by Glenn Meade
Andrev felt his emotions rise now and touched the photograph of his wife and son as if it were fragile. Nina’s merchant father indulged his only daughter’s almost every whim, and her world collapsed once the Reds grasped power and her husband was captured.
Andrev knew that his imprisonment, and not knowing if she would see him alive again, took its toll. He was not even allowed to write to his wife. But the cracks began to show in their marriage soon after he joined his unit.
It was clear Nina wanted a husband, not a soldier who spent more time with his men than he did with his wife. Their intimacy waned; their arguments grew more frequent. Whatever love once existed faded to a ritual that owed more to friendship than passion.
Worse, since the Reds grasped power they seized every White barracks and forced army families out onto the streets.
The last Andrev knew—in a letter he received from Nina before his imprisonment—she and Sergey were living in a cramped one-room flat with damp walls and a communal toilet in a slum building in St. Petersburg. She eked out a living on what little money her father could afford to give her.
It broke his heart not to be with his family. But he wasn’t alone. Anyone who opposed Lenin—men, women, entire families—were either executed or sentenced to hard labor in the frozen wastes of Siberia’s penal camps.
The average survival rate for camp prisoners was eight months. Many lasted fewer than four, their health broken by grueling work chopping timber, tunneling into dangerous ore mines, or slowly starving to death on a miserable diet of watery soup made from rotten vegetables and gristle. The irony was that the same penal system Lenin once so vehemently denounced, he now used to crush his enemies.
Andrev stared at the image of Nina and Sergey. The question that never left his head returned to haunt him: What is to become of us?
He was a long way from the simple, happy life he once knew in St. Petersburg.
When he could bear the pain no longer he tucked the photograph inside his shabby uniform. Somewhere off in the distance he heard the whistle of one of the trans-Siberian trains that passed the camp most days.
It made him think of that summer’s afternoon when he and Nina took Sergey to Neva beach, when the ice cream stuck on Sergey’s nose and made him giggle, and the simple joy in their hearts as they danced with their infant son in their arms.
The sick bay door burst open and snapped Andrev out of his trance. Two men came in wearing ragged military uniforms. Captain Mikhail Vilsk was a lanky infantry officer, his uniform threadbare, his lips a mass of encrusted cold sores. His left leg had been shattered below the knee by a German bullet and he walked with the aid of a cane.
His companion, Corporal Abraham Tarku, a former jeweler in civilian life, was a battle-hardened soldier from Kiev, who wore wire-rimmed glasses, one of the lenses cracked into a few shards but still in place. A couple of his fingertips were missing, the stumps bearing the blackened telltale signs of frostbite.
Vilsk hobbled over to the bed, taking in Andrev’s bandaged wounds. “We thought you’d be nailed into a box by now, Uri. Instead we hear that the guard who wounded you was shot by a Cheka officer. Is it true? How are you?”
Andrev nodded. “I could be a lot worse. And yes, it’s true.”
Corporal Tarku stepped over to the window, rubbed the fogged glass with the blackened stump of a fingertip. He squinted out through the snow flurries. “The Cheka officer is Leonid Yakov, isn’t he, sir? I’d recognize him anywhere.”
“Yes, it’s Yakov.”
“I saw him step down off his train when it pulled into the camp siding, before they took you off on a stretcher.”
Vilsk raised an eyebrow. “It seems you’ve found yourself a guardian angel, Uri. How do you know him?”
Andrev got up from the bed and moved to the window, ignoring his pain. “Yakov served in our unit. He was my sergeant, and a good one.”
Corporal Tarku spat on the floor and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “That was before he went over to the Reds. I heard he’s a commissar now. Travels all around the country in that armored train of his, on Lenin’s orders, slaughtering our men or sending them to the camps.”
Vilsk frowned at Andrev. “Why did Yakov intervene to spare you?”
Tarku added, “He and the captain were once close friends, almost like brothers, isn’t that true, sir?”
