Agent 6

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The safest way to write a diary was to imagine Stalin reading every word. Even exercising this degree of caution there was the risk of a slipped phrase, accidental ambiguity – a misunderstood sentence. Praise might be mistaken for mockery, sincere adulation taken as parody. Since even the most vigilant author couldn’t guard against every possible interpretation, an alternative was to hide the diary altogether, a method favoured in this instance by the suspect, a young artist called Polina Peshkova. Her notebook had been discovered inside a fireplace, in the chimney no less, wrapped in waxy cloth and squeezed between two loose bricks. To retrieve the diary the author was forced to wait until the fire died down before inserting her hand into the chimney and feeling for the book’s spine. Ironically the elaborate nature of this hiding place had been Peshkova’s undoing. A single sooty fingerprint on her writing desk had alerted the investigating agent’s suspicions and re-directed the focus of his search – an exemplary piece of detective work.

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