Siberian Red

get up first.’
    The man helped Kirov out of his parachute harness. Then the two of them gathered the chute and, not knowing what else to do with it, stuffed the silk in one of the empty rain barrels.
    ‘My name is Deryabin,’ said the man, as they made their way towards the station house.
    ‘Kirov. Major Kirov. Where are the others?’
    ‘What others?’
    ‘Is there no one else here?’
    ‘Let me put it this way, Comrade Major; you have just doubled the population for the entire district.’
    The station house was a one-room building, with bales of hay stacked three high around the outside walls for winter insulation. The shutters had been welded closed by snow whipped up from passing trains.
    The air inside the station house was rank and musty. To Kirov, it smelled like the locker room of the NKVD sports facility where he had done some of his basic training.
    A bunk stood at one end, its rope mattress sagging almost to the floor. Beside the stove, which dominated the centre of the room, two chairs were set out, as if the man had been expecting company. The far wall of the house was completely hidden behind a barricade of canned goods, still in their cardboard cases, with their names – peas, meat, evaporated milk – accompanied by manufacture dates more than a decade old.
    The first thing Deryabin did when he entered the house was to empty his pockets on to a table beside the door. Fistfuls of what looked to Kirov like large fish scales were already heaped upon the bare wood. To these the man now added another pile. They jingled as he let them fall.
    ‘What are those things?’ asked Kirov.
    ‘Money,’ replied Deryabin.
    ‘Doesn’t look like any currency I’ve ever seen.’
    ‘That’s because I ran it over with the train. I take all the one-kopek coins I can get my hands on, flatten them out and the Ostyaks turn them into jewellery.’
    ‘Ostyaks?’
    ‘They live in the woods. Trust me, you don’t want to meet them. They live to the west of here, over in District 5, where the prison camps are located. Once a month, the Ostyaks show up here with dried salmon or reindeer meat and I trade these coins for it.’
    ‘Couldn’t you just use coins to pay for the stuff?’
    ‘They prefer to trade. For them a kopek is just a kopek. But run it over with a train and you’ve got yourself a work of art. I can tell you are not from Siberia.’
    ‘No. Moscow.’
    ‘I almost went there once,’ he said thoughtfully.
    They sat down by the stove. From a battered copper kettle, Deryabin poured some tea into an even more battered aluminium cup and handed it to Kirov. ‘So to what do I owe the honour of your visit, Comrade Major Kirov?’
    ‘Several men have escaped from the Borodok camp.’
    ‘I can’t say I blame them. I’ve heard what goes on in that place.’
    ‘The convicts are headed this way. They have a hostage with them. I must try to intercept these men before they cross the border into China. Can that train outside do anything more than roll back and forth over your wages?’
    ‘That train’‚ Deryabin replied indignantly, ‘is the most famous engine on the whole Trans-Siberian Railroad! The Czechs used it to transport their men all the way from Ukraine to Vladivostok. Did you see the armour on her sides? She was a nightmare to the Bolsheviks.’
    ‘But does it run?’ demanded Kirov.
    ‘It certainly does, thanks to me. Five years ago, the authorities in Vladivostok had it shunted out here to my station. They dropped it off and told me it was my responsibility. They didn’t say why. Didn’t say how long. They just dumped it and rode back to the coast. They probably thought she would just rust away to nothing, but I made sure that didn’t happen. I’ve been looking after her ever since.’
    ‘What about those?’ asked Kirov, nodding towards the gun turrets. ‘Are they still operational?’
    ‘You could blast a platoon off the map with those,’ replied Deryabin, ‘and the authorities in Vladivostok kindly left me with enough ammunition to do exactly that. As for the rest of the train, I could drive the Orlik to Moscow. And when I got there, Comrade Major,’ he levelled a finger at Kirov, ‘I’d teach you Muscovites a thing or two!’
    ‘And I look forward to that, Comrade Deryabin.’ Kirov’s temper was beginning to fray. ‘But right now I need to borrow your train, and I need you, as well, to drive it.’
    ‘You’ve got some nerve! You can’t just fall out of the sky