Sam Eastland - Berlin Red

The animal was tracked to its lair and brought down with spears tipped with bone from the reindeer it had killed. Then its corpse was tied to a V-shaped trellis made from birch trees and dragged back to the village. That night, meat from the bear was cooked over a fire made from the same trellis used to haul him in.

The taste of it, Pekkala told her, was rank and sour and, when no one was looking, he spat it back into the fire, where the fat burned with a flame like polished brass.

The next morning, the bear was buried in a hole as deep as the bear had been tall and even though the animal had been cut to pieces for the feast, his bones were now arranged in exactly the way he had carried them in life.

The place where they buried the bear was at the edge of a grove of trees where the People of the Twilight lived. But there were no houses to mark their property or any sign at all that they were there. The name of this tribe was the Sajvva, and they lived in a parallel world, making themselves known only when they had to. They were said to be tall and beautiful, and their skin appeared to radiate a glow like that of polished wood. The Sajvva lived much as Pekkala’s people did, catching their own fish from the lakes and tending their own herds of reindeer. These animals they did not share. Only the bear lived in both of their worlds; serving as an emissary between the Twilight World and that of men. They buried his bones with respect, not only for the animal itself but for the Sajvva who considered him a friend.

In time, when he was ready, the Walker would rise up from his grave and piece his body back together, bone by bone, until he was himself again, so he could carry on his ceaseless wandering between the worlds of gods and men.

He had told her that story one evening as they stood at the edge of the Facade Pond, with the Alexander Palace at their backs. The palace had been lit up and the moon had just risen above the trees, casting its mercury light across the still water.

‘What strange names they have for things up there,’ Lilya had remarked.

‘They would have a name for you as well,’ Pekkala told her.

She turned to him, smiling. ‘Oh, really?’ she asked. ‘And what name would that be?’

‘They would call you,’ he began, and then he paused.

‘Yes?’

‘Your name’, said Pekkala, ‘would be “She Whose Hair Glows Softly in the Moonlight”.’

Even though the words had just rolled off his tongue, there was something both ancient and haunting about them, as if the name had been waiting for her much longer than she’d waited for the name.

The last thing she heard of Pekkala, after the Revolution drove them apart, was that he had been sent to the labour camp of Borodok, in the valley of Krasnagolyana. As years passed, and only silence reached her from the forests of Siberia, she began to wonder if Pekkala was still alive.

At times like that, she would return to the stories he had told her, until it seemed to her that Pekkala had transformed into the Walker in the Woods, striding through the veil between the worlds of gods and men with no more effort than a sigh.

And then she would not worry any more.

While he waited for Pekkala to arrive, Professor Swift sat in a chair across from Stalin’s desk, nervously fingering his gold Dunhill lighter. In the other hand, he held an unlit cigarette, which he was desperate to smoke but did not dare to do in Stalin’s presence. Although Swift was well aware of Stalin’s tobacco habit, he had been warned by his station commander not to light up before the Boss himself saw fit to fill the room with smoke.

Stalin seemed to know this. Balanced between his yellowed fingertips was one of the many Markov cigarettes he puffed away each morning, often switching to a pipe come afternoon. He tapped the stubby white stick upon the leather blotter of his desk, letting it slide up between his fingers before turning it around and tapping it back down the other way.

‘Pekkala appears to be late,’ remarked Swift.

Stalin responded with a grunt.

Another minute passed.

Swift could feel perspiration sticking the shirt to his back. ‘Perhaps I should come back later,’ he suggested.

Stalin fixed him with emotionless yellow-green eyes.

‘Perhaps not,’ Swift corrected himself.

From the outer office an irregular clatter of typewriter keys, which seemed to pause now and then, as if the typist – that little bald man with a shifty expression – were listening for any words that passed between them.

Just when Swift was about to flee from the premises, he heard voices in the outer office. ‘Thank God,’ he muttered.

The doors to Stalin’s study opened.

Poskrebychev swung into the room, his hands touching both door knobs, which caused his arms to spread as if he were some large featherless bird in the moment before it took flight.

Pekkala and Kirov followed on his heels.

Swift was struck by the air of lethal efficiency these two men seemed to exude. He, himself, felt clumsily unprepared. The pretence of his job as sub-director of the Royal Agricultural Trade Commission was, by now, nothing more than an afterthought. The Soviets seemed to have known exactly who he was before he even arrived in the country and the charade that SOE’s concern for agent Christophe was purely humanitarian had also crumbled to dust. He felt like a man in a poker game who had bet everything on a bluff, only to realise that he’d been showing his cards all along.

On seeing Pekkala walk into the room, Stalin’s whole demeanour seemed to change. He smiled. The stiffness went out of his shoulders. He wedged the cigarette between his lips and lit it with a wooden match which he struck against a heavy brass ashtray already crowded with that morning’s crumpled stubs. ‘You are going to Berlin!’ he announced. ‘I hear it’s very nice this time of year.’

‘And me?’ asked Kirov.

‘You as well,’ confirmed Stalin, ‘along with a guide who will lead you to a safe house in the city. There, you will meet agent Christophe and bring her back across the Russian lines to safety.’

‘Who runs the safe house?’ asked Pekkala.

‘We do,’ answered Swift. Before continuing, he paused to light a cigarette, flooding his lungs with smoke. ‘It belongs to one of our contact agents, who is employed at the Hungarian Embassy.’

‘You will be provided with papers’, explained Stalin, ‘indicating that you are Hungarian businessmen who have been stranded in the city by the bombing and are staying with a member of the embassy until you are able to leave Berlin.’

‘Neither of us speaks Hungarian,’ said Kirov.

‘And nor, in all likelihood, will any policeman who stops and asks for your papers,’ answered Swift. ‘The contact has been told to expect you. If the police check with him, he will verify your story. There is one other thing.’

‘And what is that?’ asked Pekkala.

‘We have just learned from an informant in the German Security Service that Hitler has assigned a detective, a former member of the Berlin police, to root out a spy whom Hitler is convinced is operating from within his own headquarters. It’s possible that they are closing in on Christophe, so the sooner you can get her out of there, the better.’

‘A detective?’ asked Pekkala. ‘But surely they have a Security Service protecting the headquarters?’

‘Indeed they do,’ confirmed Swift. ‘It is headed up by a former Munich policeman named Rattenhuber.’

‘Why not use him?’ asked Kirov.

‘Hitler no longer knows whom to trust,’ Swift explained. ‘That’s why he chose someone from the outside: an old comrade of his from the Great War.’

‘Who is this man?’ asked Stalin.

‘His name is Leopold Hunyadi.’