Archive 17

“What about Savushkin, the bodyguard you sent to protect him?”

“Pekkala might have won him over,” answered Stalin, still talking more to himself than to Poskrebyshev. “After all, Savushkin volunteered to work with Pekkala. I should have taken that into consideration.”

“Won him over? But why, Comrade Stalin, and with what?”

“Threats. Bribes. Some act of Finnish sorcery! And as for why, perhaps Pekkala’s loyalties to the past are stronger than I thought. I see now that Pekkala has been hiding. All this time, he has concealed himself in a disguise of incorruptibility. They were good at disguises, those agents of the Tsar. Vassileyev taught them well. But now I see Pekkala as he really is. He can no longer hide from me!”

“Comrade Stalin,” Poskrebyshev pleaded with him, “there is no evidence to suggest that what you are saying is true.”

“Evidence!” Stalin roared. “The evidence was right under our noses the whole time, hidden away in Archive 17. And that is where it should have stayed. Who is in charge there? Who is responsible for releasing the information?”

“That would be Professor Braninko.”

“Get me Kornfeld. Tell him he has work to do.”

Pekkala stood at the entrance to the mine, waiting to deliver the soup ration.

At last a man appeared, ghoulish in his coating of radium. When he caught sight of Pekkala, he raised his hand in greeting.

“I brought your soup,” said Pekkala.

“Don’t you recognize me?” asked the stranger.

“I’m sorry, Zeka, I do not,” replied Pekkala, using the common name by which prisoners addressed each other. The stranger’s face was so caked in yellowy powder that it reminded Pekkala of masks he once saw used by a troupe of Japanese Kabuki actors at the Aksyonov Theatre in St. Petersburg.

“It’s me!” The prisoner slapped his hands against his chest, sending puffs of yellow dust into the air. “Savushkin!”

Pekkala leaned forward, squinting. “Savushkin?” The man who stood before him now bore no resemblance to the friend he had made on the journey to Siberia. Savushkin’s shirt was open at the neck, revealing flesh stretched so tightly against the collarbone it looked as if the slightest movement would cause his skin to tear like wet paper.

The smile on Savushkin’s face faltered. He gathered up a bucket in each hand. The wire-bale handles dug into his raw, chapped skin. “I know my task is to protect you, Inspector, but they are making it very difficult. I’m trying. Believe me, I’m still trying.”

Overcome, Pekkala reached out and set his hands on Savushkin’s shoulders. “Don’t worry about me. Look after yourself. I’ll do what I can to get you transferred from the mine.”

“No.” Savushkin shook his head. “People will only get suspicious. Solve the case, Inspector, as quickly as you can. Then we can both get out of here.” Carrying the buckets, he disappeared into the tunnel, his shadow lumbering across the walls, giant and grotesque in the lamplight.

Pekkala looked at his hands. His palms and fingertips were chalky white where they had touched Savushkin’s jacket. Shaken, he made his way back across the compound.

Outside the kitchen, Gramotin was waiting for him. “The commandant wants to see you.”

Pekkala nodded.

“I’m watching you, convict,” said Gramotin.

“I know,” replied Pekkala.

“This just arrived for you,” said Klenovkin, holding out a telegram.

It was from Kirov.

Pekkala studied the faint gray letters fanned out across the flimsy sheet of paper.

RYABOV IS COVER NAME FOR AGENT LISTED IN BLUE FILE AS KILLED DURING ARREST OF GRODEK BUT SURVIVED STOP

Pekkala stopped reading. The Blue File. This was the first time he had heard a mention of it since before the Revolution. He hadn’t even known the Blue File was still in existence, although it didn’t surprise him to learn that the Tsar had failed to destroy it, as he should have done, in those final days of his captivity at Tsarskoye Selo. The Tsar had been such a meticulous keeper of records that getting rid of anything he’d written down would have gone against every instinct he possessed.

Pekkala gave a quiet grunt of admiration that Kirov had managed to track down this information in the labyrinth of Archive 17, especially since that meant dealing with Professor Braninko, its notoriously uncooperative curator.

Even more astonishing than the mention of Grodek was the fact that one of the Okhrana agents on that mission had survived. Until now, he had believed they were all dead.

“What’s the matter?” asked Klenovkin. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

On a clear winter’s day, a car filled with heavily armed Okhrana agents raced through the streets of St. Petersburg.

Pekkala was crammed in beside a young officer whom he had never met before. The task of the Okhrana agents was to clear the ground floor, not thought to be occupied, and make their way swiftly up to the apartment rented by Grodek and his mistress.

“Do you think he will come quietly?” asked the officer.

“No,” replied Pekkala. He did not believe it would be possible to arrest Grodek without sustaining casualties. Neither did he believe that Grodek would allow himself to be taken alive.

As they spoke, the young officer was loading his Nagant pistol. When the wheels of their car bounced over a pothole, a bullet slipped from the officer’s fingers and fell into the seat well below. The men were too closely packed for him to bend down to retrieve it. The Okhrana agent swore quietly at his own clumsiness. Then he glanced across at Pekkala.

“Last year,” the officer explained, “one of my colleagues closed a car door on my fingers.” He held up his hand as proof.

Pekkala could see that the man’s thumb and index finger had been deformed by the bone not setting straight.

“The doctors tell me I have nerve damage,” continued the officer. “Sometimes I can’t help dropping things.”

“I see,” said Pekkala.

“To tell you the truth, Inspector, I am also a little nervous.”

Before Pekkala could reply, they rounded a corner and Grodek’s house slid into view.

The officer closed the cylinder of the revolver and placed it in the holster strapped under his armpit. “Well,” he told Pekkala, “I will see you on the other side.”

The three cars screeched to a halt outside Grodek’s house. The Okhrana agents piled out immediately and began battering down the door.

As they had planned in advance, Pekkala moved to the rear of the building, in case Grodek tried to escape along the canal path. He took cover behind a stack of crates containing salt used for preserving fish which were caught in the summer months at the mouth of the Neva River. In winter, due to ice, none of the boats could get up the river. At that time of year, the whole wharf was deserted.

Once the agents were inside, they raced up the stairs to Grodek’s apartment on the second floor.

From his hiding place, Pekkala heard a heavy, muffled thump inside the building. The windows seemed to ripple. This was followed a fraction of a second later by a concussion which threw him off his feet. Jets of fire belched out of the windows. Glass sprayed over the street. Dazed and lying on his back, Pekkala watched a door sail over his head and into the canal.

Grodek had planted a bomb. Only seconds before the blast, he and his mistress, Maria Balka, had managed to escape through a side window.