by Sam Eastland
The officer opened the briefcase. From it, he removed Pekkala’s Webley, which he had been carrying at the time of his arrest at Vainikkala. The man held up the gun, examining it carefully. His thumb accidentally touched the button for loading the Webley and the barrel of the gun folded forward suddenly, exposing the chambers of the cylinder. The officer was startled and almost dropped the gun.
Pekkala had to stop himself from lunging forward to catch it, to keep the Webley from falling to the floor.
The officer caught the gun just in time. Hurriedly, he replaced it in the briefcase. The next thing he removed was the emerald eye. With the badge resting on his fingertips, the man tilted it back and forth so that the gemstone caught the light. “Your enemies call you the monster of the Tsar.” The man replaced the badge inside the case. “But you do not look like a monster to me.” Lastly, he removed Pekkala’s book. He flipped through it, staring without comprehension at the words of the Kalevala. Then he dropped that, too, back where he had found it.
He cleared his throat several times before he spoke again. “Did you know that Finland has declared its independence from Russia?”
Pekkala had not known. The news shocked him. He wondered how his father, such a loyal supporter of the Tsar, must be feeling.
“As you see,” continued the officer, “from these things which we have found in your possession, we know exactly who you are, Inspector Pekkala.” He spoke in a voice so quiet that it seemed almost timid.
“ Georgia,” replied Pekkala.
“Excuse me?”
“ Georgia,” Pekkala repeated. “Your accent.”
“Ah, yes, I am from Tiflis.”
Now Pekkala remembered. “Dzhugashvili,” he said. “Josef Dzhugashvili. You were responsible for a bank robbery in 1907 which left over forty people dead.” He could hardly believe that a man he had once hunted as a criminal was now sitting before him, on the other side of an interrogator’s table.
“That is correct,” said Dzhugashvili, “except that now my name is Josef Stalin and I am no longer a robber of banks. Now I am chief advisor to the People’s Commissariat.”
“And you are here to give me some advice?”
“I am. Yes. Advice which I hope you will take. A detective with your experience could be very useful to us. Many of your former comrades have agreed to work with the new government. This is, of course, after they have informed us of the details of their work.” He studied Pekkala for a moment. Then he held up one stubby finger, like a man checking the direction of the wind. “But I think you are not going to be one of those people.”
“I am not,” agreed Pekkala.
“This much I was told to expect,” Stalin said. “Then you understand that things must go another way.”
32
THAT EVENING, WHEN PEKKALA RETURNED TO THE IPATIEV HOUSE, HE found Kirov boiling potatoes in the kitchen. The windows wept with condensation.
Pekkala sat down at the table, folded his arms, and lowered his head until his forehead was resting on his wrists. “No deals with Mayakovsky today?”
“The old son of a bitch is crafty,” replied Kirov. “He gives us enough to whet our appetites, then lets us go hungry while his prices go through the roof.”
“I expect he’ll start charging more for information, too.”
“I was talking about information,” replied Kirov, “but I know how to deal with types like that.”
“Oh, yes?”
Kirov nodded. “You give them a present.”
“But why?”
“Because they’re not expecting it. People like Mayakovsky don’t have friends and don’t need friends. They don’t get presents very often and when they do, it throws them completely off balance.”
“You’re smarter than you look,” grunted Pekkala.
“That’s how I can get away with being smart.” Kirov sighed. “But I wasn’t smart enough to scrounge up more than a few potatoes in town today.”
“Did you learn anything when you were there?” asked Pekkala.
“Only that this whole town has gone mad.” With a wooden spoon, Kirov stirred the potatoes in the pot of boiling water. “Almost everyone I talked to swore they’d seen one of the Romanovs alive. Never the whole family together. Just one of them. You’d think the Tsar and his wife and his children had all run off in different directions that night, and yet somehow they ended up at the bottom of that mine shaft.”
Pekkala lifted his head. “Except one.”
“Still,” said Kirov, “I don’t believe Alexei has survived.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Even if the killer had let him go free, how long do you think he would have survived on the run in the middle of a revolution? A hemophiliac? That boy might as well be made of porcelain. Alexei didn’t stand a chance.”
“Why Alexei is not among the dead I can’t even begin to guess,” said Pekkala, “but as long as he is missing, the search for him has to continue. In the meantime, I think the Tsar believed he could escape from Sverdlovsk, only not without help. What I don’t know yet is who he thought was going to help him, and how he ended up dead. He may have been tricked, or the rescue attempt could have failed. Maybe the Cheka guards killed the Romanovs when they realized they were under attack. That could be why the dead guards were found in the basement. Perhaps the man who came to rescue the Tsar panicked and threw the bodies down the mine shaft, rather than leave them to be discovered in the Ipatiev house.”
“That way,” Kirov speculated, “the Reds would assume that the Tsar and his family were still alive. They’d waste their time looking for the Romanovs and not just for whoever tried to rescue them.” With a handkerchief wrapped around the pot handle, he emptied the milky-colored water down the drain. A cloud of steam swirled up around him. He set the pot on the table, then sat down opposite Pekkala. “But what do I know? I’m just here as an observer.”
