Sam Eastland - Red Moth

‘There’s nothing you can do for him now,’ said Engel. ‘We have to go now, or you and I will both be wishing we had died in this fire.’

This time‚ the two men were in agreement.

Stefanov tucked the burned pass book into his chest pocket. Then he jammed the ruined Webley into his belt. He nodded towards the Russian lines, somewhere far to the east. ‘After you,’ he said.

In a tiny, windowless room on the fourth floor of NKVD Headquarters, three women sat on empty filing crates, drinking tea out of green enamel mugs.

‘Of course he hasn’t called you!’ exclaimed Corporal Korolenko, stamping one foot and grinding her heel into the floorboards, as if to crush an insect which had strayed into her line of sight. ‘I saw what he did, down there in Lubyanka Square. He kissed you and then he turned around and ran away! What did you expect?’

‘Shut up, Korolenko!’ bellowed Sergeant Gatkina, waving her hand through a cloud of cigarette smoke. ‘If your brains were the size of your backside, you would be running this country by now. But you know nothing.’ She leaned across and bounced her fingertips off the corporal’s forehead. ‘Nothing!’ she said again. Turning her back on the bewildered corporal, Gatkina leaned towards Elizaveta, who sat very still on her crate, mug of tea clutched in both hands, looking frail and worried. ‘Now, my dear,’ said Gatkina, in a very different voice from the one she had used on the corporal, ‘what you need to do is make piroshky .’

‘Pastries?’ Elizaveta’s voice quavered between fear and confusion.

‘Yes!’ Gatkina was deafening in the cramped space. ‘I like the ones filled with green onion and egg, or salmon and rice if you can get it.’

‘But why?’

Gatkina raised one finger. ‘It is a test. You make the piroshky and, while they are still warm, you put them in a bag with a thermos of tea and you bring them to this major. Tell him you have brought this meal but that you cannot stay. Sergeant Gatkina, the bitch that is me, has ordered you back to work.’

‘I give him the pastries and then I leave?’

‘Yes.’ Gatkina paused. ‘And maybe no.’

‘Comrade Sergeant, I do not understand you at all.’

‘You tell him you have to go, yes?’

Elizaveta nodded.

‘And if he says thank you and goodbye, then you know it is finished. But if he asks you to stay, because no man with a heart would just say goodbye to a woman who has brought him fresh piroshky , then you know you are not finished, after all.’

Kirov sat in his office, a stack of untouched field reports laid out in front of him. He had tried to keep busy, hoping that the drudgery of paperwork would keep him from focusing on Pekkala and his own helplessness. He expected, at any minute, to receive news of the Inspector’s death. Every time the door closed down in the lobby, adrenalin cut through his stomach as if he had been slashed with a razor. He kept checking the telephone to make sure it was working. His loud, frustrated sighs stirred the dust that pirouetted through the air in front of him.

His gloomy thoughts were interrupted by the sound of heavy footsteps climbing the stairs. As Kirov listened, each monotonous tread of those hobnailed boots became like a kick in the face.

He stared at the door, half hoping that the person would find himself mistaken, turn around and go back down the stairs, and the other half wanting to get it over with and hear the news now instead of later. The one certainty in Kirov’s mind was that the news would not be good.

The person stopped.

Seconds passed.

Kirov remained at his desk, his hands beginning to sweat. At the first knock, he launched himself out of his chair and strode across the room towards the door.

He had no sooner opened it when he felt himself shoved violently backwards into the room. Kirov tripped on the carpet and fell and by the time he realised that his visitor was Victor Bakhturin, he was already face to face with Bakhturin’s Tokarev automatic.

Bakhturin was breathing heavily from his walk up the five flights of stairs. ‘Why the hell do you have to live up in the clouds?’ he barked.

‘If you’re going to shoot,’ replied Kirov, ‘get on with it.’

‘I’m not going to shoot you!’

Kirov stared at the gun. ‘It looks that way to me.’

‘I’m protecting myself,’ Bakhturin explained gruffly, ‘so that I get a chance to talk to you before you pull a gun!’

‘Then may I get up off the floor?’

‘Yes.’ Bakhturin hesitated. ‘As long as you understand that I have not come here seeking vengeance for what happened to my brother.’

‘You haven’t?’ Kirov climbed to his feet, dusted off his elbows and kicked the carpet back into place.

‘The only thing that surprised me when I heard that Serge had died was that he’d managed to survive for as long as he did. Don’t misunderstand me‚ Major‚ I loved my brother very much‚ but the truth is I have been preparing myself for his untimely death for so long that it is almost a relief not to have to worry about it any more.’

‘Then why are you here, Bakhturin?’

‘I heard that Pekkala has been lost behind enemy lines.’

‘He is not lost!’ Kirov shot back. ‘He knows where he is! It’s just that we don’t. That’s all.’

‘Do you still think he might be alive?’

‘I am sure of it, and I have no interest in hearing otherwise until somebody shows me the proof!’

‘I admire your stubbornness, Major. Believe me, I do. But you and I both know that he is never coming back.’

‘If you came here to tell me that,’ snapped Kirov, ‘then you have wasted your time.’

‘That is not the reason for my visit.’ From his pocket, Bakhturin removed an envelope and laid it on the desk in front of Kirov. ‘This is.’

Unable to hide his curiosity, Kirov snatched up the envelope. Inside, he found papers signed by Chief Clerk Yuri Tomilin of the People’s Commissariat for Justice, commuting the sentence of Valery Semykin to time already served. The documents were countersigned by Anton Markovsky, Director of the Recording Office of Lubyanka Prison. ‘He is being released?’ asked Kirov.

‘Even as we speak,’ replied Bakhturin.

Kirov put down the document. ‘Why have you done this?’

‘Call it a peace offering. Now that the Emerald Eye is gone, you and I must look to the future.’

‘When I know that he is gone, I’ll look. In the meantime, I will wait.’

‘My friend,’ said Bakhturin, an unfamiliar tone of gentleness suddenly present in his voice, ‘only a miracle can save Pekkala, and you must resign yourself to that.’

When Bakhturin had gone, Kirov remained at his desk, arms folded resolutely across his chest, resigned only to the miracle he felt certain would occur.

Less than an hour after his release from solitary confinement, Valery Semykin approached the doors of the Museum of the Kremlin. His beige prison pyjamas had been exchanged for a set of clothes that did not belong to him, as well as a pair of shoes that did not fit, which caused him to limp over the cobblestones.

From the moment he left Lubyanka, Semykin had thought of nothing else but wandering the halls of the museum and reacquainting himself with the works of art which he had worried he might never see again. But when he finally reached the doors, some force beyond all reckoning compelled him to continue on his way.

All through that day and on into the evening, Semykin walked and walked, as blocks of flats gave way to single-storey houses which in turn gave way to thatched-roof peasant huts.