The Beast in the Red Forest (27 page)

After returning the Packard to the Kremlin motor pool, Poskrebychev walked back to his office to collect some paperwork before heading home.

Entering the room, he turned on the lights and gasped.

Stalin was sitting as his desk.

‘Comrade Stalin?’ spluttered Poskrebychev. ‘What are you doing there, alone and in the dark?’

‘You drove my Packard.’

‘Yes, Comrade Stalin.’

‘That is my car! It is not for running errands.’

‘But it is the only vehicle whose destination is never listed in the motor-pool logbook, Comrade Stalin.’

Stalin was silent for a moment. ‘Yes,’ he said finally, ‘Under the circumstances, I suppose it makes sense to have used it.’ Stalin rose from the desk. ‘But if I find one scratch on the paint, you will answer for it, I promise.’

‘Yes, Comrade Stalin.’

‘The Siberian has been dropped off?’

‘I handled it myself,’ replied Poskrebychev.

Just before he left the room, Stalin paused and turned to his secretary. ‘I know what you think about my decision but, in time, you will see that everything which has been done is for the best.’

‘I see it already, Comrade Stalin.’

For a moment, Stalin only stared at Poskrebychev, as if struggling to comprehend the meaning of his words. Then he gave a noncommittal grunt, walked out and shut the door.

Pekkala picked up Malashenko, carried him over to the Jeep and laid his body across the rear seats.

By then, the sun had set, and darkness seemed to rise up through the ground.

He went back into the cabin, took up the paraffin lamp, and smashed it against the wall. The fuel splashed over the bare logs, trickling into a puddle on the floor. Afterwards, Pekkala lit a match from a box which he found on the windowsill. When he set fire to the paraffin, pearl-white flames raced across floor and walls and Pekkala backed out of the cabin, shielding his face with one hand.

Quickly, he climbed behind the wheel of the Jeep, turned on its blinkered headlights and raced back down the trail. The wheels spun and side-slipped in the mud and the body of the man who had saved his life jolted in the rear seat as if a pulse were returning to his veins.

As Pekkala drove, he thought about what Vasko had said about the second mission. Maybe the man had been lying, although he doubted it. Over the years, Pekkala had investigated numerous plots to assassinate Stalin. Most turned out to be nothing more than rumours and the rest had been stopped in their tracks long before they turned into actual threats. But Canaris was a formidable adversary. Stalin had confided to Pekkala that the only man who truly made him fear for his life was the admiral. The year before, Stalin’s fears had almost become reality when a German plot to assassinate him at a conference in Teheran had only been uncovered by accident. Fortunately, the admiral’s powers had been undermined by the ongoing struggle between the SS and the Abwehr, which had weakened both branches of German Intelligence. This bitter rivalry had forced Canaris to undertake operations so secret and complex that not even those within the German High Command were aware of their existence. Although Vasko had given Pekkala little to go on, the possibility that Canaris could have conceived and set in motion another plot to murder Stalin was very real. There was little Pekkala could do, however, except to transmit a message to the Kremlin as soon as he arrived in Rovno and hope that Moscow took his warning seriously.

As Pekkala drove through the outskirts of the town, he noticed a column of smoke rising from the centre, its blackness blotting out the stars. He found himself wondering what was even left to burn in Rovno. The town had been all but cremated in the numerous battles and air raids unleashed upon it.

The closer Pekkala came to the garrison, the clearer it became to him that the fire was coming from the building itself. Arriving at the barricade, he climbed out of the Jeep and joined a crowd of soldiers who were watching the blaze. No one made any attempt to put out the fire. Instead, they seemed content to stare at the inverted waterfalls of smoke and flames, rolling and boiling from the window frames.

Standing closest to the inferno was Commander Chaplinsky, his sooty face glistening with sweat. Chaplinsky held a bottle of brandy in one hand and the severed receiver of a field telephone in the other. The cloth-covered cord which once attached it to the body of the radio had been wrenched apart and now only multi-coloured strands of wire hung from the receiver.

‘What happened?’ asked Pekkala, as he went to stand beside Chaplinsky.

The commander glanced across at him, pig-eyed in his drunkenness. ‘Nobody knows for sure,’ he replied. ‘Some of our ammunition stores must have been hit during the battle. By the time we realised the place was burning, it was already too late. It was all we could do to get everyone out of there before the place started falling in upon itself. The partisans helped. Thank God we didn’t have to slaughter them. Just before the fire forced us out of the building, we received a message from Moscow, ordering us to cancel our attack on the Atrads.’

