by Sam Eastland
Even more astonishing than the mention of Grodek was the fact that one of the Okhrana agents on that mission had survived. Until now, he had believed they were all dead.
“What’s the matter?” asked Klenovkin. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
On a clear winter’s day, a car filled with heavily armed Okhrana agents raced through the streets of St. Petersburg.
Pekkala was crammed in beside a young officer whom he had never met before. The task of the Okhrana agents was to clear the ground floor, not thought to be occupied, and make their way swiftly up to the apartment rented by Grodek and his mistress.
“Do you think he will come quietly?” asked the officer.
“No,” replied Pekkala. He did not believe it would be possible to arrest Grodek without sustaining casualties. Neither did he believe that Grodek would allow himself to be taken alive.
As they spoke, the young officer was loading his Nagant pistol. When the wheels of their car bounced over a pothole, a bullet slipped from the officer’s fingers and fell into the seat well below. The men were too closely packed for him to bend down to retrieve it. The Okhrana agent swore quietly at his own clumsiness. Then he glanced across at Pekkala.
“Last year,” the officer explained, “one of my colleagues closed a car door on my fingers.” He held up his hand as proof.
Pekkala could see that the man’s thumb and index finger had been deformed by the bone not setting straight.
“The doctors tell me I have nerve damage,” continued the officer. “Sometimes I can’t help dropping things.”
“I see,” said Pekkala.
“To tell you the truth, Inspector, I am also a little nervous.”
Before Pekkala could reply, they rounded a corner and Grodek’s house slid into view.
The officer closed the cylinder of the revolver and placed it in the holster strapped under his armpit. “Well,” he told Pekkala, “I will see you on the other side.”
The three cars screeched to a halt outside Grodek’s house. The Okhrana agents piled out immediately and began battering down the door.
As they had planned in advance, Pekkala moved to the rear of the building, in case Grodek tried to escape along the canal path. He took cover behind a stack of crates containing salt used for preserving fish which were caught in the summer months at the mouth of the Neva River. In winter, due to ice, none of the boats could get up the river. At that time of year, the whole wharf was deserted.
Once the agents were inside, they raced up the stairs to Grodek’s apartment on the second floor.
From his hiding place, Pekkala heard a heavy, muffled thump inside the building. The windows seemed to ripple. This was followed a fraction of a second later by a concussion which threw him off his feet. Jets of fire belched out of the windows. Glass sprayed over the street. Dazed and lying on his back, Pekkala watched a door sail over his head and into the canal.
Grodek had planted a bomb. Only seconds before the blast, he and his mistress, Maria Balka, had managed to escape through a side window.
By the time Pekkala got back on his feet, the two fugitives were already running away down the street.
After a chase, Pekkala caught up with Grodek and arrested him, but not before Maria Balka met her death in the icy waters of the Moika canal. Her own lover had killed her rather than let her fall into captivity.
Having witnessed the devastation caused by the bomb blast, Pekkala did not even consider that any of the Okhrana agents could have survived the explosion. When Chief Inspector Vassileyev confirmed that all of the agents had perished, he was only reporting what Pekkala already knew. Or thought he knew.
The agents who died that day were all strangers to Pekkala. All except the young officer, whose name he’d never learned. And afterwards, Pekkala had done what Vassileyev had taught him to do with memories of the dead: He’d filed them away in the great archive deep in the labyrinth of his mind, and left them there to fade like photographs abandoned in the sun.
Now Pekkala wondered if the young officer had died, after all.
“I need to see Ryabov’s body again,” he told Klenovkin.
“What? Now?”
“Yes!”
“But what if Melekov is still in the kitchen?”
“He won’t be. Melekov goes back to bed as soon as his shift is finished.”
Klenovkin’s eyebrows bobbed up in surprise. “Back to bed? He’s not allowed to do that in the middle of the day!”
“Nevertheless …”
“That lazy Siberian piece of …”
“Please, Commandant. It is crucial that I see the body immediately.”
