City of Ghosts by Ben Creed (most important books of all time txt) 📕

more to locate a small porthole window at the back of one of the box-stalls, break the glass and wriggle free into the freezing night.

His right arm was in bad shape. His throat was bruised and swollen. Blood flowed from the palm of his left hand where he had cut himself with the glass shard. But Vronsky had done him the favour of toppling the chair. And left him alive, or for the Cossack to slay at his leisure, in his haste to get to Beria and warn him of the deadly threat to their partnership. And to their lives.

The composer had at least twenty minutes on him. But Beria’s dacha at Sinyavino was more than fifty kilometres away, and driving at night, following the edge of the lake in this snow, would take at least an hour, possibly more. There was still a way he could intercept Vronsky. It was not an enviable option and no one would take it unless desperate. But ten years ago, such desperation had given birth to a miracle.

The lieutenant looked towards the distant ice house and, with two heavy tape spools under one arm, began to stagger through the snow.

*

At night, in this kind of temperature – about twenty below – it was his feet that worried him the most. Without boots he might last only five minutes, ten at the most, before frostbite set in.

Rossel left the main building and stables behind him and ran towards the ice house, his breath coming in staccato exclamations each time the soles of his bare feet touched the frozen ground. Before he got there, he found what he was looking for – through the shadows where the moon broke the dark, where the pine trees ringed the edge of the island. Now he saw them. To his right, the line of old ZIS-5 trucks that he had come upon earlier. One of them was already missing – Vronsky must have taken it.

There were still four trucks left. But it wasn’t them the detective was interested in. He had to head Vronsky off before the composer could get to Beria. It was his only chance of defeating the maestro and it was probably a suicide mission, but, at this juncture, pretty much every road led to his end anyway.

After hearing Sofia’s voice, after reading her words, he would be glad of it.

The snowplough was about three metres long, scooped, V-shaped and attached to a truck, the back wheels of which had been replaced by caterpillar tracks, its front ones underpinned by two wide metal skis. It was a bizarre-looking vehicle but Rossel had seen plenty like this one during his army service. Every soldier worth his salt knew how to drive one of these in case the poor bastard who had last driven it was killed.

But there was no need – the key was in the ignition and a metal hip flask and an entrenching shovel lay on an old copy of Sovietsky Sport on the driver’s seat. Someone had just parked it? Rossel swung round but it was too late – Razin was already pointing a pistol at him.

Rossel grimaced with the pain from his right arm as he put his hands in the air.

‘I shoot you now, not think twice, militia man. But it might be more fun to just stand here and watch your toes begin to swell. Frostbite is not a pretty sight. I saw plenty of it during the war.’

The Cossack was wearing an ushanka fur hat, an ex-army greatcoat and Kirza boots.

Rossel stared down at them. Then back up at Razin.

‘I need your shoes,’ he said.

Razin smiled.

‘Yes, you do.’

Rossel sprang forward into a deafening retort as the Tokarev discharged. A zinging vibrating sound near his left ear as the bullet passed by. Razin stopped him with an arm like a steel bar and thrust him back. He pushed the pistol into Rossel’s face and squeezed the trigger. But he was too slow – the second shot disappeared into the night as Razin’s body buckled and he fell to his knees. Before he had touched the snow, Rossel hit him again with the shovel he had grasped on the floor of the ZIS. This time in the face. Razin keeled backwards and his body lay in the snow, an eddy of blood leaking from his left temple and pooling on the white ground. His shoulders and neck jerked and trembled, contorting his features.

Rossel knelt down and started untying the Cossack’s laces.

‘As I say,’ he said, ‘I need your shoes.’

*

Everything inside the ZIS snowplough rattled. It would only take another mile or two to shake the fillings out of his back teeth. The rasping of the engine was matched only by the squealing of the caterpillar tracks as they protested about being forced to grip the icy surface of Lake Ladoga.

‘Please God, let there be ice.’

At least a metre of it. Two, if possible. About fifty centimetres would support a small car but the ZIS weighed over three thousand kilos. He needed fifty solid centimetres at a bare minimum. And as little current as possible, because the motion of the current thinned the ice. ‘That other road, not one of life but of death’ – the composer was right about that. Many had never made it. Only a fool would risk it at this time of year, and especially at night. Even in a snowplough. Which is why Vronsky had opted for the road.

He was wearing Razin’s bloodied greatcoat over his own jacket, his life-saving Kirza boots and the dead Cossack’s socks. Beside him were the newspaper and two round metal cases that contained the tape spools he’d taken from Vronsky’s macabre collection. They were all the evidence he could carry and still slither out of the tiny stable window. The hip flask in his pocket, he had been pleased to find out, was full of something alcoholic. Rossel had already drunk about half.

His headlights, on full beam, stretched a few dozen