disguise. Until the moment I set eyes on you, it never occurred to me you would be hiding in plain sight.”
Hearing those words, Pekkala thought back to his days of training with Chief Inspector Vassileyev, head of the Tsar’s Secret Police.
Vassileyev drilled into Pekkala’s mind the importance of blending into different surroundings in order to carry out an investigation. To train Pekkala in the “Art of Disappearance,” as he called it, Vassileyev constructed a series of elaborate games which he referred to as “Field Exercises.”
Every Friday morning, while the streets of St. Petersburg bustled with people on their way to work, Vassileyev would vanish into the crowds. One hour later, Pekkala himself would set out, with the task of tracking down his mentor. Each week Vassileyev would choose a different part of the city. Sometimes he walked along quiet mansion-lined streets. Other times he chose one of the bustling markets. His favorite location, however, was the slums which bordered the northeast end of the city.
In the first month of these Field Exercises, Pekkala failed consistently to locate Vassileyev. There were times when the chief inspector would be standing almost in front of him and still Pekkala could not see through the disguises. Once, Pekkala hired a droshky to transport him around the district, thinking he would have a better chance of spotting Vassileyev if he moved more quickly through the streets. In desperation, Pekkala explained his predicament to the driver. Caught up in the game, the old man whipped up his horse and Pekkala spent the next two hours clinging to the sides of the open carriage while they careened through the streets in search of Vassileyev. In the end, confounded once again, Pekkala climbed down to pay the driver.
“You have already paid for the ride,” said the old man.
Pekkala, wallet in hand, glanced up to see what the driver meant and only then realized, to his dismay, that the old man was, in fact, Vassileyev.
After these humiliating defeats, the two men would walk back to Okhrana headquarters. Along the way, Vassileyev would explain the tricks of his craft. Considering that Vassileyev had lost part of his right leg to an anarchist bomb years ago and now stumped about on a wooden prosthesis, Pekkala was amazed at how quickly the man could move.
“Merely throwing on a new set of clothes is not enough,” explained Vassileyev. “Your disguise must have a narrative, so that people will be lured into the story of your life. Once they become lost in fathoming the details, they will fail to see the magnitude of your illusion.”
“Couldn’t I just wear a hat?” asked Pekkala.
“Of course!” replied Vassileyev, oblivious to Pekkala’s sarcasm. “Hats are important. But what kind of hat? No single article of clothing more quickly places you in whatever bracket of society you want to occupy. But hats alone are not enough. First you must find yourself a cafe.”
“A cafe?”
“Yes!” insisted Vassileyev. “Watch the people going past, the people sitting around you. See the clothes they wear. See how they wear them. Pay close attention to their shoes. Gentlemen of the old school will lace their shoes in straight lines across the grommets. The rest will lace diagonally. Once you have chosen your character from among them, do not go out and buy yourself new clothes. Find yourself a shop or an open-air market where they sell used garments. Every city has one on the weekends. That is the place to choose your second skin.
“Do people look healthy?” continued Vassileyev. “Do people look sick? To give the appearance of living an unhealthy life, rub cooking oil on your forehead. Sprinkle the ashes of cheap tobacco in your pockets so that the smell of it will hang about you. Stir a pinch of ash into your tea and drink it. Within a week, your complexion will grow sallow. Dab a piece of raw onion in the corners of your eyes. Put a coat of beeswax on your lips.” As he spoke, he scraped away a crust of grime from the corners of his mouth, which had given the droshky driver the appearance of a man whose days of hard work in the open air should have been behind him, but were not.
“Change your stride!” ordered Vassileyev, cracking Pekkala on the shin with his heavy walking stick.
Pekkala cried out in pain and hopped along beside the chief inspector. “You can’t expect me to do that every time I go undercover!”
“No.” Vassileyev held up a one-kopek coin. “All you need is this. Put the coin inside your shoe, beneath your heel, and it will alter the way you walk. Soon you will not even think about it anymore. And that is the whole point. Put too much effort into it, and people will suspect. It must appear natural in its abnormality!”
Vassileyev’s lectures were filled with such apparent contradictions that Pekkala began to feel as if he would never master the subtle skills which Vassileyev was trying to teach him.
Then, one day, only minutes after he had arrived in the marketplace chosen for that week’s Field Exercise, Pekkala spotted Vassileyev. The old man was wearing a short double-breasted wool coat and sitting on an upturned barrel with a porter’s trolley beside him.
“How did you do it?” asked Vassileyev, as they sat down to lunch at one of the market restaurants, its floor strewn with sawdust and the tables covered with brown paper.
“I don’t know,” Pekkala replied honestly. “I wasn’t even concentrating.”
Vassileyev thumped Pekkala’s back. “Now you understand!”
“I do?”
“Our life’s work is to sift through the details,” his mentor explained. “And yet sometimes we must learn to ignore them, so that the bigger picture comes into focus. Do you see now?”
“I am beginning to,” he answered.
For their final exercise, Vassileyev promised Pekkala his hardest task yet.
That day, as he wandered up and down Morskaya Street, Pekkala studied the faces of everyone he passed, searching for some chink in the armor of their disguises. But he found nothing.
Then, just as he was about to give up, he spotted Vassileyev. The man had been sitting on a bench the whole time. Pekkala had walked past the bench at least a dozen times and never even seen Vassileyev. It was as if he had become invisible.
But the most incredible thing about it was that Vassileyev had not put on any disguise at all. He had simply been himself. And Pekkala, searching for anyone but the man he recognized, had failed to see him.
“Sometimes,” said Vassileyev, “the most effective place to hide is in plain sight. Only when you have learned to conceal yourself are you ready to see through the disguises of others. The most dangerous thing is not the face that remains hidden”-Vassileyev passed a hand before his eyes-“but what hides behind that face.”
“I didn’t think I’d ever need a bodyguard,” said Pekkala.
As Savushkin pulled on his torn shirt, he looked down at the mangled corpse. “Neither did I, until now.”
“What enemies did you make to draw such a wretched assignment as this?”
Savushkin’s face brightened. “No enemies at all, Inspector. I volunteered for this!”
“Volunteered? But why?”
“For the chance to tell my children I once served beside the Emerald Eye.”
“I’m glad you are here, Savushkin.”
Savushkin grinned, but then his face became serious. “A word of advice, Inspector. In the days ahead do not place your faith in anyone. Anyone! Do you understand?”
“I think I can trust you, Savushkin. You just saved my life, after all.”
Before Savushkin could reply, the urgent wail of the locomotive’s whistle summoned them back to the train.
The two men watched as the wagon doors slid open and prisoners began to climb aboard.
“Looks like we’re not spending the night here after all,” remarked Savushkin, as he kicked a blanket of snow over the body which lay at their feet.
They raced across the field, waving and shouting.
“Why,” asked Pekkala, fighting for breath as the cold air raked at his throat, “did you keep asking me who I was if you already knew?”
“It gave me an excuse to stay close to you,” gasped Savushkin. “Besides, I knew they were safe questions to
