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Ever since his brother had left for Russia, Emil’s mind had been plagued with doubts.

He wondered if Stefan had been arrested, or even killed, or if by accident or out of curiosity he had opened the vial of soman, in which case he would have died on the spot, taking with him anyone who happened to be standing nearby. There was a third possibility, which was that Stefan had simply abandoned him to his fate. As the days wore on, this last option began to seem increasingly likely.

Emil cursed himself for having placed his faith in his younger brother. The more he thought about it, the more insane it seemed that he should have trusted him at all.

It was cold in the house. Even a small fire would have made a difference, but Stefan had warned him against lighting one, since the smoke would let people know he was there. His brother had left him with plenty of food, but almost all of it was meat. The man was a butcher, after all. The meat had been smoked with a variety of woods – oak, maple and alder – and hung in blackened strips from racks in the kitchen. The smell of it, which Emil had initially found pleasant, if a little overpowering, had now suffused into his clothes, his hair and his skin. He tasted the smoke every time he took a breath, and its stench had become nauseating.

The day after Stefan left for Moscow, Emil had been woken by the ear-splitting roar of engines. As his eyes snapped open, his first thought was that a tank was coming through the wall. He screamed, tipped himself on to the floor and crawled under the bed, just as six Messerschmitt 262 jet fighters screeched past at treetop level, heading east on their morning patrol. The whole house shook. The windows rippled as if the glass had turned to water. The vibration was still shuddering in his bones as he slithered out from beneath the bed and rushed to the window, just in time to see the planes pass out of sight, leaving behind oil-black trails of exhaust. He had heard about the new jet planes and recognised their Jumo engines from classified documents he had seen from a project designed to produce synthetic fuel. There was also the sound they made; not the buzz-saw hum of a propeller plane, but something that sounded to Professor Kohl more like a hive full of angry bees. There had been much talk, not only at IG Farben but in the press as well, of secret new ‘revenge’ weapons soon to be unleashed upon the Allies, which would turn the tide of the war. From the first mention of these
Vergeltungswaffen
, Professor Kohl had assumed that the Sartaman Project would feature prominently in this new arsenal of destruction. But now the fading rumble of the 262s seemed to drive home the fact that he, and his inventions, had been left out of the Führer’s grand equation.

The planes returned a little over an hour later and this time Emil got a better look at their grey, shark-like silhouettes, the black German crosses almost hidden among blooms of camouflage paint, like giant, sooty fingerprints.

Two hours later, they flew past again and a third time before the sun went down, causing the house to tremble as if caught in the grip of an earthquake.

These regularly scheduled tremors became a daily fixture in Emil’s existence. He grew to anticipate them, becoming more and more agitated as the time for their arrival drew near. And if they were late, even by a few minutes, he found himself with his nose pressed to the window, peering up through the trees to catch a glimpse of them as they flew past.

This, combined with inactivity and loneliness, was driving Kohl close to distraction, but still he did not dare go outside.

As the days passed, and the time allotted for his leave expired, Emil began to dwell upon the fact that his absence would, by now, have been reported. The disappearance of an IG Farben chemist, particularly one with his level of expertise and having been involved in such delicate work, would not be a matter for the bumbling municipal police. The matter would be handed over to the Secret State Police. It was only a matter of time before the Gestapo came knocking at his door and once they got their hands on him, all chance of escape would be lost.

I can’t just sit here waiting to be arrested, thought Emil, staring out of the window at the dirt road lined with pine trees, which was his only view from the front of the house. From the back, all he could see was a small overgrown yard, filled with firewood and bordered by a tall stockade fence.

Weighing his options for the hundredth time, it became clear that there was only one possible course of action open to him now. He would return to Leverkeusen, hand over the briefcase containing the vials and confess what he had done. Of course, he would leave out the part about handing his brother a vial of soman, but if the Russians turned up with soman at some later date, he could rightly point out that they, too, had been looking into organophosphate compounds before the war and must have stumbled upon the same formula by themselves.

If the authorities asked him where he had gone, he would simply tell them he had travelled to his brother’s house and had been unable to get back because of the fighting. The lie was both simple and plausible and, as for the chemical weapons, the only thing he had really done was to stabilise a pre-existing compound, thereby making it not only easier to transport but easier to neutralise as well. Yes, he had disobeyed an order, but he had done so with the best of intentions. It was simply a misunderstanding, and, at least the way he planned to tell it, no harm had been done.

The more Emil thought about it, the better his chances seemed. There was bound to be some kind of disciplinary action, but nothing too serious, he now convinced himself.

