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By the time Pekkala reached Elizaveta, she was already beginning to choke. Her hands had twisted into claws and a slick of white foam seeped from the corner of her mouth. He knelt down beside her, twisted off the cap of the metal container and slid out the syringe. Then he tore away the buttons of her shirt at the same time as he clamped his teeth over the Bakelite needle protector, pulled it off and spat it away. He placed his hand directly over her heart and felt for a gap between her ribs. Then he forced the needle home, pressing hard to drive it in between her ribs.

For a moment, which seemed to Pekkala to last forever, it seemed as if the drug had no effect.

Then suddenly, she gasped and sat upright, her eyes wide and terrified.

Grabbing her under the arms, Pekkala dragged her away from the contaminated ground. They had reached the other side of the street before he let her go again. As Pekkala watched her lying there, too weak to stand and retching as she tried to clear her lungs, he wondered if the atropine had saved her life or was only prolonging her agony.

At that moment, he began to feel dizzy. A darkness seemed to crowd in from the corners of his mind and he realised he was struggling to breathe. He looked down and saw that the material of his trousers was wet where he had been kneeling in the street. Then he knew that some of the liquid must have soaked through the heavy corduroy. Fumbling with the second atropine container, he removed the syringe and began struggling with the buttons of his coat and then his waistcoat. By then, he could not breathe at all and his vision was so blurred that he began to suffer vertigo. He staggered back against the wall of a house, and tried to jam the needle into his chest, only to realise that the cap was still on. He pulled it off, exposing the needle at last and rammed it in between his ribs, feeling it scrape against bone. Then, with the last of his strength, he pushed the plunger, watching the liquid vanish into his heart. With the needle still between his ribs, he slid down against the wall and blacked out.

He had no idea how long he was unconscious. It may only have been a couple of seconds. The first thing he saw when his eyes opened was Elizaveta.

She was lying on her side, with her arm hooked under her head as a pillow. She looked exhausted, but he could see that she was breathing normally.

Pekkala turned away and spat. As he did this, he caught sight of the syringe, which was still jutting from between his ribs. He grasped the tube and pulled it out. It slipped from his fingers and fell with a clatter on the road.

Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out the old stag-handled knife which he always carried with him. Opening the blade, Pekkala heard the reassuring click of its locking mechanism and he then proceeded to cut away the cloth around his knees where the soman had soaked in.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Elizaveta. She was sitting up now and watching him with a baffled look on her face.

‘Ruining a perfectly good pair of trousers,’ answered Pekkala, as he carved through the thick brown corduroy.

In that moment, they were startled by the sound of a shot, quickly followed by two more, and then silence.

Stefan Kohl had reached the church. He entered through the open door beside the north transept and quickly made his way to the altar. On the table lay a bundle, wrapped in the same oilcloth he had used when he placed it in his father’s coffin for safekeeping.

His first thought was simply to take it and run, but now he paused. He had to be sure. They might have tried to trick him, after all. Carefully, he unwrapped the bundle and the bright blues and greens of the icon seemed to jump out of the darkness of that tattered piece of cloth. There could be no mistaking the painting he had carried with him twice across the length of Russia. This frail and brittle panel had become the substance of his life. With
The Shepherd
in his hands again, Stefan felt as if some vital part of him had been restored. Once more, he was the keeper of his faith. Clutching the icon to his chest, he stepped out into the churchyard. A long journey lay ahead of him, he knew, and where it would take him, he had no idea. All he knew was that it must be far away from here.

He did not see Kirov until it was already too late.

The major stepped out from behind one of the stone buttresses of the church, appearing so suddenly in front of Stefan that the two men actually collided.

Kirov did not hesitate.

The bullet passed through the icon, smashed through Stefan’s chest and left a hole the size of a man’s fist as it exited through his back.

Kohl stepped back abruptly, a startled look on his face.

Kirov fired two more rounds before Stefan’s legs gave out from under him.

