Archive 17

of the carcass next to him. The point jammed to a halt against the pig’s ribs, only a hand’s width from Pekkala’s throat. Then the knife disappeared again, back the way it came, like a metal tongue sliding into a mouth.

“Melekov!” shouted Pekkala, still blinded by the flashlight and holding up his hands to shield himself. “It’s me!”

“You walked into my trap,” snarled Melekov.

“This was a trap? For me? But why?”

Melekov’s only reply was a bestial roar. He raised the butcher knife, ready to strike again.

Pekkala jumped to the side, crashing into a shelf as the blade glanced off the wall, leaving a long silver stripe through the frost. Bowls of food tumbled from the racks. Jars of pickled beets smashed in eruptions of ruby-colored juice and cans of army-issue Tushonka stew clattered across the floor.

Snatching up one of the heavy cans, he hurled it at the silhouette.

Melekov howled with pain as the can struck him full in the face. The flashlight fell from his grasp.

Pekkala dove to grab it, turning the beam on his attacker.

With one hand, Melekov covered his face. Blood poured in ribbons from between the fingers. His other hand still gripped the knife.

Intent on disarming the cook, Pekkala grabbed a frozen pig’s heart off the shelf and pitched it as hard as he could.

The rock-hard knot of meat bounced off Melekov’s face. With a wail of pain, he tumbled back among the bowls of guts and dropped the knife.

By the time Melekov hit the ground, Pekkala had already snatched up the weapon. “Why on earth are you trying to kill me?” he demanded.

“I figured it out,” groaned Melekov.

“Figured what out?”

Melekov clambered up until he was resting on his knees. Dazed from the fight, his head bowed forward, as if he were a supplicant before the slaughtered pigs. “Klenovkin is going to give you my job.”

“I don’t want your damned job!”

“It doesn’t matter what you want or do not want. In this camp, Klenovkin decides our fates. And where will I be if he throws me out? This isn’t like Moscow, where a man who loses his job can walk across the road and find another. There are no other jobs for me here. I’m too old to be a guard. I have no training for the hospital. If Klenovkin wants to replace me, I’ll have no place to go.”

“Even if I did want the job, did you ever stop to think that Klenovkin could never hand it to a prisoner? Dalstroy wouldn’t let him. The company would never trust a convict with their food.”

“I didn’t think of that.” Melekov raised his head sharply. “None of this was my idea.”

Pekkala threw the knife away across the floor. “Just get up!”

Gingerly, Melekov dabbed his fingers against his nostrils. “I think you broke my nose,” he muttered bitterly.

“Whose idea was this, Melekov?”

Reluctantly, the cook shook his head. “If I tell you …”

“Give me the name,” growled Pekkala.

“Gramotin,” he replied in a whisper.

Pekkala breathed out slowly. “Did he say why?”

Melekov shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. From now on, my life’s worth even less than yours, and yours wasn’t worth much to begin with.”

Pekkala realized that the time was fast approaching when he would either have to leave this camp or risk becoming the subject of his own murder investigation.

In the meantime, Ryabov’s death remained unsolved.

That thought sent a familiar shudder through his bones.

This was not the first time Pekkala had failed to close a case.

Pekkala and the Tsar stood on a balcony outside the Alexander Palace. It was an early-summer day, the sky powder blue and pollen lying luminous and green upon the puddles of a rainstorm from the night before.

“A man has been found dead,” said the Tsar. “He was a courier for the Turkish embassy.”

“Where was the body found?” asked Pekkala.

“It was pulled from the water just beneath a bridge over the Novokislaevsk River, north of Moscow.

“Their ambassador asked for you by name. Given the value of our relationship with that country, I could hardly refuse.”

“I will begin immediately.”

“Of course, but do not exhaust yourself with this inquiry.”

Pekkala glanced at the Tsar, trying to fathom the meaning of his words.

“What I am telling you,” Nicholas Romanov explained, “is that this is ultimately a matter for the Turks to unravel. It is not our job to oversee their diplomats. Look around, see what you can find, and then move on.”

Pekkala’s preliminary inspection of the body revealed no marks which would suggest a violent death. The dead man was fully clothed but did not appear to have drowned. Pekkala quickly ruled out suicide, since the drop would not have killed or even injured him.

Every day, during that first week of the investigation, Pekkala returned to the bridge and stood looking down into the water as he attempted to compose in his mind not only the reason for this man’s death but the questions which might lead him to the answer.

He stood among fishermen, who dangled bamboo poles above the water, smoked their pipes, and talked about the body. They had been the first to find it and barraged Pekkala with questions about the case.

But Pekkala had questions of his own. “Could the body have drifted here from somewhere upstream?” he asked.

“This is a lazy old river,” one of them replied. “Somebody threw him off the bridge. Where he fell is where he sank and where he sank is where we found him.”

“Do you fish here every day?”

“This time of year we do. Carp, pike, dace. They’re all down there in those weeds.”

“Then they knew you would find him. In fact, somebody wanted you to find him.”

“Unless,” suggested another fisherman, “they didn’t know the area and were just getting rid of the body.”

Pekkala shook his head. “This was done by a professional. The dead man is a message. But about what? And to whom?”

“That would be your job, Inspector,” said the fisherman.

After one week, without explanation, the Tsar called Pekkala off the case and did not assign a new investigator to take over.

Ever since, Pekkala had been haunted by his failure to arrest the killer. He felt an obligation to the victim, as if they’d formed a partnership between the living and the dead. Since that day, like stones in his pockets, he had carried the unanswered questions of that murder.

The next day Melekov showed up for work in the kitchen with a bandage on his face and two black eyes.

The two men did not speak about what had happened the day before.

Pekkala was just finishing his breakfast duties, when Tarnowski, Lavrenov, and Sedov barged into the kitchen.

Melekov, with a mound of fresh dough balanced in his hands, stood paralyzed with fear.

Tarnowski grabbed the cook and pushed him to his knees. The dough fell with a splat onto the floor.