He was interrupted by the dull thump of a ceiling giving way. A geyser of sparks erupted through the gap of what had been the front doors of the building. The doors themselves lay flattened on the ground, as if knocked down by a stampede.

‘Is there any way that I can contact Moscow?’ asked Pekkala. ‘It may be urgent.’

Chaplinsky held out the broken radio receiver. ‘This is all that’s left of our equipment. After that last message from Moscow, everything went up in flames.’ Contemptuously, he tossed the receiver aside. ‘We’re cut off from the world, Inspector, and maybe that’s not a bad thing!’ he said as he passed the brandy to Pekkala.

Pekkala took the bottle and held it up against the backdrop of the flames. On the label, not quite obscured by the name ‘Krug’, which had been scribbled across it in black pencil, Pekkala read the words, ‘Armagnac Baron de Sigognac’, as well as a date of 1940. He wondered what strange journey had brought it to this place. Through the dark green glass he saw the liquid swaying. It had been a long time since he’d been offered anything but
samahonka
, brewed by Barabanschikov himself in an old crow’s-foot bathtub, and which Pekkala wisely had not touched. Raising the bottle to his lips, he drank and felt the quiet fire of the brandy spread like wings inside his chest.

 ‘Where is my driver, Zolkin?’ asked Chaplinsky, retrieving the bottle from Pekkala. ‘Is that him sleeping in the back of the Jeep?’

‘No,’ replied the Inspector. ‘That is a partisan named Malashenko. He was one of Barabanschikov’s men.’

‘Was?’

‘That’s what I said,’ replied Pekkala.

‘Well, get him out of there before he bleeds on the seats! And where is Zolkin, anyway? Has he deserted? I never did trust that man. I’ll have him shot, I swear!’

‘Sergeant Zolkin has not deserted,’ Pekkala assured him. ‘He left for Moscow on a plane not long ago, in the company of my assistant, Major Kirov. He talked his way into becoming my chauffeur. I did not have a chance to tell you sooner.’

‘You’re welcome to him,’ said Chaplinsky. ‘Around here, drivers are not hard to find. It’s vehicles we don’t have enough of, not to mention spare parts for repairs. I guess I can’t blame him for leaving.’ He raised his bottle at the funeral pyre of the garrison. ‘Who wouldn’t trade Moscow for this?’

‘He said his greatest wish was to shake the hand of Joseph Stalin, and he may well get the chance before this day is out.’

Chaplinsky blinked at him stupidly. ‘You must be mistaken, Inspector. Zolkin is the last person who would want an audience with Stalin.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘His family used to be farmers in northern Ukraine, but they died of starvation when Stalin ordered the farms to be collectivised. Zolkin is the only one who survived, and if you believe the stories they tell about him, he did so by eating the flesh of his parents. A man like that,’ Chaplinsky paused to belch extravagantly, ‘is the kind who would carry a grudge.’

While Chaplinsky continued to ramble, one thought blazed across Pekkala’s mind. If I were Canaris, he thought, Zolkin is exactly the kind of person I would be looking to recruit. As Yakushkin’s personal driver, he too would have been transferred back to Moscow. Once there, Yakushkin would have been in direct contact with top-ranking members of the Kremlin staff, including Stalin. Drivers regularly accompanied the officers they served to meetings, acting partly as bodyguards and partly as baggage handlers for the briefcases full of documents required at each presentation to the high command. Zolkin would be armed as a matter of course. All drivers were. Perhaps Yakushkin’s murder had not been planned. The commander had simply been in the wrong place when Vasko went looking for information on the whereabouts of Major Kirov. Since Vasko did not know the identity of the second agent, or the details of his mission, he had no idea that he had placed the entire mission in jeopardy.

If Zolkin was indeed the second agent, his role in the assassination plot might have ended with Yakushkin’s death. Instead, the sergeant had just talked his way on to the plane bound for Moscow, and a meeting with Stalin himself.

And I am the one who made it possible, thought Pekkala, dread rising in the back of his throat. Within a matter of hours, Zolkin will be at the Kremlin. If he is able to carry out his task, it won’t just be Stalin who dies. The lives of Kirov and Barabanschikov are also in grave danger.

