Siberian Red

survivors of the Kolchak Expedition reached Borodok not long after you did, but by that time you had already been sent into the forest. For a long time, we heard that you were still alive, even though no one had actually seen you. But when a new tree marker was sent out to take your place, we became convinced you had died. Then new prisoners started showing up at the camp, saying you had been recalled to duty in Moscow. They said you were working for the Bureau of Special Operations, under the direction of Stalin himself. At first, we didn’t believe it. Why would the Emerald Eye put himself at the disposal of a beast like Stalin? But when these rumours persisted, we began to suspect that the stories might be true.’
    ‘The stories are true,’ Pekkala admitted. ‘I was recalled to Moscow in order to investigate the murder of the Tsar. After that, I was given a choice. Either I could come back here to die or I could go back to the job I had been trained to do.’
    ‘Not much of a choice.’
    ‘Stalin is fond of placing men in such predicaments.’
    ‘And if they do not choose wisely?’
    ‘They die.’
    ‘Like a cat with a mouse,’ muttered Tarnowski, ‘and now he has cast you aside once again, as he has done with so many others. This is where we end up and our job becomes to simply stay alive, a task you might find difficult, since there are men who are here in this camp because of you.’
    ‘No.’ Pekkala shook his head. ‘They are here because of the crimes they committed.’
    ‘A distinction which is lost on them, Inspector. But I have passed the word that anyone who lays a hand on you will answer for it with his life.’
    ‘And who will answer for the murder of Captain Ryabov?’
    The muscles clenched along Tarnowski’s jaw. ‘Saving your life and seeking vengeance for his death are not the same thing, Inspector. So many have perished since we came to this camp, I can no longer even remember their names. It would take a hundred lifetimes to avenge them all. And even if I could, what would be the point? The desire for revenge can take over a man’s life.’
    ‘And can also be the end of it,’ said Pekkala.
    ‘As you and I have seen for ourselves.’
    ‘We have?’
    ‘Oh, yes, Inspector. You and I have met before.’
    Pekkala was startled by the revelation. ‘You mean at this camp? But I thought . . .’
    Tarnowski shook his head. ‘Long before that, Pekkala, on a night even colder than this, outside the Hotel Metropole.’
    At the mention of that place, memories came tumbling like an avalanche out of the darkness of his mind. ‘The duel!’ whispered Pekkala.

He was sitting at a table in the hotel restaurant
     
     
    He was sitting at a table in the hotel restaurant, waiting for Ilya to arrive. For his fiancée’s birthday, Pekkala had promised her dinner at the finest place in St Petersburg.
    Large white pillars, like relics from a temple on Olympus, held up the high ceiling in the centre of which was a huge skylight, its view of the heavens obscured by thick swirls of cigarette smoke.
    From every corner of the room came laughter, the clink of cutlery on plates, and the dry clatter of footsteps on the tiled floor.
    Tuxedoed and ball-gowned couples danced on a raised floor at the far end of the room, to music played by a troupe of gypsies, dressed in their traditional bright, flowing clothes. In front of the musicians stood the most famous singer in St Petersburg, Maria Nikolaevna. Her quavering voice rose above all other sounds as she sang Panina’s melancholy song, ‘I Do Not Speak to You’.
    A high balcony skirted the large, rectangular room. Set into the walls along this balcony, and interspersed between tropical elephant-ear ferns‚ were rows of doors leading into private rooms known as ‘Kabinets’. What went on in those cramped spaces, judging from the endless stream of waiters in short white jackets delivering blinis and caviar, as well as the scantily dressed women who flitted like ghosts between the Kabinets, was not difficult to guess.
    Now and then, the warmth of the tobacco-foggy air would be disturbed by waves of cold as the double doors to the street were flung open and new customers entered, stamping pom-poms of snow from the toes of their boots and shedding huge sable coats. Immediately, they would be ushered to their tables, leaving behind a glittering dust of frost in the air, as if they had materialised from the haze of a magician’s spell.
    Pekkala kept his