At last Klenovkin closed the file and raised his head, squinting at Pekkala through rimless spectacles. “We have all fallen from grace in one way or another,” he said. There was a resonance in his voice as if he were addressing a crowd instead of just one man. “Having just read your history, convict Pekkala, I see that you have fallen further than most.
“You are a disease,” Klenovkin told Pekkala. “I will not allow you to infect my prisoners. The simplest thing to do would be to have you shot, but unfortunately I am not allowed to do that. Some benefit must be derived from your existence before we consign you to oblivion.
“I am sending you out into the wilderness,” continued Klenovkin. “You will become a tree-marker in the Valley of Krasnagolyana, a job no man has held for longer than six months.”
“Why not?”
“Because nobody lives that long.”
Working alone, with no chance of escape and far from any human contact, tree-markers died from exposure, starvation, and loneliness. Those who became lost, or who fell and broke a leg, were usually eaten by wolves. Tree marking was the only assignment at Borodok said to be worse than a death sentence.
But six months later, to Klenovkin’s astonishment, Pekkala was still alive. And he stayed alive.
When a young Lieutenant Kirov arrived to recall him back to duty with the Bureau of Special Operations, Pekkala had been living in the forest for nine years, longer than any other tree-marker in the history of the Gulag system.
TUCKING RYABOV’S FILE into his coat, Pekkala turned to leave.
“One more thing before you go,” said Stalin.
Pekkala turned again. “Yes?”
Reaching down beside his chair, Stalin picked up a small shopping bag and held it out towards Pekkala. “Your clothes for the journey.”
Pekkala glanced inside and saw what at first appeared to be some dirty, pinkish-gray rags. He lifted out the flimsy pajama-type shirt and recognized a standard prison-issue uniform. A shudder passed through him as he thought back to the last time he had worn garments like this.
At that moment, the door opened and Poskrebyshev walked in. “Comrade Stalin, I beg to report that Poland has surrendered.”
Stalin nodded and said nothing.
“I also beg to inform you that the Katyn Operation has begun,” continued Poskrebyshev.
Stalin’s only reply was an angry stare.
“You asked me to tell you …”
“Get out,” said Stalin quietly.
Poskrebyshev’s heels smashed together once more, then he turned and left the room, closing the double doors behind him with a barely audible click of the lock.
“The Katyn Operation?” asked Pekkala.
“It would have been better for you not to know,” Stalin replied, “but since it is too late for that, let me answer your question with a question of my own. Suppose you were an officer in the Polish army, that you had surrendered and been taken prisoner. Let us say you had been well treated. You had been housed. You had been fed.”
“What is it you want to know, Comrade Stalin?”
“Say I offer you a choice: either a place in the Red Army or the opportunity to return home as a civilian.”
“They will choose to go home,” said Pekkala.
“Yes,” replied Stalin. “Most of them did.”
“But they will never arrive, will they?”
“No.”
In his mind, Pekkala could see those officers, bundled in the mysterious brown of their Polish army greatcoats, hands tied behind their backs with copper wire. One after the other, NKVD troopers shoved them to the edge of a huge pit dug into the orangey-brown soil of a forest in eastern Poland. With the barrels of their guns, the NKVD men tipped off the caps of their prisoners, sending them into the pit below. As each Polish officer was shot in the back of the head, he fell forward into the pit, onto the bodies of those who had been killed before.
How many were there? Pekkala wondered. Hundreds? Thousands?
By nightfall, the pit would be covered up.
Within a few weeks, tiny shoots of grass would rise from the trampled soil.
One thing Pekkala had learned, however. Nothing stays buried forever.
“You have not answered my question,” said Stalin. “I asked what you would do. Not they.”
“I would realize I had no choice,” replied Pekkala.
With a scythe-like sweep of his hand, Stalin brushed aside Pekkala’s words. “But I did give them a choice!”
“No, Comrade Stalin, you did not.”
Stalin smiled. “That is why you have survived, and why those other men will not.”
As soon as Pekkala had departed, Stalin pushed the intercom button. “Poskrebyshev!”
“Yes, Comrade Stalin.”
“All messages between Pekkala and Major Kirov are to be intercepted.”
“Of course.”
“Whatever Pekkala has to say, I want to read it before Kirov does. I want no secrets kept from me.”
“No, Comrade Stalin,” said Poskrebyshev, and a fresh coat of sweat slicked his palms.
“Is there anything else, Poskrebyshev?”
“Why do you let Pekkala speak to you that way? So disrespectfully?” Over the years, Poskrebyshev had advanced to the stage where he could occasionally express an unsolicited opinion to the Boss, although only in the most reverent of tones. But the way Pekkala talked to Stalin caused Poskrebyshev’s bowels to cramp. Even more amazing to him was the fact that Stalin let Pekkala get away with it.
“The reason I endure his insolence—unlike, for example, yours, Poskrebyshev—is that Pekkala is the only person I know of who would not kill me for the chance to rule this country.”
“Surely that is not true, Comrade Stalin!” protested Poskrebyshev, knowing perfectly well that whether it was true or not, what mattered was that Stalin believed it.
“Ask yourself, Poskrebyshev—what would you do to sit where I am sitting now?”
An image flashed through Poskrebyshev’s mind, of himself at Stalin’s desk, smoking Stalin’s cigarettes and bullying his very own secretary. In that moment, Poskrebyshev knew that, in spite of all his claims of loyalty, he would have gutted Stalin like a fish for the chance to take the leader’s place.
ONE HOUR LATER, as the last rays of sunset glistened on the ice-sheathed telegraph wires, Pekkala’s battered Emka staff car, driven by his assistant, Major Kirov, pulled into a rail yard at mile marker 17 on the Moscow Highway. The rail yard had no name. It was known simply as V-4, and the only trains departing from this place were convict transports headed for the Gulags.
However miserable the journey promised to be, Pekkala knew it was necessary to travel as a convict in order to protect the cover story that he had fallen out of favor with Stalin and received a twenty-year sentence for unspecified crimes against the State.
“You can still call this off, Inspector,” Major Kirov said.
“You know that is impossible.”
“They have no right to send you back to that place, even if it is to carry out an investigation.”
“There is no ‘they,’ Kirov. The order came directly from Stalin.”
“Then he should at least have given you time to study the relevant files.”
“It wouldn’t have made any difference,” Pekkala answered. “The victim’s dossier is incomplete. There was only one page. The rest of it must be lost somewhere in NKVD archives. As a result, I know almost nothing about the man whose death I am being sent to investigate.”