Siberian Red

risk being overheard, so we set up the meeting for that night in one of the mine tunnels. It’s not difficult for the prisoners to sneak out of their barracks at night. The entrance to the mineshaft is not guarded and the tunnels are not patrolled at night. We had set a time, just after midnight. By the time I got there, Ryabov had already been killed.’
    ‘I was told you’d found the murder weapon.’
    Without removing his hands from the warmth of his pockets, Klenovkin nodded towards an object lying on a nearby crate.
    Pekkala saw it now – a crude, home-made stiletto, whose finger-length blade had been fashioned from a piece of iron railing. The handle was a split piece of white birch, into which the railing had been inserted and string wrapped tightly around the wood to hold it in place. The tight coils of string were coated with a lacquer of dried blood. ‘This was made by a prisoner,’ said Pekkala.
    ‘It was lying right next to the body,’ explained Klenovkin. ‘There’s no doubt this was the murder weapon.’
    Pekkala said nothing, but he knew that the weapon which had killed Ryabov was no prison-made contraption. One glance at the blade told him that.
    Prison knives were fashioned to be small, so that they could be easily concealed. He had seen lethal weapons constructed from pieces of tin can no larger than a thumbnail and fitted into the handle of a toothbrush. The weapon Klenovkin claimed he had found beside the body was a type used for stabbing, not cutting.
    The blade which had cleaved Ryabov’s throat was wide and sharp enough to sever the jugular with one stroke. This was evident in the clean edge of the wound, showing that the killer had not required multiple strokes of the blade to accomplish his task.
    ‘It proves the Comitati were involved,’ continued Klenovkin.
    ‘And how have you reached that conclusion?’
    Only now did Klenovkin remove a hand from its fur-lined cocoon. One finger uncurled towards the dead man. ‘The Comitati did this, because no one else would have dared to lay a hand on Ryabov.’
    ‘But why do you think they were the ones who murdered him?’
    ‘I have considered this, Inspector, and there is only one possible answer. I first assumed that he was trying to secure the release of his men along with himself. What else is there to bargain for? But the more I thought about it, the clearer it became. Ryabov had no intention of escaping with the others. The only freedom Ryabov desired was for himself. He had finally seen the Comitati for what they really are – a clan of painted madmen clinging to a prophecy which becomes more and more improbable with every passing year. Ryabov had at last reached the correct conclusion; that unless he did something to help himself, he would die here in the camp.’
    ‘Why do you think he would come to you now, after all these years of silence?’
    ‘I believe their tight-knit group had been whittled away until those few who remained had finally begun to crack. Of those, one was prepared to give up his old loyalties. The others were not. If you want to find the man who killed Ryabov, you need look no further than the men he used to call his comrades.’
    After Klenovkin locked the freezer, the two men walked out of the kitchen.
    Under the glare of the camp’s perimeter lights, sheets of newly formed ice glistened in the compound yard. Beyond the tall stockade fence, the saw-tooth line of pine trees stood out against the velvet blue night sky.
    ‘If he was so desperate to escape,’ asked Pekkala, ‘then why did he not simply attempt to leave on his own? He had learned to survive in the camp. He could have found a way out and then‚ surely‚ he could have endured conditions in the forest long enough to make it across the border into China, which is less than a hundred kilometres from here.’
    ‘The answer to that, Inspector, is the same as why you never escaped, in spite of the fact that you lived beyond the gates of this camp, with no guards to oversee your every move. Even if Ryabov could have made it through the forest on his own, he would never have got past the Ostyaks.’
    ‘Do you mean to say they are still out there?’ Pekkala asked Klenovkin. ‘I thought you would have driven them away by now.’
    ‘On the contrary‚’ remarked the Commandant. ‘They are more powerful than ever.’
    Beyond the gates of Borodok lay the country of the Ostyaks, a nomadic Asiatic tribe whose territory extended for hundreds of