Siberian Red

to transform the frozen wasteland around the port into a modern military base for Soviet Navy personnel and their families. The construction was expected to take many years. In the meantime, conditions for the workers on this project would be primitive in the extreme.
    Why such documents would have emerged from the office of Stalin himself was a question nobody would ever dare to ask. This was the perfect symmetry of Poskrebyshev’s revenge, executed more than thirty years after the events which had set it in motion.
    In the weeks and months that followed the transfer of Ermakov and Schwartz to the Arctic, Poskrebyshev would often stop in at the Kremlin’s meteorological office and inquire about weather in Archangel. Thirty below. Forty below. Even fifty below, on occasion. The worse the conditions, the more convinced Poskrebyshev became that there was indeed justice in the world for people like himself, a thing which had seemed impossible back in those days when the rotten apples, pulpy and reeking of vinegar, had splattered against him by the dozen.
    At first his scheme had seemed foolproof‚ but, as time went by, Poskrebyshev came to realise that there was no such thing. He resigned himself to the fact that, sooner or later, he would be found out.
    The double doors flew open and Stalin burst into the outer office.
    In this waking nightmare, it seemed to Poskrebyshev as if Stalin, dressed in his brownish-green tunic, had transformed into one of those apples so expertly thrown by Comrades Schwartz and Ermakov.
    ‘Where is he?’ screamed Stalin, as he approached Poskrebyshev. ‘Where is that black-hearted troll?’
    ‘I am here, Comrade Stalin,’ replied Poskrebyshev, his eyes bulging with fear.
    Stalin’s eyes narrowed. ‘What?’
    ‘I am here, Comrade Stalin!’ shouted Poskrebyshev, his voice raised to a shout of blind obedience.
    ‘Have you completely lost your mind?’ asked Stalin, resting his knuckles on Poskrebyshev’s desk and leaning forward until their faces were only a hand’s breadth apart. ‘I am looking for Pekkala!’
    ‘You have found him,’ said a voice.
    Poskrebyshev turned. He saw a man standing in the doorway to the outer office. Neither he nor Stalin had heard him enter the room.
    Pekkala was tall and broad-shouldered, with a straight nose and strong, white teeth. Streaks of premature grey ran through his short dark hair. His eyes were marked by a strange silvery quality, which people noticed only when he was looking directly at them. He wore a knee-length coat made of black wool, with a mandarin collar and concealed buttons which fastened on the left side of his chest. His ankle-high boots, also black, were double-soled and polished. He stood with his hands tucked behind his back. The shape of a revolver in a shoulder holster was just visible beneath the heavy cloth of his coat.
    Stalin’s anger dissipated as suddenly as it had appeared. Now a smile crept over his face, narrowing his eyes almost shut. ‘Pekkala!’ he said, growling out the name. ‘I have a job for you.’
    As the two men disappeared into Stalin’s office and the door closed quietly behind them, the residue of fear in Poskrebyshev’s brain was still too powerful to let him feel relief. Later, perhaps, that would come. For now, all he experienced was the luxury of drawing in breath, and an overpowering curiosity to know the weather forecast for Archangel.
    *
     
    Stalin, sitting at his desk in a leather-backed chair, carefully stuffed his pipe with honey-coloured shreds of Balkan tobacco.
    There was no chair on the other side of the desk, so Pekkala had to stand while he waited for the man to complete his ritual.
    During this time, the only sound in the room was the dry rustle of Stalin’s breathing as he held a match over the pipe bowl and coaxed the tobacco to burn. Once this had been accomplished, he waved the match and dropped the smouldering stick into a brass ashtray. The soft, sweet smell of the tobacco drifted about the room. Finally, Stalin spoke. ‘I am sending you back to Siberia.’
    The words struck Pekkala like a slap in the face. At first, he was too shocked to reply.
    ‘Although not as a prisoner,’ continued Stalin. ‘Not officially. There has been a murder in your old camp, Borodok.’
    ‘With respect, Comrade Stalin, there must be murders in that place every day of the week.’
    ‘This one has caught my attention.’ Stalin seemed preoccupied with the ashtray, moving it from one