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Few people ever had, since his picture had never been published.
    ‘How will I even know it is him?’ he asked.
    Poskrebyshev’s voice crackled down the phone line. ‘His prison number is 4745.’
    Kasinec breathed in, ready to explain that the numbers inked on to those flimsy prison clothes were often so blurred as to be illegible, but Poskrebyshev had already hung up. Following his orders Kasinec had notified the guards to keep an eye out for prisoner 4745 and to make sure he was placed aboard wagon no. 6.
    Kasinec stood on the platform, studying the number of each convict who boarded the train. But none of these men was Pekkala. He held up the transport as long as he could, until the switching junction in Shatura called and demanded to know what had become of ETAP-1889. Finally, he gave the order for the convoy to proceed. Then, with a quiet satisfaction, Kasinec sent a telegram to Poskrebyshev, informing him that prisoner 4745 was not aboard the train.
    Kasinec guessed there would be hell to pay for this and also that he would be the one to pay it, but it comforted him to know that the great inspector had once again found a way to beat the odds.
    It crossed Kasinec’s mind that the stories he had heard about Pekkala might be true – that he was not even a man but, rather, some kind of phantom, conjured from the spirit world by the likes of Grigori Rasputin, that other supernatural in the service of the Tsar.
    *
     
    Once more, the double doors of Stalin’s officer flew open and Stalin appeared, his lips twitching with anger, as he waved a flimsy piece of telegram paper. ‘This message just arrived from the master of the V-4 station, saying that Pekkala was not aboard the train!’
    ‘Would you like me to try to find him?’ Poskrebyshev rose quickly to his feet.
    ‘No! I must handle this myself. Have the car brought around. I will be leaving immediately. Fetch me my coat.’
    Poskrebyshev crashed his heels together. ‘At once, Comrade Stalin!’

Kasinec was standing on the steps
     
     
    Kasinec was standing on the steps of a flimsy wooden structure grandly named the Central Convict Transport Administration Facility, puffing on a cigarette, when an American-made Packard limousine arrived at the station yard. Its cowlings had been splashed with perfect arches of greyish-black mud as it travelled the unpaved Moscow Highway. To the stationmaster, those muddy arches made the machine appear less like a car than a giant bird of prey, swooping from the evening shadows and intent on tearing him apart.
    Kasinec sighed out a lungful of smoke. He had seen this before – desperate people trying to bid one last farewell to friends or family members who had ended up on prison transports. There was nothing Kasinec could do for them. He kept no records of the names of prisoners. By the time convicts arrived at V-4, they had already been transformed into numbers and Kasinec’s only job was to see that the tally on his list matched the total of prisoners boarding the train. When the train was full, the list would be handed to the chief guard accompanying the transport and Kasinec never saw them again.
    Just then, the air was filled with the loud clatter of the telegraph machine in his office spitting out a message. The people in that car would have to wait. Kasinec flicked his cigarette out over the muddy station yard and walked inside to read the telegram.
    Emerging a few moments later, with the telegram still clutched in his fist, Kasinec saw a man in a fur-collared coat climb from the Packard. It took him only a second to realise that this man was none other than Stalin himself.
    Immediately, Kasinec’s hands began to shake.
    Stalin crossed the station yard and climbed the three wooden steps to the balcony where Kasinec was waiting.
    Kasinec saluted, fingertips quivering against his temples.
    ‘What happened?’ asked Stalin, a halo of breath condensing around his head. ‘Why didn’t he get aboard the train with all the