“YOU ASK FOR PROOF THAT THE T-34 HAS BEEN COMPROMISED?” asked Stalin. “All right, Pekkala. I will give you proof. Two days ago, a German agent tried to purchase design specifications of the entire Konstantin Project.”
“Purchase them?” asked Pekkala. “From whom?”
“The White Guild,” replied Stalin.
“The Guild!” Pekkala had not heard that name in a long time.
Some years before, Stalin had ordered the formation of a secret organization, to be known as the White Guild, made up of former soldiers who had remained loyal to the Tsar long after his death and were committed to overthrowing the Communists. The idea that Stalin would create an organization whose sole purpose was to topple himself from power was so unthinkable that none of its members ever dreamed that the whole operation had been controlled from the start by the NKVD’s Bureau of Special Operations. It was a trick Stalin had learned from the Okhrana: to lure enemies out of hiding, persuade them that they are taking part in actions against the state, and then, before the acts of violence could take place, arrest them. Since the White Guild had been in existence, hundreds of anti-Communist agents had met their deaths by firing squad against the stone wall of the Lubyanka courtyard.
“But if that’s who they were dealing with,” Pekkala told Stalin, “you have nothing to worry about. You control the Guild. It is your own invention, after all.”
“You are missing the point, Pekkala.” Stalin scratched at the back of his neck, his fingernails rustling over the smallpox scars embedded in his skin. “What worries me is that they even know the T-34 exists. The only time a secret is safe is when no one knows there is a secret being kept.”
“What happened to the German agent?” asked Pekkala. “May I question him?”
“You could,” replied Stalin, “but I think you would find it a very one-sided conversation.”
“I see,” said Pekkala. “But at least we were successful in preventing the enemy from acquiring the information.”
“That success is only temporary. They will come looking again.”
“If they are looking,” said Pekkala, “then perhaps you should let them find what they think they’re searching for.”
“That has already been arranged,” said Stalin, as he put a fresh cigarette between his lips. “Now go back and question him again.”
IN THE FOREST OF RUSALKA, ON THE POLISH-RUSSIAN BORDER, A dirt road wandered drunkenly among the pines. It had been raining, but now bolts of sunlight angled through the misty air. On either side of the road, tall pine trees grew so thickly that no daylight could penetrate. Only mushrooms sprouted from the brown pine needles carpeting the ground—the white-speckled red of Fly Agaric and the greasy white of the Avenging Angel, so poisonous that one small bite would kill a man.
The sound of hoofbeats startled a pheasant from its hiding place. With a loud, croaking squawk, the bird took to the air and vanished into the fog.
From around a bend in the road appeared a rider on a horse. He wore a uniform whose cloth was the same grayish brown as the hide of a deer in the winter. His riding boots glowed with a fresh coat of neat’s-foot oil, and the brass buttons of his tunic were emblazoned with the Polish eagle crest. In his left hand the man carried a lance. Its short, pig-sticker blade shone brightly as it passed through the pillars of sunlight. Both horse and horseman looked like ghosts from a time long before the one in which they had materialized. Then more men appeared—a troop of cavalry—and these had rifles slung across their backs. They moved in beautiful formation, two columns wide and seven deep.
The men belonged to the Pomorske Cavalry Brigade and were on a routine patrol. The road on which they traveled snaked back and forth across the Polish-Russian border, but since it was the only road, and since the forest was so seldom visited except by woodcutters and soldiers patrolling the border, Soviet and Polish troops sometimes crossed paths in the Rusalka.
As the point rider moved around another bend in the road, he was lost in thoughts of how uneventful these patrols were and what a dreary place the Rusalka was and how unnaturally quiet it always seemed here.
Suddenly his horse reared up, very nearly throwing him. He struggled to stay in the saddle. Then he saw, blocking the path ahead of him, the huge, squat shape of a tank unlike any he had ever seen before. The barrel of its cannon pointed straight at him, and the opening at the end of the barrel seemed to glare like the eye of a cyclops. Its rotten-apple green paint made it seem as if the machine had sprouted from the dirt on which it stood.
As the other troopers came around the bend, both men and animals were startled. The clean lines of their riding formation broke apart. The lancers snapped commands and tugged at reins, trying to bring their mounts under control.
Awakened from its iron sleep, the tank engine gave a sudden, bestial roar. Two columns of bluish smoke belched from its twin exhaust pipes, rising like cobras into the damp air.
One of the Polish horses reared up on its hind legs. Its rider toppled off into the mud. The officer in charge of the troop, identifiable only by the fact that he wore a revolver on his belt, shouted at the man who had fallen. The trooper, his whole side painted with mud, scrambled back into the saddle.
The tank did not move, but its engine continued to bellow. All around the huge machine, the khaki-silted puddles trembled.
The lancers exchanged glances, unable to hide their fear.
One trooper unshouldered his rifle.
Seeing this, the officer spurred his horse towards the man, knocking the gun from his grasp.
Just when it seemed that the lancers were about to withdraw in confusion, the tank’s engine clattered and died.
The echo faded away through the trees. Except for the heavy breathing of the horses, silence returned to the forest. Then a hatch opened on the turret of the tank and a man climbed out. He wore the black leather double-