Leaving Kirov’s telegram on the desk, the two men made their way to the kitchen.
Klenovkin opened the freezer with his master key.
Inside, at the back, Pekkala pushed aside the wall of vodka crates. Ryabov’s corpse was still there, lying on the floor under a tarpaulin.
Crouching down, Pekkala pulled back the tarp, whose ice-encrusted contours retained the shape of Ryabov’s face.
The shadows made it difficult to see.
“Do you have a match?” Pekkala asked.
Klenovkin pulled a box from his pocket and handed it down.
Pekkala struck a match and held it close to Ryabov’s hand. In the quivering light, he glimpsed the crookedly healed thumb and index finger of the Okhrana officer he had met years ago, on their way to the Moika Canal. As a pawn in this game of trust between Kolchak and the Tsar, agent Ryabov had played his role through to the end.
For a long time, Pekkala stared into the dead man’s face-the alabaster skin, sunken eyes, and blue-black lips. He could not shake the feeling that he was staring at himself. “See you on the other side,” he murmured, and his breath uncoiled like silk into the still and frozen air.
“What?” asked Klenovkin. “What did you say?”
“I knew this man,” Pekkala replied. “I thought he had died long ago.”
“Well, he’s dead now, anyway.” Klenovkin tapped Pekkala on the shoulder. “Come on, let’s get the hell out of here.”
On their way back to Klenovkin’s office, Pekkala tried to fathom why on earth Vassileyev would have lied to him about this officer having survived the blast.
The answer soon became clear when Pekkala read the remainder of the telegram.
RYABOV COMMISSIONED BY TSAR TO MONITOR
KOLCHAK EXPEDITION STOP ACTIVITY OF AGENT
RYABOV NOT DISCLOSED TO OKHRANA STOP
The reason Vassileyev had not told Pekkala that there were survivors from the bomb at Grodek’s house was that he did not know of any. But the Tsar had not only lied to his own director of intelligence. He had lied to Pekkala as well.
The Tsar’s story had been very specific. He had told Pekkala that the precise location of the gold would be known only to Colonel Kolchak and his uncle, Admiral Alexander Kolchak of the Tsar’s Pacific fleet in Vladivostok. Even the Tsar himself was not to be told. There was good reason for this. Although the Tsar was confident that Kolchak could evade any attempt at capture by the Red Guards, the Tsar was equally certain that he himself would soon fall into captivity. And the first thing his captors would want to know was the location of the Imperial Reserves. Unless the Bolsheviks could be convinced that the Tsar didn’t know the whereabouts of his gold, they would resort to whatever means necessary to acquire that information.
For the Tsar, the trick would be in persuading these captors of his ignorance before they even asked the question.
Now, years later, an idea began to surface in Pekkala’s mind. At first it seemed so sinister that he felt sure this couldn’t be the answer. But the more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that it was true. The Tsar must have known that if Pekkala were arrested, he would be interrogated using whatever means the Bolshevik Security Service, known as the Cheka, thought necessary. For a man like Pekkala, in the hands of the Cheka, torture was a guarantee. The Bolsheviks would realize, as they
beat and starved and questioned him, that Pekkala was telling the truth when he said that neither he nor the Tsar was aware of the gold’s hiding place.
Except it wasn’t the truth. It was a lie, but one that Pekkala had believed.
There was only one catch. For the Tsar’s plan to work, Pekkala would have to be caught.
It was the Tsar who had provided Pekkala with the means of escaping the country-forged papers, rail tickets, even the route he should take to avoid capture. But Pekkala never made it. At a small railway station on the Russo-Finnish border, with freedom almost within his grasp, Pekkala had been hauled off a crowded train by Bolshevik Revolutionary Guards. From there, he had begun his journey to Butyrka prison, and eventually to Borodok.
He had always wondered how the Revolutionary Guards singled him out so effectively. Now he knew.
The only way the Tsar could have guaranteed that Pekkala would be arrested was by revealing the information of his escape route to the enemy.