Andrev rubbed his jaw and thought furiously, snow still falling out on the camp. “That’s not important right now. I have dire news and I want your solemn promise you’ll keep it a secret for now. You’ll understand why when I tell you.”
Both men gave their word and when Andrev explained, gloom darkened their faces. Vilsk rummaged in his pocket and found a cigarette butt he had been saving all day. “So, we’re all marked for death, aren’t we, Uri?”
“It seems that way.”
“What about the deal Yakov offered?” Vilsk used a birch twig to light the cigarette from the woodstove, and stuck it between his blistered lips.
“I can’t leave my men to die,” Andrev replied.
“Yakov’s turned out to be a right swine,” Tarku said bitterly. “He’d sell his soul for Lenin. And he holds a grudge. The Cossack officer who gave the order to shoot into the crowd storming the Winter Palace when Yakov’s wife was killed, he paid the price.”
“What are you talking about?”
“They say Yakov hunted him down and killed him with his own sabre.”
Andrev peered beyond the snow flurries and could make out Yakov’s black train parked in a siding beyond the main gate. “If we could reach Perm and alert our troops, we could lead them back here and storm the camp before dawn, surprising Yakov and the guards.”
Vilsk said, “Are you out of your mind, Uri? How do we get to Perm in this weather, let alone escape? It’s thirty miles away.”
Andrev used a finger to draw a rough map on a fogged pane of glass. “What have we got to lose? The train from Omsk ought to pass here shortly after midnight, weather permitting. It slows as it comes near the camp because of the track’s curve. If we could climb on board it would take us within a five-mile walk to our lines in less than an hour.”
Vilsk said, “Getting on board the train’s impossible. Guards are always posted where it passes near the camp’s west gate.”
Andrev said, “Leave that to me. I’ve got a diversion in mind. Just the three of us, though. We don’t want a mass breakout alerting the guards.”
Tarku said fiercely, “If we can turn the tables and make contact with our troops, we’ll hang that swine Yakov.”
Andrev said, “Leave him to me.”
Vilsk tapped his knee with his cane. “Better go without me, Uri, I’d only be a hindrance.”
“Tarku?”
“I’m with you, sir, if you’re sure you can hold up.”
Andrev came away from the window. “So long as we can get on board the train, a five-mile hike won’t kill me. Try and find extra clothes to keep us warm. And weapons of some sort, a knife or cudgel. See what you can find.”
“When do we go?”
“Before midnight, when the guard changes. Then we’ll take our chances.”
10
TSARSKOYE SELO
In his long black overcoat, and with his bald head and black hat, even a glance from Inspector Viktor Kazan could make a man feel guilty.
His left eye was milky white—he’d lost sight in the eye to an anarchist’s bomb—which gave him a frightening stare, but his good eye missed nothing as it swept over the fire scene like a searchlight.
In his right hand he clutched and unclutched a heavy brass knuckle-duster.
Kazan’s nostrils flared, overpowered by the stench of burnt human flesh as he covered his fleshy jowls with a handkerchief. Wearing a high shirt collar and thin black tie, he picked his way toward the burnt-out kitchen, a mess of debris.
In the growing darkness, the inferno’s dying embers smoldered orange. The horse-drawn fire-tenders finished their work and n
ow the blaze was replaced by just a few black plumes of lazy smoke.
A young police captain in a pale blue uniform and dark blue overcoat accompanied Kazan and said, “The gas engineers have turned off the supply at the mains and made everything safe, Inspector.”
Kazan stared at the charcoal-blackened corpse. It appeared the body was slammed against a kitchen wall with the force of the blast. It lay on its side, partly fused to the wall and the concrete floor, which was drenched with water from the fire hoses.
Kazan nudged the corpse with the tip of his boot and flakes of charcoal broke away. “Do you know the victim’s identity?”
“We think it may be the property’s landlord, a retired naval officer named Ravich. Two of his neighbors last saw him shoveling show outside here about noon today.”
Kazan wrinkled his nose at the horrible stench, the body unrecognizable, not a shred of flesh uncooked. “Who rented the house?”
