by Sam Eastland
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.”
Lavrenov gripped Tarnowski’s arm. “Let’s do what he says and get out of here now.”
“What about the gold?” For the first time, Tarnowski seemed completely overwhelmed. “You can’t expect us just to leave it all here, not after what we’ve been through.”
“Not all of it,” replied Pekkala. “How much gold does one man really need?”
THE TRAIN WAS CLOSE NOW.
Worried that he might not reach the locomotive before it passed, Gramotin lumbered down the steep slope. Half running, half falling, swamped with snow, he tumbled out at last onto the rails.
The engine slowed as it rounded a curve on the tracks. Then its motor roared, regaining speed and trailing a cloud of snow dust which rose like wings behind the train.
Gramotin raised his rifle above his head and began waving his arms back and forth, all the while shouting at the top of his lungs to attract the attention of the driver.
The engine changed pitch suddenly. The great machine was slowing down. They had seen him. The sound of brakes filled the air with a ringing clash of steel.
As the train came to a stop, Gramotin stared in awe at the overlapping plates of armor, the heavy machine guns jutting from their turrets and the ice-encrusted battering ram mounted in front of the driver’s compartment. Painted on the front of the engine, he glimpsed a name in large white letters. Even though Gramotin could barely read or write, it took him only a moment to spell out the word ORLIK.
Gramotin swore he must be dreaming, but the shaking of the ground beneath his feet proved otherwise. “No,” he mumbled. “Not you. Not again!” He could almost hear the terrible clanking rattle of the Czech machine guns as they strafed the foxholes where he lay with his platoon. He flinched as he recalled the whip-crack sound of bullets passing just above his head. He smelled pine sap from the gashed trees, mixing with the burnt-hair reek of cordite from the guns. He pressed his hands against his ears, trying to block out the terrible noise of bullets striking bodies, like that of a cleaver hacking into meat. Gramotin closed his eyes as tightly as he could, in a last, desperate attempt to banish these visions from his skull, but when he looked again, the train was even closer than before.
Convinced that his nightmares had finally sprung to life, the sergeant turned and fled.
“GO!” SAID PEKKALA. “There isn’t much time.”
Lavrenov did not hesitate. Snatching up a gold bar in each hand, he vanished into the forest.
But Tarnowski had not moved.
“You must leave now!” urged Pekkala.
“I saw what happened,” said Tarnowski, “out there on the pond. Kolchak was going to kill you.”
Pekkala nodded. “If it hadn’t been for that gunman on the cliff …”
“That gunman didn’t shoot the colonel. I did.”
The revelation stunned Pekkala. “But why?” he demanded.
“I heard what he was planning to do,” explained Tarnowski. “I don’t care if Kolchak wanted a fight with Stalin. Unlike you and Captain Ryabov, I have no love for Russia or mankind. This whole country can go up in flames as far as I’m concerned.”
“Then why did you ever become a soldier?”
“Because I was good at it! War was my job, just as police work was yours, and I expected to be paid for doing it. I am owed, Pekkala, not only for the expedition but for every day I spent at Borodok, especially since we never should have been there! If the colonel hadn’t insisted on bringing an entire wagonload of treasure with us when we departed from the city of Kazan, instead of leaving all three wagons behind as we should have done, we could have outrun the Bolsheviks. At least we would have saved ourselves. Instead, I ended up in Borodok, along with the rest of Kolchak’s men. My share of the gold is fair wages for spending half my life in that hellhole. And I’ll be damned if Kolchak was going to spend it on another war.”
“Then take what you can and go now!” pleaded Pekkala.
Tarnowski nodded once. “Very well, Inspector, and thank you. Perhaps one day I’ll see you on the other side.”
Without another word, Pekkala turned and set out across the frozen pond towards the tracks. Behind him, hidden in the canopy of pines, he heard the dull ring of gold bars knocking together. After that came silence.
