the cabinet-lined avenues. ‘Okhrana!’ he said. And then he said it again, and again, and before long he was singing the word in a voice that echoed through the rafters of the Archive.

  Once more, Pekkala recalled the proud conductor of the Petrograd-to-Tsarskoye train line, a double row of silver buttons shining on his dark blue tunic, bellowing out arias as he strode up and down the aisles of the carriage.