Eye of the Red Tsar

22

THE THREE MEN SAT TIRED AND STONY-FACED AROUND THE BARE wood kitchen table. The only sound was the scraping of spoons inside tins of food. They had no plates or bowls. Anton had simply opened half a dozen cans of vegetables and army ration meat and set them in the middle of the table. When one man was tired of eating sliced carrots, he put the tin back on the table and picked up a jar of shredded beets. They drank water from the well outside, poured into a chip-rimmed flower vase which they’d found on the floor of an upstairs room.

Kirov was the first to break. He shoved away his can of meat and snarled, “How much of this do I have to endure?” From his pocket, he pulled out the wooden apple. He thumped it down on the table. The painted red apple seemed to glow from the inside. “It makes my mouth water just to look at it,” said Kirov. He reached into his pocket and brought out his pipe. “To make things worse, I am almost out of tobacco.”

“Come now, Kirov,” Anton said. “What’s become of our happy little Junior Man?” He removed a bulging leather pouch from his pocket and inspected its contents. A leafy smell of unburned tobacco wafted across the table. “My own supply is holding out quite nicely.”

“Lend me some,” said Kirov.

“Get your own.” Anton breathed in, ready to say more, but his sentence was interrupted by a sound like a pebble thrown against a window.

The three men jumped.

The pipe fell out of Kirov ’s mouth.

“What the hell was that?” Anton asked.

The sound came again, louder now.

Anton drew his gun.

“Someone is at the door,” Pekkala said.

Whoever it was had come around the back, rather than risk being seen at the front of the house.

Pekkala went to see who it was.

The other two stayed at the table.

When Pekkala reappeared, he was followed by an old man with a wide belly and a side-to-side plod which made him teeter like a metronome as he walked into the room. With small, almond-brown eyes, he peered suspiciously at Anton.

“This is Yevgeny Mayakovsky,” Pekkala said.

The old man nodded in greeting.

“He says,” continued Pekkala, “he has information.”

“I remember you.” Anton was staring at the old man.

“I remember you, too.” Mayakovsky turned to leave. “Perhaps I should be going now-” he said.

“Not so fast.” Anton held up his hand. “Why don’t you stay for a while?” He pulled out a chair and patted the seat. “Make yourself comfortable.”

Reluctantly, Mayakovsky sat, sweat already dappling his red-veined cheeks.

“How is it you know each other?” asked Pekkala.

“Oh, he tried this little trick once before,” Anton replied. “The day the Cheka arrived, he showed up with information to sell. Swore he could make himself useful to us.”

“And did he?” Kirov asked.

“We didn’t give him the chance,” Anton replied.

“They broke my nose,” said Mayakovsky, quietly. “It was uncivilized.”

“If you were looking for civilization,” replied Anton, “you knocked at the wrong door.”

“When I saw the lights on here,” continued Mayakovsky, ignoring him, “I did not realize it was you.” He stirred in his chair. “I’ll just be on my way-”

“No one is going to hurt you this time,” Pekkala told him.

Mayakovsky eyed him. “Is that so?”

“I give you my word,” Pekkala replied.

“I’ve got something worth knowing,” said Mayakovsky, tapping a stubby finger against his temple.

“What are you talking about?” asked Pekkala.

“When the Whites came in, they set up a board of inquiry. They didn’t believe the Romanovs had survived. All they were interested in was making sure that the Reds took the blame. Then, when the Reds came back, they set up their own inquiry. Just like the Whites, they figured the Romanovs had all been killed. The difference was that the Reds wanted to be told that the guards in this house had taken matters into their own hands. It seemed like everyone wanted the Romanovs dead, but nobody wanted to be responsible for killing them. And then, of course, there’s what really happened.”

“And what is that?” asked Pekkala.

Mayakovsky clapped his hands together softly. “Well, that is the part which I have come to sell.”

Anton snorted. “We don’t have money for buying information.”

“You could trade,” said Mayakovsky, his voice barely above a whisper.

“Trade what?” asked Kirov.

The old man licked his lips. “That’s a nice pipe you’re smoking.”

“Forget it!” Kirov ’s back straightened. “You’re not getting this!”

“Give him the pipe,” said Pekkala.

“What?”

“Yes, I would like that pipe,” said Mayakovsky.

“Well, you can’t have it!” shouted Kirov. “I’m already sleeping on the floor. You can’t expect me to-”

“Give him the pipe,” repeated Pekkala, “and let’s hear what this man has to say.”