Stefan lay on his back. Through dimming sight he looked up at the sky. He could smell smoke; sweet like church incense and through the sputter of his failing senses he perceived that the Shepherd had come to life and stood before him now, casting a shadow on his face and filling him with warmth as what he believed could only be his soul was lifted from the ruins of his body. Stefan thought about the night he had stood in the rain, speaking to the man he had pulled from the ditch on the road to Krasnoyar, and how his mind had been so plagued with doubt about choosing the course his life would take. How he wished he could go back to that moment in time and reassure his younger self that everything the pilgrim had told him was the truth. There is no doubt, he thought. ‘No doubt at all,’ he whispered.

‘What?’ Kirov looked down pitilessly upon the man he had just shot. ‘What are you saying?’

Kohl breathed out in a long, rattling sigh.

Then Kirov knew that there would be no answer to his question. Coughing, he stepped back from the tatters of smoke rising from the dead man’s chest. The muzzle flash of the Tokarev had ignited highly flammable paint, setting fire to the ancient wooden panel and causing Stefan’s blood to crackle and blacken as it boiled.

Kirov holstered his gun and went back to find Elizaveta. He caught up with her and Pekkala as they were walking down the street. They both moved slowly and unsteadily, as if old age had suddenly crept up on them.

Kirov ran up to his wife and embraced her.

Pekkala, his pale knees poking from the ragged holes in his trousers, waited patiently, until at last they stood back from each other. ‘Did you find him?’ he asked Kirov.

Kirov nodded.

‘Where is he now?’ demanded the Inspector.

‘Lying in the churchyard,’ Kirov replied.

‘And the icon?’

Reluctantly, Kirov explained what had happened. ‘It was only a painting, after all,’ he added with a kind of hopeless optimism.

For a moment, Pekkala said nothing. Then finally he spoke. ‘You may be right about that, Major,’ he said, much to Kirov’s surprise.

From the distance came the rumble and clank of approaching Soviet tanks.

‘Perhaps the offensive has begun,’ remarked Elizaveta.

‘If we start walking now,’ said Pekkala, ‘we’ll run into them before they reach the town. We can warn them about the soman and they will take the necessary steps to decontaminate the area.’

‘And after that?’ asked Kirov. ‘Those planes destroyed our vehicle. How are we supposed to make it back to Moscow?’

For the first time since Kohl had kidnapped her off the street, Elizaveta smiled. ‘Come with me, gentlemen,’ she said. ‘An old friend of yours is waiting.’

One hour later, with Kirov behind the wheel of the Emka, they encountered a Red Army reconnaissance squad making its way cautiously towards Ahlborn. After flagging down the lead armoured car of the squad, Pekkala informed the commander about the briefcase. Then they carried on towards Moscow, passing dozens of tanks and trucks, all of them loaded with soldiers, making their way steadily westwards.

By then, Elizaveta had told the men the story of her capture, and what had become of Sergeant Zolkin.

‘But he was alive when you saw him last,’ said Pekkala.

‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘but . . .’

Pekkala cut her off. ‘Then there is still room for hope,’ he said.

‘I should never have left you in Moscow,’ Kirov told Elizaveta.

‘And I should never have allowed you to leave.’

‘Allowed me?’ One eyebrow raised, he glanced at his wife in the rear-view mirror. ‘Is that so, Corporal?’

‘It is, Major Kirov,’ she replied.

‘This time I think she outranks you,’ agreed Pekkala.

At the Sklivassovsky Hospital, they found Zolkin alive, although with twenty stitches in his neck. As soon as they entered the room, he climbed out of bed and embraced each one in turn. Although he was under orders not to speak, and could manage no more than a whisper, he immediately inquired about the Emka, which he had last seen driving off with Stefan Kohl behind the wheel.

He took Elizaveta’s hand in both of his. ‘I suppose you will no longer need me as your bodyguard,’ he croaked.

‘Luckily for both of us, that’s true,’ she replied.

Then a nurse arrived and ordered him back into bed.

Kirov and Pekkala left Elizaveta at the hospital, to make sure that she was suffering no ill effects from her exposure to the chemical weapon.

‘But what about you?’ she asked Pekkala.

‘I’ll be back,’ he told her, ‘but first your husband and I have some business to take care of.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘To see if your theory is correct.’

‘Theory?’ asked Kirov, following him down the corridor. ‘What theory?’