The train had stopped beside the cliff. The locomotive stamped and snorted, like a bull getting ready to charge. Then it belched out a cloud of steam as the driver released pressure from the engine.
Twenty paces away, Pekkala stood on the tracks, waiting to see what they’d do.
Now a man emerged from the haze. He was tall and thin, with a particular loping stride.
Only when Kirov stood right in front of him did Pekkala believe his eyes. “Kirov!” he shouted.
“Inspector,” said Kirov, trying to hide his astonishment at the sight of Pekkala’s filthy clothes, scruffy beard, and uncombed hair. “Where are the kidnappers?”
“Kidnappers?” asked Pekkala.
“The men who took you hostage when they escaped from the camp.”
“Ah, yes,” Pekkala replied hastily. “They fled when they saw the train coming.” Now Pekkala raised his head and squinted at the top of the cliff. “And where are the soldiers who kept them pinned down?”
“There are no soldiers, Inspector. Only me, and the driver of the train.”
“But somebody was shooting at us.”
“We did see a man on the tracks, but he ran away when we slowed down. Whoever he was, the train must have scared him off.” Kirov nodded towards Kolchak, whose body still lay sprawled upon the frozen pond. “Who is he?”
“That,” replied Pekkala, “is Colonel Kolchak, the last casualty of a war which ended twenty years ago. And from what I hear, Stalin intends to make a casualty of me as well.”
“That will be true for both of us, Inspector, if we do not bring him the thirteen cases of gold he says are still missing from the Tsar’s Imperial Reserves.”
“Thirteen?”
Kirov nodded. “That’s what he said. Five thousand pounds of it in all.”
Stalin has somehow miscalculated the amount, thought Pekkala. “How did he come up with that number?”
“They had an informant,” explained Kirov. “A groundskeeper at Tsarskoye Selo. He saw Colonel Kolchak departing from the estate and even managed to count the number of crates on the wagons Kolchak brought with him.”
As Pekkala thought back to that night, he suddenly grasped what must have happened. The groundskeeper had not realized that the third cart had broken down. He had only watched the first two carts departing. By the time the third had been repaired, the groundskeeper was already on his way to report what he had seen. Stalin must be under the impression that there were fifty cases in all, when in fact there were seventy-five. There were not thirteen cases missing. There were thirty-eight. Subtracting the three cases that Kolchak used for bribes along his route, that still left thirty-five cases of gold, and not five thousand pounds but more than thirteen thousand.
“Those cases are down there in the woods,” said Pekkala. “I will go and fetch them now.”
“Let me help you, Inspector.”
“No
.” Pekkala held up one grubby hand. “As the Tsar once said to me, this is a task I trust to no one else.”
The poor man has been driven insane, Kirov thought to himself, but he smiled gently and rested a hand upon the shoulder of Pekkala’s dirty coat. “Very well, Inspector,” he said comfortingly. “If you insist.”
It took Pekkala two hours to carry the ingots from the forest. In that time, he barely spoke, methodically shuffling back and forth between the train tracks and the clearing.
Kirov and Deryabin watched Pekkala struggling under the weight of the ingots, which he carried three at a time. The only assistance Pekkala accepted was for the two men to take the gold from his hands and stack it inside the train compartment.
“Why won’t he let us help him?” asked Deryabin, when Pekkala had once more disappeared through the reeds and into the clearing on the other side.
“Don’t ask me why he does what he does,” replied Kirov, “because, believe me, I don’t know. Most of the time only Pekkala knows what he is doing, but that was enough for the Tsar, and it is enough for Stalin as well, so it will have to be enough for you and me, Comrade Deryabin.”
When the thirteen cases of gold, three hundred twelve bars in all, had been delivered to the train, Pekkala returned one last time to the frozen pond and dragged the body of Colonel Kolchak to the tracks, leaving a bloody trail through the snow. With Kirov’s help, the two men laid Kolchak inside the tender where the reserves of coal were kept.
