by Sam Eastland
Then Vosnovsky came to an abrupt halt. ‘Here!’ he announced. ‘D. Detlev.’ He slid out one of the file drawers and walked his fingers across the brittle, dog-eared ranks of files. Smartly, he yanked out an envelope and was just about to hand it to Pekkala when the satisfied expression on his face suddenly faltered. The envelope rose and fell as he weighed in in his hand. ‘There’s something wrong,’ he said.
‘It’s empty,’ remarked Pekkala.
‘Why, yes,’ agreed Vosnovsky. ‘It almost sounds as if you knew already.’
Pekkala nodded wearily. ‘I thought there was a chance that the contents might have found their way home.’
Confused, Vosnovsky looked back into the crammed contents of the file drawer. ‘Well, Inspector, unless you know who might have taken it, I’m afraid there is very little chance . . .’
Vosnovsky’s words snagged like a fish hook in Pekkala’s brain. ‘We could try the Blue File,’ he said.
Vosnovsky turned to him, startled. ‘The Blue File!’ he echoed in a whisper. ‘No one has asked to see that in a very long time, and if the request were coming from anyone other than you, Inspector, I can assure you that request would be denied.’
The Blue File was one of the most secret collections of documents in all of Russia. It had been compiled by the Tsar, and contained lists of agents whose identities had never been revealed. Code names were used, and the names of the men to which they had been assigned were known only to the Tsar himself. These included not only top-level Okhrana operatives on special missions for the Tsar, but also spies who had been tasked to infiltrate their own secret service, as well as to perform other duties the Tsar considered too sensitive to reveal even to his closest and most trusted confidants.
After the Tsar and his family had been banished from Tsarskoye Selo, beginning the long journey which would ultimately end with their murders in the far-away city of Ekaterinburg, the file was discovered in a secret compartment of a desk in the Tsar’s study by agents of the newly formed Bolshevik Secret Service. It became known as the Blue File because all entries had been made in blue pencil in the Tsar’s own hand.
Rather than simply remove the file, the entire desk had been transported from Tsarskoye Selo in the hopes that, contained somewhere within this finely constructed piece of furniture, there might exist some other document, in which the real names of the agents might be found. But no book decoding the names had ever been discovered. If such a thing had even existed, it was likely that the Tsar had simply burned it before his departure, leaving the unsolved riddle of the file to torment those who had toppled him from power.
Even though the Tsar’s Secret Service, the Okhrana, was gone forever, and the men who once worked for the Tsar had either fled the country or were dead, access to the Blue File was still restricted only to those who had been granted the express permission of Stalin. The reason for this was not so much to protect what the Blue File contained, but to keep hidden its very existence. The very fact that such a file had been created might have led people to wonder if there might be another such file, one kept in Stalin’s own hand, and hidden away from the world. Stalin knew, as did the Tsar before him, that the best secret was not one whose answer was kept hidden by the strongest lock and key. The best secret was one which nobody knew existed.
‘Did the Tsar make you aware of Detlev’s code name?’
‘No,’ admitted Pekkala.
‘Or even that he was on special assignment for the Romanovs?’
Pekkala shook his head.
Vosnovsky regarded him solemnly. ‘Then why . . . ?’ he began.
Pekkala fixed him with a stare.
Vosnovsky’s mouth snapped shut. Motioning for Pekkala to follow, he made his way down the aisles of cabinets until he came to a locked door. The door was made of metal, painted in the same grey colour as the walls, and was as solidly constructed as the door that led out to the street. The only difference was that it had no handle, only a lock, which meant that it had not only to be unlocked from the outside, but that anyone entering was then expected to lock themselves in. Rummaging in his pocket, Vosnovsky produced a large bundle of keys and fiddled with it for some time before he found what he was looking for. Then he slid the key into the lock. With a heavy clunk, the deadbolt slid back and the door slid open with a groan of its seldom-used hinges.
The desk was the only piece of furniture in the room, which had no windows or ventilation. It appeared to have been some kind of storage room, or else a workplace deliberately set aside from the main floor in the days when the Archive had been a foundry.
Vosnovsky walked around to the back of the desk, crouched down and slid out a large compartment which contained the file. He lifted it up on to the desk. The file comprised thousands of pages, each particular set of documents separated by a small tab containing the code word by which the individual agent was known. As Pekkala squinted at the tidy collection of manila folders, each one marked with the code names of agents likely long since dead or living far away in carefully maintained obscurity – Angel Wing, Aldebaran, Balalaika, Carousel – he recognised the Tsar’s handwriting, and even the faint blue colour of the pencil which the Tsar had also used to make margin notes in the sheaves of documents supplied to him each week by his parliament, the Duma. Suddenly, Pekkala paused. There, jammed in between Carousel and another agent, code-named Dromedary, he saw a crumpled collection of pages, with no folder or anything to mark the agent’s name. He lifted them out and placed them on the desk.