Kirov appealed to Anton. “He can’t make me do that!”

“He just did,” said Anton.

“Nobody knows what I know,” Mayakovsky said.

Kirov glared at Anton and Pekkala. “You bastards!”

Both men eyed him patiently.

“Well, this is just outrageous!” said Kirov.

Mayakovsky held out his hand for the pipe.

Anton folded his arms and laughed.

“And give him your tobacco.” Pekkala nodded at the leather pouch which lay upon the table.

The laughter died in Anton’s throat. “My tobacco?”

“Yes.” Kirov thumped the table with his fist. “Give him your tobacco.”

The old man held out his hand and wiggled his fingers at Anton.

“You’d better have something good.” Anton tossed the pouch at the old man. “Or I’m going to adjust your face again.”

While the three men watched, Mayakovsky loaded the pipe and set it burning with a fluff-covered match that he pulled from his waistcoat pocket and lit on the sole of his shoe. He puffed contentedly for a minute. And then he began to talk. “I read in the papers that the Romanovs are dead.”

“Everybody read that!” Kirov sneered. “The whole world read about it.”

“They did,” nodded Mayakovsky. “But it isn’t true.”

Anton opened his mouth to shout the old man down.

Sharply, Pekkala raised a hand to silence him.

With a grumble, Anton settled back in his chair.

“Mayakovsky,” said Pekkala, “what makes you think they aren’t dead?”

“Because I saw the whole thing!” answered the old man. “I live across the road.”

“All right, Mayakovsky,” said Pekkala, “you tell us what happened.”

“That night the Romanovs were rescued,” Mayakovsky continued, “a load of Cheka guards suddenly came running out into the courtyard of the Ipatiev house. They kept two trucks in the courtyard. The guards piled into one of them and drove away.”

“A call had just come in,” said Anton. “We were ordered to set up a roadblock. The Whites were getting ready to attack. At least that’s what we were told.”

“Well, only a few minutes after that truck left, that damned fool Katamidze came to the front door of this house! He’s the photographer they’ve got locked up in Vodovenko. I’m not surprised the bastard ended up in there. Calling himself an artist. Well, I saw some of that art. Naked ladies. There’s another name for that. And those pictures were expensive-”

“Mayakovsky!” Pekkala cut him off. “What happened when the photographer arrived at the house?”

“The guards let him in. And a few minutes after that, a Cheka officer came to the door. He knocked and the guards let him in. Then the shooting started.”

“Then what did you see?” asked Pekkala.

“A regular gun battle,” answered Mayakovsky, grimly.

“Wait a minute,” Anton interrupted. “There was a tall fence around the whole building. Except for the front door and the entrance to the courtyard, the whole place was surrounded. How did you see anything?”

“I told you. I live across the road,” said Mayakovsky. “There’s a little window in my attic. If I went up there, I could see over the top of the fence.”

“But the windows had been painted over,” said Anton. “They’d even been glued shut.”

“I could see the flash of guns going from room to room. When the shooting stopped, the front door flew open and I saw Katamidze come tearing out of the house. He went running off into the dark.”

“Do you think Katamidze was involved in the gunfight?” asked Pekkala.

Mayakovsky laughed. “If you gave Katamidze a gun, he wouldn’t know which end the bullets came out of. If you’re thinking he was brave enough to attack the Ipatiev house and rescue the Tsar, you don’t know Katamidze.”

“What happened after Katamidze left?” Pekkala asked.

“About twenty minutes later, the second Cheka truck pulled out of the courtyard and headed off in the opposite direction from the first truck. That was the Romanovs. They were getting away, along with the man who rescued them. It wasn’t long afterwards that the first truck returned. The Cheka realized they’d been tricked. That’s when all hell broke loose. The guards had been killed. I heard one of the Cheka yell that the Romanovs had escaped.”

“How do you know the guards were killed?”

“Because I saw their bodies being carried out into the courtyard the next day. I didn’t see the bodies of the Romanovs. That’s how I knew they’d escaped. It’s the truth, no matter what the papers had to say about it.”

For a moment, there was silence in the room, except for the faint wheeze of Mayakovsky smoking his pipe.

“That man who came to the door,” said Kirov. “Did you see his face?”

Pekkala glanced at Kirov.

Kirov ’s face reddened. “What I meant was-”

Anton interrupted him. “Yes, what did you mean exactly, Junior Man? I did not realize you had taken over this investigation.”