Soon, Emil’s apprehensions had been swept aside. The way forward seemed clear. All he had to do was get back to Leverkeusen. It was now 18 March. He imagined he could be home again by the 20th, provided that he left immediately. The nearest station was about five kilometres to the west, in the town of Kottonforst. Travelling on foot, which appeared to be his only option, he knew he could be there in an hour or so. There was only one train a day at Kottonforst, which passed through the town at two o’clock each afternoon. It was only 9 a.m. now, which meant he had more than enough time.

Having dawdled away his time over the past few weeks, Emil now began to move at a feverish pace, packing his rucksack with clothes, wrapping some smoked meat in a handkerchief for a meal and filling a canteen with water from the pump in the garden. Once this was done, he still had four and a half hours before the train arrived.

Better, thought Emil, to arrive on time, rather than be seen hanging about the station for hours. That is bound to look suspicious. He decided to head out at eleven.

Satisfied with his plan, Emil found himself once more at a loose end. Shuddering with the cold that had permeated every corner of this unheated house, it occurred to him that he could light a fire now. By the time anybody thought to check on the smoke, he would be gone, and at least he would have spent his last couple of hours getting warm, in preparation for the long journey ahead.

He made a fire in the iron stove, laying out splinters of kindling and crumpled pieces of newspaper. When these were burning, he placed a log on top and sat back, the stove door open, holding his hands out towards the spitting yellow flames.

At last, when the warmth had finally returned to the marrow of his bones, Emil kicked the stove door shut, put his rucksack on his back, picked up his suitcase and headed out through the door.

The road was long and deserted, and Emil whistled to keep himself company. The tune he whistled was called the ‘Erikamarsch’. He couldn’t remember all the lyrics but they were something about a little flower growing on the heath among a hundred thousand other flowers. He had often heard the soldiers singing it as they marched along his street earlier in the war, and for a moment, he remembered how it had felt when the armies of his country seemed unstoppable, and victory, both in the east and the west, had seemed so obvious a conclusion that no one even thought to doubt it. Then a weight settled in Emil’s chest as his thoughts returned to the present and he remembered that the soldiers never sang any more when they went marching by his house.

Six days after leaving Moscow, Stefan Kohl reached home.

He was completely exhausted. For this last stretch of the journey, he had driven more than twenty hours straight, stopping only for fuel and fresh water. He had made better time than expected, since many of the roads leading west, far from being the quagmires of mud he had anticipated, had recently been shored up by the Red Army’s Corps of Engineers. At fuel depots along the way, he had simply handed over the required number of fuel coupons and taken what he needed. Seeing his uniform and the Special Operations licence plate on the Emka, the depot operators had never given Zolkin’s identification book more than a passing glance, and sometimes didn’t ask for it at all.

At no point did he spot the GAZ-67 staff car which had driven Pekkala from Moscow. With its 54-horsepower engine, it was considerably more powerful than the tired old Emka, and Stefan assumed that they must be far ahead of him.

Elizaveta had soon regained consciousness, and Stefan was obliged to tie her hands and legs with rope, as well as put a gag in her mouth. He also covered her with a wool blanket, which he had found draped over the back seat of the car. The first time he tried to give her water, she screamed when he removed the gag, so he put the gag back in and didn’t give her anything. The next time he stopped, six hours later, she no longer screamed when he gave her something to drink, and he also gave her some of the tinned sardines he had been saving for himself.

From then on, they maintained an uneasy truce. Several times a day, on deserted stretches of road, he would stop the car and let her out for a few minutes at a time.

‘I know who you are,’ she told him. ‘I know what you are looking for and, even as we speak, my husband and Pekkala are on their way to give you what you want. If you hurt me, the deal will be off and, I assure you, that will be the least of your troubles.’

Kohl smiled faintly. ‘I have no intention of hurting you,’ he replied. ‘I need you very much alive.’

‘Why not just let me go?’ she demanded. ‘This has nothing to do with me!’

‘Think of yourself as insurance,’ he answered, then put the gag in place, closed the boot and got back on the road. Having reached Ahlborn at last, Stefan drove the dirt-crusted Emka through the tall grass around the back of his house, so that it could not be seen from the road. Cutting the engine, he let his head sink forward on to the steering wheel. He then pulled the Nagant revolver from his coat pocket, climbed out of the car and let himself into the house. ‘Emil!’ he called out, but even as he spoke, he could sense the place was empty. There was a hollow stillness in the air, like the emptiness which hovered around animals just after he had butchered them.

A quick inspection of the house confirmed that there was no sign of a struggle. He stepped out through the front door and walked a short distance down the road that led towards the centre of the village. Aside from his own, there were no recent tyre tracks, but he did catch sight of a single line of footsteps, leading away from the house. He knew they must belong to Emil, but why he had left was a mystery. At that moment, from the direction of Ahlborn, he heard the sound of a car engine.

