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Together, they inspected the damage.

It had not been one of the large Teller mines, which would probably have penetrated the main compartment, chopping the interior to pieces, along with anyone who happened to get in the way. More likely, it was one of the smaller Schu mines, which were designed to blow off a man’s leg at the knee. The explosion had sheared through one of the holding pins, causing the tread to break, and the forward momentum had carried it right off its track.

Now the track lay like a huge dead snake in the ditch at the side of the trail. If it had been on the road, they might have been able to reverse the tank back on to the track and attach it again with a new pin, but it would take more than the strength of two men to heave the tread out of the ditch.

‘We’ll have to walk the rest of the way to the depot,’ said Ovchinikov. ‘They can send another tank to tow us out.’

Proskuryakov hoped it would not be one commanded by the officer to whom he had boasted about driving into Berlin.

Setting out on foot, they had just reached the main street running through the centre of the village when Proskuryakov heard a sound like someone shaking out a rug, and turned to see flames pouring from the open hatch of his tank. Speechless, he stared at the inferno.

There was any number of ways in which the fire could have started. A piece of shrapnel may have ruptured a fuel line. The engine might have overheated as a result of the damage they had been on their way to fix. Whatever the cause, nothing could be done about it now. Once a tank started burning, it usually didn’t stop until only a husk of iron remained.

Over the sound of machine-gun bullets exploding inside the T34, with a noise like a string of Chinese firecrackers, both men heard the rumble of a vehicle approaching.

‘At least we won’t have to walk to Eberfelden,’ remarked Ovchinikov. He stepped out into the middle of the road and waved his arms back and forth.

Soon afterwards, they saw a truck enter the outskirts of the village. It was preceded by a small staff car. Probably one of those American lend-lease Jeeps, thought Proskuryakov.

Ovchinikov was still waving his arms when he noticed the large white cross painted on the bonnet of the car, and he realised it wasn’t a Jeep after all. It was a German Kubelwagen, and the truck that followed it was a five-ton Hanomag filled with enemy soldiers.

‘Run, you idiot!’ shouted Proskuryakov.

The two men sprinted for their lives.

After a short sprint in their heavy tanker’s clothing, both men were so out of breath that they were forced to take shelter in a small church at the edge of the village. Finding the front door bolted shut, they had forced their way in through a window at the side, only to discover that the roof of the church had collapsed and the interior was a shambles of old pews, roof beams and plaster dust. To the side of the main altar, they came across a doorway leading to a narrow staircase which spiralled down into the earth. At the bottom of this staircase, on the other side of an unlocked iron gate, the two men made their way into a crypt, where pinewood coffins rested in alcoves chipped from the crumbly, sand-coloured rock. There, the Russians huddled silently, freezing in the meat-locker cold.

An hour went by.

‘Surely they have gone by now,’ whispered Ovchinikov.

Proskuryakov had been thinking the same thing. All he could hear was the murmur of wind blowing through the shattered rafters of the church and the patter of rain, which made its way down through a hole in the floorboards and dripped on to the dusty surface of the crypt. Perhaps they never even saw us, thought Proskuryakov, but he was not yet confident enough to abandon the safety of their hiding place. ‘I’ll take a look through that gap in the floorboards,’ he said, ‘but I need something to stand on.’

The two men lifted a coffin from its alcove and heaved it into the middle of the room.

Proskuryakov removed his leather coat and placed it in the corner, out of the way. Then, very carefully, he stepped up on to the coffin and looked out on to the main floor of the church. All he could make out were smashed wooden pews and prayer books lying scattered on the ground. ‘There’s no one,’ he said with a sigh. Even for a man as stubbornly faithless as Proskuryakov, it was hard not to feel as if fate had intervened on their behalf.

What happened next took place so quickly that it was over before Proskuryakov even realised what had occurred. With a loud, dry crack, the lid of the coffin collapsed. One of the captain’s heavy boots dropped through the splintered wood, while the other slid off the end of the plank. The whole coffin tipped over and Proskuryakov landed heavily upon the floor.

For a few seconds, he only lay there, too dazed by the fall to react. He swatted at the wreckage which lay on top of him and as his hands tore through old and rotten fabric, he felt his fingernails scrape against what he now realised was frozen human flesh. With a cry Proskuryakov scrambled to his feet, slapping his face and chest as if bees were swarming around him.

‘It’s all right, Captain,’ Ovchinikov assured him as he attempted to brush the dust out of the captain’s hair. ‘There’s nothing to worry about.’

‘I’m not worried!’ barked the captain, ‘and stop pawing at me, for pity’s sake!’

Ovchinikov lit the stump of a candle which he carried in his pocket and the two men turned their attention to the contents of the coffin, which now lay strewn across the floor.

‘It’s just another dead man,’ remarked Proskuryakov, determined to show that he had regained his composure, ‘and it looks like he’s been that way for quite a while.’

‘No,’ Sergeant Ovchinikov pointed to an object clutched between the withered, ice-rimed fingers of the corpse. ‘There’s something else.’

‘What is it?’ asked Proskuryakov, squinting as he leaned forward to get a better look.

The light of the candle flickered in the sergeant’s trembling hand. ‘Mother of God,’ he whispered.

St George’s Hall, the Winter Palace, St Petersburg, Russia

Inspector Pekkala felt a drop of sweat moving slowly down his neck. It meandered along the trench of his spine, pausing at the knot of each vertebra before continuing its journey. The passage of that droplet filled Pekkala’s mind, until he could focus on nothing else. He shrank away from it inside his coat, as if, by some contortion of his body, he might separate his flesh from any contact with his clothes.

Pekkala was a tall, broad-shouldered man. His dark hair, greying at the temples, was swept straight back upon his head. His eyes, a deep, shadowy brown, contained a peculiar silveriness, which people only noticed when he was looking straight at them.

The Great Hall of St George, in which he stood, was filled to capacity. Lining the walls, some in chairs but most of them having remained on their feet, was the entire Russian court, decked out in their formal tailcoats, starched white collars gripping at their throats. Among them waited representatives from all branches of the Russian military. Like exotic birds among the dreary black of politicians stood hussars in scarab-beetle-green tunics, generals of Artillery in strawberry red and men of the elite Chevalier Guard in close-fitting dove-grey uniforms. Present were admirals of the Tsar’s Navy, their midnight-blue tunics bisected by the white sashes of the Pacific Fleet at Vladivostok, the pale blue sashes of the Baltic Fleet and the red sashes of the Black Sea Flotilla. The silver-buttoned jackets worn by members of the State Police, known as the Gendarmerie, winked in bolts of sunlight which flooded into the room through the tall window frames, causing the bone-white walls to shimmer like the inside of an abalone shell. And there were a few, like Pekkala himself, who wore no uniform but that which they had chosen for themselves in carrying out their secret duties for the Tsar. These were the men of the Okhrana. They lived in the shadows of the Romanov Empire, hunting its enemies one by one through back alleys where the bomb builders, the contract killers, the anarchists, the poison makers and the forgers plied their trade. For the most deadly of these, the Tsar would always call upon Pekkala. No one else had earned such sacred trust.