Deep in the Russian countryside, a thirty-ton killing machine known officially as T-34 is being developed in total secrecy. Its inventor is a rogue genius whose macabre death is considered an accident only by the innocent. Suspecting assassins everywhere, Stalin brings in his best—if least obedient—detective to solve a murder that’s tantamount to treason. Answerable to no one, Inspector Pekkala has the dictator’s permission to go anywhere and interrogate anyone. But the closer Pekkala gets to answers, the more questions he uncovers—first and foremost, why is the state’s most dreaded female operative, Commissar Major Lysenkova, investigating the case when she’s only assigned to internal affairs?   In the shadows of one of history’s most notorious regimes, Pekkala is on a collision course with not only the Soviet secret police but the USSR’s deadliest military secrets. For what he’s about to unearth could put Stalin and his Communist state under for good—and bury Pekkala with them. “A lively read [that] bursts with period detail.”—The Daily   “[A] quirky, yet compelling hero, Inspector Pekkala seeks the truth in a nation—Russia—where finding truth can mean death. . . . An outstanding example of an unusual protagonist being used to excellent advantage.”— San Jose Mercury News   “[A] fast-paced thriller full of twists and turns that will keep the reader hooked till the end.” — Wichita Falls Times Record News   “Formidably researched . . . Eastland writes with visceral punch.” —Metro (U.K.) Sam Eastland is the author of Eye of the Red Tsar . He is the grandson of a London Police detective who served in Scotland Yard’s famous “Ghost Squad” during the 1940s. He lives in the United States and Great Britain and is currently working on his next novel. As the motorcycle crested the hill, sunlight winked off the goggles of the rider. Against the chill of early spring, he wore a double-breasted leather coat and a leather flying cap which buckled under his chin. He had been on the road for three days, stopping only to buy fuel along the way. His saddlebags were filled with tins of food he'd brought from home. At night, he did not stay in any town, but wheeled his motorcycle in among the trees. It was a new machine, a Zundapp K500, with a pressed-steel frame and girder forks. Normally he could never have afforded it, but this trip alone would pay for everything, and more besides. He thought about that as he sat there alone in the woods, eating cold soup from a can. Before camouflaging the motorcycle with fallen branches, he wiped the dust from its sprung leather seat and the large teardrop-shaped fuel tank. He spat on every scratch he found and rubbed it with his sleeve. The man slept on the ground, wrapped in an oilcloth sheet, without the comfort of a fire or even a cigarette. The smell of smoke might give away his location, and he could not afford to take the risk. Sometimes, he was awakened by the rumble of Polish Army trucks passing by on the road. None of them stopped. Once he heard a crashing in among the trees. He drew a revolver from his coat and sat up just as a stag passed a few paces away, barely visible, as if the shadows themselves had come to life. For the rest of the night, the man did not sleep. Tormented by childhood nightmares of human shapes with antlers sprouting from their heads, he wanted only to be gone from this country. Ever since he crossed the German border into Poland, he had been afraid, although no one who saw him would ever have realized it. This was not the first time he had been on such a journey, and he knew from experience that his fear would not leave him until he was back among his own people again. On the third day, he crossed into the Soviet Union at a lonely border checkpoint manned by one Polish soldier and one Russian soldier, neither of whom could speak the other's language. Both men came out to admire his motorcycle. "Zundapp," they crooned softly, as if saying the name of a loved one, and the man gritted his teeth while they ran their hands over the chrome. A few minutes after leaving the checkpoint, he pulled over to the side of the road and raised the goggles to his forehead, revealing two pale moons of skin where the road dust had not settled on his face. Shielding his eyes with one hand, he looked out over the rolling countryside. The fields were plowed and muddy, seeds of rye and barley still sleeping in the ground. Thin feathers of smoke rose from the chimneys of solitary farmhouses, their slate roofs patched with luminous green moss. The man wondered what the inhabitants of those houses might do if they knew their way of life would soon end. Even if they did know, he told himself, they would probably just carry on as they had always done, placing their faith in miracles. That, he thought, is precisely why they deserve to be extinct. The task he had come here to accomplish would bring that moment closer. After today, there would be nothing they could do to