The Red Coffin (19 page)

‘You know,’ said Kirov cheerfully, ‘I have a certificate of merit from the Komsomol for target practice. It’s hanging on my wall at home.’

‘I must have missed that one,’ mumbled Pekkala.

‘It’s in the living room,’ said Kirov, ‘right next to my music award.’

‘You got an award for music?’

‘For my rendition of “Farewell, Slavianka”,’ replied Kirov. He breathed in, stuck out his chest and began to sing, glancing in the mirror at his audience. ‘Farewell, the land of the fathers …’

One raised eyebrow from Pekkala shut him up.

Machine gun fire echoed around the buildings of the Nagorski facility.

In the confined space of the Iron House, the percussion of each shell merged into a continuous, deafening snarl. To Pekkala, standing at the entrance, it was as if the air itself were being torn apart. Beside him stood Kirov, the two men waiting while the metal snake of bullets uncoiled from its green ammunition box, spitting a shower of flickering brass from the ejection port of the machine gun. Just when it seemed as if the sound would never end, the belt ran out and the gunfire ceased abruptly. Spent cartridges rang musically as they tumbled to the concrete floor.

Gorenko and Ushinsky set the gun aside, climbed to their feet and removed the cup-shaped noise protectors from their ears. A hazy wreath of gunsmoke hung about their heads.

The weapon was aimed at a pyramid of 100-litre metal barrels. The diesel fuel these barrels once contained had been replaced with sand to absorb the impact of the bullets. Now gaping tears showed in the metal and sand poured in streams from the holes, forming cones upon the floor like time marked in an hourglass.

Ushinsky held up a stop watch. ‘Thirty-three seconds.’

‘Better,’ said Gorenko.

‘Still not good enough,’ replied Ushinsky. ‘Nagorski would have been breathing down our necks …’

‘Gentlemen,’ said Pekkala, his voice resonating through the girders which supported the corrugated-iron roof.

Surprised, both scientists wheeled about to see where the voices had come from.

‘Inspector!’ exclaimed Ushinsky. ‘Welcome back to the mad house.’

‘What are you working on here?’ asked Kirov.

‘We are testing the rate of fire of the T-34’s machine guns,’ replied Ushinsky. ‘It’s not right yet.’

‘It’s close enough,’ said Gorenko.

‘If the Colonel was alive,’ insisted Ushinsky, ‘he’d never let you say a thing like that.’

Pekkala walked over to where the scientists were standing. He removed the paper from his pocket, unfolded it and held it out towards the two men. ‘Can either of you tell me what this means?’

Both of them peered at the page.

‘That’s the Colonel’s writing,’ said Ushinsky.

Gorenko nodded. ‘It’s a formula.’

‘A formula for what?’ asked Pekkala.

Ushinsky shook his head. ‘We’re not chemists, Inspector.’

‘That kind of thing is not our speciality,’ agreed Gorenko.

‘Is there anyone here who could tell us?’ asked Kirov.

The scientists shook their heads.

Pekkala sighed with annoyance, thinking that they had come all this way for nothing. ‘Let’s go,’ he said to Kirov.

As they turned to leave, the scientists began a whispered conversation.

Pekkala stopped. ‘What is it, gentlemen?’

‘Well …’ began Ushinsky.

‘Keep your mouth shut,’ ordered Gorenko. ‘Colonel Nagorski may be dead, but this is still his project and his rules should be obeyed!’

‘It doesn’t matter now!’ yelled Ushinsky. He kicked an empty bullet cartridge across the floor. It skipped over the concrete, spinning away among the sleeping hulks of half-assembled tanks. ‘None of it matters now! Can’t you see?’

‘Nagorski said …’

‘Nagorski is gone!’ bellowed Ushinsky. ‘Everything we’ve done has been for nothing.’

‘I thought the Konstantin Project was almost finished,’ said Pekkala.

‘Almost!’ replied Ushinsky. ‘Almost is not good enough.’ He waved his arm across the assembly area. ‘We might as well just throw these monsters on the junk heap!’

‘One of these days,’ Gorenko warned him, ‘you’re going to say something you’ll regret.’

Ignoring his colleague, Ushinsky turned to the investigators. ‘You’ll need to speak with a man named Lev Zalka.’

Gorenko looked at the ground and shook his head. ‘If the Colonel heard you say that name …’

‘Zalka was part of the original team,’ continued Ushinsky. ‘He designed the V2 diesel. That’s what we use in the tanks. But he’s been gone for months. Nagorski fired him. They got into an argument.’

