Konstantin pulled a canvas wallet out of his pocket. From a jumble of crumpled bills and coins, he removed the folded letter. “I must have read it a hundred times by now. I keep waiting for the words to tell me something different.”
Pekkala looked at the letter. He couldn’t read it very well in the dark, but from what he could see, it was exactly as Konstantin described. “May I keep this for a while?” he asked.
“I don’t need it anymore,” the boy whispered. He seemed close to tears. Everything seemed to be catching up with him at once.
“Did you tell your parents what was in the letter?” asked Pekkala, folding the page and placing it inside his ID book for safekeeping.
“What would be the point of that?” asked Konstantin. “I was always afraid they would break up. When I read the letter, a part of me already knew. And I knew Maximov would never lie. He looked after me. More than my own parents.”
“So what did you do?”
“I met up with my father, just as we had planned. He brought me to the proving ground and let me drive the tank, through the puddles, over the bumps, sliding around in the mud. My father was enjoying himself. It was one of the few times I had ever seen him laughing. I should have been enjoying myself, too, but all I could think about was Maximov’s letter. The more I thought about it, the more angry I became with my father, that he had chosen this damned machine over our family. I couldn’t stand the thought of him hurting me and my mother any more than he’d already done. We stopped the tank out in the middle of the proving ground, in the middle of a muddy pit. We sank down into it. I thought the water would pour in at any moment. I was afraid we were going to drown inside that tank. But my father wasn’t even worried. He said this machine could drive through anything. We couldn’t hear each other properly. It was too noisy in the driving compartment. So we kept the engine running, put the gears in neutral, and climbed out on top of the turret.”
“And what happened then?” asked Pekkala.
“He turned to me, and suddenly he wasn’t laughing anymore. ‘Whatever happens,’ he said, ‘I want you to know that I love your mother very much.’ He started to climb back inside. That was when the gun fell out of his pocket. It landed on the back of the tank, just above the engine compartment. Because I was closest to it, my father asked me to fetch the pistol, so I did. Until I picked up the gun, I hadn’t thought about hurting him, I swear it. But then I started thinking about what he had just said—about loving my mother. I couldn’t bear to let him tell me such a lie and get away with it. He was standing on the turret with his back to me, looking out over that muddy field as if it was the most beautiful place on earth.”
“And that was when you shot him?”
The boy didn’t answer his question. “I had been so furious with him only a second before, but when I saw him fall into the water, all of that anger suddenly evaporated. I couldn’t believe what I’d done. I don’t know how to say this, Inspector, but even with the gun in my hand, I wasn’t even sure I had done it. It was as if someone else had pulled the trigger. I don’t know how long I stood there. It felt like a long time, but it may only have been a few seconds. Then I climbed back inside the tank, put it in gear and tried to drive it out of the pit.”
“Why?”
“I panicked. I thought maybe I could make it look like an accident. No one else knew I was with my father that day. Even my mother didn’t know. But I didn’t really understand how to work the engine. When I was halfway out of the pit, the motor stalled and the machine slid back into the water. Then I got out and ran to the supply building. I hid there for a long time. I was covered in mud. I was too scared to move. But then, when the soldiers arrived, I knew I had to get away, so I bolted into the woods. That was when you came after me, and when Captain Samarin was killed.”
“But how did you know the safe path through those woods? Weren’t you afraid of the traps?”
“My father hammered little metal disks into the trees. There is a color scheme. Red, blue, yellow. As long as you keep following that sequence of colors, you are on a safe path through the woods. He never told that to anyone else except me.”
Already, in his mind, Pekkala had begun to run through exactly what would happen to Konstantin now. The boy was old enough to be tried as an adult. Whatever the extenuating circumstances, he would almost certainly be executed for his crime. Pekkala thought back to his first conversation with Konstantin, when the boy had pleaded with him to track down his father’s killers. “Find them,” Konstantin had said. “Find them and put them to death.” Hidden in those words, spoken to the man whom Konstantin must have known would one day track him down, was an acceptance of the penalty he realized he’d have to pay.
“Please believe me, Inspector,” pleaded Konstantin. “I was not trying to harm you. I saw Maximov’s car coming down the road and I thought it must be him. I don’t even understand why you are here.”
“Your mother called me. She was worried about you, after Maximov’s visit this evening. His car was the only one available. What I don’t understand, Konstantin, is that if you trusted Maximov, why were you trying to kill him just now?”
“Because, after everything that’s happened, I don’t know who to trust anymore. When he showed up this evening, he had gone wild. We yelled at him to go away and I believed that was the end of it, but when I saw his car coming back, I thought he was going to kill us.”
“For what it’s worth,” said Pekkala, “I don’t think Maximov would ever try to hurt you, and I really do believe that, in his own way, he loves your mother.” His cuts and bruises were beginning to throb. “Why did you run into the forest after he left?”
Konstantin shrugged with a gesture of helplessness. “Maximov said my mother had been having an affair. I was afraid he might be telling the truth and I could not bear to hear my mother say the words.”
“He was telling the truth. I know he shouldn’t have written that letter or said anything about your mother’s affair, but people do strange things when they are in love. Believe me, Konstantin—very strange things.”
Konstantin’s voice cracked. “So it wasn’t my father’s fault that he and my mother were splitting up.”
“I’m sure if your father were here,” said Pekkala, “he would tell you they were both to blame.” He rested his hand on Konstantin’s shoulder. “I need you to come with me now.” One glance at Maximov’s car told Pekkala that it wasn’t going anywhere. “We’ll have to travel on foot.”
“Whatever you say, Inspector.” His voice sounded almost relieved.
Pekkala had seen this kind of thing before. For some people, the burden of waiting to be caught was far worse than whatever might happen to them afterwards. He had known men to walk briskly to their deaths, bounding up the gallows steps, impatient to be gone from this earth.
