Red Moth (7 page)

The young Stefanov had already learned to see with different eyes. For him, sometimes thunder was just thunder, the wind only the wind, and the body of a bird no more than the trophy of a cat.

‘Summoned him from where?’ demanded Stefanov, in a tone that almost taunted the old man, knowing full well that such a challenge might cause his father’s patience to snap yet again, and that he would then be hauled from the fence and dragged behind the compost heap for punishment. But Stefanov was past caring about the half-hearted drubbings his father administered, slapping the young boy as if trying to beat the dust out of a carpet.

‘I’ll tell you where he came from.’ The father raised his hand‚ jabbing a dirt-rimmed fingernail towards the Catherine Palace. ‘From there. From that room!’

Stefanov gazed in bewilderment at the hundreds of windows, each one of which blankly returned his stare, hiding the dozens of rooms which lay behind them.

Sensing his son’s confusion, the father continued. ‘The room whose walls are made of fire.’

Stefanov had never heard of such a room, nor did he believe that one existed. It belonged, he felt sure, in that world of half-realities with which his father made sense of the universe. His father had never set foot inside the Catherine or Alexander Palaces. For a groundskeeper, their polished marble floors lay beyond the dimensions of his work. The closest he, or Stefanov, had ever come was the back door of the Alexander Palace kitchen, where he collected the midday meal to which he was entitled.

Suddenly Pekkala stopped in his tracks. The only movement was a wisp of dust, which swirled around his polished boots.

‘He’s turning around!’ hissed the father. ‘He’s coming back!’

Stefanov and his father scuttled back behind the hedge and waited. Stefanov placed his hand over his chest, as if to muffle the sound of his heart.

The dark figure passed by, half hidden by the bushes, but only an arm’s length away.

At that instant, Stefanov heard a voice which seemed to come from inside his own head.

‘Good day,’ said Inspector Pekkala.

And then he was gone.

At his first glance of Pekkala, Stefanov had wondered if, perhaps, there was nothing so magical about the great inspector as an extraordinary man doing his best to lead an ordinary life, out for a stroll at the end of a hard day’s work. But now that Pekkala had spoken, Stefanov wasn’t so sure. There was something about the Emerald Eye which did not seem fastened to the world of flesh and bone.

As the memory evaporated from his mind, Stefanov found himself once again in the filthy cocoon of his foxhole. Realising that the toy soldier was still in his hand, Stefanov stood the tiny warrior upright in the dirt, then settled back, arms folded across his chest, and studied the figure, as if, at any moment, he might march away to battles of his own.

The door to Pekkala’s office burst open.

Pekkala was stooped over his desk studying a sketch he had made of the red moth painting before Kirov had taken it away to have the canvas X-rayed‚ along with the icon‚ which he planned to return to the museum. At first, Pekkala thought the major had returned, hopefully with news not only of the painting’s significance but also, perhaps, on the whereabouts of Polina Churikova. But his eyes narrowed with hostility when he saw who’d just stormed in.

It was a tall man with a black moustache and a pale, sweating forehead, who was dressed in the uniform of a high-ranking government official.

‘Bakhturin,’ muttered Pekkala.

‘People’s Commissar of the State Railways Bakhturin!’ He shook his fist at Pekkala. ‘Put some respect into your voice!’

‘I am not required to respect you,’ replied Pekkala, ‘and even if I was, I doubt you would find me convincing. Have you come about my visit to Semykin?’

‘As a matter of fact, yes, and to ask what you thought you were doing, speaking with a man whose sentence requires him to be kept in solitary confinement for the duration of his time in Lubyanka. That means no visitors. Not even you, Inspector!’

‘I was sorry to hear that the Wyspianski painting turned out to be a fake.’

‘Not a fake!’ snapped Bakhturin. ‘It was done in the style of Wyspianski, that is all.’

‘And was Wyspianski’s signature also done in the style of Wyspianski?’ asked Pekkala.

Bakhturin made a faint choking sound. ‘I spent a great deal of time and energy bringing that painting back from Poland and I brought it to Semykin because I’d heard he was the most reputable art dealer in Moscow. Is that so hard for you to understand?’

‘No,’ replied Pekkala, ‘but why is it so difficult for you to comprehend, Comrade Bakhturin, that the reason Semykin has such a good reputation is because he does not engage in the sale of paintings which are not authentic?’

