Eye of the Red Tsar

5

WITH THE BARREL OF ANTON’S GUN DIGGING INTO HIS TEMPLE, Pekkala slowly closed his eyes. There was no terror in his face, only a kind of quiet anticipation, as if he had been waiting for this moment for a long time. “Go ahead,” he whispered.

Footsteps sounded in the corridor. It was Kirov, the young Commissar. “That policeman has run away,” he said as he walked into the room. He stopped when he saw Anton’s gun aimed at Pekkala’s head.

With an unintelligible curse, Anton released his grip on his brother’s throat.

Pekkala rolled away, choking.

Kirov stared at them in amazement. “When you are done brawling, Commander,” he said to Anton, “would one of you mind explaining to me why the hell your brother is making everybody so nervous?”

Pekkala’s career began with a horse.

Midway through their training in the regiment, cadets were brought to the stables for instruction in riding.

Although Pekkala knew well enough how to handle a horse which had been hitched to his father’s wagon, he had never ridden in the saddle.

The idea did not trouble him. After all, he told himself, I knew nothing about shooting or marching before I came here, and those things have not been more difficult for me than they were for anybody else.

The training went smoothly at first, as recruits learned to saddle a horse, to mount and dismount, and to steer the animal around a series of wooden barrels. The horses were themselves so familiar with this routine that all Pekkala had to do was not fall off.

The next task was to jump a horse over a gate set up in a large indoor ring. The Sergeant in charge of this exercise was new to his job. He had ordered several strands of barbed wire to be stretched across the top of the gate and nailed to the posts at either end. It was not enough, he told the assembled cadets, simply to hang on to a horse while it performed tasks it could just as easily have accomplished without a rider.

“There needs to be,” he told them, pleased at the boom of his voice within the enclosed space of the ring, “a bond between horse and rider. Until you can demonstrate this to me, I will never permit you to be members of this regiment.”

As soon as the horses saw the glint of barbs along the top of the gate, they grew nervous, shying and sidestepping and clanking the bits with their teeth. Some refused to jump. Rearing up before the wire, they threw the cadets who rode them. Pekkala’s horse turned sideways, slammed its flank into the gate, and sent Pekkala flying. He landed on his shoulder, rolling on the hard-trampled ground. By the time he got to his feet, covered with flecks of old straw, the sergeant was already making marks in his notebook.

Only a few animals made it across the first time. Most of these were injured by the wire, which cut them on their shins or on their bellies.

The sergeant ordered the cadets to try again.

An hour later, after several attempts, only half of the class had succeeded in getting their horses to jump the gate. The ground was sprinkled with blood, as if a box of red glass buttons had been tipped over.

The cadets stood at attention, holding the reins of their trembling horses.

By now, the sergeant realized he had made a mistake, but there was no way for him to back down without losing face. His voice was shredded from all the shouting he had done. Now, when he yelled, his shrillness sounded less like a man in charge than like someone on the edge of hysterics.

Each time a horse collided with the gate-the hollow boom of the animal’s side connecting with the wooden planks, the scuffling of hooves and the grunt of the rider falling hard-the remaining horses and cadets would flinch in unison as if an electric current had arced through their bodies. One young man wept silently as he waited for his turn. It would be his sixth attempt. Like Pekkala, he had not cleared the gate even once.

When it was time for Pekkala to try again, he swung himself up into the saddle. He looked over his horse’s head and at the distance between them and the gate. He could see gashes in the lower planks, where hooves had torn into the wood.

The sergeant stood off to one side, notebook at the ready.

Pekkala was about to dig his heels into the horse’s side and begin another run towards the gate. He had no doubt that he would be thrown; he was resigned to it. He was ready and then suddenly he was no longer ready to ride his horse against that gate, with its garland of bloodied iron barbs. As fluidly as he had climbed into the saddle, he climbed back down again.

“Get back on your horse,” said the sergeant.

“No,” said Pekkala. “I will not.” From the corner of his eye, Pekkala saw what looked to him like relief in the eyes of the other cadets. Relief that this could not go on, and relief that they would not be held responsible if it did not.

This time, the sergeant did not scream and curse as he’d been doing all day long. As calmly as he could, he shut his notebook and slid it into the top pocket of his tunic. He tucked his hands behind his back and walked over to Pekkala, until their faces almost touched. “I will give you one more chance,” he said, his raw voice no stronger than a whisper.

“No,” Pekkala said again.

Now the sergeant came even closer, bringing his lips to Pekkala’s ear. “Listen,” he said, “all I am asking of you is to attempt your jump. If you fail, I will not hold it against you. I will even end the day’s exercise after your jump. But you will get on that horse, and you will do as you are told, or I will see to it that you are washed out of the cadets. I will personally walk you through the gates and see them bolted at your back, just as they were for your brother. That’s why it will be easy for me, Pekkala. Because people are expecting you to fail.”

At that moment, a tremor passed through Pekkala. It was the strangest thing he had ever felt, and he was not the only one to feel it.

Both Pekkala and the sergeant turned at the same time, and saw a man standing in the shadows, near the stable entrance to the ring. The newcomer wore a dark green tunic and blue trousers with a red stripe running down the side. It was a simple uniform, and yet the colors seemed to vibrate in the still air. The man was not wearing a hat. Because of this they could see clearly that it was the Tsar himself.