Sam Eastland - Archive 17

The mission had failed. The gold had fallen into the hands of the enemy. The Tsar was dead. The war was over. For Colonel Kolchak, these bitter truths would have been harder to accept than the loss of his soldiers.

One thing continued to puzzle Pekkala more than anything else. After holding out for so many years, why had Captain Ryabov suddenly approached the Commandant in order to bargain for his freedom with information too old to be of any probable use? Even if he did possess some scrap of useful knowledge, why would he choose this time to betray the colonel?

Perhaps Commandant Klenovkin was right, and the captain had finally grown tired of waiting. But what Pekkala did not believe was Klenovkin’s claim that time and hardship had simply caused Ryabov to crack. Something specific had pushed Ryabov over the edge, perhaps a horror he had glimpsed on the horizon or else an event from his past which had finally caught up with him. If the latter was true, then the answer might lie in the contents of Ryabov’s file-if only the missing pages could be found.

The time had come to bring Kirov onto the case. All Pekkala had to do now was wait until they let him out of this cell.

At dawn on the seventh day, Gramotin and Platov came to fetch him. In their heavy greatcoats, they were sweating by the time they had trudged up the hill.

Pekkala was sitting with his back against the wall, his knees drawn up to his chest, clinging to the tiny pocket of warmth he had created under the threadbare blanket.

“Get up,” ordered Gramotin.

“Time to get back to work,” added Platov.

Stiffly, Pekkala rose to his feet, and the two guards walked him down towards the camp.

Halfway there, Platov tripped Pekkala, sending him sprawling on the muddy path.

Rolling over onto his back, Pekkala found himself staring down the muzzle of Gramotin’s rifle.

“We heard about you,” Gramotin said.

“Heard you were a detective,” Platov chimed in.

“That’s right.” Pekkala tried to stand but Gramotin swung his rifle butt into Pekkala’s shin and knocked him down again.

“We also heard that the Comitati want you to stay in one piece,” continued Gramotin. “We have learned, over the years, to get along with those gentlemen, which sometimes means granting them a wish or two, but the next time you see a fight, Inspector, you stay out of it. If I have to come all this way again to fetch you down from solitary, no matter what the Comitati want, I swear you’ll never make it to the bottom of the hill. Understand?”

Pekkala nodded, gritting his teeth from the pain in his bruised shin.

By the time they reached the camp, a large truck had arrived in the compound.

The canvas flaps had been thrown back and a group of hawk-eyed women were climbing down into the slush. Even more than their gender, it was the colors of their clothes which set them apart from the dreary world of Borodok. To Pekkala, they looked like tropical birds which had been blown off course from their migrations and ended up in a place where their survival would depend on a miracle.

“Hello, my darlings!” Gramotin called to them.

“I’ll see you later,” said a woman with a tobacco-husky voice. As she spoke, she drew apart the lapels of her heavy coat and swayed her hips from side to side.

“I love it when the whores come by.” Platov was grinning. “But look at the line already.”

At the camp hospital, the queue of men stretched halfway round the building. The hospital windows, lacking glass, were made from opaque panels of pressed fish skin, and they wept with condensation. Out of the back door of the hospital, the sick were being moved to other parts of the camp. Two hospital orderlies carried out one man on a stretcher. The sick man’s face was gray with fever. He seemed oblivious to what was happening, as the orderlies parked his stretcher in the woodshed beside the main building. Even though he did not fit inside the shed, the orderlies left him there, bare feet jutting out into the snow.

The two guards walked Pekkala to the kitchen.

Melekov met Pekkala in the doorway. With arms folded across his chest and a large wooden spoon clasped in each fist, he eyed Pekkala disapprovingly.

As soon as they were both inside the kitchen, Melekov launched into a scolding. “What did you think you were doing getting involved in a fight with the Comitati? If you want to get yourself killed, there are much simpler ways of going about it!” As if to emphasize his point, Melekov walked over to his cutting board. The huge slab of wood had been worn down smoothly in the middle, like a rock pool formed by centuries of dripping water. Melekov scrubbed it at the end of each shift and treated the wood twice a month with special almond oil which he kept just for that purpose.

Pekkala thought it was one of the most accidentally beautiful things he had ever seen.

Heaped on the board now was the skinned leg of a goat, pale and bloodless, filmed with a strange shimmer of colors that reminded Pekkala of opals. “Much easier ways to die!” Melekov shouted, cleaving through sinew and gristle with his monstrous carving knife. “Well, don’t just stand there, convict. You have to bring the commandant his breakfast.” He nodded towards a tray which had been covered by a dish towel.

Pekkala went over to pick it up.

“Wait!” Melekov shouted.

Pekkala froze in his tracks.

Melekov stabbed a piece of goat meat with his butcher knife and raised it to his lips. With cruel precision, his pasty white tongue slithered out. Goat blood trickled down his wrists.

Pekkala watched in pleading silence.

Just before the meat disappeared into Melekov’s mouth, he gave the blade a sudden flick, which sent the little cube flying across the room. It bounced off Pekkala’s forehead, falling to the dirty concrete floor. With a speed that surprised even himself, Pekkala dropped to his knees. Snatching up the meat, he swallowed it without chewing. By the time the gristly knot of flesh had made its way down his throat, his eyes were watering. “Thank you,” he managed to whisper.

Carrying the tray, Pekkala walked across the compound. Inside Klenovkin’s office, he laid the breakfast tray before the commandant.

“There is only so much I can do for you!” Klenovkin barked at him. “If you will insist on breaking the rules of this camp and getting yourself thrown into solitary-”

Pekkala didn’t let him finish. “I need to send a telegram to Moscow.”

Klenovkin snatched up a piece of paper and one of his needle-sharp pencils, then slid them both across the desk. “Get on with it,” he muttered.

Pekkala scribbled out a message-

FIND MISSING CONTENTS OF RYABOV FILE STOP SEARCH ARCHIVE 17 STOP PEKKALA

He handed the paper to Klenovkin. “This must go out straightaway.”

Klenovkin took the piece of paper and stared at it. “But why is this even necessary? I told you the Comitati were responsible. As far as I’m concerned, the only reason you’re here is to pick out which one of them did it. Now, what I suggest you do is arrest them all and be done with it. The only telegram you should be sending to Moscow is to announce that the case has been closed.”

“I do not share your certainty, Commandant.”

“But they are the only ones who stand to benefit from Ryabov’s death!”

“On the contrary. You have made no secret of your hatred for these men. What better way to be rid of them than to kill one man and blame the others for his murder? In a single act you could sweep all of them away.”

Klenovkin smashed his fist down on the table. “I will not stand to be accused!”

As if propelled by some invisible current of air, the pencil Pekkala had been using began to roll.