Shadow Pass

tomato or to chew on a basil leaf.

Finally, with an hour still to go before the sun came up, he put on his coat and left the building.

It was a long walk to Kirov’s apartment, almost an hour through the winding streets. He could have made the journey in ten minutes by taking the subway, but Pekkala preferred to remain aboveground in spite of the fact that there were no reliable maps of the city. The only charts available for Moscow showed either what the city had looked like before the Revolution or what the city was supposed to look like when all of the new construction projects had been finished. Most of these had not even begun, and there were whole blocks which, on these maps, bore no resemblance to what actually stood on the ground. Many streets had been renamed, as had entire cities around the country. Petrograd was Leningrad, Tsaritsyn was Stalingrad. As the locals said in Moscow, everything was different but nothing had really changed.

Pekkala was walking along the edge of Gorky Park when a car pulled up alongside him. Before the car, a black GAZ-M1 saloon, had even stopped, the passenger-side door flew open and a man jumped out.

Without thinking about it, Pekkala moved.

By the time the man’s feet were on the pavement, he was already looking down the blue-eyed barrel of Pekkala’s revolver.

The man wore round glasses, balanced on a long, thin nose. Beard stubble made a blue haze on his pasty skin.

To Pekkala, he looked like a big pink rat.

The expression of angry determination on the man’s face gave way to stunned disbelief. Slowly, he raised his hands. “You are going to wish you hadn’t done that, Comrade,” he said quietly.

It was only now that Pekkala got a good look at him. Even though he wore plain clothes, Pekkala knew immediately—the man was NKVD. It was the way he carried himself, his look of perpetual disdain. Pekkala had been so worried about Kirov being hauled in on some random charge that he had not stopped to consider the same thing might happen to him. “What do you want?” he asked.

“Put that down!” snapped the man.

“Give me an answer,” replied Pekkala calmly, “if you want to keep your brains in your head.”

“Are you licensed to carry that antique?”

Pekkala set his thumb on the hammer and pulled it back until it cocked. “I’m licensed to use it too.”

Now the man shrugged his right shoulder, revealing a gun in a holster tucked under his armpit. “You’re not the only person with a gun.”

“Go ahead,” replied Pekkala, “and let’s see what happens next.”

“Why don’t you just show me your papers!”

Without lowering the Webley, Pekkala reached inside his coat, removed his pass book and held it out.

“You’re NKVD?” asked the man.

“See for yourself.”

Slowly, the rat man took it from his hand and opened it.

“What’s taking so long?” said a voice. Then the driver of the car climbed out. “Svoloch!” he shouted when he saw Pekkala’s revolver, and struggled to draw his own gun.

“Don’t,” said Pekkala.

But it was too late. The man’s Tokarev was now aimed squarely at Pekkala.

Pekkala kept his own weapon pointed at the rat man.

For a moment, the three men just stood there.

“Let’s just all of us calm down and see what we’ve got here,” said the rat man, as he opened Pekkala’s identification book.

A long period of silence followed.

“What’s the matter?” demanded the driver, his gun still aimed at Pekkala. “What the hell is going on?”

The rat-faced man cleared his throat. “He’s got a Shadow Pass.”

The driver looked suddenly lost, like a sleepwalker who had awakened in a different part of town.

“It’s Pekkala,” said the rat-faced man.

“What?”

“Inspector Pekkala, you idiot! From Special Operations.”

“It was your idea to stop!” complained the driver. Uttering another curse, he stuffed his gun back into its holster as if the weapon had drawn itself against his wishes.

The rat-faced man closed Pekkala’s ID book. “Our apologies, Inspector,” he said as he handed it back.

Only now did Pekkala lower his gun. “I’m taking this car,” he told them.

The driver’s face turned pale. “Our car?”

“Yes,” replied Pekkala. “I am requisitioning your vehicle.” He walked around to the driver’s side.

“You can’t do that!” said the driver. “This car belongs to us!”

“Be quiet, you idiot!” shouted the rat man. “Didn’t you hear me? I said he had a Shadow Pass. We can’t detain him. We can’t question him. We can’t even ask him the bloody time of day! He is licensed to shoot you and no one’s even allowed to ask him why he did it. He’s also permitted to requisition anything he chooses—our weapons, our car. He can leave you standing naked in the street if he wants to.”

“It pulls a little to the left,” said the driver. “The carburetor needs adjusting.”

“Shut up and get out of his way!” the rat-faced man yelled again.

As if jolted by an electric shock, the driver tossed Pekkala the keys.

Pekkala got behind the wheel. The last he saw of the two men, they were standing on the sidewalk, arguing. He drove the rest of the way to Kirov’s apartment on Prechistenka Street. Then he just sat in the car for a while, hands still on the wheel, trying to stop breathing so hard.

“When guns are drawn,” said Chief Inspector Vassileyev, “you must never show fear. A man with a gun aimed at you is more likely to pull the trigger if he sees you are afraid.”

At the end of every day of his training with the Tsar’s Secret Police, the Okhrana, Pekkala would report to Vassileyev. The procedures Pekkala learned from other agents transformed him into an investigator, but what he learned from Vassileyev saved his life.

“Surely,” argued Pekkala, “if I show I am afraid, I would be less of a threat to someone with a gun.”

“I am not talking about what should happen,” replied Vassileyev. “I am talking about what will happen.”

Even though the chief inspector always seemed to talk in riddles, Pekkala looked forward to the time he spent with Vassileyev. His office was small and comfortable, with lithographs of hunting scenes and antique weaponry hung on the walls. Vassileyev spent most of his time here, poring over reports and receiving visitors. As a younger man, he had gained a reputation for going about the city on foot, often in disguise. It was said that no one could hide from Vassileyev in Petrograd, because he knew every corner of the city. Those days came to an end one day as he was walking down the steps of the police building in order to meet the head of the Moscow Okhrana, who had just arrived by car. Vassileyev had almost reached the vehicle when a bomb, thrown through the window on the other side, exploded. The Moscow chief was killed instantly and Vassileyev sustained injuries that put him behind a desk for the rest of his career.

“The person who lives without fear,” continued Vassileyev, “does not have long to live. Fear sharpens the senses. Fear can keep you alive. But learn to hide it, Pekkala. Bury fear deep someplace inside you, so your enemies can’t see it in your eyes.”

WHEN, AT LAST, HIS BREATHING HAD RETURNED TO NORMAL, PEKKALA left the keys in the glove compartment, got out of the car, and walked across the street to Kirov’s building.

It had been freshly painted a cheerful shade of orange. Large windows, trimmed in white, looked down on the tree-lined avenue.

Pekkala knocked on the door to Kirov’s apartment, then took two steps back and waited.

After a minute, the door opened a crack and Kirov peered from inside. His eyes were squinty and his hair stuck up in tufts. Behind him, on the walls, were dozens of awards and certificates from various Communist youth organizations. Kirov had been collecting these certificates of merit since he was five years old, when he had won a