“One of Ravich’s neighbors said he’d told him that the tenant was a foreign businessman. He arrived about six weeks ago.”
“Age?”
“Mid-twenties. The neighbor didn’t know his nationality. And there are no signs of other remains within the ruins. In fact, he seems to be something of a phantom, this man.”
“A phantom?”
“He kept to himself. No one saw him apart from Ravich and the neighbor.”
“Do you have his name?”
“No, Inspector, but we can try to find out.”
Kazan removed his hat and wiped his brow with a handkerchief, his pale bald head smooth and shiny. “Trying isn’t good enough. I want a name and I want a description.” He scanned the nearby Alexander Palace, like a predator trying to pick up a scent, his right hand busily toying with the knuckle-duster. “So, you think it was all a dreadful accident, Captain?”
The captain recalled that Kazan, a former secret policeman with the tsar’s Ochrana who now worked for the Bolshevik Cheka, had a brutal reputation. Kazan was savage in his pursuit and known to beat obstinate prisoners to death. Hundreds if not thousands of the tsar’s former secret policemen were retired, fired, or killed by revengeful mobs. But not Kazan.
He made sure his cunning and expertise were useful to the Bolsheviks.
The captain said cautiously, “Well … yes, Inspector, it really does look that way. It wouldn’t be the first gas explosion in cold weather. However, my colonel thought it wise to inform you of the blast in case there was more to it, especially as the property is near the palace.”
“How very wise of your colonel.” Kazan slipped the knuckle-duster into his pocket. He knelt and examined a congealed tarry substance that coated the concrete floor near where the corpse was slammed into the wall.
He took a pinch of the black substance and rubbed it between thumb and forefinger. It was brittle and flaky. He sniffed a morsel, licked it with his tongue. He dusted his hands and stood. “The black mess is blood.”
“How do you tell, Inspector?”
“Thirty years of experience.” Kazan scanned the floor, kicking away burnt debris, before he made a steeple of his gloved fingers, touched them to his lips. “The victim may have committed suicide, but I doubt it with this much blood and a gas explosion. It’s more likely that a killer may be trying to cover his tracks.”
The captain thought, Dear God, help the criminal if Kazan picks up his scent.
Kazan studied the Alexander’s vast, snow-covered lawns. “Did Ravich’s neighbors notice any strangers in the area?”
“No, we asked them.”
“But the tenant is missing.”
“The explosion occurred only four hours ago. He may turn up yet.”
Kazan snorted. “And he may not. Intuition tells me there’s more to this, happening so close to the palace. There are royalist spies who’d like nothing better than to rescue the tsar, so let’s not take any chances.”
The captain thought, That’s rich. Kazan didn’t take long to change allegiance.
Kazan spotted something in the ashes, bent down, and picked up a small brown glass bottle with ribbed sides. It was covered in ash and the rubber screw-stopper had melted. Kazan cleaned off the ash and sniffed around the top of the bottle.
“You found something,” the officer asked.
Kazan’s nose wrinkled at the bitter smell. “Laudanum.”
“Pardon?”
“A narcotic used to treat many ills. Pain, anxiety—the list is long.”
Kazan slipped the bottle in his coat pocket. “Check with the local cabbies and lodgings. Find out if any strangers arrived recently. Watch the railway stations and the roads leading out of town. Circulate the tenant’s description.”
The exasperated captain said, “But, Inspector, my men are busy …”
Kazan’s good eye drilled into the captain’s face as the milky one stared into nothing. “You’ll do as I say. If our phantom’s out there, I’m going to find him.”
“Can you halt a few minutes?” Sorg asked the cabbie. “Nature calls.”
They were on the outskirts of Tsarskoye Selo, on a slight rise covered in thick pine woods, a frozen stream snaking through the trees.
The cabbie reined in the two sturdy horses, their breaths snorting in the freezing air. “Certainly, citizen. Take your time.”
Sorg pulled the blanket off his legs, climbed down, and moved into the woods, taking his Gladstone bag with him.
