As they walked, Kirov turned to Pekkala. “Who the hell are you?” he asked.

Pekkala did not reply. He followed the young Commissar towards a door at the end of the corridor. The door was half open.

The young man stepped aside.

Pekkala walked into the room.

A man sat at a desk in the corner. Other than the chair in which he sat, this was the only piece of furniture. On his tunic, he wore the rank of a Commander in the Red Army. His dark hair was combed and slicked back on his head with a severe parting which ran like a knife cut across his scalp. The man kept his hands neatly folded on the desk, poised as if he were waiting for someone to take his photograph.

“Anton!” gasped Pekkala.

“Welcome back,” he replied.

Pekkala gaped at the man, who patiently returned the stare. Finally satisfied that his eyes were not playing tricks on him, Pekkala turned on his heel and walked out of the room.

“Where are you going?” asked Kirov, running to catch up with him.

“Any place but here,” replied Pekkala. “You could have had the decency to let me know.”

“Let you know what?” The Commissar’s voice rose in frustration.

The policeman was still standing in the doorway, looking nervously up and down the street.

Kirov placed a hand on Pekkala’s shoulder. “You have not even spoken to Commander Starek.”

“Is that what he calls himself now?”

“Now?” The Commissar’s face twisted in confusion.

Pekkala turned on him. “Starek is not his real name. He has invented it. Like Lenin did! And Stalin! Not because it changes anything, but only because it sounds better than Ulyanov or Dzhugashvili.”

“You realize,” blurted the Commissar, “that I could have you shot for saying that?”

“Find something you couldn’t shoot me for,” replied Pekkala. “That would be more impressive. Or, better still, let my brother do it for you.”

“Your brother?” Kirov ’s mouth hung open. “Commander Starek is your brother?”

Now Anton emerged from the doorway.

“You didn’t tell me,” protested Kirov. “Surely, I should have been informed-”

“I am informing you now.” Anton turned back to Pekkala.

“That’s not really him, is it?” asked the policeman. “You’re just kidding me, right?” He tried to smile, but failed. “This man is not the Emerald Eye. He’s been dead for years. I’ve heard people say he never even existed, that he’s just a legend.”

Anton leaned across and whispered in the policeman’s ear.

The policeman coughed. “But what have I done?” He looked at Pekkala. “What have I done?” he asked again.

“We could ask that man you threw into the street,” replied Pekkala.

The policeman stepped into the doorway. “But this is my station,” he whispered. “I am in command here.” He looked to Anton silently appealing for help.

But Anton’s face remained stony. “I suggest you get out of our way while you still can,” he said quietly.

The officer drifted aside, as if he were no more than the shadow of a man.

Now, with his eyes fixed on Pekkala, Anton gave a nod towards the office down the corridor. “Brother,” he said, “it is time for us to talk.”

It had been ten years since they’d last seen each other, on a desolate and frozen railway platform designated for the transport of prisoners to Siberia.

With his head shaved and still wearing the flimsy beige cotton pajamas which had been issued to him in jail, Pekkala huddled with other convicts waiting for convoy ETAP-61 to arrive. Nobody spoke. As more prisoners arrived, they took their places on the platform, adhering themselves to the mass of frozen men like the layers of an onion.

The sun had already set. Icicles as long as a man’s leg hung from the station house roof. Wind blew down the tracks, stirring up whirlwinds of snow. At each end of the platform, guards with rifles on their backs stood around oil barrels in which fires had been lit. Sparks flitted into the air, illuminating their faces.

Late in the night the train finally arrived. Two guards stood beside each open wagon door. As Pekkala climbed aboard, he happened to glance back at the station house. There, in the light of an oil drum fire, a soldier held his rosy-tinted hands over the flames.

Their eyes met.

Pekkala had only an instant to recognize that it was Anton before one of the guards shoved him into the darkness of the frost-encrusted wagon.

4

PEKKALA HELD THE CUT-THROAT RAZOR POISED BESIDE HIS BEARD-COVERED cheek, wondering how to begin.

It used to be that he shaved once a month, but the old razor he had nursed finally snapped in half one day as he stropped it against the inside of his belt. And that was years ago.

Since then he’d sometimes taken a knife to his hair, sawing it off in clumps while he sat naked in the freezing water of the stream below his cabin. But now, as he stood in the dirty bathroom of the police station, a pair of scissors in one hand and the razor blade in the other, the task before him seemed impossible.

For almost an hour, he hacked and scraped, gritting his teeth with the pain and rubbing his face with a gritty bar of laundry soap he had been loaned along with the razor. He tried not to breathe in the sharp stench of poorly aimed urine, the smoke of old tobacco sunk into the grout between the pale blue tiles, and the medicinal reek of government-issue toilet paper.

Slowly, a face Pekkala barely recognized began to appear in the mirror. When at last the beard had all been cut away, blood was streaming from his chin and upper lip and just beneath his ears. He pulled some cobwebs from a dusty corner of the room and packed them into the wounds to stanch the bleeding.

Emerging from the bathroom, he saw that his old paint-spattered gear had been removed. In its place he found a different set of clothes and was amazed to see that they were the same garments he’d been wearing when he was first arrested. Even these things had been saved. He dressed in the gray collarless shirt, the heavy black moleskin trousers, and a black wool four-pocket vest. Underneath the chair were his heavy ankle-high boots with portyanki foot wrappings neatly rolled inside each one.

Lifting the gun belt over his shoulder, he buckled the strap around his middle. He adjusted it until the butt of the gun rested just beneath the left side of his rib cage so that he could draw the Webley and fire it without breaking the fluidity of motion-a method which had saved his life more than once.

The last piece of clothing was a close-fitting coat made of the same black wool as the vest. Its flap extended to the left side of his chest, in the manner of a double-breasted jacket, except that it fastened with concealed buttons, so that none showed on the coat when it was worn. The coat extended one hand’s length below his knees and its collar was short, unlike the sprawling lapel of a standard Russian army greatcoat. Finally, Pekkala attached the emerald eye under the collar of his jacket.

Again he looked at his face in the mirror. Carefully, he touched the rough pads of his fingertips against the windburned skin beneath his eyes, as if unsure of who was looking back at him.

Then he made his way back to the office. The door was closed. He knocked.

“Enter!” came the sharp reply.

With his heels up on the desk, Anton was smoking a cigarette. The ashtray was almost full. Several of the butts were still smoldering. A cloud of blue smoke hung in the room.

There was no chair except the one in which his brother sat, so Pekkala remained standing.

“Better,” said Anton, settling his feet back on the floor. “But not much.” He folded his hands and laid them on the desk. “You know who has sent for you.”

“Comrade Stalin,” said Pekkala.