Mayakovsky watched this, like a man following the ball at a tennis match.

“That’s all right.” Pekkala nodded at Kirov. “Continue.”

Anton threw his hands up in the air. “Now we’re really making progress.”

Kirov cleared his throat. “Can you describe the man you saw that day, Mayakovsky?”

“He had his back to me. It was dark.” Mayakovsky picked at something stuck between his front teeth. “I don’t know who he was, but I’ll tell you who they say rescued the Tsar.”

“Who’s they?” Pekkala interposed.

“They!” Mayakovsky shrugged. “They do not have a name. They are voices. All different voices. They come together and that’s how you know what they say.”

“All right,” said Kirov. “Who do they say it was?”

“A famous man. A man I wish I’d met.”

“And who is that?”

“Inspector Pekkala,” said Mayakovsky. “The Emerald Eye himself. That’s who rescued the Tsar.”

The three men had been leaning forward, but now they slumped back in their seats. All three of them let out a sigh.

“What’s the matter?” demanded Mayakovsky.

“The matter,” replied Kirov, “is that the Emerald Eye is sitting right in front of you.” He gestured vaguely at Pekkala.

The old man took the pipe from his mouth and aimed the stem at Pekkala. “Well, you do get around, don’t you?”

Less than twenty-four hours after he had said good-bye to the Tsar, Pekkala was arrested by a detachment of Red Guard Railway Police at a tiny station called Vainikkala. The situation along the border was still chaotic. Some stations were manned by Finnish personnel, while other stations even farther west were under Russian control. One of these was Vainikkala.

It was late at night when the Guards boarded the train. Their uniforms were made of coarse black wool with collars piped in cherry red, and on their right sleeves they wore homemade red armbands on which someone had drawn the sign of a hammer and a plow, soon to be replaced by a hammer and sickle as the symbol of the Soviet Union. They wore black, short-brimmed hats to match their uniforms, with a large red star sewn on the front.

Pekkala’s forged papers listed him as a doctor of obstetrics. The papers had been made for him some time ago by the Okhrana’s printing service on the orders of the Tsar. Until the Tsar handed him these documents, Pekkala had not even known the Okhrana ran a printing service. The papers were perfect, complete with photograph, all relevant stamps, and handwritten signatures on multiple travel permits. His papers were not why he was stopped.

Pekkala’s mistake had been to raise his head and look one of the Guards in the eye as three of them made their way down the narrow corridor of the train. Snow was melting on the Guards’ shoulders and condensation beaded on their weapons.

The lead Guard had tripped on the carrying strap of a bag stuffed under a seat several rows ahead of where Pekkala sat. He stumbled and fell heavily to one knee, swearing coarsely. People in the carriage flinched at the torrent of obscenities. The Guard’s head snapped up. He was furious and embarrassed to have tripped. The first person he saw was Pekkala, who just happened, at that moment, to be looking back at him.

“Let’s go,” snarled the Guard, and hauled Pekkala to his feet.

Pekkala’s first breath of cold air as he left the train felt like pepper in his lungs.

A dozen people, most of them men but a few pretty women as well, had been taken off the train. They stood huddled on the platform. The name of the station was barely visible under its coral-like coating of frost.

The train stamped and snorted, impatient to push on into the night, bound for Helsinki.

Pekkala weighed the situation in his head. He knew these men were probably just former soldiers, not professionals who could spot well-forged papers or know what questions to ask to trip up a man who was not who he was supposed to be. One well-aimed question about obstetrics could have punched a hole through Pekkala’s disguise. There had been no time for him to research his new profession.

The Webley was strapped against Pekkala’s chest. He could easily have shot the one man guarding them and run away into the dark while the others continued their search of the train. But one glance into the thick, snow-filled forests which surrounded the station and Pekkala knew he wouldn’t get far. Even if they didn’t catch him, he would most likely freeze to death.

There was nothing to do but hope that the Guards had satisfied their curiosity and their need for feeling important. Then they could all just get back on the train.

His plan had been to visit his parents, then press on via Stockholm to Copenhagen and from there down to Paris. There he would begin his search for Ilya.

The rest of the Guards disembarked.

Passengers rubbed circles on the condensation-soaked windows to see what was happening outside.

The Guard who had tripped made his way down the line of those who had been detained, examining their papers. He was a little too large for his tunic, whose sleeves stopped well above his wrists. A lit cigarette hung from between his lips, and when he spoke he sounded like a man with nerve damage to his face.