It was the contents of Detlev’s Okhrana file, clearly showing his arrest in June of 1910, incarceration in the fortress of Peter and Paul and then his release only one month later. But it was the reason for his arrest that caught Pekkala’s attention. In a raid on a guesthouse suspected of being the residence of a bomb maker named Kachalov, municipal police had come across a man, later identified as Detlev, in the act of creating a forgery. But this was not just any forgery. It was a study of a figure contained within Titian’s Burial of Saint Sebastian, one of the most famous paintings in the Tsar’s private collection. Although Titian produced many detailed studies of characters he later incorporated into his masterpieces, almost none were known to have survived. Upon interrogation, Detlev confessed that he was working for an art dealer named Kramer, who owned a well-known gallery in St Petersburg and who had furnished the Tsar with several paintings over the years. Well aware that a previously undiscovered canvas relating to the Burial of Saint Sebastian would prove irresistible to the Tsar, Kramer had commissioned the forgery, intending to make a small fortune off the sale. Having learned of Detlev’s arrest, Kramer left the country before police could track him down. But Detlev was sentenced to hard labour for a term of no less than twenty-five years, a length of time few prisoners survived. And then, quite suddenly, and only a few weeks later. Detlev found himself a free man, by order of the Tsar. There was no mention in the Okhrana report as to why the Tsar had ordered his release, but there, at the bottom of the page, faintly written in the Tsar’s own hand, Pekkala found the answer. It was a list of other paintings forged by Detlev. Among them, he saw Communion of the Elders by Crespi, and Rosa’s Court Musician, which he knew had been part of the Romanovs’ extensive art collection. As far as Pekkala knew, the true provenance of these paintings had never been revealed. According to the rest of the world, these paintings were all original. The only person left in Russia who knew the truth was Detlev. Having got word to the Tsar that the forgeries were part of his collection, Detlev had done what few men had ever been able to accomplish – he had struck a deal with Nicholas II. Detlev had traded his silence for freedom. In doing so, he had taken an extraordinary risk. The safest way to ensure a man’s silence was to have him put to death, something the Tsar could have accomplished easily, quietly and efficiently. If word had leaked out that the Tsar had paid such mighty sums for paintings that were worthless, it would not only have made him a laughing stock but would have cast his entire collection into doubt. So why keep
the forger alive? The Romanovs must have seen that a man with such extraordinary skills might come in handy some day. In the meantime, the Tsar had kept him close at hand, as a priest in the Church of the Resurrection on his own estate. Detlev might have believed that he had put his past behind him, thanks to the benevolence of the Tsar, but the day had come when his old skills were needed again. With access to the original, something almost never granted to a forger, Detlev had created a near perfect copy. It was this forgery that Stefan Kohl had received that day on the Potsuleyev Bridge and which, years later, the Skoptsy had died trying to protect.
Pekkala thought back to the day when, with the stitches from his knife wound still new and painful on his forehead, he had gone to the Alexander Palace, to make his report to the Tsar. He recalled how the Tsar’s fingers had drummed across the top of his desk, this same desk on which Pekkala’s knuckles rested now. If Pekkala could only have reached into the drawer, he would have found the missing contents of Detlev’s criminal record, recently removed from Okhrana headquarters, perhaps by one of those same agents whose code names were listed in the file which lay before Pekkala now.
Whether or not it had been the Tsar’s idea, or that of the Tsarina, to begin secret peace negotiations with his enemies, the Tsar had nevertheless been drawn into it. To pay the Skoptsy’s asking price, he had played his role in the deception. And worse than that, the Tsar had stopped his own investigator from finding out the truth.
Vosnovsky’s eyes grew rounder and rounder as Pekkala told him the story.
Afterwards, Pekkala wrote down the list of paintings in his notebook and Vosnovsky returned Detlev’s record to the Tsar’s secret file before placing it back inside the drawer.
Then the two men left the room, locking the door shut behind them.
They were walking back towards the entrance when suddenly Vosnovsky stopped and turned. ‘But the original,’ he asked, taking hold of Pekkala’s arm. ‘Who has the original now?’
*
‘Ha!’ Stalin boomed exultantly, grasping the icon with both hands and raising it above his head. ‘I knew it!’
Kirov and Pekkala stood before him, wincing as Stalin brandished the work of art.
‘I knew that first one you brought in here was a fake,’ Stalin told them. ‘I’ve got the knack, you see. The instinct!’ He put the icon on his desk and wagged his finger at the shepherd in the painting, as if to scold the white-robed man for hiding all these years. ‘That’s why I said I didn’t like the other one. It was a forgery. I told you so.’
Pekkala raised his eyebrows.
This did not go unnoticed by Stalin. ‘Not in so many words, perhaps,’ he explained. ‘I implied it. I insinuated. In matters of art, you cannot be so literal, Pekkala! The major was here. He knows what I’m talking about.’ Stalin cast a threatening glance at Kirov. ‘Don’t you, Major?’ he asked.
‘Indeed, Comrade Stalin!’ exclaimed Kirov, coming to attention.
Stalin turned back to Pekkala. ‘There you are, you see. But there’s no reason to feel ashamed, Inspector. The gifts of the gods are not handed out equally. It’s just something I have and you don’t.’
‘Yet another miracle,’ whispered Pekkala.
