by Sam Eastland
“Not ghosts, Pekkala. Refugees.” Kolchak’s voice was trembling with energy. “Just across that border there are more than two hundred thousand men who fled Stalin’s Russia. They are soldiers and civilians who had made lives for themselves in Siberia, but who were forced to flee into China during the Revolution rather than surrender to the Reds. I am talking about the Izhevsk Rifle Brigade, the Votkinsk Rifle Division, the Komuch People’s Army, and my uncle’s own Siberian Provisional Government troops. Some of them took their families with them.”
“And haven’t they made new lives for themselves?”
“Of course, but they have kept alive the dream of returning to their native country. They all want the same thing, Pekkala-to return home to the richest land in all of Russia.”
“Even if what you say is true,” replied Pekkala, “and these refugees were prepared to fight, what makes you think you could defeat the Red Army?”
“The Russian military is busy in Poland. Soon, if the rumors in Shanghai are true, it will be defending its borders against Germany. They will have neither the time nor the resources to stand up to us.”
“And suppose you did take Siberia? What then?”
“Then we form an alliance with Germany. The land west of the Ural Mountains will belong to them, and everything to the east will belong to us.”
“What makes you think the Germans would agree to this?”
“They already have,” explained Kolchak. “Their diplomatic representatives in China have promised to recognize us as a legitimate government as long as we can reclaim Siberia, which means that Japan will automatically recognize our new frontier as well.”
“And which country is providing the weapons for this adventure?”
“The men I’m speaking of are not concerned with politics.”
“You mean you are dealing with gunrunners.”
“Call them whatever you want, Pekkala. Even as we speak, there are two ships moored in a cove in the Sea of Okhotsk, loaded with rifles, machine guns, even a few pieces of artillery. All we have to do is pay for them. And when we get across the border into Russia, what we do not have-more guns, food, horses, whatever the gold has not bought-we’ll take from those who try to stop us.”
Even though Pekkala had now recovered from his initial shock, he was still astounded at the audacity of Kolchak’s plan. Under any other circumstances, such an insurrection could not stand a chance against the massed forces of the Soviet military, which Stalin would not hesitate to use if he felt that his power was threatened. But Kolchak’s timing had placed him in the center of a chain of events which might soon engulf the whole world. If his prediction of a German invasion was correct, Stalin might not be able to prevent a determined opponent from occupying Siberia. No one would understand this better than Stalin himself, whose own party had come to power in the closing stages of the Great War, when the Tsar’s army was crippled by defeats against Germany. Had the Bolsheviks chosen any other moment, their own uprising might never have succeeded, but with a combination of ruthlessness and popular support, they had taken over the whole country.
“I was right about you,” said Pekkala. “You didn’t come back for these men. You came back for the gold, and the reason they are free is because they are the only ones who knew where to find it. They believed in the oath you swore to them.”
“The oath was to the mission!” Kolchak howled.
“The mission failed. It’s over.”
“Not yet, Pekkala. I know I can’t bring back the Tsar, but I can use his treasure to build a new country, one that is not founded on the values of his enemies.”
“With yourself as emperor?” Before Kolchak had time to answer, Pekkala continued. “You may have calculated the cost of this new country in gold bullion, but what about the cost in human life?”
“I will not lie to you,” Kolchak replied. “We have many scores to settle with those who fought against my uncle in the winter of 1918 when he was trying to liberate this country. Even those who stood by and did nothing will receive the punishment they deserve. Thousands will die. Maybe tens of thousands. Numbers do not matter. What matters is that they are swept aside until all that remains of them is a footnote in the history books.” He gripped Pekkala’s arm. “Blood for blood! Those are the words on which the new Siberia will be founded.”
Pekkala pointed at the trees, where Lavrenov and Tarnowski were still digging. “What about those two men who have remained loyal to you? Have they learned about this plan of yours? All I heard them talk about was building mansions for themselves in China. Do they know you are leading them straight back into another war?”