‘An argument?’ muttered Gorenko. ‘Is that what you call it? Nagorski attacked him with a 40-millimetre wrench! The Colonel would have killed Zalka if he hadn’t ducked. After that, Nagorski said that if anyone so much as mentioned Zalka’s name, they would be thrown off the project.’

‘What was this fight about?’ asked Pekkala.

Both scientists shrugged uneasily.

‘Zalka had wanted to install bigger turret hatches, as well as hatches underneath the hull.’

‘Why?’ asked Kirov. ‘Wouldn’t that make the tank more vulnerable?’

‘Yes, it would,’ replied Gorenko.

‘But bigger hatches,’ interrupted Ushinsky, ‘would mean that the tank crew had a better chance of escaping if the engine caught fire or if the hull was breached.’

‘Colonel Nagorski refused to consider it. For him, the machine came first.’

‘And that’s why your test drivers have been calling it the Red Coffin,’ said Pekkala.

Gorenko shot an angry glance towards Ushinsky. ‘I see that someone has been talking.’

‘What does it matter now?’ growled Ushinsky.

‘Are you certain this is what Nagorski and Zalka were arguing about on that day?’ asked Pekkala, anxious to avoid another argument between the two men.

‘All I can tell you,’ replied Gorenko, ‘is that Zalka left the facility that day and he never came back.’

‘Do you have any idea where we could find this man?’ asked Kirov.

‘He used to have an apartment on Prechistenka Street,’ said Ushinsky, ‘but that was back when he worked here. He may have moved since then. If anybody knows what that formula means, it’s him.’

When Pekkala and Kirov left the building, Gorenko followed them out. ‘I’m sorry, Inspectors,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to forgive my colleague. He loses his temper a lot. He says things he doesn’t mean.’

‘It sounds like he meant them to me,’ remarked Kirov.

‘It’s just that we had some bad news today.’

‘What news is that?’ asked Pekkala.

‘Come. Let me show you.’ He led them around to the back of the assembly building to where a T-34 had been parked at the edge of the trees. The machine had a large number 4 painted on the side of its turret. Pekkala’s eye was drawn to a long, narrow scrape, which had cut down to the bare metal. The silver stripe passed along the length of the turret, neatly bisecting the number. ‘They brought it back this morning.’

‘Who did?’ asked Pekkala.

‘The Army,’ Gorenko replied. ‘They had it out on some secret field trial. We weren’t allowed to know anything about it. And now it’s ruined.’

‘Ruined?’ asked Kirov. ‘It looks the same as all the others.’

Gorenko climbed up on to the flat section at the back of the tank and opened up the engine grille. He reached his hand into the engine and when he drew it out, his fingertips were smeared with what looked like grease. ‘You know what this is?’

Pekkala shook his head.

‘It’s fuel,’ explained Gorenko. ‘Ordinary diesel fuel. At least that’s what it is supposed to be. But it has been contaminated.’

‘With what?’

‘Bleach. It has destroyed the inner workings of the engine. The whole thing will have to be refitted, the fuel system drained, all hoses and feeds replaced. It needs a complete
rebuild. Number 4 was Ushinksy’s own special project. Each of us here had a favourite. We sort of adopted them. And Ushinsky is taking this hard.’

‘Perhaps it was an accident,’ suggested Kirov.

Gorenko shook his head. ‘Whoever did this knew exactly how to wreck an engine. Not just damage it, you understand.
Destroy
it. There’s no doubt in my mind, Inspectors. This was a deliberate act.’ He jumped down from the tank, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the fuel from his fingers. ‘If you knew how hard he worked on this machine, you’d understand how he feels.’

‘Is he right?’ asked Pekkala. ‘Is the whole project ruined?’

‘No!’ replied Gorenko. ‘In a few months, as long as we can keep working on it, the T-34 should be ready. Even with Nagorski gone, the T-34 will still be an excellent machine, but there’s a difference between excellence and perfection. The trouble with Ushinsky is that he needs everything to be perfect. As far as he’s concerned, now that the Colonel is gone, any hope of perfection is out of reach. And I’ll tell you what I’ve been telling Ushinsky since we first began this project. It would never have been perfect. There will always be something, like the rate of fire in those machine guns, which will just have to be good enough.’

‘I understand,’ said Pekkala. ‘Tell him we took no offence.’

‘If you could tell him yourself,’ pleaded Gorenko. ‘If you could just talk to him, tell him to choose his words more carefully, I think it would really help.’