‘Of course,’ Chaplinsky continued, ‘there are others to blame besides the Boss. Some say it wasn’t Stalin’s fault at all. Some even say—’

‘I must get a message to Moscow!’ interrupted Pekkala. ‘Chaplinsky, this is very important.’

‘I told you, the radios are gone. Burned to ashes. The only way you can contact Moscow is if you get on the plane and go there yourself with the message.’

‘What plane?’ asked Pekkala.

‘The one that landed about half an hour ago, although exactly what he’s doing here is hard to say. It’s all very strange. He was carrying orders from Moscow to deliver a passenger. The thing is, though, he didn’t have any passengers with him.’

‘Where is the plane now?’ asked Pekkala.

‘On the runway at Obarov, but if you want to get on board, you’d better hurry. The pilot said that as soon as his plane has been refuelled, he’s going straight back where he came from.’

The words had barely left Chaplinsky’s mouth before Pekkala dashed back to the vehicle, started the engine and set out towards Obarov.

‘By all means, take my Jeep!’ Chaplinsky shouted after him. ‘You’ve already stolen my driver.’

But Pekkala was already gone.

Vasko had been running flat out for half an hour, following the dim outline of the forest path, before he finally allowed his pace to slacken. By now, he was deep in the woods and unsure of his location. Not until the moon had climbed above the trees did Vasko even know in which direction he was headed. His only thought had been to get away. To have had his life spared by the man he’d sworn to kill had turned Vasko’s mind into a hornet’s nest of confusion. But the anger was still there, coiled like a snake in his guts and whispering to him that everything Pekkala had said was a lie. Vasko listened to its patient and familiar voice, demanding blood for blood.

In the strange, gunmetal-blue light of the full moon, Vasko headed west towards the German lines, passing within a stone’s throw of the place where the farrier Hudzik lay naked and frozen among the bones of former customers.

The Lavochkin aircraft in which Pekkala travelled, being faster than the fully-loaded cargo plane transporting Barabanschikov, arrived in Moscow only half an hour after the others had touched down.

Scrambling into the air controller’s car, Pekkala raced towards the Kremlin, punching the horn as he sped through every intersection.

‘Inspector!’ Poskrebychev leapt to his feet as Pekkala entered the office. ‘I knew you would come back to us!’

Out of breath and wild-eyed with fatigue, Pekkala swiped a finger across his throat, instantly silencing Poskrebychev. With his other hand, he drew the Webley from his coat.

At the sight of the gun, Poskrebychev’s expression transformed from one of joy to utter confusion. ‘Why have you drawn your weapon?’ he gasped. ‘You know you cannot do that here!’

Pekkala pointed at the doors to Stalin’s study. ‘Who is in that room now?’ he demanded.

‘Why, Major Kirov! And that partisan leader, Barabanschikov. And Comrade Stalin, too, of course. The partisan requested a private audience with Stalin, which has been granted. Major Kirov is just finishing up his report and then he will leave them alone to carry out their business.’

‘What about Zolkin?’

‘The driver?’ Poskrebychev shrugged. ‘He came and went. Kirov introduced him to Comrade Stalin. They shook hands, Stalin autographed the back of his pass book and then Zolkin excused himself.’

‘He’s gone?’ Pekkala looked stunned.

‘Yes!’ insisted Poskrebychev. ‘The last I saw of Sergeant Zolkin, he was on his way down to the motor pool, where your Emka has been stored since Major Kirov’s departure. I gather that the sergeant is to be your new driver.’

Pekkala slumped back against the door frame. ‘I thought . . .’ he began, but his words trailed off into silence.

‘Inspector, do not throw away your life,’ pleaded the secretary. ‘I know how you must feel, but all the good you have done  for this country will be squandered in a heartbeat if you shed his blood like this.’

As those words echoed in Pekkala’s mind, he thought back to a promise he had made, on a winter’s day long ago, as he sat with his friend by the ashes of a still-glowing fire. Then suddenly he knew who he’d been chasing all along.

The double doors flew open as Pekkala stepped into the room.

The three men turned to stare at him.

Stalin was on his feet, sitting on the front edge of his desk with his arms folded and his legs stretched out and crossed, so that only his heels touched the ground. At the sight of the Inspector brandishing a gun, Stalin’s eyes grew wide with amazement.