DO NOT QUESTION OR DETAIN HIM.
HE IS AUTHORIZED TO WEAR CIVILIAN CLOTHES, TO CARRY WEAPONS, TO TRANSPORT PROHIBITED ITEMS, INCLUDING POISON, EXPLOSIVES, AND FOREIGN CURRENCY. HE MAY PASS INTO RESTRICTED AREAS AND MAY REQUISITION EQUIPMENT OF ALL TYPES, INCLUDING WEAPONS AND VEHICLES.
IF HE IS KILLED OR INJURED, NOTIFY THE BUREAU OF SPECIAL OPERATIONS IMMEDIATELY.
Although this special insert was known officially as a Classified Operations Permit, it was more commonly referred to as a Shadow Pass. With it, a man could appear and disappear at will within the wilderness of regulations that controlled the Stalinist state. Fewer than a dozen of these Shadow Passes were known to exist. Even within the ranks of the NKVD, most people had never seen one.
Rain flicked at the pass book, darkening the paper.
The guard squinted to read the words. It took a moment for him to grasp what he was looking at. Then he looked at the gun in his hand as if he had no idea how he had come to be holding it. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, hurriedly returning the weapon to its holster.
“Why would you think we were doctors?” asked Pekkala.
“There has been an accident,” explained the guard.
“What happened?”
The guard shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you. When the facility called me here at the guardhouse about half an hour ago, all they said was that a doctor would be arriving soon and to let him through without delay. Whatever it is, I’m sure Colonel Nagorski has the situation under control.” The guard paused. “Listen, are you really Inspector Pekkala?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” asked Pekkala.
“It’s just …” The guard smiled awkwardly, scratching his forehead with his thumbnail. “I wasn’t sure you really existed.”
“Do we have your permission to proceed?” Pekkala asked.
“Of course!” The guard stood back and waved them forward with a sweep of his arm, like a man clearing bread crumbs off a table.
Kirov put the car in gear and drove on.
For several minutes, the Emka traveled on the long, straight road. The facility was nowhere in sight.
“This place really is in the middle of nowhere,” muttered Kirov.
Pekkala grunted in agreement. He squinted up at the trees, which seemed to stoop over the car as if curious to see who was inside.
Then, up ahead, they saw where the woods had been hacked back from a cluster of hunched and flat-roofed brick buildings.
As they pulled into a dirt courtyard, the door to one of the smaller buildings swung open and a man dashed out, making straight towards them. Like the guard, he wore a military uniform. By the time he reached the Emka, he was already out of breath.
Pekkala and Kirov got out of the car.
“I am Captain Samarin,” wheezed the NKVD man. He had black, Asiatic-looking hair, thin lips, and deep-set eyes. “It’s this way, Doctor,” he panted. “You’ll need your medical bag.”
“We are not doctors,” corrected Pekkala.
Samarin was flustered. “I don’t understand,” he told them. “Then what is your business here?”
“I am Inspector Pekkala, of the Bureau of Special Operations, and this is Major Kirov. Colonel Nagorski was kind enough to offer us a tour of the facility.”
“I’m afraid that a tour is out of the question, Inspector,” replied Samarin, “but I would be glad to show you why.”
Samarin led them to the edge of what looked at first glance to be a huge half-drained lake filled with large puddles of dirty water. In the middle of it, sunk almost to the top of its tracks in the mud, lay one of Nagorski’s tanks, a large white number 3 painted on its side. Two men stood beside the tank, their shoulders hunched against the rain.
“So that is the T-34,” said Pekkala.
“It is,” confirmed Samarin. “And this place”—he waved his hand across the sea of mud—“is what we call the proving ground. This is where the machines are tested.”
The rain was falling harder now, pattering on the dead leaves in the nearby woods so that the air filled with a hissing sound. The smell of the damp earth hung heavy, and the solid mass of clouds, like a blind man’s eye rolled around to white, encased the dome of sky above them.
“Where is Nagorski?” asked Pekkala.
Samarin pointed at the men beside the tank.
The huddled figures were too far away for Pekkala to be able to recognize which one of them was the colonel.
Pekkala turned to Kirov. “Wait here,” he said. Then, without another word, he stepped forward and slid down the steep embankment. He arrived at the end of the slope on his back, his clothes and hands plastered with slime. The brownish-yellow ooze stood out sharply against the black of Pekkala’s coat. As he rose to his feet, dirty water poured out of his sleeves. He took one step towards the tank before realizing that one of his shoes had come off. Gouging it out of the clay, he perched on one leg like a heron and jammed his foot back into the shoe before continuing on his way.
After several minutes of wading from one flooded crater to the next, Pekkala arrived at the tank. The closer he came, the larger the machine appeared, until at last he stood before it. Even though it was half buried in the mud, the T-34 still towered over him.
Pekkala glanced at the two disheveled men. Both were as plastered in filth as he was. One wore what had once been a white lab coat. The other had a brown wool coat with a fur collar which was also painted with mud. But neither of them was Nagorski.
“Are you the doctor?” asked the man in the filthy lab coat. He had a big, square face, with a thick crop of bristly gray hair.
Pekkala explained who he was.
“Well, Inspector Pekkala,” said the gray-haired man, spreading his arms wide, “welcome to the madhouse.”
“An investigator already,” snorted the other, a short, frail-looking man with a complexion so pale that his skin looked like mother-of-pearl. “You people don’t waste any time.”
“Where is the colonel?” asked Pekkala. “Is he hurt?”
“No, Inspector,” the gray-haired man replied. “Colonel Nagorski is dead.”
“Dead?” shouted Pekkala. “How?”
The men exchanged glances. They seemed reluctant to speak.
“Where is he?” demanded Pekkala. “In the tank?”
It was the gray-haired man who finally explained. “Colonel Nagorski is not in the tank. Colonel Nagorski is under the tank.”
His companion pointed at the ground. “See for yourself.”
For the first time, standing beside the T-34’s track, Pekkala noticed a cluster of fingertips, pale dimples rising just above the surface of the water. As his eyes struggled to see into the murky water, he spotted a leg, visible only from the knee down. At the end of this limb, which seemed to have been partially torn from the body, Pekkala could make out a distorted black shoe. It appeared to have split at all its seams, as if forced on someone with a foot much too large for the shoe. “That is Nagorski?” he asked.
“What’s left of him,” replied the gray-haired man impassively.
No matter how many times Pekkala looked down upon the dead, the first sight of a corpse always stunned him. It was as if his mind could not bear to carry the burden of this moment and so, time after time, erased it from his brain. As a result, the initial shock never lessened in intensity.
What struck Pekkala was not how different the dead appeared but how much alike bodies became, no matter if they were man or woman, old or young, when the life had left them. The same terrible stillness surrounded them, the same dull eyes, and eventually, the same piercing sweet smell. Some nights, he would wake with the stench of the dead flooding his nostrils. Staggering to the sink, he would wash his face and scrub his hands until the knuckles