“All right,” he told one of the passengers. “You can go.”

The man did not look back. He ran to get aboard the train.

Two women who had been ahead of Pekkala and who had not been told to get on board stood weeping in the glare of the station lights. It had begun to snow and the shadows of flakes passed huge as clouds over the frozen platform.

The Guard came to Pekkala. “A doctor,” he said.

“Yes, sir.” Pekkala kept his head lowered.

“What is this bone?” asked the man.

And then Pekkala knew he was trapped. Not because he could not name the bones of the human body. For years a chart of the human body had hung in his father’s mortuary room; there were few bones he could not name. The reason Pekkala knew he was trapped was that if he made eye contact with the Guard, there was no chance that he would be allowed to leave. It was no different than if he had been standing in front of a dog. To the Guard, it had become a game.

“This bone here,” said the man, and snapped his fingers to draw Pekkala’s attention.

Pekkala looked down at his feet. Snowflakes landed on his boots.

The train wheezed impatiently.

A breath of cigarette smoke brushed past his face.

“Answer me, damn you,” said the Guard.

At that, Pekkala had no choice but to raise his head.

The Guard grinned at him. His cigarette had burned so low that the ember almost touched his lips. He held his hand up beside his head, moving his fingers slowly in some mockery of a greeting.

Their eyes met.

When the train pulled out, only Pekkala and one of the women stayed behind. Pekkala was handcuffed to a bench. The Guards dragged the woman into the waiting room beside the station house.

Pekkala heard her screaming.

Half an hour later, the woman ran out naked onto the platform.

By then, the snow had stopped. A full moon shone through passing shreds of cloud. The snow which had fallen no longer melted on Pekkala’s coat. Instead, it collected upon him like a mantle of polar bear fur. He could not feel his hands. The bars of the handcuffs were so cold they seemed to burn his skin. His toes became as hard as bullets hammered into the soft flesh of his feet.

The naked woman reached the platform edge. Her feet skidded in the slush. For one second, she turned and looked at Pekkala.

Twisted into her face was the same expression of terror he had once seen in the eyes of an old horse which had collapsed by the side of the road. The owner had pulled out a long puukko knife and was preparing to cut the animal’s throat. He sat down beside the horse and sharpened the knife on a small whetstone he had set upon his knee. The horse watched him the whole time, its eyes gone hollow with fear.

The woman leaped off the platform and fell heavily onto the rails half a body’s length below. Then she picked herself up and began running away down the tracks in the direction of Helsinki.

The Guards shambled out onto the platform. One was dabbing his fingers against a bloody lip. They looked around, laughing and confused.

“Hey!” A Guard kicked Pekkala’s leg. “Where did she go?”

Before he could answer, the leader of the Guards had spotted her. She was still running. Her naked back shone white as alabaster in the moonlight. Silky puffs of breath rose from her head.

The Guard took out a revolver. It was a 9 mm broomhandle Mauser with a wooden holster which could be converted into a stock, so that the gun could be fired like a rifle. The Guard removed the holster and hooked it up to the butt of the gun. Then he nestled the stock into his shoulder and aimed down the tracks towards the running woman. The gun made a dry snap. A cartridge flipped into the air and skittered across the platform, spinning to a stop next to Pekkala’s boot. A wisp of gun smoke slithered from its mouth.

The other Guards clustered at the platform edge, peering into the dark.

“She’s still running,” one said.

The leader of the Guards aimed again and fired.

The smell of cordite drifted on the frigid air.

“Missed,” said a Guard.

The leader spun around. “Then give me some space!”

The other Guards were not within three paces of the leader, but they jostled back obediently.

Leaning forward, Pekkala could vaguely see the woman still on her feet and running, her body like a candle flame shimmering between the silver rails.

The leader of the Guards aimed again. He fired twice.

The flame which had been the woman seemed to flicker for a second and then it went out.

The leader set the gun stock in the crook of his elbow, the barrel aimed now at the sky.

“Should we go get her?” asked one of the Guards.

“Let her freeze,” replied the leader. “She won’t be there in the morning.”

“Why not?”

“There’s another train coming through before dawn. When that thing hits her, she’ll shatter like a piece of glass.”

The following morning, a Guard placed a black cloth over Pekkala’s head. When the train from Helsinki arrived, he was shoved across the platform, blind and choking for air. Rough hands hauled him on board. He lay in the unheated baggage compartment, handcuffed to a replacement tractor engine, until the train pulled into Petrograd.