Siberian Red Read Online Free PDF Page B

other prisoners?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ stammered Kasinec.
    ‘We’ll never find him now,’ muttered Stalin, more to himself than to the stationmaster.
    ‘Actually, Comrade Stalin, we have found Inspector Pekkala.’ Kasinec held up the telegram, which had just arrived from the switching junction at Shatura, twenty kilometres to the east.
    ‘Found him? But you just told me he wasn’t aboard the train!’
    ‘That’s not exactly true, Comrade Stalin. He’s just not among the prisoners.’
    ‘Then where the hell is he?’
    ‘According to the message from Shatura, he appears to be driving the train.’
    Stalin shuddered, as if an electric current had just travelled through his body. He snatched the telegram from Kasinec’s hand, read it through, then crumpled the paper and flung it away into the darkness. Turning away from the stationmaster, Stalin fixed his gaze upon a point in the distance where the rails appeared to converge. ‘Pekkala, you son of a bitch!’ he roared, his voice like thunder in the still night air.
    *
     
    When the train stopped at Shatura, a guard who had climbed down on to the tracks in order to relieve himself was astonished to see a prisoner walking towards him. Instantly, he swung the rifle off his back and aimed it at the convict.
    But the prisoner neither raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, nor tried to run away. Instead, he only held a finger to his lips, motioning for the guard to be silent. This so astonished the guard that he actually lowered his gun. ‘If you are who I think you are,’ he whispered, ‘our orders were to put you on wagon number 6‚ back at the V-4 station.’
    ‘Why does it matter which wagon I get on?’
    The guard shook his head. ‘Those were the orders from stationmaster Kasinec.’
    ‘Can you get me in there now?’
    ‘Not without making them suspicious. The only time we move people is if a fight has broken out.’
    ‘Will that not do for a reason?’
    The guard studied Pekkala uneasily. ‘It would, but you don’t look as if you’ve been in a fight.’
    Pekkala sighed as he realised what must happen now.
    After a moment’s hesitation, the guard lifted his rifle, turning the butt end towards Pekkala. ‘Travel well, Inspector.’
    ‘Thank you,’ said Pekkala, and then everything went black.
    He regained consciousness just as the door to wagon no. 6 was slammed shut. His lips were sticky with blood. Tracing his fingertips cautiously along the bridge of his nose, Pekkala was relieved to feel no jagged edge of broken bone.
    In those first hours of the journey, the cramped space of the wagon remained silent, leaving each man alone with his thoughts.
    As frost began to form across the inside of the wagon walls, Pekkala felt a slow fear creeping into the marrow of his bones. And he knew it would stay there, like the frost, which would not melt until these wagons rolled back empty to the west.
    By dawn of the next day, the convoy had reached Sarapaul Station. Through the barbed-wire-laced opening that served as a window, Pekkala saw the platform jammed with soldiers on their way to man the border in the west. In their long, ill-fitting greatcoats, with pointed Budenny caps upon their heads, they boarded wagons no different from the ones in which Pekkala was riding. Blankets, rolled and tied over their shoulders, gave to these soldiers the appearance of hunchbacks. Their long Mosin-Nagant rifles looked more like cripples’ canes than guns.
    Morning sun sliced through rust holes in the metal roof, flooding the wagon with spears of golden light. As Pekkala raised his head to feel the warmth upon his face, he realised that this simple pleasure had already become a luxury.
    *
     
    Kirov sat at his desk, writing a report. The only sound in the room was the rustle of his pen nib across the page.
    The sun had just risen above the rooftops of Moscow. Specks of dust, glittering as they drifted lazily about the room, reminded him of the smoke particles he had