‘We don’t have time now,’ said Kirov.

‘Call us at the office later,’ suggested Pekkala. ‘Right now, we need to find Zalka.’

‘Maybe Ushinsky was right after all,’ said Gorenko. ‘Now that Nagorski is gone, we could use all the help we can get.’

One hour later, Kirov dropped Pekkala at the office.

‘I’ll put in a call to Lysenkova,’ said Pekkala. ‘I need to tell her she can stop searching for those White Guild agents. As of now, all our efforts should be focused on locating Zalka. Get down to the records office and see if you can find out where he lives. But don’t try to bring him in on your own. We should assume that Zalka was the man in the woods. It looks like he had the motive for killing Nagorski, and the fact, that he would have known his way around the facility would explain why Samarin thought someone on the inside was responsible for the murder.’

While Kirov drove to the public records office, Pekkala went up to the office and called Lysenkova. Worried that NKVD might be listening in, he told her they needed to meet in person.

As soon as she arrived, Pekkala explained about the White Guild agents.

‘Did you have any luck deciphering the formula, Inspector?’ asked Lysenkova.

‘That’s the other reason for tracking down Zalka,’ replied Pekkala. ‘If he’s still alive, he may be the only one who can help us.’

Lysenkova stood. ‘I’ll get started right away. And thank you for trusting me, Inspector. There are many who don’t. I’m sure you’ve heard the rumours.’

‘There are always rumours.’

‘Well, you should know that some of them are true.’

Pekkala raised his head and looked her in the eye. ‘I heard that you denounced your own parents.’

Lysenkova nodded. ‘Yes, I did.’

‘Why?’

‘Because my father told me to. It was my only way out.’

‘Out of where?’

‘A place you know well, Inspector. I am talking about Siberia.’

Pekkala stared at her. ‘But I thought they were sent to Siberia because you denounced them. You mean you were already there?’

‘That’s right. My mother had already been sentenced to twenty years as a class 59 criminal.’

‘Your mother? What did she do?’

‘My mother,’ explained Lysenkova, ‘was the only female supervisor on the production staff of the Leningrad Steam Turbine Factory. The factory was to be one of the great industrial triumphs of the 1920s, a place where foreign dignitaries could be brought to show the efficiency of the Soviet Union. Stalin himself had arranged to visit the factory on its opening day. The trouble was that construction had fallen behind schedule, but Stalin still refused to change the date of his visit. So at a time when the factory should have been operational, they had not yet produced a single tractor. In fact, the main construction floor didn’t even have a roof yet. And that was exactly where Stalin had announced he would meet the workers of the factory. So, roof or no roof, that’s where the meeting was held. It was raining the day he arrived. My mother ordered a podium to be built so that Stalin could stand above the crowd and look out over the heads of the workers.
There was also a tarpaulin to shield him from the rain. The day before his visit, political advisers had arrived at the factory. Above the podium, they hung a banner.’ Lysenkova spread her arms above her head, as if to frame the text between her hands. ‘“Long Live Stalin, The Best Friend Of All Soviet Workers”. But there was no way to shelter the workers from the rain, so they all stood there getting wet. They stood for an hour and a half before Stalin even arrived. By then, the letters of the banner had started to run. Red ink was dripping off the banner. It made puddles on the concrete floor. When Stalin walked up to the podium, everybody clapped, as the political advisers had instructed them to do. The trouble was, nobody knew when to stop. They all assumed that Stalin would make some gesture, or start talking, or something, anything, to indicate when the clapping should cease. But when the applause started, Stalin just stood there. Of course, it was obvious he must have been furious that the factory was only half built, but he showed no anger. He just smiled at everybody getting soaked. Red droplets fell from the banner. The clapping continued. The workers were too afraid to quit.

‘This went on for twenty minutes. My mother was in charge of the floor. That was her job. Nobody else was doing anything. She began to think it might be her responsibility to get the meeting started. The longer this clapping went on, the more convinced she became that, since no one else was prepared to act, she ought to be the one.’

Lysenkova brought her hands slowly together and then drew them apart and kept them there. ‘So she stopped clapping. That was the moment Stalin had been waiting for, but not so that he could start the meeting. He looked at
my mother. That’s all. Just looked at her. Then he got down from the podium, and he and his entourage drove away. No one had said a word. It was still pouring. The letters on the banner had completely washed away. One week later, my mother, my father and I were all shipped out to the Special Settlement of Dalstroy-Seven.’