In what had once been the courtyard of Rasputin’s apartment building, the mangled wreckage of a Soviet 37mm anti-aircraft gun still aimed its useless barrel at the sky. An artillery round had landed in the street outside, blown through the brick wall of the courtyard and demolished the steel gun-carriage used to transport the gun. The gun itself bore the scars of multiple shrapnel strikes and the rubber tyres, which had been painted a camouflage green, were now warped and deflated and the paint had crackled so that it resembled the skin of a reptile. It appeared that the gun had simply been abandoned, along with the ground floor of the building, which had also been ruined in the blast.

Pekkala stood in the courtyard, shielding his eyes with one hand as he squinted up to the floor on which Rasputin had lived.

‘I still don’t understand what we’re doing here,’ said Kirov.

Pekkala lowered his hand and turned to the major. ‘Testing your theory,’ he said.

‘I wish you would tell me what this damned theory of mine is!’ shouted Kirov.

They entered the building through the gaping hole in the masonry which had once held an ornate front door, complete with frosted glass engraved with a French-influenced pattern of twined ivy leaves that had once been all the rage in this city. Then Pekkala began to climb the stairs.

Kirov followed, grudgingly.

When the two men reached Rasputin’s old apartment, Pekkala paused and looked around. The landing on which he stood had not seen a coat of paint in many years. The loose panes of the window looking out over the courtyard rattled in the breeze. It was not that things had looked that much better in Rasputin’s day. The Siberian had never paid attention to the upkeep of the various houses where he stayed as a guest of wealthy benefactors. That duty had usually fallen to the Tsarina herself, who had been known to send in teams of decorators to recarpet floors, replace every article of furniture, even down to the cutlery, and repaint the walls in her favourite shade of mauve.

That colour, which Pekkala loathed because it reminded him of the boiled liver he had been forced to eat as a child, had returned many times to his mind over the past few days as he recalled the occasion when he came to visit Rasputin after the theft of the icon. The walls had just been painted. When he remarked upon the fact to Rasputin, he had received the answer that the Tsarina had ordered it to be done out of reverence for the icon. And he had thought no more about it. Until now.

Pekkala rapped his knuckles on the door.

‘Who’s there?’ called the nervous voice of a man standing on the other side, so close that the shadow of his feet showed on the floor.

‘Special Operations,’ said Pekkala.

‘Special Operations?’ echoed the man. ‘What did they send you for?’

Kirov turned to Pekkala and shrugged. Then he faced the door again. ‘Are you going to open up or not?’

There was a rattling of chains and the clunk of a deadbolt sliding back. The door swung wide, revealing a short, elderly man with a fuzz of grey hair and startled-looking blue eyes, which gave him the appearance of a baby bird that had been ousted from its nest. He wore a thick, long-sleeved undershirt tucked into high-waisted black trousers that were held up by a pair of white braces. He had no shoes on, and his bare feet looked small and vulnerable. ‘My name is Gleb Kutsov,’ said the man, pronouncing his name in a way that sounded almost like a sneeze, ‘and I would have taken care of it. All I needed was a little more time.’

‘What is he talking about?’ whispered Kirov.

Pekkala stepped into the room and was surprised to see Rasputin’s old leather couch still sitting in the corner. But that, other than the layout of the room, was the only remaining trace of the Siberian. The walls, no longer mauve, had been covered over in paper of a chiffon-yellow colour decorated with a repeating pattern of tiny red flowers. In the place where the icon had been, however briefly, hung a small reprint of Leonid Kotliarov’s portrait of a miner named Alexei Stakhanov, who had come to symbolise the ideal Soviet worker. In the picture, Stakhanov was chipping away at a coalface with a large pneumatic drill. He wore clothes almost as dark as the coalface itself and his features were illuminated by some impossible light source.

‘Like I said,’ repeated the man, ‘there was no need to call on Special Operations for a matter as simple as paying the rent!’

‘Is that why you think we are here?’ asked Pekkala.

‘Well, isn’t it?’ replied the man. ‘Let me tell you something about this so-called landlord.’

Pekkala raised his hand, opening his fingers slowly, like a magician revealing the disappearance of a coin.

The man fell immediately silent.

