Kirov raised his hands and let them fall again. Then where are we to go, Inspector? There's a storm coming in and I'd rather not sleep in the street.'
Luckily for us,' replied Pekkala, I know the finest place in town.'
Two hours after Kirov had checked himself out of his room at the hospital, a stranger appeared at the top of the stairs, dressed in the uniform of a Red Army officer.
Except for the splashing of sleet against the windowpanes, it was quiet in the hallway. The patients had been ordered off to sleep or drugged into unconsciousness. The night orderly lay dozing in his chair, cocooned within a pool of light from the candle which burned upon his desk. The young man's name was Anatoli Tutko and he had been released from military service on account of blindness in one eye and a haze of cataract across the other.
Reaching down, the stranger slowly placed his hand upon Tutko's forehead, the way a parent checks for fever in a child. So gently did he raise Tutko's head that the orderly was only half awake when the stranger whispered in his ear, Where is the commissar?'
Tutko's eyes fluttered open. What?' he asked. What's going on?' Then he felt the pinch of a knife held to his throat.
Where,' the stranger asked again, is the commissar you brought in here last night?'
Major Kirov?' whispered Tutko, so conditioned not to wake the patients after dark that even now he did not raise his voice.
Kirov. Yes. Which room is he in?'
Tutko tried to swallow. The knife blade dragged against his Adam's apple. At the end of the hall on the left,' he whispered.
Good,' said the man. Now you can go back to sleep,' said the man.
Tutko felt the stranger's grip loosen. A sigh of relief escaped his lungs.
In that same moment, the stranger slipped the knife blade into Tutko's neck, then twisted it and, with one stroke, cut through the windpipe, almost severing the young man's head. He laid the body face down on the desk as a wave of blood swept out across the wooden surface.
The man replaced the knife in its metal scabbard, which was clipped to the inside of his knee-length boots. Treading softly, as if the floor beneath his hobnailed soles was no more than a sheet of glass, he moved on down the hallway until he came to Kirov's room.
But it was empty.
A whispered curse cracked like a spark in the still air.
You're too late,' said a voice.
The stranger whirled about.
Dombrowsky, unable to sleep as usual, had just wheeled himself into the hallway.
Where is he?' asked the man.
Gone,' Dombrowsky rolled his chair forward, the heel of his palm dragging on the wheel until it brought him to a stop before the man. Earlier tonight, a visitor appeared and spoke to him.'
What kind of visitor?'
A man. More like a ghost, the way he moved.'
Yes,' muttered the stranger. That sounds like him.'
They spoke,' said Dombrowsky, and then they left.'
Do you know where they were going?'
I don't, but nurse Antonina might. The major talked to her. He must have told her something.'
Where is this nurse?'
Gone home, but she lives at the end of this street, in a house with yellow shutters. I can see it from the window in my room. But you shouldn't go there, Captain. Not if you value your life.'
And why is that?'
She's a friend of Commander Yakushkin. His "campaign wife". That's what they call them, you know. He showed up here about a week ago, along with a battalion of Internal Security troops. Yakushkin came in here to get medicine for a stomach ulcer and she's the nurse who treated him. Since then, from what I hear, Yakushkin has practically been living at her house. She's a good cook, you see, and Yakushkin likes his food. But even if you were foolish enough to go there at this time of night, you wouldn't get past Yakushkin's bodyguard, who is with him wherever he goes.'
Thank you,' said the man. You have been very helpful. Now let's get you back where you belong.' Taking hold of the wheelchair's handles, he turned the chair around and began to wheel him down the hall.
My room is the other way,' said Dombrowsky.
Yes,' said the man. Yes, it is.'
They moved by the night orderly's desk.
In the rippling light of the candle, Dombrowsky saw what had become of Anatoli Tutko. The thin wheels of his chair rolled through the blood which had cascaded from the desk and pooled across the floor. Why are you doing this?' he whispered frantically, his hand skidding uselessly upon the rubber wheels as he tried to slow them down. I won't say a word. No one believes me, anyway.'
I believe you,' said the man and, with one sudden, vicious shove, he pushed Dombrowsky's chair over the edge of the stairs and sent him tumbling to his death.
