Even though Pekkala had not seen Klenovkin in many years, the commandant’s features had been etched into his brain. Time had rounded the edges of Klenovkin’s once-gaunt face. The dark hair Pekkala remembered had turned a grayish white. Only the man’s gaze, menacing and squinty, had not changed. “Prisoners must remove their caps when they are in my presence.”
“I am no longer your prisoner.”
Klenovkin smiled humorlessly. “That is only partly true, Inspector. You may be running this investigation, but I am running this camp. As long as you are wearing the clothes of an inmate, that is how you will be treated. We wouldn’t want that guard out in the waiting room to become suspicious, would we?”
Slowly, Pekkala reached up to his cap and slid it off his head.
“Good.” Klenovkin nodded, satisfied. “I must admit, Pekkala, I do find this meeting somewhat ironic. After all, following our last meeting, I did my best to kill you.”
“And failed.”
“Indeed, and thus the irony that I am now expected to assist you in whatever way I can. Bear in mind, however, that I may be the only help you get. As for that gang of White Russians, of which Captain Ryabov was a member, I wouldn’t expect much from them.”
“And why is that?”
“Because they have gone mad. The years at Borodok have worn away their minds as well as their bodies. Now they speak of a day when they will be rescued from this place and sent to live like kings in some faraway land.” Klenovkin rolled his eyes in mocking pity. “They really believe this! They are fanatics, tattooing their bodies with the symbols of their loyalty to a cause that no longer exists. These men have nothing left but hope, for which they no longer require proof or logic or even reason to support their beliefs. They even have a name for the dwindling ranks of their disciples. They call themselves Comitati-whatever that means.” Then he laughed. “It is a word that has no meaning, for men who serve no purpose.”
But that word did have a meaning, and the mention of it made Pekkala’s blood run cold. The Comitatus was an ancient pact between warriors and their leader, in which men swore never to leave the battlefield before their leader, and the leader swore in return never to abandon those who followed him. As each swore allegiance, the man and the oath became one and the same. Together, those who had made the pact formed a band known as the Comitati. Now Pekkala knew why these men had never given up the fight. They were waiting for Kolchak to return and fulfill the oath he had taken.
“In a way,” continued Klenovkin, “they have already been rescued. Their minds escaped from this camp long ago. The only sane thing left for them is to surrender to their madness. The one man among them who had any grip on reality was Ryabov, and that, I think you will find, is the reason he is dead.”
“How many of these Comitati were originally sent to Borodok?”
“There were about seventy of them in the beginning.”
“And how many remain?”
“Three,” replied Klenovkin. “There is a former lieutenant named Tarnowski, and two others-Sedov and Lavrenov. In spite of how many have died over the years, Ryabov was the first to be murdered.”
“Has his body been preserved?”
“Of course.”
“I need to see the remains,” said Pekkala. “Preferably now.”
“By all means,” replied Klenovkin, rising to his feet. “The sooner you can deliver to Stalin whatever it is that he wants from these men, the quicker I can be rid of them. And of you as well, Inspector.”
Heaving on a canvas coat, thickly lined with coarse and shaggy goat fur, Klenovkin led Pekkala out of the office.
Shivering in his prison jacket, Pekkala followed the commandant to the camp kitchen, which had been closed down for the night.
Inside, at the back of the building, stood a large walk-in freezer, its door fastened shut with a bronze padlock as big as a man’s clenched fist.
Removing a key from his pocket, Klenovkin unfastened the padlock and the two men stepped inside.
Klenovkin turned on an electric light. One bare bulb glimmered weakly from the low ceiling. Frost which had coated the thin glass shell of the bulb immediately melted away. By the time the droplets reached the floor, they had frozen again and crackled on the ground like grains of unboiled rice.
On one side of the freezer, pig carcasses dangled from iron hooks. On the other stood slabs of pasty white beef fat and stacks of vegetables which had been boiled, mashed, and pressed into bricks.
A wall of splintery wooden crates lined the back of the freezer. The crates were filled with bottles, each one marked with a yellow paper triangle, indicating Soviet army-issue vodka.
On the floor, behind the barricade of vodka crates, lay a dirty brown tarpaulin.
“There he is,” said Klenovkin.
Pekkala knelt down. Pulling aside the brittle cloth, he stared at the man whose death had brought him to Siberia.
Ryabov’s skin had turned a purplish gray. A dark redness filled the lips and nostrils and the dead man’s open eyes had sunk back into his skull. His open mouth revealed a set of teeth rotted by years of neglect.
Ryabov’s throat had been cut back to his spine, as if the murderer had wanted not simply to kill him but had attempted to remove his head as well.
The huge amount of blood which had flowed from Ryabov’s severed jugular had formed a black and brittle crust over the dead man’s chest.
At least it had been quick, Pekkala noted. From a wound like that, Ryabov would have bled out in less than thirty seconds.
The hands of the dead man had been wrapped in strips of rag, a common practice among prisoners to protect against the cold. Pekkala peeled back the layers of filthy cloth. It was not easy. Ice had bonded the strips so solidly together that Pekkala’s fingernails tore as he prised away the layers. At last the skin was exposed, revealing the image of a pine tree which had been crudely etched on the tops of Ryabov’s hands using a razor blade and soot.
“The mark of the Comitati,” observed Klenovkin.
Pekkala set his fingertips against the edges of the wound in the dead man’s neck. The skin was curved back on itself, a sign that the blade used to kill Ryabov had been extremely sharp.
Now Pekkala turned his attention to the man’s clothes. The padded coat and trousers had been washed so many times that the original black color had been bleached to the same dirty white shade as the snow which piled up on street corners in Moscow at the end of winter. The buttons had been replaced with pieces of wood hand- carved into toggles, and there were many repairs in the cloth, each one meticulously stitched with whatever fabric had been available. Searching the pockets of Ryabov’s jacket, Pekkala found nothing but black crumbs of Machorka tobacco, the only kind available to Gulag prisoners. It was made from the stems as well as the leaves of the plant and produced a thick, eye-stinging cloud that could be inhaled only by the most desperate and hardened smoker.
“Where was the body found?” Pekkala asked.
“At the entrance to the mine. I discovered it myself when I went there to speak with him.”
“Why were you there and not in your office?”
“When he first came to me, saying he knew where to find Colonel Kolchak, I told Ryabov I didn’t believe it. Kolchak is dead, I told him. But he insisted he had proof that the colonel was still alive, and he was so convincing that I thought I should at least hear what he had to say.”
“And what did Ryabov want in exchange for this information?”
“He didn’t say. He refused to talk in my office, because he didn’t want to risk being overheard, so we set up the meeting for that night in one of the mine tunnels. It’s not difficult for the prisoners to sneak out of their barracks at night. The entrance to the mine shaft is not guarded and the tunnels are not patrolled at night. We had set a time, just after midnight. By the time I got there, Ryabov had already been killed.”
“I was told you’d found the murder weapon.”
Without removing his hands from the warmth of his pockets, Klenovkin nodded towards an object lying on a nearby crate.
Pekkala saw it now-a crude homemade stiletto, whose finger-length blade had been fashioned from a piece of
