Of that moment in time, Pekkala had no recollection of anything else except the sight of her, standing just outside a white marquee set up for the occasion. She was wearing a pale green dress. She did not have a hat, so he could see her face quite clearly—high cheekbones and eyes a dusty blue.
At first he thought he must know her from somewhere before. Something in his mind made her seem familiar to him. But that wasn’t it. And whatever it was, this sudden lurching of his senses towards something it couldn’t explain, it stopped him in his tracks and held him there. The next thing he knew, a woman on the other side of the wall had come up and asked him if he was looking for somebody. She was tall and dignified, her gray hair knotted at the back.
“Who is that?” Pekkala had asked, nodding towards the young woman in the green dress.
“That’s the new teacher, Ilya Simonova. I am the headmistress, Rada Obolenskaya. And you are the Tsar’s new detective.”
“Inspector Pekkala.” He bowed his head in greeting.
“Would you like me to introduce you, Inspector?”
“Yes!” Pekkala blurted out. “I just … she looks like someone I know. At least, I think she does.”
“I see,” said Madame Obolenskaya.
“I might be wrong,” explained Pekkala.
“I don’t suppose you are,” she replied.
He proposed to Ilya Simonova exactly one year later, down on his knees in the same schoolyard where they first met.
A date was set, but they were never married. They never got the chance. Instead, on the eve of the Revolution, Ilya boarded the last train heading west. It was bound for Paris, where Pekkala promised to meet her as soon as the Tsar had granted him permission to leave the country. But Pekkala never did get out. Months later, he was arrested by Bolshevik militiamen while attempting to cross into Finland. From there, his journey to Siberia began, and it was many years before he had another chance to leave.
“You are free to go now if you wish,” said Stalin, “but before you make your decision, there is something you should know.”
“What?” asked Pekkala nervously. “What do I need to know?”
Stalin was watching him closely, as if the two men were playing cards. Now he opened a drawer on his side of the desk, the dry wood squeaking as he pulled. He withdrew a photograph. For a moment, he studied it. Then he laid the picture down, placed one finger on top of it, and slid the photograph towards Pekkala.
It was Ilya. He recognized her instantly. She was sitting at a small cafe table. Behind her, printed on the awning of the cafe, Pekkala saw the words LES DEUX MAGOTS. She was smiling as she watched something to the left of where the camera had been placed. He could see her strong white teeth. Now, reluctantly, Pekkala’s gaze shifted to the man who was sitting beside her. He was thin, with dark hair. He wore a jacket and tie, and the stub of a cigarette was pinched between his thumb and second finger. He held the cigarette in the Russian manner, with the burning end balanced over his palm as if to catch the falling ash. Like Ilya, the man was smiling. Both of them were watching something just to the left of the camera. On the other side of the table was an object which at first Pekkala almost failed to recognize, since it had been so long since he had seen one. It was a baby carriage, its hood pulled up to shelter the infant from the sun.
Pekkala realized he wasn’t breathing. He had to force himself to fill his lungs.
Quietly, Stalin cleared his throat. “You must not hold it against her. She waited, Pekkala. She waited a very long time. Over ten years. But a person cannot wait forever, can they?”
Pekkala stared at the baby carriage. He wondered if the child had her eyes.
“As you see”—Stalin gestured towards the picture—“Ilya is happy now. She has a family. She is a teacher, of Russian of course, at the prestigious École Stanislas. She has tried to put the past behind her. That is something all of us must do at some point in our lives.”
Slowly, Pekkala raised his head, until he was looking Stalin in the eye. “Why did you show this to me?”
Stalin’s lips twitched. “Would you rather have arrived in Paris, ready to start a new life, only to find that it was once more out of reach?”
“Out of reach?” Pekkala felt dizzy. His mind seemed to rush from one end of his skull to the other, like a fish trapped in a net.
“You could still go to her, of course.” Stalin shrugged. “But whatever peace of mind she might have won for herself in these past years would then be gone in an instant. And let us say, for the sake of argument, that you could persuade her to leave the man she married. Let us say that she even leaves behind her child—”
“Stop,” Pekkala said.
“You are not that kind of man, Pekkala. You are not the monster that your enemies once believed you to be. If you were, you would never have been such a formidable opponent for people like myself. Monsters are easy to defeat. With such people, it is merely a question of blood and time, since their only weapon is fear. But you, Pekkala—you won the hearts of the people and the respect of your enemies. I do not believe you understand how rare a thing that is. Those whom you once served are out there still.” Stalin brushed his hand towards the window of his study, and out across the pale blue autumn sky. “They have not forgotten you, Pekkala, and I don’t believe you have forgotten them.”
“No,” whispered Pekkala, “I have not forgotten.”
“What I am trying to tell you, Pekkala, is that you can leave this country if you want to. I’ll put you on the next train to Paris, if that’s really what you want. Or you can stay here, where you are truly needed and where you still have a place if you want it.”
Until that moment, the thought of staying on in Russia had not occurred to him. But now Pekkala realized that his last gesture of affection for the woman he’d once thought would be his wife must be to let her believe he was dead.
THEY WERE OUT IN OPEN COUNTRY NOW, THE EMKA’S ENGINE ROARING contentedly as Kirov raced along the dusty Moscow Highway.
“Do you think I have made a mistake?” asked Pekkala.
“A mistake with what, Inspector?” asked Kirov, glancing at Pekkala in the rearview mirror before turning his eyes back to the road.
“Staying here. In Russia. I had a chance to leave and turned it down.”
“Your work here is important,” said Kirov. “Why do you think I asked to work with you, Inspector?”
“I judged that to be your own business.”
“It’s because every night when I lie down to sleep, I know I have done something that really matters. How many people can honestly say that?”
Pekkala did not reply. He wondered if Kirov was right, or if, in agreeing to work for Stalin, he had compromised every ideal for which he’d ever stood.
Gray clouds hung just above the treetops.
As they neared the Nagorski facility, Pekkala looked out at a tall metal fence which stretched along one side of the road. The fence seemed to go on forever. It was twice the height of a man, topped by a second stage of fencing which jutted out at an angle towards the road, and was lined with four strands of barbed wire. Beyond the wire grew an unkempt tangle of forest, rising from the poor and marshy soil.