Siberian Red

Minister for Public Works, Antonin Tuzinkewitz, a thick-necked man as jowly as a walrus and responsible for‚ among other things‚ the filling in of Moscow’s potholes. This minister was best known not for his public works but for the facts that he rarely got out of bed before noon and that the primordial roar of his laughter, as he returned in the early hours of the morning from the Bar Radzikov, could be heard more than a block away.
    Colonel Kubanka’s daily commute to the Ministry of Armaments should not have taken him past Tuzinkewitz’s home, but Kubanka made a wide detour to ensure that it did.
    The noise, as the front and rear wheels of Kubanka’s Mercedes collided with the pothole, was like a double blast of cannon fire. It actually shook the loose panes of glass in Kirov’s window. No one could sleep through that, especially not a man like Tuzinkewitz, who still suffered from flashbacks of the war, in which he had been repeatedly shelled by Austrian artillery in the Carpathian Mountains. Tuzinkewitz, rudely jolted from his dreams, would rush to the window, fling back the curtains and glare down into the street, hoping to spot the source of this noise. By then, Kubanka’s car had already turned the corner and disappeared and Tuzinkewitz found himself staring down helplessly at the pothole, which returned his stare with a cruel, unblinking gaze.
    It was driving Tuzinkewitz mad, slowly but with gathering speed, exactly as Kubanka intended. Kirov saw the proof of this each day in the strain on Tuzinkewitz’s meaty face as it loomed into view out of the stuffy darkness of his bedroom.
    When this daily ritual had been completed‚ Kirov turned and smiled towards Pekkala’s desk, but the smile froze on his face when he saw the empty seat. He kept forgetting that Pekkala was gone. Even stranger than this, he sometimes swore he could feel the presence of the Inspector in the room.
    Although Major Kirov had been raised in a world in which ghosts were not allowed to exist, he understood what it felt like to be haunted, as he was now, by the absence of Inspector Pekkala.
    *
     
    Far to the east the freezing, clanking wagons of ETAP-1889 crossed the Ural Mountains and officially entered Siberian territory. From then on, the train stopped once a day to allow the prisoners out.
    Before the wagons were opened, the guards would walk along the sides and beat the doors with rifle butts, in hopes of dislodging any corpses that had frozen to the inner walls.
    Piling out of the wagons, the prisoners inevitably found themselves on windswept, barren ground, far from any town. Sometimes they stayed out for hours, sometimes for only a few minutes. The intervals did not appear to follow any logic. They never knew how long they would be off the train.
    During these breaks, the guards made no attempt to keep track of the prisoners. For anyone who fled into this wilderness, the chances of survival were non-existent. The guards did not even bother to take roll calls when the train whistle sounded for the prisoners to board. By then, most convicts were already huddled by the wagons, shivering and waiting to climb in.
    Beside Pekkala stood a round-faced man named Savushkin, who kept trying to make conversation. He had patient, intelligent eyes hidden behind glasses that were looped around his ears with bits of string. He was not a tall man, which put him at a disadvantage when trying to move around the cramped space of the wagon. To remedy this, he would raise his hands above his head, press his palms together‚ and drive himself like a wedge through the tangled thicket of limbs.
    Confronted with Pekkala’s stubborn silence, Savushkin had set himself the task of luring Pekkala into conversation. With the faith of an angler tying one kind of bait after another to his line, Savushkin broached every topic that entered his head, trusting that the fish must bite eventually.
    Sometimes Pekkala pretended not to hear. Other times, he smiled and looked away. He knew how important it was for his identity to remain secret, and so the less he said, the better.
    Savushkin did not take offence at his companion’s silence. After each attempt, he would wait a while before trying again to find some chink in Pekkala’s armour.
    When Pekkala finally spoke, a bright, clear day had warmed the wagons, melting ice which usually jammed the cracks between the walls. While the wheels clanked lazily over the spacers, their sound like a monstrous