Bakhturin began to pace back and forth, like a cat locked in a cage. ‘He could have kept his mouth shut. Instead of that, he practically announced in public that I was trying to cheat Minister Osipov.’

‘You mean you weren’t?’

‘I’m the one who was cheated! I didn’t know the painting wasn’t right.’

‘And when Semykin explained that to you . . .’

‘By then it was too late! I had already borrowed money to pay for a dacha north of the city. I had to forfeit the contract. I lost a great deal of money thanks to that pompous art dealer.’

‘So you put him in prison.’

‘I could have done worse!’ bellowed Bakhturin. Then he paused for a moment, and when he spoke again, a sinister calm had entered his voice. ‘I did not come here to explain myself to you, Pekkala, only to advise you to keep your distance from Semykin. Remember what you saw in that prison cell today.’

Pekkala would never forget. More than the blood-dappled walls, or the ragged stumps of Semykin’s fingertips, or the choking sensation of confinement in that cell, it had been the look in Semykin’s eyes which bore witness to the full measure of Bakhturin’s cruelty. But Bakhturin had been wrong when he’d said that he could have done worse. For a man like Semykin, accustomed to spending his days surrounded by art, five years staring at the blank walls of a prison cell was worse than the deaths which Bakhturin’s other victims had suffered.

On his way out of the office, Bakhturin turned and aimed a finger at Pekkala. ‘You know what it means to be shut away in Lubyanka and you know it can happen to anyone. Anyone at all, Inspector.’

Pekkala managed to contain his irritation until Bakhturin had descended to the bottom of the stairs, before muttering a seemingly endless string of Finnish obscenities.

It was after dark when Kirov returned to the office.

By then, Pekkala had been staring at the drawing for so long that when he closed his eyes, the outline of the moth’s wings remained imprinted on his sight as if he had been staring at the sun. Blearily, he focused on the major. ‘Any luck?’

Kirov removed his gun belt and hung it on the coat hook by the door. ‘NVKD believes that the painting may have been delivered to the German Embassy in Stockholm in a diplomatic pouch originating from the Swedish consulate in Turkey. Given its size the painting could easily have been smuggled through our borders. Agents of ours at the German Embassy in Stockholm report that something roughly the size of the painting arrived by diplomatic pouch about a week before the plane went down over our lines, although they were not able to view the contents and did not realise at the time that it was of any significance, since diplomatic pouches arrive there every day from all over the world.’

‘But what about the painting itself?’ asked Pekkala. ‘Have you determined whether anything was concealed inside the frame?’

‘I had the painting X-rayed at the Moscow Central Hospital, but there was nothing in the frame except the wood used to construct it. Then I brought it over to the School of Agriculture and exposed the canvas to the ultraviolet lights they use on some of their tropical plants.’

‘Nothing there either?’

Kirov shook his head. ‘It’s just a painting, Inspector, and if Comrade Stalin himself called right now and asked me what I thought, I’d tell him we were wasting our time.’

Pekkala took the sketch he had made and held it up to the light. For a moment, in the glow of the bulb through the paper, it looked as if the moth had come to life. ‘One thing I’ve learned about Stalin,’ he said, ‘is that his instincts are usually right, even if he doesn’t know why. Our job is to give him the answer, which, in this case,’ he crumpled up the sheet and threw it into the corner of the room, ‘may turn out to be impossible.’

‘Especially without the help of Polina Churikova.’

‘You couldn’t find her?’

‘NKVD are searching now,’ Kirov replied. ‘If anyone can locate her . . .’

At that moment, the phone rang. The loud clattering of the bell startled both men.

Kirov picked up the receiver. ‘Yes, this is Major Kirov. You have?’ There was a long pause as he listened to the voice at the other end. ‘Where? When? I see. Never mind, then.’ He replaced the receiver in its cradle.

‘More bad news?’

‘I’m afraid so, Inspector. One hour ago, Lieutenant Polina Churikova boarded a train at the Ostankinsky District railyard, bound for the front, along with the rest of her signals battalion. We’ll never catch up with her now.’

‘You say she has boarded the train?’

‘That’s what they just told me, yes.’

‘But did they tell you that the train has actually departed?’

