prize for a week of community service in the Young Pioneers. After this, he had gone on to win awards for best orienteering, best science experiment, best tent-pitching. Each certificate bore a hammer and sickle nestled between two sheaves of wheat. Some of the certificates had been ornately hand-lettered. Others were no more than scrawls. But all of them had been framed, and they hung from every vertical surface in his apartment. “What are you doing here?” asked Kirov.
“Good morning to you too,” replied Pekkala. “Get dressed. We have to go.”
“Where?”
Pekkala held up the piece of paper Lysenkova had given him. “To talk to the scientists at the facility. Maybe they can decipher this. There may be a link between the equation and the man who escaped, but we won’t know until we understand what’s written here.”
“Who is that?” asked a woman’s voice from inside the apartment. “Is that Inspector Pekkala?”
Kirov sighed heavily. “Yes.”
“So that’s why you didn’t come back!” spluttered Pekkala. “Damn it, Kirov, I thought you’d been arrested!”
“Arrested for what?” asked Kirov.
“Never mind that now!”
“Aren’t you going to let him in?” asked the woman.
Pekkala peered into the room. “Major Lysenkova?”
“Good morning, Inspector.” She was sitting at the kitchen table, wrapped in a blanket.
Pekkala gave Kirov a withering stare.
Lysenkova got up from the table and walked toward them, bare feet padding on the floor. As she approached, Pekkala realized she wasn’t wearing anything beneath the blanket. “Major Kirov told me the good news,” she said.
“Good news?” asked Pekkala.
“That you’ve allowed me to keep working on the case,” she explained. “I’ve already gotten down to work.”
Pekkala mumbled something unintelligible.
“I found some more information on the White Guild,” said Lysenkova.
“You did? What did you find out?”
“That they’re gone.”
“Gone?” asked Pekkala.
“Finished. They were closed down a few weeks ago. All their agents got reassigned.”
“Do you think you might be able to find out where they are now?”
“I can try,” she said. “I’ll start on it as soon as I get back to NKVD headquarters.”
Ten minutes later, the Emka pulled up to the curb. Kirov sat behind the wheel. His hair was wet and neatly combed.
Pekkala climbed in and slammed the door. “Kremlin,” he said.
“But I thought we were going to talk to those scientists out at the facility—”
“There’s something I need to do first,” replied Pekkala.
Kirov pulled out into the road. “I made us some lunch,” he said, “in case we’re gone all day.”
Pekkala stared out the window. Sunlight flickered on his face.
“I take it you disapprove, Inspector,” said Kirov.
“Of what?”
“Of me. And Major Lysenkova.”
“As long as our investigation is not obstructed, Kirov, it’s not for me to say one thing or another. After all, my own adventures in that field would not stand up to any test of sanity.”
“But you do disapprove. I can tell.”
“The only advice I have for you is to do what you can live with. The further you go beyond that point, the harder it is to return.”
“And how far have you gone, Inspector?”
“If I ever get back,” Pekkala answered, “I will be sure to let you know.”
“I CAN’T TALK NOW, PEKKALA,” GROWLED STALIN, AS HE STOOD up from his desk. “I’m on my way to the daily briefing. The Germans have moved into Czechoslovakia, just as I told you they would. It has begun, and we still don’t have the T-34.”
“Comrade Stalin, what I need to ask you is also important.”
Stalin pressed his hand against a panel in the wall and the trapdoor clicked open. “Well, come on, then!”
“In there?” asked Pekkala.
“Yes! In here. Hurry up!”
He followed Stalin into the secret passageway, his stomach knotting as he ducked into the shadows.
Once they were both inside, Stalin pulled a metal lever in the wall and the door swung silently shut.
A line of weak electric bulbs lit the way, trailing into the darkness.
As soon as the trapdoor shut, Stalin set off through the tunnel.
Pekkala had to struggle to keep up, painfully stooped so as not to bang his head on the wooden beams which crossed the ceiling.
Doors appeared out of the gloom, each with its own opening-and-closing lever. The rooms to which they led were marked in yellow paint. It smelled dusty in the passageway. Now and then, he heard the murmur of voices on the other side of the wall.
By now, he was fighting against panic. The low ceiling seemed to be collapsing in on him. He had to remind himself to breathe. Each time they came to a door, he had to struggle against the urge to open it and escape from this rat tunnel.
They came to an intersection.
Pekkala looked down the other passageways, the pearl necklace of bulbs illuminating dingy tunnels leading deep into the heart of the Kremlin.
Stalin swung to his right and immediately began to climb a flight of stairs. He paused halfway up to catch his breath.
Pekkala almost ran into him.
“Well, Pekkala,” Stalin wheezed, “are you going to ask me this question of yours or are you just keeping me company?”
“The White Guild is finished,” said Pekkala.
“That does not sound like a question.”
“Is it true? Has the White Guild been shut down?”
Standing above him on the stairs, Stalin loomed over Pekkala. “The operation has been terminated.”
“And its agents have been reassigned?”
“Officially, yes.”
“Officially? What do you mean?”
This time Stalin did not reply. He turned and continued up the stairs. Reaching the top, he set out along another passageway. The floor was lined with dark green carpet, the center of which had been worn down to the ridging underneath.
“Where are those agents?” asked Pekkala.
“Dead,” replied Stalin.
“What? All of them?” The sound of water gurgling in pipes rushed past Pekkala’s ears.
“Last month, over the course of a single night, the six agents were tracked down to their lodgings in various parts of the city. It was a professional job. Each one was executed with a shot to the back of the head.”
“Do you have any suspects?”
Stalin shook his head. “In his final report, one of those agents stated that he had been approached by some people wishing to join the Guild. One week later, the agents turned up dead. The names these people used turned out to be fake.”
“Whoever these people were,” said Pekkala, “they must have discovered that Special Operations controlled
