“What should we do?” asked Kirov.
“We won’t find them in the dark,” replied Pekkala. “Not out here. Until it gets light, we wait for them to come to us. But as soon as it is light enough to see, we will go looking for them.”
A short distance up the road from where the Emka had been parked, they set up the PTRD anti-tank rifle in the ditch and covered it with a pine branch as camouflage. In addition, each of them carried a bottle filled with the explosive mixture. The greasy liquid sloshed about in the glass containers. The only other weapons they possessed were handguns.
They spent the rest of the night huddled in the ditch, watching the road. In the plunging darkness, their eyes played tricks on them. Phantoms drifted among the trees. Voices whispered in the hissing of the wind, then suddenly were gone and had never been there at all.
In the eel-green glimmer of dawn, they saw something coming towards them.
At first it did not seem human. The creature loped like a wolf, keeping to the edge of the road.
Slowly, Pekkala reached up to the edge of the ditch and eased his fingers around his gun.
Kirov did the same.
Now they could see it was a man, and a moment later, they recognized the bald head of Maximov. He ran with a long, steady stride, hunched over, his arms hanging down at his sides.
Arriving at the Emka, Maximov stopped and peered cautiously into the trees. “Kirov!” he whispered. “Pekkala, are you in there?”
Pekkala climbed out of the ditch and stood in the road, keeping the gun in his hand. “What do you want, Maximov?” In spite of what his instincts told him about Maximov, Pekkala had made up his mind to shoot the man if he so much as made a sudden movement.
Maximov seemed confused that Pekkala was not by the car. But then he realized what the two inspectors must be thinking. “I heard him!” said Maximov urgently, as he made his way towards Pekkala. “I heard the sound of metal against metal. I followed. I had to move quickly.” He came to a stop. Only then did he notice Kirov in the ditch, and the PTRD laid out under its covering of pine. He stared at the two men in confusion. “Did you think I had abandoned you?”
“What else were we supposed to think?” snapped Kirov.
“After what that man did to Konstantin,” Maximov answered, “did you honestly believe I would go back to helping him?”
“You say you followed him?” Pekkala asked, before Kirov could respond.
Maximov nodded. He pointed down the road. “He’s only about fifteen minutes away. There’s a clearing just off the road. The tank is already off the truck. It looks like he’s getting ready to head out as soon as it is light enough to see.”
“Was he alone?” asked Pekkala. “Did you see the man he took hostage?”
“The only person I saw was Kropotkin. We must go now if we’re going to catch him. It will be much harder to stop that tank once he’s on the move.”
Without another word, Kirov gathered up the PTRD. As he climbed out of the ditch, he handed his Tokarev to Maximov. “You’d better have this,” he said, “in case you can’t talk him out of it.” Then he glanced into the sky and exclaimed softly, “Look!”
Maximov and Pekkala turned. A plume of thick smoke rose above the trees in the distance.
“What is that?” asked Kirov. “Is that the exhaust from the tank?”
“It looks more like he’s trying to burn the forest down,” said Maximov.
At the car, each man took a bottle of the explosive mixture and as much extra ammunition as he could carry. Then they set off running, Maximov in the lead, wolf-striding ahead of the two inspectors.
As they ran, the smoke spread across the sky.
Soon they could smell it, and then they knew it wasn’t wood smoke. The thick haze reeked of burning oil.
They moved as quickly as they could through the maze of trees, over spongy earth where mud sucked at their boot heels and strange insect-eating plants, their smell like rotting meat, reared their open mouths.
Kirov followed close behind Pekkala, cursing softly as he scraped his shins against the limbs of fallen trees. Spindly branches whipped their faces and snatched at the guns in their hands.
By the time Maximov held up his hand for them to stop, Pekkala was drenched in sweat. He still had on his coat and the bottle in his hands had made running even more difficult.
Burdened by the bulky PTRD, Kirov was also exhausted.
Only Maximov seemed to show no sign of exertion. It was as if the big man could have kept on running without pause until the waves of the Atlantic washed about his feet.
They stepped into the trees to take cover. It was quickly growing lighter now.
Ahead, Pekkala could make out the blazing skeleton of the truck.
“What’s he doing, giving away his position like that?” whispered Kirov. “The smoke must be visible halfway across Poland.”
They crawled forward until through the shifting flames they could make out the shape of the tank. In front of it, they saw Kropotkin. He was pouring fuel from a battered gasoline container into the tank. Then, with a roar of anger, he flung the container across the clearing.
“That’s why he didn’t stop at the depots,” whispered Maximov. “He’s been draining fuel out of the T-34. Now he probably doesn’t have enough to drive the tank all the way into Poland.”
“So he set fire to the truck,” said Pekkala. “The woman I talked to in the village said that Polish cavalry run patrols through these woods all the time. He lit the fire so the Poles will come to him.”
Kropotkin disappeared around the other side of the tank. When he reappeared, an old man was with him. He was a short, bald man with narrow shoulders, wearing a collarless blue work shirt and heavy corduroy trousers. Pekkala knew it must be Zoya Maklarskaya’s father. Kropotkin had tied Maklarsky’s hands behind his back. Now he hauled the old man to the center of the clearing.
“You swore there would be gasoline here!” Kropotkin raged at his captive.
“There was!” The old man pointed at the empty fuel can. “I told you, they always leave some here for an emergency.”
“One fuel can is not enough!”
“It is if you’re driving a tractor,” protested Maklarsky. “You didn’t tell me how much you needed. You just asked if there was fuel.”
“Well, I guess it doesn’t matter now,” said Kropotkin, taking a knife from his pocket.
“What are you going to do with that?” Maklarsky’s eyes were fixed on the blade.
“I’m letting you go, old man,” replied Kropotkin, “just like I promised.” He cut through the ropes and they fell like dead snakes to the ground. “Go on,” said Kropotkin, and gave him a shove.
But Maklarsky didn’t run. Instead, he turned and looked back at Kropotkin, motionless.
“Go on!” bellowed Kropotkin, folding the knife shut with a click and returning it to his pocket. “I don’t need you anymore.”
Slowly, Maklarsky began to walk out of the clearing, following the path which led to the main road.
Then the three men watched helplessly as Kropotkin drew a gun from his coat. The dry snap of a pistol echoed through the trees.
Maklarsky staggered forward. He did not seem to realize what had happened. Crookedly, he walked on a few more paces.
Kropotkin strode across the clearing. With the barrel of the gun touching the back of Maklarsky’s head, he pulled the trigger. This time, the old man dropped, so suddenly it looked as if the ground had swallowed him up.
Kropotkin returned to the tank. He climbed up onto the turret, whose hatch was already open, and dropped down inside the machine.
Pekkala realized that Kropotkin was preparing to move out, whether he had enough fuel or not. He nodded at Kirov.
Kirov unlocked the tripod from the barrel of the anti-tank rifle. He set it up and lay down behind the gun.
“Do you have a clear shot?” Pekkala asked.
“No,” replied Kirov, after he had squinted through the sights. “Too many trees in the way.”
