“At first the driver said he just wanted some fuel for his truck. But the thing is, we are only allowed so much every month from the local commissariat. We only have one tractor in this village and what they give us isn’t even enough to keep it running. The amount of fuel he wanted was more than we draw in a month. So we told him no. Then he asked for someone to show him the way to the border. The Rusalka is patrolled by Polish cavalry. Our own soldiers come through here sometimes, once a month or so, but the Poles ride through that forest almost every day. The woods are full of trails. It’s easy to get lost. We told him he should go back out to the Moscow Highway and cross the border into Poland from there. That was when the driver pulled a gun.”
“What did he look like?” asked Pekkala.
“Broad shoulders, a big square face, and a mustache. He had blond hair turning gray.”
“His name is Kropotkin,” said Pekkala, “and he is very dangerous. It is very important that I stop this man before he crosses into Poland.”
“He may have done that already,” said the woman.
“If he had,” said Pekkala, “we would know about it.”
“This man said that people would come looking for him. He said we should keep a lookout for a man with a black coat, who wore a badge shaped like an eye on his lapel.”
Pekkala turned up the collar of his coat. “He meant this.”
“Yes,” said the woman, staring at the Emerald Eye. “He told us if we kept quiet, he would let his hostage go. But I didn’t believe him. That is why I’m talking to you now. The others are too scared to speak with you. My name is Zoya Maklarskaya and that man I told you about is my father. The decision is mine whether talking to you now will do more harm than good.”
“We will do what we can to bring your father back,” said Pekkala.
The woman nodded at the churned-up road. “Those tracks will lead you to him, and you had better leave now if you want to find him before nightfall. Once the dark has settled on that forest, even the wolves get lost in there.”
As Pekkala turned, he saw a face in the window of a house, sliding back into the shadows like a drowned man sinking to the bottom of a lake.
IN FADING LIGHT, THEY FOLLOWED KROPOTKIN’S TRACKS INTO THE forest. The ranks of trees closed around them. Sunset leaned in crooked pillars through the branches, lighting clearings where blankets of grass gleamed as luminously as the emerald in Pekkala’s gold-framed eye.
The road itself appeared to mark the border.
On one side, they passed wooden signs written in Polish, indicating that they were traveling right along the edge of the two countries. On the other side, nailed to trees, were metal plaques showing the hammer-and-sickle emblem of the Soviet Union. From beneath the signs, where the nails had pierced the bark, white trickles of sap bled down to the ground.
From his hours of staring at the map, the Rusalka compressed in Pekkala’s mind until he had convinced himself that such a monster of a tank could never hide for long.
But now that they were in it, bumping along over washboard roads, eyes straining to follow the snakeskin trail of Kropotkin’s tire tracks, Pekkala realized that a hundred of those tanks could vanish in here without a trace.
Pekkala was overwhelmed by the vastness of these woods. His memories of the great cities Leningrad, Moscow, and Kiev all began to feel like a dream. It was as if the only thing that existed on this earth, that had ever existed, was the forest of Rusalka.
When the sunlight had finally gone, the darkness did not seem to settle from above as it did in the city. Instead, it rose up from the ground, like a black liquid flooding the earth.
They could no longer see the truck’s wheel marks, and it was too dangerous to use the Emka’s headlights when Kropotkin might be waiting for them around every bend in the road.
They steered the Emka off the road, cut the engine, and climbed stiff-legged from the car. The dew had settled. Wind blew through the tops of the trees.
“We’ll start looking again as soon as it is light,” said Pekkala. “As long as it’s dark, Kropotkin can’t risk moving either.”
“Can we make a fire?” asked Kirov.
“No,” replied Pekkala. “Even if he couldn’t see the flames, the smell of smoke would lead him right to us. We will all take turns standing guard. I’ll take the first watch.”
While Pekkala stood guard, Maximov and Kirov lay down in the cramped space of the car, Maximov in the front seat and Kirov in the back.
Pekkala sat on the hood of the Emka, feeling the warmth of the engine, which sighed and clicked as it cooled, like the ticking of an irregular clock.
After years spent in the constant rolling thunder of underground trains snaking their way beneath the sidewalks of Moscow, the clunk of water pipes in his apartment, and the distant clattering of trains pulling into the Belorussian station, the stillness of this forest unnerved Pekkala. Old memories of his time in Siberia came back to haunt him as he stared helplessly into the dark, knowing that Kropotkin could come within a few paces before he’d be able to see him.
Beads of moisture gathered on his clothes, transforming the dull black of his coat into a cape of pearls which shimmered even in this darkness.
After a while, the back door of the Emka opened and Kirov climbed out. The windows of the car had turned opaque with condensation.
“Has it been three hours already?” asked Pekkala.
“No,” replied Kirov. “I couldn’t sleep.” He came and stood beside Pekkala, hugging his ribs against the cold. “How much time do we have left?”
Pekkala checked his pocket watch. “Fourteen hours. By the time the sun comes up, we’ll have only a couple left.”
“Would it really be enough to start a war?” asked Kirov. “One tank, driven by a lunatic? Even if he does manage to kill a few innocent people, surely the world would come to its senses in time—”
Pekkala cut him off. “The last war was started by a lunatic named Gavrilo Princip. The only thing he used was a pistol, and all he had to do was kill one man, the Archduke Ferdinand.”
“An archduke sounds pretty high up.”
“He may have had an important title, but was Ferdinand important enough to bring about the deaths of over ten million people? The war began, Kirov, because one side wanted it to begin. All that side needed was a big enough lie to convince its own people that their way of life was threatened. The same is true today, and so the answer is yes: One lunatic is more than enough.”
THE CAR DOOR OPENED.
Pekkala felt a rush of cold brush across his face, sweeping away the stale air inside the Emka. He had been asleep, legs twisted down into the seat well and head resting on the passenger seat. The Emka’s gearshift jabbed into his ribs. His neck felt like the bellows of a broken accordion.
Someone was shaking his foot.
It seemed to Pekkala as if he had only just closed his eyes. He couldn’t believe it was time to go back out on watch again.
“Get up, Inspector,” whispered Kirov. “Maximov is gone.”
Kirov’s words jolted him awake. He scrambled out of the car. “What do you mean he’s gone?”
“I finished my watch,” explained Kirov. “Then I woke up Maximov and told him it was his turn to go on. I got up a few minutes ago to take a piss. That’s when I noticed he was gone.”
“Perhaps he’s nearby.”
“Inspector, I searched for him and found nothing. He’s gone.”
Both men stared out into the dark.
“He’s gone to warn Kropotkin,” muttered Kirov.
At first Pekkala was too shocked to reply, stubbornly refusing to believe that Maximov had deserted them.