“Not yet,” admitted Kolchak. “After what happened when I tried to explain things to Ryabov-”
“You mean you told Ryabov?”
“I tried to!” Kolchak’s voice rose in frustration. “He was the senior officer among the Comitati. I thought I owed it to the man to tell him first. I had imagined that after so many years in captivity, he would be glad to learn that the thieves who had stolen his freedom would pay for that crime with their lives.”
“What happened instead?”
“He told me he wouldn’t go through with it. He didn’t even hesitate. I explained that he could stay behind in China. I said I didn’t care whether he came or not. But that wasn’t enough for Ryabov. He insisted that enough lives had been lost on account of the gold. I told him it was about more than treasure. It was about eliminating Stalin and the Communists. If there is one thing I have learned in my years of exile it is that the only way to get rid of a monster is to create an even bigger monster. After that, it’s just a matter of seeing who bleeds to death first.”
“And what did Ryabov say to that?”
“He said he would refuse to give up the location of the gold. After all, the Comitati were the only ones who knew where it was, since I had left before they buried it. Ryabov told me that the men in Borodok had learned to trust him. Everything they had lived through, he had also endured. Ryabov was certain they would listen to him before they listened to me.”
“And you believed him?”
“I wasn’t sure, but I couldn’t take the chance that he was right. That night, when he came to the mine, I thought he had come to speak with me, perhaps to try and talk me out of it. I didn’t realize that he was there to meet Klenovkin. He didn’t expect to find me outside that cave where I’d been hiding, deep inside the mine. Tarnowski and the others had warned me to stay put, but I couldn’t stand it, cooped up in there like some animal in a cage made out of stone. So I had taken to wandering those tunnels at night, anything but stay holed up in that cave. That’s when I discovered Ryabov. I could tell he was surprised to see me. I tried again to reason with him, but he told me his mind was made up. He was putting a stop to the escape. I reminded him of how long he had struggled to ensure the survival of our men so that one day they might find their way out of this camp.”
“And what was his reply?”
“He said their freedom, and his own, would not be worth the countless thousands we’d leave butchered in our path.”
At last, the mystery of Ryabov’s death became clear to Pekkala. He realized he had misjudged the murdered officer.
“Pekkala, I did not want to kill him, but when he told me that Klenovkin would be there any minute, thinking perhaps that I would see the situation as hopeless and surrender, I knew I didn’t have any choice except to silence him for good.”
Their conversation was interrupted by a shout from the men who were digging. An arm rose from the smoke, the fist clutching a bar of gold. Tarnowski staggered out, half blinded, and laid the ingot down at Kolchak’s feet. Then he turned and went back to his digging.
Slowly, Kolchak bent down and picked up the bar, whose surface was hidden by a residue of dirt which had leached through the wooden crate over time. Kolchak rubbed it away with his thumb, revealing the double-headed eagle of the Romanovs. Then he glanced at Pekkala and smiled.
“Those
men deserve to be told,” said Pekkala, nodding towards Lavrenov and Tarnowski, “and told now.”
“They will be, as soon as they have finished.”
“Have you considered the possibility that they might not want to go through with it?”
“Of course,” replied Kolchak. “That’s why I am telling you first. These men know that you were trusted by the Tsar. If you are with me, they will be as well. Think of it, my friend. We won’t just be living like kings. Kings are what we will be!”
But all Pekkala could think about was the lives which would be lost if he stood by and did nothing. He remembered the Tsar, driven to the brink of madness by the dead from the Kodynka field, the men and women he believed he could have saved whirling in a ceaseless and macabre dance inside the white-walled palace of his skull.
It took both men to raise the first crate from the ground. As they lifted it, the rotten wood gave way. With dull, metallic clanks, ingots tumbled out into the snow. Other crates followed quickly, wrenched from the dirt and dragged clear of the steaming ground.
“Did it not occur to you,” asked Pekkala, “that I might agree with Ryabov?”
Kolchak laughed, certain that Pekkala must be joking. “We are all of us entitled to vengeance, but none more than you, Pekkala.”