The snow hadn’t penetrated under the pines, the needles soft and damp, his journey silent, and soon he came out on the far side of the woods. A view of Tsarskoye Selo spread out before him.
Sorg took the spyglass from his Gladstone and leaned the muzzle against a bare birch tree, its bark the color of tarnished silver. It wasn’t difficult to spot the house. The smoke plume was blacker and thicker than any other rising into the winter air.
Sorg focused on the horse-drawn fire carriage, painted red and blue, figures standing around as smoke curled from the ruins.
He noticed two men talking. One wore a long dark coat and a broad-rimmed black hat. When he removed it to wipe his brow, a bone-white bald head was revealed.
Sorg turned ashen. He felt as if someone had frozen his heart. A surge of fear coursed though him. Sixteen years had passed, but the man was still frighteningly familiar.
Kazan.
He looked older, fleshier, but Sorg never forgot the image of the man who had dragged his father away. What’s Kazan doing here?
The Ochrana was disbanded. Was the Cheka making use of his brutal talents? It made a warped kind of sense.
Sorg shivered, as if someone had walked over his grave. Then he began to sweat. He rummaged in his pockets for the Laudanum tincture, thinking a few drops would calm his anxiety.
The bottle was gone. He must have lost it in the struggle.
He swore.
Snapping shut the spyglass, he pushed it into the Gladstone. Then he walked back through the woods and climbed into the carriage. He pulled the blanket over his legs, shaking now.
The cabbie smiled. “Your business is done?”
Sorg thought, I have a feeling it’s just begun.
11
At eight that evening Yakov was seated behind his oak desk, looking through some papers, when he heard a sharp knock on his carriage door. “Come in.”
Zoba entered, the Georgian rubbing his hands together, stamping his boots, his face frozen and the wind whistling. “It’s as cold as an Eskimo’s kiss outside. My feet are like ice blocks.”
Yakov stood up from his desk and took a tin cigarette case from his pocket. “Throw another log in the stove and get some heat into you.”
Zoba crossed to a tiled woodstove in a corner, opened it, and was greeted by a blazing furnace of heat. As he threw in a log someone banged on the door.
This time a soldier entered and a gust of icy wind raged in before he managed to shut the door. He snapped off a salute. “Duty Officer Malenkov reporting. A night to keep warm, Commissar. A bad storm’s brewing, I�
�d say.”
“Isn’t it always in this godforsaken place?” Yakov saw the duty officer’s eyes dart about the luxury carriage. A half-dozen comfortable seats were upholstered in bright red velvet and a nickeled samovar bubbled in a corner, a whiff of charcoal scenting the air. Nearby stood a side table with a bottle of vodka and some glasses. “You look impressed,” Yakov said to the man.
“We don’t see much luxury in these parts, comrade.” The duty officer peered past an open door and saw a private bedroom in another part of the carriage. It looked more sparse, with a soldier’s simple metal cot.
Yakov struck a match, lit a cigarette, and blew out smoke as he crossed the polished walnut floor to the stove blazing in the corner. “Tell him, Zoba.”
“You’re standing in the former private carriage of the Grand Duke Andrew, which now rightfully belongs to the Soviet people. We carry a hundred and fifty troops on board, and two special carriage stables to transport a dozen of the finest cavalry horses for our mounted scouts.”
Zoba rapped his knuckles against one of the steel-hinged plates hanging by each of the windows, gun ports cut into the metal. “We’ve added steel shutters and machine-gun turrets for extra protection. When Comrade Lenin travels with us, he calls our train his ‘Kremlin on wheels.’ It has its own kitchens, troop sleeping quarters, and plentiful stores of arms and munitions.”
Yakov said to the duty officer, “Well, what do you want?”
“I picked the firing squad. They’ll be ready to carry out the execution at dawn. The remaining hundred and sixty prisoners will be force-marched to the Soborsk camp.”
Yakov inhaled on his cigarette and sighed. “Hopefully the captain’s execution won’t be necessary.”
“Comrade?”
“Not your business. How has Captain Andrev been since he arrived here?”