Siberian Red

there would be hell to pay for this and also that he would be the one to pay it, but it comforted him to know that the great inspector had once again found a way to beat the odds.
    It crossed Kasinec’s mind that the stories he had heard about Pekkala might be true – that he was not even a man but, rather, some kind of phantom, conjured from the spirit world by the likes of Grigori Rasputin, that other supernatural in the service of the Tsar.
    *
     
    Once more, the double doors of Stalin’s officer flew open and Stalin appeared, his lips twitching with anger, as he waved a flimsy piece of telegram paper. ‘This message just arrived from the master of the V-4 station, saying that Pekkala was not aboard the train!’
    ‘Would you like me to try to find him?’ Poskrebyshev rose quickly to his feet.
    ‘No! I must handle this myself. Have the car brought around. I will be leaving immediately. Fetch me my coat.’
    Poskrebyshev crashed his heels together. ‘At once, Comrade Stalin!’

Kasinec was standing on the steps
     
     
    Kasinec was standing on the steps of a flimsy wooden structure grandly named the Central Convict Transport Administration Facility, puffing on a cigarette, when an American-made Packard limousine arrived at the station yard. Its cowlings had been splashed with perfect arches of greyish-black mud as it travelled the unpaved Moscow Highway. To the stationmaster, those muddy arches made the machine appear less like a car than a giant bird of prey, swooping from the evening shadows and intent on tearing him apart.
    Kasinec sighed out a lungful of smoke. He had seen this before – desperate people trying to bid one last farewell to friends or family members who had ended up on prison transports. There was nothing Kasinec could do for them. He kept no records of the names of prisoners. By the time convicts arrived at V-4, they had already been transformed into numbers and Kasinec’s only job was to see that the tally on his list matched the total of prisoners boarding the train. When the train was full, the list would be handed to the chief guard accompanying the transport and Kasinec never saw them again.
    Just then, the air was filled with the loud clatter of the telegraph machine in his office spitting out a message. The people in that car would have to wait. Kasinec flicked his cigarette out over the muddy station yard and walked inside to read the telegram.
    Emerging a few moments later, with the telegram still clutched in his fist, Kasinec saw a man in a fur-collared coat climb from the Packard. It took him only a second to realise that this man was none other than Stalin himself.
    Immediately, Kasinec’s hands began to shake.
    Stalin crossed the station yard and climbed the three wooden steps to the balcony where Kasinec was waiting.
    Kasinec saluted, fingertips quivering against his temples.
    ‘What happened?’ asked Stalin, a halo of breath condensing around his head. ‘Why didn’t he get aboard the train with all the other prisoners?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ stammered Kasinec.
    ‘We’ll never find him now,’ muttered Stalin, more to himself than to the stationmaster.
    ‘Actually, Comrade Stalin, we have found Inspector Pekkala.’ Kasinec held up the telegram, which had just arrived from the switching junction at Shatura, twenty kilometres to the east.
    ‘Found him? But you just told me he wasn’t aboard the train!’
    ‘That’s not exactly true, Comrade Stalin. He’s just not among the prisoners.’
    ‘Then where the hell is he?’
    ‘According to the message from Shatura, he appears to be driving the train.’
    Stalin shuddered, as if an electric current had just travelled through his body. He snatched the telegram from Kasinec’s hand, read it through, then crumpled the paper and flung it away into the darkness. Turning away from the stationmaster, Stalin fixed his gaze upon a point in the distance where the rails appeared to converge. ‘Pekkala, you son of a bitch!’ he roared, his voice like thunder in the still night air.
    *
     
    When the train stopped at Shatura, a guard who had climbed down on to the tracks in order to relieve himself was astonished to see a prisoner walking towards him. Instantly, he swung the rifle off his back and aimed it at the convict.
    But the prisoner neither raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, nor tried to run away. Instead, he only held a finger to his lips, motioning for the guard to be silent. This so astonished the