Siberian Red

eyes. In that moment, each one recognised the other.
    ‘Gramotin!’ exclaimed Pekkala.
    The sergeant’s screaming ceased abruptly as he gaped at prisoner 4745; the man he could have sworn he had just killed.
    And then the train was gone.
    Gramotin waited until the Orlik had vanished into the distance. Then, after swearing a silent oath never to mention what he had just seen, he tottered back on to the tracks and kept walking.
    Six days later, the Orlik rolled into Moscow’s Central Station.
    *
     
    High above the Kremlin, thunderhead clouds drifted across the pale blue sky.
    From his office window, Stalin gazed out across the rooftops of the city. He never placed himself directly in front of the glass. Instead, he leaned into the thick folds of the red velvet curtain, preferring to remain invisible to anyone who might be looking from below.
    Pekkala stood in the centre of the room, breathing in the honeyed smell of beeswax polish and the leathery reek of old tobacco smoke.
    He had been there for several minutes, waiting for Stalin to acknowledge his presence.
    Finally, Stalin turned away from the window. ‘I realise you must be upset. I might have overreacted.’
    ‘You mean by ordering me to be shot?’
    ‘However!’ Stalin raised one finger in the air. ‘You must admit my instincts were right about the gold. Ingenious, Pekkala, allowing yourself to be taken hostage by the Comitati, in order to locate the treasure. A pity those two men managed to escape.’
    ‘A small price to pay.’
    ‘Yes,’ Stalin muttered absent-mindedly.
    ‘You seem restless today‚ Comrade Stalin.’
    ‘I am!’ he agreed. ‘Every since I walked in here this morning, I’ve had the feeling that the world was somehow out of balance. My mind is playing tricks on me.’
    ‘Is there anything else, Comrade Stalin?’
    ‘What? Oh, yes. Yes, there is.’ Lifting a file from the stack laid out on his green blotter, he slid it across to Pekkala. ‘For the successful completion of this case, congratulations are in order. These are your award papers. You are now a Hero of the Soviet Union.’
    ‘That will not be necessary, Comrade Stalin.’
    Stalin’s jaw clenched, but then he sighed with resignation. ‘I knew you wouldn’t take it, and yet I have a feeling you do not intend to leave here empty-handed.’
    ‘As a matter of fact,’ said Pekkala, ‘I do have one request.’
    ‘I thought as much,’ growled Stalin.
    ‘It concerns a man named Melekov.’
    *
     
    In the outer office, Poskrebyshev was relishing Stalin’s discomfort.
    The previous night, he had experienced an epiphany. When it came to him, he was hovering in that space between waking and sleep, when the body seems to translate itself, molecule by molecule, into that swirling dust from which the universe is made.
    The idea appeared in Poskrebyshev’s head so completely that it seemed to him at first as if there was someone else in the room explaining it to him. The drifting of his consciousness halted abruptly. Suddenly wide awake, Poskrebyshev sat up in bed and fumbled about in the dark for a pencil and piece of paper, afraid that if he did not write it down his plan might escape unremembered into the mysterious realm from which it had appeared.
    Poskrebyshev had been thinking about the apparently limitless enjoyment Stalin took in humiliating him. He had always assumed that this was simply a thing he was required to endure. There could be no consideration of revenge. Stalin’s sense of humour did not extend to laughter gleaned at his own expense. The only way Poskrebyshev could ever achieve any kind of satisfaction was if Stalin did not know a joke was being played on him.
    Which is impossible, he told himself.
    It was at this moment that the angels spoke to Poskrebyshev, or if they were not angels, then some other supernatural voice – Lenin, or Trotsky perhaps, calling to him from beyond the grave – since it hardly seemed possible to him that he could have come up with such a brilliant plan all on his own. In its deviousness, it even surpassed the revenge he had taken on Comrades Schwartz and Ermakov, currently residing in Archangel.
    Arriving early for work the next morning, Poskrebyshev carefully rearranged the contents of Stalin’s office. Chairs. Carpets. Ashtrays. Pictures on the wall.
    As Poskrebyshev was well aware, Stalin liked everything to be in its proper place. He insisted upon it to such a degree of obsession that, the previous week, when a