Siberian Red

the great bronze hand. ‘My dear Comrade Major,’ he said, ‘the reason for keeping the Blue File secret has nothing to do with what it contains. The very fact that there was once a group of men who spied upon those whose job it was to spy on others is, in itself, a dangerous thing. It might lead people to wonder if there is another such file kept, perhaps, by our own government and hidden away in the desk of some untouchable man. The best secret, Comrade Major, is not one whose answer is hidden from us by the strongest lock and key. The best secret is one which nobody even knows exists.’
    As soon as he was outside the archive, Kirov ducked into one of the abandoned warehouse buildings. With his back against a cold brick wall, he opened the Kolchak Expedition file. It contained three sheets of paper. Each was embossed with the double-headed eagle of the Romanovs.
    From the Tsar’s handwritten notes, Kirov learned that an Okhrana agent had been wounded in an attack on a house in St Petersburg, where a convicted murderer had been hiding. The murderer, whose name was Grodek, had been a notorious terrorist before the Revolution.
    Kirov had learned about this mission from Pekkala, who had been a part of it. But what Kirov read next, even Pekkala didn’t know.
    Rather than return the wounded agent to active duty, the Tsar had secretly ordered the man’s name to be placed on the list of those who had died in the attack. In the meantime, the agent was brought to a clinic on the grounds of the Ekaterinburg estate. There he was tended to by the Tsar’s own doctor until he had recovered.
    The Tsar then summoned the agent, and gave him a choice. Either he could return to the ranks of the Okhrana and the report of his death would be attributed to a bureaucratic mix-up, or he could agree to work as an agent for the Tsar, and only for the Tsar, taking part in missions so secret that not even his own intelligence service would be informed.
    The agent had required no persuasion. He readily agreed and, soon after, was given a new identity as a cavalry officer with the cover name of Isaac Ryabov.
    There followed a list of several missions undertaken by Ryabov, ranging from payoffs made to women made pregnant by Rasputin to the assassination of a Turkish diplomat suspected of involvement in smuggling stolen Russian steam turbine technology out of the country.
    The last entry in the file detailed how the Tsar had appointed Ryabov to the cavalry brigade of Colonel Kolchak, only days before the Expedition departed for Siberia. Ryabov’s orders were to report back not only on the whereabouts of the brigade, but also on the location of where the Romanov gold was hidden. Ryabov had been the Tsar’s insurance policy against Kolchak running off with the treasure.
    Kirov had no idea whether this file would provide Pekkala with the information he was looking for, but Braninko had been right when he said that if anybody could make sense of the contents, it would be Pekkala.
    Stashing the pages in the pocket of his tunic, Kirov ran back towards his office. Within the hour, he had telegraphed his findings to the Camp Commandant at Borodok.
    *
     
    While Pekkala was away, delivering soup to the miners, Melekov sat alone in the kitchen, on a rickety wooden chair, reading a scrap of newspaper that he had peeled off the carcass of a frozen pig which had arrived that morning on the train.
    Gramotin walked in from the compound. Instead of ignoring Melekov, as he usually did, he sauntered over to the cook and slapped him on the back.
    ‘What do you want?’ asked Melekov, without looking up from his paper.
    ‘Nothing,’ replied Gramotin. ‘Nothing at all.’
    Which was, of course, a lie.
    Ever since Gramotin’s last meeting with the Camp Commandant, dark thoughts had entered the guard’s mind. Klenovkin was usually upset about something or other – Dalstroy was continually demanding higher quotas, providing him with fewer guards and cutting salaries at random – but this was the first time Gramotin had seen the Commandant so unhinged by a single prisoner. And to learn that this convict Pekkala was the source of Klenovkin’s distress had fixed in Gramotin’s mind only one possible course of action.
    He needed to get rid of Pekkala.
    This decision was not made out of any particular love for Klenovkin, but rather because Gramotin had, over the years, created a fine-tuned balance between himself and the Commandant.
    At the heart of this