Archive 17 (14 page)

A
FTER
T
ARNOWSKI
, there were no more visitors.

It was hunger which preoccupied Pekkala now, no matter how hard he tried to steer it from his mind.

On his fifth day in solitary, Pekkala spotted a cockroach scuttling across the floor. The thumb-sized, amber-colored insect reached the far wall and began to move along it.

Without another thought, Pekkala lunged across the floor and caught it. With nausea rising in his throat, he crushed the cockroach in his fist and ate the mash of legs and shell and innards, mixed with the gray-brown silt, like the ashes from a crematory oven, which he had clawed up from the floor along with the insect.

Pekkala felt no revulsion, knowing that in the Gulags, only those who were prepared to set aside all pretense of dignity would go on living.

To take his mind off the fact that he was starving, he focused his thoughts on the murder of Ryabov. Since arriving at the camp, he had been presented with several possibilities, all of which appeared to circle around the truth. But none of them, as far as Pekkala was concerned, pointed directly at it. Commandant Klenovkin was convinced that the killing had been carried out by the Comitati. Melekov blamed Sergeant Gramotin. The Comitati themselves seemed resigned to their gradual extinction in this place, at the hands of whoever dared to challenge them. For Tarnowski, the killer and his reasons hardly seemed to matter anymore. The only thing they had left to believe in was that their leader would one day return to set them free.

Pekkala admired the Comitati for the depth of their faith, but for that same reason he also pitied them. Even if Kolchak had promised to return someday, Pekkala did not believe that the colonel would keep his word. Although Pekkala had not been well acquainted with Kolchak, he knew precisely the kind of man the Tsar would have
chosen for such an important task. Kolchak may have selected the men under his command for their loyalty to him, but the Tsar had picked Kolchak for his ability to carry out the mission, no matter what the cost in human life. That mission was to transport the gold. For such a task, cold blood, not compassion, was required. Once his soldiers had fallen into captivity, Kolchak would have weighed the risks of trying to free them and realized that the odds were too great. What the men under Kolchak’s command had never been able to accept was that they were, in the eyes of their leader, expendable.

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.

Both of them watched it gathering speed until it tipped off the end of the desk and fell with a rattle to the floor.

Deliberately, Pekkala bent down, picked up the pencil, and placed it back where it had been before. “I have not accused you of anything. I am merely showing you that the situation is more complicated than you imagine. I am beginning to think that the reason for his death might lie outside this camp.”

“And you hope to find the answer in this Archive 17?”

“With your permission, Camp Commandant.”

“Very well,” he replied gruffly. “I will allow it to go through.”

When Pekkala had gone, Klenovkin sank back into his chair. His heart was beating so quickly that he felt as if he were being rhythmically punched in the throat.

Sergeant Gramotin poked his head around the door. “I heard shouting. Is everything all right, Commandant? Has that prisoner been causing any trouble?”

Klenovkin grunted. “
Any
trouble? At the moment, he is causing
all
the trouble.”

“I can take care of that, Commandant.”

Klenovkin sighed and shook his head. “Patience, Gramotin. The bastard is protected. At least, he is for now.”

R
ETURNING TO THE KITCHEN
, Pekkala set to work delivering the thin vegetable broth known as
balanda
, which was served to the miners for their midday break.

The soup was carried in buckets which fastened with a wooden lid and a toggle on a piece of string; Pekkala hauled the buckets on a cart made out of rough planks. Its wheels yawed on gap-toothed hubs. A horse that used to pull the kitchen cart had died of exhaustion one week before Pekkala arrived at the camp. Without another animal to take its place, Pekkala strapped himself into the leather harness and struggled across the compound, his sweat mixing with the sweat of the horse whose bones had long since been sucked hollow by the camp inmates.

Arriving at the entrance to the mine, Pekkala called into the darkness and listened to his voice shout back to him. Then he waited, hypnotized by the tiny swaying flames of lanterns along the tunnel wall.

“A
MESSAGE
!” Poskrebyshev burst into Stalin’s office, brandishing a telegram. “A message from Borodok!”

Stalin held out his hand. “Give it to me.” He snatched the telegram from Poskrebyshev, placed it carefully on the desk in front of him, and stared at the piece of paper. “Archive 17,” he muttered.

“What exactly is in Archive 17, Comrade Stalin?”

“Old files, misplaced files, files out of order, files incomplete. Archive 17 is the graveyard of Soviet bureaucracy. The question is what does Pekkala hope to find there?”

“He is looking for the file on a man named Ryabov,” said Poskrebyshev, trying to be helpful.

“I know what he is looking for!” Stalin shouted. “I mean what does he hope to find on Ryabov, assuming anything can be located. The question was rhetorical. Do you know what ‘rhetorical’ means, Poskrebyshev?”

Poskrebyshev did not answer directly, in case that question might also have been rhetorical. He continued to puzzle over Stalin’s fixation with this dead prisoner. The discovery that Kolchak might still be alive seemed to have disrupted the order of Stalin’s universe in ways that even the outbreak of war had not achieved. It was as if Stalin had remained locked in a private war with the Tsar, even though Nicholas II had been dead for years. He would not rest until every last vestige of that defunct civilization had been trampled into dust. Of the old guard, only Pekkala had escaped Stalin’s wrath, but for how much longer, Poskrebyshev did not dare to guess, as long as this case remained unsolved.

T
HERE WAS A THUNDEROUS KNOCKING
on the door of Kirov’s office.

Kirov stood up from his desk and strode across the room. Opening the door, he found himself looking at a corporal of the NKVD, smartly dressed in an olive tunic, deep blue trousers, and black boots. The man’s cap was tucked under his left arm. He saluted and held out a brown envelope. “Telegram for you, Major.”