‘Well, no, but . . .’

‘It takes them forever to load those transports,’ interrupted Pekkala. ‘Call the Ostankinsky station. Tell them who we’re looking for and order them to hold the train until we have arrived.’

For a moment, Kirov remained frozen, as if still searching for the words to reason with Pekkala.

‘Now!’ shouted Pekkala. ‘And as soon as you’ve done that, get down to the car as quickly as you can!’

The sound of Pekkala’s voice jolted Kirov into action. He snatched up the phone and dialled for the operator.

Pekkala, meanwhile, grabbed the keys for the Emka and tramped down the stairs. Before he disappeared into the street, one final command echoed up the battered staircase. ‘And bring that blasted painting with you!’

The Emka skidded into the Ostankinsky railyard just as the last carriage of the troop transport clattered away into the dark.

‘Damn!’ Kirov mashed his fist on the steering wheel.

‘Did you call them?’ asked Pekkala.

‘Of course I did, Inspector. I spoke to the stationmaster. He asked who I was looking for and I told him. Then I asked him to delay the departure of the train.’

‘And what did he reply?’

‘That he’d do the best he could.’

Both men fell silent as they watched the red light of the caboose growing smaller and smaller until finally it vanished in the black.

Kirov cut the engine.

Then they both climbed out and looked around the deserted platform, on which the only trace of the hundreds of soldiers who had crowded on to the wagons just a few minutes before were a few cigarette butts, smouldering on the concrete. The light of an oil lamp flickered in the station house – a long, squat building fashioned out of heavy logs and roofed with tar-paper shingles.

‘Maybe we can find out where the train’s next stop is going to be,’ Pekkala wondered aloud. ‘Perhaps we can get there before it arrives.’

‘The movement of military trains is classified,’ Kirov reminded him, ‘even for NKVD. By the time we’ve pulled enough strings to find out, the train will be at the front. We might as well face the fact, Inspector. We’ve lost her. But perhaps we can still get by without her help.’

Wind rustled through the pine trees on the far side of the tracks.

At that moment, the door to the station house burst open and a soldier strode out on to the muddy railyard. Bundled in a greatcoat against the chill of the night, the figure advanced upon the two men.

Only when the soldier had come to a stop in front of them did Pekkala notice it was a woman. She was tall, with long hair which stuck out from under her brimless
pilotka
cap, but more than this Pekkala could not tell, as her face remained cloaked in the shadows.

‘The stationmaster ordered me off the train,’ she growled, ‘and told me to wait here for someone named Kirov.’

‘That would be me,’ admitted the Major.

‘Well, there had better be a good reason for this!’ She pointed down the tracks. ‘My whole battalion’s just departed for the front. I have a job to do. I am needed where they’re going. And I didn’t even have time to get my rucksack off the train!’

‘You are needed here as well,’ Kirov informed her, ‘by the Bureau of Special Operations.’

‘Special Operations! You men are NKVD?’ The indignation vanished from her voice.

‘I am‚’ said Major Kirov.

‘What do you want with me?’ she asked‚ suddenly sounding afraid.

It was Pekkala who explained. ‘We have come into possession of a painting, which we believe might be significant. Valery Semykin advised us to ask your opinion about it.’

‘Valery Semykin is in prison.’

‘That is where we found him,’ confirmed Pekkala, ‘and he sends you his regards.’

‘Well, if Valery couldn’t tell you whether it’s important, believe me, nobody can.’

‘The importance might not lie in its artistic value,’ Pekkala told her. ‘That’s why he said you might help us.’

‘Now you are speaking in riddles.’

‘It is a riddle we are asking you to solve.’

‘We have the painting here.’ Kirov lifted the briefcase. ‘If you could just take a look at it and tell us what you think.’

‘I might as well.’ She nodded at the empty tracks. ‘It looks as if I’m not going anywhere for a while.’

They walked to the station house and stepped inside, stamping the mud from their boots on a rough hemp mat spread out on the floor of the little room which served as a conduit between the interior of the station house and the outside air. Both ends of this narrow passageway were blocked off by a door. During the winter, patrons would make sure that one of the doors was kept closed while the other was open, in order to keep out the cold. Now, since it was summer, the windows had been opened and the inner door was propped wide by an old army boot. Even with the added ventilation, the air was still thick and stale and smelled bitterly of Russian army tobacco.