I’m too late, thought Stefan. Pekkala has found my brother, and now they’re heading back across the border.

At that moment, a noise like distant thunder reached his ears. Stefan looked up into the cloudless sky. The ground began to shake beneath his feet and, a second later, he flinched as six planes flew past, flying so low that he felt the heat of their engines. Before he was even fully aware of what had happened, the aircraft were already gone. The power of those winged monsters seemed to him less like inventions of man and more like the riders of the Apocalypse, galloping past on their hollow-eyed horses.

Then, above the clamour of the planes, Stefan heard the hammering pulse of heavy-weapons fire. It took him a second to realise that one of the planes must have been firing at a target on the ground.

Stefan dashed back to the Emka, opened the boot and hauled out his prisoner. ‘You had better pray it’s not too late,’ he said through clenched teeth as he gripped Elizaveta’s arm. With the young woman stumbling along beside him, he set off at a run towards the centre of the town.

The sound Kohl had heard was not that of Pekkala leaving Ahlborn. In fact, he and Kirov had only just arrived. Their car had got stuck behind a column of supply vehicles just outside Bryansk and, later, outside Kalinkovichi, they had arrived at a fuel depot, only to discover that soldiers of Marshal Zhukov’s 1st Belorussian Front had requisitioned every drop of fuel. They were forced to detour to the north, following directions to another fuel depot, where they were able to fill their tank.

Their driver was a gaunt-faced Mongolian named Narmandak, who had been forcibly recruited into the Red Army after straying across the border in search of lost sheep from his herd. They had taught him to drive and then shipped him off to Moscow, where he had ended up at the army motor pool. When he received the call to collect Kirov and Pekkala from outside their office, there had been no explanation of how far they would be travelling. He was simply told to take the two men wherever they wanted to go. Such vague instructions were not uncommon, and usually involved driving generals around to various bars and brothels in the city. Narmandak had prepared himself for a long night of sitting in some polished lend-lease Buick from America outside whatever back-alley club these two men chose to visit. He was surprised, therefore, when his motor pool requisition orders specified a GAZ-67. This was a serious machine, with big, chunky tyres, and none of the well-sprung creature comforts to be found in the cars normally given to those who found themselves in Stalin’s favour.

Major Kirov had simply told him to head west along the Moscow highway. Narmandak had not left the Moscow city limits in over a year and he had never been west of Mozhaysk, only a few hours’ drive from the city.

By the end of that day, as the GAZ bumped along over the wide and unpaved road, Narmandak was further from his home than he had ever been before. The thought unnerved him, and he kept returning to that day when he had strayed from his home in the bare and rocky foothills of Altan Bulak, in search of that lost flock of sheep. He shared his shepherding duties with a dim-witted cousin named Batu. Under the shadow of a stone, Narmandak had fallen asleep in the heat of the day, while Batu stood guard. But Batu had also nodded off and, when they awoke, more than ten sheep were missing. Leaving Batu to guard the remainder of the flock, Narmandak followed their tracks to a stream, where he came across some men who were watering their horses and trying unsuccessfully to catch taimen, a breed of salmon native to Mongolia, with their bare hands in the shallow, fast-running water. By the time Narmandak found them, they were all completely soaked and had nothing to show for their efforts but fish scales stuck to their palms from the taimen which had slipped through their fingers. It turned out that they were Mongolian cavalry in the service of the Soviet Union, who had been sent into this wasteland to find volunteers for military service. Narmandak had not volunteered. In fact, as soon as the men had revealed the purpose of their mission, he had turned around and run the other way. But they soon caught up with him. They whipped him with a quirt, with chips of bones threaded on to the leather tassels. Then they tied him hand and foot, threw him over a saddle and returned to their barracks, a four-day journey away.

He wondered about those sheep. What had become of them? Had Batu searched for him when he failed to return? Had he seen the hoof-prints in the sand down by the stream and sounded the alarm? Did they think he had been carried off by demons? Why, in all the time since then, had they not come for him, or even sent word to ask if he was well?

These questions creaked and clattered in his mind, as when wind blows through the ice-covered branches of a tree and, as a result, he found it hard to concentrate upon the conversations of these two men, from which he hoped to learn their destination.

By the third day of driving, Narmandak was exhausted. Even though he had been given plenty of food and a place to sleep every night, the vast distances they covered across what was to him a flat and dreary landscape sapped all of his strength away.

