The weapon was aimed at a pyramid of hundred-liter metal barrels. The diesel fuel these barrels once contained had been replaced with sand to absorb the impact of the bullets. Now gaping tears showed in the metal and sand poured in streams from the holes, forming cones upon the floor like time marked in an hourglass.
Gorenko held up a stopwatch. “Thirty-three seconds.”
“Better,” said Ushinsky.
“Still not good enough,” replied Gorenko. “Nagorski would have been breathing down our necks—”
“Gentlemen.” Pekkala’s voice resonated through the girders which supported the corrugated iron roof.
Surprised, both scientists wheeled around to see where the voice had come from.
“Inspector!” exclaimed Ushinsky. “Welcome back to the madhouse.”
“What are you working on here?” asked Kirov.
“We are testing the rate of fire of the T-34’s machine guns,” replied Gorenko. “It’s not right yet.”
“It’s close enough,” said Ushinsky.
“If the colonel was alive,” insisted Gorenko, “he’d never let you say a thing like that.”
Pekkala walked over to where the scientists were standing. He removed the paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and held it out towards the two men. “Can either of you tell me what this means?”
Both peered at the page.
“That’s the colonel’s writing,” said Ushinsky.
Gorenko nodded. “It’s a formula.”
“A formula for what?” asked Pekkala.
Ushinsky shook his head. “We’re not chemists, Inspector.”
“That kind of thing is not our specialty,” agreed Gorenko.
“Is there anyone here who could tell us?” asked Kirov.
The scientists shook their heads.
Pekkala sighed with annoyance, thinking that they had come all this way for nothing. “Let’s go,” he told Kirov.
As they turned to leave, the scientists began a whispered conversation.
Pekkala stopped. “What is it, gentlemen?”
“Well—” began Ushinsky.
“Keep your mouth shut,” ordered Gorenko. “Colonel Nagorski may be dead, but this is still his project and his rules should be obeyed!”
“It doesn’t matter now!” yelled Ushinsky. He kicked an empty bullet cartridge across the floor. It skipped over the concrete, spinning away among the sleeping hulks of half-assembled tanks. “None of it matters now! Can’t you see?”
“Nagorski said—”
“Nagorski is gone!” bellowed Ushinsky. “Everything we’ve done has been for nothing.”
“I thought the Konstantin Project was almost finished,” Pekkala said.
“
“One of these days,” Gorenko warned him, “you’re going to say something you’ll regret.”
Ignoring his colleague, Ushinsky turned to the investigators. “You’ll need to speak with a man named Lev Zalka.”
Gorenko looked at the ground and shook his head. “If the colonel heard you say that name …”
“Zalka was part of the original team,” continued Ushinsky. “He designed the V2 diesel. That’s what we use in the tanks. But he’s been gone for months. Nagorski fired him. They got into an argument.”
“An argument?” muttered Gorenko. “Is that what you call it? Nagorski attacked him with a wrench! The colonel would have killed Zalka if he hadn’t ducked. After that, Nagorski said that if anyone so much as mentioned Zalka’s name, they would be thrown off the project.”
“What was this fight about?” asked Pekkala.
Both scientists shrugged uneasily.
“Zalka had wanted to install bigger turret hatches, as well as hatches underneath the hull.”
“Why?” asked Kirov. “Wouldn’t that make the tank more vulnerable?”
“Yes, it would,” replied Gorenko.
“But bigger hatches,” interrupted Ushinsky, “would mean that the tank crew had a better chance of escaping if the engine caught fire or if the hull was breached.”
“Colonel Nagorski refused to consider it. For him, the machine came first.”
“And that’s why your test drivers have been calling it the Red Coffin,” said Pekkala.
Gorenko shot an angry glance towards Ushinsky. “I see that someone has been talking.”
“What does it matter now?” growled Ushinsky.
“Are you certain this is what Nagorski and Zalka were arguing about on that day?” asked Pekkala, anxious to avoid another argument between the two men.
“All I can tell you,” Gorenko replied, “is that Zalka left the facility that day. And he never came back.”
“Do you have any idea where we could find this man?” asked Kirov.
“He used to have an apartment on Prechistenka Street,” said Ushinsky, “but that was back when he worked here. He may have moved since then. If anybody knows what that formula means, it’s him.”
When Pekkala and Kirov left the building, Gorenko followed them out. “I’m sorry, Inspectors,” he said. “You’ll have to forgive my colleague. He loses his temper a lot. He says things he doesn’t mean.”
“It sounded like he meant them to me,” Kirov pointed out.
“It’s just that we had some bad news today.”
“What news is that?” asked Pekkala.
“Come. Let me show you.” He led them around to the back of the assembly building to where a T-34 had been parked at the edge of the trees. The machine had a large number 4 painted on the side of its turret. Pekkala’s eye was drawn to a long, narrow scrape, which had cut down to the bare metal. The silver stripe passed along the length of the turret, neatly bisecting the number. “They brought it back this morning.”
“Who did?” asked Pekkala.
“The army,” Gorenko replied. “They had it out on some secret field trial. We weren’t allowed to know anything about it. And now it’s ruined.”
“Ruined?” asked Kirov. “It looks the same as all the others.”
Gorenko climbed up onto the flat section at the back of the tank and opened up the engine grille. He reached his hand into the engine and when he drew it out, it was smeared with what looked like grease. “You know what this is?”
Pekkala shook his head.
“It’s fuel,” explained Gorenko. “Ordinary diesel fuel. At least that’s what it is supposed to be. But it has been contaminated.”
“With what?”
“Bleach. It has destroyed the inner workings of the engine. The whole thing will have to be refitted, the fuel system drained, all hoses and feeds replaced. It needs a complete rebuild. Number 4 was Ushinsky’s own special project. Each of us here had a favorite. We sort of adopted them. And Ushinsky is taking this hard.”
“Perhaps it was an accident,” suggested Kirov.
Gorenko shook his head. “Whoever did this knew exactly how to wreck an engine. Not just damage it, you understand.
“Is he right?” asked Pekkala. “Is the whole project ruined?”
“No!” replied Gorenko. “In a few months, as long as we can keep working on it, the T-34 should be ready. Even with Nagorski gone, the T-34 will still be an excellent machine, but there’s a difference between excellence and perfection. The trouble with Ushinsky is that he needs everything to be perfect. As far as he’s concerned, now that the colonel is gone, any hope of perfection is out of reach. And I’ll tell you what I’ve been telling Ushinsky since we first began this project: It would never have been perfect. There will always be something, like the rate of fire in those machine guns, which will just have to be good enough.”