It was only now, by the soft light of paraffin lanterns which hung from iron hooks along the walls, that Pekkala got his first look at Churikova’s high cheekbones and eyes the same dark blue as in Delft pottery. As he studied the woman his face grew suddenly pale.

‘Inspector Pekkala, is something the matter?’ asked Kirov.

‘Pekkala?’ echoed Churikova. ‘The Emerald Eye?’

‘Yes.’ Pekkala turned over the lapel of his coat. The jewel winked in its iris of solid gold. ‘That’s what they used to call me.’

‘Then this must be very important.’ As Churikova spoke, she removed her bulky greatcoat, which was standard issue for both men and women in the Red Army. The coats were made of thick olive-brown wool and fastened with black metal buttons, each one emblazoned with a hammer and sickle set inside the outline of a star.

‘It might be important,’ Pekkala told her. ‘And it might mean nothing at all. We are relying on you to tell us.’

The two men sat down opposite Lieutenant Churikova at a rickety table on which a red and white checked table cloth had been laid out, its pattern blotched with stains and cigarette ash.

Kirov removed the painting from the leather briefcase and handed it to her.

‘Where did you get this?’ she asked, as her eyes fanned across the canvas.

Over the next few minutes, Kirov told her everything they knew.

When he had finished explaining‚ Churikova sat back slowly in her chair. ‘What did Semykin have to say about it?’

‘That the painting was basically worthless,’ said Kirov.

A faint smile passed across her lips. ‘Semykin was right. Partly, anyway.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Pekkala.

‘It is worthless as a painting,’ she replied, ‘because it is, in fact, a map.’

‘A map?’ the two men chorused.

‘You must be mistaken,’ said Kirov. ‘I had the canvas X-rayed and even ran it under ultraviolet light in case special inks had been used. We found nothing that looked like a map, Comrade Churikova.’

‘I did not say that it contains a map,’ explained Churikova. ‘The painting itself
is
the map. This is known as a Baden-Powell diagram. It was named after the British officer Robert Baden-Powell, who sometimes operated as a spy while posing as an eccentric butterfly collector, complete with a pith helmet, butterfly net and sketchbook. He even spied on our own fortress at Krasnoe Selo back in 1886, and escaped with details of our observation balloons and a new type of flare which had just been issued for the Russian military. He often employed the drawings of these butterflies as a way of encoding his information, contained within the wing structure of the butterfly. In the case of Krasnoe Selo‚ the speckles on its wings denoted where guns had been positioned‚ while the lines created the shape of the fortress walls. The next time you see a mad Englishman with a net and a sketchbook full of butterflies, take my advice and arrest him‚ Inspector.’

‘A map,’ whispered Pekkala, as he began to think it through. ‘But who made it? And why? Were the men in that plane picking it up or delivering it?’

‘And why,’ Kirov wondered aloud, ‘in an age of electronic messages, would someone resort to a technique as outdated as this?’

‘Sometimes the simplest techniques are the most difficult to crack,’ Churikova tapped her fingernail upon the crude wooden frame of the painting, ‘and, unfortunately for you, this one is virtually impossible to break. Even if you could decipher the matrix of symbols, you have no way of knowing what those symbols refer to, or where the object is or the scale of the map. It could be the size of something you keep in your pocket or it could be the size of Moscow. Without some pre-existing codex, which would have been agreed upon by the two people sharing the map, there is no way to determine what is hidden in this painting.’ Churikova rose slowly to her feet. ‘Perhaps you can take consolation in the fact that, at the rate the Germans are advancing, the location detailed in this map, wherever it was, is probably behind their lines by now.’

They walked out into the railyard. The Milky Way arched across the sky, like the vapour trail of a plane bound for another galaxy.

‘We can drive you back to your barracks in Moscow,’ offered Kirov.

‘There’s no one there,’ replied Churikova. ‘My whole battalion was aboard that train. I’d rather stay here and wait for the next one.’

A few minutes later, as the Emka pulled out on to the road, Pekkala glanced back at the station. In the darkness, he could just make out the silhouette of Churikova. She stood alone in the middle of the deserted railyard, staring up at the stars as if to decipher the meaning of their placement in the universe.