On the morning of the fourth day, it rained and the going was slow, but by the afternoon the sun had come out, making the air heavy and soft. As they raced along the road towards the city of Shepetovka, Narmandak found himself mesmerised by the slate rooftops of the houses, which shone in the misty air, like scales scraped from a fish. This made him think of those taimen that the cavalrymen had been chasing through the stream that day and how, if they had been a little kinder to him, he could have shown them how to actually catch the fish. And it suddenly occurred to him why no one had come looking for him since his kidnapping by those horsemen. It was Batu. After all, it was his fault that the sheep got away and he would have done anything to avoid taking the blame. Instead of telling people what really happened, he probably spun some web of lies to make it seem as if he, Narmandak, had stolen the sheep and fled. It all seemed so clear to him now, and he swore that if he ever made it back to Altan Bulak . . .

Narmandak heard a rustling sound. Then he opened his eyes.

They were in the middle of a field. The GAZ had stalled out and it was perfectly quiet, except for the faint rustle of a breeze through the steppe grass.

He realised he had fallen asleep.

There was no ditch at the side of the road along this stretch of highway or they would have gone straight into it. Instead of that, the car had just veered off into the field, moving more and more slowly until the engine finally quit.

Glancing hesitantly in the rear-view mirror, the first thing he saw was Major Kirov, who lay snoozing with his head thrown back and mouth open. Narmandak breathed a sigh of relief, and wondered if he might even be able to get them back on to the road without his passengers being the wiser. But then, in the corner of the mirror, he noticed a shiny brown eye, with what appeared to be a glint of silver winking from the black depths of the pupil.

Inspector Pekkala was awake. ‘This road is long and dreary,’ he remarked.

Narmandak only nodded in reply.

‘Easy for a man to fall asleep while driving such a road,’ said Pekkala.

Narmandak let out a whistling sigh.

‘I’m guessing you’re not from around here,’ remarked the Inspector.

‘Altan Bulak,’ replied the driver. ‘In Mongolia.’

‘I know where it is,’ said Pekkala, ‘and I expect you miss the mountains.’

‘Who doesn’t miss the place which he calls home?’

Pekkala leaned forward and slapped him gently on the shoulder. ‘Until you leave it, though, you cannot really know where you come from.’

Narmandak had never thought of it that way before and suddenly the distance between himself and those bare foothills, and the familiar tinny jangling of sheep bells and the constant rolling thunder of the water coming out of the mountains did not seem so painfully far.

Narmandak switched on the engine and they drove back to the road.

Major Kirov knew nothing of this. He continued to nap, snuffling contentedly as the GAZ sped off towards Shepetovka.

The next morning, having spent the night in an unlocked cell at the police barracks, Narmandak’s eyes fluttered open and he was surprised to see, from the colour of sunlight through the barred window above his head, that it was already quite late in the morning. He pulled on his boots and walked down the corridor to the guardroom, expecting to find Major Kirov and the Inspector ready to depart. But all Narmandak found was a solitary policeman sitting at a desk, drinking tea from a green enamel mug.

‘Where are they?’ he asked.

‘Gone,’ replied the policeman.

‘Gone?’ gasped Narmandak.

‘Some time ago, in fact.’

Narmandak went to the door and looked out into the street. ‘Are they coming back?’ he asked.

‘Didn’t say anything about it,’ answered the policeman. ‘They left you something, though.’ With the heel of his boot, he shunted a crumpled brown paper bag across the desktop so that it was within Narmandak’s reach.

Narmandak opened the bag. Inside was a bar of chocolate, a packet of cigarettes and a set of transfer papers back to Altan Bulak.

Meanwhile, several hours’ drive to the west, Major Kirov sat behind the wheel. Unused to the pedals, he had crashed the gears several times, filling the air with the zipping, nerve-wrenching noise of metal cogs grinding together. ‘Why the hell did you send him to Mongolia?’ he demanded.

‘That’s where he lives,’ answered Pekkala.

‘He was our driver!’

‘But Mongolia is where he belongs. Besides, you’ll get the hang of it.’

Kirov crashed the gears again.

‘Eventually,’ added Pekkala.

Two days later, knowing they were close to their destination, Kirov pulled over at the outskirts of the village in order to consult his map. The quality of the roads had improved since they’d crossed the German border but all signposts had been ripped up, which made navigating complicated.

While Kirov unfolded the map, trying to find their location as the large, creased sheet of paper flapped like a banner in the breeze, Pekkala stood in the middle of the road, hands tucked behind his back, looking out across the deserted countryside. Neat wooden fences criss-crossed the fields, and farmsteads dotted the horizon, each one enclosed by high stone walls so that only the upper floors and rooftops were visible, in marked contrast to the thatched barns and whitewashed houses of the Russian farms.

‘According to this,’ said Kirov, squinting at the map, ‘Ahlborn should be the next village we come to.’ Receiving no reply from Pekkala, he glanced towards the Inspector.

Pekkala’s attention was fixed upon the horizon.

‘Inspector?’ asked Kirov.