“ Kirov,” said Pekkala, “you will make a fine detective someday.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you knew how little I’d turned up. All I got was a stack of photographs.”
“Photographs?”
“Some old lady gave them to me. Said they were from Katamidze’s studio. Said Katamidze gave them to her as a gift, but after Katamidze disappeared, she was afraid she’d get into trouble for holding on to them.”
“Where are they?”
“They’re in the front room. I was going to throw them in the fire, seeing as we are running out of wood to burn-”
Before Kirov had finished his sentence, Pekkala dashed out of the room.
“They’re mostly landscapes, nothing important,” called Kirov. “You won’t find the Tsar in any of them!”
A moment later Pekkala returned. A sheaf of photographs was clutched in his fist. There were about two dozen of them, their ends curled up and torn. A haze of fingerprints stained the images. Most were pictures of the town. The church with its onion dome spire. The main street, with the Ipatiev house in the distance and a blurred, ghostly image of a horse and cart crossing in front of the camera’s view. There was a pond, with the same church in the distance. On the other side of the water, a woman in a long skirt and headscarf stooped to gather something in the weeds. A few of the photos were of the nuns whose images he had seen on the walls of the convent. On these, it looked as if Katamidze had been trying to color them but had given up halfway through the process.
“These must be his rejects,” muttered Pekkala. He sat back and rubbed his tired eyes.
“I told you they weren’t important,” said Kirov.
Each man speared a potato and began to eat, puffing their cheeks with the heat.
Anton stumbled in, his breath a fog of pickled beets and Lake Baikal sprat. These fish, dried and shriveled to the shape of crumpled cigars, hung threaded on wires above the bar, their tiny bones like musical notes under the hard, translucent flesh. If a customer wanted a fish, he simply reached up and twisted the body, snapping off its head, which
remained on the wire. Men with no money would then pick off the head and eat it, chewing the metallic-tasting cartilage until nothing remained.
Anton tossed a notebook on the table. “It’s all in there,” he said.
Pekkala picked up the notebook and flipped through it. “These pages are blank.”
“You must be a detective, after all,” said Anton.
“You call this help?” asked Pekkala, struggling to contain his anger.
Anton sat down at the table. He spotted the photographs and picked them up. “Ooh, pictures.”
“They belonged to Katamidze,” explained Kirov.
“Any naked ones?” asked Anton.
Kirov shook his head.
“I bet Mayakovsky has them. He seems to have everything else.”
“I told you not to drink,” said Pekkala.
Anton dropped the stack of photos. “You told me?” he asked. Then he slammed his hand down on the table. “You mean you ordered me! You can’t go to a tavern and not drink! I did my job, just like you told me to, so you can just lay off me, Inspector.” He hawked out the last word as if it were a chunk of fat. “The tavern is where people tell their secrets! That’s what you said.”
“But you have to be sober to hear them!” Pekkala snatched the wooden apple which lay on the table and threw it at his brother.
Anton’s hand shot up. The apple slapped into his palm and he closed his fingers around it. He gave his brother a triumphant look.
“Did you offer to rescue the Tsar?” asked Pekkala.
The gloating look sheared off his face. “What?”
“You heard me,” replied Pekkala. “When you were guarding the Romanovs, did you offer to let him and his family escape?”
Anton laughed. “Have you completely lost your mind? What possible reason would I have for helping them? There was a time when all I wanted was a place among the Finnish Regiment, but you stole that from me. I had to make some different plans, which did not include the Tsar.”
“You could have rejoined the Regiment!” said Pekkala. “They didn’t kick you out for good.”
“I was going to come back, until I found out you were on your way to Petrograd to take my place. Did you honestly expect me to endure that humiliation? Why didn’t you stay home and take over the family business the way our father planned for you to do?”
“The way he planned?” repeated Pekkala. “Don’t you realize he was the one who sent me to take your place in the Regiment?”
Anton blinked. “He sent you?”
“After we received the telegram that you had been suspended. We didn’t know that it was only temporary.”
“But why?” Anton stammered. “Why didn’t you tell me back then?”
“Because I couldn’t find you. You had disappeared.”
For a long time, nobody spoke.
Anton seemed rooted to the spot, too stunned to move. “I swear I didn’t know,” he murmured.
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Pekkala told him. “It’s too late now.”
“Yes,” Anton replied, speaking like a man in a trance. “It is too late.” Then he walked out into the courtyard.
“Perhaps,” said Kirov, after a moment, “one of the other Cheka guards made an offer to the Tsar. Your brother might not have known anything about it.”
“You mean he was too drunk to know,” Pekkala said.
Both men looked out at Anton, who stood slumped against the wall, one arm held up against the stone for balance. A bright arc of piss splashed down onto the ground. Then he walked out of the courtyard, into the street, and was gone.
“He’s going straight back to the tavern,” said Kirov.
“Perhaps,” Pekkala agreed.
“They’ll beat him up all over again.”
“He doesn’t seem to care.”
