Shadow Pass

Pekkala was not surprised to learn of the Tsarina’s meddling. Alexandra had kept up a constant barrage of letters to the Tsar while her husband was in Mogilev, insisting that Rasputin’s advice on military affairs should be followed and that anyone who disagreed with it should be sacked.

What did surprise Pekkala was to learn that the Tsar had known about the Grand Duke’s visit all along. Nicholas had even met with the Tsarina’s brother, probably in the very room where Pekkala and the Tsar were meeting now.

Once he had concluded the investigation, Pekkala made his report. He omitted nothing, not even those facts he’d uncovered which incriminated the Tsar himself. Once he’d finished, Pekkala unfastened the Emerald Eye from the underside of his lapel and laid it on the Tsar’s desk. Then he drew his Webley revolver and set it beside the badge.

“What’s this?” demanded the Tsar.

“I am offering my resignation.”

“Oh, come now, Pekkala!” the Tsar growled, flipping his pencil into the air and catching it. “Try to see this from my point of view. Yes, I admit we discussed the possibility of a truce. And yes, I admit this was done in secret, without the knowledge of our High Command. But damn it all, Pekkala, there is no truce! The negotiations fell apart. I knew the Russian people wanted answers about whether these rumors were true. That’s why I put you on the case—to put their minds at ease. The thing is, Pekkala, the answers they wanted were not the ones I knew you’d find.”

Sunlight illuminated the gilded titles of leather-bound volumes on the bookshelves. Pekkala studied them before speaking.

“And what would you have me do now, Majesty, with the information I have uncovered?”

“What I would have you do,” replied the Tsar, tapping the point of his pencil against Pekkala’s revolver, “is get back to work. Forget about this whole investigation.”

“Majesty,” said Pekkala, struggling to remain calm, “you do not employ me to provide you with illusions.”

“Quite right, Pekkala. You provide me with the truth. And I decide how much of it the Russian people need to hear.”

PEKKALA WAS BEGINNING TO WONDER IF STALIN MIGHT KEEP HIM waiting there all day. To pass the time, he rocked gently back and forth on the balls of his feet, his eyes on the wall behind Stalin’s desk. From previous visits, Pekkala knew that hidden somewhere in those wooden panels was a secret door, impossible to see until it opened. Behind the opening stretched a low and narrow passageway, lit with tiny lightbulbs no bigger than a man’s thumb. The floor of this passageway was thickly carpeted, so that a person could move the length of it without making any sound. Where it led to, Pekkala had no idea, but he had been told that this whole building was honeycombed with secret passageways.

Finally, he heard the familiar click of the panel’s lock releasing. The wooden slab swung outward and Stalin emerged from the wall. At first he did not speak to Pekkala, or even look at him. His habit was to stare into every corner of the room, searching for anything that might be out of place. Finally, his gaze turned to Pekkala. “Nagorski died in an accident?” he snapped. “Do you expect me to believe that?”

“No, Comrade Stalin,” replied Pekkala.

This seemed to catch the dictator by surprise. “You don’t? But that’s what I read in the report!”

“Not my report, Comrade Stalin.”

Muttering curses under his breath, Stalin sat down at his desk and immediately fished his pipe out of the pocket of his tunic.

Pekkala had noticed that Stalin smoked cigarettes when not in his office, but normally stuck to smoking a pipe when he was in the Kremlin. The pipe was shaped like a check mark, with the bowl at the bottom of the check and curved over at the top. The pipe had already been stuffed with honey-colored shreds of tobacco. Each time Pekkala saw Stalin smoking his pipe, the pipe itself looked new, and Pekkala suspected that he did not keep them long before replacing them.

From a small cardboard box, Stalin fished out a wooden match. He had a way of lighting these matches which Pekkala had never seen before. Grasping the match between his thumb and first two fingers, he would flick the match with his ring finger across the sandpaper strip. This never failed to light the match. It was such an unusual method that Pekkala, who did not smoke, had once bought a box of matches and spent an hour over his kitchen sink trying to master the technique, but succeeding only in burning his fingers.

In the stillness of the room, Pekkala heard the hiss of the match, the tiny crackle of the tobacco catching fire, and the soft popping sound as Stalin puffed on the end of the pipe. Stalin shook out the match, dropped it in a small brass ashtray, then sat back in his chair. “No accident, you say?”

Pekkala shook his head. Removing a handkerchief from his pocket, he stepped forward to the desk, laid the cloth in front of Stalin, and carefully unfolded it.

There, in the center of the black handkerchief, lay the tiny sliver of lead which Pekkala had removed from Nagorski’s skull.

Stalin bent forward until his nose was almost touching the desktop and peered intently at the fragment. “What am I looking at, Pekkala?”

“Part of a bullet.”

“Ah!” Stalin gave a satisfied growl and sat back in his chair. “Where did you find it?”

“In Colonel Nagorski’s brain.”

Stalin nudged at the fragment with the stem of his pipe. “In his brain,” he repeated.

From his pocket, Pekkala removed the empty gun cartridge that he and Kirov had found in the pit the night before. He placed it before Stalin as if he were moving a pawn in a chess game. “We also recovered this from the scene. It is from the same gun, I am almost certain.”

Stalin nodded with approval. “This is why I need you, Pekkala!” He opened the gray file and plucked out the single sheet of paper it contained. “The NKVD investigator who filed this report said that the body had been thoroughly examined. It says so right here.” He held the paper out at arm’s length so he could read it. “No sign of injury prior to being crushed by the tank. How could they have missed a bullet in his head?”

“The damage to the body was considerable,” offered Pekkala.

“That’s a reason, not an excuse.”

“You should also know, Comrade Stalin, that the bullet did not come from a Russian-made gun.”

Almost before the words had left Pekkala’s mouth, Stalin smashed his fist down on the desk. The little cartridge jumped, then rolled in a circle. “I was right!” he shouted.

“Right about what, Comrade Stalin?”

“Foreigners carried out this murder.”

“That may be so,” replied Pekkala, “but I doubt they could have done so without help from inside the country.”

“They did have help,” replied Stalin, “and I believe the White Guild is responsible.”

Pekkala’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “Comrade Stalin, we have spoken about this before. The White Guild is a sham. It is controlled by your own Bureau of Special Operations. How could the White Guild be responsible when you are the one who created it, unless you are the one who ordered Nagorski’s death?”

“I know perfectly well,” replied Stalin coldly, “who summoned the White Guild into being, and no, I gave no command for Nagorski to be liquidated.”

“Then surely the Guild poses no threat to us.”

“There have been some new developments,” muttered Stalin.

“And what are they?” asked Pekkala.

“All you need to know, Pekkala, is that our enemies are attempting to destroy the Konstantin Project. They know that the T-34 is our only chance of surviving the time that is coming.”

“I don’t understand, Comrade Stalin. What do you mean by ‘the time that is coming’?”

“War, Pekkala. War with Germany. Hitler has retaken the Rhineland. He has forged a pact with Japan and Italy. My sources tell me he is planning to occupy parts of Czechoslovakia and Austria. And he won’t stop there, no matter what he tells the rest of the world. I have received reports from Soviet agents in England that the British are