The rest of the gold, more than five hundred bars, Pekkala left behind in the forest. In time, the Ostyaks would find it—a gift from the man with bloody hands.
“Inspector,” said Kirov, “we have a long journey ahead of us, but before we go, I have a little gift for you.” From the pocket of his tunic, Kirov removed the Emerald Eye and placed it in Pekkala’s hand.
For a moment Pekkala stared at the badge, which unblinkingly returned his gaze from the safety of his grubby palm. Then, very carefully, Pekkala pinned it to the lapel of his coat.
In the engineer’s compartment, Kirov sat down on the bars, which formed a low bench against the rear wall. He leaned back and folded his arms. “Deryabin!”
“Yes?”
“It is time to go.”
“But where?”
“Still think you could teach those Muscovites a thing or two?”
“Damned right I could!”
Seated on his makeshift throne of gold, Kirov gestured casually towards the west. “Then roll on, Engine Master. We are bound for Moscow. Show us what the Orlik can do.”
TOO EXHAUSTED TO GO ON, Gramotin stood beside the tracks, crying out in terror and confusion.
The Orlik had caught up with him at last.
Looking down from the engineer’s compartment, Pekkala noticed what appeared to be a person in military uniform, although he could not be quite sure. This wretch’s clothing appeared to be both singed and frozen at the same time. The helpless creature stood with its mouth open, caught up in a cyclone of whirling snow which vortexed around him as if it were a living thing. Whoever it was, Pekkala pitied him for having gone astray in such a wilderness.
As the train passed by, the two men locked eyes. In that moment, each one recognized the other.
“Gramotin!” exclaimed Pekkala.
The sergeant’s screaming ceased abruptly as he gaped at prisoner 4745—the man he could have sworn he had just killed.
And then the train was gone.
Gramotin waited until the Orlik had vanished into the distance. Then, after swearing a silent oath never to mention what he had just seen, he tottered back onto the tracks and kept walking.
Six days later, the Orlik rolled into Moscow’s Central Station.
HIGH ABOVE THE KREMLIN, thunderhead clouds drifted across the pale blue sky.
From his office window, Stalin gazed out across the rooftops of the city. He never placed himself directly in front of the glass. Instead, he leaned into the thick folds of the red velvet curtain, preferring to remain invisible to anyone who might be looking from below.
Pekkala stood in the center of the room, breathing in the honeyed smell of beeswax polish and the leathery reek of old tobacco smoke.
He had been there for several minutes, waiting for Stalin to acknowledge his presence.
Finally, Stalin turned away from the window. “I realize you must be upset. I might have overreacted.”
“You mean by ordering me to be shot?”
“However”—Stalin raised one finger in the air—“you must admit my instincts were right about the gold. Ingenious, Pekkala, allowing yourself to be taken hostage by the Comitati, in order to locate the treasure. A pity those two men managed to escape.”
“A small price to pay.”
“Yes,” Stalin muttered absentmindedly.
“You seem restless today, Comrade Stalin.”
“I am!” he agreed. “Ever since I walked in here this morning, I’ve had the feeling that the world was somehow out of balance. My mind is playing tricks on me.”
“Is there anything else, Comrade Stalin?”
“What? Oh, yes. Yes, there is.” Lifting a file from the stack laid out on his green blotter, he slid it across to Pekkala. “For the successful completion of this case, congratulations are in order. These are your award papers. You are now a Hero of the Soviet Union.”
“That will not be necessary, Comrade Stalin.”
Stalin’s jaw clenched, but then he sighed with resignation. “I knew you wouldn’t take it, and yet I have a feeling you do not intend to leave here empty-handed.”
“As a matter of fact,” said Pekkala, “I do have one request.”
“I thought as much,” growled Stalin.
“It concerns a man named Melekov.”
IN THE OUTER OFFICE, Poskrebyshev was relishing Stalin’s discomfort.