‘I am not here about the rent,’ Pekkala said quietly.

‘Then what on earth . . . ?’ Kutsov paused as he followed Pekkala’s gaze to the painting of Stakhanov. ‘The print?’ he asked. ‘Is there something wrong with it? Has the artist fallen out of favour? Because if he has, I swear to you, comrades, I knew nothing about it!’ Kutsov began to breathe heavily. ‘I never really liked it, to be honest. A friend gave it to me, and a friend no longer, I should say!’ He all but lunged at the wall, removed the painting from its supporting nail and handed it to Major Kirov. ‘Take it!’ he commanded, turning his head away as if he could not even bear to see the painting any longer. ‘Make it go away! I never want to see it again.’

Pekkala stepped up to the blank wall. ‘Was this nail here when you moved in?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘And when did you move in?’

‘I’ve been here since 1923. The place had been empty for several years when I arrived.’

Pekkala reached over and tapped against the wall. ‘It’s not very thick.’

‘It’s just a board, I think,’ said Kutsov, staring at the space as if to find some meaning in its blankness.

‘I am sorry to do this,’ said Pekkala, and with those words, he removed the lock knife from his pocket, opened the blade and rammed the tip into the wall.

Kutsov gasped, as if the metal had pierced his own flesh.

Without letting the blade sink in too deeply, Pekkala dragged the knife down the wall, and then across and then dragged it back up again, creating a U-shaped scar in the thin plaster board. Then, his teeth clenched with the effort, he worked the knife across the top until a rectangular cut had been made. He then put the knife away and, with one sharp strike from the heel of his palm, knocked the piece loose. It fell back into the space behind the wall and dropped away.

And then the three men stared in amazement at the picture which met their eyes. It was
The Shepherd
, its bright colours obscured by a fine layer of plaster dust.

Pekkala leaned forward and, as if extinguishing a candle, blew away the powder.

‘I know that painting,’ said Kutsov. ‘But I thought . . .’

‘So did we all,’ replied Pekkala.

Slowly Kutsov sank to his knees. ‘Do you mean to tell me that this has been hanging in my house the whole time I’ve been living here?’

‘That appears to be the case,’ said Kirov, as he reached in through the gap and carefully removed the icon.

Pekkala rested his hand upon Kutsov’s shoulder. ‘Someone will come to fix the damage,’ he said.

When the two men walked out of the room, Kutsov was still fixated upon the crater in his wall, as if at any moment, more treasures might tumble from the dusty gloom.

‘How did you know?’ asked Kirov, as they walked down to the street.

‘Back in Ahlborn,’ said Pekkala, ‘when you told me it was just a painting, I remembered that I’d heard those words before.’

‘From whom?’

‘Rasputin,’ answered Pekkala. ‘On the day the icon was reported stolen, I came to this house and he told me to abandon my search. He warned me how dangerous it would be if I continued the investigation. Grigori was right, but he was trying to tell me something else as well. When he said it was only a painting, I thought that sounded strange coming from a man as devout as Rasputin. What I didn’t understand until you spoke those words again was that he meant it literally.’

‘Then the thing Stefan Kohl was chasing all this time . . .’

‘Was a forgery, and, whoever did the work,’ said Pekkala, ‘the Tsarina must have known about it, as well as where the original was stashed. After all, she was the one who ordered the wall to be painted, which must have been to cover up the damage they had caused when hiding it.’

‘Why leave it at Rasputin’s?’ asked Kirov.

‘Because that is the one place she thought no one would look,’ replied Pekkala. ‘And when the people of Russia had finally resigned themselves to the fact that
The Shepherd
was gone, the Tsarina would spirit it back to its hiding place in their own Church of the Resurrection. You see, Kirov, although she believed in its power, she never had any intention of sharing that power with the world.’

‘But the forgery was perfect,’ remarked Kirov. ‘Even Semykin, the Kremlin’s own authenticator, was convinced. Is there no way to find out who painted it?’

‘Under different circumstances, I would probably say no,’ Pekkala told him. ‘A forger this accomplished would be well acquainted in the art of covering his tracks. However, the same is not always true of his employers and, in this case, I think I might know where to find the answer.’