In this way the Tsar and his family would be spared the same fate as Pekkala. There would be no point in interrogating the Romanovs for information which they didn’t have.
The facts were inescapable.
The Tsar had betrayed him, his most trusted servant, who in return had trusted the Tsar with a devotion far beyond the value of his life.
It was an ingenious and intricate plan. Not surprisingly, the Tsar had calculated almost every detail, but the one thing he had not anticipated was that Kolchak might actually be caught. Or that the members of the Romanov family might be herded to the city of Ekaterinburg and, on a sultry August night in 1918, butchered in the basement of the Ipatiev house.
The knowledge that the Tsar had, in those final days of their acquaintance, offered him up as a sacrifice struck Pekkala like a hammer to his skull.
“Well,” demanded Klenovkin. “Do you have your answer?”
“I have an answer,” replied Pekkala. “But it was not the one I’d been expecting.”
As soon as Pekkala had left the room, Klenovkin began to pace like a cat trapped in a cage. He had read the telegram as soon as it came through but wasn’t able to make head or tail of it. And what did Pekkala mean, wondered the commandant, when he said it wasn’t the answer he’d been expecting? Klenovkin could not help but fear the worst. Pekkala was refusing to accept his theory about the Comitati. “And who else is there to accuse, but me?” he asked himself. Already, in feverish dreams, he had found himself before a board of inquiry, accused of Ryabov’s murder. To this imaginary jury he had pleaded his case, but was always found guilty.
“It’s time I took matters into my own hands,” he muttered to himself. Seating himself at his desk, Klenovkin took out a piece of paper and furiously scribbled a note.
Professor Braninko had fallen asleep as he sat at his desk, consolidating dusty files for the archives.
A banging on the metal door startled him awake. He breathed in sharply, rose stiffly to his feet, and straightened his tie as he walked towards the door.
The knocking came again.
Braninko knew who it was. Major Kirov had come to return the file he borrowed.
In the brief time he’d spent with Kirov, Braninko had been impressed by the young officer’s willingness to listen to the outbursts of an old man who had no one else to talk to except the unblinking statues of old generals and politicians. Before Kirov, there had been no visitors for several weeks, and after he left, there were unlikely to be others for a while.
As he made his way towards the door, the knocking continued.
“I heard you the first time,” muttered Braninko, but he was not angry. In fact, he was looking forward to seeing Kirov again. Of course, it would not be appropriate to appear too enthusiastic. He would maintain his usual reserve, but this time, he decided, he might at least offer the major a cup of tea. He had a kettle in the back room, and a few old tin cups, which he hoped were clean enough to use. As he opened the door, Braninko was trying to remember if he had any sugar left to sweeten the tea. He had just enough time to realize that the person outside was not Kirov before the air seemed to catch fire all around him.
The next thing Braninko knew, he was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling of the archive. Someone had seized his ankles and was dragging him across the floor towards the back of the building. He could not understand what was happening. The only clear thought in the old professor’s head was that it felt undignified to be hauled around like this. With a feeble, barely conscious gesture, he reached up to adjust his tie, which suddenly felt too tight around his throat.
The man who was dragging him wore a dark hat and a coat which came down below his knees. Both were civilian garments. It occurred to Braninko to inform him that only government personnel were allowed in Archive 17.
What is wrong with me? Braninko wondered. His stomach felt strangely empty and he experienced a terrible thirst, as if he were lost in a desert.
At last the dragging stopped. The man let go of Braninko’s feet and the professor’s heels struck the floor hard.
Braninko was relieved to be lying still. He felt dizzy and sick. He glanced at his palm and realized he was covered with blood. Only now did it dawn on him that he had been shot. Tugging at the buttons of his vest, he pulled the cloth away and saw the deep red marks of two bullet holes punched through the fabric of his shirt.
The man turned around and looked at Braninko. He was narrow-faced, with a black mustache tinged gray along the edges. He wore thick corduroy trousers and a short double-breasted wool coat.
