the White Guild. They found out who the Special Operations agents were and killed them.”
“Correct.”
“What I don’t understand, Comrade Stalin, is why you think the Guild might be involved in the Nagorski killing, when you have just told me you closed it down before he died.”
“I did close down the Guild,” said Stalin, “but I am afraid it has come back to life. The Guild was once a trap for luring enemy agents in, but these people, whoever they are, have now turned it against us. I think you’ll find they are the ones who killed Nagorski.”
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this, Comrade Stalin?”
Stalin threw a lever, which lay flush against the wall. The door swung open.
Beyond lay a room with a huge map of the Soviet Union on the wall. The heavy red velvet curtains had been drawn. Pekkala had never seen this place before. Men in a variety of military uniforms sat around a table. At the head of the table was one empty seat. There had been a murmur of talk in the room, but as soon as the door opened, it fell silent. Now all of the men were watching the space from which Stalin was about to emerge.
Before entering the room, however, Stalin turned to Pekkala. “I did not tell you,” he said quietly, “because I hoped I might be wrong. That does not seem to be the case, and it’s why I am telling you now.” Then he stepped into the room. A moment later, the door closed softly behind him.
Pekkala found himself alone in the passageway, with no idea where he was.
He retraced his steps to the stairs, then went down to the intersection. Before he reached it, all the lights went out. He realized they must have been on a timer, but where the switch was for that timer, Pekkala had no idea. At first, it was so dark inside the corridor that he felt as if he might as well have been struck blind. But slowly, as his eyes grew used to the blackness, he realized he could make out thin gray bands of light seeping under the bottoms of the trapdoors spaced out along the passageway.
He could not read the yellow writing on the doors, so, sliding along with his back to the wall, he picked the first door he came to. Groping, he found the lever and pulled.
The trapdoor clicked open.
Pekkala heard the sound of heels upon a marble floor and knew instantly that he had emerged onto one of the main corridors of the Palace of Congresses, which adjoined the Kremlin Palace where Stalin’s office was located. He stepped through the opening and almost collided with a woman wearing the mouse-gray skirt and black tunic of a Kremlin secretary. She was carrying a bundle of papers, but when she saw Pekkala appear like a ghost out of the wall, she screamed and the papers went straight up into the air.
“Well, I should be going,” said Pekkala, as the documents fluttered down around them. He smiled and nodded good-bye, then walked quickly away down the corridor.
“YOU FORGOT YOUR GUN AGAIN, DIDN’T YOU?” ASKED PEKKALA, as they drove towards the Nagorski facility.
“No, I didn’t forget,” replied Kirov. “I left it behind on purpose. We’re only going to talk to those scientists. They won’t give us any trouble.”
“You should always bring your gun with you!” shouted Pekkala. “Pull over here!”
Obediently, Kirov brought the car to a halt. Then he turned in his seat to face Pekkala. “What’s up, Inspector?”
“Where is that lunch you made us?”
“In the trunk. Why?”
“Follow me,” said Pekkala, as he got out of the car. From the trunk, Pekkala removed the canvas satchel containing two sandwiches and some apples. Then he stalked into the field beside the road, pausing to snap off a dead branch, about the size of a walking stick, from a tree beside the road.
“Where are you going with our food?”
“Stay there,” Pekkala called back. After he had gone a short way into the field, he stopped. He jammed the branch into the ground, then removed an apple from the lunch bag and skewered it onto the end of the branch.
“We were going to eat that!” shouted Kirov.
Pekkala ignored him. He returned to where Kirov was standing, drew his Webley from its holster and handed it, butt first, to Kirov. Then he turned and pointed towards the apple. “What we will be doing—” he began, then flinched as the gun went off in Kirov’s hand. “For goodness sake, Kirov! Be careful! Take time to aim properly. There are many steps involved. Breathing. Stance. The way you grip the gun. It’s going to take some time.”
“Yes, Inspector,” replied Kirov meekly.
“Now,” said Pekkala, returning his attention to the apple. “What? Where’s it gone? Oh, damn! It’s fallen off.” He strode back towards the stake, but had gone only a few paces when he noticed shreds of apple peel scattered across the ground. The apple appeared to have exploded, and it was a few more seconds before Pekkala finally got it into his head that Kirov had hit the apple with his first shot. He spun around and stared at Kirov.
“Sorry,” said Kirov. “Did you have something else in mind?”
“Well,” growled Pekkala, “that was a good start. But you mustn’t get your hopes up. What we want is to be able to hit the target not just once, but every time. Or almost every time.” He fished another apple from the bag and stuck it on the end of the stick.
“What do you expect us to eat?” asked Kirov.
“Now don’t go blasting away until I get back there,” ordered Pekkala as he strode towards Kirov. “It is important to make a firm platform with your feet, and to grip the gun tightly but not too tightly. The Webley is a well-balanced weapon, but it’s got a hard kick, much greater than the Tokarev.”
Casually, Kirov raised the Webley and fired.
“Damn it, Kirov!” raged Pekkala. “You’ve got to wait until you’re ready!”
“I was ready,” replied Kirov serenely.
Pekkala squinted at the stake. All that remained of the second apple was a cloud of white juice, diffusing in the air. Pekkala’s mouth twitched. “Stay there!” he said and went back into the field. This time he pulled the branch up, walked several paces farther back and stuck it into the ground. Then he took a sandwich wrapped in brown wax paper from the bag and jammed it onto the stick.
“I’m not shooting my sandwich!” shouted Kirov.
Pekkala wheeled. “You won’t? Or you
“If I hit that,” said Kirov, “will you stop bothering me?”
“I certainly will,” agreed Pekkala.
“And you will admit that I’m a good shot?”
“Don’t push your luck, Comrade Kirov.”
Three minutes later, the Emka was back on the road.
Pekkala slumped in the back, arms folded across his chest, feeling the warmth of the gun’s cylinder radiating through his leather holster.
“You know,” said Kirov cheerfully, “I have a certificate of merit from the Komsomol for target practice. It’s hanging on my wall at home.”
“I must have missed that one,” mumbled Pekkala.
“It’s in the living room,” said Kirov, “right next to my music award.”
“You got an award for music?”
“For my rendition of ‘Farewell, Slavianka,’ ” replied Kirov. He breathed in, stuck out his chest, and began to sing, glancing in the mirror at his audience.
One raised eyebrow from Pekkala shut him up.
MACHINE-GUN FIRE ECHOED AROUND THE BUILDINGS OF THE Nagorski facility.
In the confined space of the Iron House, the percussion of each shell tangled into a continuous, deafening snarl. To Pekkala, at the entrance, it was as if the air itself were being torn apart. Beside him stood Kirov. The two men waited while the metal snake of bullets uncoiled from its green ammunition box, spitting a shower of flickering brass from the ejection port of the machine gun. Just when it seemed as if the sound would never end, the belt ran out and the gunfire ceased abruptly. Spent cartridges rang musically as they tumbled to the concrete floor.
Gorenko and Ushinsky set the gun aside, climbed to their feet, and removed the cup-shaped noise protectors from their ears. A hazy wreath of gun smoke hung about their heads.