“Vengeance has become the purpose of your life, Kolchak, but not of mine.”
Kolchak’s smile faded as he grasped that Pekkala was serious. “I trusted you! I broke you out of that prison. I gave you the coat off my back-and this is how you repay me? The Tsar would be ashamed of you.”
“The Tsar is dead, Kolchak, and so is the world in which he lived. You cannot bring it back by spilling blood. If you have your way, the rivers of Siberia will soon be choked with corpses. And if Germany invades in the west, millions more people will die. By the time your vengeance has been satisfied, Russia will cease to exist. Your uncle did not die for that.”
Kolchak’s eyes glazed with rage. “But you will, Inspector Pekkala.”
Almost too late, Pekkala saw the knife. He grabbed Kolchak’s wrist as the weapon flickered past his face.
With his other hand balled into a fist, Kolchak struck Pekkala in the throat, sending him down in a heap onto the trampled snow.
While Pekkala fought for breath, Kolchak raised the blade above his head, ready to plunge it into the center of Pekkala’s chest.
When the two men emerged onto the ice, Gramotin could scarcely believe his good luck. Shielding his eyes with one dirty hand, he strained to make out who they were. Even though their faces were unclear, he could still see the numbers painted in white on their faded black jackets. One of them was 4745. “Pekkala,” he muttered to himself. The other, he decided, must be Lavrenov, since he was neither bald nor the size of Tarnowski.
Lavrenov and Pekkala seemed to be involved in a heated conversation. Pekkala, who did most of the talking, even grabbed Lavrenov by the arm.
With trembling fingers, Gramotin slid back the bolt of his rifle and double-checked that he had a round in the breech.
Now the two men appeared to be arguing.
The next thing Gramotin saw was that Pekkala had drawn a knife. Suddenly, Pekkala struck Lavrenov, who fell in a heap in the snow. As Pekkala prepared to finish off the wounded Lavrenov, Gramotin felt a sudden rush of pity for the man, to have come this far only to be killed by the very person who had convinced him to escape in the first place.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Gramotin lined up the sight, right in the center of Pekkala’s back, and pulled the trigger. The gun stock bucked into his shoulder. After so much time spent with no other sound but his own breathing, he was deafened by the noise of the gunshot. It echoed back and forth between the forest and the cliff, as if guns were firing from all directions. For a moment, Gramotin lost sight of the men, but when he raised his head above the sights, he saw that Pekkala was down and a splash of blood had darkened the snow beside the fallen man.
Lavrenov, meanwhile, had scrambled away into the trees. Gramotin’s mind was in an uproar. His whole body trembled and a cackling, nervous laugh escaped his lips. He had done it. He had killed Pekkala.
This laughter ceased abruptly as it occurred to Gramotin that he needed the inspector’s body as proof of what he had done. Without it, doubt would be cast upon his story. Determined to kill as many of the Comitati as he could, and force the rest to leave Pekkala’s corpse behind, Gramotin began to fire round after round into the smoke. When the rifle’s magazine was empty, he rolled over onto his back and removed a handful of bullets from his bandolier.
As he hurriedly reloaded the rifle, Gramotin heard a noise which, at first, he mistook for thunder-although in the middle of winter that would have been unlikely. Perhaps it is an avalanche, he thought. The mysterious sound grew, filling the sky, vibrating the ground beneath his shoulder blades until, suddenly, Gramotin realized what it was. Immediately, old nightmares reared up in his mind and a choking sensation clamped down on his throat. Squinting into the distance, he spotted a train approaching from the east.
It took a moment before Gramotin was able to comprehend that, in fact, the arrival of this train was the best thing that could possibly happen to him. It meant that help was on the way. All trains on the Trans-Siberian carried a contingent of armed guards. These men would assist him in rounding up the last of the Comitati. For certain, they would be amazed to find him there, a solitary warrior, having pursued these escaped convicts across the taiga before cornering them in the forest. They, not he, would be the ones to tell the story of his heroic journey. He no longer needed to concern himself with any Dalstroy board of inquiry. They would not be punishing him. Instead, they would shower him with honors. There would be a promotion. That much was certain. Master Sergeant Gramotin. They might even make him an officer. There would also be a medal. But which one? Hero of the Soviet Union, perhaps. All he had to do was go down there and tell that train to stop.
