In that moment, something snapped inside him. Pekkala knew that if they didn’t catch him now, they’d never find him in this wilderness. He had not forgotten about Nagorski’s traps, but some instinct had awakened in him, overriding thoughts of his own safety. Without a word to the others, Pekkala set off running through the woods.
“Wait!” screamed Samarin.
Pekkala raced among the trees, drawing his gun as he sprinted.
“Have you gone completely mad?” shouted Samarin.
Kirov too joined the chase, hurdling the thickets as he struggled to catch up with Pekkala.
“This is insane!” roared Samarin. Then, with a shout, he lunged after them.
Brambles tore at their legs as the three men raced through the dying light.
“There he is!” shouted Samarin.
Pekkala’s lungs were burning. The weight of the coat hung on his shoulders and dragged against his thighs.
Samarin had overtaken him now, picking up speed as he gained on the running man. Then, suddenly, he skidded to a halt, a hand raised in warning.
Barely in time to avoid crashing into Samarin, Pekkala managed to stop. He bent double, hands on his knees, his throat raw and painful as he struggled for breath.
Mutely, Samarin pointed to the strand of wire strung across the path. It threaded through a bent nail which had been hammered into the trunk of a nearby stump. From there the wire stretched up through the leaves of a tree beside the path until at last, Pekkala’s straining eyes could see where it wrapped around the handle of a Type 33 grenade, bound with threads of dried grass to a branch directly above their heads. A tug on the wire would bring it down. This movement would arm the grenade, since Type 33’s—like iron soup cans attached to a short stem and wrapped with a gridded fragmentation sleeve—were normally activated by the movement of throwing them through the air.
“We’ll keep after him,” wheezed Samarin, as he bent down to untie the string, “as soon as I’ve disarmed this thing.”
As Pekkala moved forward, he glanced up once more at the grenade. It was then he noticed that the slide cover at the top of the grenade, which should have contained the cigarette-shaped detonator, was empty. The thought that this might, somehow, have been intentional was only half born in his mind when he heard a loud rustle in the branches above him.
He had just enough time to turn his head to look at Samarin.
Their eyes met.
A shape flashed in front of Pekkala. The speed of it brushed cold against his cheek. Then came a dull and heavy thump. Leaves flickered down around him.
Pekkala had not moved, paralyzed by the closeness of whatever had swept past him, but now he forced himself to turn.
At first glance, Samarin appeared to be crouched against a tree stump. His arms were thrown out to the sides, as if to steady himself. A shape, some tangling of earth and wood and weather-beaten steel, obscured his body.
It took Pekkala a moment to understand that this object was an iron pipe. It had been sawed through on a diagonal so that the end was like the needle of a huge syringe. The pipe had then been bound with vines to the trunk of a bent sapling; the weight of Samarin’s foot had loosed it.
The grenade was only a diversion, drawing their gaze away from the real danger hidden in the leaves.
The sharpened pipe had struck Samarin square in the chest. Its force had thrown him back against the stump. The rotten wood had exploded and now, from that throne of dust, a rabble of shiny black ants, pincer-tailed earwigs, and wood lice streamed out in confusion. The insects swarmed over Samarin’s shoulders, migrating frantically down his arms and out along the walkways of his fingers.
Samarin was still alive. He stared straight ahead, a look of resignation on his face. Then something happened to his eyes. They became like those of a cat. And suddenly he was dead.
Through shredded clouds, beams of sunlight slanted among the trees so that the air itself appeared like molten copper. The rain had stopped.
“Where the hell is Maximov?” asked Kirov. “Why didn’t he help?”
“Too late now,” replied Pekkala. “Whoever that man was, we have lost him.” As he stared once more at the place where the man had disappeared, it occurred to him that they might not have been chasing a human at all, but something supernatural, a creature that could drift above the ground, oblivious to the traps, drawing around itself the million tangled branches of the trees to vanish in the air.
The two men walked over to Samarin.
There was no gentle way to pry him loose. Pekkala set his boot against the dead man’s shoulder and wrenched the bar out of his chest.
Together, Kirov and Pekkala carried Samarin’s body back to the road. There they found Maximov waiting just where they had left him.
Maximov stared at the body of Samarin. Then he raised his head and looked Pekkala in the eye, but he did not say a word.
Kirov could not contain his anger. He stalked over to Maximov, so that the two men were only an arm’s length apart. “Why didn’t you help us?” he raged.
“I know what’s out there in those woods,” replied Maximov. His voice betrayed no emotion.
“He knew!” Kirov pointed at the body of Captain Samarin. “He knew and still he came with us.”
Maximov’s head turned slowly, until he was looking at Samarin’s corpse. “Yes, he did.”
“What’s the matter with you?” yelled Kirov. “Were you afraid to take the risk?”
At this insult, Maximov seemed to shudder, as if the ground were trembling beneath his feet. “There are better ways to serve your country, Comrade Commissar, than by throwing your life away at the first opportunity.”
“You can settle this later,” said Pekkala. “Right now, we have company.”
An army truck with NKVD license plates was coming down the road. The canvas covers were battened down. As it passed, the driver glanced out the side window, caught sight of Samarin, then turned to say something to someone in the passenger seat.
The truck pulled up in front of the facility. Armed men wearing the blue and red peaked caps of NKVD Security troops jumped down onto the muddy ground and took up positions around the buildings.
An officer emerged from the cab of the truck. It was only when the officer began walking towards them that Pekkala realized it was a woman, since she wore the same clothes and caps as the men, hiding the curve of her hips and her chest.
The woman stopped in front of them, surveying the filthy disarray of their clothes. She was of medium height, with a round face and wide green eyes. “I am Commissar Major Lysenkova of NKVD Internal Affairs.”
Pekkala had heard about this woman. She was famous for her work within the NKVD, for which most of her colleagues despised her. Commissar Lysenkova had the unenviable task of investigating crimes inside her own branch of service. In the past two years, over thirty NKVD men had gone to their deaths after being convicted of crimes investigated by Lysenkova. Within the close-knit ranks of the NKVD, Pekkala had never heard a kind word said about her. He had even heard a rumor that she denounced her own parents to the authorities, and that her whole family ended up in Siberia as a result.
Given the reputation that preceded her, Pekkala was surprised at how Lysenkova appeared in person. Her tough reputation did not seem to match the gentle angles of her face, and the clothes she wore would have been too small for him by the time he was twelve years old.
“Which one of you is Pekkala?” she asked.