Yeliseyev store set out its annual display of tulips arranged in the shape of a hammer and sickle. But here, it was all around him, like a gently spinning whirlwind, painting the black sides of the Emka with luminous yellow-green dust.
They were fortunate to have missed the time known as the Rasputitsa, when snow melted and roads became rivers of mud. But there were still places where their route disappeared into lakes, reappearing on the far bank and stubbornly unraveling across the countryside. Out in the middle of these ponds, tilting signposts seemed to point the way into a universe below the water’s edge.
The detours cost them hours, following paths which did not exist on their maps, and even those which did exist sometimes ended inexplicably while according to the map they carried on like arteries inside a human body.
On their way, they flew through villages whose white-picket-fenced gardens flickered past them as if in the projection of a film.
They stopped for fuel at government depots, where the oil-soaked ground was tinted with rainbows. Half hidden behind heaps of rubber tires left to rot beside the depot, the milky purple blossoms of hyacinth cascaded from the hedges. The scent of them mingled with the reek of spilled diesel.
Depots on the Moscow Highway were a hundred kilometers apart. The only way fuel could be obtained from them was with government-issued coupons. To prevent these coupons from being sold on the black market, each one was made out to the individual to whom they were issued. At each depot, Kirov and Pekkala checked to see whether Kropotkin had cashed in any of his coupons. They turned up nothing.
“What about depots off the highway?” Pekkala asked one depot manager, a man with a fuzz of stubble on his cheeks like a coating of mold on stale bread.
“There are none,” replied the manager, removing his false teeth and polishing them on his handkerchief before replacing them in his mouth. “The only way to get fuel is from these depots or through the local commissariats, who issue it for use in farm machinery. If the driver of a heavy truck tried to requisition fuel from a commissariat, he would be turned down.”
Kirov held up the bundle of fuel coupons which the manager had given him to inspect. “Could any of these have come from the black market?”
The manager shook his head. “Either you have a pass book allowing you to requisition fuel for government use, as you do, or you have coupons, like everyone else. If you have coupons, each one has to be matched up with the identity card and driver’s license of the person requisitioning the fuel. I’ve been doing this job for fifteen years, and believe me, I know the difference between what’s real and what is fake.”
While the manager filled up their car, Pekkala opened the Emka’s trunk and stared at the shortwave radio provided by Gorenko. It was the same type to be used in T-34’s, enabling them to communicate with artillery and air support groups out of normal radio range at the front. If the mission was successful, they could use it to transmit a message to an emergency channel monitored by the Kremlin before the forty-eight-hour deadline was up. Otherwise, as Stalin had promised, thousands of motorized troops would be dispatched to the Polish border.
Beside this radio lay the ungainly shape of the PTRD. The more Pekkala stared at it, the less it looked to him like a weapon and more like a crutch for some lame giant. He kept the titanium bullet in the pocket of his waistcoat, fastened shut with a black safety pin.
“Leave it,” said Kirov, closing the lid of the trunk. “It will be there when we need it.”
“But will it be enough?” asked Pekkala. The thought that they might already be too late to prevent Kropotkin from driving the tank into Poland echoed through Pekkala’s mind.
At some time in their eighteenth hour on the road, Kirov fell asleep at the wheel. The Emka slid off the highway and ended up in a field planted with sunflowers. Fortunately, there was no ditch, or the Emka would have been wrecked.
By the time the car had stopped moving, its side and windshield were coated with a spray of mud and the tiny pale green tongues of baby sunflower leaves. Without a word, Kirov got out of the car, went around to the back door and opened it. “Get out,” he said to Maximov.
Maximov did as he was told.
Kirov unlocked the cuffs. Then he held out his hand towards the empty driver’s seat.
With Maximov at the wheel and the two investigators pushing with their shoulders against the rear cowlings, they eased the Emka out of the mud and back onto the road.
High above them, vultures circled lazily on rising waves of heat. All around was the smell of this landlocked world, its dryness and its dustiness sifting through their blood, as spiced as nutmeg powder.
From then on, they drove in shifts of two hours each. By the time they arrived at the Rusalka, all three of them had reached the point of exhaustion where they could not have slept even if they’d wanted to.
On the map the forest resembled a jagged shard of green glass, hemmed in by white expanses indicating cultivated fields. It straddled the Soviet and Polish border, marked only by a wavy dotted line.
The Rusalka lay approximately two hundred kilometers due east of Warsaw. Only a handful of villages existed on the Russian end of the forest, but there were, according to Pekkala’s map, several on the Polish side.
Pekkala had studied it so many times that by now the shape of it was branded on his mind. It was as if by knowing its outline he might be better prepared for whatever lay inside its boundaries.
It was late in the afternoon when they reached a tiny village called Zorovka, the last Russian settlement before the road disappeared into the forest. Zorovka consisted of half a dozen thatched-roof houses built closely together on either side of the road running into the Rusalka. Indignant-looking chickens wandered across the road, so unused to traffic that they barely seemed to notice the Emka until its wheels were almost on top of them.
The village seemed deserted except for a woman who was tilling the earth in her garden. When the Emka rolled into sight the woman did not even raise her head, but continued to chip away with a hoe at the muddy clumps of dirt.
The fact that she did not look up made Pekkala realize that she must have been expecting them. “Stop the car,” he ordered.
Kirov hit the brakes.
Pekkala got out and walked over to the woman.
As he crossed the road towards her, the woman continued to ignore him.
Beneath the marks of wagon wheels and horses’ hooves, Pekkala saw the tracks of heavy tires. Now he knew they were on the right path. “When did the truck pass through here?” he asked the woman, standing on the other side of her garden fence.
She stopped chipping at the earth. She raised her head. “Who are you?” she asked.
“I am Inspector Pekkala, from the Bureau of Special Operations in Moscow.”
“Well, I don’t know anything about a truck,” she said in a voice so loud that Pekkala wondered if she might be hard of hearing.
“I can see the tire tracks in the road,” said Pekkala.
The woman came to the edge of her fence and looked out into the road. “Yes,” she said, her voice almost a shout, “I see them, too, but I still don’t know anything about it.” Then she glanced at him, and Pekkala knew from the look on her face that she was lying. And more than this—she wanted him to know she was lying.
A jolt passed through Pekkala’s chest. He looked down at the ground, as if distracted by something. “Is he here?” he whispered.
“He was.”
“How long ago?”
“Yesterday. Sometime in the afternoon.”
“Was he alone?”
“I did not see anyone else.”
“If he is gone,” asked Pekkala, “why are you still afraid?”
“The others in this town are hiding in their houses, watching us and listening at their doors. If anything happens, they will blame me for talking to you, but I will blame myself if I say nothing.”
“If anything happens?” asked Pekkala.
The woman stared at him for a moment. “This man who drove the truck, he took somebody with him. Someone from this village. His name is Maklarsky—a forester here in the Rusalka.”
“Why would he kidnap somebody?” asked Pekkala.