WHEN THE NOISE of the first gunshot echoed through the trees, Pekkala dove for cover into the frozen reeds.
Tarnowski was waiting for him on the other side, a rifle in his hand. “The colonel?”
Through the brittle screen of rushes, both men looked out onto the pond. Kolchak’s open eyes stared blindly back at them. A round had hit him in the shoulder, leaving a gaping tear just under the right armpit as the bullet left his body.
Pekkala glimpsed a muzzle flash from the cliff, just as another round slammed into the ice on the pond, filling the air with a strange popping sound, like the cork coming out of a champagne bottle.
Pekkala and Tarnowski crawled back among the trees, where they found Lavrenov hiding in the hole from which they had dug out the crates. “Where’s the colonel?” he asked.
“They got him with the first shot,” replied Pekkala.
Bullets hacked through the branches above them, showering the men with pine needles.
“There must be a dozen of them out there,” whimpered Lavrenov, “to judge from all that fire.”
“But who are they?” asked Pekkala.
“Whoever they are,” Tarnowski answered, “they’re using army rifles.”
Pekkala realized that their situation was hopeless. The others knew it, too. No one had to say the words. He could see it on their faces.
He looked at the gold bars, which lay strewn across the scorched and trampled ground, and thought of how close he and the Comitati had come to living out their lives as free men. Tarnowski was right. There would be no prisoners this time.
With his eyes fixed on the luster of the ingots, Pekkala fell backwards through time, to when he had last seen this treasure.
Deep beneath the Alexander Palace, hidden in the stone vault of his treasure room, the Tsar placed his hands against the neatly stacked bars of the latest gold shipment from the Lena mines.
To Pekkala, he looked like a man trying to push open a heavy door, as if that wall of gold would give way into another room, or perhaps another world.
�
��Excellency,” whispered Pekkala.
The Tsar turned suddenly, as if he had forgotten he was not alone. “Yes?”
“I must he getting back.”
“Of course.” The Tsar nodded his approval. “Be on your way, old friend.”
Pekkala began to climb the winding stone staircase which led to the ground floor of the palace. After a few steps, he paused and looked back.
The Tsar stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at him.
“Will you be staying, Majesty?” inquired Pekkala.
“You go on ahead, Pekkala,” said the Tsar. “I have yet to count the shipment. Every bar must be accounted for. This is a task I trust to no one else.”
“Very well, Majesty.” Pekkala bowed his head and turned away. He continued up the narrow stone stairs. Just as he reached the main hall, he heard the Tsar’s voice calling to him from the bowels of the earth.
“Remember, Pekkala! Only the chosen will be saved.”
Pekkala did not reply. Silently he walked along the hall, where his own wet footsteps still glistened on the polished floor, and out into the pitiless heat of that August afternoon.
Faintly in the distance, Pekkala heard the sound of a locomotive. Moments later, the three men glimpsed the dull gray snout of an armored engine barely visible among the ranks of pines.
Lavrenov began to panic. “Those men up on the cliff were only keeping our heads down until the reinforcements arrived. There’s no way out of this. We’re as good as dead.”
“Just try to take one with you,” said Tarnowski.
Both men seemed resigned to their deaths.
“You could run,” Pekkala suggested quietly.
Tarnowski shook his head. “With those men after us, how far do you think we would get?”
“Once they set eyes on the gold, they won’t be thinking about anything else.”
“You talk as if you aren’t coming with us.” Tarnowski was staring at him.
“Stalin might be persuaded that your freedom is the price to be paid for getting his hands on the gold, but my escape brings him no such reward. If I go with you, he will pursue us to the ends of the earth.”