The previous night he had experienced an epiphany. When it came to him, he was hovering in that space between waking and sleeping, when the body seems to translate itself, molecule by molecule, into that swirling dust from which the universe is made.
The idea appeared in Poskrebyshev’s head so completely that it seemed to him at first as if there was someone else in the room explaining it to him. The drifting of his consciousness halted abruptly. Suddenly wide awake, Poskrebyshev sat up in bed and fumbled about in the dark for a pencil and piece of paper, afraid that if he did not write it down his plan might escape unremembered into the mysterious realm from which it had appeared.
Poskrebyshev had been thinking about the apparently limitless enjoyment Stalin took in humiliating him. He had always assumed that this was simply a thing he was required to endure. There could be no consideration of revenge. Stalin’s sense of humor did not extend to laughter gleaned at his own expense. The only way Poskrebyshev could ever achieve any kind of satisfaction was if Stalin did not know a joke was being played on him.
Which is impossible, he told himself.
It was at this moment that the angels spoke to Poskrebyshev, or if they were not angels, then some other supernatural voice—Lenin, or Trotsky perhaps, calling to him from beyond the grave—since it hardly seemed possible to him that he could have come up with such a brilliant plan all on his own. In its deviousness, it even surpassed the revenge he had taken on Comrades Schwartz and Ermakov, currently residing in Archangel.
Arriving early for work the next morning, Poskrebyshev carefully rearranged the contents of Stalin’s office. Chairs. Carpets. Ashtrays. Pictures on the wall.
As Poskrebyshev was well aware, Stalin liked everything to be in its proper place. He insisted upon it to such a degree of obsession that, the previous week, when a member of the Kremlin cleaning crew had switched his pipe rack from one side of the desk to the other, Stalin had the woman dismissed.
The brilliance of Poskrebyshev’s revenge consisted in shifting these objects only millimeters from their original position. No one looking at them would be consciously aware that anything was out of the ordinar
y. Subconsciously, however, the cumulative effect would be devastating.
It would not be permanent, of course. When Stalin had gone for the day, Poskrebyshev would put everything back in its proper place. He would do this not to relieve Comrade Stalin of his suffering but to confound him even further as to the source of his anxiety.
Now, as Poskrebyshev eavesdropped on Stalin’s conversation with Pekkala, he experienced a warmth of satisfaction he had never felt before and clenched his teeth to hide the sound of cackling which threatened to burst from his mouth.
A few minutes later, when Pekkala emerged from Stalin’s office, Poskrebyshev busied himself with paperwork. He expected Pekkala to walk straight past without acknowledging him, as most people did. Instead, the investigator paused. Reaching across Poskrebyshev’s desk, he repositioned the intercom a finger’s breadth to the right of where it had been before.
“What are you doing?” asked Poskrebyshev.
“Comrade Stalin seems particularly agitated today.”
Poskrebyshev looked at the ugly black box, as if by force of will he might return the object to its original position. Then, slowly, he raised his head until he was staring at Pekkala. Could he possibly have figured it out? wondered Poskrebyshev. What are you thinking? asked the voices in his head. It’s Pekkala. Of course he has figured it out! A sense of imminent doom surrounded Poskrebyshev, but only for a moment, because he noticed Pekkala was smiling.
“And how is the weather in Archangel today?” asked the inspector.
By the time Poskrebyshev remembered to breathe, Pekkala had already gone.
MELEKOV HAD JUST FINISHED INSTALLING a new phone in the commandant’s office. His hands were sticky from the electrical tape he had used to bind the wiring. As he wiped his fingertips on his shirt, Melekov looked around the room. Most of Klenovkin’s possessions had already been stolen by various guards who came to see the bullet hole, almost hidden by the peacock fan of blood which had sprayed across the wall.
Now the bullet hole had been repaired and the blood had been painted over, although, Melekov noted, both were still visible if he stared at the place for a while.