And what is the finest place in this town?' asked Kirov, as he followed Pekkala through the bombed-out streets. From what I've seen, that isn't saying much.'
I am taking you to a safe house which was used during the occupation,' answered Pekkala.
But I thought the Barabanschikovs lived in the forest.'
They did, and they still do, but Barabanschikov made sure that he still had access to Rovno. It was important to keep an eye on those who came and went from the headquarters of the Secret Field Police. Several of the merchants in this town – tailors, cobblers, watchmakers – were actually members of the Barabanschikovs, and the Field Police officers became their best customers. Some of them liked to talk while their watches were being repaired or the hems taken up on their trousers and any piece of information they let slip would find its way to Barabanschikov. Many important meetings were held here between the various partisan leaders, right under the noses of the police, which was the last place they ever thought to look. Barabanschikov himself chose this house, and when we get there, you'll see why.'
By now, the sleet had turned to hail, stinging their faces and rattling like grains of uncooked rice upon the frozen ground.
The cold leached its way through Kirov's tunic and up through the soles of his boots. He hoped the house was comfortable, with soft beds and blankets and a fire. Perhaps there might even be food, he thought. Fresh bread might not be too much to ask.
Pekkala ducked into a narrow alleyway, which was flanked on either side by tumbledown wooden fences, some of them held up only by the weeds and brambles which had grown between the slats.</ol>
By following this maze of paths, Pekkala was able to stay clear of the streets, where people gathered around oil-drum fires and dogs fought in the dirty snow for scraps of rotten meat.
Opening an iron gate, Pekkala stepped into an overgrown garden and beckoned for Kirov to follow.
Through tall, dishevelled grass, each strand bowed with its minute coating of ice, the two men crept towards the house.
The back door had been boarded up and the shutters on the windows fastened closed with planks of wood
How do we get inside?' asked Kirov.
At that moment, Pekkala seemed to vanish, as if the earth had swallowed him completely.
Rushing forward, Kirov found himself at the edge of a deep but narrow trench which had been dug against the outer wall of the house.
Come on,' Pekkala called out of the darkness of the trench, unless you want to stay out there all night.'
Before he jumped, Kirov turned and looked back in the direction from which they had come. He could make out little more than the silhouettes of houses and the tumbledown fences which separated their gardens. Wind slithered through the grass, whose brittle strands crackled like electricity. Just then, Kirov caught sight of a dog, loping along the alleyway. As the animal drew close, Kirov realised that it was, in fact, a wolf. It stopped at the end of the garden, then turned and looked at him, its mean, thin face spliced by the iron railings of the gate. They watched each other, man and beast, breath rising like smoke from their nostrils. There was something about its stare which snatched the last faint trace of warmth from Kirov's blood and he felt colder than he'd ever been before, as if a layer of frost had formed around his heart. The wolf moved on and Kirov scrambled to catch up with Pekkala.
Report on Arrest of William Vasko
Pekkala, Special Operations
Dated December 10th, 1937
REPORT CENSORED
In accordance with the instructions of Comrade Stalin, I have conducted an interview with William Vasko at Lubyanka, where he has been held in solitary confinement since his arrest and transfer from the Ford Motor Car plant in Nizhni-Novgorod. The circumstances of his arrest involved allegations that he was attempting to flee the country illegally, along with his wife and children. Although I have found no documentary evidence of this, Vasko readily admitted that he had planned to return his wife and children to the United States, which is their country of citizenship. However, Vasko denied that he himself intended to flee and further questioned whether such a departure would have been illegal, even if he had chosen to do so. Vasko initially refused to divulge the reasons why he was choosing to send his family away. However, when I travelled to Nizhni-Novgorod and began interviewing some of his fellow American workers, it soon became apparent that they believed Vasko to be behind the arrests of numerous other workers at the plant. In fact, by the time I arrived, over half the workforce had been taken into custody on charges ranging from sabotage to subversion to threats made against the leadership of the Soviet union . His former comrades at the factory firmly believed that Vasko's reports to Soviet security services had caused a large number of them to be arrested. These workers readily admitted that they had threatened Vasko with bodily harm if he did not immediately resign from the plant's workforce.