‘Miracles!’ Stalin grumbled. ‘There’s no such thing.’
‘And what of the soman?’ asked Kirov, anxious to change the subject.
‘Chemical weapons specialists were sent to Ahlborn,’ replied Stalin, ‘where they collected samples from the broken vials which had belonged to Professor Kohl. These have now been safely stored away at our laboratory in Sosnogorsk, which is where they are likely to remain. Even our enemies seem to have grasped the madness of unleashing such a weapon on the battlefield.’ As Stalin talked, his voice trailed off and his gaze returned to the icon. ‘I think I might keep this for a while,’ he said. ‘I might even put it up on the wall next to my Repin.’ He gestured towards the painting of the young lovers standing at the edge of the Neva River on a stormy winter’s day. An expression of longing passed across his face as he stared at the couple, frozen in perpetual exhilaration.
Pekkala and Kirov stood there in silence for a while.
Finally, Pekkala spoke. ‘Will there be anything else, Comrade Stalin?’
Stalin breathed in sharply, as if woken from a trance. He seemed surprised to find the two men standing there. ‘Go now,’ he told them gruffly. ‘You’ll be needed again soon enough.’
Kirov and Pekkala made their way out of the office, passing by a flustered-looking Poskrebychev, who had not heard them coming and was now pretending to fiddle with the dials on his intercom.
As they strode along the marble-floored hallway, Pekkala glanced across at Kirov. ‘Indeed, Comrade Stalin!’ he muttered, mimicking the shrill obedience of Kirov’s voice back at him.
‘What else was I supposed to say?’ replied Kirov.
Pekkala did not reply. He reached into a pocket for his notebook, then tore out a page and handed it to Kirov.
‘What’s this?’ asked the major.
‘A list of Detlev’s forgeries,’ replied Pekkala. ‘Do any of them look familiar?’
Kirov searched the list. He was not expert in matters of art and most of the titles were just mysteries to him. But one of them he did recognise. ‘What Freedom!’ he said, and then he glanced at the Inspector. ‘Isn’t that the one by Repin?’
‘Yes,’ replied Pekkala. ‘And it is hanging on the wall of Stalin’s office.’
23 April 1945
Seelow Heights, Germany, 50 kilometres from Berlin
Pulled over at the side of the main east–west highway, known as Reichsstrasse Number 1, blue-grey diesel smoke coughed from the exhaust pipes of Captain Proskuryakov’s new tank. It was a Model 76F, the latest in a long line of T34s that had rolled off the assembly line of the Uralmash factory in Sverdlovsk only two weeks before. Now the steel turret hatch clanked open and Captain Proskuryakov, resplendent in his new leather jacket, climbed up from the commander’s seat below. ‘Will you get a move on!’ he bellowed at his driver, Sergeant Ovchinikov, struggling to make himself heard over the constant roar of machinery which passed them on the road. There were tanks and trucks and armoured cars, all of them loaded with men and supplies.
‘Almost done!’ replied Ovchinikov, who was crouched beside the turret, hobnailed boots balanced upon the engine grille.
‘I swear to you, if this war ends before we reach Berlin . . .’ Proskuryakov did not finish his sentence, but only shook one black-gloved fist at the sergeant. ‘You can always tell when a man’s luck has run out,’ he added with a growl. ‘You can see it in their eyes, and I’m starting to see it in yours!’
‘There!’ said Ovchinikov. ‘Finished!’ He scrambled over to the driver’s hatch and lowered himself inside.
A moment later, the engine slammed into gear and two fresh geysers of exhaust smoke belched into the sky. The wide, segmented tracks churned against the earth and Proskuryakov’s tank turned out on to the road, joining the mass of vehicles streaming relentlessly towards the west.
As the T34 gathered speed, wet paint from letters daubed by Ovchinikov upon the turret began to merge, trickling into each other and forming a strangely beautiful pattern in which, before long, the word Pastukh – ‘The Shepherd’ – had merged into invisibility.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the following for their help and encouragement:
At Faber: Walter Donohue, Katherine Armstrong, Will Atkinson, Miles Poynton, Neal Price, Simon Burke, Sophie Portas, Katie Hall, Hannah Griffiths, Angus Cargill and Alex Kirby.
At Opus: Glenn Young and Kay Radtke.
At Juicy Orange: Mark Robohm and Lauren Ruggeri.
At RCW: Deborah Rogers, Cara Jones, Gill Coleridge, Matthew Turner and Ruth McIntosh.
My Baker Street Irregulars: Richard Lloyd, Bill McMann and Charles Barber, Professor of Early Christian and Byzantine Art at Princeton University.
And in the Western Mountains
: My friend and guide Bob Foster.
About the Author
Sam Eastland lives in the US and the UK. He is the grandson of a London police detective.
Also by Sam Eastland
EYE OF THE RED TSAR
THE RED COFFIN
SIBERIAN RED
THE RED MOTH
THE BEAST IN THE RED FOREST
First published in 2015
by Faber & Faber Ltd
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This ebook edition first published in 2015
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© Sam Eastland, 2015
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This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–31231–3