“I am here, Comrade Stalin,” replied Poskrebyshev, his eyes bulging with fear.
Stalin’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
“I am here, Comrade Stalin!” shouted Poskrebyshev, his voice raised to a bellow of blind obedience.
“Have you completely lost your mind?” demanded Stalin, resting his knuckles on Poskrebyshev’s desk and leaning forward until their faces were only a handsbreadth apart. “I am looking for Pekkala!”
“You have found him,” said a voice.
Poskrebyshev turned. He saw a man standing in the doorway to the outer office. Neither he nor Stalin had heard him enter the room.
Pekkala was tall and broad-shouldered, with a straight nose and strong white teeth. Streaks of premature gray ran through his short dark hair. His eyes were marked by a strange silvery quality, which people noticed only when he was looking directly at them. He wore a knee-length coat made of black wool, with a mandarin collar and concealed buttons which fastened on the left side of his chest. His ankle-high boots, also black, were double-soled and polished. He stood with his hands tucked behind his back, the shape of a revolver in a shoulder holster just visible beneath the heavy cloth of his coat.
Stalin’s anger dissipated as abruptly as it had appeared. Now a smile crept over his face, narrowing his eyes. “Pekkala!” he said, growling out the name. “I have a job for you.”
As the two men disappeared into Stalin’s office and the door closed quietly behind them, the residue of fear in Poskrebyshev’s brain was still too powerful to let him feel relief. Later, perhaps, that would come. For now, all he experienced was the luxury of drawing in breath, and an overpowering curiosity to know the weather forecast for Archangel.
Stalin, sitting at his desk in a leather-backed chair, carefully stuffed his pipe with honey-colored shreds of Balkan tobacco.
There was no chair on the other side of the desk, so Pekkala had to stand while he waited for the man to complete his ritual.
During this time, the only sound in the room was the dry rustle of Stalin’s breathing as he held a match over the pipe bowl and coaxed the tobacco to burn. Once this had been accomplished, he waved the match and dropped the smoldering stick into a brass ashtray. The soft, sweet smell of the tobacco drifted about the room. Finally, Stalin spoke. “I am sending you back to Siberia.”
The words struck Pekkala like a slap in the face. At first, he was too shocked to reply.
“Although not as a prisoner,” continued Stalin. “Not officially. There has been a murder in your old camp. Borodok.”
“With respect, Comrade Stalin, there must be murders in that place every day of the week.”
“This one has caught my attention.” Stalin seemed preoccupied with the ashtray, moving it from one side of his desk to the other and then back to its original place. “Do you remember Colonel Kolchak?”
“Of course I remember him!”
Stalin’s words threw Pekkala back to a dreary, rain-soaked night in March of 1917, just before the Tsar stepped down from power.
“And do you remember what became of the Kolchak Expedition?” asked Stalin.
“I do,” replied Pekkala. “Almost as soon as the expedition was under way, Kolchak learned that an informant had betrayed him to the Bolsheviks. Guessing that Kolchak would head for the territory held by his uncle, the Bolsheviks sent their own cavalry to intercept the expedition before it reached Siberia. Once Kolchak realized that he was being followed, and since the wagons which transported the gold were slowing down his progress, he decided to leave the gold behind in the city of Kazan as he passed through there on his way to Siberia. The gold was later removed from its hiding place by the anti-Bolshevik forces of the Czechoslovakian Legion, who were also on their way to Vladivostok.”
Stalin nodded. “Go on.”
“In the winter of 1918, Czech Legion troops under the command of General Gaida had joined with the admiral’s White Russian Army. In the spring of 1919, they launched an offensive against the Reds from their base in Siberia.”
“But the offensive stalled out, didn’t it?”