PEKKALA AND KONSTANTIN MADE THEIR WAY ALONG THE DARK ROAD, headed towards the facility.
As they walked, Pekkala tried to fathom what must have been going on in Konstantin’s mind in that moment when he picked up the gun to shoot his father. There were some crimes Pekkala understood. Even the motives for murder made sense to him sometimes. Unchecked fear or greed or jealousy could push anyone to the brink of their own sanity. What happened beyond that point even the murderers themselves could not predict.
Pekkala remembered the last time he had seen his own father—that day on the train as it pulled out of the station. But now the image seemed strangely reversed. He stood not on the train but on the platform, seeing through the eyes of his father. Almost out of sight, he glimpsed the young man he had been, arm raised in farewell as he leaned from the window of the carriage, bound for Petrograd and the ranks of the Tsar’s Finnish Regiment.
Then the train was gone and he found himself alone. Sadness wrapped around his heart as he turned and walked out of the station. In that moment, Pekkala grasped something he had never understood before—that his father must have known they would not meet again. And if, in the end, the old man had not forgiven him for leaving, it was only because there had been nothing to forgive.
As the image stuttered into emptiness, like a reel of film clattering off its spool, Pekkala’s thoughts returned to the present. And he wondered if Nagorski might also have forgiven his son, if he could have found the breath to do so.
By the time they arrived at the facility, the sky was already beginning to lighten.
Pekkala rapped on the door of the Iron House and stood back.
Konstantin waited beside him, resigned to whatever happened next.
The door opened. A waft of stuffy air blew past them, smelling of old tobacco and gun oil. Gorenko filled up the doorway. He had pulled on his dingy lab coat and was fastening its black metal buttons, like a man welcoming guests to his home. “Inspector,” he said. “I thought you had gone back to Moscow for the night.” Then he caught sight of Konstantin and smiled. “Hello, young man! What brings you here so early in the morning?”
“Hello, Professor.” Konstantin could not return the smile. Instead, his whole face just seemed to crumple.
“I need you to watch him,” Pekkala told Gorenko. “I regret he will need to be handcuffed.”
“Handcuffs?” Gorenko’s eyes grew wide with astonishment. “He’s the colonel’s son. I can’t do that!”
“This is not a request,” said Pekkala.
“Inspector,” said Konstantin, “I give you my word I will not try to run away.”
“I know,” Pekkala answered quietly. “Believe me, I do, Konstantin, but from now on, there are procedures we must follow.”
“I don’t have any handcuffs!” protested Gorenko.
Pekkala reached into his pocket and brought out a set. A key was clipped onto the chain. He handed them to Gorenko. “Now you do.”
Gorenko stared at the cuffs. “But for how long?”
“A couple of hours, I expect. My car ran out of fuel back on the road. I have to get out there with some gasoline and then return to the facility. Then I will pick up Konstantin and we will travel back to Moscow. Until I tell you so myself, no one is to see him or to speak with him. Do you understand?”
Gorenko stared at Konstantin. “My dear boy,” he pleaded, “what have you gone and done?” The old professor seemed so confused that it looked as if Konstantin might have to lock the handcuffs on himself.
“Where do you store your fuel, Professor?” asked Pekkala.
“There are five-liter cans on a pallet on the other side of this building. Two of those would be more than enough to get you back to Moscow.”
Pekkala put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he said, as he turned to leave.
“Inspector,” Gorenko called after him, “I must speak with you. It is a matter of great importance.”
“We can talk about Ushinsky later,” said Pekkala.
“It’s not about him,” insisted Gorenko. “Something has happened. Something I don’t understand.”
Pekkala stared at him for a moment, then shook his head, walked into the building and handcuffed Konstantin to a table. Only then did he turn to Gorenko. “Follow me,” he said.
Around the side of the building, Pekkala picked up two fuel cans from the pallet. “What is it, Professor?” The cans were heavy and the liquid sloshed about in them. He hoped he would have the strength to carry them all the way back to the Emka.
“It’s about the tank.” Gorenko lowered his voice. “The one they sent to the factory in Stalingrad.”
“The prototype? What about it?”
“The tank has not arrived. I called to check. You know, in case there were questions.”
“It’s a long way to Stalingrad from here. Perhaps the truck broke down.”
“No, Inspector. I’m afraid that’s not it. You see, when I called them, they told me they had never put in a request for the tank.”
Slowly, Pekkala lowered the fuel cans to the ground. “But they must have. You saw the requisition form, didn’t you?”
“Yes. I have it here.” Gorenko rummaged in the pocket of his lab coat and produced a crumpled yellow paper. “This is my copy. I was going to frame it.”
Holding up the page so that he could read it in the lights which illuminated the compound, Pekkala searched the form for anything out of the ordinary. It was a standard government requisition form, correctly filled out by someone at the Stalingrad Tractor Factory, which he knew had been converted to tank production. The factory designation code looked right—KhPZ 183/STZ. The signature was so hastily scrawled as to be illegible, as most of them were on these forms. There was nothing unusual at all.
“I received a call the day before the truck arrived,” continued Gorenko, “from someone at the Stalingrad works, informing me about the requisition and telling me to prepare the tank for transport.”
“Did you mention that to the people in Stalingrad?”
“Yes.”
“And what did they say?”
“That they never telephoned me, Inspector.”
“This is probably just a miscommunication. Mistakes like this happen all the time. Was there anything