Although such clothes were common in the streets of Moscow, Braninko had no difficulty identifying this man as a member of NKVD. It was not the clothes, but how the stranger wore them-with no regard for comfort, all the buttons fastened, and the lapels stitched into place, rather than being allowed to rest naturally against the collarbone.
“Who are you?” As the professor spoke, a thread of bloody saliva trickled from his mouth.
“My name is Kornfeld,” replied the man. Removing a handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped the perspiration from his cheeks. “You are heavier than you look, old man.”
“Why have you done this to me?”
“It is my job.”
“But what have I done to deserve it?” Braninko had trouble breathing, as if someone were kneeling on his chest.
“The only thing I can tell you is that you have upset someone very important.”
“The Blue File,” whispered Braninko. “Is that what this is about?”
“I told you, I don’t know.”
“I was helping with an investigation.”
“I have no interest in what you were doing.”
“The man I was helping is Inspector Pekkala, and you will answer to him for what you’ve done to me-you and whoever sent you on this butcher’s errand.”
From the pocket of his coat, Kornfeld removed a Browning automatic pistol. “You may be right, Professor, but he will have to find me first.”
“Oh, he will find you,” Braninko replied angrily, “and sooner than you think. By the time you leave this building, the Emerald Eye will be upon you.”
Kornfeld did not appear to be listening. Instead, he busied himself with checking the number of rounds in the Browning’s magazine.
Observing the casual efficiency of his executioner, Braninko abandoned all hope. The old man gazed around the room, his eyes flickering across the faces of the statues which had kept him company all these years. He thought about the papers on his desk, which still needed sorting, and of his cat, on the windowsill at home, watching for him to return, and of all the important and unfinished business of his life which swirled around him like a cloud of tiny insects, then suddenly scattered and lost all meaning. Reaching into the blood-drenched pocket of his vest, Braninko removed a spindly iron key and held it out towards the man who was about to kill him. “Please lock the door on your way out.”
Kornfeld took the key from Braninko’s outstretched hand. “O
f course,” he said. Then he shot the old man twice in the head and left his body lying on the floor.
On his way out, Kornfeld locked the door behind him. With unhurried steps, he crossed the street, pausing only to drop the key down a storm drain before he disappeared into the chaos of the Bolotnia Market.
That morning before dawn, one of the camp’s generators had caught fire, sending a cloud of thick, oily smoke unraveling into the clouds. The snow that fell from the sky was tinged with soot, adding to the sense of desolation hanging over the Valley of Krasnagolyana.
Arriving at the kitchen, Pekkala discovered that Melekov had left the freezer door open. Pekkala called Melekov’s name, but there was no reply.
He must have gone to watch the generator burn, thought Pekkala.
Knowing that Melekov would soon return, and unable to resist the temptation of helping himself to the best food in the camp, Pekkala slipped into the freezer.
By the light of the single bulb, hanging like a polyp from the metal ceiling of the freezer, Pekkala surveyed the bowls of offal, like coils of slippery orange rope, the white bricks of tallow fat, and the huge and severed tongues of cows. At the back of the freezer, four pig carcasses hung from gaff hooks, their skin like pink granite and glittering with frost.
At that moment Pekkala heard someone enter the kitchen-the creak of the spring on the outer door and then the gunshot slam of the inner door being closed.
Realizing he was trapped, he darted to the end of the freezer and hid behind the pig carcasses. On his way he yanked the dirty pull string of the light. The freezer was plunged into a coffin-like darkness, but seconds later the sharp glare of a flashlight burst like an explosion in the cramped space.
Pekkala glimpsed the unmistakable silhouette of Melekov. He immediately began to calculate how much trouble he might actually be in. He hadn’t actually eaten anything, so perhaps Melekov would let him off. He could say he found the door open and went in to see if any food had been taken. It was a flimsy excuse, but the only one he could come up with. It would all depend on what mood Melekov was in. He might laugh it off, or he might decide to make life difficult.
