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Krasnagolyana to deliver the news that Pekkala’s sentence had been repealed, but only on condition that he agreed to work for Stalin, just as he had once done for the Tsar.
    As a gesture of Stalin’s good will, the officer brought with him a satchel containing two trophies which had been taken from Pekkala at the time of his arrest, and which he was now authorised to return.
    One was a .455 calibre Webley revolver with solid brass handles, a gift from King George V of England to his cousin the Tsar, and passed on to Pekkala by Nicholas II as a token of his esteem. The second trophy was the emerald eye itself, which Stalin had kept in a purple velvet bag in his desk drawer. The jewelled emblem had been one of his most prized possessions. Often, over the years, when Stalin found himself alone in his red-carpeted office in the Kremlin, he would take out the badge and hold it in the palm of his hand, watching the jungle-green stone drink in the sunlight, as if it were a living thing.
    Since that time, maintaining an uneasy truce with his former enemies, Pekkala had continued in his role as Special Investigator, answerable only to the ruler of the Russian people.

‘There you are!’
    â€˜There you are!’ exclaimed a Red Army major as he stepped into the fuggy air of Café Tilsit. He was tall and wiry, with rosy cheeks and arching eyebrows which gave him an expression of perpetual astonishment.
    On each sleeve of his close-fitting gymnastiorka tunic, he wore a red star etched out in gold-coloured thread, to indicate the rank of commissar. Riding breeches, the same dull colour as rotten apples, had been tucked into a set of highly polished knee-length boots. He strode across the room and joined Pekkala at his table.
    While they were openly curious about Pekkala, the diners at the café immediately averted their gaze from this officer, having recognised the red stars of the commissar upon his sleeves. Now they busied themselves with scraping dirty fingernails, or reading scraps of newspaper or with a sudden fascination for their soup.
    The man who sat before Pekkala now was that same officer who had trudged through the Siberian wilderness to deliver the news that Stalin required his services again.
    They had been working side by side for many years now, each having learned to tolerate the eccentricities of the other.
    Kirov reached across the table, picked up the half-drunk mug of kvass, took a sip and winced. ‘For breakfast?’ he asked.
    Pekkala answered with a question of his own. ‘What brings you here at this ungodly hour?’
    â€˜I came to deliver a message.’
    â€˜Then deliver it, Major Kirov,’ said Pekkala.
    â€˜We are wanted at the Kremlin.’
    â€˜Why?’ asked Pekkala.
    â€˜Whatever it is, it can’t wait,’ replied Kirov, rising to his feet.

At the V-2 rocket site
    At the V-2 rocket site, General Hagemann’s technicians had just completed the dismantling of the mobile launch platform, which they referred to as a ‘table’. The heavy scaffolding, bearing the scorch marks of numerous ignition blasts, had been stacked upon the Meillerwagen, which had been fitted with a double set of rear wheels to take the extra weight of a fully loaded rocket.
    The technicians, using their helmets as seats, sat in the road smoking cigarettes which, these days, consisted mostly of corn silk and acorns, while they waited for the order to move out. Assembling and dismantling the V-2 platforms had become second nature to these men. It had to, since their lives depended on the speed with which they worked. During the hours of daylight, once the enemy had spotted the tell-tale fire of a V-2 launch, it was only a matter of time before artillery was brought to bear on the position, or fighter planes equipped with armour-piercing bullets roared in at treetop level. It was the job of these technicians to be long gone by then, and they required little encouragement to carry out