The Beast in the Red Forest Read Online Free PDF Page B

it’s time I listened to Poskrebychev, thought Kirov, as he climbed out of his chair. After all, I can’t report to Comrade Stalin in clothes fit only for the battlefield. The thought occurred to him suddenly that it might have been Stalin himself who raised the objection, and Poskrebychev was just delivering the message. The idea made him queasy, as Stalin was not slow in punishing those who failed to heed his advice. Now there was no question in his mind. It was time for a new set of clothes. Kirov only hoped that, if by some miracle the Inspector was still alive, he never learned about this trip to Linsky.
    Jangling the car keys in his hand, Kirov trampled down the stairs towards the street, bound on a mission to Linsky’s.

(Postmark: Nizhni-Novgorod, June 14th, 1937.)
    Ford Motor Plant
    Workers’ Residence Block 3, ‘Liberty House’
    Nizhni-Novgorod, Soviet Union
    Boys, I am writing in haste. Whichever one of you opens this letter, I hope you will read it to the others. The truth is, I may need your help. My situation has changed recently. It’s too much to go into right now, but the upshot of it is that I am sending my family back to America. I expect it will only be temporary, but they are going to need a place to stay and since my wife’s family is spread out all over the Midwest, I figure it would be better for her and the kids to stay in a neighbourhood where she has friends like you. She’s going to need a place to stay. You know Betty. She doesn’t need much, and she’ll be glad to earn her keep in whatever way she can. I wouldn’t ask this of you if it wasn’t real important. But I am asking you now. I expect she will be home again in a couple of months at the outside. Depending on how things go, I might be following her in a matter of days or it could be a matter of weeks, but I think it’s best if she and the kids leave now. I don’t know if you’ve heard anything from the others who came over, and by that I mean anything about me specifically, but if you have, then just remember that there’s two sides to every story. I’ll explain it all when I see you again, which I hope won’t be too long from now.
    Your old friend, Bill Vasko

  
    The tyres of Kirov’s battered Emka saloon popped rhythmically over the cobblestones.
    Robotically, Kirov steered down one street and another as the chassis of the Emka swayed creaking on its worn-out springs. He wheeled past roadblocks fashioned out of torn-up railroad tracks which had been in place since the winter of 1941, when advance units of the German army Group Centre came within sight of Moscow and the seizure of the capital had seemed almost a foregone conclusion. Now those sections of rail, welded into bouquets of rusted iron, seemed to belong to a different universe from the one in which Russia existed today.
    At last, Kirov pulled up to the kerb outside Linsky’s. It was on a dreary street, so choked with ice and snow by midwinter that few vehicles would risk the journey. Even in summer, the tall buildings cleaved away the light except when the sun stood directly overhead.
    As Kirov climbed out of the car, he paused and looked around. Apart from a man sweeping slush from the sidewalk with a large twig broom on the other side of the street, there was nobody around. And yet he had the feeling that he was being watched. This same sensation had come to him so many times since Pekkala disappeared that Kirov had begun to worry he might be growing paranoid. With gritted teeth, he scanned the windows of the buildings across the way, whose empty reflections returned his nervous stare. He looked up and down the street, but there was only the sweeper, his back turned to Kirov, methodically brushing the sidewalk. Finally, with a growl of frustration at his own fragmenting sanity, Kirov returned to his errand.
    Linsky’s window had not changed in all the years that Kirov had known about the existence of this eccentric little business. The intricate floral