“At the Bureau,” said Kirov, “when they assigned me to the case, I was told his drinking might be a problem.”
“He’s not as drunk as he wants us to believe.”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you see the way he caught the apple?”
“You were testing his reflexes?”
Pekkala nodded. “If he had been really drunk, he would never have reacted that quickly.”
“Why would he pretend to be drunk?”
“Because he’s hiding something,” said Pekkala, “but whether it has to do with this investigation or if it is something from our past, or both, I do not know.”
“Are you saying we can’t trust him anymore?” asked Kirov.
“We never could,” Pekkala answered.
“There is something we would like to know,” said Stalin. “Eventually you will tell us. The only variable in this equation is what remains of you, physically and spiritually, by the time you have answered the question.”
Pekkala felt almost relieved that the process had begun. Anything was better than the agony of standing hunched inside that chimney of a cell. It was the curve of the ceiling which terrified him most, as if the room were slowly caving in. Every time he thought of it, fresh sweat beaded on his face.
“Fortunately,” continued Stalin, “we only have one question for you.”
Pekkala waited.
“Would you like a cigarette?” Stalin asked. From his trouser pocket, he removed a red and gold box with the word MARKOV on the cover.
Pekkala recognized them as the brand which Vassileyev used to smoke.
“The former director of the Okhrana was kind enough to leave behind a considerable supply in his office,” explained Stalin.
“Where is he now?”
“He is dead,” said Stalin matter-of-factly. “Do you know what he did? When he knew we were coming to arrest him, he filled his artificial leg with explosives. Then, in the police van on the way to this prison, Vassileyev set off the bomb. The axle of the van ended up on the roof of a two-story building.” Stalin laughed softly. “Explosives in a wooden leg! I can’t deny he had a sense of humor.”
He held out the box of cigarettes, awkwardly rotating his wrist so that the white sticks faced Pekkala.
Pekkala shook his head.
Stalin snapped the box shut. “In the days ahead, I ask you to remember that my first offer to you was one of friendship.”
“I won’t forget,” said Pekkala.
“Of course you won’t. That famous memory of yours would not allow it. That is why I am confident that you will be able to answer my question.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Where are the Tsar’s reserves of gold?”
“I have no idea.”
Stalin breathed out quietly, his lips slightly pursed, like someone learning to whistle. “Then it must be wrong, what I have heard.”
“What did you hear?” With each passing minute, that strange lightness which was the certainty of death filled more and more of Pekkala’s body. By the time they get around to killing me, he thought, there will be nothing left to feel the pain.
“I heard that the Tsar trusted you,” said Stalin.
“With some things.”
Stalin smiled faintly. “Pity,” he said.
Two weeks later, Pekkala was dragged out of his cell and returned to the interrogation room. He had to be carried, because he could no longer walk. The tops of his toes were burned raw on the carpet as the guards hauled him along, each with one of Pekkala’s arms hooked over his shoulder.
Released by the guards, Pekkala walked the last few paces to his chair in the interrogation room. Trembling like a man with a high fever, he sat down and tried to keep his balance. His feet were swollen to twice their normal size, the nails blackened from blood which had congealed beneath them. He could not lift his hands above his shoulders. He could no longer breathe through his nose. Every few breaths, he would cough violently, his knees drawn up towards his chest. Blue flashes arced across his vision, accompanied by pain like a spike driven into his skull.
Stalin was there. “Now would you like a cigarette?
” He asked it in that same, half-timid voice.
Pekkala opened his mouth to speak, but started coughing again. He managed only to shake his head. “I don’t know where the gold is. I am telling you the truth.”
“Yes,” replied Stalin. “I am now convinced of that. What I would like to know instead is this: Who did he trust with the task of removing the gold?”
Pekkala did not answer.
“You do know the answer to this,” Stalin told him.
Pekkala remained silent. Dread came loping like a black dog down the tunnels of his mind.
“When this is over,” said Stalin, “and you reflect on what will happen to you now, you may regret that perfect memory of yours.”
33
LATER THAT EVENING, PEKKALA SAT IN THE FRONT ROOM, WITH HIS back against the wall, legs stretched out across the bare floorboards. The Kalevala lay on his lap.
Kirov came in, carrying a pile of wood for the fire. He dumped it with a clatter on the hearth.
“No sign of Anton?” asked Pekkala.
“No sign,” replied Kirov, slapping the wood dust off his palms. He nodded towards the Kalevala. “Why don’t you read me some of your book?”
“Unless you speak Finnish, you wouldn’t understand.”
“Read some anyway.”
“I doubt you will find this on your list of texts approved by the Communist Party.”
“If you won’t tell, then I promise that neither will I.”
Pekkala shrugged. “Very well.” He opened the book and began to read, the Finnish words rolling like thunder in his throat and cracking off the roof of his mouth like the snap of lightning in the air. Although he read from this book all the time, he rarely spoke its text out loud, and it had been years since he’d had the chance to speak his native tongue. Even his brother had abandoned it. As he read now, it sounded both distant and familiar, like a memory borrowed from another person’s life.
After a minute, he stopped and looked up at Kirov.
